Same difference: Two halves of the hippocampus have different gene activity DALLAS - May 28, 2021 - A study of gene activity in the brain's hippocampus, led by UT Southwestern researchers, has identified marked differences between the region's anterior and posterior portions. The findings, published today in Neuron, could shed light on a variety of brain disorders that involve the hippocampus and may eventually help lead to new, targeted treatments. "These new data reveal molecular-level differences that allow us to view the anterior and posterior hippocampus in a whole new way," says study leader Genevieve Konopka, Ph.D., associate professor of neuroscience at UTSW. She and study co-leader Bradley C. Lega, M.D., associate professor of neurological surgery, neurology, and psychiatry, explain that the human hippocampus is typically considered a uniform structure with key roles in memory, spatial navigation, and regulation of emotions. However, some research has suggested that the two ends of the hippocampus - the anterior, which points downward toward the face, and the posterior, which points upward toward the back of the head - take on different jobs. Scientists have speculated that the anterior hippocampus might be more important for emotion and mood, while the posterior hippocampus might be more important for cognition. However, says Konopka, a Jon Heighten Scholar in Autism Research, researchers had yet to explore whether differences in gene activity exist between these two halves. For the study, Konopka and Lega, both members of the Peter O'Donnell Jr. Brain Institute, and their colleagues isolated samples of both the anterior and posterior hippocampus from five patients who had the structure removed to treat epilepsy. Seizures often originate from the hippocampus, explains Lega, who performed the surgeries. Although brain abnormalities trigger these seizures, microscopic analysis suggested that the tissues used in this study were anatomically normal. After removal, the samples underwent single nuclei RNA sequencing (snRNA-seq), which assesses gene activity in individual cells. Although snRNA-seq showed mostly the same types of neurons and support cells reside in both sections of the hippocampus, activity of specific genes in excitatory neurons - those that stimulate other neurons to fire - varied significantly between the anterior and the posterior portions of the hippocampus. When the researchers compared this set of genes to a list of genes associated with psychiatric and neurological disorders, they found significant matches. Genes associated with mood disorders, such as major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder, tended to be more active in the anterior hippocampus; conversely, genes associated with cognitive disorders, such as autism spectrum disorder, tended to be more active in the posterior hippocampus. Lega notes that the more researchers are able to appreciate these differences, the better they'll be able to understand disorders in which the hippocampus is involved. "The idea that the anterior and posterior hippocampus represent two distinct functional structures is not completely new, but it's been underappreciated in clinical medicine," he says. "When trying to understand disease processes, we have to keep that in mind." ### Other UTSW researchers who contributed to this study include Fatma Ayhan, Ashwinikumar Kulkarni, Stefano Berto, Karthigayini Sivaprakasam, and Connor Douglas. This work was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH grants NS106447, T32DA007290, T32HL139438, NS107357), a University of Texas BRAIN Initiative seed grant (366582), the Chilton Foundation, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences of the NIH (under Center for Translational Medicine award UL1TR001105), the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (an advised fund of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, HCA-A-1704-01747), and the James S. McDonnell Foundation 21st Century Science Initiative in Understanding Human Cognition (scholar award 220020467). About UT Southwestern Medical Center UT Southwestern, one of the premier academic medical centers in the nation, integrates pioneering biomedical research with exceptional clinical care and education. The institution's faculty has received six Nobel Prizes, and includes 25 members of the National Academy of Sciences, 17 members of the National Academy of Medicine, and 13 Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigators. The full-time faculty of more than 2,800 is responsible for groundbreaking medical advances and is committed to translating science-driven research quickly to new clinical treatments. UT Southwestern physicians provide care in about 80 specialties to more than 117,000 hospitalized patients, more than 360,000 emergency room cases, and oversee nearly 3 million outpatient visits a year. This story has been published on: 2021-05-28. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Chinese Premier stresses improving development quality, efficiency via sci-tech innovation Xinhua) 09:14, May 29, 2021 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, addresses a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang) BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang Friday urged improving the quality and efficiency of development through giving full play to the advantages of human resources and through scientific and technological innovation. Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, made the remarks Friday afternoon during the second plenary session of the meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology. Addressing the meeting on Friday morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, called for accelerated efforts in building China into a leader in science and technology and achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels. Li said that Xi delivered an important speech in which he systematically reviewed China's new historic achievements in science and technology. The speech made clear the major tasks in accelerating efforts to build China's sci-tech strength, and must be thoroughly implemented. He noted that since the outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic, a vast number of sci-tech workers have negotiated difficulties and made important contributions to epidemic prevention and control, the growth of new growth drivers, and economic and social development. Li said the uncertainties of the environment at home and abroad are increasing. China should vigorously promote scientific and technological innovation, expand domestic demand and opening-up, and promote high-quality development. China has made many significant sci-tech achievements in critical areas in recent years, the Chinese Premier pointed out. He noted that it is necessary to give full play to the advantages of human resources under the new circumstances and enhance the leading role of scientific and technological innovation in economic and social development. He highlighted the primary role of basic research, promoting more innovative breakthroughs in key areas, setting off the innovation vitality of enterprises, and promoting management system reform for science and technology. Li also called for strengthening the protection of intellectual property rights, encouraging young researchers to meet challenges, and stepping up international sci-tech cooperation to improve self-innovation ability through opening-up. The Chinese Premier noted that the CAS and CAE academicians are outstanding representatives of the Chinese sci-tech workers and encouraged them to continue to make contributions to the sci-tech progress, talents cultivation, and economic and social development in the country. He also asked governments at all levels to continue their support for researchers and strive to create better working and living conditions for them. About 3,000 sci-tech professionals and officials attended Friday's event. Enditem (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) A total of 914 fugitives suspected of cross-border gambling had surrendered to police as of April 30, the deadline set by Chinese judicial and law enforcement authorities for such offenders to voluntarily turn themselves in to be eligible for leniency, according to the Ministry of Public Security (MPS). Of the total suspects, 493 surrendered in the Chinese mainland while 317 surrendered outside the mainland. Another 104 have submitted the letter of intent to surrender but are yet to be formally arrested as they are still overseas, the MPS said. On Feb. 5, China's Supreme People's Court, Supreme People's Procuratorate and the MPS jointly released a statement urging suspects involved in such cases to surrender. According to the statement, suspects who turn themselves in before April 30 and confess their crimes would be eligible for lesser punishments. Offenses deemed relatively minor might even be exempted from penalties, it added. Vowing to take stringent measures to resolutely curb cross-border gambling, the ministry has asked such offenders to surrender for mitigated punishments and urged the public to provide tipoffs. Mary Williams wants to introduce a broader perspective on American history, one that honors the African Americans who built the country and spreads hope for the generations to come. A parade during the commemoration events for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre centennial was the place God told her to start, she said. Groundbreakers are often forgotten or marginalized, but our framework today is because of the footprints of yesterday, said Williams, founder of Color Me True. African Americans are woven into the fabric of America with honor and credibility as much as any other culture of people or race. Its those very founders Williams sought to bring into the publics eye Saturday morning through dazzling educational floats, vintage automobiles, historical characters and at least 100 motorcycle riders from all over the country in the first Black Wall Street Heritage Parade. The line made its way through the heart of Greenwood during the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival as Williams spoke from a stage about each of the more than 25 entries, engaging spectators in the tales of history and encouraging them to imagine the district as it once was. A man who has spent nearly half his life in prison now faces federal first-degree murder charges after his state conviction was dismissed due to jurisdictional issues. A first-degree murder charge against Renel Anthony Brewer, 41, was unsealed Thursday in Tulsa federal court, records show. Brewer is accused of shooting 16-year-old Courtland Kincaid Griffin on Jan. 26, 1999, while Griffin sat in a car outside a house in the 3100 block of North Kenosha Avenue in Tulsa, according to court records and Tulsa World archives. Griffin died the following day at a hospital. Another teenager in the car with Griffin survived being shot but was paralyzed. Police at the time described the shooting as gang-related and in retribution for an earlier shooting. Brewers case is among hundreds that are being retried in Oklahoma federal courts after the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts ruled since last summer that the state of Oklahoma did not have jurisdiction to try cases involving American Indians in much of the eastern half of the state because Congress never disestablished the reservations of the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee and Seminole nations. As he poked through the rubble of his burned-out home and restaurant, Joe Lockard must have felt utterly defeated. The life he had worked so hard to build had started and nurtured with his own two hands had in just a matter of hours been wiped out. But as overwhelming as Lockards losses were, at some point a bigger concern would begin to take priority. It had been days since he had last seen his younger brother, Eddie. That, he knew, was not a good sign. And soon enough, Lockards growing fears for his sibling would be confirmed. What that mustve been like for Joe Lockard on top of losing everything in the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, to lose his brother as well is something his great-granddaughter Dene Harjo has often wondered about. And Eddie Lockard is even more of a mystery. He worked in Joes restaurant, we think, Harjo said. But beyond that we dont know much about him. A lot of those details died with our ancestors, added her sister, Cheri Pearson-Jordan. I think back then there was a fear sometimes of actually talking about the race massacre. The massacre, which occurred over May 31-June 1, 1921, when white mobs invaded Tulsas African American Greenwood District, resulted in the fiery destruction of some 35 blocks of the formerly thriving community. It also left at least 37 individuals dead, though unofficial estimates have put the number much higher. Who were the 37? For most, outside of names, ages and a few details from news reports, its hard to say anything definitive. What can be said about Eddie Lockard, for example, starts with his headstone. One of two confirmed massacre victims who have graves at Oaklawn Cemetery, his marker lists his birth as Dec. 10, 1888. That would make him 32 when he died. Less clear are the circumstances of his death. Harjo, of Oklahoma City, says the story passed down in her family is that Eddie was riding a horse when he was killed by gunfire from an airplane. Over the years, rumors and stories that Greenwood was attacked from the air, in addition to the mobs on the ground, have persisted, although theres never been anything to officially confirm aircraft involvement. If her family story is true, Harjo said, he was pretty much a sitting duck, it sounds like. According to reports, Lockard wasnt found until five days after the massacre. Initially unidentified, his body was discovered near the airport with a rifle lying next to it. He had a gunshot wound to his neck. Because Lockard was not married and left behind no known children, that makes Harjo and Pearson-Jordan along with their mother, Pearl Alford, of Tulsa some of his closest surviving kin. Partly for that reason, the sisters feel a sense of responsibility toward him. It begins, they said, with just trying to know who he was. But therein lies a problem. How do you do that, when its someone whos been all but forgotten by history? Cold-blooded murder With his own late relative, Don Adams has had more of an advantage in learning details. Dr. Andrew C. Jackson, his great uncle, was well known. By the time of his death, in fact, the 42-year-old Greenwood physician was one of the most prominent Black medical professionals in the country. Adams said he and his brother Jack first became acquainted with their uncles story as children growing up in Tulsa. From the time I was about 7 or 8, I dont think a day hardly passed that my aunt or my grandmother didnt tell me about him, said Adams, now of Woodbridge, Virginia. His Uncle Andrew has been real to him ever since, he said. I knew all of the details. They kind of drilled them into me. I think it was part of the healing process for them to talk about him. Born in Memphis, Jackson grew up in Guthrie. After graduating from Meharry Medical College in Nashville, he practiced in Tulsa and Claremore, before training as a surgeon in Memphis. He returned to Tulsa in 1919. Adams is especially proud to note that Jackson drew no lines. He was known to treat both Black and white patients, he said. He and his wife, Julia, a school teacher, were forces for good in the Greenwood community. Jacksons death, unlike most of the others in the massacre, was well attested to. His white neighbor, John Oliphant, former police commissioner and retired judge, witnessed it, and did not mince words: It was cold-blooded murder, he later said. Confronted by a group of whites out front of his home, Jackson had raised his hands to surrender, Oliphant reported, when two of them gunned him down. This sudden, violent loss combined with the fact that no one was held accountable would haunt his survivors for years. Adams, one of several plaintiffs in a new lawsuit seeking reparations for the massacre, said his aunt kept a photo of Jackson on her wall in Tulsa, and later passed it on to him. She said she wanted me to keep it. It made her cry to have it there. The original of the only known photo of Jackson, its been in my living room ever since, more than 40 years. I cherish that picture. Also cherished, Adams said, is his memory of once meeting Jacksons widow. Julia, whod had no children with Jackson, had gone on to marry again. But clearly, she was still affected by her first husbands death. She was up in age by then and passed on shortly after that, Adams said. I remember her crying and telling me I still miss him. Land of opportunity The Lockard family story echoes those of many whose Greenwood ties go deep. Originally from Texas, they later moved to Oklahoma. The new state, which boasted more all-Black communities than any other, promised a better life for African Americans. I think in my great-grandfathers mind, this was the land of opportunity, and probably the way he was going to be able to have the American Dream, Harjo said. Joe Lockard and his wife Rina settled in Greenwood, where he would establish and run a successful restaurant, the Peoples Cafe. By the time of the massacre, he was even planning to expand. Those plans were dashed. But Lockard didnt abandon Greenwood. He stayed put, and would become a pivotal figure in its rebuilding. His lawsuit, Joe Lockard v. city of Tulsa, was one of two that ultimately prevented the Tulsa City Commission from using an extension of the fire code to keep Black Tulsans from rebuilding after the massacre. Pearson-Jordan, a Tulsa resident, said her great-grandfathers resolve is inspiring. He had every reason in the world to give up, she said. He could very well have said, you know I tried. Im just gonna go back to Texas, and I dont think anyone would have thought any less of him as a man. But he stayed. And he continued to be a prominent citizen in this community making inroads and changes. Lockard not only rebuilt his home, he went back into the restaurant business. He would run a popular barbecue eatery, and pass on cooking skills that are still in the family today. My mom still has the knife he used to cut meat, Pearson-Jordan said. Despite its rise from the ashes, Greenwoods rebirth wouldnt last, though. Starting in the 1950s, various forces, from urban renewal to new highway projects, would combine to carve up the community, leaving behind only a memory of what had been. But at least one thing Joe Lockard erected still stands today: His brothers headstone. We have the stories, but its good to have that, too, said Pearson-Jordan, who visited it recently for the first time. Its a physical sign of who he was and what happened. At the same time, she said, it makes her feel bad for families who dont have even that. With rumors of mass burials and unmarked graves related to the massacre still prevalent, the city of Tulsa began a search last year using the markers of Eddie Lockard and fellow massacre victim Reuben Everett to guide them. An excavation at Oaklawn yielded a site containing at least 12 decomposed coffins buried together which may contain possible massacre victims. The research team will exhume the bodies in June and begin efforts to identify them. Its hard to think they were thrown out just like trash, Harjo said. He had so much to offer Lockard descendants arent alone in knowing the value of a proper headstone. For far too long, Jackson, who was buried in his hometown of Guthrie, did not have one, Adams said. That frustrated attempts to locate the grave. Between multiple visits over the years to Summit View Cemetery, Adams and his brother searched and searched, he said. We were so disgusted because we couldnt find it. But we never gave up. Eventually, they were able to pinpoint the location. They made sure, he said, it would never be overlooked again. Its a heck of a memorial, Adams said of the new headstone that was placed there. Adorned with Jacksons portrait and an inscription identifying him as a massacre victim, the sight of it fills Adams with pride. But it also makes him sad, he said. I think of how much he had to give. What his contributions could have been. A lot of people die before their time, Adams added. But the fact remains, he had so much to offer. Standing where it has for nearly a century, Lockards headstone has received a lot more attention than Jacksons. Thats included from national media. Pearson-Jordan said the family understands the interest. But, she added, we want people to know that hes more than a photo op. We want to put a life and a person to the name. Most of what there was to know about Eddie Lockard the person, in the end, is lost to time. Unlike with Jackson there are no photos. However, the family does have images of his brother. And in Joes features, they can try to visualize Eddie. What Harjo sees, she said, is a young man who had his whole life still in front of him. I imagine him as wanting to have his own business some day, a family of his own, she said. He missed out on all of that. But thats where Harjo and her sister come in. In a sense, she said, they are the fulfillment of what both Joe and Eddie Lockard started of everything they hoped and aspired to in coming to Oklahoma. We havent just survived, weve thrived, Harjo said. Harjo, a counselor with Oklahoma City Public Schools, said she and her sister each have successful careers. Moreover, they are active in their communities, and support causes that empower African Americans. Yes, his life was lost, Harjo said of her uncle. But his blood is coursing through our veins. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. It is only in more recent years that Mother Fletcher has been willing to openly discuss the massacre and her memories of that terrible night, Solomon-Simmons said. Randle, 106, Ellis, 100, and Fletcher are believed to be the last survivors of the May 31-June 1 massacre in which 35 square blocks of Tulsas Black Greenwood neighborhood were destroyed. Hundreds of lawsuits seeking restitution have been filed in the century since, but none has been successful. The current suit alleges local governments and others have continued to oppress the neighborhood and Black Tulsans since 1921. To date, Solomon-Simmons has declined requests for documentation that his clients lived in Tulsa in 1921 or that the two women have distinct memories of events. Ellis would have been an infant in 1921. Records for that period, and particularly for African Americans and especially for African American children are scant, but the situation does illustrate the difficulty of documenting such cases. Many minorities cite the lack of records as an example of a system rigged to thwart or silence them, and activists say more credence should be given oral histories such as those recorded by race massacre survivors. The deadline for that fundraising was one week. And we did it we raised the money, and were excited survivors were going to accept these gifts, he said. That excitement was very short-lived, Matthews said, because the survivors legal representatives upped the ante the very next day. The demands for $1 million per survivor and $50 million in seed money for reparations were simply not possible to respond to. Matthews said the $100,000 raised for each of the survivors is still theirs if theyll have it. I absolutely want the survivors and descendants to be financially and emotionally supported. However, this is not the way, said Matthews. It is my hope that what people remember from this weekend is an outpouring of support for survivors, for descendants, for justice and for reparations not that a concert was canceled, Matthews said. Solomon-Simmons indicated to the The Oklahoman that entertainer John Legends and political activist Stacey Abrams uncertainty about the survivors role in the Remember & Rise event led to its cancellation. The two were to headline the event. JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) A proposed gold mine in western Alaska has won a key approval, with a state official rejecting an administrative law judge's findings that the state Department of Environmental Conservation lacked reasonable assurance the project would meet Alaska water quality standards. Department Commissioner Jason Brune, in a decision Thursday, defended the analyses done by the department's Division of Water and upheld its issuance of a so-called certificate of reasonable assurance for the Donlin Gold project. Brune said the issuance was supported by a reasonable basis in law and substantial evidence in the record. Brunes decision can be challenged in court. Olivia Glasscock, an attorney with Earthjustice who is representing the Orutsararmiut Native Council, said Friday that a decision on next steps had not been made. The council had challenged the issuance of the certificate, leading to the findings last month by an administrative law judge. Brune was not bound by those findings. Critics of the proposed mine have raised concerns about possible impacts to water and salmon habitat. --The U.S. government blocked imports of seafood from the fleet of a Chinese company that authorities say forced crew members to work in slave-like conditions that led to the deaths of at least three Indonesian fishermen last year. --Lawyers say lawsuits filed by protesters who were forcefully removed from a park near the White House before a photo op by Trump should be dismissed because the new administration is not likely to repeat the events of last June. The discovery of a fresh cyberespionage campaign targeting U.S. and foreign government agencies and linked to the same Russian hackers blamed for the SolarWinds intrusion adds a new point of tension to the upcoming summit between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. --Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is talking with the head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and taking questions from students. His public comments are being parsed as some liberals encourage the 82-year-old justice to retire while Democrats retain narrow control of the Senate. --Republicans across the country are passing legislation to limit how issues of race are taught in public schools, prompting concerns from teachers and racial justice advocates that the government will try to censor critical lessons about slavery and race relations. TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Kansas Supreme Court staff stepped in this spring to oppose legislation meant to address issues surrounding drivers license suspensions for unpaid traffic fines, an issue pushed by activists for racial justice and the poor nationwide. Some measures to address the issue passed and became law. But other efforts to eliminate some fees and to replace some fines with community service stalled after a court official told lawmakers that collecting fewer dollars through reinstatement fees would threaten the courts ability to remain open and pay employees. Some advocates think that's the problem: The court system is overly reliant on impoverished and minority populations for funding. The system is formulated to thrive off the backs of poor people, said Sheila Officer, chairwoman of the Racial Profiling Advisory Board of Wichita. She said states including Washington and California have passed laws ending failure to pay fines as a reason for license suspension. The issue is part of a larger national conversation in which activists say fines and penalties for not paying them have the effect of criminalizing poverty. The ACLU and other groups are backing lawsuits and other efforts to keep poor people who cant afford to pay legal fees and fines from facing penalties. For Amy Cobalt, the nuances of the water tragedies to which she has borne witness reach far and wide, but one aspect remains the same. It just seems so preventable, the state trooper said. Lake season for recreational boaters will soon be upon Oklahoma if the tumultuous spring weather cedes to the sun, and several organizations are stepping out ahead of time to plead for caution. They want people to know that a fun weekend trip to the lake can quickly turn deadly. Cobalt acknowledged that the idea of preventability might sting for those who have already experienced the worst day of their life at a lake in losing a loved one or dear friend to drowning, but she said more needs to be done to prevent others from experiencing the same. Drowning is the leading cause of death in Oklahoma for children between 1 and 4, and for every child who dies from drowning, another five receive emergency department care for nonfatal submersion injuries, according to a joint news release from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Oklahoma Highway Patrol and Safe Kids Tulsa Area. Western countries have denounced the move as a hijacking and demanded freedom for Pratasevich. a founder of a messaging app channel that was widely used to coordinate protests against Lukashenko. He faces a potential prison term of 15 years. The European Union has banned flights from Belarus in response. The long-term impact of that move is not clear, but many fear that it could drive Belarus into closer relations with Russia, which has dismissed criticism of the plane's diversion. Lukashenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday and Saturday. From our point of view, the situation requires a thoughtful and constructive examination without hasty conclusions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Saturday. "But this cascade of hasty conclusions, which were made by European capitals and in Brussels, rather suggests that this approach is not based on an attempt to really clarify the circumstances, but is based solely on emotions. Many observers warn that tougher EU sanctions would make Lukashenko easy prey for the Kremlin, which may use his isolation to push for closer integration. Some in the West have even alleged Russia was involved in the flight diversion something Moscow angrily denies and will seek to exploit the fallout. The world's only captive brown giant panda, nicknamed "Qi Zai," met the public for the first time on Friday, during the trial operation of a science park in northwest China's Shaanxi province. Covering an area of over 28 hectares, the science park is located in Zhouzhi County at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains. It aims to protect and popularize four rare animal species of the mountains, namely giant panda, crested ibis, golden monkey and takin. The world's first brown panda was discovered in 1985 in the Qinling Mountains. All recorded photographs of wild brown pandas were taken in the area. The Qinling giant panda is a subspecies of giant panda first recognized in 2005. It has a smaller and rounder skull, shorter snout and less fur than the more familiar Sichuan subspecies. According to panda experts, brown pandas could be the result of genetic mutations or atavism and further study is needed on the topic. Although the antagonists of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre are long gone, Tulsa today shares responsibility for the current state of north Tulsa and the Greenwood District. Those affected by the current racial divide in Tulsa are collateral victims of the massacre. Oklahoma is no stranger to domestic terrorism. But the Tulsa massacre does not receive the same attention that the Oklahoma City bombing does. The city has brought awareness to Memorial Day weekend in 1921, but this is not enough. We can teach our children about the massacre, but we are ignoring the larger picture of how 1921 created the foundation for the current socio-economic divide of Tulsa along racial lines. Viola Fletcher, one of the last remaining survivors, testified in Congress recently on how Tulsa has enriched itself on telling victims stories, while continuing to deny restorative justice to Greenwood. Fletcher is a victim not only of 1921 Tulsa, but also of the Tulsa today that perpetuates racial and socioeconomic segregation along Interstate 244, exemplified by food deserts and inferior education opportunities. When I was in college, there was a campus minister known far and wide as a superb marriage counselor. Students and townsfolk alike would seek his help in saving their marriage. I once asked him the secret of his success at helping salvage so many seemingly hopeless unions. "I would try," he told me, "to remind them of the joy of reconciliation." The joy of reconciliation? Though it can indeed bring joy, reconciliation is serious business. It is the medicine all of us need but too often fail to take. Such is true in our personal lives, and in our shared life as a community. As we remember the saddest time in the history of Tulsa, the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921, the need for reconciliation should be foremost in our minds. But it is no wonder that we tend to shy away from that necessary medicine. Reconciliation requires admitting past wrongs. Even wrongs we did not personally commit. Even wrongs as unspeakably egregious as those that occurred here in 1921. Reconciliation also requires forgiveness. It can even require, as in the case at hand, forgiving the unforgiveable. As Vietnam is pressing for its COVID-19 vaccination program as the next crucial step to spur the national economy, business groups, including the American Chamber of Commerce in Vietnam (AmCham Vietnam), have voiced their support for the governments plan. In an exclusive interview with Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper on Wednesday, Mary Tarnowka, executive director of AmCham Vietnam, affirmed the chambers willingness to cooperate with the government in supporting its efforts to secure an adequate supply of proven vaccines, as well as distributing them transparently with equitable access according to priority groups. The latest survey from AmCham Hanoi has greatly attracted attention to what foreign businesses think of Vietnams vaccination program. Does AmCham Vietnam receive the same reaction from its members in general? So, I will note, the survey that was conducted by AmCham Vietnams Hanoi branch (AmCham Hanoi), indeed, attracted significant press attention. It also attracted a lot of attention from our members here in AmCham Vietnam [in Ho Chi Minh City]. Our Hanoi branch represents about a quarter of AmCham Vietnam's total members, and a number of our important business leaders. So, I think the results are significant. We shared our views on many of these issues in a letter that we sent to the prime minister together with other leading foreign business chambers late last month. We said we always support the government's efforts to secure proven vaccine supply in line with the current target of 150 million doses. We said speed and scale are critical to ensure that Vietnam reaches meaningful levels of community immunogenicity, to protect its population and allow for a safe recovery and reopening of its borders. We also gave some comments on vaccine access, and we appreciate the guidance which identified a priority list to whom the vaccine should be administered. We did request some clarification regarding which people fit in the different categories. We also pressed for equitable access. We requested that foreign nationals living in Vietnam be granted equitable access to vaccines, according to the priority order set by the Vietnamese government. The Vietnamese government has a policy of encouraging crowdfunding to expand the population benefiting from the vaccination scheme, calling on both businesses and other organizations to participate in this effort. What is AmCham Vietnam's view on this policy? AmCham Vietnam looks forward to participating in Vietnam's vaccine stockpiling effort through a variety of channels. Many AmCham Vietnam companies are willing to contribute toward the costs of vaccines for their employees. Many also have made it clear that they want to ensure they would not be jumping the queue ahead of other higher priority groups like frontline workers. Several also want to make sure that any funding from the private sector for purchase of vaccines is coordinated with the government to avoid the private sector and government competing for limited global vaccine supplies. AmCham also supports the consideration of policies that would allow organizations such as hospitals, clinics, and possibly pharmacies to purchase vaccines commercially for distribution in line with the stated priority order. Discussions on this issue are still in the early stages. How do you evaluate the implementation of the vaccination program in Vietnam? I think the first step is to secure a supply of proven vaccines and that's a priority. Just a few weeks ago, many people still did not feel the urgency of vaccines. However, with the many dangerous virus strains that have appeared in Vietnam, I think that no country can fight the epidemic alone. Vietnam also needs to maintain continuity of vital supply chains and open up its economy, so boosting the vaccination program is a necessary step. I think one of the strengths of Vietnam during the COVID-19 pandemic is the transparency of information about the government's response, ensuring it is updated regularly and clearly. It is essential to build trust among the population, as well as to ensure that people follow general guidelines set forth by the government. AmCham Hanoi, in a survey, recently called on the Vietnamese government to relax restrictions on entry, especially shortening the quarantine period, for business people and investors who have been vaccinated. How about your expectations? The Vietnamese government really needs to make a balanced decision between health and safety and economic interests. Vietnam is considered one of the world's leading countries in disease tracing, testing and control. However, the population is largely unvaccinated, so it is still vulnerable to outbreaks. I think everything still needs balance. You know, if a potential investor comes to Vietnam and has to quarantine for more than 20 days, that will be a big barrier. However, I am not a scientist and not a medical professional. So, I understand that Vietnam needs to balance all those factors as it determines the right quarantine policies. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnam will suspend the import of live pigs from Thailand following the discovery of African swine fever in a batch of imported hogs this month, the government said in a statement on Friday. The move aimed to prevent the disease spreading to the domestic pig herd, the statement said, adding that the suspension will take effect from June 30. It said African swine fever was found in a batch of 980 live pigs imported from Thailand on May 19. Vietnam imported more than 500,000 live pigs from Thailand in the second half of 2020, state media reported earlier this year, citing data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. Police in Da Nang on Friday initiated legal proceedings against two local women for facilitating the illegal entry of South Koreans into Vietnam under the guise of experts. The two women -- Phan Thi Thao Ly, 26, from Ngu Hanh Son District, and Pham Thi Phuc, 25, from Thanh Khe District -- were also arrested on the same day. Ly and Phuc worked without a contract of employment for the office of a South Korean society in Da Nang, which is located in Son Tra District. Their main job was to help companies prepare related documents during the visa application process. The two Vietnamese women assisted To My Hong Anh and Van Thi Phuong Thao, two employees of KV Global Company, in preparing documents for 12 South Koreans to make entry into Vietnam under the cover of experts. Initial investigation results showed that these 12 South Koreans were not experts, those included in Vietnam's list of priority for entry during the COVID-19 pandemic. The Da Nang police indicted Anh on May 15. Ly and Phuc took part in this illicit racket run by Anh and KV Global despite fully acknowledging its illegitimacy. Under their agreement, Ly and Phuc would be paid US$2,100 for every successful entry. Vietnam began denying entry to foreign nationals on March 22, 2020 and currently only allows foreigners who are investors, experts, skilled workers, and business managers to get in. They are required to present certificates showing they tested negative for COVID-19 within three days before their flights and comply with Vietnams coronavirus quarantine regulations upon their arrival. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! Vietnam has found a new variant of the novel coronavirus that is a combination of the UK and Indian mutants, according to the countrys top health official. Genome sequencing has just detected a coronavirus mutation that carries the characteristics of the UK and Indian strains, two variants already found in Vietnam, Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said on Saturday. The Indian variant is believed to be more transmissible the characteristic of the UK mutant and to lessen the efficacy of COVID-19 jabs typical of the South African mutation, according to experts. The newly-discovered hybrid strain spreads fast and widely in the air, explaining a quick surge in the number of infections in the ongoing fourth wave, Minister Long added. We will announce the genome of the variant to the world soon, he said. The UK mutation was first reported in Kent, southeast England, in September last year. Vietnam detected the first case of the mutant, a patient returning from the UK, on January 2. The South African strain was first discovered in South Africa in December 2020. Vietnam recorded the first known case of the variant on January 31. The SARS-CoV-2, the official name of the novel coronavirus, has mutated for thousands of times since it first emerged in China in December 2019, the health ministry said early this month, adding that most catching the UK, South African, Brazilian, and Indian variants. Vietnam recorded the first patient of the fourth wave on April 27, after having gone about a month without any community transmission. The country has recorded 3,644 local infections in more than half of its provinces and cities since, over two-thirds detected in factory workers in Bac Giang and Bac Ninh Provinces, two industrial park hubs of the northern region. Local health authorities have identified the Indian mutation in patients in this bout. Hanoi, the national capital, accounted for 357 cases while Ho Chi Minh City has found two clusters with 90 patients since Thursday, most linked to a registered religious group. Vietnam has registered 6,713 coronavirus patients, including 2,896 recoveries and 47 deaths, since the pandemic hit the country on January 23, 2020, according to the health ministrys data. The nation confirmed 106 community cases in the first wave from January 23 to April 16, 2020, 554 in the second from July 25 to December 1, 2020, and 910 in the third from January 28 to March 25, 2021. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam! South Australian screen companies KOJO Studios (First Day, Top End Wedding) and Closer Productions (Aftertaste, The Hunting) have been selected for the first round of South Australian Film Corporations Screen Business Accelerator Program. Each will receive business loans of up to $200,000 per year for up to two years under the program, which supports established South Australian screen businesses to grow their business. SA Minister for Innovation and Skills David Pisoni MP said: The Marshall Governments support of South Australian screen businesses is designed to foster growth and attract increased investment. I congratulate both KOJO Studios and Closer Productions on being selected for the SAFCs Screen Business Accelerator Program, and look forward to seeing what they achieve in the years ahead. SAFC CEO Kate Croser said: The SAFC is committed to enabling entrepreneurship in South Australian screen businesses and supporting them to increase inward investment and export revenue as key aims of our agencys Strategic Plan. The Screen Business Accelerator Program is an important part of the SAFCs strategy to support established and prolific screen businesses like KOJO Studios and Closer Productions innovate, grow and expand in a way that delivers success with positive flow-on effects across the whole the sector. I congratulate both companies on being selected for this significant investment, which will set them on a path for growth and enable more production of quality South Australian screen content. KOJO Studios Executive Producer Linda Ujuk said: This program is critical in accelerating our ambitious goal to become South Australias first fully independent and female-led self-financing studio, that unapologetically prioritises ingenuity, fearlessness, agency and authorship of diverse voices in storytelling. KOJO Studios Producer Kate Butler said: Linda and I are proud to lead KOJO Studios. These funds are vital for our own growth by boosting our Originals slate, fostering and escalating key creative talent, and expanding our capacity and global partnerships. Were thrilled to be playing our role in the collective growth of the South Australian creative sector. Closer Productions said: We are thrilled to be selected for the SAFCs inaugural Screen Business Accelerator Program. These funds will support the strategic growth of our business, increasing Closers capacity to produce contemporary content with creative ambition, relevance and scale in South Australia. We are excited to forge new international partnerships and to continue our successful collaborations with talented local screen businesses, cast, crew, and creatives and to foster opportunities for diverse voices and build pathways for new talent. The funding can be used for a range of activities including slate funding, business capability, financial planning, engagement and retention of personnel, research and development, marketing, innovation and more. The SBAP follows on from the first stage of the SAFCs two-part screen business development initiative launched in 2020, the Screen Business Planning and Mentoring Program (SBPMP), which saw KOJO and Closer undertake specialised business training alongside four other SA screen companies, who each received up to $5,000 for business mentoring. KOJO has a 30-year track record as one of Australias most highly regarded commercial screen businesses. KOJO Studios has delivered seven feature films and television series including the highly acclaimed projects First Day, Top End Wedding and 2067 while the KOJO Studios banner is developing a diverse slate of premium original content for a global market. Closer Productions is a creator-led company known for its distinctive, compelling and innovative content including television series Aftertaste (ABC) and The Hunting (SBS), web projects Are You Addicted to Technology (SBS On Demand) and F*!#ing Adelaide (ABC iView) and feature films Animals, 52 Tuesdays, Sam Klemkes Time Machine and Shut Up Little Man. Related Education centerpiece Whitehouse High graduating classes celebrates little moments, future paths Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School 2021 graduates wait to walk on the Wildcat Stadium track on Friday night to their seats at the graduation ceremony. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Attendees at the Whitehouse High School 2021 graduation ceremony watch the graduation ceremony held at Wildcat Stadium on Friday night. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School 2021 graduate Andrew Moran delivers the opening remarks at the graduation ceremony held at Wildcat Stadium on Friday night. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse ISD Superintendent Dr. Christopher Moran delivers a speech for the graduating class on Friday night at Wildcat Stadium during the graduation ceremony. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School 2021 Salutatorian Lucas Baum delivers his speech for the graduating class on Friday night at Wildcat Stadium during the graduation ceremony. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School 2021 Valedictorian Ashley Smith delivers her speech for the graduating class on Friday night at Wildcat Stadium during the graduation ceremony. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School 2021 Valedictorian Ashley Smith returns to her seat after she delivers her speech for the graduating class on Friday night at Wildcat Stadium during the graduation ceremony. Zak Wellerman/ Tyler Morning Telegraph Whitehouse High School Principal Josh Garred delivers her speech for the graduating class on Friday night at Wildcat Stadium during the graduation ceremony. The Whitehouse High School Class of 2021 reflected on the memories over the last four years while looking ahead to their future at Wildcat Stadium Friday evening. About 350 students received their diplomas at the football stadium as family, friends and Whitehouse ISD gathered in the stands to support the graduates. Whitehouse ISD Superintendent Dr. Christopher Moran said the ceremony is what unity looks like. He gave the graduates three points of advice: be excellent in everything, have a great attitude and commit to serving others. Whitehouse High School Principal Joshua Garred noted the COVID-19-related challenges the students overcame, and encouraged the graduates to find their purpose. You all kept coming back to school. It definitely taught all of us that wed all rather be together, Garred said. Whichever path you chose just know your career should never be what defines you. You were all created for a specific purpose. I know youll accomplish great things. In her speech to her peers, Valedictorian Ashley Smith shared the anticipation shes been feeling ahead of major events like graduation. She reflected on the changes the graduating class has seen over the years as well. As my mind races, I always wonder if when I wake up in the morning, I will have transformed into a different version of myself, one who is ready for the next stage of life, she said. Yet, without fail, I open my eyes hours later and am still the person I was the day before. We all can recognize that today we are not the same students who walked into first grade with backpacks bigger than our bodies, who trekked between the forever far apart buildings of the junior high, or who frantically searched for a lunch table during the first day of Power Hour freshmen year. Shes realized the Class of 2021 has gone this milestone through the small memories. The small moments that seem mundane or meaningless at the time have shaped us into who we are today. I think back to the nightly games Ive played with my mom, the numerous peer counseling sessions Ive endured, and the long nights watching documentaries with my best friends. Its difficult to remember the specific details because in those moments, I was completely present, Smith said. When we dont expect change, we are able to be our most authentic selves. Smith said true growth occurs during unexpected moments. While this was not the senior year any of us envisioned, it has shown me to appreciate the small moments that come along with sitting in the school for seven hours a day. All of my teachers deserve a massive thank you for working tirelessly for me and my classmates and for treating us as people first, students second. I also owe much of my development during high school to my time with student council, she said. She encouraged her classmates to focus on finding people to share the small moments with. Smith will attend the University of Texas at Austin as a Dedman Scholar. She plans to major in international relations and the Plan II Honors Program to work as a policy analyst for the State Department one day. Salutatorian Lucas Baum thanked his family, friends and Whitehouse ISD staff. He said graduates should be proud of their accomplishments and grateful to those who helped along the way. He noted the significance of the ceremonial graduation walk the students make. Once you have walked across the stage and have reveled in your two seconds of glory, you will be expected to promptly return to your seat and quietly respect everyone who now walks the stage, he said. You will have made a complete circle by the time you sit back down. This circle that we make has significance because tonight will not be the first time that you have made it, nor will it be the last time. Everything you have done in the past and will do in the future resembles a circle. Baum described the past 13 years of schooling and the monotony the students went through. He added some might continue a similar cycle into college or the workforce until retirement. Now, the way out of this monotony, the way to avoid going insane, is to find meaning in something, he said. For me, I find it in Christianity, but despite the sovereignty and sufficiency of Christ, it is still so easy to slip into the belief that this circle of life is senseless, even though its not. He said the teacher, a character in the Bible, says the meaning of life is like smoke, which is difficult to grasp, and when people think theyve figured the smoke out, it fades away. Even if the meaning of our lives is difficult to determine, we can still find great joy in the smoke. Once you leave this field, and your life begins to go round and round, pause, take a breath, and remember the small things that make each circle a little bit different. Because our lives, even if were careful, could become endless loops, he said. And I want to let you know that it will be okay. It will be more than okay because even though a circle is closed, it is not meant to confine. When you face those trials and tribulations, know that God does not forsake you in your battles. He will be with you in the middle of the smoke. Baum will attend the Colorado School of Mines to study civil engineering while pursuing a minor in humanitarian engineering. He wants to have a career in international development with the United Nations Office for Project Services, United States Agency for International Development or a foreign non-governmental organization that focuses on community development. We have used your information to see if you have a subscription with us, but did not find one. Please use the button below to verify an existing account or to purchase a new subscription. Flash China on Friday deplored U.S. accusations against the Improving Electoral System (Consolidated Amendments) Bill 2021 passed by Hong Kong's legislature, urging the U.S. to stop meddling in China's internal affairs. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks when asked to comment on a recent statement by the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, which accused China of continuing to undermine the democratic institutions of Hong Kong and denying the rights of Hong Kong residents. China is strongly dissatisfied with and firmly opposes the United States' blatant slander against the local legislation to improve the electoral system of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), Zhao said at a daily press briefing. Noting China is a country under the rule of law, Zhao said the completion of the legislation by the HKSAR is an important step to implement the relevant decision by the National People's Congress (NPC) and guidance by the NPC Standing Committee on amending the law. The legislation will plug the previous loopholes in the HKSAR's electoral system, further build up the new order of "patriots administering Hong Kong", and promote the sound development of Hong Kong's democratic political system on a healthy and orderly track, he said, adding this will provide a more solid guarantee for Hong Kong's good governance and help safeguard national sovereignty, security and development interests, as well as the long-term prosperity and stability of Hong Kong. In total disregard of basic facts, Zhao said the United States leveled groundless accusations against the China's central government and the government of the HKSAR. "The United States does not care for Hong Kong's democracy and the rights of its residents. It's true purpose is to interfere in Hong Kong's politics and China's internal affairs," said the spokesperson. Zhao urged the United States to respect basic norms governing international relations and immediately cease meddling in China's internal affairs, including Hong Kong affairs. Immigration & Travel The Student and Exchange Visitor Program (SEVP) will extend the guidance originally issued in March 2020 for the 2021-22 academic year. This guidance allows students to engage in distance learning in excess of normal limits due to the continuing public health concerns created by COVID-19. Enrollment Requirements UD is offering only in-person course options for undergraduate students. Therefore, there is no option to study remotely. Undergraduates intending to continue their studies should plan to be on campus. Graduate students must check with their programs to see what course modalities are offered. Students in graduate programs that offer only or mostly in-person courses should plan to be on campus. International students who started their studies after Mar 9, 2020 cannot study entirely online. They must take at least one credit of blended or in-person classes to maintain status. This applies to new students starting their studies in fall 2021. Travel Requirements If you are preparing to travel to the US, this section will explain what documents to prepare, testing and quarantine guidelines, and potential travel restrictions if you are from an affected country. Documentation to prepare Review our travel reminders to know what academic and immigration documents to prepare to ease your entry into the US. Some may find this helpful ISSS fall return letter helpful. Country Specific Travel Restrictions Some students may be affected by US travel restrictions. Four COVID-19-related presidential proclamations limit entry to the United States by individuals who were physically present in a covered country during the 14-day period prior to their planned entry or attempted entry to the United States. The Countries Affected by Travel Restrictions Brazil China Iran Ireland Schengen Area (Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) United Kingdom South Africa India In May 2021, The Department of State (DOS) updated its National Interest Exception (NIE) page to allow greater flexibility for F-1 and J-1 students to travel to the US from China, India, Iran, Brazil, South Africa, Schengen Area, United Kingdom, and Ireland. Students and scholars subject to these restrictions may qualify for an NIE only if their academic program begins August 1, 2021 or later. Dependent family members accompanying the principal visa holder are also exempted. Students with valid F-1 visas intending to begin or continue an academic program, including optional practical training (OPT), starting August 1, 2021 or later do not need to contact an embassy or consulate to travel. Students seeking to apply for new F-1 visas should check the status of visa services at the nearest embassy or consulate; those applicants who are found to be otherwise qualified for an F-1 visa will automatically be considered for an NIE to travel. J-1 students and scholars who have a valid visa should contact the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate before traveling, if they believe they may qualify for a National Interest Exception. If a National Interest Exception is approved, they may enter on a valid visa. This provision, though, is applicable "only if their academic program begins August 1, 2021 or later." What does this mean for you? Aspectre is haunting Europe: the spectre of political Islam. From Frances fight against Islamo-leftism to Austrias battle against political Islam, Muslims and Muslim anti-racist civil society groups are coming under more and more pressure from state authorities. As Middle East Eye reports, in both countries, governments have shut down NGOs and mosques, limited freedom of expression, and raided homes and institutions under the pretext of the war on terror. Such measures intensified after terrorist attacks were carried out last year. In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkels Christian Democratic Union (CDU) appears set to follow in the footsteps of French President Emmanuel Macron and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. While Macron was met with harsh international criticism for his anti-Muslim legislation, Kurzs initiatives went nearly unnoticed. But they all seem to follow the same playbook, claiming to protect the majority of peaceful and law-abiding Muslims while targeting only the dangerous Muslims. In reality, they are dramatically widening the group of potentially "dangerous Muslims". According to a recent publication by the CDU/CSU alliance in the German parliament: Islamism is not confined to a certain number of violent menaces. The ideology behind it is poison for our liberal society. It endangers integration and social cohesion by inciting Muslims against our democracy. This crusader rhetoric does not come out of thin air. Statements like these build on a long and problematic history of countering violent extremism and deradicalisation programmes, which emerged after the war on terror was initiated two decades ago. State surveillance A more recent development has been the broadening of the notion of countering violent extremism to include the targeting of non-violent extremism. The latter term implies that non-violent Muslim groups share the same goals as violent ones, and differ only in methodology, as noted in a Bavarian intelligence report. This term is used to exclude Muslim organisations from civil society by targeting Muslim associations that work within the western democratic political order and reject violence. According to the report, these legal, non-violent means include operating cultural associations and mosques, which serve to recruit members on the one hand and to spread their ideology on the other hand. Through their umbrella organisations, they try to offer themselves to the state as the mouthpiece of Muslims. This concept targets mainstream Muslim groups, rather than subversive movements hiding in the shadows. Most mainstream Muslim associations have been subjected to state surveillance for years in Germany. A general suspicion underlies this discourse, treating Muslims with mistrust and cynically questioning their integrity. The term being applied broadly is political Islam, but not in the way academics would use it to differentiate between diverse manifestations of the intersection of politics and religion. The problem with the vague term political Islam in countries such as Austria is that the government uses it to criminalise Muslim practices and to silence Muslims who express political opinions critical of the government. In a sense, it has become the intellectual foundation upon which to institutionalise a general demonisation of Muslims, reminiscent of Joseph McCarthys witch hunt in the 1950s against Black and leftist groups under the banner of anti-communism. Hardline positions The growing hardline positions of European countries such as Austria, France and Germany seem to be coming in tandem. Last October, a group of well-known authors and politicians from Germanys CDU/CSU signed an open letter that proposed five recommendations for strengthening the free democratic basic order in the face of political Islam. The letter noted: It is high time to face the problems of the immigrant society openly and not to be intimidated by unfounded accusations of alleged Islamophobia. Similar to Frances culture war against gender, postcolonial and racism studies, these scholars were trying to immunise the status quo against any critique. Did this letter gain traction because of the attacks in France and Austria last year? Not really, for the claim is that political Islam is much more dangerous than militant violence stemming from Muslims. The five recommendations include establishing a documentation centre based on the Austrian model, in which the structures, strategies and financing of political Islam are analysed and disclosed; the establishment of 10 university chairs dedicated to analysing the structures of political Islam in Germany; and the establishment of an expert group within the interior ministry to make recommendations in the fight against political Islam. Such ideas raise serious questions. Austrias Documentation Centre is largely run by hawkish law-and-order figures who have a long history of supporting anti-Muslim legislation, including people like Mouhanad Khorchide, Susanne Schroter and Lorenzo Vidino. The recent CDU/CSU position paper also argues that state authorities should stop supporting associations that fall under the category of political Islam, and proposes creating a "German imam", designed to be a Germany-trained student who is attached first and foremost to German national identity and thus reproduces the existing power structures. The paper also calls for stricter financial controls on Muslim groups. The goal is to surveil Muslims as much as possible, violating secular notions of separating state powers and religious communities. As similar measures have not been enacted against other religious communities, it seems that Muslims are being singled out as targets yet again. Azerbaijan supported the proposal put forward by the Russian side to establish a trilateral commission on delimitation and demarcation of the state border between the Republic of Azerbaijan and the Republic of Armenia, the Prime Minister of Azerbaijan, Ali Asadov, said, speaking at a meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the CIS in Minsk. He recalled that after gaining independence, Azerbaijan carried out delimitation and demarcation with neighbouring countries - Russia, Iran and Georgia - in accordance with international legal norms. "Delimitation and demarcation of the border with Armenia were impossible due to the fact that the territory of the Republic of Azerbaijan was occupied by the Armenian armed forces," AZERTAC quotes the head of the Cabinet of Ministers as saying. Ali Asadov noted that now, as the hostilities are over, Azerbaijan has begun to create its border infrastructure and is ready to resolve the issue of drawing the border with Armenia in a constructive manner. The Prime Minister stressed that in this regard, Baku supported Moscow's proposal to establish an appropriate trilateral commission on the delimitation and demarcation of the border between Azerbaijan and Armenia. He added that the definition of borderlines is a technical process that must be based on an international legal basis. The Prime Minister also expressed Azerbaijan's commitment to supporting sustainable peace and security in the region, including the normalization of the post-conflict situation and the settlement of all issues by diplomatic means in the context of the conscientious observance of the November 9 and January 11 trilateral statements provisions. U.S. President Joe Bidens $715 billion Department of Defense budget includes a 2.7% pay raise for troops and shifts billions in spending from old systems to help pay to modernize the nuclear arsenal to deter China, Reuters reports. The defense spending request for fiscal 2022, which was sent to Congress on Friday, invests in troop readiness, space, the Pacific Deterrence Initiative aimed at countering China's military build-up in Asia and nuclear weapons technology. The budget request would buy warships and jets, and pay for maintenance and salaries. An additional $38 billion is earmarked for defense-related programs at the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Energy and other agencies, bringing the national security budget to $753 billion, a 1.7% increase over the 2021 figure. There is also money to further develop and test hypersonic weapons and other "next generation" systems as the military aims to build capabilities to counter Russia and China.Presidential budget requests, including those for the military, are commonly a starting point for negotiations with Congress, which ultimately decides how funds are spent. The proposed pay raise for military and civilian Defense Department workers follows a 3% raise for the 2021 fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Migration flows to Russia that decreased due to the coronavirus pandemic, are gradually recovering, but it is difficult to predict whether they will return to the previous levels, Ekaterina Vinnik, an analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza, said in the Natsvopros program on the Vesti.FM radio station. Natsvopros is a weekly program on Vesti.FM discussing various aspects of national relations, primarily in Russia. Today's program was dedicated to migration issues. The expert recalled that migration, in particular labour migration, is an extremely important economic factor for Russia, ensuring the stable development of several sectors, including agriculture, industry and services. "In Russia, migrants make up about 12% of the labour force, their contribution to GDP is estimated at 7.7%. That is why the importance of migration flows and trends leading to their change must be monitored and taken into account," she explained. "In general, the number of migrants living in Russia from 2010 to 2019 fluctuated at the level of 10-11 mln people. Those who arrive to work make up about half or even more of all migrants. However, naturally, during a pandemic, their number has significantly decreased in Russia, as well as around the world. By December 2020, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the number of migrants amounted to 6 mln, and in Moscow, the number of migrants decreased by 40%, " the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza said. "According to Rosstat, the growth of migrants in 2020 decreased by three times compared to 2019 (that is, the indicators decreased from 116,000 to 38,000 people). Although, even in April, when the borders were already closed, the number of arrivals did not fall to zero. As of November 1, 2020, 1.3 mln people worked in Russia under patents, in the same period of 2019 their number amounted to 1.7 mln. In general, in 2020, 378,000 people returned to the CIS countries (mainly Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where most migrants come from)," she said. Ekaterina Vinnik explained that the outflow of migrants during the pandemic is associated with employment problems. "After the introduction of a high alert regime, up to 70% of migrants in some communities, in particular, Tajiks, were temporarily unemployed. The largest percentage of unemployed migrants was recorded in April - 31%. According to data on labor migration for 2021, for the first two months, the number of migrants registered is two times less than in the same period of 2020, that is, one million compared to two. The Ministry of Internal Affairs reports that almost two times fewer patents were issued. In addition, the number of issued invitations to foreigners and stateless persons has decreased: up to 16,000 people compared to 57,000 in 2020, the expert noted. "Nevertheless, since the end of December 2020, there has been a tendency for migrants to return to Russia. In addition, since April this year, students from a number of epidemiologically safe countries can enter Russia, so the migration flow, in general, will probably increase in the fall," the expert predicts. "Although it is still too early to talk about the recovery of migration flows to the level that preceded the pandemic, most likely the situation will gradually recover due to the opening of borders and checkpoints. However, we should understand that those labour migrants, in particular, who have left, may not to return, since it is likely that they have already found a new job. In general, much will depend on the economic dynamics in the countries of origin, as well as on the willingness of Russian employers to provide work and some guarantees to hired workers from other countries, the analyst of Vestnik Kavkaza summed up. Thousands of worshippers turned out in Istanbuls central Taksim Square on Friday to mark the inauguration by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of an imposing, and controversial, new mosque, Al Jazeera reports. The opening fulfilled a long-held ambition by various governments since the 1950s to build a Muslim place of worship in the square, often thought of as a symbol of Turkeys founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturks secularism. The inauguration also coincided with the anniversary of massive anti-government protests, which began in the nearby Gezi Park on May 28, 2013, due to government construction plans. Screens in the square showed the first prayers at the mosque, which looms over a bronze and marble statue depicting Ataturk, while worshippers sat on disposable paper prayer mats. While municipality workers handed out masks and sanitiser, the was little social distancing among the thronging crowds even though Turkey has recently come out of its strictest COVID-19 lockdown yet. Erdogans arrival was met with applause as he waved to the crowd before heading inside. Former Prime Minister of Georgia Giorgi Gakharia established his own For Georgia party, the media informs. About 400 people attended the presentation of the party. The congress participants unanimously elected Gakharia as the party chairman. "Today we are uniting for Georgia, not against someone. Today our team is starting to work for Georgia, but I repeat not against someone. We are uniting for Georgia in order to build a strong state together with our citizens," the head of the new Georgia party said, Sputnik Georgia informs. Gakharia explained that a state should take care of its citizens and the country, which requires consistent development planning. Flash Chinese Premier Li Keqiang sent a congratulatory letter on Friday to the inauguration of the 2021 China-ASEAN Year of Sustainable Development Cooperation. Promoting sustainable development is fundamental to solving multiple global problems, Li noted in the letter, adding that the decision to make 2021 the year for such cooperation reflects the hope of the two sides to ramp up sustainable development in the region. It includes environmental protection, disaster prevention and mitigation, climate change, and poverty reduction. This year also marks the 30th anniversary of China-ASEAN dialogue relations, which have witnessed considerable progress in bilateral relations and cooperation, he said. China has always regarded the ASEAN as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy and supports the ASEAN to strengthen its centrality in regional cooperation and play a greater role in building an open and inclusive regional architecture, Li said. Li also stressed in the letter that China stands ready to cooperate with the ASEAN partners under the principle of mutual respect, mutual benefit, win-win results, deepening practical cooperation in various fields, and working together to build a closer community with a shared future. The US-Russia summit of Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, which will take place on June 16 in Geneva, will be "the best event that could happen" to return to normal life after the pandemic, the chairman of the Geneva cantonal government Anne Emery-Torracinta and her colleague Serge Dal Busco, who will replace her as head of government in June said. "This is a major event. This is the best thing that could happen when it comes to returning to normal life," TASS quotes Dal Busco as saying. The politician noted that the announcement of the meeting was "excellent news" for international Geneva, which is experiencing the dire consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. Tehran denies information about oil supplies from Iran to the United States, the representative of the Ministry of Petroleum, Kasri Nuri said. Yesterday, different outlets, citing data from the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy reported that America imported oil from the Islamic Republic for the first time since November 1991 in March, with average daily supplies reaching 33,000 barrels. "We cannot express a reaction about this published news. We do not have accurate data on these statements. Officially, we did not do this. There are no such messages in our official sources. We do not confirm this information," RIA Novosti quotes Nuri as saying. An Iranian-flagged tanker seized by Indonesia in January over the suspected illegal transfer of oil has been released, an Indonesian official and Iranian state media said on Saturday, Reuters reports. Wisnu Pramandita, a spokesman for the Indonesian coastguard, said the Iranian-flagged tanker, the MT Horse, was released on Friday after a court decision earlier in the week. The court ruled the vessel could leave Indonesia, while the captain would be subject to a two-year probation without any fine, the spokesman said. Irans state broadcaster said the vessel had resumed its mission before returning home. The OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs call on Armenia and Azerbaijan to take immediate steps to de-escalate the situation and to begin negotiations to delimitate and demarcate the border, the statement of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs said, Trend reports. The Co-Chairs note with concern several recent reports of incidents on the non-demarcated Armenia-Azerbaijan border. The use or threat of force to resolve border disputes is not acceptable, said the statement. The Co-Chairs express their readiness to assist in advancing the process of delimitation and demarcation and call on the parties to implement in full the commitments undertaken under with the November 10 ceasefire declaration Azerbaijani Defense Ministry reported earlier that a reconnaissance-sabotage group of Armenian Armed Forces undertook an attempt to enter Azerbaijans territory in the direction of the Yukhary Ayrim settlement of Azerbaijans Kalbajar district near the state border on May 27. The group attempted to carry out reconnaissance sabotage operations and terrorist activities aimed at mining roads. It was detected. As a result of immediate operational measures, 6 Armenian servicemen who tried to mine the roads leading to the positions of the Azerbaijani Army on the border were besieged, rendered harmless, and detained. Acting Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan hopes that at least 60% of voters will give their voices for his Civil Contract party in the upcoming early parliamentary elections. He announced this at a meeting with party activists in three administrative districts of Yerevan. "I expect that at least 60% of citizens in the upcoming elections will vote for the Civil Contract party," Sputnik Armenia quotes the politician as saying. Pashinyan explained that this level of voters' confidence will neutralize "all conspiratorial plans" against the country. Press secretary of the Russian leader Dmitry Peskov shared the details of the meeting between Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi. "The meeting was very constructive and deep. This is one of the meetings in a series of permanent Russian-Belarusian contacts at the highest level," TASS quotes him as saying. Peskov noted that the key issues for discussion were the development of bilateral trade, economic cooperation and the fight against the pandemic. The press secretary of the Russian leader clarified that the heads of state discussed the issue of the second tranche in the amount of $ 500 mln from the state loan totaling $ 1.5 bln. He recalled that this was announced "before all the stories with the plane," and confirmed the previously announced terms - until the end of June. Alexander Lukashenko and Vladimir Putin continue the talks started in Sochi yesterday, the press secretary of the Russian head of state, Dmitry Peskov, informed. "Today, the communication between the two presidents continues," TASS quotes him as saying. The heads of state talked for more than five hours the night before. Opening the meeting, they mentioned the situation with the Ryanair plane, which landed in Minsk on May 23 due to the information about an alleged bomb threat, as well as issues of economic and energy cooperation. A container ship broke down in the Suez Canal on Friday but was refloated and repaired with no impact on traffic in the waterway, the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) said, Reuters reports. The 353-metre (1,158-foot) Maersk Emerald experienced sudden engine failure near Ismailia during its passage southwards through the canal but was refloated by tugs and went to a waiting area for technical checks, the SCA and canal sources said. During the incident, some ships were diverted through a second lane created during an expansion of part of the canal completed in 2015, according to an SCA statement. Shipping firm Leth Agencies also reported that traffic in the canal was normal after the Maersk Emerald had been refloated. Another container ship, the Ever Given, was grounded for six days in March across the southernmost section of the canal, blocking traffic in both directions and disrupting global trade. Authorities successfully restored traffic in both directions on Bosphorus after towing the crude oil tanker, a Turkish Coast Guard source told Sputnik late Friday night, Sputnik reported. "The tanker was towed from the Bosphorus and delivered to an anchorage," the directorate said. "Movement on the Bosphorus is reopened." Coast Guard personnel previously suspended travel while tug boats attended to the tanker. Local reports detailed that RAVA was stopped some 300 meters (984 feet) from the coast of Istanbul's Yenikoy district. No injuries have been reported in connection with the incident. Flash The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Friday condemned Israel's settlement expansion, saying that the Israeli authorities recently approved the construction of 560 new settlement units south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. "Construction of new units aims at expanding the settlements that were built on Palestinian citizens' lands in the area," the ministry said in a statement sent to Xinhua. The statement warned that the expansion of settlements in the area of Bethlehem in the West Bank "will isolate Palestinian towns and villages from each other and turn them into isolated islands in an ocean of settlements." The foreign ministry's statement held the Israeli government responsible for the settlement expansion and the seizing of Palestinian lands, and warned of its disastrous consequences for the chances of making peace. A Congressional delegation will visit Georgia. The information about it is reported by the US Embassy in Georgia, InterPressNews reports. According to the US Embassy, the delegation will be led by Senators Jean Shaheen and Senator Rob Portman. "A Congressional delegation led by U.S. Senator Jeanne Shaheen, and including Senator Rob Portman, will visit Georgia next week to send a bipartisan message that the United States stands with the people of Georgia in their efforts to strengthen their democracy", - reads the statement. Having one of the fastest-growing paint and coating industries in the Southeast Asian region, Vietnam is mainly dominated by international paint and coating groups, but it is now witnessing a refresh as local makers attempt to gain some traction. Japan-based Nippon Paint Group has released its new three-year strategy in which it announced plans to construct a resin factory in Hanoi. We already have a paint factory in Vietnam that started operations a few years ago and the addition of the resin factory will strengthen our supply chains in Asia, said a company representative. Nippon Paint Vietnam has been in the domestic market for more than 25 years, as one of the earliest paint brands in the country. Here, Nippon Paint has built and put into operation three factories in Hanoi, its neibouring province of Vinh Phuc, and the southern province of Dong Nai specialising in the production of both decorative and industrial paint. The Vietnamese paint and coating industry has seen huge investments in capacity expansions in recent years, including leading multinational paint and coating producers such as AkzoNobel, JOTUN as well as regional players like 4 Oranges Co., Ltd. and Toa Paints. According to the Vietnam Paint-Printing Ink Association, foreign paint makers account for 65 per cent of the market. Foreign paint and coating makers covers all kinds such as painting airports, ships, and coatings of galvanised steel and wood. With advantages in technology and finance, foreign paint producers are a common choice for the architectural and general industrial coating segment that accounts for more than 62 per cent of the Vietnamese paint and coating market on a volume basis. Under Vietnams plan for developing the paint and ink industry until 2020 with a vision to 2030, the average growth rate in production value of the paint and ink industry reaching 14 per cent in the period from 2021 to 2030 and the proportion of production value of the paint and ink segment in the whole chemical sector will increase from 11 per cent in 2012, 11.5 per cent in 2020, and 12 per cent in 2030. Last year major player Jotun celebrated the launch of Essence Easy Clean, a new interior product in the medium category in Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, and Indonesia. In its 2020 report, the Norwegian paint company noted its investment in production capacity and research and development (R&D) facilities in the year. Investment has mostly been related to new production facilities in Vietnam and Egypt, facility upgrades in Norway and the Czech Republic, construction of new regional headquarters and R&D facility in Dubai, and finalisation of the same in Norway. Expected to be completed this summer, the construction of JOTUNs new $100 million water-based and powder coatings factory is taking place in Hiep Phuoc Industrial Park of Ho Chi Minh City, with capacity of 85 million litres water-based paints and 10,000 tonnes of powder coatings. The construction of a new factory in Vietnam is on budget and on schedule, noted the report. It added that the pandemic caused significant declines in sales activity in the second quarter of 2020, especially in Southeast Asia and the Middle East where JOTUN has a strong market presence. However, by quickly implementing business continuity measures at company factories and offices and utilising digital technologies to strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, the company posted another year of positive results in the decorative paints segment. In Vietnam, Jotun has been in the market since 1993. Initially, the company entered only with imported products, operating mainly in the field of industrial paint and marine works. However, it veered towards decorative paint a decade later when it was one of the first paint makers in Vietnam to introduce state-of-the-art colour mixing technology. Business expansion into ASEAN markets with extensive experience is indicative of a potential growth from foreign investment, infrastructure development, and utilities as well as ever-increasing urbanisation, according to the group. This is expected to boost the demand for both decorative paint and coating products and non-decorative paints and coatings. Fresh focus Over the last few years some domestic companies have become very competitive, including Kova Paint Group, Dong Tam, Alphanam, Hoa Binh, among others. These domestic companies even dominate the market in smaller cities and rural areas. For instance, choosing a product line aimed at the popular segment but manufactured in accordance with Japans leading standards and technology, locally-invested Alphanam Group has been on a journey to refresh the Vietnamese paint and coating market. The demand for civil construction such as residential houses and apartment buildings remains key for Alphanam. Kansai-Alphanam has launched two sets of interior and exterior paint products for the popular segment with modern technology, fresh colours, guaranteed quality, and durability according to Japanese standards. While industry experts believed that brand is one of the most important factors in the paint market, the issue of price and the suitability to climatic conditions of each region is of increasing concern, especially for large projects. That is an opportunity for domestic paint makers to seize. According to the current production value, construction coatings take up a large proportion at 54 per cent, while industrial coatings products have been in increasing demand because of industrialisation. Nguyen Thi Hoe, chairman of the board at Kova, confirmed that the domestic market has been fiercely competitive and cannot deny the advantages of foreign paints. However, Kovas position in the market is currently strong and its paints are deemed worthy enough to compete, Hoe said. Kova attracts consumers with a series of new features such as fire resistance, antibacterial, dust-proof, and even bulletproof paint. Kova began to dominate the retail market for non-decorative waterproofing in Vietnam five years ago, but its first factory was established in Hanoi in 1998. In 2007, Kova also entered the non-decorative protective coating market with its metallic paint and coating products and the following year the company expanded to Cambodia. Currently Kova comprises nine member companies and five high-capacity paint and coating manufacturing plants; four are located in Vietnam and one in Cambodia. Consensus being reached on harmful paint lead limits The first mandatory technical regulations restricting lead limits in paints and varnishes in Vietnam aims to prevent negative human health effects as well as push innovation in the countrys paint sector. The Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) has published the national regulations which will come into effect on July 1 next year. Under Circular No.51/2020-BCT, paint and varnish products in Vietnam must contain less than 500 parts per million (ppm) of lead. From 2027, paint and varnish products in the country must contain less than 90ppm of lead. This regulation is more relaxed than its draft, which set out to reduce lead content limits to 90ppm over a three-year period only. The new rules will apply to manufacturers, importers, and distributors of paints and varnishes, and labelling to be carried out in accordance with Decree No.43/2017/ND-CP released in 2007 on goods labelling. Lead can be found in decorative paints for interiors and exteriors of homes, schools, and public and commercial buildings, as well as on toys, furniture, and in playgrounds. As of the start of this year, nearly 80 countries have legally binding controls in place to limit the production, import, and sale of lead paints, while another 26 are in the early or final stages of drafting laws, according to a United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) report. Studies have shown that lead in paints is known to lower IQ and increase behavioural problems. It can also cause anaemia, increase the risk of kidney damage and hypertension, and impair reproductive functions, with young children and pregnant women are especially vulnerable. The negative impacts on childrens developing brains also have significant economic costs, including healthcare costs, productivity losses, and intellectual disability. While the cost of removing existing decorative lead paints from surfaces in homes, schools, and other buildings can be substantial, the economic cost is low for eliminating the use of lead compounds in new decorative paints, according to the UNEP. UNICEF warned last year that over 3.2 million children in Vietnam could have dangerous levels of lead in their blood that may cause irreversible health damage, not helped by high amounts of lead content in paints and varnish products in the country. Lead content in paints is safe for human health and the community as recommended by the World Health Organization, if lower than 90ppm. Nations such as the United States, Canada, the Philippines, Israel, and more have followed the recommendation. However, according to the MoIT, Vietnam has needed time for producers to prepare to meet new regulations. Nguyen Thi Lac Huyen, chairman of the Vietnam Paint-Printing Ink Association, said that greener chemicals are an inevitable trend and most business are aware of this and will accept higher costs. But she warned that it is likely that countries in the region will still have inventories of lead-containing materials for export to Vietnam for some time to come. VIR Construction materials market flourishes again After a gloomy period due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the construction materials market in HCM City started to flourish again in the third quarter as the peak construction season began and demand from some export markets recovered. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development has sent a document to the Thai Embassy on the suspension of imported live pigs from Thailand into Vietnam. In the second half of 2020, Vietnam imported over 447,000 live Thai pigs. According to the Department of Animal Health of Vietnam, on May 19 the animal quarantine agency found a shipment of 980 pigs imported from Thailand infected with African Swine Fever (ASF). To prevent ASF from entering Vietnam and spreading the disease to domestic pigs, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development decided to temporarily suspend the import of live pigs from Thailand from June 30, 2021. For batches of live pigs that have been signed by enterprises of the two countries and will be transported to Vietnam by June 29, the Ministry allowed imports into Vietnam and directed the veterinary agency to strictly control them to ensure food hygiene and safety. The Ministry has assigned the Department of Animal Health to coordinate with the competent authority of Thailand to assess the epidemic situation in Thailand and consider allowing the import of Thai pigs when the conditions for disease safety are ensured. Previously, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development allowed the import of live pigs from Thailand to Vietnam for raising and slaughtering for food from June 12, 2020 in order to balance supply and demand of pork in the local market. In 2020, Vietnam imported 447,600 live pigs, equivalent to 44,800 tons of meat, and 34,600 breed pigs from Thailand. The country imported nearly 226,000 tonnes of pork of all kinds last year, an increase of 260 percent compared to that of 2019. The main sources of imports are from Russia, Poland, Brazil, Canada, the US, Germany, and Spain. In the first quarter of 2021, Vietnam imported 34,600 tonnes of pork (HS code 0203), worth 80.07 million USD, up 101.4 percent in volume and 102.3 percent in value over the same period last year./. Tam An At 8 am May 16, Hai Phong, a 12th grader at a Hanoi high school was sitting in front of his laptop, checking the internet, camera and headphone, waiting for his turn to be interviewed for admission to the Hanoi University of Science and Technology. This was part of the exam organized annually by the school to admit talented students. In previous years, students had to come to the school to attend in-person interviews. As the Covid-19 outbreaks have reoccurred, the school has decided to interview students online this year. The online interview attracted 2,000 students who had been shortlisted. Each student was interviewed for 15 minutes. Phong was the ninth student interviewed that day. As he was used to online learning in the last year, he felt comfortable and answered five questions from the jury board. After 15 minutes, Phong clicked his mouse to leave the exam room and waited for the result. The student said the online interview allowed students to save time, and ensured health safety. Online studies Nguyen Phong Dien, Vice Rector of the Hanoi University of Science and Technology, said the interviewd on May 16 were a large-scale activity that the school had never held before. Dien said the school prepared for the interviews very carefully to be sure that the transmission lines were smooth, the interview content was reasonable, and the procedure was strict, while ensuring the most favorable conditions for students. The interviewing was done on Microsoft Teams, the online platform that the school has a lot of experience in using. The internet connection infrastructure and support equipment was upgraded the previous day, and more than 300 lecturers had been trained. At present, online exams are only considered an alternative, a temporary solution when students cannot go to school amid the pandemic. The central city of Da Nang and the northern province of Vinh Phuc decided to allow schools to organize online exams, while Hanoi has allowed 12th graders to do tests online, and the use of technology in examining and assessing students. Deputy Director of the Da Nang Education and Training Department Mai Tan Linh said that secondary and high school students in the city will have online exams on Google Forms, Quizizz, vnEdu LMS and Microsoft Teams platforms. Teachers will compile exam questions for every subject based on the knowlege level that students have to reach. The biggest concern for online exams is how to prevent exam cheating. Linh said the department has asked to film the entire process of students doing exams and apply a closed exam procedure to ensure strict student supervision in order to minimize cheating. Tran Manh Tung, a maths teacher at Luong The Vinh High School in Hanoi, said that online exams are the only choice now. He said, however, that it is difficult to ensure the seriousness of exams and assess students abilities through online exams. Technological solutions are the key to minimize exam cheating. The central city of Da Nang and the northern province of Vinh Phuc decided to allow schools to organize online exams, while Hanoi has allowed 12th graders to do tests online, and the use of technology in examining and assessing students. Schools need to make decisions on which platforms and software to use for online exams to prevent interventions from outside. He suggested using diverse forms for online exams, including multiple exam questions, which allow teachers to mark students work on software; online oral tests, essays, and project implementation and presentation. Luong The Vinh High School has also tested students online. Students had 30 seconds to give an answer to the first question. After that, a second question was raised. This means that questions were only asked after students finished the previous questions. This prevented students from sending questions to other people and asking for help. Online university entrance exam Educators believe that online exams could be applied not only to semester-end exams, but also to exams at provincial level, and to national high school finals and university entrance exam. Dien believes that online exams are convenient and economical for examinees. However, he admitted that there would be great challenges in technical infrastructure, exam content and exam procedure. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) said it is impossible to organize online high school finals, because this is not allowed under current law. OLM (Olm.vn), the website developed by the Hanoi University of Education, has a system for online exams. In related news, MOET has asked schools to organise tests and assessments in line with the local situation to ensure safety for students and teachers. Ngo Huyen - Hoang Thanh Education Ministry considers more online teaching for Vietnam Three conditions are needed to make online teaching more common in Vietnam: parents support, teachers capability of shifting to new teaching methods and students readiness for a new style of interaction. Soon after the first infection cases in the province were discovered, Bac Giang province immediately decided to test all the workers in IZs, trace and isolate high-risk cases, and implement medical quarantine and social distancing in at-risk areas. On May 8, 2021, an IZ worker tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 after spending the April holiday with family members. After two weeks, as of May 26, 1,454 infection cases had been reported in the province, mostly IZ workers. However, Bac Giang leaders stated that hundreds of infections a day were anticipated, and that Bac Giang had prepared well for the fight against the outbreak. Rapid tests Bac Giang chose to use antigen rapid tests for F1 (direct contacts) cases in quarantine areas and suspected infections in the community to discover positive cases. Soon after the results, the provincial authorities classified subjects and applied appropriate regimens. In the last month, since the new wave broke out, Bac Giang has completed large-scale testing in all districts and towns. Bac Giang has also received support from all over the country. Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long set up a taskforce to Bac Giang to help the epicenter with the outbreak. Hundreds of physicians and medical workers from Quang Ninh, Hai Duong, Thai Nguyen, Yen Bai, Ministry of National Defence and Military Hospital 103 have been sent to the province. The promise that all workers will be tested has been implemented. At least 130 workers from five IZs have given samples for tests so far, or 20,000 workers a day. A fortress The battle has been going as planned: giving medical treatment to F0s (infection source) at hospitals; establishing concentrated quarantine areas; and imposing social distancing on F2 and F3 (indirect contacts) for continued supervision. Meanwhile, testing campaigns are being organized to continue screening and classifying workers into groups for appropriate treatment. Bac Giang imposed a medical quarantine on 157 hamlets and residential quarters; medical isolation on four communes, wards and towns; social distancing on 31 communes, wards, towns, 18 hamlets and residential quarters; social lockdown on four districts; and social distancing on Bac Giang City and Yen The District. The province formed 12 quarantine areas and treatment areas to treat positive patients with the capacity of 3,000 beds; built intensive care units for serious patients; and installed field hospitals. The provincial authorities ordered the installation of a transmission line that connects Covid-19 patient treatment hospitals in the province with the local healthcare department and the Ministry of Health (MOH) for exchange of information and professional guidance. The provincial authorities ordered the installation of a transmission line that connects Covid-19 patient treatment hospitals in the province with the local healthcare department and the Ministry of Health for exchange of information and professional guidance. More infection cases may be discovered in Bac Giang in the days to come, but the speed is of the spread has decreased step by step. Newly discovered cases are in quarantine areas, so the possibility of the pandemic spreading among the community is low, said Bac Giang Chair Le Anh Duong. Bac Giang now can control the situation well, Duong said. Bac Giang has called on the country to help the province overcome the outbreak. It has set up a zero-dong supermarket in the province and allocated VND310 billion from the provincial budget to support workers. Fighting the pandemic and protecting businesses at the same time On May 18, Bac Giang suspended the operation of four IZs, namely Quang Chau, Van Trung, Dinh Tram and Song Khe Noi Hoang, and imposed social distancing on the entire district of Viet Yen. Prior to that, Bac Giang said it would shut down units and enterprises that dont observe epidemic prevention regulations. There are more than 560 enterprises in six IZs in Bac Giang, employing tens of thousands of workers, which are the backbone of the provinces economy. However, Bac Giang understands that it needs to struggle with the outbreak and maintain production and business at the same time. On May 13, Bac Giangs Chair decided to allow F2 and F3 workers to return to work after meeting all the requirements on pandemic prevention and control. On May 25, plan was released to reorganize production activities in Dinh Tram, Quang Chau, Song Khe Noi Hoang and Van Trung IZs. Eight enterprises were allowed to make plans to resume production in IZs in Viet Yen District from May 28. Tran Thi Chi from Newwing Company in Van Trung IZ, said the company uses 17,000 workers. It is one of the companies with the highest number of workers in the province. After receiving the instruction about resuming production, the company immediately designed plans to maintain production during the pandemic. We have established 'groups of workers to fight Covid-19. The members of the same groups share the same means of transport, have meals and live together. This restricts contact with other people and makes it easier to trace pathogens, Chi explained. At the company, groups of workers have meals at different times in accordance with a timetable. Disinfectants are sprayed after workers having meals, before the next turn of workers arrive to eat. Duong said that local enterprises resumed their operation to reactivate the global supply chains in the province. If the supply chains are disrupted, the entire economy will be affected. Using technology is a must Deputy Director of the Bac Giang Department of Information and Communications Ngo Dinh Tien said all Bac Giang people have to make health declarations on apps. On May 22, the provincial authorities released an urgent dispatch requesting all people to make medical declarations within three days, from May 22 to May 25. Heads of departments, agencies and organizations, and heads of local authorities have been asked to inform the public about making health declarations (second time) via Ncovi and Bluezone apps on smartphones, and make online declarations at https://tokhaiyte.vn. Those who cannot make online declarations can call 18001119 to get support. Anyone who deliberately makes a wrong declaration will be in violation of Vietnamese law and may be prosecuted if the behavior causes serious consequences. According to the department, 427,655 people as of May 25 had provided their phone numbers to Bluezone, or 23.71 percent of Bac Giangs population. Four outbreaks Vietnam has experienced four Covid-19 waves. The country has been fighting the pandemic by relying on the political system and human power. The ratio of the number of people under quarantine (which is high) to the number of infections (low) has been among the highest in the world. This method is effective when the number of infections is low and the virus spreads slowly. However, it is not feasible in the context of new coronarivus variants that spread rapidly. With tens of thousands of F0s, the number of F1s, or those who have to be put under concentrated quarantine, and F2s, who have to stay under quarantine at home, can be as many as hundreds of thousands. Therefore, cities and provinces in Vietnam have been asked to apply new approaches as per the Prime Minister instruction, who said that it is necessary to be more proactive and shift from defense to attack, apply technology more, take the initiative in testing, test more rapidly, and organize vaccinations more rapidly. As of May 25, as many as 636,764 samples had been taken for testing; Bac Giang had imposed a medical quarantine on 157 hamlets and residential quarters; medical isolation on four communes, wards and towns; social distancing on 31 communes, wards, towns, 18 hamlets and residential quarters; social lockdown on four districts; formed 12 quarantine areas and treatment areas to treat positive patients with the capacity of 3,000 beds districts. Kien Trung COVID-19: Vietnam records 31 more local infections, with 29 detected in Bac Ninh epicenter The Health Ministry confirmed 31 further fresh local cases of COVID-19 on May 23 morning, including 29 in Bac Ninh and 2 in Ninh Binh, raising the infection count of Vietnam's fourth coronavirus wave to 2,066. When she just came to the US, Nguyen Ngoc Trang was surprised when realizing her English pronunciation was not correct. But four years later, she was the best student at her high school. Nguyen Ngoc Trang of Common Spirit Health Dr. Christina Nguyen (Nguyen Ngoc Trang) is well known in the community of medical practitioners and students in Vietnam for her articles and videos sharing her experiences of living and working in the medical environment in the US. The Vietnamese born physician was mentioned in the Wichita Eagle newspaper in the US for winning two prestigious scholarships in the US - the Gates Millenium Scholarship and Dell Scholarship. Before Trang, her mother and younger sister went to the US 20 years ago, she had been an eighth grader at Nguyen Tri Phuong Secondary School in Hue City. Though Trang always got high scores in English, she could not communicate in English on her first days in the US. She had to spend one year learning English before joining the classes of native students. I was taught how to pronounce every syllable, every word, to correct all my mistakes. Every day when I got home from school, I had to open the book and practice pronunciation like a child," Trang recalled. She set a goal to obtain scholarship for tertiary education, so that" my study wont be a burden on my family, she recalled. She finished high school as a valedictorian and was offered a lot of scholarships, including two prestigious ones worth over VND5 billion. She remembers that while applying for the Gates Millenium scholarship, she had to write eight essays to answer the questions raised by the selection board. The aim was to better understand candidates and their ways of solving problems and conflicts, their spirit of devotion to the community, their resilience to overcome difficulties, and their ways of facing failure. New way to follow At high school, Trang decided that she would carry out research in laboratory majoring in chemistry and biochemistry. The decision was made when she witnessed a friend of hers struggling from blood clotting disorders. When she was studying biology at Creighton University, Trang contacted a professor at the school and began working at a laboratory. However, a turning point in her career path occurred after she participated in a voluntary campaign at the schools hospital. I realized that I wanted to work face to face with patients, listen to their stories and help them relieve pains, she said. Trang had to decide either to continue to follow the research path or become a practitioner. Before making a final decision, Trang worked at many hospitals and observed physicians working in their clinics. The experience helped her understand that she would be more suited to clinical medicine rather than scientific research. After graduating from college summa cum laude, she continued studying for a doctorate at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. Trang now works as a doctor at Family Medicine, for Common Spirit Health, a leading medical organization in the US, and as a clinic instructor. Overcoming language and cultural barriers, she is beloved by many patients in America. A patient wrote in a local newspaper that the main doctor treating him in the emergency room was Dr. Christina Nguyen, and he couldn't have asked for better care than that. Helping Vietnamese physicians become self-confident Trang has been working in the US for a long time, but she always remembers Vietnam. She set up a YouTube channel and Facebook to connect to the community of Vietnamese doctors. While talking with Vietnamese colleagues, Trang realized that the doctors want to practice English, especially medical English. Almost every day, she posts something on Facebook - an idiom, a medical English term, English communication, and study and work experiences in the US. She has organized free workshops with different themes, from the art of communicating with patients in English, to the experience of registering for medical residency courses. She has also compiled an ebook of 100 idioms that help people communicate in English, for free download. To succeed in the US medical environment, professional knowledge alone is not enough. Doctors also need to have patients confidence and establish good relations with them. This is a difficulty for doctors trained in Vietnam who want to work with foreign patients. Trang embarked on The Phoenix Medical Academy project to provide medical English skills to Vietnamese doctors, for free. Vietnamese doctors are very good, both at professional knowledge and learning and working behaviors. I firmly believe that if they can overcome the language barrier, they will be in no way inferior to doctors trained in other countries, she said. Phuong Chi Vietnamese student earns highest score at Asian Physics Olympiad All eight Vietnamese students participating in the 2021 Asian Physics Olympiad (APhO) have won prizes, bringing home two golds, one silver, three bronzes and two certificates of merit, reported the Ministry of Education and Training on May 23. Professor, Dr Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam, has written an article titled A number of theoretical and practical issues on socialism and the path towards socialism in Vietnam. Below is the full text article: Socialism and the path to socialism in Vietnam is a truly fundamental theoretical and practical topic of great importance. It covers a broad array of diverse and complex issues under various approaches, and requires both painstaking and serious investigation, and a deep and scientific stocktaking of practice. Within the scope of this writing, I would like to touch upon some aspects from Vietnam's practical perspective. I would only focus on answering the following questions: What is socialism? Why did Vietnam choose the socialist path? How to gradually build socialism in Vietnam? How significant have the Doi Moi (Renewal) and the building of socialism been in Vietnam over the past years? And what are the issues facing this process? Professor, Dr Nguyen Phu Trong, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). VNA Photo Tri Dung As we are well aware that socialism is usually understood in three aspects: socialism as a doctrine, socialism as a movement, and socialism as a polity. Each aspect has different manifestations, depending on the world outlook and development level in a specific historical period. The socialism as referred to in this writing is a scientific socialism, based on Marxism - Leninism in the world today. How, then, shall we define socialism and chart the course towards socialism, in a manner suitable to the particular condition and characteristics in Vietnam? Previously, while the Soviet Union and its constellation of socialist countries existed in the world, the question of advancing towards socialism in Vietnam seemed beyond doubt and implicitly validated. However, after the collapse of the socialist model in the Soviet Union and many other Eastern European countries and the decline of the world revolution, the advancement towards socialism was once again put into question and became the topic for every discussion, even drawing heated debate. Anti-communism and political opportunists rejoiced, and seized that opportunity to spread misinformation and subvert the movement. Within the revolutionary rank, there are also those who wallowed in pessimism and faltered. Some began to doubt the correctness and science of socialism, and blamed the dissolution of the Soviet Union on the errors of Marxism-Leninism and the choice of socialism as the way forward. From this premise, they believe we have chosen the wrong way and must march on another path. Some echoed the hostile arguments, disparaged and criticized socialism, and indulged in one-sided praise of capitalism. Some even claimed repentance for having had faith in Marxism-Leninism and socialism. But is this the truth? Is it true that capitalism today, including those long-standing capitalist countries, are still growing well? Has Vietnam chosen the wrong way? We concur that capitalism has never been more global as it is today, and has achieved immense accomplishments, especially in liberating and developing the productive capacity and advancing science and technology. Many developed capitalist countries, building on their advanced economic foundation and also thanks to the struggle of the working class and working people, have made adjustments and set up considerable social welfare schemes that are more progressive than before. Since the mid-1970s, and particularly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, international capitalism spared no effort to adjust itself and promoted neo-liberalism at the global scale in order to adapt to new conditions. For this reason, it is still able to grow further. Yet capitalism still cannot address its innate and fundamental contradictions. Crises continue to break out. Most notably, in 2008 and 2009 we witnessed a financial crisis and economic recession starting in the United States. It then rapidly spread to other centers of capitalism and affected nearly every country in the world. Capitalist states and governments in the West injected huge amounts of money into their system to save transnational corporations, industrial, financial and banking complexes, and security markets, but they only gained limited success. And today we witness a multi-faceted health, social, political and economic crisis unfolding under the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Fourth Industrial Revolution. An economy in recession has unmasked social injustice within capitalist societies. The living standard of the majority of working people is falling dramatically while unemployment rises. The rich-poor gap grows larger, exacerbating antagonism and conflict among ethnicities. Instances of bad development and anti-development paradoxes have spilled over from the economic and financial domain into social life, igniting social conflicts. In many places, economic incidents became political ones, where waves of demonstrations and strikes would shake the entire regime. Reality has shown us that the free market of capitalism itself cannot help solve these problems, and in many cases even causes serious harm to poor countries and deepens the conflict between global labor and global capital. This reality also rips apart economic theories or development models that have long been considered as in vogue. They were praised by bourgeois politicians and viewed as optimal and sensible by bourgeois experts. The economic and financial crises are accompanied by the energy and food crises, the exhaustion of natural resources and the degradation of the environment and ecosystem. These are posing monumental challenges to the existence and development of mankind. They are the consequences of a process of economic and social development that crowned profit as its supreme end, that esteemed the possession of wealth and consumption of material as the yardstick of civilization, and that upholds individual interest as the pillar of society. Such are the core characteristics of the capitalist mode of production and consumption. The ongoing crises once again prove the economic, social and ecological unsustainability of capitalism. According to many scientists, the present crises are impossible to be fully resolved within the framework of a capitalist regime. Recent social protest movements flaring up in many developed capitalist countries, have further exposed the truth about the nature of capitalist polities. In fact, democratic institutions in the mold of freedom and democracy that the West spares no effort to promote and impose upon the world at large not at all guarantee that power shall truly be of the people, by the people and for the people - what democracy means at its core. This system of power still belongs mainly to the wealthy few and serves the interest of large capitalist cartels. A tiny minority, even just about 1% of the population, possesses the vast majority of wealth and means of production, controls three quarter of financial and knowledge resources and the mainstream mass media, and accordingly dominates the entire society. This is the root cause of the 99% versus 1% movement in the United States in early 2011, which has since spread like wildfire into other capitalist countries. The claim of equal rights detached from equal opportunities to exercise these rights led to democracy in name only - emptiness and without substance. In political life, once the power of money dominates, the power of the people shall be overpowered. This is why in developed capitalist countries, free and democratic elections, as they claim, may change governments, but may not change the ruling power. Behind the multi-party system in fact remains the dictatorship of capitalist cartels. We need a society in which development is truly for humans, not for exploitation and dehumanization for the sake of profit. We need economic development accompanied by social progress and equality, not an increase in the gap between the rich and the poor or greater social inequity. We need a society of compassion, solidarity and mutual assistance towards progressive and humanistic values, not unfair competition where the weak are meat, and the strong do eat to satisfy the selfish interest of a few individuals and cliques. We need sustainable development in harmony with nature to secure a clean living environment for present and future generations, instead of unlimited exploitation and possession of resources, unrestrained consumption and destruction of the environment. And we need a political system where power truly belongs to the people, is enforced by the people and serve the people, not merely in the interest of the wealthy few. Such beautiful ideals are the true values of socialism, arent they? And, are they also the goal and the path that President Ho Chi Minh and our Party and people had chosen, the path upon which we persevere, arent they? As we all know, the Vietnamese people have undergone a long, arduous and sacrifice-filled revolutionary struggle against colonialist and imperialist domination and invasion in order to defend the sacred national independence and sovereignty and for the freedom and happiness of our people, in the spirit of Nothing is more precious than independence and freedom. National independence associated with socialism is the fundamental guideline of Viet Nam's revolution and at the same time the quintessence in the theoretical legacy of President Ho Chi Minh. Through his wealth of practical experience, combined with the revolutionary and scientific theories of Marxism-Leninism, Ho Chi Minh came to a profound conclusion that only socialism and communism may fully answer the question of national independence and bring about freedom, wellbeing and happiness to everyone and every nation. Since its inception and throughout its revolutionary struggle, the Communist Party of Vietnam has always asserted that socialism is the goal and ideal of the Communist Party and people of Vietnam, and that advancing towards socialism is an objective demand of and the inevitable course of Vietnamese revolution. In 1930, in its Political Platform, the Communist Party of Vietnam stated its line of action: to carry out a peoples national democratic revolution under the leadership of the working class and advance towards socialism, bypassing the stage of capitalism. In the late 20th century, while a large part of the socialist realism in the world collapsed, the bloc of socialist states ceased to exist and the socialist movement entered a period of crisis, decline and hardship, the Communist Party of Vietnam continued to hold that "Our Party and people are determined to build Vietnam on the path towards socialism on the basis of Marxism- Leninism and Ho Chi Minh thought. At the 11th National Congress of the Communist Party (January 2011), in the Platform for National construction in the period of transition to socialism (amended and further developed in 2011), once again we affirmed that "Advancing to socialism is the aspiration of our people and the correct choice of the Communist Party of Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh, and is in line with the development trajectory of history". However, What is socialism, and how shall we advance to socialism? That is the question we are always pondering, deliberating, investigating and weighing, in order to gradually improve our guideline and viewpoint, and organize for their implementation, so as to both observe the general law and satisfy the particular conditions in Vietnam. During the years of Doi Moi, based on the review of praxis and study of theory, the Communist Party of Viet Nam has been gradually reaching a more complete and profound understanding of socialism and the transition into socialism. We have in stages addressed simplistic ideas we held previously, such as homogenizing the end goal of socialism with the task currently at hand, one-sidedly stressing production relations and equal distribution without fully realizing the need to develop the productive force in the transition period, not recognizing the existence of other economic sectors, putting the market economy in the same basket as capitalism, and viewing the rule-of-law state as the same as a bourgeois state, just to name a few. As of today, while there remain areas for further study, we have established an overarching understanding: The socialist society that the Vietnamese people are making all efforts to build is a society where the people are well-off, the nation is strong and the people are owners, a society characterized by democracy, equality and civilization. It possesses a highly developed economy on the basis of a modern productive force and suitable and progressive production relations. It enjoys an advanced culture imbued with national identity. Its people are entitled to wellbeing, freedom and happiness and are blessed with opportunities for comprehensive development. Ethnic groups in the Vietnamese community are equal, united, respectful and supportive of each other to grow together. It has a rule-of-law socialist state of the people, by the people and for the people under the leadership of the Communist Party. And it maintains friendship and cooperation with all countries in the world To achieve this goal, we must step up industrialization and modernization in conjunction with the development of a knowledge-based economy. We must also develop a socialist-oriented market economy, build an advanced culture imbued with national identity, boost human resource development, improve the people's living standards, and exercise social progress and equality. We must safeguard national defense and security, public order and security. We must implement the foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralization and diversification for peace, friendship, cooperation and development, and actively engage in international integration. We must build a socialist democracy, harness the will and power of all-nation unity in combination with the power of our time. We must build the socialist rule-of-law state of the people, by the people and for the people. We must build an untarnished, strong Party and polity in every respect. The further our Party delves into practical guidance, the more we realize that the transition to socialism is a long-term and immensely challenging and complex task, for it must bring about profound, qualitative changes across all fields of social life. Vietnam embarked on its journey to socialism from its starting point as an underdeveloped agricultural country, bypassing the stage capitalism and with a very limited productive force. The country was further weakened by decades of wars resulting in severe devastation, and by the constant subversive attempts of hostile forces. These factors have hinder Vietnams path to socialism. As such it unavoidably requires a protracted transition that involves various stages and forms of socio-economic organization, with a struggle between the old and the new. To say that Vietnam bypasses the stage of capitalism, I mean the country bypasses a regime of oppression, inequality and capitalist exploitation, and bypasses harmful practices and political institutions and arrangements unsuitable in a socialist system. It does not mean that we must reject the accomplishments and values of civilization that mankind has achieved throughout the development of capitalism. Naturally, these achievements must be selectively absorbed via the lens of science and development. The concept of developing a socialist-oriented market economy is a particularly fundamental and creative theoretical breakthrough of our Party. It is an important theoretical achievement gleaned through 35 years of implementing the Doi Moi, stemming from Vietnams praxis and selective absorption of experiences around the world. Our understanding is that, a socialist-oriented market economy is a modern market economy well integrated with the world. It is an economy that operates fully and cohesively in line with the laws of a market economy. It is regulated by a rule-of-law socialist state under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam. It upholds a socialist orientation towards the goals of an affluent people, prosperous nation, democratic, equitable and advanced society. It is a new form of market economy in the history of this economic model. It is a mode of economic organization that abides by the laws of the market economy, but is also built on and guided by the principles and nature of socialism. This is reflected in all three aspects, namely ownership, organization and governance, and distribution. This is not a capitalist market economy, and has yet to become a full-fledged socialist market economy (since our country is still undergoing the transition period). A socialist-oriented market economy encompasses multiple forms of ownership and multiple economic sectors. Economic sectors operating in compliance with the law are important components of the economy. They are equal under the law in the interest of long-term development, cooperation and healthy competition. In this system, the state economy plays a key role; the collective economy is constantly consolidated and developed; the private sector is an important engine of the economy; the FDI sector is encouraged to develop consistently with the socio-economic development strategies and plans. Distribution relations must ensure fairness and create momentum for growth. Distribution is to be conducted primarily based on labor outcomes, economic efficiency, and capital and resource contributions. It should also be implemented via the system of social security and welfare. The state regulates the economy via the law, strategies, plans, policies and material resources so as to provide orientation to, regulate and stimulate socio-economic development. A fundamental characteristic and important feature of the socialist orientation in the Vietnams market economy is the combination of economics and society, the coordination of economic and social policies. It also ensures that economic growth would be accompanied by social progress and equality in every stage, every policy, and throughout the development process. This means that we shall not wait until the economy has reached a high level of development to begin exercising social progress and equality. We also shall certainly not sacrifice social progress and equality in pursuit of mere economic growth. On the contrary, every economic policy should target the goal of social development, and every social policy should seek to promote economic growth. Encouraging people to enrich themselves legally should go hand in hand with promoting sustainable eradication of hunger and poverty reduction, and taking care of the disadvantaged and those who have rendered great service to the nation. This is a matter of principle to ensure a healthy, sustainable and socialist-oriented development. We consider culture as a spiritual foundation of the society, an internal strength, an engine for national development and defense. We regard the holistic development of culture in harmony with economic growth, social progress and equality as a fundamental guideline underlying the construction of socialism in Vietnam. The culture that we are building is one of progress, rich in national identity. It is a culture of unity in diversity, on the basis of progressive and humanistic values. Marxism - Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts play a primary role in the spiritual life of the society. We seek to build upon and advance the wholesome traditional values of all ethnicities within our country, and learn from the cultural achievements and quintessence of humanity at large. We strive to build an advanced and healthy society for the true interests and dignity of the people that fosters an increasingly higher level of knowledge, morality, physical fitness, lifestyle and aesthetics. We place the people at the heart of our development strategies. Cultural and human development are both the target and the momentum of Doi Moi. Cultivation of education - training and science - technology constitute our top national policy. Environmental protection is an existential issue and a criterion for sustainable development. The building of happy and progressive families produces a concrete foundation for the society, and the upholding of gender equality is the norm for progress and civilization. A socialist society is one that strives toward progressive and humanistic values, based on the harmony between the common interests of the entire society and legitimate interests of the people. This is qualitatively different from other societies characterized by competition to acquire exclusive interest between individuals and groups. Therefore, it requires and is also able to cultivate social consensus rather than social opposition and antagonism. In a socialist political system, the relationship between the Party, State and people is a relationship between entities unified in their goals and interests. Every Party guideline, every government policy, law and action, aims to serve the interest and happiness of the people. The political model and its overall mode of operation involves the leadership of the Party, the management by the State, and the mastery by the people. Democracy is the nature of the socialist regime. It is both the goal and engine for the construction of socialism. Building a socialist democracy that ensures the real power belongs to the people is an ultimate and long-term mandate of Vietnams revolution. We aim to unceasingly promote democracy and build a law-governed socialist state that is truly of the people, for the people and by the people, on the basis of the alliance between workers, farmers and intellectuals under the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam. The State represents the peoples right to mastery, and organizes the implementation of the Partys guidelines. There are mechanisms in place to allow the people to exercise their right to direct mastery and democratic representative in all areas of society, and take part in the governance of society. We are aware that a law-governed socialist state, by nature, is different from a rule-of-law capitalist state. Legislative power under a capitalist regime is essentially an instrument to protect and serve the interests of the bourgeois class. By contrast, the rule of law under socialism is a tool to reflect and exercise the peoples right to mastery, to ensure and protect the interests of the majority of the people. Through the enforcement of the law, the State would secure conditions for the people to truly be the subject of political power, and exercise sole state power to address all actions that violate the interests of the Fatherland and the people. We, at the same time, consider the great national unity to be a source of strength and a decisive factor for the lasting victory of Vietnams revolution. Equality and unity among our ethnic groups and religions are constantly promoted. Being deeply aware of the Communist Partys leadership is a factor that decides the success of the Doi Moi and ensures our countrys development in line with the socialist path, we pay special attention to party building and rectification. This task is critical to the survival of the Party and the socialist system. The Communist Party of Vietnam is the vanguard of the Vietnamese working class. The founding, existence and development of the Party aim to serve the interest of the working class, the working people, and the entire nation. As the Party takes the helms and leads the nation, it is recognized by the whole people as their vanguard, and is accordingly the vanguard of both the working class and the mass of working people and the entire Vietnamese nation. This is not meant to downplay the class nature of the Party, but rather to reflect a deeper and more complete understanding of this class nature, for the interest of the working class is aligned with that of the mass of working people and the entire nation. Our Party perseveres with Marxism - Leninism and Ho Chi Minh Thoughts as the foundation and lodestar for the revolution, and holds democratic centralism as the fundamental organizing principle. The Party asserts its leadership through its platforms, strategies, and major guidelines and policies. In practice, these are translated into information dissemination, persuasion, mobilization, organization, inspection, oversight. The Party also leads with Party members role models and holds the unified leadership of personnel work. As it understands that the risks to the ruling party are corruption, bureaucracy and degradation, particularly in a market economy, the Communist Party of Vietnam requires regular self-improvement and self-rectification, and deems it necessary to constantly combat opportunism, individualism, corruption, bureaucracy, extravagance and moral degradation within the Party and the entire political system. The Doi Moi, including the development of the socialist-oriented market economy, has truly brought about enormous and positive changes to our country over the past 35 years. Prior to the Doi Moi (in 1986), Vietnam used to be a poor and war-torn country, with devastated human lives, infrastructure, and environment. For instance, to date, millions of people fall victim to grave diseases, and hundreds of thousands of children are born with birth defects and disabilities due to Agent Orange/dioxin used by the US Army during wartime. According to experts, it would take another 100 years or more for Vietnam to fully remove the remaining post-war unexploded ordnance (UXOs). After the war, the US and the Western imposed economic sanctions on Vietnam for nearly 20 years. That period also saw complex developments in the region and the world, to our detriment. There was a severe shortage of food and essential goods, and our people lived in great hardships, with three quarters of the population living under the poverty line. Thanks to the Doi Moi, our economy has begun to thrive, enjoying a relatively high growth rate over the course of 35 years at around 7% per year. Our GDP is continually expanding, reaching $342.7 billion in 2020 and becomes the 4th largest economy in ASEAN. Per-capita income has increased seventeen-fold to $3,512. Vietnam successfully graduated from low-income status in 2008. From a country faced with constant food shortages, at present, Vietnam not only is able to ensure food security, but also has become a leading exporter of rice and various other agricultural products in the world. Our industries are flourishing, the shares of industry and services in our GDP are constantly increasing, and today account for 85% of total GDP. Our foreign trade turnover is growing dramatically, exceeding $540 billion in 2020, in which exports reached over $280 billion. Our foreign exchange reserves jumped to $100 billion in 2020. Foreign direct investment is also rapidly expanding, with a total registered capital of nearly $395 billion USD by late 2020. With regard to our economic structure in terms of ownership, the state sector accounts for 27% of Vietnams total GDP, the collective economy for 4%, the household economy for 30%, the domestic private sector for 10%, and the FDI sector for 20%. Vietnam today has a population of over 97 million people across 54 brotherly ethnic groups, 60% of whom residing in rural areas. Economic development has delivered the country from the socio-economic crisis of the 1980s and remarkably improved the peoples living standards. The percentage of poor households falls by 1.5% every year on average, from 58% in 1993 to 5.8% in 2016 by the Government poverty standards, and to less than 3% in 2020 according to the multidimensional poverty index (whose standards are higher than previously). Today, more than 60% of communes have met the standards of new-style rural areas. Most of them enjoy car roads leading into their neighborhood center, national power line coverage, primary and secondary schools, clinics, and telephone services. While we are yet able to provide free education at all levels for all, Vietnam have been focusing its efforts on eradicating illiteracy. We realized universal primary education in 2000 and universal secondary education in 2010. The number of university and college students has increased by 17 times over the last 35 years. Currently, 95% of Vietnamese adults are literate. While we have yet to achieve universal health coverage, we are focusing on enhancing preventive healthcare, epidemic prevention and control, and providing support for disadvantaged persons. Many once-prevalent diseases have been successfully curbed. The poor, children under 6, and the elderly are provided with free health insurance coverage. Children malnutrition and infant mortality have been slashed about three fold. Average life expectancy has gone up from 62 years in 1990 to 73.7 years in 2020. Thanks to economic progress, we have also been able to take better care of people with significant contributions to the revolution and Vietnamese Heroic Mothers, and tend to the graves of martyrs who sacrificed themselves for the Fatherland. The cultural life has also been significantly enriched with a diverse and growing range of cultural activities. 70% of the population now have internet access and Viet Nam is among the worlds fastest-developing IT countries. The United Nations has recognized Viet Nam as one of the leading countries in reaching the Millennium Development Goals. In 2019, Vietnams Human Development Index (HDI) value reached 0.704, putting the country in the high human development category. This is a commendable achievement, especially compared to countries at a similar level of development. Thus, we can say that the implementation of Doi Moi has delivered clear, profound and positive transformations in Vietnam. The economy is booming and the productive force is strengthened. Poverty is rapidly and constantly falling. The peoples living standard is improving and many social issues have been addressed. Political and social stability, defense, and security are well-safeguarded. We enjoy an increasingly broader foreign relations and more extensive international integration. Our national standing and power are growing and the peoples trust in the Partys leadership is bolstered. In its review of 20 years of Doi Moi, the 10th National Party Congress (2006) noted that the Doi Moi process has garnered immense historic achievements. Indeed, in many respects, the Vietnamese people nowadays enjoy living standards higher than ever before. It is one of the reasons why the Doi Moi initiated and led by the Communist Party of Vietnam receives such support, and is actively implemented by the broad mass of Vietnamese citizenry. The successes of Doi Moi have proved that socialist-oriented development is not only more economically positive, but also capable of better addressing social problems, than is the case in capitalist countries at the same level of economic development. The extraordinary results and accomplishments of Vietnam amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and global recession since early 2020 have been recognized and commended by international friends and peoples, thus illustrating the superiority of the socialist system in our country. Recently, the 13th National Party Congress once again asserted and emphasized that After 35 years of Doi Moi, 30 years of implementing the Platform for national development during the transition to socialism, the theories on Doi Moi, socialism, and the path towards socialism in Vietnam are becoming more complete and gradually translated into reality. We have achieved tremendous and historic progress, and are developing more vigorously and comprehensively compared to the pre-Doi Moi era. With all due modesty, we can say that Never has our country had such fortune, potential, international standing and prestige as it does today. Such progress is the crystallization of the creativity of the entire Party, people and army, and the product of our enduring and constant endeavor over the many past terms of office. It is testimony to the correctness of our path to socialism. It proves that this process is well in line with objective laws, the situation in Vietnam, and the development trajectory of our times. It demonstrates that the Doi Moi guideline set by the Party is correct and innovative. It proves that the leadership of the Party is the foremost element that decides all victories of the revolution in Vietnam. The political platform of the Party continues to be the ideological banner that strengthens our peoples resolve and leads them along the path of comprehensive and holistic Doi Moi. It serves as the foundation for our Party to improve its guideline for the building and defense of our Fatherland, the Socialist State of Vietnam, in the new era. (Documents of the 13th National Party Congress, volume 1, National Political Publishing House, Hanoi, 2021, page 25-26). Apart from the dominant streak of achievements and positive aspects, there remain considerable drawbacks and limitations, in addition to emerging challenges that we must face in our national development. Economically, Vietnam's growth quality and competitiveness remain low and not very sustainable. Infrastructure lacks coherence, and the effectiveness and capability of many businesses, including state-owned enterprises, are limited. The environment in many areas suffers from pollution. The administration and regulation of the market still exhibit many shortcomings. Meanwhile, competition is growing increasingly fiercer against the backdrop of globalization and international integration. Socially, the wealth gap is on the rise, while the quality of education, healthcare and other public services still leaves much to desire. Our culture and social morality shows signs of decline in certain aspects, and crime and social evils continue to see complex developments. Most alarmingly, corruption, extravagance, degradation in political thought, morality and lifestyle can be observed in a portion of cadres and Party members. At the same time, hostile forces are trying all means to intervene, subvert, cause instability and carry out peaceful evolution in order to undermine socialism in Vietnam. Our Party recognizes that Vietnam is in a transitional period towards socialism. During this transition, socialist elements are taking shape, intertwined and competing against non-socialist elements, including capitalist elements in a number of areas. This overlap and competition becomes even more complex and intense against the backdrops of the market economy, openness, and international integration. Apart from achievements and positive developments, there will always be negative aspects and challenges that demand rational consideration and prompt and effective resolution. This is an arduous and grueling struggle that requires a new vision, new resolve, and new drive for innovation. Advancing towards socialism is a period of tirelessly bolstering, augmenting and harnessing socialist elements so that they would become more dominant and superior, and ultimately triumph. Success or failure depends, first and foremost, on the correctness of the Party guideline and its political fortitude, leadership, and combativeness. Presently, we are continuing to accelerate the transformation of our growth model and economic restructuring with greater focus on quality and sustainability. In this connection, we have identified the following breakthroughs: the synchronous improvement of development institutions, with priority given to the socialist-oriented market economy; the development of human resources, particularly highly-skilled workers; and the development of synchronized and modern infrastructure, economically and socially (Documentation of the XIII Congress, volume 2, pp. 337 - 338). With regards to social development, we continue to promote sustainable poverty reduction, improve the quality of healthcare, education and other public services, and further enhance peoples cultural life. The entire Party, people and army are making every effort to study and emulate President Ho Chi Minh's thoughts, morality and style with the determination to stem and reverse the degeneration in political ideology, morality, and lifestyles among a portion of cadres and Party members, primarily leadership and managerial cadre at all levels. We shall strive to better implement the principles of Party organization and building, in order to ensure the Party organization and the state apparatus will grow stronger and free from taint, maintain the Party's revolutionary nature and improve its leadership capacity and combativeness. Both theory and praxis have shown that building socialism means creating a qualitatively new type of society, which is by no means a simple or easy task. This is a grand and innovative endeavor, full of challenges and adversities. It is a self-driven, continuous, long-term and goal-oriented cause that cannot be rushed. Therefore, in addition to charting the correct Party line and policy and ensuring its leadership role, we must actively harness people's creativity, support and active participation. The people shall welcome, support and enthusiastically participate in the implementation of the Party lines since they see that such guidelines are in their interest and live up to their aspirations. The ultimate victory and development is deeply rooted in the strength of the Vietnamese people. On the other hand, the Partys leadership and stewardship, in shaping the political line and making decisions, should not refer only to the reality of its own country and nation. It must instead also study and learn from the experience of the world and that of the times. In today's globalized world, the development of each nation-state cannot stand alone and separate from the impacts of the world and the times, and those of the context and the dynamics. Therefore, we must actively engage in international integration, implement a foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development, and multilateralization and diversification of international relations, on the basis of respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of each other, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit. And it is of great importance to remain steadfast and firm on the foundation of Marxism - Leninism - the scientific and revolutionary doctrine of the working class and the working people. The scientific and uncompromising revolutionary nature of Marxism-Leninism and Ho Chi Minhs Thought are enduring values that have been pursued and implemented by generations of revolutionaries. This will continue to develop and prove its vitality in the reality of both the revolutionary movement and scientific development. We need to selectively accept and supplement in the spirit of criticism and creativity of the latest ideological and scientific achievements, so that they shall forever be fresh and revitalized, and filled with the breath of our times, thus not falling prey to dogmatism and obsoleteness. Let us live in peace and love. Let us forget recent things. Let us live in peace and love. Let us forget the last things. These words are written on a blackboard at a school in Bentiu town in South Sudan. (Photo by courtesy of Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang) "These words are written on a blackboard at a school in Bentiu town in South Sudan. Just a few words, but they leave a strong impression. They reflect a desire to live in peace, with stability and development, by not only children but all people of South Sudan. Due to the ongoing conflict since the country declared independence in 2011, its children have no or little opportunity to access an adequate education." The remark was made by Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang, Head of the Level-2 Field Hospital No 2s Air Rescue Team, who has just finished his time at the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. In South Sudan since November 2019, Dr Quang was in charge of Civilian Military Coordination (CIMIC), which plays a role as an interface between the military and civilian components of peacekeeping operations. The school we visited is an example of the mounting difficulties people here are facing, he said. With more than 1,600 students, Bentiu B Primary School has just three blocks. All are in various stages of disrepair from war and conflict, and the school cannot afford to fix them. COVID-19, meanwhile, has been sweeping across the country since April last year and the school has been deserted as a result. With a hope of helping local students have better conditions to study, Vietnamese officers and soldiers at the Level-2 Field Hospital No. 2 acted as carpenters to make tables and chairs from recycled wooden boxes. Finally, after nearly 12 months, 31 sets of tables and chairs and 100 sets of alphabet letters for learning were made. At a handover ceremony for the new tables and chairs, students also received gift bags in which, in addition to books and pens, was a sheet of paper introducing Vietnam and President Ho Chi Minh. When you read this paper, you will see that Vietnam is a country located on the Pacific coast and has an area only half the size of South Sudan, a representative from the Vietnamese hospital said at the ceremony. The two countries are more than ten thousand kilometres apart. This distance is very far, but we hope that it will be shortened by knowledge gathered from books read on these tables and chairs and recorded in these notebooks. With knowledge, you can help your family and rebuild South Sudan. One day, we believe we will be able to welcome you to visit Vietnam. Do you agree? The question was met with loud applause as soon as the interpreter had finished. As a country that has itself gone through war, Vietnam understands the value of peace. Soldiers who were born when the country was free from gunfire appreciate what todays generation enjoys. People can go to work or to school and live in a peaceful society. Therefore, when participating in the United Nations peacekeeping mission, despite the harsh conditions, Vietnamese blue beret soldiers are fully aware of their responsibilities and their noble mission. In its seven years of involvement in peacekeeping operations, since 2014, Vietnam has sent 53 military officers to South Sudan and the Central African Republic. There have also been 189 Vietnamese officers and doctors joining Level-2 Field Hospitals No 1, 2 and 3 in South Sudan. Participating in United Nations peacekeeping operations means realising the Partys guidelines on the protection of the Fatherland soon and from afar by peaceful means. It is also an expression of the humanity of the Vietnam Peoples Army and Vietnamese peoples love of peace. Students at Bentiu B Primary School receive gift bags from staff at the Level-2 Field Hospital No 2 at the handover ceremony for new tables and chairs. (Photo by courtesy of Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang) Witnessing first-hand the poverty and suffering of people in areas heavily affected by sectarian conflict and political instability, Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong has many unforgettable memories from her time as a military observer with the UN peacekeeping mission in South Sudan. From conducting regular patrols in the area, including both short-term and long-term reconnaissance, Lieutenant Colonel Phuong had the opportunity to interact with local authorities and people, thereby understanding the situation and the thoughts and aspirations of local people. The image of a young woman of 16-18 holding twins as small as two new-born kittens and crying bitterly because she didnt have enough milk because there was nothing to eat made my heart sink, Lieutenant Colonel Phuong recalled. Realising the extremely important and meaningful mission of peacekeepers, she promised herself she would make every effort to complete her task well, contributing to speeding up the implementation of peace deals and rebuilding South Sudan so that people can soon enjoy a peaceful and prosperous life. Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong holds a South Sudanese baby during her first day-long patrol as a military observer, in December 2019. (Photo by courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong) Every nation needs to protect people and ensure they live in a peaceful environment and are less susceptible to non-traditional challenges. According to Major General Hoang Kim Phung, Director of the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations, besides carrying out UN mission, Vietnams peacekeeping force provided major support to local residents, such as teaching and taking care of kids and instructing people on how to plant vegetables, among other things. Such things contributed to creating a beautiful image of Uncle Hos soldiers. Vietnams peacekeeping force has worked to improve the countrys position in promoting the implementation of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, including maintaining sustainable peace around the world, said Major General Phung. Fulfilling the United Nations peacekeeping mission and returning to their homeland, many Vietnamese blue beret soldiers brought with them a host of memories. Perhaps the greatest concern of those soldiers is how to make people in South Sudan in particular and countries in conflict around the world enjoy peace, prosperity, and happiness. That noble mission is being continued by generations of Vietnam Peoples Army soldiers in the uniform of the United Nations blue beret force./. Inside the classroom of Bentiu B Primary School, tables and chairs are scattered around with only their steel frames remaining. (Photo by courtesy of Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang) Staff at the Level-2 Field Hospital No 2 bring tables and chairs to the handover ceremony. (Photo by courtesy of Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang) Students at Bentiu B Primary School receive gift bags from staff at the Level-2 Field Hospital No 2 at the handover ceremony for new tables and chairs. (Photo by courtesy of Senior Lieutenant Dr Tu Quang) Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong holds a South Sudanese baby during her first day-long patrol as a military observer, in December 2019. (Photo by courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong) Officers of Vietnams peacekeeping force present gifts to children in the Western Division in South Sudan during a patrol in the area, in November 2020. (Photo by courtesy of Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Thi Minh Phuong) VNA Secretary of the Hanoi Party Committee Dinh Tien Dung said that with a population of about 10 million, Hanoi needs more than VND1 trillion to realize the goal of giving free Covid-19 vaccinations (the first dose) for its people. Hanoi Party Secretary Dinh Tien Dung inspects epidemic prevention and control activities in Thach That district. Photo: Viet Thanh Mr. Dung told the media that in this situation it is very difficult to completely prevent Covid-19 if the entire population is not vaccinated. The epidemic can return at any time and threaten the stability, security and safety of the whole society. The Prime Minister has focusex on a vaccine strategy and the government has established a vaccine fund. For Hanoi, the city defines the spirit of "the State and the people to work together" to realize the goal of creating community immunity. The city plans to buy vaccines for frontline forces and priority subjects first, then the people, using the state budget and the city's Covid-19 Prevention and Control Fund. The vaccination will be free for the entire population. According to Mr. Dung, with a population of about 10 million, Hanoi needs at least 5-6 million doses for the first round of vaccination to create community immunity, with the required fund amounting to more than VND1 trillion. The need is great, the demand is more and more urgent. But the city's Covid-19 prevention and control fund is still very small compared to the need," said Mr. Dung. He said that the city needs the support of "sponsors", especially businesses and entrepreneurs. He encouraged investors in urban area projects to support the city's vaccine program and buy vaccines for their residents. And domestic and foreign enterprises, especially those in industrial zones, can buy free vaccinations for their workers. Dung believes that Hanoi businesses and entrepreneurs are not only rich in wealth but also rich in affection and compassion and they will actively contribute to the common goal of repelling the epidemic. Huong Quynh In the absence of greater clarity, we fear some teachers might feel it is necessary to avoid discussions of current events or race or sex entirely. It seems like, in a rush to score some political points, the Legislature has not really given much thought to what implementing this would look like in practice in a classroom, DeBeer said. The legislative session ends Monday, and although the bill was dealt a procedural blow by Democrats Friday that made its passage unlikely, Republican senators revived the bill in the evening and it "now appears back on track to reach Gov. Greg Abbott's desk for approval," The Texas Tribune reported Friday evening. DeBeer said the first section of the bill, which outlines certain documents and topics for the state board of education to include in the state curriculum, is not the trouble. He said in an interview Friday that the rest of the bill is worded so vaguely that clashes between teachers and parents over what would be considered controversial issues under its rules seem inevitable. Any classroom discussion about racisms role in shaping the world might become too fraught to go on, and teachers might have to leave students questions about current events unanswered. Six months became six years. He was a very tough and determined man, she said. Greer became his caretaker. She took him at least twice a week (with usually three appointments a day) to the VA hospital in Temple. She took him to every appointment, pushing him in a wheelchair in and out of elevators at the VA hospital. I was very proud to be able to do that because everyone at the Temple VA Hospital were so very nice. As they sat with veterans, Greer heard her father exchange stories. He felt at home there because he was with his brothers, she said, adding It was a very humbling experience pushing my dad up and down the halls of the VA hospital sick or not. I didnt want him to be sick and neither did he, but it still was a very humbling and proud experience. Larry Wade McKey passed away March 20, 2021 at home. He is survived by his daughters Chantel and Shelly LaFranco, of San Antonio, as well as eight grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. He is buried with full military honors at the Central Texas State Veterans Cemetery in Killeen. Greer, who works for Johnson Roofing, misses her father terribly. She is planning on spending Memorial Day visiting his gravesite, where he finally has a headstone that she hasnt yet seen. And theres Jesse LeRoy Brown, who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross the first Black naval officer to complete the Navys basic flight training program and the first Black naval officer killed in the Korean War. He was killed trying to save Marines trapped at the Chosin Reservoir. His body was never recovered, and his family was left without a grave to honor and remember him. The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial is the final resting place for 7,861 servicemen who died liberating Italy from the Nazis. Many more heroes from all our wars rest in hallowed grounds around the world. We cant lose sight of what Memorial Day means for our nation and families who continue to grieve the loss of a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or Coast Guardsman. For these Americans, Memorial Day may not be a day of celebration. It may be a deeply personal and somber day. Remember them in your prayers and recognize that we are free because of their sacrifices. President Biden told me that my job as VA secretary is to fight like hell for veterans. He also said that there is no more sacred duty than to care for our nations vets who have given us so much. The more we make Memorial Day about remembering our fallen warriors, the better off we are as Americans. And the day after Memorial Day, there are many steps we as thankful Americans can take to honor the service and sacrifice of those who have so selflessly served us. Its important to realize that, in every war in our nations history from Bunker Hill to Baghdad the majority of those who took up arms were volunteers. Sure, there were conscripted soldiers and draftees in the Civil War, both world wars, Korea and Vietnam. But even in those conflicts, most of fighting, bleeding and dying was done by those who choose to put on a uniform. How amazing is that? That there have always been so many willing to fight and die to ensure the rest of us can live in freedom, peace and prosperity. The nobility of their sacrifice, regardless of the war or terms of service, deserves our prayerful thanks. It not only affirms who they were; it is a validation of who we are: a nation worth fighting for. In recent years, many worried that America was forgetting the true purpose of Memorial Day, succumbing to distractions like blowout car and furniture sales or prepping for the big cookout. Today, however, there are bigger things to worry about. Texas recently opted out of federal unemployment compensation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the $300 weekly supplement. The reason often given is that there are as many job openings as there are Texans receiving benefits, with the implication being that people will now be more eager to enter the workforce. This talking point seems thoroughly ensconced in our political rhetoric and is unlikely to be dislodged. Nonetheless, it simplifies and obfuscates a much more complex issue. There are certainly some people choosing not to work at least partially because of the added benefits, but the limited available evidence suggests that their numbers are relatively small. Many job openings are indeed going unfilled. Recall, however, that there were widespread shortages before the pandemic. In early 2020 (pre-COVID-19), there were far more job openings in Texas than unemployed workers, despite the fact that 1.1 million undocumented people went to jobs every day. This situation reflects demographic patterns which havent materially changed. Children younger than 12 are not eligible to receive any coronavirus vaccine, meaning typically no students are vaccinated in fifth grade and lower. Vaccination progress thus far has been slow among students 12 and older who are eligible. Although 7.4 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine overall have been administered in Georgia, it continues to be among the 10 lowest states for vaccination rates nationwide, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Daily coronavirus infections in Georgia averaged 397 for the seven-day period ending Friday, their lowest level since late March 2020. Deaths are still inching up in the state, which passed 18,000 confirmed virus deaths Thursday. Jason Esteves, chairman of the Atlanta school board and the state Democratic Party treasurer, told WSB-TV that Atlanta schools would keep their mask requirements no matter what Kemp said. We dont anticipate things changing," Esteves said Thursday. Were still going to use masking requirements as part of our dress code. GOVERNORS HAVE BEEF: Gov. Kim Reynolds and five other governors are asking the U.S. Department of Justice to continue its investigation into anti-competitive practices in the meatpacking industry. The DOJ originally had sent investigative demands to the nations four largest meatpackers in May 2020. The governors highlighted the threat to consumers as prices of meat at the grocery store continue to rise, all while beef producers are struggling to make ends meet. The consistently high prices realized on the boxed beef side are not being reflected on the producer side, forcing consumers to pay a premium for beef, while threatening many of our producers with the loss of their business, the governors wrote. Reynolds was joined in signing the letter by Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Greg Gianforte of Montana. Pete Ricketts of Nebraska, Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Kevin Stitt of Oklahoma. CLASSROOM MONEY: The Iowa Department of Education on Friday awarded more than $1.6 million in competitive grants to six school districts to establish therapeutic classrooms for learners whose social-emotional or behavioral needs affect their ability to be successful in their current learning environment. LONDON (AP) Anti-immigration demonstrators protesting the rising numbers of people attempting to reach the U.K. by crossing the English Channel in small boats blocked trucks traveling to a cargo terminal in Dover on Saturday. archives 30 May - 6 Jun (2) 23 May - 30 May (4) 2 May - 9 May (3) 25 Apr - 2 May (4) 4 Apr - 11 Apr (2) 28 Mar - 4 Apr (4) 28 Feb - 7 Mar (1) 7 Feb - 14 Feb (2) 10 Jan - 17 Jan (2) 27 Dec - 3 Jan (2) 13 Dec - 20 Dec (3) 6 Dec - 13 Dec (1) 29 Nov - 6 Dec (1) 15 Nov - 22 Nov (6) 8 Nov - 15 Nov (1) 25 Oct - 1 Nov (1) 18 Oct - 25 Oct (3) 4 Oct - 11 Oct (1) 27 Sep - 4 Oct (1) 20 Sep - 27 Sep (2) 13 Sep - 20 Sep (4) 6 Sep - 13 Sep (3) 30 Aug - 6 Sep (1) 23 Aug - 30 Aug (1) 16 Aug - 23 Aug (4) 9 Aug - 16 Aug (1) 2 Aug - 9 Aug (3) 26 Jul - 2 Aug (4) 19 Jul - 26 Jul (5) 12 Jul - 19 Jul (2) 5 Jul - 12 Jul (7) 28 Jun - 5 Jul (2) 21 Jun - 28 Jun (7) 14 Jun - 21 Jun (4) 7 Jun - 14 Jun (4) 31 May - 7 Jun (3) 24 May - 31 May (2) 17 May - 24 May (1) 10 May - 17 May (1) 19 Apr - 26 Apr (1) 12 Apr - 19 Apr (1) 15 Mar - 22 Mar (1) 8 Mar - 15 Mar (3) 1 Mar - 8 Mar (2) 23 Feb - 1 Mar (2) 9 Feb - 16 Feb (3) 26 Jan - 2 Feb (1) 19 Jan - 26 Jan (2) 12 Jan - 19 Jan (2) 5 Jan - 12 Jan (1) 29 Dec - 5 Jan (1) 8 Dec - 15 Dec (1) 24 Nov - 1 Dec (2) 17 Nov - 24 Nov (1) 27 Oct - 3 Nov (1) 6 Oct - 13 Oct (1) 1 Sep - 8 Sep (2) 25 Aug - 1 Sep (4) 18 Aug - 25 Aug (1) 11 Aug - 18 Aug (2) 4 Aug - 11 Aug (8) 28 Jul - 4 Aug (5) 14 Jul - 21 Jul (3) 7 Jul - 14 Jul (3) 30 Jun - 7 Jul (4) 23 Jun - 30 Jun (2) 16 Jun - 23 Jun (4) 9 Jun - 16 Jun (1) 2 Jun - 9 Jun (5) 26 May - 2 Jun (1) 19 May - 26 May (6) 12 May - 19 May (1) 21 Apr - 28 Apr (3) 14 Apr - 21 Apr (1) 31 Mar - 7 Apr (3) 24 Mar - 31 Mar (6) 17 Mar - 24 Mar (5) 10 Mar - 17 Mar (1) 3 Mar - 10 Mar (3) 24 Feb - 3 Mar (2) 17 Feb - 24 Feb (5) 10 Feb - 17 Feb (3) 3 Feb - 10 Feb (2) 20 Jan - 27 Jan (3) 13 Jan - 20 Jan (1) 23 Dec - 30 Dec (3) 2 Dec - 9 Dec (1) 25 Nov - 2 Dec (2) 18 Nov - 25 Nov (2) 11 Nov - 18 Nov (2) 4 Nov - 11 Nov (1) 21 Oct - 28 Oct (4) 14 Oct - 21 Oct (5) 7 Oct - 14 Oct (2) 30 Sep - 7 Oct (1) 23 Sep - 30 Sep (1) 9 Sep - 16 Sep (4) 2 Sep - 9 Sep (1) 19 Aug - 26 Aug (1) 12 Aug - 19 Aug (4) 5 Aug - 12 Aug (6) 29 Jul - 5 Aug (2) 22 Jul - 29 Jul (1) 15 Jul - 22 Jul (3) 8 Jul - 15 Jul (4) 1 Jul - 8 Jul (1) 24 Jun - 1 Jul (1) 17 Jun - 24 Jun (3) 10 Jun - 17 Jun (5) 3 Jun - 10 Jun (3) 27 May - 3 Jun (5) 20 May - 27 May (6) 13 May - 20 May (6) 6 May - 13 May (1) 29 Apr - 6 May (5) 22 Apr - 29 Apr (4) 15 Apr - 22 Apr (6) 8 Apr - 15 Apr (4) 1 Apr - 8 Apr (4) 25 Mar - 1 Apr (3) 18 Mar - 25 Mar (3) 11 Mar - 18 Mar (3) 4 Mar - 11 Mar (4) 25 Feb - 4 Mar (3) 18 Feb - 25 Feb (1) 11 Feb - 18 Feb (4) 4 Feb - 11 Feb (5) 28 Jan - 4 Feb (6) 21 Jan - 28 Jan (1) 14 Jan - 21 Jan (4) 7 Jan - 14 Jan (2) 31 Dec - 7 Jan (7) 24 Dec - 31 Dec (2) 17 Dec - 24 Dec (3) 10 Dec - 17 Dec (1) 3 Dec - 10 Dec (4) 26 Nov - 3 Dec (3) 19 Nov - 26 Nov (2) 12 Nov - 19 Nov (1) 5 Nov - 12 Nov (4) 22 Oct - 29 Oct (3) 15 Oct - 22 Oct (4) 8 Oct - 15 Oct (4) 1 Oct - 8 Oct (1) 10 Sep - 17 Sep (2) 3 Sep - 10 Sep (2) 27 Aug - 3 Sep (1) 20 Aug - 27 Aug (6) 6 Aug - 13 Aug (4) 30 Jul - 6 Aug (1) 23 Jul - 30 Jul (5) 16 Jul - 23 Jul (3) 9 Jul - 16 Jul (5) 25 Jun - 2 Jul (5) 18 Jun - 25 Jun (2) 11 Jun - 18 Jun (6) 4 Jun - 11 Jun (1) 28 May - 4 Jun (5) 21 May - 28 May (2) 14 May - 21 May (4) 7 May - 14 May (4) 30 Apr - 7 May (4) 23 Apr - 30 Apr (3) 16 Apr - 23 Apr (3) 9 Apr - 16 Apr (1) 2 Apr - 9 Apr (3) 26 Mar - 2 Apr (2) 19 Mar - 26 Mar (3) 12 Mar - 19 Mar (3) 5 Mar - 12 Mar (2) 26 Feb - 5 Mar (3) 19 Feb - 26 Feb (2) 12 Feb - 19 Feb (2) 5 Feb - 12 Feb (6) 29 Jan - 5 Feb (5) 22 Jan - 29 Jan (1) 15 Jan - 22 Jan (8) 8 Jan - 15 Jan (7) 1 Jan - 8 Jan (4) 25 Dec - 1 Jan (3) 11 Dec - 18 Dec (3) 13 Nov - 20 Nov (4) 6 Nov - 13 Nov (2) 30 Oct - 6 Nov (1) 23 Oct - 30 Oct (1) 16 Oct - 23 Oct (1) 9 Oct - 16 Oct (1) 2 Oct - 9 Oct (2) 25 Sep - 2 Oct (1) 18 Sep - 25 Sep (4) 11 Sep - 18 Sep (2) 4 Sep - 11 Sep (1) 28 Aug - 4 Sep (4) 21 Aug - 28 Aug (1) 14 Aug - 21 Aug (2) 7 Aug - 14 Aug (4) 31 Jul - 7 Aug (6) 24 Jul - 31 Jul (3) 17 Jul - 24 Jul (6) 10 Jul - 17 Jul (3) 3 Jul - 10 Jul (6) 26 Jun - 3 Jul (3) 19 Jun - 26 Jun (4) 5 Jun - 12 Jun (5) 29 May - 5 Jun (1) 22 May - 29 May (1) 15 May - 22 May (1) 8 May - 15 May (5) 1 May - 8 May (5) 24 Apr - 1 May (1) 17 Apr - 24 Apr (2) 10 Apr - 17 Apr (3) 3 Apr - 10 Apr (2) 20 Mar - 27 Mar (2) 13 Mar - 20 Mar (4) 6 Mar - 13 Mar (1) 28 Feb - 6 Mar (2) 21 Feb - 28 Feb (1) 14 Feb - 21 Feb (1) 7 Feb - 14 Feb (3) 24 Jan - 31 Jan (2) 17 Jan - 24 Jan (3) 10 Jan - 17 Jan (2) 3 Jan - 10 Jan (1) 27 Dec - 3 Jan (1) 20 Dec - 27 Dec (1) 13 Dec - 20 Dec (3) 6 Dec - 13 Dec (2) 29 Nov - 6 Dec (2) 22 Nov - 29 Nov (2) 15 Nov - 22 Nov (1) 8 Nov - 15 Nov (5) 1 Nov - 8 Nov (2) 25 Oct - 1 Nov (2) 18 Oct - 25 Oct (1) 11 Oct - 18 Oct (4) 4 Oct - 11 Oct (1) 27 Sep - 4 Oct (3) 20 Sep - 27 Sep (2) 13 Sep - 20 Sep (1) 6 Sep - 13 Sep (3) 30 Aug - 6 Sep (5) 23 Aug - 30 Aug (6) 16 Aug - 23 Aug (1) 9 Aug - 16 Aug (1) 2 Aug - 9 Aug (3) 26 Jul - 2 Aug (2) 19 Jul - 26 Jul (1) 12 Jul - 19 Jul (5) 5 Jul - 12 Jul (6) 28 Jun - 5 Jul (4) 21 Jun - 28 Jun (7) 14 Jun - 21 Jun (5) 7 Jun - 14 Jun (2) 31 May - 7 Jun (5) 24 May - 31 May (3) 17 May - 24 May (5) 10 May - 17 May (3) 3 May - 10 May (1) 26 Apr - 3 May (1) 19 Apr - 26 Apr (5) 12 Apr - 19 Apr (5) 5 Apr - 12 Apr (2) 29 Mar - 5 Apr (1) 22 Mar - 29 Mar (5) 15 Mar - 22 Mar (9) 8 Mar - 15 Mar (6) 1 Mar - 8 Mar (10) 22 Feb - 1 Mar (5) 15 Feb - 22 Feb (5) 1 Feb - 8 Feb (2) 25 Jan - 1 Feb (1) 18 Jan - 25 Jan (4) 11 Jan - 18 Jan (1) 4 Jan - 11 Jan (3) 28 Dec - 4 Jan (3) 21 Dec - 28 Dec (3) 14 Dec - 21 Dec (4) 7 Dec - 14 Dec (2) 30 Nov - 7 Dec (3) 23 Nov - 30 Nov (3) 9 Nov - 16 Nov (3) 2 Nov - 9 Nov (5) 26 Oct - 2 Nov (3) 19 Oct - 26 Oct (8) 12 Oct - 19 Oct (6) 5 Oct - 12 Oct (3) 28 Sep - 5 Oct (5) 21 Sep - 28 Sep (4) 14 Sep - 21 Sep (1) 7 Sep - 14 Sep (4) 31 Aug - 7 Sep (1) 24 Aug - 31 Aug (2) 17 Aug - 24 Aug (2) 10 Aug - 17 Aug (7) 3 Aug - 10 Aug (3) 27 Jul - 3 Aug (3) 20 Jul - 27 Jul (3) 13 Jul - 20 Jul (4) 6 Jul - 13 Jul (1) 29 Jun - 6 Jul (5) 22 Jun - 29 Jun (2) 15 Jun - 22 Jun (4) 8 Jun - 15 Jun (2) 1 Jun - 8 Jun (2) 25 May - 1 Jun (8) 18 May - 25 May (4) 11 May - 18 May (1) 4 May - 11 May (3) 27 Apr - 4 May (4) 20 Apr - 27 Apr (2) 13 Apr - 20 Apr (6) 6 Apr - 13 Apr (2) 23 Mar - 30 Mar (4) 16 Mar - 23 Mar (2) 9 Mar - 16 Mar (2) 2 Mar - 9 Mar (2) 23 Feb - 2 Mar (2) 16 Feb - 23 Feb (1) 9 Feb - 16 Feb (6) 2 Feb - 9 Feb (1) 26 Jan - 2 Feb (2) 19 Jan - 26 Jan (1) 12 Jan - 19 Jan (1) 29 Dec - 5 Jan (1) 22 Dec - 29 Dec (2) 8 Dec - 15 Dec (2) 1 Dec - 8 Dec (1) 24 Nov - 1 Dec (4) 17 Nov - 24 Nov (4) 10 Nov - 17 Nov (1) 3 Nov - 10 Nov (4) 20 Oct - 27 Oct (2) 13 Oct - 20 Oct (4) 29 Sep - 6 Oct (1) 22 Sep - 29 Sep (2) 15 Sep - 22 Sep (3) 8 Sep - 15 Sep (1) 1 Sep - 8 Sep (6) 25 Aug - 1 Sep (7) 18 Aug - 25 Aug (9) 11 Aug - 18 Aug (6) 4 Aug - 11 Aug (4) 28 Jul - 4 Aug (3) 21 Jul - 28 Jul (8) 14 Jul - 21 Jul (4) 7 Jul - 14 Jul (5) 30 Jun - 7 Jul (8) 23 Jun - 30 Jun (8) 16 Jun - 23 Jun (4) 9 Jun - 16 Jun (7) 2 Jun - 9 Jun (7) 26 May - 2 Jun (8) 19 May - 26 May (7) 12 May - 19 May (5) 5 May - 12 May (5) 28 Apr - 5 May (11) 21 Apr - 28 Apr (6) 14 Apr - 21 Apr (5) 7 Apr - 14 Apr (6) 31 Mar - 7 Apr (7) 24 Mar - 31 Mar (4) 17 Mar - 24 Mar (4) 3 Mar - 10 Mar (6) 24 Feb - 3 Mar (3) 17 Feb - 24 Feb (3) 10 Feb - 17 Feb (5) 3 Feb - 10 Feb (3) 27 Jan - 3 Feb (6) 20 Jan - 27 Jan (1) 13 Jan - 20 Jan (6) 6 Jan - 13 Jan (2) 30 Dec - 6 Jan (2) 23 Dec - 30 Dec (1) 16 Dec - 23 Dec (3) 9 Dec - 16 Dec (2) 2 Dec - 9 Dec (1) 25 Nov - 2 Dec (1) 18 Nov - 25 Nov (3) 11 Nov - 18 Nov (5) 4 Nov - 11 Nov (2) 28 Oct - 4 Nov (6) 21 Oct - 28 Oct (9) 14 Oct - 21 Oct (9) 30 Sep - 7 Oct (4) 23 Sep - 30 Sep (2) 16 Sep - 23 Sep (2) 9 Sep - 16 Sep (6) 2 Sep - 9 Sep (3) 26 Aug - 2 Sep (3) 19 Aug - 26 Aug (3) 12 Aug - 19 Aug (7) 5 Aug - 12 Aug (4) 29 Jul - 5 Aug (8) 22 Jul - 29 Jul (7) 15 Jul - 22 Jul (7) 8 Jul - 15 Jul (7) 1 Jul - 8 Jul (7) 24 Jun - 1 Jul (9) 17 Jun - 24 Jun (10) 10 Jun - 17 Jun (7) 3 Jun - 10 Jun (10) 27 May - 3 Jun (6) 20 May - 27 May (8) 13 May - 20 May (8) 6 May - 13 May (11) 29 Apr - 6 May (6) 22 Apr - 29 Apr (8) 15 Apr - 22 Apr (5) 8 Apr - 15 Apr (11) 1 Apr - 8 Apr (5) 25 Mar - 1 Apr (9) 18 Mar - 25 Mar (9) 11 Mar - 18 Mar (8) 4 Mar - 11 Mar (8) 19 Feb - 26 Feb (7) 12 Feb - 19 Feb (7) 5 Feb - 12 Feb (5) 29 Jan - 5 Feb (7) 22 Jan - 29 Jan (4) 15 Jan - 22 Jan (2) 8 Jan - 15 Jan (5) 1 Jan - 8 Jan (5) 25 Dec - 1 Jan (6) 18 Dec - 25 Dec (4) 11 Dec - 18 Dec (5) 4 Dec - 11 Dec (7) 27 Nov - 4 Dec (7) 20 Nov - 27 Nov (7) 13 Nov - 20 Nov (3) 6 Nov - 13 Nov (4) 30 Oct - 6 Nov (5) 23 Oct - 30 Oct (9) 16 Oct - 23 Oct (3) 9 Oct - 16 Oct (8) 2 Oct - 9 Oct (5) 25 Sep - 2 Oct (11) 18 Sep - 25 Sep (4) 11 Sep - 18 Sep (6) 4 Sep - 11 Sep (6) 28 Aug - 4 Sep (7) 21 Aug - 28 Aug (3) 14 Aug - 21 Aug (9) 7 Aug - 14 Aug (4) 31 Jul - 7 Aug (8) 24 Jul - 31 Jul (11) 17 Jul - 24 Jul (8) 10 Jul - 17 Jul (9) 3 Jul - 10 Jul (11) 26 Jun - 3 Jul (9) 19 Jun - 26 Jun (9) 12 Jun - 19 Jun (7) 5 Jun - 12 Jun (9) 29 May - 5 Jun (5) 22 May - 29 May (8) 15 May - 22 May (9) 8 May - 15 May (4) 1 May - 8 May (6) 24 Apr - 1 May (6) 17 Apr - 24 Apr (10) 10 Apr - 17 Apr (8) 3 Apr - 10 Apr (8) 27 Mar - 3 Apr (8) 20 Mar - 27 Mar (8) 13 Mar - 20 Mar (12) 6 Mar - 13 Mar (7) 27 Feb - 6 Mar (7) 20 Feb - 27 Feb (11) 13 Feb - 20 Feb (7) 6 Feb - 13 Feb (5) 30 Jan - 6 Feb (8) 23 Jan - 30 Jan (10) 16 Jan - 23 Jan (10) 9 Jan - 16 Jan (9) 2 Jan - 9 Jan (11) 26 Dec - 2 Jan (6) 19 Dec - 26 Dec (7) 12 Dec - 19 Dec (6) 5 Dec - 12 Dec (7) 28 Nov - 5 Dec (5) 21 Nov - 28 Nov (4) 14 Nov - 21 Nov (7) 7 Nov - 14 Nov (6) 31 Oct - 7 Nov (6) 24 Oct - 31 Oct (5) 17 Oct - 24 Oct (5) 10 Oct - 17 Oct (7) 3 Oct - 10 Oct (2) 26 Sep - 3 Oct (4) 19 Sep - 26 Sep (6) 12 Sep - 19 Sep (7) 5 Sep - 12 Sep (10) 29 Aug - 5 Sep (8) 22 Aug - 29 Aug (5) 15 Aug - 22 Aug (6) 8 Aug - 15 Aug (6) 1 Aug - 8 Aug (4) 25 Jul - 1 Aug (13) 18 Jul - 25 Jul (9) 11 Jul - 18 Jul (9) 4 Jul - 11 Jul (8) 27 Jun - 4 Jul (9) 20 Jun - 27 Jun (11) 13 Jun - 20 Jun (11) 6 Jun - 13 Jun (11) 30 May - 6 Jun (9) 23 May - 30 May (23) 16 May - 23 May (12) 9 May - 16 May (12) 2 May - 9 May (10) 25 Apr - 2 May (7) 18 Apr - 25 Apr (9) 11 Apr - 18 Apr (10) 4 Apr - 11 Apr (11) 28 Mar - 4 Apr (9) 21 Mar - 28 Mar (6) 14 Mar - 21 Mar (9) 7 Mar - 14 Mar (2) 28 Feb - 7 Mar (9) 21 Feb - 28 Feb (7) 14 Feb - 21 Feb (9) 7 Feb - 14 Feb (9) 31 Jan - 7 Feb (6) 24 Jan - 31 Jan (14) 17 Jan - 24 Jan (9) 10 Jan - 17 Jan (11) 3 Jan - 10 Jan (10) 27 Dec - 3 Jan (10) 20 Dec - 27 Dec (8) 13 Dec - 20 Dec (6) 6 Dec - 13 Dec (9) 29 Nov - 6 Dec (13) 22 Nov - 29 Nov (10) 15 Nov - 22 Nov (14) 8 Nov - 15 Nov (11) 1 Nov - 8 Nov (16) 25 Oct - 1 Nov (13) 18 Oct - 25 Oct (12) 11 Oct - 18 Oct (9) 4 Oct - 11 Oct (11) 27 Sep - 4 Oct (14) 20 Sep - 27 Sep (19) 13 Sep - 20 Sep (13) 6 Sep - 13 Sep (12) 30 Aug - 6 Sep (15) 23 Aug - 30 Aug (15) 16 Aug - 23 Aug (16) 9 Aug - 16 Aug (14) 2 Aug - 9 Aug (15) 26 Jul - 2 Aug (20) 19 Jul - 26 Jul (10) 12 Jul - 19 Jul (13) 5 Jul - 12 Jul (21) 28 Jun - 5 Jul (15) 21 Jun - 28 Jun (20) 14 Jun - 21 Jun (10) 7 Jun - 14 Jun (13) 31 May - 7 Jun (13) 24 May - 31 May (13) 17 May - 24 May (15) 10 May - 17 May (16) 3 May - 10 May (11) 26 Apr - 3 May (21) 19 Apr - 26 Apr (17) 12 Apr - 19 Apr (20) 5 Apr - 12 Apr (16) 29 Mar - 5 Apr (19) 22 Mar - 29 Mar (17) 15 Mar - 22 Mar (23) 8 Mar - 15 Mar (22) 1 Mar - 8 Mar (21) 22 Feb - 1 Mar (22) 15 Feb - 22 Feb (25) 8 Feb - 15 Feb (25) 1 Feb - 8 Feb (21) 25 Jan - 1 Feb (23) 18 Jan - 25 Jan (19) 11 Jan - 18 Jan (35) 4 Jan - 11 Jan (23) 28 Dec - 4 Jan (27) 21 Dec - 28 Dec (28) 14 Dec - 21 Dec (23) 7 Dec - 14 Dec (22) 30 Nov - 7 Dec (19) 23 Nov - 30 Nov (22) 16 Nov - 23 Nov (19) 9 Nov - 16 Nov (15) 2 Nov - 9 Nov (17) 26 Oct - 2 Nov (10) 19 Oct - 26 Oct (12) 12 Oct - 19 Oct (13) 5 Oct - 12 Oct (19) 28 Sep - 5 Oct (14) 21 Sep - 28 Sep (17) 14 Sep - 21 Sep (19) 7 Sep - 14 Sep (22) 31 Aug - 7 Sep (15) 24 Aug - 31 Aug (14) 17 Aug - 24 Aug (9) 10 Aug - 17 Aug (5) When I get up bright and early my sunflowers are all facing east and when I go to bed late, they are all facing west According to researchers only young sunflowers will follow the Sun. These flowers are following a natural circadian rhythm to receive the most light for photosynthesis. However when they mature the flowers will mainly face east. The reason for this is fairly simple, bees like warm flowers, and the flowers facing the east are the warmest. Source: Why Do Sunflowers Follow the Sun? The Wonder of Science It is really cool to follow. At noon they are straight up.I almost cried as I had to thin the sunflowers. They are my babies, you know! Something is wrong with the USA With 225 mass shootings by the end of May, the US is on track to have more mass shootings in 2021 than any recent year on record. Source: The US has had 225 mass shootings in 2021 so far. Heres the full list. Something is really gone sour in the US society and lets just bang bang you dead, it all away Update: Look at this just a day later after talking about the issue TASS, May 30. Three gunmen opened fire on a crowd of people in Miami, Florida, killing at least two and wounding about 20 others, ABC TV channel reported citing local police on Sunday.I am at the scene of another targeted and cowardly act of gun violence, where over 20 victims were shot and two have sadly died, Miami-Dade police director Alfredo Ramirez III wrote on his Twitter account. These are cold blooded murderers that shot indiscriminately into a crowd and we will seek justice. My deepest condolences to the family of the victims. Source: Two killed, over 20 wounded in Miami shooting TV report Emergencies TASS Really wrong and very sad Interesting thing happened: I was busy and goofing off at the computer. A mosquito was bugging me and he decided that my hand was a good meal. I had forgotten about him (actually a her) and she got me. I started to swipe at her and she lifted off and started to fly away. Before I could do any damage like smash her she dropped right in front of me dead. Full and fat with my blood and dead I looked at her and then at my hand and as I itched, I wondered what happened? Did my blood kill her? Does some of the medicines I take kill her? Maybe that is why I hardly have any issues anymore with mosquitoes? Hmm.and no I did not feel sorry for her! I have to answer some emails.when I find time I have to let the wood stove at moms dry one more day. So today I will mow Nikolais Home and wait patiently for word that our Sammy the Volga is done. They said that she will done today.yes, I know good luck on that Talk about a broke and weird country! Yippy Zippy a 6 trillion dollar budget The US government suggests increasing taxes on corporations (from 21% to 28%) and on the wealthiest citizens Source: Biden unveils record-high $6 trillion budget request for fiscal year 2022 World TASS And yet the taxes are hardly half of that amount Current Revenue of the U.S. governments total revenue is estimated to be $3.863 trillion for FY 2021. Income taxes will contribute $1.932 trillion. Another $1.373 trillion will come from payroll taxes. This includes $1.011 trillion for Social Security, $308 billion for Medicare, and $43 billion for unemployment insurance. Corporate taxes will add another $284 billion. The Tax Cut and Jobs Act cut taxes for corporations much more than it did for individuals. In 2015, corporations paid 11%, and income taxpayers paid 47%. Source: US Federal Tax Revenue by Year I was taught to live within your true money available.guess that does not count anymore? (Anymore? maybe for a very long time it has not counted?) Time to mow. I have already watered everything and we have a whole bunch of beautiful multi-colored purple irises blooming. They had almost been killed off from neglect and I salvaged them. They are simply beautiful Now that is a pleasant sight to start the day! WtR Lubbock, TX (79423) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. Hot. High 98F. Winds SE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds E at 10 to 20 mph. Reports Further High-Grade Drilling Sydney, May 29, 2021 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Alta Zinc Limited ( ASX:AZI ) ( FRA:8EE ) is pleased to announce the results of drill holes POD11 to POD13 and five channel samples (POCH12-16) which returned multiple intersections of zinc, lead and silver mineralisation from new drill locations in the Ponente area of the Gorno Mine.These results have extended the thick and high-grade mineralisation 125m to the east of the initial drill Pad A and defined a thick and high-grade zone in a N-S direction from Pad D (Figure 1*). The mineralisation appears to be a shallow dipping lens of variable thickness, with recent drill intersections suggesting an average true thickness of 10m in this area.Geraint Harris, MD of Alta Zinc commented:"Ponente drilling and channel sampling continues to push out the extent of the mineralisation and it is very encouraging to see these high-grades and good thicknesses being defined with consistency. These results will flow into our upcoming Mineral Resource estimate (MRE), and with two drill rigs now in Ponente we will endeavour to complete coverage of the Ponente West area prior to the MRE data cut-off. However, Ponente remains wide open to the north, east and south with many exciting drilling targets, giving us significant additional growth potential post MRE."About Alta Zinc Limited Alta Zinc Limited (ASX:AZI) (FRA:8EE) is an emerging ASX-listed exploration and development company focused on unlocking dormant value at the Gorno Project. Gorno is an historic high-grade zinc mine in industrialised Northern Italy, proximal to smelters and key infrastructure and with a track record of producing high quality clean concentrates to European Smelters. Drilling of known brownfields high-grade targets is underway and aims to strengthen the current Resource inventory. Subsequent project development will leverage off the existing underground infrastructure, simple metallurgy and advanced technical studies to de-risk a future feasibility study. The Company also has a portfolio of other mineral exploration projects in northern Italy and Australia. Instagram Celebrity The 'Guardians of the Galaxy' actor heaps praises on Katherine Schwarzenegger, describing her 'a fantastic woman' after she gave birth to their first child. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Chris Pratt has paid tribute to his "hero" wife Katherine Schwarzenegger following the birth of their daughter. The "Guardians of the Galaxy" star and the 31-year-old author welcomed Lyla Maria into the world last August (20), and Chris - who also has eight-year-old son Jack with his ex-wife Anna Faris - has now praised the way Katherine handled being pregnant and giving birth during the Covid-19 pandemic. He said during an appearance on "The Ellen DeGeneres Show", "(Katherine) got pregnant just before the pandemic struck. I'm telling you, that is not easy. For any new moms who had to go through that and do that, it's tough." You can't bring anyone to these doctor appointments (and when) you go in to give birth to your baby, they're like, 'Do you have your mask?' It's hard. It's made everything a lot harder, but especially, I think, childbirth and pregnancy cause obviously you're concerned about your own health, but now when you have, like, a little infant around. It just adds a whole new degree of stress." "But she handled it so well, she never missed a beat. She's my hero ... She's a fantastic woman. I'm a lucky man." Chris and Katherine welcomed their daughter nine months ago and announced the news with a sweet post on Instagram. Both parents shared the same caption, which read, "We are beyond thrilled to announce the birth of our daughter Lyla Maria Schwarzenegger Pratt. We couldn't be happier and we feel extremely blessed! Love, Katherine and Chris." The baby's middle name is a nod to Katherine's mother, Maria Shriver, who commented on the announcement at the time, "So happy for you Lyla Maria is so blessed to have you both as parents you are going to be an amazing mama you already are !!! (sic)" WENN/Avalon Celebrity Identified by Jane Doe, a woman, who claimed she started dating Marilyn in 2011, states in the lawsuit that the rocker made her watch a gruesome groupie video that he kept locked in a safe. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Marilyn Manson faces more legal troubles. An ex-girlfriend has reportedly filed a lawsuit against the rocker in Los Angeles County state Superior Court as she claimed that he raped her and forced her to watch a gruesome film depicting abuse of a groupie. Identified as Jane Doe, the woman revealed that she started dating Marilyn, whose real name is Brian Warner, in 2011. She also said that the musician made her watch a video that he kept locked in a safe. The said video featured abuse of a groupie which took place after a 1996 appearance by the band at the Hollywood Bowl. According to Jane Doe, a young fan was seen being forced to drink urine, threatened with a gun. She also claimed that the fan might have been pistol-whipped. A source, meanwhile, told TMZ that the video is actually a scripted short film intended for a project, though it was shelved. Nevertheless, the woman was afraid for her life after watching the clip. She decided to return a key to Manson's home. However, he then forcibly raped her in addition to threatening to kill her. The lawsuit arrives after it was said that the star was a wanted man in New Hampshire. An arrest warrant was issued for the rocker in the New England region for an alleged assault related to an incident that happened in 2019 at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion involving a videographer. "The Gilford Police Department has an active arrest warrant for Brian Hugh Warner (aka: Marilyn Manson) for two counts of Class A misdemeanor Simple Assault stemming from a 2019 incident at the Bank of New Hampshire Pavilion," a statement from The Gilford Police Department said on Tuesday, May 25 via Facebook. "The alleged assaults involved a videographer. Mr. Warner, his agent and legal counsel have been aware of the warrant for some time and no effort has been made by him to return to New Hampshire to answer the pending charges." WENN/Joseph Marzullo Celebrity The 'Sex and the City' actress has been slammed online after claiming that she could not 'imagine' the way to solve problem of 'people stealing basic necessities out of desperation' is to arrest them. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Cynthia Nixon is flooded with negative comments on her social media. After suggesting that shoplifters should not be "prosecuted," the "Sex and the City" actress has been slammed online by commenters and critics. Sharing her thoughts on her Twitter account on Saturday, May 22, the "Ratched" actress wrote, "The CVS on my corner has started locking up basic items like clothing detergent." She elaborated, "As so many families can't make ends meet right now, I can't imagine thinking that the way to solve the problem of people stealing basic necessities out of desperation is to prosecute them." Shortly after, the 55-year-old's tweet received lots of reactions from commenters and critics. Even former prosecutor Thomas Kenniff, who is running for Manhattan District Attorney, responded, "Why don't you leave the doors to your posh co-op unlocked and the closets and freezer stocked. Those in need can come help themselves?" Cynthia Nixon suggested that shoplifters should not be 'prosecuted' in a Twitter post. "I grew up poor and we never took anything that we hadn't paid for. It's insulting that you think the less fortunate have no ability to discern right from wrong," a Twitter user replied to the "A Quiet Passion" actress' suggestion. The reply pointed out, "Also, allowing widespread theft will result in higher prices, punishing the poor and honest." "You live in a neighborhood of $3 million-dollar apartments and townhouses. No one at your CVS is 'desperate' to steal 'basic necessities,' " another commenter wrote. "This isn't just moral grandstanding on your part, it's really incompetent moral grandstanding." In the meantime, a Twitter user noted, "Letting people just steal stuff doesn't solve the problem either. Which laws do we choose to follow? Do you really think society will be better off if we let people just walk into a store and steal whatever they want?" A different user sarcastically insisted that it showed "Cynthia lives in a different world" and was "virtue signaling." Cynthia's comment was a response to Errol Louis' tweet that read, "Worth noting that several candidates for Manhattan DA (and for NYC Mayor) say shoplifting should not be prosecuted because that's 'criminalizing poverty.' " Her post, however, came after Governor Andrew Cuomo warned of the escalating crime rate in New York City, which has increased by 30 percent this week compared to the same week last year and robberies were 70 percent higher. WENN/ Facebook/PNP Celebrity Dixie Lewis, 19, and her boyfriend Ross Schultz, 20, were pronounced dead at the scene after the car he was driving collided with a Freightliner semi-truck near Truckee, California. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Journalist and author Michael Lewis is in deep grief. The writer, whose books "Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game", "The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine" and "The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game" have been turned into movies, is mourning the death of his young daughter. His 19-year-old daughter Dixie Lewis, a Pomona College freshman, and her boyfriend Ross Schultz were killed in a car crash on Tuesday afternoon, May 25, so it's confirmed on Friday. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 20-year-old Ross was driving the car when it crossed the center line on Highway 89 and collided with a Freightliner semi-truck near Truckee, California. Dixie and Ross were pronounced dead at the scene, while the driver of the truck, a 45-year-old man from Nevada, suffered minor injuries. California Highway Patrol Officer Jacob Williams said it's not yet clear why the 2014 Ford Fusion carrying Dixie and Ross veered into oncoming traffic, but authorities believe that alcohol or drugs were not involved. The CHP is currently investigating the accident and looking for more witnesses to gather more information. Confirming the sad news, Michael said in a statement to Berkleyside, "We loved her so much and are in a kind of pain none of us has experienced..." He said of her daughter, "She loved Ross, with whom she died. She loved to live and our hearts are so broken they can't find the words to describe the feeling. Her mother, Tabitha, and I, and her brother Walker and sister Quinn are going to find ways for her memory to live in her absence." Michael's father Tabitha Soren, who is a former MTV political correspondent, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a statement, "Dixie was a fighter-and not just for herself but for everyone... She had a fire in her that people could feel when she walked in the room. She used her intensity to bring up everyone around her and she tried so hard at everything she did. When she showed up, she was going to show up 150%." Ross' aunt Locke Schultz Jaeger said the couple met Berkeley High School and was in Tahoe on vacation. "Ross loved his friends and he loved his family and, boy, did he love Dixie, who died with him," she said of her nephew. She added of the late couple, "They were funny, they were charming, and they were both very smart. They were kind and they had friendships and relationships that were the deepest and most incredible bond." Channel 10 Celebrity In a viral clip from the latest episode of the cooking competition, the 54-year-old British chef can be seen eliminating a young woman after giving her and her family a false hope. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Gordon Ramsay seemingly wants to have some fun on "MasterChef" by pulling a prank on a contestant, but it is far from being appreciated. In a viral clip from the latest episode of the cooking competition, the 54-year-old British chef could be seen eliminating a woman after giving her a false hope. Before sending her home, Gordon told the young chef to call her friends and family into the room. Thinking that she made it through the next round, the contestant's family and friends came in while looking excited and holding congratulations signs. However, crushing their hopes, Gordon delivered the bad news with a smile. "It's a no," he told the hopeful chef. A TikTok user called _m0_g shared the clip on the platform and called him "straight evil." In his post, he said, "He did the poor girl so dirty. He even made her go to the back and call all of her family. They came in cheering, all happy.. and just look at the smile on [Gordon's] face. That was the most evil thing I've ever seen." Echoing the sentiment, a viewer wrote in the comment section, "He woke up and he chose violence." Another user added, "Bro smiled when he said it too." Meanwhile, a third person said, "Gordon has no chill." The backlash arrives after Gordon's daughter Holly spent three months in a mental health hospital after suffering PTSD from sexual assaults that she experienced when she was 18. Addressing the matter on her "21 & Over with Holly Ramsay" podcast, the 21-year-old detailed how she was diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder. "I was going out a lot, missing class because I'd been out. I wasn't enjoying myself. I was struggling a lot. The PTSD was a result of two sexual assaults when I was 18...," she said. "I didn't tell anyone about it until a year afterwards. I just buried it in a box in the back of my mind. [In hospital] is was where I was diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression." Instagram Celebrity More than a week after going public with his diagnosis, the Pray Tell depicter on 'Pose' admits to Jimmy Fallon that he has 'never felt joy like this before.' May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Billy Porter is living his best life after unveiling HIV-positive status. More than a week after he made public his diagnosis, the Pray Tell depicter on "Pose" raved he finally feels "free." When appearing in the Thursday, May 27 episode of "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon", the 51-year-old opened about his life since making the revelation. "I've been positive since 2007. And, you know, having lived through the AIDS crisis, it was heavy for me. It was a heavy year, 2007," he began. "I lived with the shame of it for a really long time and last week I released that shame, I released that trauma and I am a free man, honey! Free!" "I've never felt joy like this before. And, you know, we talk about it in the Black church. You know, this joy that I have - the world didn't give and the world can't take it away," the actor further told Jimmy Fallon. "I got it. I got some joy now. It really feels good, it really feels great." When asked about why he did not tell his own mother of his diagnosis, Billy spilled, "You know, growing up in the Pentecostal church, there's such a stigma surrounding it." He further explained, "Having lived through it, I was supposed to know better, [but] it happened anyway." "There was just so much going on, and my mother received so much persecution because I was gay, and I just didn't want her to have to go through that again," the Emmy award-winning star continued. "It's sort of like a second coming out and I didn't want to go through that again and my sister and I have vowed we were just going to wait till she was dead. And she went into a nursing home six years ago, and she ain't going nowhere. She's full of life! So it's time to tell her." Billy came forward with his HIV diagnosis in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Revealing that he had been "living with that shame in silence" for the last 14 years, he wondered, " 'Why was I spared? Why am I living?' " He then acknowledged, "Well, I'm living so that I can tell the story. There's a whole generation that was here, and I stand on their shoulders. I can be who I am in this space, at this time, because of the legacy that they left for me." WENN/Avalon/James Watkins Celebrity When promoting latest project 'The Music of Kings and Queens', 'The Queen' actress claimss she will never be a royalist, but admits that the British monarch does have a calm consistency about her. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Dame Helen Mirren has heaped praise on The Queen, insisting she has always admired Her Majesty's open-mindedness. In a new interview to promote her latest project "The Music of Kings and Queens", which was unveiled to mark Elizabeth II's recent 95th birthday, the actress, who won an Oscar for her portrayal of The Queen, admits she'll never be a royalist - but she loves the royal family's matriarch. "Queen Elizabeth II has always had the extraordinary ability to accept the new and go with the times," she told Woman & Home magazine. "All I know is what I've observed, and to me, she has always seemed very open-minded. But that ability to accept the new is a very interesting quality." "The Queen is very consistent. She's never put on weight but she's never been too thin, she drinks but we've never seen her drink too much. She has banquets, but never eats too much. There is just an incredible, calm consistency about her." Devised by producer and director Simon Brooks-Ward, "The Music of Kings and Queens" will feature music composed by Debbie Wiseman. About teaming up with Debbie and actor Damian Lewis for the project, Mirren said, "I have enjoyed the opportunity to work with Debbie on the musical journey into royal history." "It was a privilege to record the words with Damian and to be part of celebrating Her Majesty The Queen's 95th birthday. Debbie has done a marvellous job composing and recording the music," she continued. "We may not remember most of our prime ministers, politicians, military or even ground-breaking scientists but we will have a good grasp of our kings and queens who have shaped our Nation. This is their story and their legacy." WENN/Instar/FayesVision Celebrity Having become the former 'The O.C.' star's target of negativity, 'The Hills: New Beginnings' star claims she feels like 'a sensitivity chip missing' from her former friend. May 29, 2021 AceShowbiz - Caroline D'Amore has addressed former good friend Mischa Barton's negative comments about her business. Having been subjected to such unkind remarks in the first season of "The Hills: New Beginnings", the newest cast member of the reality series admitted that it was "really hurtful." In the Thursday, May 27 episode of "Hollywood Life TVTalk" on Instagram Live, the founder of Pizza Girl opened up about how she really felt. She told the publication, "It was really hurtful." She continued, "It was really insane. That's my livelihood. It made me feel like - I don't know - There's a sensitivity chip missing. Very confusing." Back in March 2020, Mischa took to her social media to share a screenshot of an article that claimed she would not be returning for season 2 of the show and Caroline would be joining the cast to replace her. In the post that has since been taken down, she began to write, "Lol. Where do people get their reporting from?" "As if anyone would watch @carolinedamore try to hoc her boring ass pasta bowls and greasy pizza on tv," the former star of "The O.C" continued. "Tried that it was like watching paint dry. Get the story straight first. @usweekly." Instead of clapping back at Mischa's unkind comment, Caroline opted to express her gratitude by sharing that the bullying increased the orders for her pizza business. Along with a photo of her donning black lingerie and holding a pizza box with "Pizza Girl" on it, she penned, "Thank you for the sudden surge in @pizzagirlofficial sales this morning. #notstoopingtoyourlevel @mischabarton REAL women don't bully other women." Elsewhere in the interview with Hollywood Life, Caroline stated that she "would be cool" if Mischa returned to the show. The DJ opened up, "I hope she gives a little more this time and is a little bit more exciting. I was prepared for her to come back this season. I was ready for it. If she does. I'm a very forgiving person even to a fault, so if she apologizes in some way." "There was actually another girl involved who wasn't on the show last season who's on the show this season," Caroline spilled. The "American Idiots" actress added further, "She actually did call and apologize to me, so I think maybe if there's an apology we definitely can get along again. We had fun together and I loved her as a friend so it was kind of sad for me." Police in the United Kingdom uncovered a cryptocurrency mine powered by stolen electricity during a raid of what they suspected was a cannabis farm. The facility was stealing thousands of pounds worth of electricity from the mains supply, according to a statement from the West Midlands Police, published Thursday. "Officers forced entry to the premises in Great Bridge Industrial Estate, Sandwell, on 18 May on the back of intelligence suggesting it was being used as a cannabis farm," the statement read. "Lots of people were visiting the unit at different times of day, lots of wiring and ventilation ducts were visible, and a police drone picked up a considerable heat source from above," it added. Despite these being described by the police as "classic cannabis factory signs," officers instead found "a huge bank of around 100 computer units as part of what's understood to be a Bitcoin mining operation." Police seized IT equipment and said inquiries with electricity supplier Western Power revealed the electric supply "had been bypassed and thousands of pounds worth had been stolen to power the 'mine'." "It's certainly not what we were expecting," Sandwell Police Sergeant Jennifer Griffin said. "It had all the hallmarks of a cannabis cultivation set-up and I believe it's only the second such crypto mine we've encountered in the West Midlands," Griffin added. "My understanding is that mining for cryptocurrency is not itself illegal but clearly abstracting electricity from the mains supply to power it is," he said. No arrests have been made on site and no one was at the unit at the time of the warrant, but inquiries with the unit's owner will be conducted, the statement also read. Cryptocurrency mining requires significant computer power and electricity, and has a large carbon footprint. Mining hardware is constantly running, which also increases energy consumption. DURHAM, Calif. - Around 70 students from one local school district are in quarantine after they were possibly exposed to the coronavirus. The Durham Unified School District Superintendent told Action News Now that all students who were identified as being in close contact are in quarantine and there is a minimal risk at the campus. Superintendent John Bohannon, said over the weekend they were notified that a member of the school district had tested positive for the coronavirus. A few days later they were notified about a second positive case. The school district worked with Butte County Public Health Department to identify students who may have been in close contact. As of right now, only those two people have tested positive. Students who are in quarantine are doing their school work from home as a precaution. RELATED: Potential COVID-19 exposure has about 70 in Durham schools in quarantine Action News Now spoke with a family member of one of the students who was impacted. "My nephew is one of the boys that got put on quarantine, said Lynda Villicana, "It is kind of scary because with all the vaccinations that have been already given and then we have people put on quarantine, it makes me concerned. She said he has tested negative but is at home following the quarantine guidelines after possibly being exposed. Bohannon said the majority of the students in quarantine are from the Intermediate School, but there are a few students from the Elementary and High Schools. "We just want to make sure everyone is trying to follow the guidelines so we can get through this school year with everybody healthy, he added. As far as the plan for the next school year, Bohannon said they are still waiting for guidance from the state. "We are hopeful we can start next year as a normal school year I think that would be the best for our kids to get the most out of their school year," he said. I think we should wait and see where were at as a nation at the beginning of next school year but definitely with a plan to go into next school year with some normalcy for our kids they need that socialization," said Villacana. The first group of students who went into quarantine will return to campus on Tuesday, and the other group will return the following Monday. There are a total of about 1000 students in the Durham Unified School District. SHASTA COUNTY, CALIF. California gearing up for another wildfire season. The Blueprint For a Fire Safe California is a legislative package aimed to help fight against wildfires. Several California lawmakers plan to push the 10 bill package aimed to fight wildfire risks. The 10 bill package includes expanding firefighters' legal rights to both seasonal and part-time firefighters and requiring utility companies to hire former incarcerated firefighters and conservation crew members with experience just to name a few. A lot more boots on the ground, said Pearson of Nevada City The more boots on the ground, the better you're off. You can't beat numbers. Pearson supports the legislation because past fires forced him and his wife to evacuate. I'm all for it, said Pearson. We've lived in a zone that does get burned and we've been evacuated several times. The package also includes two bills that are would help property owners in wildfire-prone areas, especially those who can no longer get or afford insurance. Steven Hajik believes that the bills would also help farmers. The fires also impact agriculture a whole bunch, said Steven Hajik of Willits. We've had stories in Lake County where people had their cattle burned up alive. Hajik also believes the bills are necessary. It's very important for the state and the economy, said Hajik. When things burn down, people lose their jobs and homes. It's a big deal. California lawmakers how to get this on the Senate floor next week. Action News Now reached out to CAL FIRE and the agency says they're not able to comment on pending legislation. OROVILLE, Calif. - With people ready to get out of the house and eased COVID-19 restrictions, Forebay Aquatic Center is expecting lots of locals and travelers to come enjoy the water this weekend. "People are really eager to get outside, I know I am, said Laila Monroe, who lives in Chico. It's a lot safer to get outdoors." Monroe and Toby Licon are two teens looking forward to paddling out to the start of a more normal summer this weekend. "For the high schoolers like us, we just finished a pretty much whole year online. Then at the end kind of trying to be normal, said Licon. Everyone wants to get out and do something fun with their friends." Staff at the forebay are ready to welcome them. "A lot of people showed up last year who had never been here before, said Ted Wheeler, operations director at Forebay Aquatic Center. Hopefully those that did show up will come back here again." If you are planning on hitting the road this weekend, be prepared to pay more at the pump. The average price of a gallon of unleaded gas in California is $4.18, up $1.30 from this time last year. "We are expecting people to come from out of town and visit their family and friends, said Sherina Cason, waitress at Cow Cafe and Grill. "We have a lot of the girls ready and maybe more on call just in case." Hotels are also filling up quickly. "So far we have like four rooms available for tomorrow and three rooms available for Sunday, said Fabio Kruschewsky, front desk manager, at the Holiday Inn Express Lake Oroville. People have a lot to look forward to this weekend. "We are looking forward to finally touching each other, said Georgette Foster, who is planning on being reunited with friends this weekend. We're all senior citizens, so we've missed each other." More importantly, people are ready to remember the reason why we celebrate. "It's not all about barbecues and everything, it's about honoring those that gave the ultimate sacrifice so we can enjoy our freedoms, said Casey Lansdon, who lives in Oroville. Traveling or not this weekend, be prepared for record breaking heat. Butte County Public Health is reminding people to stay safe and drink plenty of water. California Highway Patrol will be out this weekend with maximum enforcement, reminding people that if they do not click it, they will get a ticket. MODOC COUNTY, Calif. - Modoc Sheriffs Office is asking for help locating a missing person. Deputies are looking for Jim Lamet who was last seen at Eagle Lake in Lassen County. Lamet is believed to be last seen in his brown Ford camper with a license plate RPA292 to Klamath Marsh National Refuge. If anyone sees Lamet, they are asked to contact deputies in the Klamath or Lassen Counties. NORTHERN CALIFORNIA - The Memorial Day holiday honors our nation's fallen servicemen and women as observances are planned Monday throughout Northern California. Flags will be raised early in the morning at the Chico Cemetery and Glen Oaks Memorial Park in Chico. Instead of the traditional gathering, a drive-through parade is planned between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. People are encouraged to decorate their vehicles as prizes will be given for the most patriotic. In Gridley, a ceremony will include a fighter jet flyover from Beale Air Force Base. It's set for Monday at 10 a.m. at the Gridley-Biggs cemetery. Paradise has a ceremony planned for noon, at the Veterans Memorial Hall on the Skyway. Shasta County's Veterans Memorial Day service is planned for Sunday, at 11 a.m. at the Veterans Memorial Grove on the Civic Auditorium grounds, followed by a luncheon. SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) Authorities say the gunman who killed nine co-workers at a California rail yard had 12 guns and 22,000 rounds of ammunition at his home that he set on fire. Officials said Friday that the shooter, Samuel James Cassidy, had coordinated a fire at his house to coincide with the violence Wednesday at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose. The Santa Clara County sheriff's office said in a news release that a search of Cassidy's home also turned up multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails. Though monarchy has been abolished from almost all countries, tales of royalty, crown intrigues, and the nobility continue to interest us all. Otherwise why would the royal fallout between Megan and Prince Harry and the British monarchy intrigue us so much? Right from the worlds first emperor, King Sargon of Akkad established the worlds first empire more than 4,000 years ago in Mesopotamia up to the Queen of England, Queen Elizabeth II, monarchy in some form or the other has existed in the world. So, if you are a fan of Royalty, and are enthralled by tales of Kings, Queens, and their royal subjects, OTT platforms have several offerings to fill up your binge watch. We bring you some of the best fare on OTT... The Crown Netflix This drama series follows the political rivalries and romance of Queen Elizabeth IIs reign and the events that shaped the second half of the 20th century. In light of the current controversies and fallout, The Crown has seen a lot of interest. Bridgerton Netflix The eight close-knit siblings of the Bridgerton family look for love and happiness in London high society. This extremely popular series is inspired by Julia Quinns bestselling novels. Game of Thrones Disney+ Hotstar The most watched series in the world, Game of Thrones captivated the world over its 8 seasons with the tale of nine noble families waging war against each other in order to gain control over the mythical land of Westeros. Based on the bestselling book series by George R.R. Martin, Game of Thrones is a must re-visit series over and over again. The Royals Amazon Prime Video The royal family is thrown into turmoil when the heir to the throne dies suddenly. His younger siblings have a hard time with their new roles, while the queen tries to secure her grasp on the throne. Victoria SonyLiv The series follows the early life of Queen Victoria from her ascension to the throne at the tender age of 18 to her courtship and marriage to Prince Albert. Reign Amazon Prime Video Mary, the Queen of Scots, arrives in France at the age of 15 and marries Prince Francis. She starts a friendship with her handmaidens and they become best friends. The White Princess Amazon Prime Video The series is told from the perspective of three noblewomen waging an ongoing battle for the English throne at the conclusion of the War of the Roses. Promised in marriage to the newly crowned King Henry VII in hopes that it will unite the Kingdom, Princess Elizabeth instead resents and plots against him. She matches wits and wills with Lady Margaret Beaufort, King Henry VIIs mother, each manoeuvering to gain his trust. The Spanish Princess SonyLiv The series is told uniquely from the perspective of the women, but it also sheds light on the lives of people of colour who were living and working in 16th-century London. Teenage Catherine of Aragon, the strong-willed Princess of Spain, is promised in marriage to the English Prince Arthur. When he dies suddenly, the throne seems lost until she sets her sights on the new heir, the charismatic and headstrong Prince Harry. Dickinson Apple TV+ Budding writer Emily Dickinson uses her outsiders perspective to explore the constraints of society, gender and family in the 19th century, with a touch of humour and a whole lot of imagination. Pride and Prejudice Netflix Based on Jane Austens 1813 novel, Pride and Prejudice tells the story of Elizabeth Bennett, a strong-willed yet sensible young woman. At a local ball, she encounters a wealthy young man, Fitzwilliam Darcy, who is arrogant, and they develop an unusual relationship. The iconic modeling clay brand Play-Doh celebrates its 65th anniversary this year and joins forces with the Museum of Modern Art in Paris to celebrate the reopening of cultural venues. Play-Doh and the MAM unveil a colorful partnership to encourage children and their parents to share family moments around art and creativity. The advertising agency Brand Station imagined this campaign for this particular anniversary. A digital film, directed by Samy Benama, Damien Guiol and Nicolas Massart and produced by Laetitia Neves and Vincent Massart, will be broadcasted from May 31st onwards on digital channels. A one-of-a-kind campaign with the Museum of Modern Art in Paris. For the first time in the history of modeling clay, a work entirely made by four hands, between a father and his daughter, will be exhibited at the Musuem of Modern Art in Paris, among other renowned artists creations, from June 4th to 6th. Through this symbolic campaign, Play-Doh wishes to show that the most beautiful works of art are those that we create together. Starting in September 2021, Play-Doh will support the MAM's educational workshop program for the youth. Throughout the year, these activities will be built around both the permanent collections and the temporary exhibitions. The workshops, adapted to all audiences, are designed for different age groups, in order to share curiosity for art in a playful way. The program can be found on the MAMs website. By positioning itself as a patron of the Museum of Modern Art, Play Doh gives a new resonance to its institutional message, which is to stimulate the creativity of young people, while supporting the museum in one of its fundamental missions: transmission. Watcho, Dish TV Indias OTT platform is all set to premiere a new thriller mystery show Mystery Dad. This is in continuation of a string of engrossing content releases on Watcho, which have received positive feedback amongst its user base. The new Watcho original will stream from May 28th and is centered around the fallout of accidental pregnancy and the associated perplexity that the young protagonist finds herself in. Directed by Vikram Munjal, Mystery Dad revolves around a young girl Ria, who is bold, confident, and discovers that she is pregnant. Apart from dealing with this new twist in her life, the quandary is that the protagonist is not sure who the potential father is amongst the four personalities whom she encountered at a recent party. The series further explores her wild and crazy hunt for her babys father along with her sister. The writer Nihal Gupt has encapsulated engaging elements in each episode with intense emotion and drama, which will leave the audience on the edge of their seats before ultimately revealing the truth. The drama-filled series features a multi-talented star cast like Saadhika Syal, Priyanka Karunakaran, and Aman Maheshwari. Commenting on the launch of exhilarating new series on Watcho, Mr. Sukhpreet Singh, Corporate Head - Marketing, DishTV and Watcho, Dish TV India Ltd, said, Consumers growing interest in OTT platforms motivates us to experiment with engaging storytelling and clutter-breaking narratives. We are excited to announce the launch of this youth-oriented new series on Watcho. The show has a unique concept, and we are certain that the audiences are in for an emotional and engrossing experience. As the platform continues to thrive, we want to continue to cater to our audience by building a robust slate of differentiated stories that address the different aspects of our viewers life. Bringing in a unique assortment of snackable content cutting across all genres, Watcho offers many original shows including web series like Sarhad, JaalSaazi, Titli-Current Maarti Hai, Its my pleasure, 4 Thieves, Love Crisis, Ardhsatya, Mortuary, Chhoriyan, Rakhta Chandana and original influencer shows like Look I Can Cook, Bikhare hain Alfaaz, etc. to name a few. Available across screens (Android & iOS devices, Dish SMRT devices, D2H Magic devices, and Fire TV Stick) and at www.watcho.com, Watcho presently provides over 35 plus original shows in Hindi, Kannada, and Telugu regional languages. By Anne Dachel Minnesota physician Dr. Scott Jensen is a Republican candidate for governor who wants to halt giving the COVID vaccine to teens. As expected, Dr. Jensen has come under fire for daring to challenge the official narrative that we all need to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. May 28, 2021, WEAU TV, Eau Claire, WI: Minnesota candidate backs move to block COVID shots for kids Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen is backing a court action to stop COVID-19 vaccinations for 12- to 16-year-olds that, among other things, compares the inoculations to Nazi experimentation on imprisoned Jews. Jensen is a family physician and former state senator from Chaska. And hes the first named plaintiff in a petition filed in federal court in Alabama by Americas Frontline Doctors, which calls the vaccines dangerous biological agents. May 27, 2021, St Paul Pioneer Press: GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen, a physician, goes to court to stop youth COVID vaccinations. He says he hasnt read the entire petition. Scott Jensen, a prominent Minnesota Republican candidate for governor with a track record of COVID-19 theories not shared by the medical community, has signed onto an effort to stop vaccinations for 12- to 16-year-olds. It should be noted that Dr. Jensen was named Minnesota Family Physician of the Year in 2016. Sunflower prices had been at near record highs earlier in May, but like most other commodities, prices have fallen back a bit, though still considered very good. A broad commodity sell-off this week left stock markets, energy, and commodity prices significantly lower, commented John Sandbakken, executive director of the National Sunflower Association, writing in NSAs weekly newsletter on May 24. Chicago Board of Trade soybean and products spilled into the red after ample technical selling, he continued. Soybean prices continue to face pressure from a slowdown in export sales, a large U.S. crop that is currently being planted, and a likely record-breaking Brazilian harvest. Looking at South American oil crop production, Sandbakken noted that despite more than a few weather challenges, Brazil set a new record for soybean production of 4.9 billion bushels, a growth of 8.5 percent from last year. Sunflower prices weathered the sell-off quite well with minimal losses. Nearby old and new crop NuSun and high-oleic prices were down 35 cents to unchanged this week (ending May 21). Old and new crop prices continue to trade at nine-year highs, he said. Looking at prices at the regions crush plants, as of May 24, the price at the ADM crush plant in Enderlin, N.D., was $26.85 per hundredweight for delivery in June. At the Cargill crush plant in West Fargo, N.D., NuSun sunflower was listed at $26.80 per hundredweight for delivery in June. High-oleic sunflower prices were $27.35 at Enderlin for delivery in June and $27.30 at West Fargo, also for delivery in June DeWITT, Iowa Jason Kerr was serving breakfast as a hotel manager in Davenport, Iowa, when the world seemed to stand still. All the news programs in the hotel lobby quickly shifted tone as reports of a plane flying into the World Trade Center came in. Kerr, 29 years old at the time, knew he didnt have a choice in what to do next. I always had service on the back of my mind, but after Sept. 11, all that went away and it was just how fast can I get over there, Kerr said. Its probably akin to what Im sure many men and women felt after Pearl Harbor. Kerr had considered going on an officer path when he was in college. His family has a military history, with his grandfather, great uncle, father and uncle all spending time in the armed forces. He remembers when he first told people he was joining the Army. On Sept. 14, my best friend and I were at his house in LeClaire and had a fire pit going, Kerr said. Neither one of us had more than two words to say. He just said, Im joining the Army. I said, Yeah, me too. I had to say it out loud. Enlisting in the Army Reserves, Kerr was older than many of the new recruits. He felt the need to prove himself. He ended up being top of his class. Kerr served as a .50 caliber machine gunner on a Humvee in Iraq, the same gun system used by his grandfather and great uncle during their service. Now, after hearing the stories of his fathers service, Kerrs 10-year-old son A.J. has dreams of joining the Air Force. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani locked horns with his powerful hard-line rivals by throwing his full weight behind young Minister of Information and Communications Technology Mohammad Javad Azari Jahromi, who has been pushing fundamental internet development projects. Jahromi was summoned last week by a Tehran court for an investigation into a host of accusations, including his failure to implement judicial orders on banning the social media platform, Instagram. Jahromi was released only after committing himself to attending the next stages of the proceedings. Addressing a Cabinet meeting in Tehran on Jan. 27, Rouhani fiercely criticized the judiciary over the case. Nobody should be put to trial over expanding the internet bandwidth, Rouhani said. He even challenged the judiciary by declaring that if there was anyone to be investigated, it would be the president, who issued the directive on the bandwidth improvement. Rouhani did not detail the technical aspects of the project, but he praised his young minister for the great job that he said will help in such areas as customs controls, thus boosting the fight against corruption. In 2018, Jahromi blew the whistle on powerful financial empires who had allegedly pocketed millions of dollars by misusing government subsidies granted to cell phone imports. Ever since, the minister has been attempting to project the image of an avant-garde, anti-corruption hero. His relentless support to help open up space on Irans typically restricted social media has also kept him under the spotlight. The list of filtered platforms in Iran currently includes Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The latest addition is the messaging app Signal, which became unavailable to users inside Iran on Monday. While admitting that he holds nearly no authority to lift those bans, Jahromi has managed to keep Instagram up and running. But in that struggle, the minister has been relentlessly chased by the prosecutor-general. And to Jahromis dismay, the conservative parliament is also in the middle of an intense attempt to pass legislation on banning Instagram, which hosts nearly half of the countrys population. The partisan nature of the tug of war over Irans internet management was highlighted by government spokesman Ali Rabiee, who described the ministers brief interrogation as not simply a judicial or administrative process. Rabiee suggested that the decision was rooted in the judiciarys political rifts with the administration regarding governance, religion and culture. He also warned that a ban on Instagram would result in an exodus of more than 1 million people who are earning a living through small businesses on the platform. * Username This is the name that will be displayed next to your photo for comments, blog posts, and more. Choose wisely! Putin, Lukashenko discuss Ryanair incident in Sochi Xinhua) 09:15, May 29, 2021 Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko Lukashenko told Putin he would show him documents related to the recent emergency landing of the Ryanair flight. MOSCOW, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday met with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi where the leaders discussed the aftermath of the Ryanair incident, the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin agreed with Lukashenko's opinion that the reaction to the Ryanair landing demonstrated an "emotional outburst," and added there were many other common fields of interest both leaders could discuss, according to the statement. Putin recalled an incident that took place in 2013, when the airplane of the Bolivian president was forced to land at a different location, pointing out the reaction back then was rather quiet. Lukashenko in turn told the Russian leader he would show him documents related to the recent emergency landing of the Ryanair flight. "There has been an attempt to stir up the situation so it would end up being similar to that of August last year... It is simply clear what these Western friends want from us," he said, speaking of mass election protests in Belarus in 2020. The Irish airline Ryanair said that flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was directed to an airport in Minsk on Sunday as crew on the plane had been alerted to a possible security threat by Belarusian authorities, adding that nothing untoward was found. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) Gov. John Bel Edwards has signed into law a measure that allows some people convicted of felonies in Louisiana to be able to serve on juries for civil and criminal cases. It was bound to happen. In other words, the left would tell us that Caitlyn (Bruce) is a Republican and cannot be a transgender or something like that. This is from news reports: Though Caitlyn Jenner would be the first transgender governor if elected to lead California, she's [sic] been largely rejected by the transgender community, who see her [sic] Republican-leaning views as coming from a place of privilege. "She's [sic] completely detached," said Bamby Salcedo, president of the TransLatin@ Coalition, an advocacy group. "All this truly is about her [sic]. It's not about the issues, not about the people." Christine Hallquist, the first transgender woman [sic] to be a Democratic nominee for governor when she [sic] ran in 2018, told the San Francisco Chronicle Jenner doesn't grasp the challenges faced by trans people. I guess Caitlyn wants to control the border, and that puts him out of touch with the challenges facing trans people. What we see here is that I've experienced being a conservative Hispanic. In many instances, liberals have accused me of being out of touch because I support legal immigration. I recall one time debating a liberal, and he said that I should support "our people" and defend open borders. I asked what "people" he was talking about, since all of my real "people" came here legally. We didn't get too far after that. Frankly, I find Caitlyn Jenner repulsive. He is a man dressed up as a woman. I don't care that I agree with his political views; the whole issue of transgenderism is repulsive and unnatural. Nevertheless, we are seeing once again that transgenders are liberals first and transgenders second. PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk). Image: Web Summit. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. It seems to me that a controversy in Iowa City, Iowa illustrates Instapundit Glenn Reynolds's dictum that the demand for racism vastly exceeds the supply in present-day America. At issue is not another hate crime hoax, but rather a protest against the presence of an armed security guard at only one of three gas station/convenience store outlets in the area run by the regional chain Casey's. The store that had an armed guard happened to be in a census tract with 25% Black population, and that led to charges that it was discriminatory. Hillary Ojeda reports for the Iowa City Press-Citizen (hat tip: David Paulin): A Casey's convenience store on the south side of Iowa City has "paused" its practice of having an armed security guard on-site after some neighbors and community activists questioned the message that sent. File photo of a Casey's (source). For a copyrighted photo of the store in question in Iowa City, click here. Out of 2,200 Casey's outlets in 16 states, "only a couple dozen" have armed security guards. This, apparently is seen as an affront by some: Over the past month, Iowa City South District residents have been questioning why Casey's felt the need to have a security guard in a neighborhood with a higher Black population compared to other locations where there are reportedly no guards. It was an issue raised at meetings of the Iowa Freedom Riders, an opinion piece published in The Cedar Rapids Gazette, and numerous social media posts from activists and residents. Catherine Hitchcock, a resident of the South District, told the Press-Citizen she feels the decision to have the armed guard at the Casey's near her home was discriminatory. How is this "discriminatory"? Is she planning to rob it? If not, how is she hindered from doing anything? But the rhetoric is flying hot and heavy: .@caseysgenstore thinks the South District is an occupied police state. Black neighborhoods do NOT need armed guards at gas stations. Fill out their contact form and show them how racist this is: https://t.co/KmQCnOBFKW https://t.co/ieefwTQpOb Iowa Freedom Riders (@IAFreedomRiders) May 3, 2021 Apparently, some people believe that the chain is going to the considerable extra expense of hiring an armed security guard for no reason at all, other than to cast aspersions on the neighborhood, particularly its Black residents: Christopher Patton, a resident in the South District neighborhood, said he regularly gets gas at his local Casey's and has never felt unsafe there. "I feel like Iowa City is a very safe community," he said. "Maybe some people feel safer seeing armed guards in places, but I honestly don't." Temple Hiatt, who lives in the neighborhood and is Johnson County's leader of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America, said she believes an armed security guard does more harm than good. The fact that other Casey's don't have security guards does not create a welcoming environment for customers, she added. "We feel like we're being targeted," Hiatt said. "And unfortunately, when guns are present like that, it's not a deterrent, it's an escalation." The company says its policy is based on the experience at individual stores: A Casey's spokesperson said when a store has "elevated levels of disruptive activity that impacts guests and team members, our safety guidelines call for on-site security support." But some locals think they know better than the company how much trouble there is at the location: The Iowa City Police Department provided calls for service from each of the three Casey's locations in the city to the Press-Citizen. At the Broadway location, the number of calls decreased from 139 to 120 between 2017 and 2018, according to the data. But of course, with an armed guard present, it stands to reason that the number of calls to police would decrease. Troublemakers tend to be discouraged by armed guards, after all. David Paulin pointed out to me in an email: If Casey's had a security problem at a particular store yet failed to do anything about it such as having increased security then I would think that they could be held liable if innocent customers were attacked by thugs that Casey's all but allowed to hang out at their outlet. In fact, David wrote about a case in Texas seven years ago where a McDonald's was hit with a $27-million judgment when a couple of teenagers were killed by people who hung out at one of its stores. My wild guess is that some people feel shame when they see an armed guard in their neighborhood. They may not want to admit that the elevated need for such is related to the character of their area of residence. They don't like such feelings, so they project onto others a sinister motive to avoid reflecting on the behavior that causes the need. But I am a dreaded white male, so that probably makes this view "racist." To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. In what has to be the most appalling court ruling coming out of western Europe in years, a leftist judge in the Netherlands held Royal Dutch Shell at least in part responsible for global warming and therefore obliged to cut emissions to Paris climate accord-dictated levels, which should put a damper on its productive capacities. Here was the Wall Street Journal report that ran a few days ago: A Dutch court on Wednesday ruled that Royal Dutch Shell RDS.A -0.52% PLC is partially responsible for climate change and ordered the company to reduce its carbon emissions, a first-of-its-kind ruling that adds fresh pressure on oil-and-gas companies already facing heightened scrutiny from governments and investors. The ruling, issued by the district court in The Hague and stemming from a lawsuit brought by environmental groups, found Shell must curb its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, compared with 2019 levels. This is in line with United Nations guidance for member states aimed at preventing global temperatures rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Lawyers and consultants said the ruling could set a precedent in other Western jurisdictions, particularly in Europe, opening oil companies to new legal jeopardy over their carbon emissions. Companies in other heavy polluting industries could also face greater environmental scrutiny, they added. Which is garbage. There is no man-caused global warming to start with and notice that these leftist NGO clowns who brought this suit had no such lawsuits in their quiver for Red China, the world's biggest polluter. They knew where the easy pickings and the useful judges were, so they targeted Shell, which has already bent over backward to comply with their global warming carbon emissions demands. Now it's worse: Turns out all the little lefties with big ambitions are targeting oil companies in the U.S. (as well as Europe) on the same greedy-idiot logic: According to Reuters: A Dutch courts decision to force Royal Dutch Shell (RDSa.L) to make deeper, faster cuts to its climate warming emissions on the basis of human rights could set a precedent, especially in European countries, according to lawyers and activists. The court on Wednesday ordered the Anglo-Dutch company to slash its global greenhouse gas emissions, which stood at around 1.6 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent in 2019, by 45% by 2030. read more Shell said it would appeal the decision forcing it to cut by an amount roughly equivalent to four times Britain's annual emissions. [chart showing how Shell has already reduced emissions over the last few years] "We expect a ripple effect into other jurisdictions. Now that we have this first established liability, it definitely creates a momentum we can build on," said Roger Cox, lawyer for activist group Friends of the Earth, which brought the case along with Greenpeace, other activists and Dutch citizens. The carbon emissions levels cuts arbitrarily set by unelected European bureaucrats are below those of the U.S.'s worst-hit states which have already embraced such follies, which would take a heck of a bite out of Shell's production and force the rise of energy prices, a leftist gift to the poor, who will have to pay for those higher prices. So much for the leftist claim that oil companies have a "duty of care." Nobody cares about those poor people, or those jobs lost or those jobs never created as this hideous court order goes into effect. Economic stagnation is no concern of theirs, in fact, the more stagnation, the better, they got theirs. None of these creeps are going to care in the slightest when greenie mandates create brownouts and the electricity goes out in the hospitals, cutting off people on life support, or the prisons get no heat when the power goes out during a cold wave. The irony here is that these leftist NGOs who cooked up this lawsuit strategy, probably did it under gas-powered electrical lighting and then drove to the courthouse in gasoline-powered vehicles. They would have consumed fossil even if their cars were electric, given that natural gas and coal are used to fire up those battery recharging stations. They undoubtedly used computers -- manufactured and powered by fossil fuels. They sat there consuming Big Oil's products and creating untold carbon emissions all to get some ignorant leftist judge in a Eurotrash courtroom to blame Big Oil for global warming. And now the others are getting ideas. The Journal notes one here: More recently, governments and shareholders have also ratcheted up the pressure on the industry. Elsewhere on Wednesday, an activist investor won at least two seats on the board of Exxon Mobil Corp. in a historic defeat for the oil giant that will likely force it to alter its climate strategy. Reuters has more, citing a left-wing lawyer: "I think it's quite likely that we'll see other lawsuits filed in other jurisdictions, seeking to accomplish the same thing," he said, noting a similar case is pending against Total in France. ...and... There are about 425 pending climate lawsuits in various countries and about 1,375 lawsuits in U.S. courts, according to the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School. read more The U.S. cases target the industry, while most cases in other jurisdictions take aim at governments. So rest assured, they're geting ready, and with Joe Biden in the saddle at the WhiteHouse, looking forward to all of his left-wing judicial appointees. The Journal concluded with this, citing an industry expert: This judgment will not only send shivers down the collective spines of the oil industry, but of all the other industries that significantly contribute to the greenhouse gases, said Martyn Day, a lawyer at Leigh Day, a London-based law firm that has been involved in other pollution cases against Shell. Which tells us two things: Big Oil is in for hell in the coming years as court clowns copycat this bad ruling from an ignorant Dutch judge. Production costs will rise, and production will go down. California Model, anyone? This could be California cubed. Two, Big Oil needs to get much more assertive than it's been getting. Its efforts to drive emissions lower have only been met with bigger lawsuits and more onerous and impossible-to-attain demands. It needs to start openly questioning global warming and all its mendacious claims, if not pointing the finger to China and insisting that activists go there instead. It's put so much effort into greenie-kowtowing in the hopes that the green crocodile will eat it last that it now finds itself tops on the menu. Greenie leftists want nothing more than to see all of humanity back to mud huts and outhouses, completely bereft of progress, on the religious myth that global warming is real. They'll do this if they can get away with it and don't think they aren't trying as they target Big Oil. Big Oil barely stands up for itself in this day and age, fearing the loss of the "youth vote" or something, and letting itself getting taken down by morons in the process. It's time for Big Oil to stand up for itself and its product, not let greenie Lilliputians encircle it with string. The sooner it wakes up and does so, the better. Image: Logo, via Wikipedia To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. The CDC finally said that vaccinated people can ditch the masks. Where I live (in a free red state), a lot of people promptly did. Now, at stores, nobody asks whether those without masks are vaccinated. We trust them to make their own decisions. However, a lot of people are still wearing those skimpy, often dirty rags on their faces. It turns out that they should ditch them, too, because a new, comprehensive study found that masks made no difference to the Wuhan virus's spread. Because I'd come from California, with its many wildfires, I had N95 masks on hand when the virus started. We wore them, and they may well have stopped a few virus particles from passing through. Of course, the fact that my limited supply meant that we also re-wore them and, about once a week, washed them with liquid detergent suggests that their protection was dubious at best. Compared to our fellow Americans, we were well protected. Whenever we ventured out, we saw people wearing the equivalent of t-shirts or napkins on their faces. They had them under their noses, they touched them constantly, they shuffled them repeatedly in and out of pockets and bags, and they generally rendered them completely ineffective at stopping viruses. My feeling all year was that the masks were pure theater. I was right. A study from the University of Louisville, one that initially believed that masks did help, looked at CDC data found and discovered that masks were useless when it came to stopping COVID's spread: Randomized control trials have not clearly demonstrated mask efficacy against respiratory viruses, and observational studies conflict on whether mask use predicts lower infection rates. We hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use are associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States. Methods We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post-mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates. Results Case growth was not significantly different between mandate and non-mandate states at low or high transmission rates, and surges were equivocal. Mask use predicted lower case growth at low, but not high transmission rates. Growth rates were comparable between states in the first and last mask use quintiles adjusted for normalized total cases early in the pandemic and unadjusted after peak Fall-Winter infections. Mask use did not predict Summer 2020 case growth for non-Northeast states or Fall-Winter 2020 growth for all continental states. Conclusions Mask mandates and use are not associated with slower state-level COVID-19 spread during COVID-19 growth surges. Containment requires future research and implementation of existing efficacious strategies. Perhaps if everyone had first disinfected his hands and then placed high-end, single-use N95 masks snugly over his face, the data might have been different. What really happened was that people lost a year of seeing each other's faces. In addition, they suffered from low oxygen intake, they developed rashes, they damaged their dental health, and they wasted a lot of money on foolish face coverings. The worst thing that happened was to children. Babies need to see human faces to develop. Little children were inhibited from playing and leading normal lives. Empathy dies a little when you cannot see someone's face. (Burqas are a very effective part of dehumanizing women in the Islamic world.) But the mask Nazis were inflexible. In New Jersey, a school nurse was suspended when she rightly called the mask mandate "child abuse." If you doubt her, pay attention to her experience: I had a kid come down to me. She was wearing a mask. She was crying. She had vomited in classI pulled her mask off. It was full of vomit. Her mask was full of vomit. Child abuse, indeed. We've read about the leftists who refuse to lose the masks, whether because they're willing victims of Stockholm syndrome or because they're making political statements. Think of those masks as the equivalent of the rattle on a snake. These are people you should avoid. Everyone else should ditch those face diapers. Perhaps they can be used as hammocks for hamster cages and dolls' houses. Image: Masks by Vera Davidova on Unsplash. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. One of the constants in Joe Bidens political life for the past 12 years is his completely inappropriate obsession with little girls. Over the years, weve seen endless videos of him groping, sniffing, and whispering to prepubescent little girls. Well, hes back, this time flirting with a little girl and commenting on how old and attractive she looks. Theres a reason we talk about dirty old men and Joe is it. There is no evidence that Joe has ever sexually assaulted a child. However, there is evidence that his public behavior with children is creepy and inappropriate. If you doubt that, watch this video that pairs Bidens conduct around little girls with a completely unrelated audio in which a specialist gives a TED talk about how pedophile predators groom little girls: Again, Im not accusing Joe of ever crossing the line into illegal activity although he has been accused, often, of crossing lots of lines when it comes to grown women. Last year, Tara Reade credibly accused Joe of sexually assaulting her an accusation that Kamala Harris said she believed. Also last year, the Secret Service admitted that it destroyed records in the case of the Veep Biden using the opportunity of a photograph with a Secret Service agent and his girlfriend to grab the girlfriends breast. Already back in 2017, when Biden seemed to have retired, a former Secret Service agent had some things to say about the former Veep: A former Secret Service agent assigned to the Vice President Joe Biden residence claims that the Service often had to protect female agents from him. Advertisement story continues below Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the agent asserted that, We had to cancel the VP Christmas get together at the Vice Presidents house because Biden would grope all of our wives and girlfriends asses. The annual party was for agents and Navy personnel who were tasked with protecting the Biden family. He would mess with every single woman or teen. It was horrible, the agent said. Given that track record, it somehow seems utterly predictable that, when Biden saw a little girl on the stage with him, he called her out and promptly sexualized her: Joe Biden looks at a little girl in the audience, the daughter of a veteran, and says "I love those barrettes in your hair. Man Ill tell you what, look at her she looks like she's 19 years old sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed." pic.twitter.com/DbH8ihG2Mj The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) May 28, 2021 While leftists were shrieking about President Trumps completely accurate statement that, when youre rich and powerful, women will let you take liberties, Joe Biden was giving meaning to the phrase dirty old man. IMAGE: Joe Biden fondles a little girl. YouTube screengrab. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Though the number of flights per day is still far below the daily average of recent years, the FAA recently revealed that the total number of reported incidents of passenger bad behavior on flights so far in 2021 is about ten times the annual average through just the first four months of the calendar year. The FAA says it typically sees between 100 and 150 "formal" cases of bad behavior by passengers in a typical year. By contrast, the agency said there have already been 1,300 such cases reported this year, even with significantly lower passenger miles flown. These instances have involved verbal and physical assault and "political intimidation," frequently over mask mandates. This Southwest Airlines flight attendant lost two teeth to an attack by a passenger. YouTube screen grab. This simply reflects what is happening on the ground as well. Standards of behavior have been altered for the worse, possibly forever. Obstruction, looting, burning, rioting, and violence are everywhere on the increase. This is the inevitable result of ignoring cheating; letting crime go unchecked and unpunished; supporting rioting; sowing racial, class, and intersectional hatred; dispensing with long held cultural norms; eschewing the Judeo-Christian work ethic; attacking, mocking, and defunding the police; and attempting to dispense with the traditional nuclear family. Throw in pent up emotions of nearly endless and pointless lockdowns and mask mandates, and you have effectively mandated bad behavior, hopelessness, despair...and mass unrest. In other words, Democrats have deliberately, carefully, and painstakingly created the perfect conditions for societal collapse. Many of today's Democrats hate the country as founded and believe they will be there, in the end, to pick up the pieces and consolidate their power. Screw the coronavirus vaccine; these Democrats should have been forced to be proactively vaccinated against Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) and the Anti-American Insanity Virus (AAIV). To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. On Wednesday, May 19, I read and then posted to my Facebook page an excerpt from J.B. Shurk's American Thinker article, "An Election Heist Too Big to Fail," and quoted the essay's fourth paragraph in the body of my post. Within minutes, I received a notice from a nameless censor at Facebook that my post "violated their community standard of coordinating harm and promoting crime" and therefore was banned from Facebook. That censorship notice also contained the warning that if I persisted, my account would be subject to being restricted. As with many who have also faced this same thing, there was no means afforded me to challenge this most arbitrary decree. The image below has all the substantive information I got from Facebook: I challenge anyone to read J.B. Shurk's entire article objectively, and not just the excerpt I posted, to see if there is anything remotely resembling "coordinating of harm and promoting crime." I am a conservative who cherishes America and all the good it stands for and has done, making it a beacon of freedom to the rest of the world. The idea that there are some who will arbitrarily censor ideas and freedom of information is loathsome to the outstanding principles on which this country was founded. Facebook's act goes beyond the mere legal technicality that a private corporation can get away with censorship denied the government when it comes to my freely voicing my opinion. As a boy, I learned what all Americans were once taught, which is the great principle separating right from wrong. Facebook's censorship of what amounts to its political disagreement with my discourse violates what is right. Some might wonder why it has taken a week for me to react to this. Well, I wrote to my state and congressional representatives (both of whom are Republicans) a "Houston, we have a problem" letter and was waiting for their replies. One has yet to reply; the other, adding insult to injury, basically told me, "This is your problem, not mine." I believe that Republican elected officials should take a stand for their constituents, especially on this issue of censorship. I pluralize "constituents," given that my example hardly stands alone. There has been a plague of leftist censorship affecting far too many Americans. The highly disappointing stance from the Republican officials for whom I voted contrasts sharply with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Review this quote taken from the news about the signing of Bill 7072 from Governor DeSantis's site: "This session, we took action to ensure that 'We the People' real Floridians across the Sunshine State are guaranteed protection against the Silicon Valley elites," said Governor Ron DeSantis. "Many in our state have experienced censorship and other tyrannical behavior firsthand in Cuba and Venezuela. If Big Tech censors enforce rules inconsistently, to discriminate in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology, they will now be held accountable." "What we've been seeing across the U.S. is an effort to silence, intimidate, and wipe out dissenting voices by the leftist media and big corporations. Today, by signing SB 7072 into law, Florida is taking back the virtual public square as a place where information and ideas can flow freely. Many of our constituents know the dangers of being silenced or have been silenced themselves under communist rule. Thankfully in Florida we have a Governor that fights against big tech oligarchs that contrive, manipulate, and censor if you voice views that run contrary to their radical leftist narrative," Lieutenant Governor Jeanette Nunez said." What are Pennsylvanian's chances of seeing such a protective bill even proposed, much less enacted, given the disappointing Pontius Pilate treatment from Republicans who ought to be taking a strong stand against social media censorship? As I wrote back to the office of the representative who at least replied to my obvious request for support, "you might as well be a Democrat." Then there is this. In the New York Post, Sohrab Ahmari, in an essay pointedly titled "Facebook's lab-leak censors owe The Post, and America, an apology," provides us with a fuller look at how Facebook and its censoring create another kind of risk: Think about it: If you were Xi Jinping, and you wanted to deploy an information-control operation over the origins of COVID-19, you couldn't have done better than to just let Facebook, working in conjunction with America's bottom-feeding "fact-checking" industry, do its thing. Ahmari's conclusion is a worthy one: Enough is enough. Facebook and the other Big Tech giants are irreformable. Only political action in the form of removing the special status that allows them to act like publishers without any of a traditional publisher's liabilities can save us from this private tyranny. When will we stop putting up with this plague of censorship from the left and return this great land to normalcy, principle, and honor, a place in which the marketplace of ideas is fully open? Ed Lasso is a pseudonym. To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Washington and Lee University may change its name -- well, both of them -- in June when the schools board of trustees meets to decide the matter. The renaming controversy has surrounded the school for some time now, with many students and some faculty demanding a change while others wish to keep the current name of one of the oldest colleges in the country. In 1796, George Washington donated 100 shares of the James River Canal Company stock to the school, stock that he had received in recognition of his selfless service to his country. It was one of the largest donations to any educational institution at the time and remains part of the institutions endowment to this day, contributing to the University's operating budget. Upon bestowing this gift, Washington stated that higher education should prepare students for personal success and public service, while also unifying diverse communities of students and teaching them to live in harmony. That is an admirable goal, but, sadly, the opposite of what colleges see as their mission today. Four months after Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse, the schools board of trustees invited Lee to become president of the college. They did so believing that his dedication to principle and duty would inspire students and faculty alike. Lee explained his motivation for accepting the presidency in an 1865 letter to his wife: "Life is indeed gliding away and I have nothing good to show for mine that is past. I pray I may be spared to accomplish something for the benefit of mankind and the honour of God." In another letter written the following spring, he noted: "So greatly have [educational] interests been disturbed [in] the South, and so much does its future condition depend upon the rising generation, that I consider the proper education of its youth one of the most important objects now to be attained, and one from which the greatest benefits may be expected." Lee instituted undergraduate courses in business and journalism, introduced modern languages and applied mathematics, incorporated the law school, and expanded offerings in the natural sciences. In short, he transformed the school into a modern university. He also emphasized the importance of student self-governance by putting the students in charge of the honor system the faculty had previously overseen. He proclaimed: "As a general principle you should not force young men to do their duty but let them do it voluntarily and thereby develop their characters." That principle helped to engender a campus culture that fostered honor, integrity, and civility. (All of which are sorely lacking on todays campuses, directly because of the incessant leftist indoctrination.) Upon Lees death on Oct. 12, 1870, the college had significantly enhanced its financial footing and grown its enrollment, thanks to Washingtons endowment and Lees guidance. At that time, the faculty requested that the trustees rename the college, originally called Augusta Academy and then rechristened Washington Academy, to recognize Lees contributions. The trustees agreed, changing the name to Washington and Lee University. Let us hope that the schools current Board of Trustees respects the contributions of both men, and the scope of history, and leaves the name as is. But dont count on it. In todays climate, the school might be renamed Marx and Engels University. Possibly Farrakhan and Sharpton University. Schumer and Pelosi University? The College of Tlaib & Omar? Or, perhaps, in deference to our friends in the LGBTQ Community, The College of Mary and Mary? Photo credit: Zeete CC BY-SA 4.0 license To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here. Have any questions? Please give us a call at 907-561-7737 (Image source from: livemint.com) India extends ban on International flights till June 30th:- The coronavirus pandemic is unstoppable in the country and the second wave is having a toll on the people. Several countries of the globe banned Indian passengers from entering their countries considering the spread. The Indian government suspended the international passenger flights last year and the ban has been extended till June 30th informed the Indian aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) today. DGCA announced that some of the international scheduled flights will be allowed on the selected routes like now. The international flight services have been suspended from March 23rd, 2020 after the pandemic hit the country. Indian government has been operating special international flights on Vande Bharat Mission from May last year under the rule of the air bubble. India formed air bubble with 27 countries of the globe. Recently, countries like USA, UK and Sri Lanka banned flights and passengers from India considering the spread of coronavirus. Close to 2 lakh new cases of coronavirus are reported in India on a regular basis and the death toll has been quite high in all the states. Samsung has apparently been polling users via a survey to see if they have any interest in Android tablets even bigger than the standard 8-, 10-, 0r 12-inch variety. Thats based on a recent report from 9to5Google, after the appearance of several posts on the topic on Naver. For clarity, thats a social media site out of the companys home region of South Korea. In fact, the company appears to be gauging interest in tablets running the mobile OS as large as 14.6-inches. Putting the tablet at well over the standard size for large Android tablets. That, on average, maxes out at around 10-inches. Aside from size what would bigger Samsung Android tablets look like? The specs associated with the speculative tablet are just as impressive as its size, too. The company would be utilizing one of its OLED panels with a refresh rate of 120Hz. That would showcase an iteration of Android being driven by an unknown chipset. But that, in turn, would be backed up by up to 12GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. Underneath that, the company would be utilizing a 12,000mAh capacity battery with incredibly fast 45W charging. Advertisement Setting aside those obvious flagship leanings, the company also points to quad-speakers and dual-cameras, with one on front and back. S Pen support would also be included with the device. So it wouldnt be too dissimilar to the current top-tier models of the Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+. This would create as many problems as it potentially solves if Samsung ever releases it at all Now, there are some questions that are raised by a tablet falling into this size category and running Android. Traditionally, Android tablets, Samsung or otherwise, havent gone bigger than 12-inches because the apps dont work as well at scale and its likely that will have impacted the results of the survey. Specifically, because while some app makers are aiming for that market, most arent. Those that arent aimed there are scaled up by Android itself. So they end up looking stretched and disproportionate. In fact, this is also among the most prominent issues with larger Chromebooks running Android apps. Advertisement Bearing that in mind, Samsung isnt likely to release a tablet in this size until, at the very least, its own apps support the larger display. And Samsung may ultimately scrap the idea depending on the results of the poll. Purchase an online subscription to our website for $7.99 a month with automatic renewal. Each online subscription gives you full access to all of our newspaper websites and mobile applications. To cancel you may contact Customer Service @ 256-235-9253 or email JPAYNE@ANNISTONSTAR.COM For a limited time, for NEW SUBSCRIBERS ONLY a NEW ANNUAL SUBSCRIPTION is just $59.99 for the first year. Existing customers do not qualify for the specials! After the first year, well automatically renew your subscription to continue your access at the regular price of $69.99 per year. Please note *Your Subscription will Automatically Renew unless you contact Customer Service To Cancel* Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. A teenager has appeared in court charged with murdering a 16-year-old boy, police said. The 17 year old, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made his first appearance at Northampton Magistrates Court on Saturday charged with killing Rayon Pennycook in Corby. The teenager was remanded in custody and will next appear at Northampton Crown Court on Tuesday, June 1, Northamptonshire Police said. Police said two boys aged 15 and 17 have also been released on bail pending further inquiries. Officers were called at about 7pm on Tuesday May 25 to reports of a boy being stabbed on Constable Road. East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said it was called to a private address in the town at 6.57pm after reports of a medical emergency. Two paramedics in ambulance cars, two crewed ambulances and the air ambulance were sent, but the victim died at the scene. Hundreds of people have gathered in central London to protest against the coronavirus vaccine rollout. Many of the crowd in Parliament Square on Saturday had travelled from outside the capital. Some claimed the pandemic is a hoax while others carried placards reading My body, my choice, and protested against the idea of vaccine passports. Several people set off smoke bombs and one launched a firework. One man, who did not give his name, told the PA news agency he had come because I want to be free and I want you to be free and the Government are lying to us. People take part in an anti-vaccine protest in Parliament Square (Tess De La Mare/PA) Another said she had attended because the press are lying to us. By around 1.20pm, the crowd had started to disperse and head up Whitehall. After the crowd dispersed from Parliament Square, it headed up Whitehall past Leicester Square and towards Hyde Park. The Metropolitan Police Events Twitter account posted at around 4.30pm that certain roads around Shepherds Bush had been closed due to the ongoing demonstrations. In the early evening, a group staged a demonstration in the Shepherds Bush site of the Westfield shopping centre. At around 6.30pm, the Met said: The 3rd demo is now at Westfield and is causing significant disruption to the local community and businesses, police are at the location. The MPS strongly urge those who are taking part in this demo to go home. Failure to do so may result in enforcement action being taken. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. Chicago parents are concerned that a private Catholic school in the state is teaching "woke" ideology to its students despite contradictions to the Church's teachings. Ethics & Public Policy Center scholar Noelle Mering is sounding the alarm over a Catholic school in Chicago that is reportedly teaching the youth "woke" ideology despite it contradicting the Church's teachings. She revealed how parents have grown concerned about critical race theory, which lessons are in stark contrast to the Catholic Church's teachings. According to the Christian Post, Mering wrote an op-ed for The National Catholic Register, in which she pointed out how the "woke toxicity" of critical race theory is teaching students about the "rejection of the person, "rejection of reason," and "rejection of reverence." She argued, "The Christian message is that people are defined by the love of God, and the woke message is that people are defined by the hatred of society. From that implies two very different courses of action." Contrary to the Gospel's message, which is to "spread the good news that we are loved," Mering explained that "woke" ideology pits individuals or groups of individuals against each others, teaching people that they are "hated or haters." The scholar argued that woke ideology is "fundamentally divisive and rather despairing ideology" that is somewhat of a "Trojan horse." She explained that it "appeals to people's instincts to be compassionate and to fight real evils and injustices that do exist" but at the same time inserts "ideological poisonous bombs" that hinder people from creating a meaningful relationship with Christ. Mering warned that woke ideology is spreading in American education institutions through a "top-down implementation of extreme 'antiracism' and gender ideology in the curriculum." According to the scholar, institutions such as the Chicago-area Loyola Academy, which fetches an annual tuition of $17,750, has hired "diversity consultants" to train faculty and students about "gender pronouns." Students are also taught about privilege, with working class students "bewildered" to find out that he or she is an "oppressor" just because of the color of his skin. Parents at the school were so concerned and alarmed over the woke ideology infiltrating the school that they set up a website called kidswinloyola.com to raise awareness about the "growing crisis" that is the "adoption of an intolerant Identity Curriculum." The parents wrote that there were several negative effects of the woke ideology curriculum, including the "indoctrination of students and faculty, verbal and cyberbullying of students, deterioration of school spirit and division among student groups, [and] increasing levels of anxiety, depression and isolation in students." The Chicago school isn't the only one seemingly entrenched in woke ideology. The National Review reported that the Sacred Heart Network across up to 25 schools in the U.S. have fought their battle against critical race theory. Miami's Carrollton School is the same, with students reporting how "expressing opinions contrary to "woke" orthodoxy, especially on racial and sexual issues, was becoming impossible-even when these opinions aligned with Catholic teaching." More and more parents and students are seeing the struggle with woke ideology and rightfully fighting back to uphold their freedom of expression, which is protected under the U.S. Constitution. Have any questions? Please give us a call at 541-889-5387 Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. You are the owner of this image. You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Share This: The U.S. Attorneys Office for the Middle District of Pennsylvania announced Herman Cabral, 62, of Cranston, RI, was sentenced May 26 to 10 months imprisonment and three years of supervised release by U.S. District Court Judge Malachy E. Mannion for a wire fraud conspiracy offense. According to Acting U.S. Attorney Bruce D. Brandler, Cabral was convicted of processing false invoices for nonexistent automobile repairs through his Providence, RI, automobile repair shop, A Plus Collision Center. Cabral pleaded guilty July 23, 2019, to causing between $150,000 and $250,000 of fraudulent loss to the Wilkes-Barre based automobile warranty company. Mannion also ordered Cabral to pay restitution of $211,644.03 to the victim of his crime. Three of Cabrals coconspirators were convicted and are awaiting sentencing. Brian Larry, 59, of Clarks Summit, PA, was convicted May 10 following a jury trial, of mail fraud, wire fraud, aggravated identity theft and false statement offenses. Larry was convicted of defrauding his former employer, the Wilkes-Barre based automobile warranty company, from approximately January 2014 through October 2018. Larry also was convicted of stealing the personal information of warranty policy owners and providing it to his coconspirators, who created false invoices for nonexistent automobile repair work supposedly performed at various garages in Rhode Island, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, including by forging the policy owners signatures on the paperwork. The false and forged documentation was then sent to the warranty company, where Larry approved payment of the invoices. During the course of the scheme, Larry and his coconspirators obtained approximately $400,000 paid out by the warranty company pursuant to the false invoices, including... In 1967, to celebrate winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans race a year earlier, Carroll Shelby and his partners at Ford unleashed the most impressive Mustang they had ever built, the formidable GT500.Powered by a heavily modified 427 cu in (7.0-liter) Police Interceptor engine rated at 355 hp, it was all muscle and no compromise, captivating the hearts of enthusiasts across the country.While the partnership with Ford is legendary, few people know that Carroll Shelby was also the official West Coast distributor for Goodyear tires during that period.In February, the company asked him to take part in a promotional event for the new Thunderbolt line of economy tires at Goodyears high-speed test facility near San Angelo, Texas.Obviously, he thought it would be a great opportunity to also promote the new GT500 . Legend has it that he talked about the event with former Shelby American sales manager Don McCain who came up with a crazy idea. Jokingly or not, he suggested that a GT500 with a GT40 race engine would be a heck of a marketing stunt.As mad as that idea was, Shelby was intrigued and eventually decided to make it happen. He gave the task to chief engineer Fred Goodell who immediately got to work.He selected a white GT500 with the serial number 67402F4A00544, which was stripped down and modified extensively. Inside the engine bay, he fitted a lightweight 427 racing V8 that was virtually identical to the one used in the Le Mans-winning GT40 Mk I I. It had aluminum heads, Le Mans conrods, a forged crank, and an aluminum water pump. Additionally, they installed a variation of the race cars exhaust system, as well as an external oil cooler, a remote oil filter, and an enhanced cooling system.At the time, it was reported that the engine made around 650 hp. This has since been disputed with many speculating that the actual output was 520 hp. Still, both figures were astonishing 54 years ago and pretty impressive even today.The race-bred powerplant may have been the most important upgrade the car received, but it wasnt the only one. To counteract the high-speed cornering forces that the car would endure on the 5-mile oval track, stiffer springs and shocks were mounted on the passenger side. Goodell didnt stop there and fitted traction bars along with a Detroit Locker differential to make sure that torque was properly applied to the wheels. The front brakes were also swapped with heavy-duty variants that used braided lines.For the finishing touches, the Super Snake got bespoke chrome headlight ornaments and a custom version of the production Le Mans striping that distinguished it from all other GT500s.In preparation for the event, its 10-spoke aluminum wheels were fitted with 7.75-15 Goodyear Thunderbolt Whitewalls. These new tires were developed as an affordable option for everyday cars, so they looked out of place on the Super Snake.Hours before the main event took place, Carroll Shelby drove the rabid pony car around the oval track for a few laps, reportedly reaching speeds of about 170 mph (273 kph).Since the official test was 500 miles (804 km) long, he passed the helmet to Fred Goodell saying that he had to leave. The latter successfully completed the run with the skinniest tires ever fitted on a GT500 performing flawlessly. He later revealed that the tires were inflated with nitrogen to increase sidewall rigidity and protect them from overheating.After the team got back to California, the Super Snake was sent to Mel Burns Ford dealership where Don McCain was working. He was sure it would generate enough interest to justify a limited production run and spent the next few months finding potential buyers.While it drew a lot of attention, it was more expensive than two standard GT500s or a Ferrari 275 GTS/4 NART Spyder and nobody was willing to pay that much. Eventually, McCain acknowledged that a limited production run just didnt make sense.Ultimately, it was sold and changed owners several times until came into the possession of Richard Ellis, a rare Mustang collector from Illinois. Although the car was in an exceptional state and only registered 26,000 miles (41,843 km) on the odometer, it was missing some of its original parts.Ellis replaced some improvised wires and hoses with original components, added a period-correct Rotunda fire extinguisher that was missing, and NOS Shelby 10-spoke wheels, identical to the ones originally mounted. Amazingly enough, he also obtained the only surviving set of brand-new 7.75-15 Thunderbolt whitewall tires.Even though it belongs in a museum where it could be enjoyed by everyone, the unique high-performance car was offered at an auction in 2019, fetching $2.2 million and becoming one of the most expensive Mustangs ever sold.The 1967 Shelby GT500 Super Snake is so audacious that it reached legendary status without ever competing in a race. Its the epitome of an eccentric idea that only the brilliant Carroll Shelby could turn into reality and well forever be grateful to him for building it. Fast forward to the present day, and Jaguar Land Rover embodies the pinnacle of British automotive unreliability. A great example in this regard is that infamous Defender that broke down 48 hours and 167 miles (267 kilometers) after the peeps at TFL took delivery of it.A luxed-up sport utility vehicle with unibody construction thats manufactured in Slovakia instead of the United Kingdom, the off-road rig has been recalled in the Land Down Under over exhaust downpipe fixing nuts that havent been tightened to specification. If they come loose, exhaust gas may leak into the engine compartment, causing heat damage or a fire.533 examples of the Defender are included in the safety recall according to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, which highlights that affected vehicles feature the six-cylinder diesel engine known as the D200, D250, or D300 depending on the output ratings. Land Rover offers all three of them in Australia, and the most potent version of the twin-turbocharged sixer with mild-hybrid assistance cranks out 300 horsepower.The Indian-controlled British automaker isnt aware of any recorded instances of vehicle fire, choosing to recall these vehicles out of an abundance of caution. Reading between the lines, Land Rover prefers to incur some losses by fixing these Defenders instead of facing a lawsuit While on the subject of money, Tata Motors announced losses to the tune of $1 billion on Tuesday, May 18th, despite a strong performance in the first quarter of the year. Care to guess why the Indian automaker is bleeding precious dollars? Thats because of Jaguar Land Rover, which is currently restructuring over financial problems. As part of the strategy rethink, some 2,000 jobs will be cut and the next-gen Jaguar XJ has been canceled. A minister continues with her ministry to spread the Gospel and share God's love, risking her life in one of the most dangerous nations in Africa. Heidi Baker operates Iris Global, a Christian humanitarian organization, in Mozambique. Currently living in Cabo Delgado Province, she has been in the country for more than two decades. Speaking to CBN News, Baker shared her unfading passion to serve the people, helping them find hope in the middle of tragedy. "This is the greatest time to be alive, for such a time as this. If you are a believer in Jesus you are one of the first who is right on the list," she said. The country has seen a number of terror attacks in recent years. The rebel group, Al Shabab, has killed and displaced large number of people since 2017. "Churches have been burned and anyone who is not agreeing with this specific group of terrorists, whatever faith they have, their homes are being burnt as well, their crops are being burnt," Baker shared. The group's worst attack took place only last March in southern Africa, affecting thousands of individuals. The rebels assaulted the town of Palma, where they killed a number of people, including a dozen foreigners. A resident also shared that the group burned their houses and took their children. The government was able to recapture the town from the rebels after 10 days. But even after a couple of months, thousands of residents have yet to return to their homes out of fear. Militants have resumed their attacks just in recent weeks. However, the minister said that she would continue preaching the Word of God "for many more decades," amidst danger of the "frightening" rebel group. "I'm telling you in the midst of the tragedy, God is doing the most incredibly beautiful things and He's wiping away the tears," the preacher revealed. Baker spoke about the powerful move of the Lord in the country, sharing a man who was tortured by being crucified and set on fire but survived. He is now serving in her organization. She believes that God has prepared her to share the love of God to these people. "Not knowing that God would be preparing us to be the right people in the right place at the right time to share the radical love of a beautiful Savior Jesus who asks His people to be His hands and His feet extended on planet earth," she declared. Her organization ministers to thousands of displaced Palma residents, strengthening her team with the power of Jesus that "takes away the fear." "We've ramped up our efforts so now we are feeding 34,000 individuals a day and mostly comforting the broken, holding them in our arms, praying with them," she said. "Don't be afraid but fix your eyes on Jesus, He takes away the fear and puts relentless courage in you," Baker told her team. The Economic Times said that the Al-Shabab rebel group is comprised of unemployed young people who were sent for studies abroad, funded by Muslim organizations. Upon returning home, many of them preached a "radical form of Islam". The group has grown to hundreds since it began its attacks against the government, killing more than 2,000 people and displacing almost 700,000 residents. President Filipe Nyusi launched a "counterterrorism offensive" but military action was difficult since the rebels mingle with civilians. To help Mozambique, America sent special operations forces officers last March to train the country's marines. Probably no one will have a solution too soon for the rather long waiting times when it comes to recharging battery-electric cars, but the premium carmaker from Germany makes it easier to get access to the outlets for its clients.With the launch of the BMW and MINI Charging services, the company promises owners will have at their disposal one of the worlds largest public charging networks, using just one RFID card or smartphone application. Basically, either using the new BMW/MINI card or the BMW or MINI Charging App, they are granted easy access to more than 11,000 charging points in the UK alone.As always, these also need to be broken down into their respective AC and DC (alternate or direct current) categories. That paints a slightly bleaker picture in terms of waiting times: just 1,500 of those are of the fast DC variety, even though the company provides access to different operators across the UK The current network includes the likes of bp pulse (also ChargeYourCar), ESB, Osprey, Source London and Chargepoint Network UK (also Instavolt), and others. As far as high-power stations, theyre only available through the Ionity network, the joint venture between the BMW Group, Daimler AG, Ford Motor Company, VW AG, and the Hyundai Motor Group.On the other hand, using BMW Charging and MINI Charging also comes with the bonus of using some 173,000 charge points across continental Europe. Some 162,000 of those are of the AC variety, while an additional 11,000 access points have DC connections.Additionally, BMW and MINI offer a few nice charging packs (no subscription fee for 12 months) when purchasing a plug-in hybrid or fully electric vehicle from official BMW or MINI Centers. But that doesnt mean they dont come out to play and deter from time to time. Thats exactly what happened a number of times already this year, as various, massive military exercises have been conducted around the world.Starting with May 17 and ending on May 28, the U.S., France and the UK have been involved together in something called Atlantic Trident 2021 . Described as a drill meant to enhance fourth and fifth-generation integration, combat readiness and fighting capabilities, the event saw a number of the most modern fighter aircraft coming together in the skies over Europe.Pictured here (click photo to enlarge) are four of them. We have the U.S. Air Force (USAF) F-35A Lightning II , two French Dassault Rafales, and a Royal Air Force (RAF) Eurofighter Typhoon, flying extremely close to one another as part of the drills. A perfect shot to make us feel more at ease knowing such impressive machines can be deployed at a moments notice in case of need.This is not the first image that came our way from Atlantic Trident this past week. A few days ago we showed you a pair of F-35s performing an incredible aerial dance with two French Rafales.All these images show impressive machines, but they are impressive in themselves as well, as it takes a lot of skill to snap them at just the right moment and from just the right angle. For the record, the image attached to this text was shot by Staff Sgt. Alexander Cook. kWh Not just one, but 2 types of innovative tugs are set to be built, as part of what will become one the eco-friendliest tugboat fleets in the world. The ElectRA 2800, an electric harbor tug, and the RAstar 4000-DF, a dual fuel escort tug, are currently under construction. The result of a collaboration between HaiSea Marine and LNG Canada, this 5-boat fleet will operate at LNG Canadas new export facility in Kitimat, on the British Columbia Coast.Designed by Vancouver-based naval architect Robert Allan, both models are meant to take the green revolution one step further, without limiting their power and performance. The ElectRA 2800 is 90 feet (28 meters) long, with a 6,102battery capacity and a towing capacity (bollard pull) of 70 tons. This means that she will be able to perform ship-berthing and un-berthing operations without any harmful emissions.Theres no need to worry about charging either because shell have access to dedicated charging facilities on shore, allowing the tugboats to recharge fast, between operations.The RAstar 4000-DF escort tug, on the other hand, is bigger and more powerful. With a 131 feet (40 meters) length and almost 100 tons of bollard pull, this will be one of the most powerful escort tugs today. Since its a dual fuel boat , its equipped with a diesel after-treatment system, in order to comply to the most stringent emissions standards, but its designed to run entirely on liquefied natural gas (LNG) during regular escort operations.According to the Robert Allan company, these escort tugs and harbor tugs will reduce CO2 emissions by almost 10,000 tons/year, compared to standard diesel vessels. And they are also quiet, helping reduce noise pollution, which is another important issue when it comes to the marine environment.This environmentally-friendly fleet will consist of 3 ElectRA 2800 tugs and 2 RAstar 4000-DF tugs, which are set to begin operating in British Columbia in 2023. This July, the world will mark the 76th anniversary of the Trinity test. That would be the first detonation of a nuclear weapon, a test that took place as part of the Manhattan Project in New Mexico, and opened the doors to humanity having the means to exterminate itself many times over.The Alamogordo site when the blast took place is since 1965 a Historic Landmark, and people just go there mostly for sightseeing. But some of them go for research, and at times the results are stunning.So is the case with the thing you see as the main photo of this piece. They call it icosahedral quasicrystal, and it has been found by a team of researchers at Alamogordo. Their discovery was announced through a paper published in the June issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences ( PNAS ).You see, when the bomb, called Gadget, was taken to its place of detonation, it was hoisted up a metal tower. Copper transmission lines ran through and from the site, to allow scientists to gather as much data about the explosion as possible.When the thing cracked open, all hell broke loose and sand, the tower, and the transmission lines became a single material, a glassy substance called trinitite. It was in this trinitite that todays scientists found this icosahedral quasicrystal.The thing is not unlike naturally-occuring quasicrystals, like the ones that can be found in meteorites. Scientists believe they can use this finding to better understand the nature of the explosion and the extreme conditions during the blast, but also "the discovery of new quasicrystal-forming systems." 4WD A few years back, at the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, Peugeot unveiled a concept known as the Rifter 4x4, a vehicle meant to be this automakers answer to the growing trend of vehicles aimed at offering the freedom to explore above and beyond the confines of city limits.For this vehicle Peugeot didnt work alone. The help and expertise of a long-time partner Dangel, was also called upon. Not very many people have heard of Dangel, so a small intro is in order. This 4x4-focused company out of France has been fidgeting with cars and suspension kits since before the 1980s. However, it was only in 1980 that the brand was born. Through the years this company has offered its expertise to automakers the likes of Citroen, Opel, Fiat, and you guessed it, Peugeot.The Rifter isnt the first vehicle to ever come out of a Peugeot and Dangel collaboration, but it is one of the machines that seems to standout on its own. It might just be the design and color scheme, but then again, versatility also seems to play a key role in its capabilities.Just to kick things off , the integrated transmission on the Rifter is developed by Dangel and offers three driving modes to choose from. The first is classic 2WD, to be used in daily driving. The second mode is that of, where the transmission handles any loss of traction by transferring power to the rear wheels, and finally, lock mode; locks the rear axle and designed for extreme off-roading.Equipped with a BlueHDI 130 engine and six-speed manual gearbox, this little powerhouse squeezes out 300 Nm (221.2 lb-ft) of torque. All thats completed with a set of A/T, BF Goodrich tires for helping cling to surfaces, and an 80-mm lift (3.14-in) to help raise ground clearance.The exterior of the Rifter has also seen extensive tampering. One obvious feature are the anodized Yellow Satin bits featured at the front under the fog lights, along the side skirts, and at the back. The Dangel emblem features the same yellow color tone. Even the black 16-inch diamond cut Onyx wheels have a tad of the yellow.The exterior is also equipped with an Overland tent developed by expert rooftop tent maker Autohome. Its easiest to say that this team has been specializing in rooftop tents since 1958. Today, automakers like Land Rover, MINI , and Peugeot all work with Autohome on one level or another. In front of the tent is a 1.35-meter (4.43-foot) curved LED bank with 100 LEDs, setup on two rows, and a total power output of 300-watts.This tent has been specifically designed for the Rifter Concept and ease of use is one of the main focuses of this feature. All that needs to be done to get a nights rest is unfold the tent from its housing and fasten the sliding ladder. The mattress holds the to the same color scheme as the rest of the vehicle and is easily folded along with the tent when not in use.Inside the Rifter, the dashboard features an uncluttered design that blends shades of the exterior with grey and smoked chrome accents. The black and chrome is then offset with yellow stitching around the shifter and interior of the steering wheel.Those large inserts around the console and door panels are machined from solid aluminum and used to balance the near all-black dash and doors. The same Yellow Satin stripes and lettering is features on seats with embossed grey mottled fabric and black Alcantara.One other feature that could be seen at the Geneva Auto Show was the Peugeot eM02 FS Powertube MTB. As a final addition, completing the nomadic lifestyle by offering extended freedom to places otherwise inaccessible to four-wheel vehicles, Peugeot seemed to have been hitting all the right notes in terms of a vehicle that can take you away for a day or two.Since then, not much has been heard of the Rifter 4X4 Concept, except that Peugeot produces the Rifter and e-Rifter. Another vehicle that bears a striking resemblance to the 4x4 Concept is the Peugeot Partner, a vehicle that has seen the touch of Dangel as well. kW Some good advice... If you buy an electric trail bike, read the manual before you ride it for the first time. I have broken part of my back. Thank you to everyone for your kind messages. Simon Cowell (@SimonCowell) August 10, 2020 The music mogul and TV personality broke his back in three places last summer, falling off a brand new e-bike hed just gotten delivered and was about to ride for the first time in his driveway. He later spent nearly six hours in surgery, and then a couple of months bedridden. He is still in rehab and has a titanium rod in his back, but he considers himself lucky after all.Cowell is about to make his return as judge on Americas Got Talent and, to promote it, he stopped by a chat with Kelly Clarkson, on her show. The topic of the bike fall came up first, for the obvious reasons: Cowell really cheated death. He said hed been getting stupid buying all sorts of new e-bikes and trying them out, but this one was his most stupid, since it was more powerful than he could have imagined.So, when he got on it, it pulled a wheelie, throwing him high in the air. He landed flat on his back and, as hes said before, he knew right away that hed broken it. I was a millimeter away from severing my spine, and that would have been bad, he tells Kelly. So I consider myself lucky.Thats a valid point: he able to walk again and even ride e-bikes . He lives and will get to enjoy his life as before, if only with a bit more common sense in the decision-making part of the buying process. He is lucky, alright.The bike Cowell fell from is the Swind EB-01 from Swindon , a London maker. Its not road legal and its not sold as such. Marketed as the most powerful in the world, its a trail bike that packs a 15(20 hp) motor, which 60 times more powerful than anything you can find on road-legal bikes in Europe. Again, as weve said before , to hear Simon say he didnt know it was powerful is ridiculous, especially since he admitted after the accident that he hadnt even bothered to read the owners manual for instructions before that first ride. For the past several months, weve been hearing a lot about several UFO sightings by U.S. Navy personnel throughout 2019. All these sightings of UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, Pentagons preferred term for UFOs) were recorded and documented, and are now subject of an ongoing investigation by the Pentagon, whose findings will inform next months Congress briefing To sum up, U.S. Navy personnel have been spotting UAPs for a long time. Officials wont say whether they are of alien origin, but they all agree that they behave in unnatural, strange ways, and that they seem more technologically advanced than anything ever created by the most powerful nation in the world, the United States. And that alone is saying a lot Add another one to the ever-growing pile of sightings. Jeremy Corbell, an UFO documentary maker who also contributes to the Extraordinary Beliefs website, got his hands on another U.S. Navy video. Shot in the summer of 2019 and now declassified, it was posted online earlier this month. It shows a spherical UAP flying at very high speeds and apparently observing the USS Omaha warship, before splashing into the water and disappearing right away.In a recent post on the website, Corbell says that this is just one of the 14 targets spotted by USS Omaha off the coast of San Diego. Round, with a diameter of nearly 6 feet (1.8 meters), it traveled at speeds ranging between 40 knots and 138 knots (46 mph and 158 mph / 74 kph and 254 kph), and was transmedium capable meaning, it could fly and travel underwater. The flight of this illuminated sphere lasted for nearly an hour, and it disappeared without a trace once it went down. No takeoff or landing points could be determined.It is noted in intelligence reports that the spherical craft could not be found upon entry to the water that a submarine was used in the search and recovered nothing, Corbell writes.This sighting, like all the previous ones, is included in the ongoing investigation by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF). Insurance Institute for Highway Safety IIHS This time the artist chose a midsize crossover as his model and went with the 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe. Woodworking Art is usually obsessed with details and making the wood replicas as accurate as possible, but this time he made an extra effort to make the car stand out even more.The carpenter admits on his Facebook page that he loves the styling of the Santa Fe, its interior, front end, and wheels. And it really shows in his video, as he worked very carefully and elaborately on the suspension and wheel rims.Just like all his car replicas, the Santa Fe is also carved out of Fujian cypress wood, with a glossy coating. This type of wood is very appreciated in Vietnam and is commonly used for furniture, art objects, and so on. The reason why is its high density, characteristic aroma, and the fact that is a resilient timber against termites.The Hyundai replica took him approximately 32 days to be finished and has a 1:13 proportion to real size. It weighs 3 kg (6.6 lb).Woodworking Art carefully carved all the specific details of the Santa Fe and even shows us whats under the hood of the car . The seats are glossy and he even screwed in headlights and painted the taillights in red.You can order the 2021 Hyundai Santa Fe on Woodworking Arts Etsy page for approximately $840 ($1,024).Hyundai Santa Fe was launched two decades ago by the South Korean car maker but the 2021 model didnt receive the best reviews. In fact, it was penalized by the) over marginal, poor headlights that offer inadequate visibility in several scenarios. The low beams also create excessive glare according to IIHS. President Joe Biden will announce Friday that he's nominating Rufus Gifford, former ambassador to Denmark, as his chief of protocol at the State Department, Politico first reported and Axios has confirmed. Why it matters: The position, which holds an ambassadorial rank, will mark Bidens first ambassador announcement outside of the career foreign service, with more names expected as early as next week. The chief of protocol helps to plan the presidents travel abroad and coordinates visits of foreign leaders to the United States to showcase American traditions, cultures and institutions. Gifford, 46, whose expected appointment was reported by Axios in January, was a deputy campaign manager for Biden. He achieved celebrity status in Denmark, where he married his husband, Stephen DeVincent, in Copenhagen's city hall. What's next: Biden will name Kathleen Miller as his nominee for Pentagon comptroller, a person familiar with the matter tells Axios. The big picture: Donors and political allies have been waiting for Biden to start making ambassadorial announcements for months, with some frustration building among donors. Four individuals were arrested when a six-member group of Romanian nationals hit America, stealing donation checks from churches worth more than $760,000. Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) launched "Operation Thou Shalt Not Steal," looking into a theft ring that stole over 1,700 checks from 636 churches all over the country, 355 of these are in Florida. The group started its operation in November 2019 in Lee County, The News-Press reported. The group would deposit the checks to their bank accounts and withdraw on ATMs. The suspects reportedly used the stolen money on vehicles, food and clothing. They also sent large amounts to Romania through wire transfers. Ionut Raducan, Marius Dumitru, another Marius Dumitru also known as Viorel Dumitru, and Panait Dumitru were booked into Orange County Jail. They were charged with racketeering, conspiracy to commit racketeering, unlawful possession of personal identification information, grand theft and money laundering. FDLE is still searching for Catalin and Simona Trandafir who are facing the same charges. During the media briefing on Wednesday, FDLE Special Agent Shane Pollard revealed that the department began its investigation last December when Cape PD officers discovered that the group victimized 24 churches in the Lee County. "It was almost a perfect crime as COVID-19 swept the country. Some church members stayed home from in-person church services and mailed in their offerings" he continued. "This theft ring took full advantage of the situation, stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in church donations out of church mailboxes," the agent added. Moreover, Pollard said that group used to steal from 85 churches daily, many of these were targeted numerous times. Some of the thefts were even captured by a surveillance video. Grace United Methodist Church (GUMC) in Lee County is one of the churches affected by the group's operation. Taylor Foley, GUMC's executive pastor, said that the church noticed the missing checks when its offices reopened in summer. "We had a dozen families affected. We actually had a family reach out to us and meet with one of our pastors concerned that their giving was not being reflected on the quarterly giving statements we send out," he said. He added that after making an internal review, the church confirmed that some checks were indeed lost. They also communicated with the bank and when they found out that those checks were not cashed into the account of the church, GUMC's officials reported the incident to authorities. Foley stated that recovered funds will be returned to the families. Other counties affected by the group's operation include Gainesville, Naples, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Summerfield, Neptune Beach, Atlantic Beach, Lake Mary, Leesburg, Longwood, Sanford and Orange County. Aside from Florida, the thieves also operated in other states such as Mississippi, North Carolina, Illinois, South Carolina, Wisconsin and Oregon. Pollard said that the group might have had more victims. Attorney General Ashley Moody released a statement, condemning the group for exploiting people's "act of kindness." "Churches depend on donations from generous members of the community to operate and serve those in need. It is despicable that this crime ring would exploit the selfless acts of kindness displayed through these donations for selfish greed," Moody stated. Christopher Hobson, who attended Churchill School as a sixth-grader, returns, at age 38, to start an art-promotion business Workplace shootings are all too common in California. The latest one fits a pattern The city of Lebanon in Ohio's city officially declared itself a "sanctuary city for the unborn" on Tuesday as part of a legislation barring abortion inside its borders. Lebanon is a small town situated 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati. This week, the city of 20,000 residents became the first in the state, and one of the first in the Midwest, to do so, reports Christian Headlines. According to The Cincinnati Enquirer, the legislation was adopted unanimously by the Lebanon City Council, despite the resignation of one member in protest. Hundreds of people spoke in front of the city council. Those who prayed, sang, and told personal tales of rape and miscarriages were among those who spoke up during the deliberation, noted the Enquirer. Outside the city hall, supporters on both sides were shouting and asking motorists to honk in support of their cause. The Enquirer further highlighted that there are no abortion clinics in the town because the government body believe it is not in the constituents' best interest to build one. "We are clearly saying in our community we do not think it is in our best interest to open a clinic or a hospital that does abortions," said Amy Brewer, the city's mayor. "We are elected to make decisions based on what's good for our community today." The city's move is applauded by Ohio Right to Life. "Through this vote, the people of Lebanon have made their voices abundantly clear: Planned Parenthood isn't welcome in our city," said Allie Frazier, director of communications for Ohio Right to Life. "Lebanon's commitment to life demonstrates what we already know: Ohio is pro-life. The victimization of women and children through abortion has no place in our communities. In the United States, there are more than 25 communities with sanctuary city laws, though the majority of them are in Texas. Roe v. Wade was called a "lawless and unlawful act of judicial usurpation" by one council member, who resigns in protest, per Fox 19's report. Krista Wyatt, the council member, argues: "It is not fair to the citizens and is not the role of a City Council member to be a moral compass." "There is a core group of people who have hijacked the council to force their personal, political and religious views on the entire citizenship of Lebanon," she wrote in a letter. Activists for abortion have also threatened to file lawsuits. What the ordinance entails According to City Attorney Mark Yurick, who spoke with Fox, the new ordinance makes having or helping in an abortion a crime punishable by up to $2,500 in penalties and up to a year in imprisonment. It also prohibits giving money or help to anybody seeking an abortion, even if the abortion is performed outside the city borders. The ordinance is currently in full force across the city. However, there are several exceptions. It protects a pregnant woman who wants to have an abortion from being prosecuted. The law includes exemptions for ectopic pregnancy, miscarriage, or "preserving the health of the unborn child." There are no exceptions in the event of rape or incest. Stay up to date on COVID-19 Get Breaking News Sign up now to get our FREE breaking news coverage delivered right to your inbox. As the next meeting between the company and union representatives for 620 Beaumont workers still hangs in limbo, ExxonMobil has started answering questions about decertifying the bargaining unit. In a Thursday night informational message to employees, the company decided to outline information it said answered questions from currently locked out workers about the process of removing their representation by the United Steelworkers Union and its local, 13-243. The Company continues to receive decertification-related questions from employees and has published some of those questions along with answers, spokesperson Nakisha Burns told the Enterprise in an email. In the bulletin, representatives from the company explained the technical parts of calling an election to decertify and how pay for certain positions would be affected in the event it was passed. According to information from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), which receives petitions to facilitate elections for workplace representation, at least 30% of the 620 workers in the refinery and packaging facility bargaining unit would have to sign the petition to begin the process. A notice of a petition for an election hadnt been publicly released in the NLRB database by Friday afternoon. On Friday morning, representatives from the United Steelworkers Union called the notice a desperate move and questioned the timing of the information. Richard Hoot Landry, a staff representative with USW District 13, said that the conversation about decertification isnt new and had been happening well before the lockout began on May 1, but he believed it was handled poorly. There was an employee in the plant that was trying to collect signatures for decertification efforts and was sharing information with workers, but it eventually grew to a point where it was creating a hostile work environment that was brought up to management. Landry said he couldnt comment on the details of what happened and the union wasnt accusing ExxonMobil of pushing the movement to decertify. An official complaint to the NLRB filed more than a month ago provided more context about what happened before the lockout. In the document filed on April 23, USW lawyers alleged that the company had been providing an employee with materials about decertification, as well as emails of employees and use of its email system and allowed them to keep a lockbox on the companys property for petitions since early March. The complaint also alleged the company had been making changes outside of the agreed contract that impacted safety and rights of workers, like ending the requirement for employees working at heights to have a spotter. It also took exception to workers not being able to make up shifts lost due to Winter Storm Uris impacts across Texas. The company said it couldnt respond to the direct charges in the complaint, but that it has been acting appropriately and within the law throughout the contract negotiation. The Company has at all times acted lawfully and will continue to do so, Burns said in an email. Beyond that, the Company has no further comment on the decertification effort at this time. jacob.dick@beaumontenterprise.com twitter.com/jd_journalism SEATTLE (AP) Five weeks after ex-Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, three Washington state police officers pleaded not guilty Friday in the death of Manuel Ellis, another Black man who pleaded for breath under an officers knee. Tacoma police officers Christopher Burbank, Matthew Collins and Timothy Rankine appeared in orange jumpsuits by video conference from the Pierce County Jail as Superior Court Judge Michael Schwartz set bail at $100,000 for each of them. By mid-afternoon, all three were listed as on the online jail register as having been released on bond. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson charged Burbank and Collins, who are white, with second-degree murder Thursday after witnesses reported that they attacked Ellis without provocation. Timothy Rankine, who is Asian, faces a charge of first-degree manslaughter. He is accused of kneeling on Ellis back and shoulder as he repeatedly told them he couldn't breathe, according to a probable cause statement filed in Pierce County Superior Court. Special assistant attorney general Patty Eakes, representing the state, asked for bail to be set at $1 million, citing the severity of the charges. But defense attorneys argued that their clients had no criminal history, turned themselves in, and posed no risk of flight or danger to the community. Theres nothing to suggest hes ever going to commit a crime he didnt commit this crime, Burbanks attorney, Wayne Fricke, told the judge. If these guys were going to run and he, specifically that would have occurred in the last 14 months. Ellis, 33, died on March 3, 2020 Tasered, handcuffed and hogtied, with his face covered by a spit hood just weeks before George Floyds death triggered a nationwide reckoning on race and policing. The Pierce County medical examiner called Ellis death a homicide because of a lack of oxygen caused by restraint, with an enlarged heart and methamphetamine intoxication as contributing factors. The death made Ellis name synonymous with pleas for justice at protests in the Pacific Northwest. His final words I cant breathe, sir! were captured by a home security camera, as was the retort from one of the officers: Shut the (expletive) up, man. Ellis was not fighting back, the probable cause statement said, citing video recorded by witnesses. Burbank and Collins reported that the encounter began after they saw Ellis trying to get into occupied cars at a red light. Ellis, recently back from church, had walked to a convenience store to get a late-night snack: powdered, raspberry-filled donuts. The officers cast Ellis as the aggressor, saying he punched the window of their cruiser and attacked them as they got out, according to statements from other officers cited in the charging documents. But two witnesses came forward with identical stories, saying the police attacked. An officer in the passenger side of a patrol car slammed his door into Ellis, knocking him down, and started beating him, they said. The witnesses described seeing a casual interaction between the officers and Ellis before Burbank struck Ellis with his car door there was no sudden, random attack by Ellis as the officers described that night to others, the probable cause statement said. In court Friday, Rankine's attorney, Bryan Hershman, sought to distinguish the allegations against his client from those against Burbank and Collins. My client was responding to a priority backup call. What happened prior to his arrival he had no knowledge of, Hershman said. He just knew there was a fracas when he got there. The sheriffs office botched the initial investigation by failing to disclose for three months that one of its deputies had been involved in restraining Ellis; state law requires independent investigations. The Washington State Patrol took over, and the Attorney Generals Office reviewed its evidence and conducted its own additional investigation. Ellis had a history of mental illness and addiction. In September 2019, he was found naked after trying to rob a fast food restaurant. A sheriffs deputy subdued him with a Taser after he refused to remain down on the ground and charged toward law enforcement. His landlords at the sober housing where he was staying told The Seattle Times he had been doing well in recent months after embracing mental health care for his schizophrenia. At a news conference Thursday, Ellis family welcomed the charges but called for more work to overhaul the criminal justice system. The family is seeking $30 million in a lawsuit against the city. The charged officers could face up to life in prison if convicted. But the standard sentencing range is 10 to 18 years for second-degree murder with no prior criminal history and 6.5 to 8.5 years for manslaughter. Collins, 38, and Burbank, 35, had each been an officer for four years by March 2020 after serving eight years in the Army. Rankine, 32, joined the department in 2018 after six years in the Army and two as a security contractor for the U.S. State Department. VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) Belarus's exiled opposition leader vowed Saturday to persist fighting the country's authoritarian regime despite intensifying repression that was thrown into high relief a week ago by the diversion of a commercial airliner and the arrest of a dissident journalist who was aboard. We are here today to express our determination to continue the struggle for freedom. We will not back down, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya said at a rally of about 150 demonstrators in the capital of Lithuania. Along with Tsikhanouskaya, thousands of Belarusians have fled to Lithuania since authorities escalated a harsh crackdown on dissent last year. Many other Belarusians have fled to Ukraine. About 100 of them rallied in Kyiv to denounce President Alexander Lukashenko, whose repression of opposition intensified after massive protests arose following an allegedly manipulated August election that gave him a sixth term in office. A North Korea is being built step by step in Belarus, protester Syarhey Bulba said in the Ukrainian capital. The diversion of the Ryanair flight and the arrest of 26-year-old Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend last Sunday epitomized Lukashenko's harsh rule. Belarusian authorities said the plane was ordered to land in Minsk, accompanied by a fighter jet, because of a bomb threat received while it was en route from Athens to Vilnius. Western countries have denounced the move as a hijacking and demanded freedom for Pratasevich. a founder of a messaging app channel that was widely used to coordinate protests against Lukashenko. He faces a potential prison term of 15 years. The European Union has banned flights from Belarus in response. The long-term impact of that move is not clear, but many fear that it could drive Belarus into closer relations with Russia, which has dismissed criticism of the plane's diversion. Lukashenko met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday and Saturday. From our point of view, the situation requires a thoughtful and constructive examination without hasty conclusions," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists on Saturday. "But this cascade of hasty conclusions, which were made by European capitals and in Brussels, rather suggests that this approach is not based on an attempt to really clarify the circumstances, but is based solely on emotions. Many observers warn that tougher EU sanctions would make Lukashenko easy prey for the Kremlin, which may use his isolation to push for closer integration. Some in the West have even alleged Russia was involved in the flight diversion something Moscow angrily denies and will seek to exploit the fallout. The demonstrations on Saturday also marked the one-year anniversary of the arrest of Tsikhanouskaya's husband, Syarhey Tsikhanousky, a popular blogger and activist who had planned to challenge Lukashenko in last year's election but was arrested after a scuffle at a campaign rally that reportedly injured a police office. Tsikhanouskaya ran against Lukashenko in her husband's place. The protesters in Ukraine beat a portrait of Lukashenko with slippers, an echo of the slogan Smash the cockroach popularized by Tsikhanousky, Last year's protests in Belarus, some of which attracted as many as 200,000 people, arose after the country's Aug. 9 presidential election, in which officials said Lukashenko, who has run the country since 1994, got 80% of the vote. Protests alleging the election results were manipulated immediately broke out, and Tsikhanouskaya fled to Lithuania. The protests continued for months, a significant challenge to Lukashenko. Police cracked down harshly on the protests, arresting more than 30,000 people and beating many of them. Although the protests died down over the winter, authorities have continued wide-ranging repression of opposition. The Vyasna human rights organization in Belarus said a bicyclist who was arrested at a race that officials deemed an unauthorized gathering has been charged with insulting the president for wearing a T-shirt denouncing dictatorship. The charge carries a possible 2-year prison term. In the Belarusian capital, Minsk, several dozen people made a small show of defiance Saturday by marching down a main street carrying opposition banners. -= Yuras Karmanau in Kyiv, Ukraine, and Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this story ___ Follow AP's coverage of Belarus at https://apnews.com/hub/belarus According to Pastor Lucas Miles, Western Christianity is experiencing a "really damaging, antithetical to the Gospel, and certainly heretical" problem. Over the past 36 months, he claims he has seen leftists' ideologies infiltrate churches at an astonishing scale. He said that it began with well-known professing Christian politicians, pastors, and professors, but gradually spread to smaller church leaders as well. "I've seen what The New York Times has called this 'Ascendant Liberal Christianity' invade churches. And of course, they present 'Liberal Christianity' or 'Progressive Christianity' in a positive light, but I think it's actually extremely dangerous to the Body of Christ," he told Christian Post. He clarified, however, that not all progressives are actual leftists or Marxists, such as Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock and Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg who, according to Miles, are on the "far left and have created this hybrid version of Christianity and Marxism." "The Gospel is not something that's legalistic, and it's important that we not fall into fundamentalism either," he argued. "But if we begin to downgrade Scripture to something other than the Word of God, Christianity begins to erode." The Christian Left Miles' latest book, "The Christian Left: How Liberal Thought Has Hijacked the Church" reveals the Leftists' objective in pop culture, history, and politics. The Christian Left, he said, is "really good at hijacking terminology" so that they can "ooze their way into being recognized" as "Christian." One method they achieve this is by promoting "Christian Universalism," which states that all roads lead to Christ. Who are the true Leftists? True leftists, according to Miles, understand that they "cannot win elections unless they divide the church and win some of the religious vote." "The Democratic Party in years past was quite content to be referred to as the 'godless party' and even made efforts to take the word 'God' out of their party platform. Now we're seeing sort of this doubling down on faith by the left, and it's really a partnership with liberal Christian universities, certain mainstream media outlets, and even certain mainstream faith outlets," he explained. Growing Biblical Illiteracy One of the reasons progressive ideology has so readily infiltrated churches throughout the West is a rising biblical illiteracy, contends Miles. According to the State of the Bible 2020 report, the number of Americans reading the Bible on a daily basis plummeted to fewer than one in ten (9 per cent). Another recent research says that only 6% of Americans have a "biblical worldview." When Church Leaders Start Calling Unrighteousness 'Good' The "number of pastors embracing LGBT and transgenderism, downplaying pro-life issues, and presenting an 'acceptable Christianity'" Miles claimed is causing anxiety among Christians. "There's a huge concern for the future of the Church in America," he adds, revealing that he's heard from many people who have grown tired of attending church because it seems like "a commercial for the Democratic Party" or a platform for the promotion of critical race theory. "We cannot call things that are not Christian or rooted in the teachings of Christ or the unity of Christ 'Christian' just because we want to," Miles says adding that "we're not even worshiping the same Christ" when people do not understand Jesus and commandments as clearly presented in the Bible. What the Christian Left Lacks I believe that true love is manifested in speaking truth towards each other," Miles asserts "and that is something the 'Christian Left' is missing." The Christian Left, Miles' latest book, is the No. 1 bestseller on Amazon in three distinct categories. He aspires to "equip and empower the Church" so that it can stand strong on biblical truth and raise "God's truth, justice, and wisdom." Listen to Miles talk about the matter in the player below: CENTREVILLE, Miss. (AP) A new marker has been unveiled on the Mississippi Writers Trail to honor the late author and civil rights activist Anne Moody. Moody, who was Black, was part of an integrated group of Tougaloo College students who staged at sit-in at the segregated Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Jackson in 1963. A violent white mob poured ketchup, mustard and sugar on their heads and beat one of the men. COLUMBIA, Mo. (AP) A Missouri sheriff said Friday that he didnt find credible a report that a man who is now a state lawmaker had sex with a drunken 19-year-old while on duty as a police officer in 2015. Pike County Sheriff Stephen Korte dismissed the claims as sour grapes and said they were brought forward by law enforcement officials with political vendettas against Rep. Chad Perkins, a 42-year-old Republican from Bowling Green. Frankford police Chief Josh Baker in April sent documents about the claims to the Missouri Highway Patrol, the House speaker and other law enforcement agencies. The documents include a report from a former Pike County detective who received copies of purported messages between the 19-year-old and Perkins anonymously in September 2019 that reference an interaction when she was drunk and he was on duty as a Bowling Green police officer. She also asked him for help getting alcohol and the prescription drug Adderall. The victim was an intoxicated young girl, the police officer on duty was a Bowling Green, Missouri police officer, the detective wrote in an August 2020 email to a U.S. Department of Justice employee. Instead of doing his job at the city park he decided to receive a sexual favor instead. Perkins has told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the relationship was consensual. Asked Friday by The Associated Press whether he ever had sex with the woman in question while she was drunk, Perkins said he has been advised by consultants not to answer questions. He said he never received a police call regarding her. Much of it is completely fabricated, Perkins said Friday about the claims. The guy (Baker) is just disgruntled and has some personal vendettas and axes to grind. Perkins told the Post-Dispatch that Baker was upset that Perkins didnt endorse Bakers wife in her bid for Pike County assessor last year. Kortes handling of the allegations is under scrutiny because the detective and Baker, who both previously worked under Korte, claim the sheriff downplayed the case and told law enforcement under him not to pursue it further because Perkins was running for state representative. We cant prove any of this, Chad needs to win this its important and the girl is loose, the detective claimed Korte said during a September 2019 conversation. Korte on Friday said thats a complete and utter lie. The Highway Patrol now is conducting a preliminary inquiry. A spokesman said Republican House Speaker Rob Vescovo immediately referred the allegations to the House Ethics Committee, which investigates claims of misconduct against state representatives. Korte on Friday said he spoke with Perkins after the claims were brought to his attention and that Perkins told him that the two had a consensual short-term relationship but that he never provided her alcohol (and) they never hung out when she was visibly intoxicated. There was no indication that any crime had taken place, Korte said. He said that at some point in the past few years he also spoke with the woman and that she confirmed the two hooked up but that he didnt document the conversations. Korte said that beyond those conversations and flagging the claims to the Bowling Green police chief, he didn't take further steps to investigate. An AP request for comment to the Bowling Green police chief was not immediately returned Friday. Asked about concerns that his handling of the case might erode young womens trust that his department would take seriously claims of sexual assault against law enforcement officers, Korte said he could see someone who didnt know him or the community questioning it. I guess my question is, were you ever in a situation where you said, Hey look at that cute cop? Korte asked. Korte also questioned whether the messages with Perkins were fabricated and questioned the credibility of the detective over what he said was a political feud with Perkins. Baker in a police report he sent to the Highway Patrol also said a gas station clerk called him in July 2020 to report that two girls came into the store showing people messages with Perkins and the 19-year-old indicating that he had sex with her while on duty. Perkins officially opened a campaign account in November 2019 and was elected to the Legislature in November 2020. His law enforcement license was inactive as of Thursday, which means he hasnt been working as a police officer recently and cant return to the job immediately. Just a few months ago, if you said that the coronavirus was unleashed on the world by an accidental leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, you might have been looked at as if you suggested that Elvis was kidnapped by space aliens. The official explanation from the Chinese government was the virus passed from a bat to a person at a wet market in Wuhan, where all kinds of strange plants and animals are sold to people with varying degrees of cleanliness. It seemed plausible, because similar viruses have jumped from critters to people like this. And China, which just landed a rover on Mars, is hardly a Third World backwater. But mostly, while governments and scientists were trying to grapple with a pandemic that was killing millions of people, no one had much time for something like that. It seemed too much like other crazy theories floating around, such as Hillary Clinton having Jeffrey Epstein killed in federal custody. (Uh, she didnt.) We were all trying to figure out when this nightmare would end and when or if life would return to normal. Thats starting to happen now, as the toll finally starts to recede thanks to several impressive vaccines. Researchers also have more information though not necessarily enough to reverse-engineer the virus and speculate about its origins. The unsettling truth is that more of them, along with more spies and diplomats, are gravitating toward the lab-leak theory, as it is being called now. No one has any hard proof, and probably never will. The Chinese government knows if this theory is true or false, but theyre not saying anything now and wont ever. Thats not the way communists operate. But the suspicions are growing. If nothing else, it is hard to ignore the amazing coincidence that the central Chinese city of Wuhan had an advanced laboratory studying these types of viruses but the bug that started infecting thousands of people supposedly had nothing to do with that facility. Its like saying that a forest fire had no connection with a large trash fire nearby that had been burning unattended for days. You dont have to be an expert in that field to be able to put 2 and 2 together. China has strongly denounced the theory, and a joint report released by China and the World Health Organization in March said it was extremely unlikely that the coronavirus leaked from a lab. But the report was widely criticized, and China has been accused of not being fully transparent about operations of the lab. That might be because its a communist government that routinely covers up, or because it has something to hide here. Unless our spies can get hold of a smoking-gun email or document from the Chinese government that confirms the theory, well never know. And of course it is quite possible that the Chinese have been telling the truth about this disaster from the start. But if the coronavirus slipped out of that lab because a worker didnt disinfect his hands or a piece of equipment properly, it will go down in history as the worst accident ever, killing 3 million people worldwide. Its a tragedy of epic proportions, and if it could have been prevented, its even worse. Thomas Taschinger, TTaschinger@BeaumontEnterprise.com, is the editorial page editor of The Beaumont Enterprise. Follow him on Twitter at @PoliticalTom Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. This undated handout photo released by the Indonesian Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla) on May 29, 2021 shows crew members (center) of the Iranian tanker MT Horse boarding their ship off the Riau Islands before leaving Indonesian waters. Indonesia released two oil-tanker captains from China and Iran as well as their vessels, days after a court convicted them for carrying out an unauthorized ship-to-ship petroleum transfer in Indonesian waters four months ago, the coast guard said Saturday. The Panama-flagged MT Freya and the Iranian-flagged MT Horse crude-oil tankers set sail from Indonesian waters with both captains aboard, Adm. Aan Kurni, the commander of Indonesias Maritime Security Agency (Bakamla), told BenarNews. They returned to their home countries on Friday, he said. A Bakamla ship, the KN Pulau Dana-323, escorted the foreign tankers and their captains as they departed Indonesian waters from Batu Ampar port, in Batam Island, Aan said. On Tuesday, a court in Batam handed suspended sentences of one year each to Chinese national Chen Yo Qun, captain of the Freya, and Mehdi Monghasemjahromi, captain of the Horse, after finding them guilty of violating Indonesias navigational rules by conducting an oil transfer at sea without a permit in late January. The Indonesian coast guard seized the ships and their crews after catching them carrying out the operation in waters off West Kalimantan, an Indonesian province on Borneo Island. The two captains will not have to serve time in prison unless they are caught committing a similar offense during the next two years, the court ruled on May 25. The court also ordered Captain Chen to pay a fine of 2 billion rupiah (U.S. $140,000) for dumping oil in territorial waters. In this file photo released by Indonesias coast guard on Jan. 24, 2021, the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya (left) and the Iranian-flagged MT Horse tankers are seen anchored together in Pontianak waters off Indonesian Borneo. [Indonesian Maritime Security Agency via AP] On Jan. 24, Bakamla intercepted the two foreign ships after detecting that the tankers identification systems were turned off near West Kalimantan, and discovered that an illegal oil transfer was under way, authorities said then. In February, Indonesian government officials said that the violations committed by both tankers included transferring oil ship-to-ship, concealing the vessels origin, turning off their automatic identification systems (AIS), and spilling oil. Thirty-six Iranian nationals crewed the Horse, while 25 Chinese nationals crewed the Freya, officials said. The Panama-flagged tanker is owned and managed by a firm listed as the Shanghai Future Ship Management Co., according to information from MarineTraffic.com. We were not involved in the courts decision. What is clear is that the ships were found guilty, and it was the courts decision that allowed them to return home, Aan, the coast guard chief, said. Irans state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) confirmed on Saturday that the MT Horse, which is owned by the National Iranian Tanker Co., was released Friday after 125 days in Indonesian custody. The tanker resumed its mission and will return home once their mission is complete, IRNA said. An Indonesian attorney for Monghasemjahromi, Elindo Saragih, confirmed that his client had departed the country. They left Indonesia yesterday, he said. Iran has been accused in recent years of violating U.S. sanctions on its oil exports by hiding the international movements of its tankers through turning off their automatic identification systems. Bakamla said it had become more vigilant after a Chinese survey ship went through Indonesias exclusive economic in January with its AIS turned off. Malaysian Health Department workers unload the coffin of a person who died of COVID-19 at the Muslim burial ground in Gombak, Selangor state, May 22, 2021. The Malaysian government on Friday announced a near-total nationwide lockdown for two weeks starting on June 1, as new COVID-19 infections set a record for the fourth straight day. Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin has come under increased pressure to reconvene parliament and shut down the country so new COVID-19 cases can be stemmed and elected lawmakers can collectively make decisions on public health. On Friday, Muhyiddin did not say anything about restarting parliament which has been suspended since Januarys emergency declaration but noted that a lockdown had become imperative as hospital capacity was strained nationwide. The decision [to impose a lockdown] was made after taking into account the current COVID-19 situation in Malaysia, with daily cases exceeding 8,000 and more than 70,000 active cases, the Prime Ministers Office said in a statement. The Southeast Asian country reported 8,290 new infections on Friday, taking the cumulative caseload to nearly 500,000. With 61 virus-related deaths, pandemic fatalities rose to 2,552. With the latest rise in daily cases showing a drastically upward trend, hospital capacity across the country to treat COVID-19 patients is becoming limited, Muhyiddin said. Muhyiddin said the lockdown running through June 14 would be called Phase One and would affect economic and social sectors. In Phase Two, movement restrictions would be slightly relaxed, but only if the number of cases go down. In Phase Three, the nation would move back to even fewer restrictions. Immobilized parliament Muhyiddins decision to impose a lockdown came a day after Azalina Othman Said, the parliaments deputy speaker, said it was imperative the house reconvenes because the only way to stem snowballing COVID-19 infections is through collective decision making. Given that COVID-19 is here to stay for years to come, we cannot afford to be in a state of emergency forever, Azalina said in an open letter she posted on social media. Do we remain the only country in the world that has immobilized parliament in times of crisis? Azalina wasnt the only one who appeared upset. A social media campaign with the hashtag #KerajaanGagal, which means failed government, has been trending on Twitter for weeks. Malaysians have posted tweets blaming Muhyiddins unelected government for a rise in COVID-19 infections and blasting him for not imposing a lockdown. The government really are having a blast during COVID times. Declaring emergency to bend the rules for them, suspending parliament to operate and act without accountability with no care in the world knowing the people cant say or do anything about it. #KerajaanGagal, said one tweet. Other critics said that the PMs stated reason for imposing an emergency to contain the pandemic rang false when he said it and has since been proven untrue. Following the criticism, Muhyiddin on Friday said the virus-related death toll and the presence of extremely infective COVID-19 variants had influenced his decision to impose the lockdown. This was in contrast to last week when Muhyiddin said he would not shut down the country like he did in March 2020 because the economy could not bear another hit. Following the governments decision to initiate a full closure of the economic sector and social activities, the Finance Ministry will draw up an assistance package for Malaysians and the economic sectors affected, the statement from the prime ministers office said. Phased movement restrictions In addition to the lockdown, Malaysia expects to increase COVID-19 vaccinations in the coming weeks with fresh supplies expected in June and July, Muhyiddin said. Over the past month or so, some health experts had criticized what they said was the slow pace of vaccine rollouts. So far, only 1.7 million Malaysians have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, according to government data. The country aims to inoculate 80 percent of its 32.7 million population that is, 26 million people. The Federation of Private Medical Practitioners Associations of Malaysia said on Friday that swift inoculations along with movement restrictions were key to contain COVID-19. We need to have more centers for the population to get their vaccine including all government health clinics, hospitals and private health clinics, said Steven K.W. Chow, president of the group. Philippine soldiers look over workers constructing a building, which was a main battleground in 2017 when Islamic State-inspired Muslim militants laid siege to the southern Philippine city of Marawi for five months, May 23, 2021. Nine suspected Filipino militants belonging to the local Islamic State chapter were captured after a brief firefight in the southern Philippines on Saturday but two sub-leaders of the group escaped, the military said. The police, backed by army and navy commandoes, launched a dawn raid in Tuburan, a town in Lanao del Sur province, to catch Daulah Islamiyah-Maute Group (DI-MG) sub-leaders Farahufon Hadji Satar (alias Abu Omar) and Muna Kali (alias Abu Dimam), said Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan Jr., chief of the militarys Western Mindanao Command. While the security forces were approaching the target house to serve the warrant of arrest they were fired upon by the target suspects and their cohorts, sparking the brief firefight, Vinluan told reporters. The targets escaped, he said as he listed the names of the nine suspects who were taken into custody. Vinluan identified them as Camaroden Tindug, 52; Sabdullah Sarip, 36; Oter Macaungun, 35; Asnare Alisood, 20; Alisood Dima, 52; Sowaib Abdullah, 18; Saaduden Adapun, 30; Zaenal Abdulatip, 33; and Aleem Salih Pitiilan, 45. There were no reports of casualties on either side. The government forces recovered five firearms two M-16 rifles, one carbine, two .45-caliber pistols along with an improvised explosive device (IED), communications equipment and a laptop computer, officials said. According to Vinluan, the military was holding the suspects for interrogation and would turn them over to police later. We continue to intensify our operations to hunt and pound the remaining DI-MG members in our area of operation, the regional military chief said. With Saturdays arrests, military forces in the Mindanao region have now caught or killed 18 Daulah Islamiyah suspects since January, Vinluan said. Among the 18, two were killed, while seven surrendered, he said. The Daulah Islamiyah is the Philippine name for Islamic State (IS). The Maute Group was founded by two Filipino brothers by that surname who helped organize and lead a five-month siege of Marawi City by pro-IS fighters from the Philippines and other countries in 2017. Marawi is the capital of Lanao del Sur. During the ransacking of the southern Philippine city, the Mautes acted as lieutenants to overall Philippine IS head and Abu Sayyaf Group militant Isnilon Hapilon, who led the attack on Marawi. The ensuing battle of Marawi between government forces and the pro-IS militants lasted from May 23 to Oct. 23, 2017. It left the city in ruins and an estimated 1,200 people dead. Hapilon, as well as both of the Maute brothers were killed in the fighting, but some militants managed to flee Marawi. They are now scattered in the south and the military say they have been trying to recruit new fighters to their cause. Meanwhile, Rear Adm. Toribio Adaci Jr., commander of naval forces for the Western Mindanao region, confirmed on Saturday that police in the Malaysian state of Sabah in nearby Borneo Island had handed over eight suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf Group to Philippine authorities in deporting them to Tawi-Tawi, a province in the far southern Philippines a day earlier. Sabah police arrested the eight earlier this month when they found them hiding out in a swamp with eight women and 21 children. The women and children remain in the custody of Malaysian immigration authorities. Jeoffrey Maitem contributed to this report from Cotabato City, Philippines. "Please, ignore the CDC guidance," Dr. Marty Makary, a professor, author, and surgeon at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, called out to the public during a recent interview at the "The Vince Coglianese Show." The Liverpool-born doctor is just one of the many credible medical professionals who believe that America has reached herd immunity against COVID-19. In fact, Dr. Makary believes that about 85% of the American population are now immune to COVID-19. According to WND, Dr. Makary believes America has reached herd immunity because about half of the population have gotten "natural immunity due to prior infection that protects them from COVID-19." This, combined with 40.2% of the population or 132 million Americans who have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, means there is an estimated 85% of people who are immune to the deadly virus, the doctor argued. "Live a normal life, unless you are unvaccinated and did not have the infection, in which case you need to be careful," Dr. Makary said. "We've got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them." Top infectious diseases expert and White House adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has been embroiled in various controversies about COVID-19, believes otherwise. He told Business Insider earlier this month, "Vaccines are highly efficacious. They are better than the traditional response you get from natural infection." Dr. Fauci even argued that people who had COVID-19 and survived should also get a shot, saying, "Vaccines, actually, at least with regard to SARS-CoV-2 [COVID-19] can do better than nature. Vaccination in people previously infected significantly boosts the immune response." This, despite previously admitting that COVID-19 vaccines aren't safe for people. But not all doctors seem to agree with the herd immunity metric set by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which Dr. Makary calls the "most reactionary CDC in history." Some doctors are advising that America's "fixation" on herd immunity as a metric or goal has to stop. In fact, getting sick with COVID-19 and surviving it adds a layer of protection to one's immune system. Yale University epidemiologist Dr. Harvey Risch argued that a study conducted in Israel found how those who had tested positive for COVID-19 in the last three months at least had the same level of protection against a new infection, hospitalization, and death as those who were vaccinated against the disease. The antibodies left behind by an infection prove to be great protectors against a new infection. Dr. Risch told WND, "These natural antibodies are proof of past infection. Past infection is extremely strong evidence of immunity." Dr. Makary argues that natural immunity and immunity from vaccinations are "life-long" and may not require any booster shots. He added that there is "more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer." Reinfections of COVID-19 may also occur, but are "rare," in which "symptoms are mild or are asymptomatic." Meanwhile, the White House is confident that 50% of Americans will have been fully vaccinated this week, as per Voice Of America. The Biden administration set a goal of 160 million adults, or 70% of the population, to be vaccinated by July 4 to achieve what CDC calls herd immunity. If you'd like to leave a comment (or a tip or a question) about this story with the editors, please email us We also welcome letters to the editor for publication; you can do that by filling out our letters form and submitting it to the newsroom. In this June 12, 2020 file photo, a doctor holds a bag of blood plasma donated by a COVID-19 survivor at at blood bank in La Paz, Bolivia. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly asserting that the Red Cross says if you recovered from COVID-19 and had a vaccine, you cannot donate blood plasma because the vaccine wipes out natural antibodies. On Friday, The Associated Press reported on stories circulating online incorrectly asserting that the variants of the coronavirus that have been found in the global population were created by COVID-19 vaccines. London-based content creation platform OnlyFans is under scrutiny as an investigative report revealed that minors are actually using it to sell explicit content because of "easy money." Faithwire reported that children were able to use the platform to post explicit content by using fake IDs despite OnlyFans stating that only individuals 18 years older can create accounts in it. An investigative report conducted by BBC showed that minors aged 12 to 17 have been using the platform for a long time to earn money. OnlyFans is a content-creation service established in 2016 by Timothy Stokely where "fans" fund the creator in several modes such as per view, every month, or one-time if the content provided them is pleasing. Content vary from exclusive album releases to fashionable products. However, reports have shown that the platform's 120 million global user-base is now being used for sex trafficking of minors. The BBC report cited a 17-year-old girl from England who earned around $7,000 for posting sexually explicit videos of herself, while a 16-year-old girl, also from England, boasted in Instagram that she is making lots of money in OnlyFans for the "very sexualized, pornographic" images she has been posting there. Faithwire said another content creator revealed she has been using the platform since she was 13 years old and is fully aware that she shouldn't be posting photos of herself there but just wants to be like other kids who easily earn money. "I don't wanna talk about the types of pictures I post on there, and I know it's not appropriate for kids my age to be doing this, but it's an easy way to make money. Some of the girls have thousands of followers on Instagram, and they must be raking it in. I wanna be just like them," the undisclosed girl said. The United Kingdom's leading chief constable for child protection Simon Bailey pointed out that OnlyFans isn't doing its efforts to safeguard children from being exploited and from using their platform. A possible reason to this is that OnlyFans earn 20% of a content creator's earnings. While the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Vice President Staca Shehan revealed that that they have found the platform is linked to cases of missing children. "There were around a dozen children known to be missing being linked with content on OnlyFans (in 2019). Last year, the number of those cases nearly tripled," she raised. The Guardian reported that OnlyFans earned big by 615% as of November 2020 as compared to a year before due to the pandemic. The platform earned 1.7 billion ($2.4 billion) that allowed its director a 2 million ($2.8 million) salary in 2020 and pay dividends of 20m ($28.38m) besides being able to acquire a new business at 23 million ($32.6 million). Most of its earnings it gets from selling pornography online through the content of its members or creators. The Guardian revealed that OnlyFans has 69 million active customers in the United States as of 2020 and that a majority of the business was sold in 2019 to U.S.-based online pornographer Leonid Radvinsky. The Guardian said the owners are doing their best to filter its member base from minors sine they know that it would cause them sanctions from various governments their platform is used in. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Statehouse Reporter Danny Jin is the Eagle's Statehouse reporter. A graduate of Williams College, he previously interned at the Eagle and The Christian Science Monitor. Danny can be reached at djin@berkshireeagle.com or on Twitter at @djinreports. 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. On Thursday (May 27), the Washington state attorney general charged two Tacoma police officers with murder and one with manslaughter in the death of Manuel Ellis, a Black man they were attempting to take into custody. Ellis, 33, died after telling the officers he couldnt breathe as he was being restrained on March 3, 2020. According to NPR, Attorney General Bob Ferguson filed charges of second-degree murder against Christopher Burbank and Matthew Collins, and first-degree manslaughter against Timothy Rankine. A probable cause statement filed in Pierce County Superior Court reveals witnesses claiming Burbank and Collins attacked Ellis without provocation while Rankine is accused of putting pressure on Ellis back as he said that he couldnt breathe. RELATED: Protests Over Police Brutality Are Met With Waves Of Police Brutality Nationwide The Pierce County medical examiner ruled Ellis death a homicide and attributed it to a lack of oxygen from being restrained. NPR reports his final words I cant breathe, sir! were captured by a home security camera. "Ellis was not fighting back," the probable cause statement said. "All three civilian witnesses at the intersection ... state that they never saw Ellis strike at the officers." The encounter began after officers reported seeing Ellis trying to get into occupied cars at a red light. They claim Ellis charged officers as they exited their police cars. The witnesses, who recorded parts of the fatal incident, say Ellis did not provoke them. The officers, however, slammed a patrol car door into Ellis, knocking him down and then jumped on him while beating him. Pierce County Sheriff Ed Troyer said at the time that none of the officers placed a knee on Ellis' neck or head, which was disputed by one of the witness videos. Call ahead to confirm events. Due to COVID-19, many events have been canceled but hosting organizations might not have updated their entries. Email Blast Success! An email has been sent to with a link to confirm list signup. Error! There was an error processing your request. Daily News Headlines & Events Email Blast Would you like to receive a digest of each day's headlines & events from The Daily News by email? Signup today! The Amplifier Headlines & Events Email Blast Would you like to receive a weekly digest of headlines & events from The Amplifier by email? Signup today! Daily News Hosted Events The Daily News is a proud host of community enrichment events. Join our Daily News Events mailing list to learn about the next event we are planning. Sign up now. Manage your lists Offer a personal message of sympathy... You'll find individual Guest Books on the page with each obituary notice. By sharing a fond memory or writing a kind tribute, you will be providing a comforting keepsake to those in mourning. . From a Guest Book, you may log in with your Google, Facebook, Yahoo or AOL account to leave a message. If you have an existing account with this site, you may log in with that. Otherwise, it's simple to create a new one by clicking on the Create "Sign up" button and following the simple steps on the Sign Up page. IMF lauds China's efforts in stepping up vaccination abroad and at home Xinhua) 09:16, May 29, 2021 Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), receives an interview with Xinhua during the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington D.C., the United States, April 13, 2021. (Kim Haughton/IMF/Handout via Xinhua) "Here, China's efforts are commendable - by making vaccine supplies available abroad while keeping up the accelerated pace of vaccination at home," IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said. WASHINGTON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva on Friday lauded China's efforts in stepping up vaccination abroad and at home, stressing that pandemic policy is now the best economic policy. "We must vaccinate at least 40 percent of the population of all countries by end-2021, and at least 60 percent by mid-2022," Georgieva said in opening remarks for the spring meetings of the International Finance Forum (IFF), a non-profit, unofficial international organization headquartered in Beijing. The IMF chief noted that a comprehensive plan, with upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations, and more investment to insure against downside scenarios, will cost around 50 billion dollars globally, adding that a faster vaccination can result in higher global output of 9 trillion dollars between now and 2025. "Here, China's efforts are commendable - by making vaccine supplies available abroad while keeping up the accelerated pace of vaccination at home," said Georgieva. Airport staff members unload the first batch of Chinese Sinovac vaccine raw materials from a plane at the Cairo International Airport in Cairo, Egypt, May 21, 2021.(Xinhua/Sui Xiankai) She noted that the recoveries are diverging dangerously across countries. "A small number of advanced and emerging market economies are powering ahead - while poorer countries are falling behind, mainly due to limited policy space and vaccine availability," she said. "We face high uncertainty until this pandemic truly ends," Georgieva said. "We are all in the same boat." "This interdependence is our strength, and we see a renewed support for multilateral efforts: from vaccines, climate action, to modernizing international corporate taxation," she said. A transition to the new climate economy, Georgieva said, is critical to avoid widespread economic and financial disruption, noting that China's target of net zero carbon emissions by 2060 "shows important leadership and underlines the global consensus." According to IMF research, green infrastructure investment with carbon pricing could boost global gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.7 percent annually over the next 15 years - and create millions of jobs. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Dozens of United States bishops reportedly called for a delay on the debate whether pro-abortion politicians should receive Communion. The Christian Post reported that 60 bishops have sent a unified letter to United States Conference of Catholic Bishops President Archbishop Jose Gomez requesting the delay discussions on Eucharistic worthiness in the scheduled June 16-18 general assembly. The said bishops, which roughly comprise 15% of the USCCB membership of prelates of the Western Catholic Church and eparchs from the Eastern Catholic Church, were led by Archdiocese of Washington Cardinal Wilton Gregory, Archdiocese of Boston Cardinal Sean O'Malley, and Archdiocese of Chicago Cardinal Blase Cupich. The signatories have suggested instead to "gather in person regionally or by province to discuss the Cardinal Ladaria letter before the September Administrative Committee Meeting and before any other conference or committee work continues on this matter." "Having now received the May 7, 2021 letter from His Eminence Cardinal Luis F. Ladaria, SJ, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, we respectfully urge that all Conference wide discussion and committee work on the topic of Eucharistic worthiness and other issues raised by the Holy See be postponed until the full body of bishops is able to meet in person," the bishops stressed in the letter. The Pillar, who first reported on the matter after obtaining a copy of the letter sent to Gomez by the bishops this month, revealed that the final letter sent to Gomez used the letterhead of the Archdiocese of Washington. The Pillar also disclosed that sources said around 68 cardinals, bishops, bishop emeriti, and auxilliary bishops have initially signed the letter but changed their mind, which included New York Archdiocese Cardinal Timothy Dolan. As per the contents of the letter, the group of bishops pointed out the current lack of consensus among them that Ladaria's letter have suggested for consideration before deciding on the national policy for Eucharistic worthiness for Catholic politicians consistently advocating abortion. Ladaria responded to a March letter of Gomez on the matter just this month and pointed on the need to conduct dialogue among bishops and dialogue with the pro-choice Catholic politicians, as well as, to the letter sent by then-Prefect of the Congregation For The Doctrine of Faith Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger who is now Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI to Cardinal Theodore McCarrick and the CDF 2002 Doctrinal note for guidance on the said issue. The Pillar said Ratzinger's letter clearly stipulated that after speaking to the politician and the politician persists then communion should be denied him. Bishops pointed out the pastoral need of doing so, which means it is more for the good of the person's soul to deny him communion than give it to him while he is unworthy to receive the Body and Blood of Christ as St. Paul pointed out in the Bible. San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Joseph Cardileone, who has already released a pastoral letter that denies communion to pro-choice Catholic politicians in his archdiocese, has expressed his grief in a statement last Tuesday that some of his brother bishops are attempting to delay the discussion on Eucharistic worthiness. Cardileone said that the attempted delays are contrary to regular USCCB procedures where such issues are regularly discussed and agreed upon. "I'm deeply grieved by the rising public acrimony among bishops and the adoption of behind-closed-doors maneuvers to interfere with the accepted, normal, agreed-upon procedures of the USCCB. Those who do not want to issue a document on eucharistic coherence should be open to debating the question objectively and fairly with their brother bishops, rather than attempting to derail the process," he added. Meanwhile, the Pillar said Gomez has recently released a memo that indicated the draft document on Eucharist worthiness would still be discussed in the June assembly following the "usual process of consultation, modification, and amendment" before it could be voted on for publication and implementation "at a future Plenary Assembly." Gomez went on to explain that the purpose of the said document is more for catechetical means than as a norm to be used among Catholics in America. IIL has been sanctioned a grant of Rs 60 crore towards enhancing production capabilities In a bid to augment vaccine production, the Government of India has signed an agreement with Hyderabad-based Indian Immunological Limited (IIL), which has a facility under the PSU, National Dairy Development Board. A technical collaboration agreement has been reached between IIL and Bharat Biotech, for IIL to supply the drug substance required for manufacturing Covaxin Vaccine to Bharat Biotech. Dr K Anand Kumar, MD, IIL, said that IIL is planning to start the production of drug substance for Covaxin from next month, June 15, and send out the first batch to Bharat Biotech limited by July. Stating that IIL is expected to produce the drug substance for about 10-15 million doses per month, Dr Anand Kumar said it will be initially two to three million doses and will be scaled up to six to seven million per month later in the year. Dr Kumar shared that they are converting the Karkapatla manufacturing unit of IIL near Hyderabad into a Bio Safety Level -3 (BSL3) facility for the production of the drug substance and is also taking up construction of another block. The IIL is also working on another COVID -19 vaccine and the animal trials are underway currently and is expected to come out by next year for human vaccination. Under Atmanirbhar Bharat 3.0 Mission COVID Suraksha was announced by the Government of India, to accelerate the development and production of Indigenous COVID Vaccines. This is being implemented by the Department of Biotechnology. IIL Hyderabad has been sanctioned a grant of Rs 60 crore towards enhancing production capabilities. MALARIA DENGUE TB PLAY SECOND FIDDLE TO COVID-19 Although India has worked relentlessly towards developing innovative testing solutions for COVID-19 throughout last year, the timely detection of a number of other infectious diseases has been sidelined. In India, the range and burden of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, filariasis, leprosy, HIV infection, typhoid, hepatitis etc., are enormous. In fact, inadequate containment of the vector has resulted in recurrent outbreaks of dengue fever and re-emergence of chikungunya virus disease and typhus fever. If India can develop more than 20 different diagnostic tests or devices in a single year to fight COVID-19, many more such innovations can be brought to effectively detect other infections looming in our country. SingularityU announces Exponential Finance Summit 2021, aimed at growing investment ecosystem in Africa Adam Valkin (Managing Director of General Catalyst) Alex Gladstein (Chief Strategy Officer at the Human Rights Foundation) speaking on financial freedom Wee Liang Chua (Cowin Capital) to address Asia Africa investing and lessons from investments in China Nathana Sharma (Lablebox AI) speaking on scalable start-ups Paula Santana (Founder of Social Glass, government procurement portal and Matternet, drone delivery company) Cathy Hackl (Bestselling Author: The Augmented Workforce), to address funding the metaverse Hilda Liswani (We Bloom) speaking on funding for female entrepreneurs in Africa Sam Rad (Bitcoin Pizza) speaking on decentralised finance Tshilidzi Marwala (University of Johannesburg, 4IR) speaking on AI investing in Africa Anishran Pillay (Risk Insights) speaking on environmental sustainability and governance David Roberts (The world's leading expert on Exponential Leadership and a global thought leader on business disruption) speaking on global impact in leadership Will Weisman (Founder and managing director of Kitty Hawk Ventures, an early stage frontier technology venture capital firm) speaking on scaling 100x Adam Valkin Alex Gladstein David Roberts Lee Wiang Chau Mark Nasila Paula Santana Sam Rad Tshilidzi Marwala SingularityU South Africa has announced its plans to host the SingularityU Exponential Finance Summit online in 2021. Taking place from 28-30 July 2021, the summit aims to build and grow an African investment innovation ecosystem by connecting South Africa and Africas top entrepreneurs and innovative businesses with global venture capitalists, institutional funds, private investors and global thought leaders.SingularityU is known for its prowess in corporate education by showcasing bleeding edge speakers, ground breaking topics and thought provoking insights at its summits and programmes. This year's Exponential Finance online summit responds to President Ramaphosas recent appeal at the South Africa Investment Conference for more investments into the country, by focussing on how to bring investment into South Africa and Africa so as to create an investment ecosystem in which to harness Africas true potential.The diverse range of topics that will be addressed at this years summit will include Leadership and Investment, Exponential Technology, Crypto/Blockchain, Future of Banking, Scaling, ESG, 5G, Cybersecurity, Social Impact, Inclusive Growth, NFTs (nonfungible tokens), Gaming and DEFI (decentralized finance). The goal is to empower delegates with the latest future focussed knowledge and potential solutions to solve the global challenges, such as water, energy, education, financial inclusion, the future of work, food security, governance and prosperity. Furthermore, the 2021 Exponential Finance summit will place specific focus on innovation that will drive scalable investment, digital business acceleration and stimulate deal flow.While the Covid-19 pandemic has placed many industries under strain, it has also triggered new opportunities for innovation and growth, which will be explored at this online summit.A host of local and international speakers will take to the stage to present the latest insights that will help propel exponential growth. The confirmed speakers to date include:The presentation format will include compact talks making way for deeper engagement online with less screen fatigue and a greater variety of topics to be covered. Knowing how important it is to still be able to connect and network, special provision has been made for facilitated matchmaking, online networking, and meeting rooms with dedicated time slots for this. The summit will also feature an online expo area, where delegates can engage with the latest products and developments from exhibitors and engage in business flow.We understand that capital is oxygen for any business and breathes life, sustainability and growth. This is why it is so important for us to develop and build an investment innovation ecosystem in South Africa. In this way we can improve the quality of life for all South Africans through a booming, abundant economy, said Mic Mann, Co-CEO of SingularityU South Africa.As we continue SingularityUs journey to future proof Africa, it is essential to harness the expertise that is available in our network to cultivate an economy that is advantageous for investors. The second annual SingularityU Exponential Finance Summit Online will empower entrepreneurs, business leaders and titans of industry alike with the newest insights regarding ground-breaking technologies and innovations that are available to take the continent forward, added Shayne Mann, Co-CEO of SingularityU South Africa.The SingularityU Exponential Finance Summit 2021 will be hosted in collaboration Deloitte and MTN. To join the SingularityU community of changemakers, or to book, visit https://www.exponentialfinance.co.za/ Ticket prices:Early Bird: R5000 incl vat. Book before 4 June 2021.Early Adopter: R6250 incl vat. Book before 25 June 2021.Standard Ticket:- R8500 incl vat. Book before 22 July 2021.Late Mover Ticket - R10625 incl vat. Registration closes 30 July 2021.For more information, or to request interviews, kindly contact:Jenny GrieselJenny Griesel CommunicationsTel 083 406 3444 | az.oc.leseirgynnej@ynnej Byron "Tanner" Cross, a Christian educator for physical education at Loudoun County, Virginia was placed on administrative leave following his speech saying that "a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa." The Christian teacher decried the Loudoun County Public Schools' (LCPS) new transgender-affirming policies, which required educators and school staff to call students by their preferred pronouns and allow them to engage in school activities according to their gender identity, as opposed to their biological sex, including team sports. "I am speaking out of love for those who are suffering from gender dysphoria," Cross declared during his speech, as reported by FOX News. The Christian teacher then cited a "60 minutes" special on the issue of transgenderism. The special, which aired on Sunday, featured more than 30 young people who transitioned but felt some level of regret during their transition. Cross shared how detransitioners felt they were "led astray" due to the "lack of pushback" and how "easy" it was to go to a doctor and ask to have "physical changes" done to their bodies. Detransitioning has earned more media coverage in the last couple of years, with some detransitioners such as Charlie Evans, Helena Kerschner, and Keira Bell sounding the alarm on transition regret and how medical professionals who provide transitions make it too easy for minors to make huge life-altering, sometimes misguided, decisions at an early age. Cross added that while it was not his "intention to hurt anyone," there were "certain truths that we must face when ready." But transgenderism is often a divisive topic that results in lawsuits and media censorship. "I love all of my students but I will never lie to them regardless of the consequences. I'm a teacher but I serve God first and I will not affirm that a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it's against my religion," Cross declared. "It's lying to a child, it's abuse to a child, and it's sinning against our God." Parents Against Critical Theory or PACT received a copy of an email from Loudoun County's Principal Shawn Lacey in which he announced Cross' "leave" and that he could not provide additional information. LCPS spokesman Wayde Byard however confirmed that "Mr. Cross is on administrative leave with pay." According to The Blaze, Cross referred to LCPS' Policy 8040 that requires school staff to use the name and pronouns that correspond to their gender identity and that the "use of gender-neutral pronouns are appropriate." The policy warned that anyone who does not comply will be "in violation of this policy." The Christian teacher also referred to Policy 8350, which allows transgender students to pursue school activities that are "consistent" with their gender identity. Cross "condemned" these policies, saying it will "damage children" and "defile the holy image of God." It is yet unclear when the Christian teacher will be allowed to return to his work as an educator at LCPS following his rejection of its transgenderism policies. The New York Post reported that Cross' wife, Angela, took to Facebook to air her concerns over her husband's forced administrative leave. She wrote that while they believe American citizens have the right to uphold their beliefs, "No American has the right to impose their beliefs on others." Angela lamented about how her husband was not able to bid a proper goodbye to his pupils and co-teachers before his administrative leave but is determined to "do everything he can" to return to his job. She wrote, "In answer to the many question of what you can do to help, first please stand with us in truth and with love on God's word." (Erratum: misspelled the name of Loudoun County as "Loudon" thrice. Article has been updated to correct wrong spellings. We apologize for any confusion this might have caused.) What's Included With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 814-368-3173 or email nfinnerty@oleantimesherald.com. Sunday's "60 Minutes' on CBS put the spotlight on a topic that is often overlooked in mainstream media: detransitioning. In the special, CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl spoke to former transgender people called "detransitioners" who once transitioned but later reversed the process. Now, these people are blowing the whistle on how patients like themselves are "not being properly evaluated in accordance with professional guidelines before being prescribed hormone treatments or approved for surgery." Stahl, together with the production team led by Alexandra Poolos and Collette Richards spoke to several detransitioners, former transgender people who had issues over transgender health care. Stahl admitted to CBS News that she "spoke to more people on this story than any other story" she has worked on for "60 Minutes." The result was several detransitioners coming out to say how "the medical community needs to make it more difficult to change genders and have surgery," Christian Headlines (CH) reported. Detransitioning is often a taboo subject in this day and age when transitioning and transgenderism is reported on in a positive light by the mainstream media. But on the Internet, a Reddit "detransition" support group has over 19,000 members. Just last month, a campaign took to the streets in Los Angeles to help raise awareness on detransitioning. In "60 Minutes," Stahl spoke to one detransitioner who shared the same sentiments as those people on Reddit. Grace Lidinsky-Smith, who was born female, transitioned to male and then back to female. All while dealing with depression, she learned about transgenderism through the transgender communities on the Internet. She observed how they were "being so happy and excited about doing this wonderful transformative process to really become their true selves" and wondered if she could do the same for herself. According to CH, Grace Lidinsky-Smith shared that she saw a therapist for her depression, but her therapist did not "go into what my gender dysphoria might have been stemming from. We only had a few sessions." When she decided she wanted to transition, Lidinsky-Smith was approved for hormone shots by the clinic, which she said "didn't ask many questions." After four months of hormone treatments, she was approved for a mastectomy. She underwent the surgery, which she regretted almost immediately. She admitted, "I started to have a really disturbing sense that like a part of my body was missing." It was then when Lidinsky-Smith decided to detransition. But the medical community is not entirely to blame, as they too have reservations about transgender therapy and surgery. Stahl spoke to Laura Edwards-Leeper a psychologist at Boston Children's Hospital who believes that doctors may face backlash from the transgender community if they are not open or welcoming to those who want to undergo such transition procedures. "Everyone is very scared to speak up because we're afraid of not being seen as being affirming or being supportive of these young people or doing something to hurt the trans community," Dr. Edwards-Leeper admitted. "But even some of the providers are trans themselves and share these concerns." Lidinsky-Smith argues that the solution is to have "more help from therapists with [those who have] dysphoria." She said, "We want there to be longer-term tracking of health outcomes. Everyone benefits from that." PHILADELPHIA (AP) A Philadelphia man who spent more than 29 years in prison for a murder he says he did not commit was released Friday after agreeing to plead guilty to a lesser charge. A Court of Common Pleas judge vacated Eric Riddick's 1992 first-degree murder conviction after his attorneys argued that evidence had not been shared with the defense during his initial trial. But, rather than face a new trial, Riddick, 51, chose to plead no contest to a third-degree murder charge and time served. Riddick's mother, Christine Riddick, left the courthouse Friday and breathed a deep sigh saying she had waited nearly 30 years for her son to be free. Waiting a few more minutes for him to finish the administrative paperwork to be released would be easy, she said. He's going to be free. It doesn't matter what they say because I know he's innocent, she said, when asked whether they would continue seeking an exoneration. That's on the back burner because I already know the truth. I don't need a piece of paper to tell me. The petition Friday under the Post Conviction Relief Act was at least the third filed by attorneys for Riddick. The first two, because of state laws for how new evidence is defined and deadlines to present a challenge once that new evidence is discovered, were not considered despite judges saying his innocence was likely. It is clear to all that it is likely that an innocent man sits behind bars for no better reason than a poorly conceived statute, Superior Court Judge John T. Bender wrote in response to Riddick's 2016 petition with concurrence from Senior Judge James Fitzgerald III. Riddick was sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of first-degree murder in the November 1991 shooting death of 20-year-old William Catlett. Riddick has maintained he was two blocks away on a porch with some friends when the shooting happened. He was the only person charged in the crime. A witness to the shooting told police four different versions of what he saw, naming Riddick as the shooter in the last statement, according to his previous appeals. That witness recanted his statement, but by the time Riddick learned of the official recantation, he had missed the deadline to file an appeal based on new evidence. Riddicks attorneys tried again to file an appeal in 2016, after hiring an expert to examine the ballistics evidence. The ballistics analysis argued from where Riddick was alleged to have been standing he could not have fired the shots, most of which the coroner said had an upward trajectory. The panel of judges said the evidence was available at trial even if the analysis was new. But Riddick's pleas and the evidence his defenders had gathered was enough to convince a handful of people of his innocence. The case received a lot of news coverage in the last few years after rapper Meek Mill spoke about Riddick's case while pushing for reforms in the criminal justice system, including of the laws that define when someone can appeal a conviction. Mill, who was briefly Riddick's cellmate, also convinced two of the attorneys who helped secure his release to work with Riddick's attorneys. Eric Riddick's story always resonated with me because he was truly victimized by a broken criminal justice system for 30 years. I have an incredible amount of respect for the strength and poise that Eric demonstrated while dealing with this nightmare, and I'm thankful for everyone that played a role in helping him get released, Mill said through a spokesperson Friday. Philadelphia City Councilman David Oh was also moved after sitting down with Riddick's mother. Oh filed a petition with Gov. Tom Wolf's office in late 2018 seeking a pardon. That petition is still in the review process but a hearing is tentatively scheduled for February. Oh attended the hearing Friday and said it was a bittersweet moment that did not entirely feel like justice. I think it's a disgrace that he had to admit to third-degree murder to get out, Oh said. I'm happy he's getting released, but I think the evidence should always rule the case. And the evidence shows he's not guilty. The Philadelphia District Attorney's office sees the case differently. Patricia Cummings, the supervisor of the office's Conviction Integrity Unit, told the court Friday that Riddick had not received a fair trial because of evidence that was not fully disclosed. Cummings also said the prosecutor's office does not believe Riddick killed Catlett, but they believe there is credible evidence showing he was an accomplice in the shooting. Riddick's attorney, Emeka Igwe, disputed the prosecutor's claims. He said he looked forward to the pardon hearing and urged the governor to grant the request. The Manitoba Barrel Association has taken the steps to move the Prestige Barrel Race to Whitewood, Sask., on June 26 from Manitoba due to public health order restrictions. Advertisement Advertise With Us The Manitoba Barrel Association has taken the steps to move the Prestige Barrel Race to Whitewood, Sask., on June 26 from Manitoba due to public health order restrictions. However, no public health orders will be violated, according to acting president of the association, Charmaine Grad. Brandoite Kelsey Wheeler participates in the Carnduff Barrel Race, True Grit in May. Wheeler will be heading to the Prestige Barrel race being held in June in Saskatchewan. (Submitted) In a telephone interview with The Sun, she said that for Saskatchewan residents, under the Rodeo and Racing regulations, the event is above board. "It is a legal event, and will be in phase 2 by that time. Well be within the guidelines of hosting in the province." For Manitobans who want to participate in the event, she said, "They dont have to quarantine when they come into Saskatchewan." "At this time, anyone is able to come into Saskatchewan that were aware of. Its just they have to quarantine when they go back into Manitoba. If youre from Manitoba, you should know the regulations of your province." The organization was questioned by an anonymous source for hosting an event in Saskatchewan while its neighbouring province, Manitoba, is under strict lockdown. In an email from the Saskatchewan government, in response to an inquiry by The Sun they said, "We are not aware of the Whitewood barrel racing event. However, like most provinces, Saskatchewan is discouraging non-essential interprovincial travel at this time. We are optimistic that as vaccination rates increase across Canada that we can look forward to travel and participate in events across the country." In Manitoba, residents should be staying home and avoiding any non-essential travel. As well, anyone entering the province must self-isolate for 14 days according to the current public health orders. Grad did not have updated registration information which indicated how many barrel racers from Manitoba would be participating in the June event, saying there are 135 slots available. Those slots fill quickly and could come from Alberta, North Dakota, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan but are dependent on the health restrictions at the time. As well, more than one slot may be held by one person. "Everyone was well informed ahead of time that the event moved to give them plenty of time to get their slots to someone else if they cant come because of the regulations for whatever reason, because it has moved," Grad said. The slots are $205 each and non-refundable. Theyre purchased months in advance, but with a massive waiting list, participants unable to attend should have no problem renting their spot, she said. "In the end, its up to the individual what they do, because some can go home and quarantine. If theyre from Manitoba, and they would like to enter, they can come to Saskatchewan, but when they go home, their provincial rules will be for them to quarantine for two weeks." Kelsey Wheeler is a professional barrel racer. She said the prizes from those races are her bread and butter. She will be travelling from Brandon to participate in the Prestige Barrel Race, she said. The Prestige Barrel race isnt Wheelers first rodeo. Literally. Shes been training horses since she was 10 years old and went professional at 16. Shes confident the race will run without a hitch. "You follow the rules. The event is outside. I talked to two or three people. Youre on horseback. Youre not close to anybody. You have to make sure the horses dont kick each other. Its just common sense frankly. Everybody did their part, ran (the race) and left," she said of a previous event she participated in Carnduff, Saskatchewan recently. "Ill come home and self-isolate for 14 days," she said. "It is what it is. Im getting my vaccine on June 1." At the Carnduff event, everyone wore masks and there were no spectators, she pointed out. "If Im not going to get fined, Im going," she told The Sun in a telephone interview. On the Prestige Barrel Race Facebook page, there were a few people who said they werent attending due to the public health restrictions in Manitoba. Grad said she has offered to help those people fill their slots but shes confident they wont have a problem. The Prestige Barrel Race is scheduled for June 26 and 27. kkielley@brandonsun.com A harrowing discovery in Kamloops, B.C., is reminiscent of one much closer to home, off Grand Valley Road in Brandon. Advertisement Advertise With Us A harrowing discovery in Kamloops, B.C., is reminiscent of one much closer to home, off Grand Valley Road in Brandon. Yesterday, it was announced the remains of 215 children had been found buried on the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nation Chief Rosanna Casimir described the discovery as an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented." An archivist is working with the Royal BC Museum to see if any records of the deaths can be found. The dead were as young as three. The Brandon Industrial/Indian Residential School carries a similar legacy, which University of Manitoba researcher Katherine Nichols helped uncover key details of several years ago. Drawing from various and sometimes contradictory reports, she discovered the names of at least 70 people, not all of whom pupils, who died at the school during its operations from 1895 to 1972. While some are buried at the former school site on the north side of Grand Valley Road, on property Sioux Valley Dakota Nation currently owns, approximately 50 are believed to have been buried in historic gravesites called the Assiniboine River Burial Ground, which operated from 1895 to 1912. Located south of the former school site and north of the Assiniboine River, the property was owned and operated by the City of Brandon as Curran Park from 1972 to 2001, after which it changed between owners until Mark and Joan Kovatch took over in 2007. Since that time, the new owners have allowed researchers on site, which led to the discovery of the exact locations of graves. Between themselves, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, the City of Brandon and the province, Mark said all parties have come to a mutual decision. "Weve identified where they are and where theyve got to go," he said of the unmarked graves, adding that when he finally gets around to developing the land, those interred on site will be handled in whatever manner their respective First Nations communities determine best. "We have to either leave them where they are and fence them in and leave a shrine around them, or move them up with the other kids in the graveyard up on the hill." Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Coun. Evelyn Pratt said its been a complex matter, namely because the majority of bodies are more than 100 years old and "there wasnt a lot of good record-keeping as far as the residential schools go." "There are so many injustices in the residential school system," she said. "I dont think any other culture or group in Canada would find that acceptable, to just mass bury them and forget them. Theyre not even marked. Its just not right." Sioux Valley Dakota Nation has established a committee to co-ordinate with elders from various home communities and/or relatives of the deceased to determine how to deal with the bodies in as respectful and culturally relevant manner as possible, following all required protocols. Itll help offer closure to some family members, Pratt said, as parents werent always told how their children died. The effort has ground to a bit of a halt during the pandemic, she said, since some elders dont have access to the technology required to join online meetings. Another plan, for a treatment centre at the former school site, has also been put on hold, as Pratt said it will depend on whats done with the burial sites. Mayor Rick Chrest said its of special note that Sioux Va lley Dakota Nation has taken a leadership role in tackling the burial sites, as many of the students who died at the school were not from the community. "We certainly do want to see appropriate and dignified solution worked out, and the positive thing is that all parties, including the now-property owner, have been very co-operative and collaborative in letting people on the property to do investigations and verify things," Chrest said, adding the project deserves to be a priority. "We look forward to picking this back up when COVID gets a little more behind us, and get back to work on this project." According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, more than 4,100 children died of disease or accident while attending a residential school. Sioux Valley Dakota Nation Chief Jennifer Bone did not return a message for comment by Fridays deadline. tclarke@brandonsun.com Twitter: @TylerClarkeMB Residents along much of the NSW coast have been warned to expect strong winds and damaging surf conditions to persist on Sunday, after a low pressure weather system created abnormally high tides and gale force winds on Saturday. Maximum wave heights offshore of the Mid North Coast on Saturday morning peaked above 10 metres, according to Weatherzone. Nine News reported a 10-metre wave was recorded near Coffs Harbour, with a buoy off the coast of Sydney hit by an 8.5-metre wave. Large waves at Maroubra Beach on Saturday. Credit:Steven Siewert Damaging waves of up to four metres were still expected for almost the entire NSW coast on Sunday morning, spanning from Moruya in the south to Byron Bay in the north, according to a 6.30am update from the Bureau of Meteorology. But the winds and severe conditions should gradually ease from Sunday morning as the weather system weakens and moves away to the east. Queensland police will be the first in the country to receive new specialised sexual violence training after the service came under fire for its response to victims, with officers believing outdated rape myths. Gold Coast Centre Against Sexual Violence will lead the program Start By Believing, which will train officers to improve their initial response to victims. Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll last week conceded the language used by an officer investigating a rape complaint was inappropriate and admitted police should be more sensitive. Police Commissioner Katarina Carroll. Credit:Michelle Smith The officer had said a Gold Coast woman did not appear upset or extensively dishevelled after an alleged assault, raising questions over police response to victims and concerns over how many officers believe outdated rape myths. The tenor of peoples conversations on this subject has also changed. Where once they might have laughed about lockdowns as an unfortunate but inevitable novelty of the pandemic, now they are angry that after 15 months and with vaccine protection possible, the pattern just keeps repeating. But the outbreak must also be a wake-up call for governments. Authorities quickly made changes; on Wednesday night Health Minister Greg Hunt announced an extra 130,000 vaccines would be expedited to Victoria. Then on Thursday, the medical advice changed to allow Victorian aged care residents to get their COVID-19 vaccine within two weeks of receiving a flu shot. And in a major development, people inundated the phone lines when Victoria allowed people aged 40 to 49 to get their Pfizer jabs. Queues at Victorian vaccination centres have increased sharply since the outbreak. Credit:Joe Armao These tweaks showed that when push comes to shove, changes can be made. So now the question becomes: what else can we do to reduce the chances of this happening again? And who will do it? Prime Minister Scott Morrisons initial stance seems to be that the settings are right and we just have to wait. Asked on Thursday if he had too hastily abandoned the national cabinets so-called war footing - whereby it was supposed to meet more often to address problems plaguing the vaccine rollout - Morrison said no and that the extra meetings had achieved what was needed. But Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly plainly left the door open to more wholesale changes. He said it was worth considering whether vaccines currently held back for peoples second doses should be redirected toward getting younger Australians their first jabs. Lets see how it goes over the next week in terms of cases and numbers, he said. On Friday, in response to criticism that only 2 per cent of Australians had received both doses, he added: First doses are important. Zero doses give you no protection, one dose gives you very good protection quite quickly. Other countries are revising their rollouts. Singapore last week opted to widen the gap between the two doses of Pfizer and Moderna jabs in order to prioritise getting all adults at least one dose by early August. From June 7, Germany will start offering the vaccine to everyone over 16. Forty per cent of Germans have had at least one jab and 15 per cent are fully vaccinated. Im frustrated and would like to see more urgency: 30-year-old Rose Drover said she would happily receive the AstraZeneca vaccine. Credit:James Brickwood In Australia, one in four vaccine doses available for use have not gotten into arms. The latest health department data shows that out of the 5.5 million doses distributed by May 16, 3.6 million had been used by May 23, leaving nearly 2 million left over, for a utilisation rate of 75 per cent. Governments wont break those figures down into Pfizer versus AstraZeneca. The staggered nature of the vaccine rollout is intended to prioritise those most at risk, but it has created inter-generational conflict in the process. Many younger Australians are furious about baby boomers refusing to take the AstraZeneca vaccine and hanging out for a Pfizer shot. Theyre itching to get vaccinated themselves and many would happily accept the very low risk associated with the AstraZeneca jab. Im frustrated and would like to see more urgency from people around me that are eligible to get the vaccine, says Rose Drover, a 30-year-old from Manly who works in science communication at a university. Most people are walking around like theres not a pandemic raging. Older people have been hit with a barrage of conjecture, misinformation and hyperbole about the vaccine theyre being offered. The blood clot risk from the AstraZeneca jab is extremely low, but it has terrified large numbers of people. The government has sent mixed messages, with Hunt telling people do not wait at the same time as confirming there would be 2 million Pfizer doses a week arriving from the start of October. Nick Coatsworth says under-50s should get the AstraZeneca vaccine if they wish. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen Former deputy chief medical officer Nick Coatsworth said health officials would likely keep a keen eye on the Victorian outbreak and national vaccination uptake over the coming days to determine whether wholesale changes to the rollout were needed. The phased approach was always intended to be flexible and that if the public health situation demands it we [can] absolutely adapt the vaccination program, he said. I think it will be dictated by the numbers in Victoria. Coatsworth had no problem with people under 50 taking the AstraZeneca vaccine if they wished. Theres an issue of patient autonomy there, he said. If a patient has made a judgment that theyre prepared to accept a risk for a known benefit then they should be able to. As he locked down his state on Thursday, Victorias acting premier James Merlino laid the blame squarely on the federal government, saying we would not be here today if alternatives to hotel quarantine had been established and if more people were vaccinated. However, neither Victoria nor NSW are making serious complaints about vaccine supplies. In fact, they say vaccine supply is adequate for the present level of demand. The issue now in Victoria is people coming forward to get the vaccine, the states chief health officer Brett Sutton said during the week. Weve got the supply, weve got the infrastructure to deliver it, we want people to book in, to walk in and to get the vaccine. Victorian deputy health secretary Jeroen Weimar reiterated on Friday: We have a decent supply at this point in time to do at least double the numbers we have been doing every week. NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian made clear she wants to vaccinate people faster than currently planned, but said her state had good certainty about vaccine supplies for the coming six weeks. Victorias Acting Premier, James Merlino, has blamed the federal government for the outbreak. Credit:Justin McManus Theres never enough because we always want to do more [but] theres enough to keep us more than busy in the next six weeks, Berejiklian said on Wednesday. Were really starting to get a rhythm. Im expecting - apologies to anyone who I work with, they know what Im like - but were expecting to see those targets pushed through in the next few weeks. Then there is hotel quarantine. Federal Labor has pummelled the Morrison government for the 17 leaks out of the hotel quarantine system in six months. The Melbourne outbreak, linked to a leak in Adelaide several weeks prior, has again underlined the seriousness of the problem. The complacency over hotel quarantine is scientifically and economically unsustainable, tweeted ABC coronavirus commentator Norman Swan. One leak and a state might be shut down. Morrison has made it fairly clear his government will support Victorias proposal for an alternative quarantine facility, now likely to be near Avalon Airport. This is in addition to hotel quarantine, not a replacement, and would help the state increase its intake of returning travellers from the 1310 a week it accepts presently. On Friday afternoon, Hunt was optimistic about the Victorian proposal becoming blueprint for new quarantine facilities nationally, though he noted it was an issue for the national cabinet. Loading The Victorian proposal is far and away the most advanced and we think an excellent model that could be considered elsewhere in the country, he said. The problem is inherently linked to the vaccination rollout because of the time frame. Built-for-purpose quarantine facilities will take a long time to establish - is it worth it this far into the pandemic? That depends on how much longer we will need a quarantine system for returning travellers and others. And that depends on how quickly the rest of the country gets vaccinated. As Coatsworth observes, while hotel quarantine and the vaccination program have become targets for buck-passing between the Commonwealth and the states, in reality all these projects are joint efforts. It always has to be a co-operative relationship, he says. It doesnt matter what the Constitution says. Coatsworths main message is that the blame-shifting theatrics amid every outbreak need to end. Its neither helpful to over-egg the criticism of the vaccination campaign or hotel quarantine, nor helpful to criticise Victorias contact tracing system. All three of those things are immeasurably better than when they started and none of them are perfect, he says. It probably erodes the trust of the community when we see people from both sides of politics saying this is happening because this isnt good enough. Maybe leave that discussion for when this [outbreak] is sorted. Victorias business groups have backed Treasurer Tim Pallas call for the federal government to stump up wage subsidies for employees impacted by the states seven-day lockdown. Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra and Ai Group Victorian head Tim Piper have demanded the Commonwealth to work with the state government to support workers who are enduring their first lockdown without JobKeeper. Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive Paul Guerra. Credit:Penny Stephens [The state governments announcement] doesnt cover wages - itll cover in some cases some of the rent and in some cases itll cover some of the perishables, Mr Guerra said. Its better than nothing but its certainly not going to cover all the costs that a business has, and its certainly not going to replace the revenue, which is why we want to see the federal government come together with the state government to provide support for workers. Its not the workers, its not the businesses fault that we find ourselves back in lockdown. Were at the end of the queue here, and we want to make sure that everybody gets through There are opportunities up north, and if [workers] leave Victoria, our ability to bounce back is going to be highly compromised. Mr Pallas and acting Premier James Merlino savaged the Commonwealth on Sunday morning for refusing to provide wage subsidies to workers - especially casual employees - who face at least a week of uncertainty because of the Victorian governments decision to plunge the state into a lockdown. Mr Piper urged the state government to reflect on its decision to impose higher taxes for some businesses in this years budget in the wake of the latest coronavirus outbreak and the impact of the lockdown. Michelle ONeil, president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions, welcomed the support for business and urged the Morrison government to revive its JobKeeper scheme which she said should be expanded to support all affected workers. Workers in Victoria, more than half a million of them in casual and insecure work, are facing a week of not knowing whether theyve got a job and whether theyve got an income, Ms ONeil said. We welcome the fact that the Victorian Government has put in place a grant program for businesses that are doing it tough, but that does not replace a wage subsidy. The federal government needs to step up. Ms ONeil, who wanted to see the JobSeeker payment should also be bolstered to support those forced out of work, said the government should never have ended JobKeeper before the population was widely vaccinated and quarantine leaks occurred. The top reason given for vaccine hesitancy was concern about side effects, amid the discovery that rare blood clots had been linked to the AstraZeneca vaccine, and lack of knowledge about the vaccine. A significant percentage also said that with no international travel there was no rush. On May 19, Mr Morrison told 2GBs Ray Hadley he was not overly troubled by the survey findings, saying theres plenty of time to have the chat with the others who are a bit hesitant. And Mr Hunt sparked confusion when he said that while the government encouraged everyone over 50 to be vaccinated as early as possible, they could also wait for Pfizer or Moderna vaccines later in the year. There has been an incredible lot of very unhelpful and irresponsible messaging from the government on this issue, said Dr Stephen Duckett, the director of the health program at the Grattan Institute. The federal government has spent $40 million on a vaccine advertising campaign on television, radio and newspapers, which Mr Hunt said was focused on people aged over 50. But Dr Duckett believes the government needs to run a more nuanced campaign focused on addressing the concerns of different sections of the population, such as young women and migrant groups, and emphasising how low the risk is of developing side effects. Loading Its the governments fault for not actually bringing the population along in the way they should have and also partly the medias fault that they over-hype some of the clot risks, he said. Mr Hunts spokesperson disputed there had been hesitancy: As increased supply has become available and new age groups have been eligible for vaccinations we have seen a significant increase in uptake from people, contrary to those claiming there has been hesitancy. The spokesperson said the advertising would continue to ramp up. Work on the next campaign is under way and will take a different approach as it addresses a different and younger demographic. The vaccine rollout has also been bedevilled by supply shortages. In December a deal to buy more than 50 million doses of University of Queenslands vaccine was abandoned after several trial participants returned false positive HIV test results. Loading It was clearly a huge blow to our plans when the Queensland vaccine fell down; that was a huge component of our vaccine rollout plan, said La Trobe University epidemiologist Associate Professor Hassan Vally. And in March the European Commission blocked the shipment of 250,000 doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine to Australia. It was at a critical time for us, just as we were getting going, Dr Vally said. Dr Vally also said the decision to preference Pfizer for people under 50, which had been intended to reassure people the government was acting with an abundance of caution, had had the opposite effect, creating doubt about the AstraZeneca vaccine. The over 50s are wondering why are they getting a vaccine thats different to the under 50s and questioning whether theyre being put at risk to a greater degree. There have also been distribution problems with some GPs struggling to access sufficient vaccines. The big challenge with all of this is the fact that the federal government is usually not the level of government that rolls out vaccines, Dr Vally said. Were not taking advantage of the way things usually work with the states leading the delivery of the vaccine and thats created a lot of problems. Professor Mike Toole, an epidemiologist from the Burnet Institute, blames the slow rollout on uncertain supply, vaccine hesitancy and just plain complacency. People think: There are no cases, why should I bother?, Professor Toole said. But as soon as theres an outbreak, like in Melbourne, that changes. Loading There is nothing like a crisis to focus the mind. On Wednesday the federal government released 130,000 extra vaccines. Mr Hunt said 29 aged care facilities which at the time had not received a single vaccine, months after the governments target would be prioritised. Victoria announced people aged 40-49 would be eligible for the Pfizer vaccine. On Friday despite an overwhelmed booking service the state broke its record for the second day in a row for the most vaccine doses administered in a day. Two Queensland cabinet ministers have told Brisbane City Council to stop playing politics and investigate building a green bridge east of the Story Bridge. And the people of Bulimba agree. Bulimba newsagent Donna Bradshaw says residents would prefer to walk over a green bridge than use Shafston Avenue or Wynnum Road to get into the city. Credit:Tony Moore Summarising the views of the suburbs businesses, Oxford Street newsagent Donna Bradshaw said a pedestrian bridge from Bulimba to Teneriffe or Newstead was a fabulous idea. I think people would love it ... anything to get more people into the area, she said. Washington: The US has asked multilateral development banks to suspend funding to Ethiopia as fresh reports of human rights abuses surface from the war-torn Tigray region. The unending conflict in Tigray, a region that borders with Eritrea, has resulted in a famine-like situation, Robert Godec, the acting assistant secretary for the State Departments Bureau of African Affairs told a US Senate panel. The US imposed wide-ranging economic sanctions against Africa second-most populous nation on May 24. There are confirmed reports of Tigrayans dying from malnutrition and starvation, Godec said. As a result, the US was withholding support for new lending from multilateral development banks that does not address basic human needs and are asking our allies to do likewise. Protesters chant Stop the genocide in Tigray! during a demonstration against Ethiopias war against Tigray regional forces near the Chinese Embassy in Berlin, Germany, earlier this month. Credit:Getty Images The latest move will result in the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund withholding funding to a nation led by Nobel laureate Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who wooed foreign investors by pledging to open up the large African economy. Ethiopia received $US1 billion ($1.3 billion) of American aid last year. The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) on Thursday decided to create a commission of inquiry with a wide-ranging reach to investigate Israel for its "war crimes" during the 11-day conflict resulting from the Hamas attacks launched by the Palestininan terrorist group. Israel decried the declaration of the permanent fact-finding commission, the first of its kind against a U.N. member state. "Today's shameful decision is yet another example of the UN Human Rights Council's blatant anti-Israel obsession," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement, as reported by CBN News. "Once again, an immoral automatic majority at the Council whitewashes a genocidal terrorist organization that deliberately targets Israeli civilians while turning Gaza's civilians into human shields." The Israeli Prime Minister condemned the UNHRC for depicting Israel as a "guilty party" when in fact it had been "a democracy acting legitimately to protect its citizens from thousands of indiscriminate rocket attacks." The Anadolu Agency reported that 254 people, including 39 women and 66 children were "killed in offensive by Israeli military on Gaza Strip" during the 11-day conflict. It's important to note that the Hamas terror group embedded itself in civilian areas, and has used innocent people as human shields. It's also worth knowing that Hamas had nearly 700 rocket misfires, harming and even killing people in Gaza. This is the third time in seven years that the UNHRC in Geneva has established a commission of inquiry, but this commission is unique in the sense that it is "ongoing," meaning that the panel will pursue an indefinite inquiry, according to the New York Times. This "degree of permanence" is very much like the same commissions of inquiry assigned to Syria and Myanmar. Finally, the commission of inquiry assigned to Israel is tasked to analyze "all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict, including systematic discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity." Prime Minister Netanyahu called it a "travesty [that] makes a mockery of international law and encourages terrorists worldwide." The Hamas militant group was recognized by the U.S. as a designated foreign terrorist organization in 1997. During this year's conflict, they launched more than 4,300 rockets towards Israel, 680 of which fell short and landed inside the Gaza Strip and hurt Palestinians, a fact that mainstream media have not reported on. The UNHRC's "guilty party" approach to Israel appears to paint the Jewish nation at fault for "war crimes" despite the resolution failing to mention Israel or Hamas. Israel's Foreign Ministry decried the UN's "anti-Israel obsession," saying that the resolution failed to recognize how the Jewish nation acted "with the highest ethical standards" and that the Hamas militant group had in fact committed a "double war crime" by launching airstrikes at Israeli civilians from right inside Gaza's civilian population. "Any resolution that fails to condemn the firing of over 4300 rockets by a terror organization at Israeli civilians, or even to mention the terror organization Hamas, is nothing more than a moral failure and a stain on the international community and the U.N.," the Israeli Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin reiterated their commitment to the "safety and security" of their citizens. London: Australians vaccinated overseas are urging the government to clarify if their COVID vaccination status will be recognised, after the head of Home Affairs suggested only citizens vaccinated in Australia would one day be allowed to quarantine at home. Australias borders have been shut since the start of the coronavirus pandemic in March last year and are set to remain so until at least mid next year. Passengers reentering are currently sent to 14-day hotel quarantine at a personal cost of $3000. Constraints on the number of people allowed in quarantine have led to a backlog of tens of thousands of citizens who cannot return home. Home Affairs Secretary Mike Pezzullo flagged Australians vaccinated in Australia will be able to skip hotel quarantine in future. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen This week the Secretary of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo said the current border arrangements were unsustainable. He told Parliament work was under way on a Digital Passenger Declaration (DPD) that would store a persons health and vaccination status. Bryan, OH (43506) Today A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%. German Chancellor has called for ramping up Covid-19 vaccine production across the world while addressing the Global Solutions Summit 2021. To overcome the Covid-19 crisis, "we need to provide access to sufficient vaccines, medicines and tests for all, including the poorest countries", Xinhua news agency quoted Merkel as saying at the Summit on Friday. The Chancellor called on G20 countries to support the international campaign ACT-Accelerator "to the best" of their abilities by accelerating the development of tools against Covid-19 and making them available to all countries in a fair manner. There was a lack of funds not only for vaccine distribution but also for production expansion, according to Merkel. As one of the ACT Accelerator's largest donors, Germany would support the global initiative with 2.2 billion euros ($2.7 billion), she noted. "The world is a community of fate," said Merkel, adding that there's "no lack of major challenges". --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) reported 5,436 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, informed the state government. Now, the total case count in the state shot up to 3,98,010. The northeastern state also saw 5,760 recoveries and 80 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the overall tallies to 3,40,178 and 3,168 respectively. Current positivity rate in the state is 4.78 per cent. At present, has as many as 53,317 active cases. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on Friday informed that as many as 1,86,364 fresh COVID-19 cases have been reported in India in the last 24 hours, which is the lowest daily new cases reported in the last 44 days. The daily positivity rate in the country has also gone down to 9 per cent, the Union Health Ministry said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Brazilian government will expand vaccination against Covid-19 to the general population in the age group from 18 to 59 years old, as well as to education workers, the Ministry of Health announced. In a statement on Friday, the Ministry said that new orientation is possible because states and municipalities have reported decreasing demand in priority groups, which include people with comorbidities from 18 to 59 years of age and people over 60, reports Xinhua news agency. Speaking at a press conference here, the Ministry's Executive Secretary Rodrigo Cruz explained that the vaccination schedule will be the responsibility of each Brazilian state according to its capacity. The recommendations were agreed upon by the Tripartite Interinstitutional Commission at a meeting on Thursday with representatives from the Health Ministry, states and municipalities. The aim is to distribute vaccine doses in a staggered manner, starting with the education sector, in preparation for resuming in-person classes. To date, 43.7 million Brazilians have received their first vaccine dose against Covid, and 21.4 million their second dose, out of a population of about 214 million people. With 16,274,695 infections and 454,429 fatalities, currently accounts for the world's third largest caseload and the second highest death toll. --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) chief Sukhbir Singh Badal on Saturday accused the Centre of dragging its feet on granting US pharma giants and Moderna necessary permissions to export their COVID-19 vaccines to India and said the process should be expedited. He also asked Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh to directly place orders with companies that are supplying vaccines instead of waiting to get doses from the Centre. Badal was speaking at the inauguration of a free vaccination 'seva', an initiative by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC), at the Golden Temple here. The 'seva' will be extended to Takht Sri Damdama Sahib in Bathinda and Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib in Anandpur Sahib in the coming days, he said. The SAD chief accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi and CM Singh of having failed to fulfil their duty to provide vaccines to people. Badal expressed surprise over the alleged delay by the Centre in granting permission to companies like and Moderna to export their vaccines to India and said all necessary approvals should be fast-tracked. Pfizer, which is ready to offer 5 crore doses to India between July and October this year and has sought certain relaxations including indemnification, has held a series of interactions with the Indian government authorities recently including one this week, during which it shared the most recent data points regarding efficacy trials and approvals for its vaccine in various countries and by the World Health Organisation (WHO). The government is examining Pfizer's request for indemnity and will take a decision in the larger interest of people and on merit, NITI Aayog Member (Health) V K Paul had said on Thursday. Badal also urged the Centre to waive the goods and services tax (GST) on Covid medicines, oxygen concentrators, ventilators and vaccines. "I don't understand why the Centre wants to earn money by taxing life-saving medicines and machines and making them more expensive for the people. Even the SGPC had to pay GST on purchase of vaccines. This must be waived immediately," he said. Badal asked Singh to place orders directly with companies that are supplying vaccines instead of waiting for the meagre supply from the Centre. He said the Punjab government should follow the example of the Mumbai municipal corporation, which used Rs 600 crore to purchase vaccines, and demanded that jabs worth Rs 1,000 crore be purchased immediately. States across the country have reported a shortage of Covid vaccine doses and some have been forced to halt the vaccination drive for certain age groups. Many states have also issued global tenders to procure vaccines. Punjab's nodal officer for vaccination Vikas Garg had said on May 23 that the state has approached all vaccine manufacturers for direct purchase of Covid jabs including Sputnik V, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson. While Moderna and have refused to supply vaccines directly to the Punjab government, saying they deal only with the Centre, other firms haven't yet responded, according to Garg. Badal decried the Congress-led Punjab government for not giving any relief to the people in this time of crisis and allegedly befooling them by claiming that it had affected a 20 per cent reduction in power tariff when nothing of this sort had been done. If the Congress government is really serious about providing relief to the common man and industry, it should have waived electricity bills for a six-month period. (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 Bangladesh government has approved the purchase of 15 million Covid-19 vaccine doses from China. Additional Secretary of the Cabinet Division, Shahida Akhter told mediapersons on Thursday had that each dose of China's Sinopharm vaccine will be priced at USD 10. From June onwards, shipments will arrive in Bangladesh in three phases, with five million doses in each consignment, bdnews24 reported. This comes after a government cabinet committee approved the USD 150 million government-to-government vaccine deal at a meeting in the capital city Dhaka. According to bdnews24, that means no private companies in Bangladesh will be part of the deal. Bangladesh had started its inoculation drive against with the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine procured from India at USD 5 per dose. As things stand, the Chinese vaccine is set to cost Bangladesh double the Oxford-AstraZeneca shot from the Serum India of India. In the last 24 hours till Saturday morning, Bangladesh recorded another 38 deaths and 1,043 COVID-19 cases, Dhaka Tribune reported. The total number of infections in the country rises to 797,386 and the death toll stands at 12,549. (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 Delhi court on Saturday granted bail to businessman Navneet Kalra in a case pertaining to the seizure of oxygen concentrators from his upscale restaurants, including Khan Chacha, here. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg has directed the accused not to contact the customers to whom he had sold the concentrators, not to tamper with evidence or influence the witnesses, and join the investigation as and when called by the police. During a recent raid, 524 oxygen concentrators, which are a crucial medical equipment used for Covid-19 patients, were recovered from Khan Chacha, Town Hall, and Nege & Ju restaurants owned by Kalra. The businessman, accused of black-marketing the critical medical device, was nabbed from Gurugram on May 16 and formally arrested the next day. He had been on the run ever since the police raided his restaurants and seized the medical devices. A court had later sent him to judicial custody till June 3. During the course of hearing on the bail plea, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, representing the Delhi Police, told the court that the businessman committed a white-collar crime and made profit by selling medical devices at exorbitant price to those on death beds. Kalra's lawyers, senior advocate Vikas Pahwa and advocate Vineet Malhotra, opposed the contentions of the police and said that their client is being made a scapegoat and had no criminal intent to cheat people as he sold the oxygen concentrators to merely help family and friends. The police claimed that the concentrators were imported from China and were being sold at an exorbitant price of Rs 50,000 to 70,000 a piece as against its cost of Rs 16,000 to Rs 22,000. (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) India on Saturday reported a net reduction of 114,428 in active cases to take its count to 2,228,724. Indias share of global active cases now stands at 15.40 per cent (one in 6). The country is second among the most affected countries by active cases. On Saturday, it added 173,790 cases to take its total caseload to 27,729,247. And, with 3,617 new fatalities, its Covid-19 reached 322,512, or 1.16 per cent of total confirmed infections. Dear Reader, Business Standard has always strived hard to provide up-to-date information and commentary on developments that are of interest to you and have wider political and economic implications for the country and the world. Your encouragement and constant feedback on how to improve our offering have only made our resolve and commitment to these ideals stronger. Even during these difficult times arising out of Covid-19, we continue to remain committed to keeping you informed and updated with credible news, authoritative views and incisive commentary on topical issues of relevance. We, however, have a request. As we battle the economic impact of the pandemic, we need your support even more, so that we can continue to offer you more quality content. Our subscription model has seen an encouraging response from many of you, who have subscribed to our online content. More subscription to our online content can only help us achieve the goals of offering you even better and more relevant content. We believe in free, fair and credible journalism. Your support through more subscriptions can help us practise the journalism to which we are committed. Support quality journalism and subscribe to Business Standard. Digital Editor The government has extended the COVID curfew for another week till 5 am of June 7 while allowing operations of manufacturing/production units within closed premises. "The DDMA extended the curfew on the movement of individuals except for essential activities in till 5 am on June 7 (Monday) or further orders whichever is earlier. Operations of manufacturing/production units within closed premises in approved industrial areas and construction activities within their worksites shall be allowed outside the containment zones during the curfew period," reads the Disaster Management Authority (DDMA) order. On Friday, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had announced that the national capital will begin to unlock from Monday and said that construction activities and factories will be reopened from May 31."In the meeting chaired by the Lieutenant Governor with Delhi Disaster Management Authority over unlocking process, it has been decided that construction activities and factories will be reopened from Monday keeping the daily wage workers in mind," he said.Kejriwal urged people to follow the COVID-appropriate behaviour and stated that Delhi may have to opt for if there is an increase in the COVID cases again. The national capital has been under a since April 19 in view of a surge in COVID-19 cases in the second wave of the pandemic. Delhi recorded 956 fresh COVID cases and 122 deaths on Saturday, according to the health department of the union territory. The daily new case numbers on Saturday have been the lowest over the last two months. (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.) Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia on Saturday said the city government will receive 5.5 lakh COVID-19 jabs for beneficiaries in the 18-44 age group from the Centre in June. Addressing a press conference here, Sisodia accused the central government of "sitting over" the vaccine distribution system. The deputy chief minister also alleged "mismanagement" by the central government and sought to know how private hospitals were getting vaccines while states were being told that there are no stocks. As against a requirement of 1.84 crore doses to vaccinate 92 lakh people in the 18-44 age group in Delhi, Centre provided 4.5 lakh doses in April and 3.67 lakh doses in May, he said. "Now the Centre has informed us that a limited stock of 5.5 lakh doses will be provided, that too after June 10," Sisodia said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15. Pfizer-BioNTech becomes the first vaccine to be authorised for adolescents in the 27 member states of the (EU), reports Xinhua news agency. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Marco Cavaleri, EMA's vaccine strategy manager, said that the medicines' regulator had received the necessary data to authorise the vaccine for younger teens. The data shows that it is highly effective against Covid-19. He pointed out that the decision needs to be approved by the European Commission and individual national regulators. Regulators in Canada and the US had already recommended its use for teenagers. The EMA's recommendation was based on a study in more than 2,200 adolescents in the US showing that the vaccine was safe and effective. The trial showed that the immune response in this group was comparable to that in the 16-25 age group. The study shows that the vaccine was 100 per cent effective at preventing Covid, the EMA said in a statement. The most common side effects in children aged 12 to 15 are similar to those in people aged 16 and above. They include pain, tiredness, headache, muscle and joint pain, chills and fever. --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Manufacturing Covid-19 vaccines takes between 40 days and 120 days, and thus from lab to jab, theres a lag of up to four months, according to industry insiders and experts. Its at least 50 days from the day a batch production starts to the time it is available at a vaccination centre, even for those vaccines which take 30 days to manufacture, said experts. This is because after the manufacturer releases doses from its plants following testing and inspection, these go to Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL), Kasauli, for inspection before their release into the market. ... Police arrested an active categorized terrorist of proscribed terror outfit Hizb-ul- Mujahideen (HM) from Frisal area of district on Friday. According to an official statement of Police, during the intervening night of May 27 and May 28, acting on specific information about the presence of terrorists in Faisal area of Kulgam, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by Police, 1RR (Rashtriya Rifles) and Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), and arrested Zakir Bhat, an active categorized terrorist of HM. "Investigations reveal that Zakir Bhat is basically a resident of district and living in Shopian for last 8 years. Incriminating materials including arms and ammunition have also been recovered from his possession. In this regard, a case has been registered and further investigation is in progress," police said. Meanwhile, on Friday at about 3.00 pm, acting on a specific input regarding presence of terrorists in orchards of village Ganapora area of Shopian, a joint cordon and search operation was launched by Police, 44RR, and 14Bn CRPF in the said area. Police said that during the search operation, as the presence of terrorists got ascertained they were given repeated opportunities to surrender, however they fired indiscriminately upon the joint search party which was retaliated leading to an encounter. "In the ensuing encounter, one terrorist was killed and his body was retrieved from the site of encounter. He has been identified as Aitmad Ahmad Dar resident of Awend Shopian linked with proscribed terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). As per police records, the killed terrorist was active since March 26 and was involved in several terror crime cases," informed the police. Police further said that arms and ammunition including 01 AK-56 rifle and other incriminating materials were recovered from the encounter site. "All the recovered materials have been taken into case records for further investigation and to probe his complicity in other terror crimes. In this connection, police have registered a case under relevant sections of law and an investigation has been initiated. People are requested to cooperate with police till the area is completely sanitized and cleared off of all the explosive materials, if any," it added. IGP Kashmir congratulates Police and security forces for conducting a successful operation in a professional manner without any collateral damage. Moreover, on Friday evening at about 7:30 pm, a joint party of Police and security forces at Usmanabad Warpora area of Sopore while laying cordon of a suspected house from where terrorists fired upon our party and escaped from the house during a brief exchange of fire. Police said that reinforcements came and nearby orchard has been cordoned off and a search is going on. Further details are awaited. (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.) External Affairs Minister and US Secretary of State during their bilateral meeting on Friday (local time) discussed regional and global cooperation between India and United States, including joint efforts to address a range of regional issues, such as China, Burma and Afghanistan, a US spokesperson has said. "The United States and India have strengthened our cooperation in the region. Over the course of the past year, we have worked together to address a range of regional issues such as China, Burma and Afghanistan," said Dean Thompson, the Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs, US. He further said that both the countries have also shared their concerns over China's problematic activities. "On China, we shared concerns about Southern China's problematic activities in the region, and it becomes increasingly like-minded on these issues. On the coup in Burma, the US and India have called for an end to the violence, urged the release of political prisoners, and called for the restoration of democracy," Thompson said in his briefing to reporters. In a tweet after his meeting with Jaishankar, Blinken said: "Productive discussion today with @DrSJaishankar on regional security and economic priorities to include U.S. COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation, and our support for Afghanistan. As friends, we will work together to address these areas of shared concern." External Affairs Minister Jaishankar, who is on an official trip to the US on Friday (local time) held meetings with his counterpart and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin. Meanwhile, Thompson in his briefing to reporters on the meeting between Jaishankar and Blinken also said "On Afghanistan, we have ve long shared the view that a peaceful, stable Afghanistan is in our mutual interest, We need to continue working together and with the region to press for political settlement to end the conflict there." The state department official said "We're also pleased with the scope of our Quad cooperation, building on historic leader-level summit - the historic leader-level summit earlier this year." Thompson also informed that the US has redirected critical supplies to India that will help the country manufacture 20 million additional doses of AstraZeneca's Covishield. "We have redirected one of our own orders of critical vaccine manufacturing supplies, which will allow India to make over 20 million additional doses of AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine," he said. Thompson also said: "In total, the US government, state governments, US companies, and private citizens have provided over 500 million US Dollars in COVID-19 relief supplies to India." He further went on to say that Jaishankar's visit showcased the breadth and depth of the relationship with India, which the US administration views as one of the most important partnerships in the region and the world. "Today's meeting between Secretary Blinken and Minister Jaishankar demonstrates our deep commitment to the partnership and to strengthening it in the years to come," he said. The latest COVID-19 crisis, Thompson said, has only strengthened the commitment to working together on Covid response, which will be essential to helping the world recover from the pandemic. Expanding to the production of safe and effective Covid-19 vaccines is a top priority for both the United States and India, he said. "Together with our Quad partners Japan and Australia, we are continuing to identify options for cooperation in the areas of vaccine manufacturing capacity in India, as well as Covid19 vaccine administration and delivery across the Indo-Pacific region," he said. He added that the meeting also had a conversation on global vaccine distribution and addressing worldwide shortages of critical inputs for vaccine production. (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 32-year-old Indian national who arrived here on April 25 from Nepal could not have been infected with COVID-19 at the Changi airport as there is no phylogenetic link between her case and those infected in the airport's Terminal 3 cluster, officials said. Singapore's health ministry said on Friday that its investigations have confirmed that there is no phylogenetic link between the Sonal Wadde case and those in the Changi Airport Terminal 3 cluster. Phylogenetic testing helps to determine if infections are related. Wadde, who arrived here as a dependant's pass holder, had said that she felt safer in India, according to a report by The Straits Times. The matter came to the fore after a screenshot of her response to a question on Facebook that she was infected "most probably" at Changi Airport circulated online. This was because two polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests I took before boarding the flight to and upon arrival had been negative, she wrote in the comment section, which was picked up by several online news websites. It is unclear when she posted the comment, or what question she was responding to, said the English daily. "A negative pre-departure test or on-arrival test does not necessarily mean that a person is free from COVID-19, as one could be incubating the virus from an exposure prior to taking the tests," the newspaper quoted the health ministry as saying. The Changi Airport cluster is currently the largest active cluster with 108 cases linked to it as on Thursday. Wadde is an imported case who was confirmed to have COVID-19 infection on May 2, the ministry said, adding that she tested positive during her stay-home notice at a dedicated facility. After Wadde was identified as an employee of Singapore's DBS Bank in online articles on Tuesday, the bank clarified in a Facebook post that she was previously engaged as a contract employee through a third-party vendor from June to July 2019. Wadde is not currently a DBS employee, the bank's post said. "We hold our employees to the highest standards of conduct, both in person and online. DBS is fully committed to supporting the national effort to contain the spread of COVID-19," said DBS, Singapore's largest banking group. reported 15 local and imported cases each on Friday. There have been 61,970 confirmed COVID-19 cases so far here, out of which, 61,407 people have been discharged from hospitals and community facilities. A total of 241 people are still in hospitals, 290 housed in isolated facilities with milder symptoms, and 32 people have died due to infection-related complications. (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 Israeli government has extended an ongoing to seven countries, including India, until June 13, according to a joint statement. The statement issued on Friday by the Ministries of Health and Transport and the Prime Minister's Office also lists Ukraine, Ethiopia, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Turkey, Xinhua news agency reported. Israeli citizens and permanent residents who want to travel to one of these countries must apply to an exceptions committee. Meanwhile, all passengers arriving in from these countries must go into quarantine, including those vaccinated and recovered from the virus. It was decided that the will also apply to Argentina and Russia next week. So far, a total of 839,429 cases have been detected in Israel, with 6,406 deaths. --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Amid an acute shortage of vaccines, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on Saturday asked the Centre to buy vaccines and distribute them to the state governments, and said this is not the time for blame game and petty politics. Noting that the national capital recorded around 900 new cases in the last 24 hours, the chief minister stressed that if new infections continue to decline, more activities will be allowed to open up in the city. Kejriwal said the AAP government "just wants vaccines" for Delhi and sought to know where is the politicisation in that. The chief minister also said till yesterday, there were 450 cases of mucormycosis or black fungus in Delhi government hospitals. On Saturday, he visited the Delhi government's drive-through COVID-19 vaccination centre at the Chhatrasal Stadium. Asked about politicisation of the issue of vaccine procurement, Kejriwal said the Delhi government "want just vaccines". "..where is the politicisation in this? The people need vaccines, they (Centre) should tell where should we get the vaccines from. The central government has to procure the vaccines, after doing so they should give them to us and we will administer them to everyone," he said. Stating that this is "not the time for petty politics or to play the blame game", he said vaccination is the only solution to this problem. "This is not the time for finger-pointing. This is not the time for debate and counter. The country is suffering from a pandemic. The experience of the entire world shows that vaccination is the sole solution for this. "So they (Centre) should buy vaccines for the entire country and distribute them to the state governments. We will administer them. Why are they debating over this is beyond my understanding," he said. The process of lifting the lockdown gradually in the capital will begin from Monday, starting with resumption of construction activities and reopening of factories for a week, Kejriwal had announced on Friday. The phase-wise unlocking process in Delhi will begin after over six weeks of lockdown enforced in view of the second wave of COVID-19. "Yesterday we announced that two activities - construction activities and factories -- can be opened up because the poor such as migrant labourers have faced the most difficult time during the lockdown. "Today, around 900 cases have emerged for the first time, I hope that as and when the cases keep on decreasing in the upcoming weeks, we will continue to unlock further. We want the economic activities to come back on track so that the economy can be revived," Kejriwal said. Delhi recorded 956 cases on Saturday, the lowest since March 21, when the national capital had reported 823 cases. Kejriwal also asked the traders to not rush and panic and assured them that when the situation will ease, everything will be opened up. "I can understand the troubles of the traders and I can understand their anxiety. I read in the newspapers that they are a bit upset. I want to tell them that it was with great difficulty that we were able to control the situation by imposing a lockdown. "I can understand their difficulty but they should be patient and should not rush. We also want their markets and shops to open up and as and when the situation comes under control, we will open up everything," he said. Kejriwal said there are about 450 cases of black fungus, according to data till Friday. "I have black fungus data till yesterday. There are two kinds that of Delhi government and that of private hospitals and the central government hospitals on the other hand. "In the Delhi government hospitals, there are about 450 cases of black fungus. The central government hospitals are dealing directly with the Centre," he told reporters. He said the Delhi government has demanded medicines accordingly. "I understand that there is a countrywide paucity of medicines. The central government is giving whatever it can. As I understand, more injections of this medicine will be procured and will be distributed to all the state governments," he added. Amid rising incidents of black fungus in the national capital, the Delhi government had on Thursday declared it an epidemic. The Delhi government has floated a global expression of interest (EOI) for procurement of COVID-19 vaccine on an urgent basis. He said the Delhi government is making all efforts from their side but "till now all the governments which floated a global tender, their outcomes have not been very fruitful". "So we have also floated it in the hope that a company comes forward, but on a general note, from what I have understood is that all the big vaccine manufacturing companies of the world want to deal directly with the central government and are communicating directly with them. "So only time will tell as to how successful the different state governments will be but we have floated a global tender from our side. At the Chhatrasal Stadium, he said, "People can come here in their cars, motorcycles, or even on foot, and can get vaccinated here. Right now, this has been initiated for those above the age of 45 years because there is no vaccine for those below the age of 45 years. "As soon as adequate vaccines arrive, vaccination for those below the age of 45 (18-45 years) will also be started," he said. He also interacted with some people who had come there and said they were very happy with the entire arrangement and by the fact that they have gotten vaccinated," he said. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Top officers of Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar on Friday resolved to make it India's first fully-vaccinated district against coronavirus, according to officials. A clarion call towards the resolution was given by District Magistrate Suhas L Y during a virtual meeting with top health and administration officials of the district with Police Commissioner Alok Singh also in attendance, they said. "DM Suhas L Y called on all officials to get totally committed toward ensuring the objective of getting Gautam Buddh Nagar fully vaccinated against COVID-19," District Information Officer Rakesh Chauhan said in a statement to the press. Currently, Gautam Buddh Nagar is second after state capital Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh in terms of vaccination but is first in terms of population ratio inoculated, according to the statement. Gautam Buddh Nagar has an estimated population of 21 lakh of which around 15 lakh to 16 lakh people are to be vaccinated. As on Friday, 5.71 lakh people in the district have been vaccinated, which is around 30 per cent of the total targeted population for vaccination, it added. The press statement did not share any timeline for the objective and PTI's phone call to the district magistrate remained unanswered till the time this story was filed. The district, adjoining Delhi in western Uttar Pradesh, has so far recorded 439 deaths and has 1,930 active cases of COVID-19, according to official figures updated till Friday. (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.) BJP leader on Saturday blamed the Maharashtra government for "negligence" over the Supreme Court's decision striking down reservation for Other Backward Classes (OBCs) in local body elections. The Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress government was "never serious" about the issue, he alleged in a letter to chief minister Uddhav Thackeray. "The struck down the OBC reservation in local government body elections. The state government's review petition has been rejected," the BJP leader said in the letter. "It happened because of unpardonable negligence of the state towards the issue. The Maha Vikas Aghadi government was never serious about this issue," the former chief minister alleged. "During one of the hearings, the SC had asked the state to set up a backward class commission and produce empirical data that would justify the reservation. However, the state did nothing," the BJP leader alleged. State Congress chief Nana Patole, however, blamed the BJP-led Union government for 'not providing data'. "The SC had asked the Centre to submit data to support the OBC reservation. The Centre deliberately did not submit it, therefore the reservation was struck down. The Centre is against OBCs," he alleged. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) has failed to prove the alleged "involvement" of India in a case related to the November 2018 attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi, in which four people were killed. The Anti-terrorism Court (ATC) on May 26 expressed displeasure at the failure of the prosecution to present witnesses against suspected members of the ethnic insurgent group Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) for facilitating the attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi. According to the charge sheet registered, the attack was carried out by the BLA in connivance with India's Research and Analysis Wing to harm the relations between and and disrupt the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, reported The News International. The ATC-VII judge ordered the investigation officer (IO) of the case to ensure presence of the complainant in the courtroom on July 7 since he had not appeared on four last hearings despite being issued summons. The court had in January charged five people for providing weapons, hideouts and cash to the perpetrators. Three heavily armed militants had carried out the attack on the Chinese consulate located in Clifton on November 23, 2018. Four people, including security personnel and visa seekers, were killed in the attack. The attackers, later identified as Abdul Razzaq, Raees Baloch and Azal Baloch, were also killed in their fight with police. A large number of weapons, ammunition and explosives were found on them. The accused - Ahmed Hasnain, Muhammad Aslam, Nadir Khan, Ali Ahmed and Abdul Latif - were arrested by the Counter-Terrorism Department for allegedly facilitating the attack. According to the IO, Latif and Aslam had confessed to the crime before a judicial magistrate a week after their arrest. Besides the indicted suspects, the police had also booked BLA chief Hyrbyair Marri and other leaders Kareem Marri, Bashir Zaib, Aslam Baloch, Noor Bakhsh Mengal, Rehman Gul, Nisar, Gaindi, Sheikhu Sharif, Hamal, Agha Sher Dil and Munshi. All of them have been declared proclaimed offenders in the case. Issuing perpetual warrants of arrest for the absconders, the ATC earlier ordered police to approach Interpol for the arrest of Hyrbyair who is living in exile and who allegedly masterminded the attack from a foreign country. The charge sheet said the terrorists stormed the consulate building and started firing and throwing hand grenades, which killed assistant sub-inspector Ashraf Dawood and police constable Muhammad Amir who were performing security duty at the first checkpost. A visa seeker, Tahir Shah, and his father, Niaz Ahmed, were also killed by the attackers, it reported further. (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.) Petrol price on Saturday crossed the Rs 100-a-litre mark in after the 15th increase in this month. Petrol price was increased by 26 paise per litre and diesel by 28 paise a litre, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. The increase - 15th this month - took petrol and diesel prices to a fresh all-time high across the country. The price of petrol, which had already crossed the Rs 100-mark in several cities in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, breached the psychological barrier in on Saturday. Petrol now costs Rs 100.19 a litre in and diesel comes for Rs 92.17 per litre. differ from state to state depending on the incidence of local taxes such as VAT and freight charges. Rajasthan levies the highest value-added tax (VAT) on petrol in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. In Delhi, the petrol price rose to Rs 93.94 a litre and diesel to Rs 84.89. This is the 15th increase in prices since May 4, when state-owned oil firms ended an 18-day hiatus in rate revision they observed during assembly elections in states like West Bengal. Oil companies revise rates of petrol and diesel daily based on the average price of benchmark fuel in the international market in the preceding 15-days, and foreign exchange rates. Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan had the costliest petrol and diesel in the country at Rs 104.94 per litre and Rs 97.79 a litre, respectively. In 15 increases, petrol price has risen by Rs 3.54 per litre and diesel by Rs 4.16. (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.) Congress leader has sent 10,000 home isolation, medical kits to his previous Lok Sabha constituency Amethi for the needy COVID-19 patients, a party leader said on Saturday. Chief of district unit of Congress Pradeep Singhal said 10,000 medical kits have arrived under the party's 'seva satyagraha' programme and they would be given to people who need it. Rahul Gandhi, who is the former Lok Sabha MP from Amethi, had also earlier sent 20 oxygen concentrators and 20 oxygen cylinders to Amethi. Gandhi is currently the Lok Sabha MP from Wayanad in Kerala. (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.) leader is on oxygen support and his condition is critical, informed Medanta Hospital, Lucknow on Saturday. "Condition of leader is critical. He is on oxygen support," said Medanta Hospital, Lucknow Khan was shifted to Lucknow's Medanta Hospital from Sitapur jail on May 9 where he is undergoing treatment for the disease. His son Abdullah Khan was also shifted to the same hospital. The father-son duo was tested positive for COVID-19 on April 30. Azam Khan's health suddenly deteriorated on May 9 following which he along with his son was sent to Lucknow by an ambulance. Khan has been lodged in Sitapur jail since February last year with more than a hundred cases registered against him. His son has also been lodged in Sitapur jail in several cases filed against him. (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 National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has directed States and union territories to submit data of all children, who have been orphaned or have lost one of their parents to Covid-19. The NCPR has written to Principal secretaries of states and union territories to upload the information on the Bal Swaraj portal. The portal, created to digitally monitor and track in need of care and protection, has been extended for use amid the pandemic under the COVID-Care link. " who have lost both or either of the parent or are found to be without family support in need of care and protection under Section 2(14) of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015 and therefore, it is necessary that the right of such are upheld and protected," the Commission said. It added that the children have to be produced before the Child Welfare Committee under Section 31 of the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and procedure under the Act has to be followed for them. The Commission also listed providing a document for procedure and functions of each child protection authority/officer as given under the Juvenile Justice Act, 2015 and made recommendations for State Governments and the other relevant authorities. "The Commission has prepared this document after holding consultations with the SCPCRs (State Commissions)," it said. The second wave of the Covid-19 crisis over the last few months hit the country hard, leaving many children without parents or guardians. Earlier this week, government sources had informed that at least 577 children across the country had been orphaned after their parents died of Covid-19. The Non-Institutional Child Care Fund had released Rs 10 lakh to each district for the care of such children. On May 21, the Ministry of Home Affairs had written a letter to all states and Union Territories (UTs) directing them to take steps for the protection of "vulnerable sections" especially children who lost parents to COVID-19. Several state governments, including Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Punjab, have extended their support to such children. Steps taken by governments include free education and monthly stipends. (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.) Deaths from Covid-19 are amplified by any mistakes we make," said S. Vincent Rajkumar, an oncologist and professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic in the United States. The shortage of health resources, such as oxygen, and the overuse of medicines, such as steroids and antibiotics, have exacerbated problems from the Covid-19 pandemic in India, he elaborated. Of India's billion-plus population, over 315,000 have been officially reported as having died of Covid-19, even as widespread reporting shows that these numbers are underestimated. The only way out, said Rajkumar, are Covid-19 vaccines. Until now, India has fully vaccinated about 43 million people and over 160 million have been given the first dose of the vaccine, still too low to protect most people against the disease, explained Rajkumar. We asked Rajkumar, also the editor-in-chief of the Blood Cancer Journal, what India can learn from the first and second wave of Covid-19, which is now abating in several parts of the country, to deal with a possible third wave in the future. Within the Covid-19 pandemic, India is also facing the epidemic of black fungus or, mucormycosis, which suggests an overdose of steroids. We asked Rajkumar, who completed his bachelor of medicine and surgery (MBBS) at the Christian Medical College in Vellore and at Madras University, about doctors pressured to overmedicate. Edited excerpts from the interview: Before we get to the way forward in this pandemic, my first question is why are you following the India situation so closely? As you know, I was born and brought up in India. I did my medical school here and all my family lives in India. I mean, my parents live there, my brothers, my sister. I have a huge number of friends and relatives so naturally, we are following the situation very closely. A lot of people have reached out to both myself and my wife, who gives advice to patients as well as counsels physicians on strategies to treat. In the US, there was a huge spike in cases and a huge number of deaths. Now, it is easing off, very likely due to vaccination, which is faster in the US than in many other countries. In India, the second wave is easing but not necessarily because of vaccination, except in one or two places. How do you look at these two situations at this point? In the US, we got hit with at least three waves in the last year (in 2020), and each time, the wave was suppressed with a lockdown or a social distancing containment measure. The most recent one, I think, is because of the effect of vaccines, which started in early December. And by now, half the adults in the US have had at least one dose, and a majority of patients who are 65 years and older have been fully vaccinated. So, this time we are seeing the lowest number of cases in almost a year, deaths are coming down and things seem to be under control. There is some hope now, this time, as restrictions are relaxed, the fourth wave will not happen again because most of the population would be vaccinated. Read More: What if the Covid-19 virus was leaked from a laboratory In India, you had a really significant wave last year and somehow, as social restrictions were lifted, the cases continued to drop. But progressively, people got more and more confident that the pandemic is over. This time the cases are very high and it is coming down but you have 90% of the population still not vaccinated. So, the difference is that if you relax, things will come right back because the population is still susceptible. And you say that because you feel the virus is fundamentally alive and kicking everywhere? Yes, the virus--the new virus-- most of us are not susceptible to it [in the US]. Even if half of India has had Covid-19 already, that still leaves another 700 million people susceptible and that would be a huge number of deaths. And so, we have to assume that either we have had Covid or have Covid or we are going to get Covid and we have to protect ourselves. The only way out is through vaccination of at least 70-80% of the country. You have been actively campaigning about the nature of the administration of medicines and prescriptions in India and specifically the use of steroids. Now, I am sure you understand the Indian context, and why doctors overprescribe. How do you see us coming out of that and what could be some solutions? You have to step back and see why this enormous second wave, almost like a spike, happened. As I mentioned, it happened because, one, there was relaxation of social distancing [and there was] crowding. That was a key problem. Number two, mask compliance became very very low and that allowed the virus to transmit very easily among people and at a higher viral dose. Because if you are not wearing masks, when you do get exposed, it is a higher viral dose. But the third factor is that the virus itself became more transmissible, potentially more virulent. And so, you are faced with a triple threat here. That alone is going to cause a huge number of deaths but when it all happens at the same time, you have a really crushing blow to the healthcare system which is now facing an onslaught of cases. Deaths from Covid-19 are amplified by any mistakes we make or any shortages of healthcare resources. What would have been a 2% mortality is now a 20% mortality and that is the same thing which happened early on in Lombardy and New York when the cases came very fast and all at the same time. So, what is happening now is that you have shortages of beds, shortages of medication, oxygen, but then we also want to do something [to treat patients] and that has led to the overuse of steroids and antibiotics when they are not necessary. What happens then is that you get complications of these which could be deadly serious and cause more problems; everything from secondary infections with bacteria to black fungus infection and other problems. I think you compound what was already a bad situation with a more transmissible virus with all these other things that happen with the healthcare system. Right, so if you look at India, many of us over the years have been over-prescribed antibiotics and we have taken them for diseases we should not have [done so for]. Now, when faced with a situation like Covid-19, will changing the strategy help? For instance, suppose the doctor says that no, do not take any antibiotics, do not touch steroids at this point for at least the first eight days and stay put, but the patient says I have always taken antibiotics in my life and you know, maybe it has worked. So what do you do? Well, here is the thing, we have to make sure that physicians are totally clear on what steroids can and cannot do. Steroids are not antivirals; they actually promote viral growth because they suppress the immune system, they kill the plasma cells that help you fight infection. By giving it early, yes, the fever will go away, and the patient might feel better, but behind the scenes, the steroids are actively encouraging the virus to replicate and cause problems and you will end up with worse outcomes. Number two, there is a right dose [of steroids]--too high a dose and it becomes toxic. I have seen steroids prescribed at very high doses. Much much more than what the Recovery Trial shows. Sometimes five times more. And thirdly, (steroids are) given for a very long duration. Unless somebody is on steroids for two months or something, you do not need to taper the steroids, it is five-10 days and stop. But people are giving steroids for 5-10 days at high doses and then continuing them week after week after week. That will suppress the immune system and initially, it will promote [the] Covid-19 [virus] to grow and later on, it will promote black fungus and bacteria to grow. This is not an antiviral treatment, it is used to suppress a very active immune system that is causing lung damage and you need to do that only if the oxygen level is less than 92% and then only at equivalent of six milligrams of dexamethasone for 5-10 days and stop. Beyond that, if you have a problem, it is not due to Covid or Covid inflammation, it is something else so steroids will not fix that. You are saying that even if a patient is in some ways used to taking an antibiotic at the first sign of trouble, he/she should be counselled not to take it. I am just wondering how can doctors do that better, rather than trying to fight the other battle and treating problems caused by an overuse of medicines. I practiced medicine in India before I moved to the US. So, I know how the patients are and how things are. I do not want to blame the patients here because the patients are not aware of the pros and cons of antibiotics or steroids. We are. And I have seen prescriptions that routinely include the antibiotics azithromycin or doxycycline, including in guidelines. And that is completely unnecessary and it will promote bacterial resistance and it will promote infection with drug resistant bacteria. So, all we need to do is counsel the patients from the beginning that this is a viral infection, steroids are going to make it worse, antibiotics are not going to have any effect on it. Very few patients with Covid in the first week or so get a secondary bacterial infection. So, we do not need to give it. Give a prescription for what works--that will be paracetamol for fever--and just tell them to watch their oxygen concentration with a pulse oximeter. And if they feel short of breath, very short of breath, particularly while walking, and a pulse oximeter shows a lower oxygen concentration, that is when they seek medical help. That is when steroids might help. Antibiotics are used only when there is a real indication of a secondary bacterial infection. And the point is that even in normal times you should not be overmedicating yourself. It is not about Covid. Absolutely. Forget Covid, we are all aware about drug-resistant bacteria being a big problem in India and that is clearly related to the widespread use of antibiotics that have a very broad spectrum. You wipe out all the susceptible bacteria and then you allow resistant ones to grow. That is why you have, in hospitals, drug-resistant bacteria that are resistant to all the antibiotics that we have. Same thing with fungi, you have Candida that is resistant to all the anti-fungus [medication]. So, you want to be really judicious in the use of antibiotics, antifungal agents so that when you need them, they are there for you. You have spoken about how to administer dexamethasone and your own lessons in treating patients. Walk us through that. Dexamethasone is a drug that I have studied for more than 20 years because we use it as a treatment for multiple myeloma--cancer of the plasma cells. Now, plasma cells are the cells that make antibodies; when you get a vaccine, plasma cells make antibodies and that is how you get protection from Covid-19. We use steroids in the oncology field to kill these plasma cells; they are very powerful weapons to suppress the immune system. Early on, when I started my career, the amount of steroids we used even for a cancer like multiple myeloma was too high. We did a study where we compared high dose versus low dose only to see that the low dose gave the same benefit with less side-effects. What we found was beyond our imagination--that the low dose actually saved lives. We had 10% people die in the first year just from the high dose of steroids so we have given a lower dose of steroids for all these years--15 years plus--in myeloma as a result of that trial. I know how bad these drugs can be. When used appropriately for about 5-10 days at six milligrams, it works really well and that too only when the patient is hypoxic [has low oxygen levels, in the case of Covid-19]. [If] you use it at a higher dose, you use it for a longer period of time, it will cause everything from higher risk of blood clots to higher risks of secondary infections to black fungus. So, just keep that lesson in mind. The second point is about giving an equivalent dose of an alternative of dexamethasone. If there is a shortage of dexamethasone, people are using solu medrol, methylprednisolone or prednisolone. And the equivalent dose is 32 milligrams of solu medrol or methylprednisolone once a day. But routinely, I see twice a day or even 200 or 500 milligrams of methylprednisolone. That will really suppress the immune system more than you need it to. I know you have given us some very specific medical prescriptions. Now, each patient is different and therefore, a physician should also be adjusting to that patient's physiology and so on. That is where you need to know how powerful these medicines are. Six milligrams of dexamethasone is a big dose. You do not gain anything more by giving twice that amount or thrice that amount to anyone unless they have cancer of some kind that you are trying to deal with. So, just to recognise that for most patients in India, I think even six milligrams may be too much because that was based on body weights that are seen in the West. Even for the diseases I deal with we have generally used lower doses of steroids. We use 40 milligrams in the US for myeloma treatment. We recommend sometimes, for Indian patients, only 20 milligrams. So, for the body weight and body surface area of Indian patients, for most of them, even six might be too high. What it also does, I think this is important, it will universally increase the blood sugars. And there is a lot of diabetes, a lot of unrecognised diabetes in India. In a crunch, where everybody is fighting for oxygen, the last thing people check is the blood sugars. And when you are putting patients on steroids and particularly, higher doses, [blood sugars] are going to go up as well. And that is the number one reason for mucor. Given your understanding of how this disease has progressed and the treatments that the medical fraternity has performed, what is your sense on how a third wave could be different? The second wave in India has affected more younger people, it showed that we were overdosing when it came to steroids and are facing the consequences of that. And of course, the behaviour of the virus, its transmissibility and infectiousness. What would you say could happen in the third wave, based on your understanding and experience? I think that the fundamental lesson that I learnt last year--because we all made mistakes, including me--on what was going on in India, was that [we wrongly believed that] somehow Indians are protected from the virus due to pre-existing Covid-19 immunity of some kind. But really, the reason the numbers came down in India with the first wave was because people were scared of the virus. They did take precautions, they did wear masks and there were lockdowns, so that really got the wave under control. This time the wave was much worse and I have no idea how many people were affected each day as the counts are hard to combine. And, again, every state is in lockdown and the cases are naturally coming down, particularly in the urban areas, the cities. We do not have insight from the rural areas. But keep in mind, this is coming down because of social restrictions, because people are not coming in contact with other people and because people are wearing masks. At this point, the third wave is fully in our control. It will happen only if people relax too early, it can be avoided or it can be minimised if people understand they are still susceptible until they are vaccinated. And so, the real key is, eventually, when the test positivity goes to 5% or lower, as restrictions are relaxed, people still need to be educated that you are susceptible, you will get Covid, and there will be a third wave unless you wear masks and you avoid crowds and do not invite people into the house that you do not need to see. And, just keep your distance till you get your vaccine dose. This time at least, there is a way out of this, which is vaccinations. As vaccination rates go up, then you feel more and more free. The third wave could be as bad as the second wave and affect younger people, provided we abandon all these principles and just start living life as before. It is really all in our hands how the shape of the third wave, how high it will be and how much more people will be affected. Depends on what we do, both from the government standpoint, in vaccinations and making sure everyone has access to it, and quickly securing enough vaccines from wherever. From the public standpoint, in maintaining the guidelines of social distancing and masks. Last question: What should medical practitioners bear in mind? They do know their job but they are the ones who are in intimate contact with patients and perhaps, feeling the brunt of patient and family pressure on prescriptions and medications. So, how should they be navigating the next wave? Yes, and it is very, very hard [there are] heart-breaking stories from Indian physicians. The number of Indian physicians who have lost their lives is really worrying and heart-breaking. And, I know that no one can function when you have 20 patients show up at the same time or when you are the one person manning the ICU [Intensive Care Unit] with so many people critically ill. So, I do not think they could have done anything better, because [even] in a resource-rich country like the US and [city such as] New York, we had 10-20% mortality in the first wave when the resources were all stretched. So really, the question is, if we can build up [resources] when the cases are down, particularly hospital beds, ICUs, ventilators, oxygen units, so that if and when a third wave comes, physicians will not be so stressed--that is the first thing. The second thing is please avoid unnecessary medications and counsel your patients that all they need like 90% of Covid patients will recover with just paracetamol, staying at home and waiting it out. Only when there is hypoxia, use steroids and seek medical care and oxygen. That is all that is needed. There are very very few specific treatments that work for Covid, a number of the ones that we are touting are only because we want to do something, but they are all double-edged swords. They come back [in the form of other problems], they are not proven and I do not think we need to worry about all these extra drugs. Traders body the Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT) has expressed anguish at the Delhi governments decision to exclude shops and markets from the citys unlock process starting Monday. Delhi, which has been under lockdown since April 20 to contain the spread of Covid-19, will begin to gradually lift restrictions starting Monday (May 31), chief minister announced on Friday. In the first phase of unlocking, construction and manufacturing activities will resume in the city, as CM Kejriwal said that a lot of poor families are reliant on daily wage labour at construction sites for their livelihoods. national general secretary Praveen Khandelwal said over 1.5 million small and big traders in Delhi provide employment to 3.5 million employees, most of them migrant labourers dependent on their work in retail shops for their livelihood. Khandelwal added that factories and manufacturing units will operate smoothly only when theyre able to buy building material, tools, building hardware, machinery, spare parts etc from retail shops. Further, the production of factories will remain idle if they dont sell their products and it can happen only when shops are open. In such a situation, the basic justification for the opening of construction activities and factories is failing badly, Khandelwal added in a press note. In a proposal sent to the and Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal, recommended that starting May 31, wholesale markets in the city should be allowed to open from 10 am to 4 pm and retail markets from 12 pm to 7 pm. The proposal added that further details on the timings and days on which the shops will remain open can be worked out, but opening shops is the need of the hour as traders are facing an acute financial crisis. During the lockdown, daily Covid cases in Delhi have come down substantially. In the last 24 hours, Delhi recorded 956 Covid cases with a positivity rate of 1.19% and 122 deaths because of the virus. There is a recognition in the US that India is an important part of the conversation when it comes to talk about the future of Afghanistan, External Affairs Minister has said. Jaishankar, who is in the US on an official trip, said the situation in Afghanistan, from where the US is in the process of withdrawing its troops, was discussed during his meetings with Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Security Advisor (NSA) Jake Sullivan. In my meeting with the Secretary of Defence, with the, with the Secretary of State, the issue obviously came up because it is a very important concern," he said. "The possible scenarios, once the US military draws down is obviously something which matters to us, it matters very much to Afghanistan, it matters to the United States, and it has a larger regional resonance, Jaishankar said. US President Joe Biden in April announced that all American troops would be withdrawn from by September 11 this year, thus bringing to end the country's longest war, spanning across two decades. In an interaction with a group of Indian reporters here, Jaishankar said that came up in all of these meetings. I don't think it was so much an issue of what is India's role? I mean, India has an interest, India has influence, India has stakes, India has a history out there. We are a regional country. We are probably bordering Afghanistan," he said. "So, there is a recognition, clearly in the as indeed in many other countries, that when you talk about the future of Afghanistan, India, is an important part of that conversation, Jaishankar said. There were discussions on what could happen, what should happen, what should not happen, he said in response to a question. Earlier, Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Dean Thompson told reporters that both India and the US have long shared the view that a peaceful, stable Afghanistan is in their mutual interest. We need to continue working together and with the region to press for a political settlement to end the conflict there, he said. With respect to the question about Afghanistan, certainly providing an update on what's happening in Afghanistan the two ministers talked about where things are headed on that front, Thompson said. India has invested more than USD 3 billion in stabilising Afghanistan economically, in reconstruction and relief work since 2001 when US-led troops drove the Taliban out of Kabul. (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 Centre has allocated Rs 5,117 crore to under the Jal Jeevan Mission, a four-fold rise than last year, and released its first tranche of Rs 1,184 crore, the Jal Shakti ministry said on Saturday. Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat had two rounds of detailed review meeting with Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan. During the review, Chouhan said that he will regularly review the planning and implementation of The chief minister also assured that instead of the deadline of 2024, the state will ensure tap water connection and assured potable piped water supply to every rural home by 2023, the ministry said. "To provide safe and potable piped drinking water to all the rural households in Madhya Pradesh, the first tranche of Rs 1,184.86 crore have been released by the National Jal Jeevan Mission, Ministry of Jal Shakti to the state," the ministry said in a statement. "Keeping in view the commitment of the state to make provision of tap water supply in every rural home by 2023, in 2021-22, Rs 5,116.79 crore central grant-in-aid has been allocated to Madhya Pradesh for the implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission," the ministry said. The Centre has earmarked Rs 50,000 crore to the which aims to provide piped drinking water to all rural households by 2024. "In 2019-20, the Central Government allocated Rs 571.60 crore which was increased to Rs 1,280.13 Crore in 2020-21," the ministry said. In 2020-21, despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Madhya Pradesh "performed exceptionally well" and provided new tap water connections to 19.89 lakh rural households, it said. The state has 1.23 crore rural households, out of which now 38.29 lakh (31.1 per cent) have tap water supply. Madhya Pradesh is planning to reach near the half way coverage mark by March 2022 by providing 22 lakhs more tap water connections. It also plans to focus on 3,731 piped water supply village in seven districts where on an average less than 150 household connections can make these villages with piped water connection to every household. During the annual action plan (2021-22) discussion, the state government has been advised to work with more speed so as to provide tap water in about 42 per cent villages which are still without piped water supply. The state has also been advised to increase the coverage in priority areas such as Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe majority habitations, water quality-affected villages, drought prone areas, aspirational districts. "With the allocation grant of Rs 5,116.78 crores in 2021-22 and unspent balance of Rs 191.61 crore available with the state government, and state's matching share of Rs 5,392.50 crore, which includes the total assured fund availability for the implementation of JJM in the State is about Rs 10,700 crore," the statement added. This fund availability will enable the state to expedite the implementation of various planned activities to provide tap water to rural homes this year. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Washington [US], May 29 (ANI): External Affairs Minister (EAM) and US corporate leaders talked about how to increase investment, create more jobs and transfer technology, said US-India Strategic Partnership Forum Chief Mukesh Aghi on Friday (local time). In an exclusive interview with ANI, Mukesh Aghi said, there was no discussion on COVID-19 vaccine in the meeting. "The outcome of this meeting was that the commitment of US companies for India with India has become much stronger during this COVID-19 crisis. They have their own employees but if you look at the contribution they made is not specific to their company employees but overall to India itself," he said. Aghi further said that the interest in investment and growth still continues as the FDI form US companies goes up by 20 per cent, compared to last year. So overall, the sentiment was strong, they talked about how to increase investment create more jobs transfer technology. Speaking on COVID-19 vaccine, he said, "I think there was no discussion on vaccine in the closed door meeting we had. But when we talk to folks like Pfizer Moderna Johnson and Johnson, they are in discussion with government of India, to see how they can supply this vaccine into India." He further stated, "Johnson and Johnson, under the QUAD partnership has agreed to manufacture a billion doses of their vaccine in partnership with Bio E, and to be distributed across the Indo Pacific region itself, whereas the Moderna and Pfizer is a much more complex mRNA technology, which is difficult to transfer because you don't have the equipment you don't have the train manpower the manufacturer, so they are focused on expanding the capacity, and I think if you look at Pfizer will take the capacity of 1.2 billion doses this year, And by next year will be over 2 billion doses, and they plan to export that to rest of the world right now." Talking about the pharma companies and business leaders participating in this meeting, Aghi said that there were pharma companies like Abbott, Merck, and there was also a diverse group of companies, the geopolitical leaders strategic thinkers to have a much broader discussion. It was a closed door meeting, but the meeting was very positive and strong sentiment on India cameout. Highlighting the COVID-19 challenges, he said that India and US companies are facing challenges to get back to business as normal or be able to get their manufacturing going be able to move their services from India to rest of the world itself. Explaning that Atmanirbhar Bharat is not miscalculated, he said "India supplies 40 per cent of the generic drugs to the US, but it imports 70 per cent is API from China. There's a risk factor there. And then, when we started initially started supplying oxygen concentrated to India, we had challenges." He further stated that "All the vaccines shipping goes under the name of Indian Red Cross, Indian Red Cross. They distribut it to the states. And then we get Deloitte, who is our audit partner on this. They give us feedback, in which state what is going and how it's getting distributed so there's a very transparent process." "One of the messages we have given to Governorment of India is, is when you compare manufacturing in India and China, on a labor costs on taxation on electricity costs is on a par. But somehow, manufacturing India is 20 per cent higher, because the logistic cost is higher," he added. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) An eight-member ministerial panel under Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma will examine the need for exempting or cutting rate on Covid essentials like vaccines, drugs, hand sanitisers, masks, PPE kits and oxygen related equipment. The Council in its meeting on May 28 had decided to set up a Group of Ministers (GoM), which will submit its report by June 8. "As a follow up of the decision of the Council at its 43rd meeting, a Group of Ministers (GoM) has been constituted to examine the issue of GST concession/exemption to COVID relief material," the Finance Ministry said. As per its terms of reference (ToR), the GoM would examine whether a GST rate cut or exemption would be required for medical grade oxygen, pulse oximeters, hand sanitisers, oxygen therapy equipment like concentrators, ventilators, PPE kits, N-95 and surgical masks and temperature checking equipment. As a follow up of the decision of the GST Council at its 43rd meeting, a Group of Ministers (GoM) has been constituted to examine the issue of GST concession/exemption to COVID relief material. GoM to submit its report by June 08, 2021.#IndiaFightsCorona #Unite2FightCorona pic.twitter.com/Qn1N2IEvIw Ministry of Finance (@FinMinIndia) May 29, 2021 Besides, the panel would also look into Covid vaccines, drugs and medicines for Covid treatment and testing kits for Covid detection. The other members of the GoM are Gujarat Deputy Chief Minister Nitinbhai Patel, Maharashtra Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, Goa Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho, Finance Ministers of Kerala (K N Balagopal), Odisha (Niranjan Pujari), Telangana (T Harish Rao) and UP (Suresh Kr Khanna). The GST Council on Friday left taxes on COVID-19 vaccines and medical supplies unchanged after the BJP and Opposition-ruled states sparred over whether the tax cut benefits will reach the common man. Congress and other Opposition ruled states have been demanding a reduction in taxes but the central government felt the move may not result in tangible gains for people. Currently, 5 per cent GST is levied on domestically manufactured vaccines, while it is 12 per cent for COVID drugs and oxygen concentrators. (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 Indo-French Chamber of Commerce & Industry (IFCCI) has raised over EUR 6.1 million (Rs 55 crore) from French companies based in India to support its ongoing fight against the Covid pandemic. As part of the French Solidarity Mission initiated by the French Government and implemented by the Embassy of in India, majority of these funds have been committed to purchase and install at least 20 French oxygen generator plants in Indian hospitals. Eight of these oxygen plants have already been delivered and installed in Indian hospitals including Military Hospital in Palam, Telengana Institute of Medical Sciences, Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Hospital, Raja Harish Chandra Hospital, Ambedkar Nagar Hospital among others. The remaining will arrive in India within a few weeks. Each oxygen plant sourced from French company Novair supplies non-stop oxygen to a 250-bed hospital for 10-12 years, ensuring greater healthcare autonomy to hospitals who have been catering to thousands of critical patients, IFCCI said in a statement. In addition, IFCCI has been working with Business to procure approximately 600 oxygen concentrators from due to arrive in the next few days. It is also working closely with Capgemini to develop a mobile app and website which would serve as a common resource pool for sharing information about plasma donors, oxygen cylinders and concentrators for IFCCI's members and extended networks. Donations were received from more than 50 companies including Capgemini, Amundi - SBI Mutual Fund, Saint Gobain, Air Liquide, CMA-CGM, Dassault Aviation, Societe Generale, Accenture, Atos, Pernod Ricard, BNP Paribas, Safran, Sanofi, Moet-Hennessy, L'Oreal, EDF, Airbus, Naval Group, Alstom, Total, Orano, ADP, Renault, Hermes, Roquette, Engie, Credit Agricole, Sopra Steria, Serdia Pharmaceuticals, Thales, Air France, Michelin, Schneider Electric, ARaymond, bioMerieux, Legrand, NRB Bearings, Dassault Systemes, BIC Cello, Amadeus, Emballiso, TNP Consultants, Idemia, Phosphea, Robertet, Velan, Evolis, Monin, Sonepar, Armor Group, Technique Solaire, Soufflet, Link, Radiall, Precia Molen and Helma. "Grave times call for unprecedented action, and we saw unanimous support and willingness from our member companies in response to our call for help under this initiative by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Our member companies have long been committed to India's story of overcoming challenges and resilient growth. French companies are committed to India as long term investors. Their efforts to help strengthening the healthcare infrastructure across the country shows how deeply they are invested in India as a country as well as safety of their employees, families and peers", said Sumeet Anand, President, IFCCI. --IANS sn/skp/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, who is on a five-day US visit, discussed wide range of issues related to shared priorities and regional security challenges including Quad during his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Regarding Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad) consisting of India, the US, Japan and Australia, Jaishankar said "the strategic group has filled the gap that has emerged in contemporary times where there are global or regional requirements." "Quad fills a very important gap that has emerged in contemporary times,which cannot be filled by a single country, which cannot even be furthered by one bilateral relationship, and which is not being addressed at the multilateral level, Jaishankar added. Quad alliance is seen by Beijing as a part of efforts to counter China's influence in the Indo-Pacific region. In an effort to strengthen Indo-Pacific cooperation through the Quad, the alliance had earlier discussed maritime security, connectivity, including technology issues, supply chain issues, vaccine production. "So, there are a whole set of issues in the world have many, many concerns, you know, the many concerns have to be addressed by somebody, I mean, big countries can do a large portion of it, big relationships can add to it. But at the end of the day, most things work better if a group of countries sit together and say, okay, we all have similar positions and similar interest, and why don't we all sit and address those sets of issues? So that's how we see Quad we see what I mean, is an expression of the convergence of interests of many countries, it is, in many ways, a reflection of the contemporary nature of the world," said Jaishankar. He also said that both the countries have also shared their concerns over China's problematic activities, coup in Myanmar and COVID-19 origin tracing. "On China, we shared concerns about Southern China's problematic activities in the region, and it becomes increasingly like-minded on these issues. On the coup in Burma, the US and India have called for an end to the violence, urged the release of political prisoners, and called for the restoration of democracy," informed DeanThompson, the Acting Assistant Secretary, Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs in his briefing to reporters. Talking about Afghanistan, Jaishankar said, "There is a recognition, clearly in the as indeed in many other countries. You know, when you talk about the future of Afghanistan, India, is an important part of that conversation. Just as when we look at Afghanistan, clearly, you know, given the American presence over many years, it is something that we will be discussing." During his meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the issue of Afghanistan came up. US troops will be withdrawing from Afghanistan by September 2021 and many fears that the withdrawal of foreign troops will lead to unrest in the war-torn country. "The possible scenarios, once the US military draws down is obviously something which is, which matters us, it matters very much. It matters to the United States, and it has a larger regional presence. So, in one of these meetings, this subject came up. I don't think it was so much an issue of what is India's role, I mean, India has interest, India has influence, India has stakes, India has a history." India had offered Afghanistan, a nascent democracy, an assistance package of USD 1 billion. It is the 5th largest donor to Afghanistan, providing development reconstruction assistance of USD 2 billion since 2001. Also, it supports Afghan-led, Afghan-owned and Afghan-controlled development of the war-torned nation. Regarding, India's position on COVID-19 origin tracing, Jaishankar said that WHO convened a global study on origin of COVID-19 and that is an important first step. "The probe stressed the need for next phase of studies to reach robust conclusion. So, that is the position which we have taken and the matter," said Jaishankar. (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.) Despite President Bidens pledge to aggressively cut the pollution from fossil fuels that is driving climate change, his administration has quietly taken actions this month that will guarantee the drilling and burning of oil and gas for decades to come. The clash between Mr. Bidens pledges and some of his recent decisions illustrates the political, technical and legal difficulties of disentangling the country from the oil, gas and coal that have underpinned its economy for more than a century. On Wednesday, the Biden administration defended in federal court the Willow project, a huge oil drilling operation proposed on Alaskas North Slope that was approved by the Trump administration and is being fought by environmentalists. Weeks earlier, it backed former President Donald J. Trumps decision to grant oil and gas leases on federal land in Wyoming. Also this month, it declined to act when it had an opportunity to stop crude oil from continuing to flow through the bitterly contested, 2,700-mile Dakota Access pipeline, which lacks a federal permit. The three decisions suggest the jagged road that Mr. Biden is following as he tries to balance his climate agenda against practical and political pressures. Mr. Biden cant afford to take a pure position on the climate because he lacks strong majorities in Congress, said William A. Galston, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. That is the backdrop against which this president and the administration will be making trade-offs on every single issue. Read More: India, US can come together to find tech to tackle climate change After successfully campaigning on a pledge to address global warming, Mr. Biden hit the pause button on any new gas or oil leases on federal lands and waters, returned the United States to the Paris Agreement on and squashed the controversial proposal to build the Keystone XL pipeline all on his first day in office. But he is also trying to provide a safety net for people employed in the oil, gas and coal sectors, including union workers, and ease the transition into wind, solar and other renewables. As important, Mr. Biden is trying to avoid alienating a handful of moderate Republicans and Democrats from oil, gas and coal states who will decide the fate of his legislative agenda in Congress. Among them is Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska for whom the Willow project is a top priority and who grilled Deb Haaland about it during Ms. Haalands confirmation hearing for interior secretary in February. Ms. Haaland, who opposed the Willow project as a member of Congress, personally called Ms. Murkowski and other members of Alaskas all-Republican delegation this week to tell them the Biden administration would support the project in federal court in Anchorage, House and Senate aides confirmed. The decision on the Willow project was made as the Biden administration is trying to win Republican support for its infrastructure package and other policies, said Gerald Torres, a professor of law and environmental justice at Yale University. He is going to need Murkowskis vote for some things, he said. These are political calculations. Senator Dan Sullivan, Republican of Alaska, said in an interview that he, Ms. Murkowski and Representative Don Young of Alaska had all met with Ms. Haaland ad nauseam about Alaska issues, including the Willow project. Mr. Sullivan said he had repeatedly made the case that Willows projected 2,000 jobs and $1.2 billion in revenues should be seen as part of the Biden administrations focus on environmental equity, as it would directly benefit local and Alaska Native communities in the North Slope. If you kill these jobs you are turning environmental justice on its head, Mr. Sullivan said. The multibillion-dollar plan from ConocoPhillips to drill in part of the National Petroleum Reserve would produce more than 100,000 barrels of oil a day until 2050. It is being challenged by environmental groups who said the Trump administration failed to consider the impact that drilling would have on fragile wildlife and that burning the oil would have on global warming. In a paradox worthy of Kafka, ConocoPhillips plans to install chillers into the permafrost which is thawing fast because of to keep it solid enough to drill for oil, the burning of which will continue to worsen ice melt. Over the past 60 years, Alaska has warmed more than twice as fast as the rest of the United States. Arctic ecosystems are in disarray, sea ice is disappearing, sea levels are rising and the ground is thawing. Earlier this month, lawyers for the Biden administration also opposed in court shutting down the Dakota Access pipeline, which is carrying about 550,000 barrels of oil daily from North Dakota to Illinois. The Standing Rock Sioux tribe and other activists have fought it for more than five years, contending the pipeline threatens water supplies and sacred sites. The Biden administration could have decided to halt the pipeline while the Army Corps of Engineers conducts a new court-ordered environmental review, but it opted not to intervene. Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia criticized the administration for its inaction. A few days later, the Biden administration defended 440 oil and gas leases issued by the Trump administration on federal land in Wyoming that is also the critical habitat of the sage grouse, mule deer and pronghorn. Environmentalists successfully sued the government to stop the leases, arguing that they violated a 2015 agreement that protected that land. But in federal appeals court, the Biden administration defended the decision to allow oil and gas drilling. Environmental activists, who campaigned to elect Mr. Biden, said this week that they were baffled and disappointed by the decisions but avoided criticizing the president. Still, some said they were running out of patience with the distance between Mr. Bidens climate policies and his actions at a time when scientists say countries need to quickly and sharply cut emissions or risk irreversible damage to the planet. These are bad decisions, said Drew Caputo, a lawyer for the environmental group Earthjustice, which has fought the Trump administration policies that Mr. Biden is now defending. These actions are carbon bombs. The physics of is unforgiving, Mr. Caputo said. To keep global temperatures from rising to dangerously high levels, extraction must stop, he said. I get that theyre being pressured politically. I get that there are thin margins, he said. But the climate crisis doesnt care about any of that stuff. This month the worlds leading energy agency warned that governments around the globe must stop approving projects now if they want to keep the increase in average global temperatures below 2 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels. Thats the threshold beyond which scientists say the Earth will experience irreversible damage. Press officers at the White House, the Interior Department and the Justice Department all declined to comment on how the administrations recent decisions align with its climate pledges. The Interior Department also said it would have no comment on why Ms. Haaland reversed course on the Willow project after characterizing it as egregious in a letter she signed while serving in Congress. In its court filing regarding Willow, the government said the Trump administration adequately considered its impacts on fish, caribou and polar bear habitat. It also upheld the method used by the prior administration to account for the greenhouse gas emissions generated by the project. Conoco does have valid lease rights, the filing states, noting that under law the company is entitled to develop its leases subject to reasonable regulation. Amy M. Jaffe, director of the Climate Policy Lab at Tufts Universitys Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, said the fact that a handful of states wont immediately shut their oil production doesnt necessarily upend Mr. Bidens goal of reducing emissions and transitioning to clean energy. To use an oil analogy, were not changing a speedboat. Were shifting course of a giant supertanker. Its not going to happen overnight, Ms. Jaffe said, adding, Its a time-consuming and thoughtful process to move an entire country the size of the United States, with the complexity of the economy we have, to a major energy transition. The Palestinian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has condemned Israel's settlement expansion, saying that authorities in the Jewish state recently approved the construction of 560 new settlement units south of the West Bank city of Bethlehem. "Construction of new units aims at expanding the settlements that were built on Palestinian citizens' lands in the area," the Ministry said in a statement sent to Xinhua news agency on Friday. The statement warned that the expansion of settlements in the area of Bethlehem in the West Bank "will isolate Palestinian towns and villages from each other and turn them into isolated islands in an ocean of settlements". The Foreign Ministry held the Israeli government responsible for the settlement expansion and the seizing of Palestinian lands, and warned of its disastrous consequences for the chances of making peace. The Palestinians, who claim all of the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, and a majority of the community consider the settlements a violation of law and a hurdle to peace. More than 600,000 Jews live in about 140 settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. --IANS ksk/ (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) The Biden administration announced it would re-impose sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises and is developing additional penalties to target officials in the administration of President Alexander Lukashenko over the forced landing of a Holdings Plc jetliner and the arrest of a dissident journalist. The administration has also issued a Do Not Travel warning to American citizens urging them to steer clear of Belarus, and issued a notice to American pilots to exercise extreme caution when considering flying in Belarusian airspace, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on Friday night. The Treasury Department is also crafting an executive order that will provide the increased authorities to impose sanctions on elements of the Lukashenko regime, its support network, and those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy, Psaki said. Belaruss forced diversion of a commercial flight under false pretenses, traveling between two member states of the European Union, and the subsequent removal and arrest of Raman Pratasevich, a Belarusian journalist, are a direct affront to norms, Psaki said in the statement. Read More: Why Belarus' arrest of dissident journalist appears legally dubious earlier this week forced the landing of a jetliner carrying Pratasevich, a Belarusian journalist and outspoken critic of the Lukashenko regime, as it was traveling between Greece and Lithuania. Pratasevich, 26, has been detained in Minsk alongside his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, despite demands for their release. European Union officials on Thursday detailed plans for their own sanctions against that would hit economic sectors close to Lukashenko, including the countrys potash industry. Those are likely to have a greater effect than the penalties announced by the White House; U.S. trade with amounted to only about $112 million in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The announcement came after some lawmakers earlier this week called for the Federal Aviation Administration to fully prohibit U.S. aircraft from entering Belarus air space after the episode. The U.S. is suspending its discretionary application of the 2019 U.S-Belarus Air Services Agreement, the White House said. The FAA on Friday urged flight crews operating over Belarus to exercise extreme caution, but stopped short of a ban on overflights of the region. The European Unions air-safety regulator has advised airlines to avoid Belarus airspace. Russia has backed Lukashenko over the past quarter century, including during a brutal crackdown on the opposition last year, even as he resisted Moscows push for closer economic and political union. He has been deft at playing off the EU and Russia against each other to retain his independence, but now the Kremlin sees an opportunity to lure the country into its orbit. President Gitanas Nauseda of Lithuania, which borders Belarus, told Bloomberg TV Friday that Russia intends to exploit the crisis. There are efforts of the Russian government to swallow Belarus as an independent state, he said. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is to meet with President Joe Biden in Geneva next month, played host to Lukashenko in the Black Sea resort of Sochi, warmly greeting him on Friday. Im very happy to see you, Putin said, agreeing as Lukashenko belittled Western criticism of the airliner incident as a surge of emotions. Vice President focused on the challenges of the pandemic, climate change and cybersecurity threats during her keynote speech to graduates at the US Naval Academy on Saturday, the first by a woman at the 175-year-old institution. Harris, the nation's first female vice president and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office, said the pandemic has accelerated our world into a new era. It has forever impacted our world," she said. "It has forever influenced our perspective, and if we weren't clear before, we know now: Our world is interconnected. Our world is interdependent, and our world is fragile. A pandemic can spread throughout the world in a matter of months, a gang of hackers can disrupt the fuel supply, and one country's carbon emissions can threaten the sustainability of the Earth, the vice president said. This, midshipmen, is the era we are in, and it is unlike any era that came before," Harris said. "So, the challenge now, the challenge before us now is how to mount a modern defense to these modern threats. Harris described the cyberattack earlier this month that shut down the nation's largest fuel pipeline as a warning shot in what the new Navy and Marine Corps officers will be facing. In fact, there have been many warning shots, so we must defend our nation against these threats, and at the same time we must make advances in things that you've been learning things like quantum computing and artificial intelligence and robotics and things that will put our nation at a strategic advantage, Harris said. In her speech to more than 1,000 graduates, including ones who majored in mechanical, electrical and ocean engineering, Harris described climate change as a very real threat to our national security. I look at you, and I know you are among the experts who will navigate and mitigate the threat, Harris said. Most of the 1,084 graduates were commissioned as officers in the Navy and Marine Corps, including 784 Navy ensigns and 274 Marines as 2nd lieutenants. About 28% of the graduating class are women. Harris said the American people are depending on you." We saw this during COVID-19 when Americans watched how members of our military helped vaccinate our nation, because you know biological threats like pandemics and infectious diseases are yet another threat in this era, Harris said. The commissioning ceremony was held in person again at the Navy-Marine Corps Stadium in Annapolis, a year after the academy held its first-ever virtual graduation and commissioning ceremony because of the coronavirus pandemic. Harris marked the milestone of becoming the first woman to give the keynote address at the academy's commissioning ceremony in the same year that the academy had its first Black female brigade commander, who represents about 4,400 midshipmen. Midshipman Sydney Barber, who was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the Marines at the ceremony, said it was an exciting and emotional day to graduate with Harris as the speaker. She said she was scheduled to meet with the vice president after the ceremony. I plan to thank her for paving the way," Barber, of Lake Forest, Illinois, said in an interview before the ceremony. "She definitely paved the way for me, inspired me throughout the journey. In her speech, Harris said she has put Barber's shoulder boards on display in her ceremonial office. (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.) If market experts are to be believed, this is just the beginning of a major bull-run for Indias stock market. Healthy growth in corporate profit for the next few years, coupled with favourable demographics can take the indices to stratospheric levels in the years ahead. Raamdeo Agrawal, co-founder and joint managing director, Financial Services (MOFSL) has said in a May 27 note that he expects the to hit the 200,000 mark in the next 10 years up nearly 4 times (4x) from the current level of around 51,500 and advises investors not to bet against India. For the to achieve this monumental feat, Agrawal expects corporate profits to grow at 15 per cent on compounded annualised basis (CAGR) for the next 10 years a tad higher than the countrys gross domestic product (GDP), which he pegs at 12 13 per cent (nominal GDP). Market return going ahead, he believes, will be in line with growth in corporate profits. In the last 10 years, the S&P BSE has given a modest CAGR return of 10 per cent from 19,445 levels in March 2011 to 49,509 levels in March 2021, Agrawal said. During this period, market has taken crises like demonetisation, the ILFS fiasco and Covid in its stride. During this period, the Indian economy, according to him, has grown at a CAGR of 4 per cent from 1.7 trillion in 2010 to 2.6 trillion in 2020E, as compared to China that has grown at 10 per cent CAGR to 13.2 trillion in 2020E. By 2029, he expects the Indian economy to reach the $5 trillion mark. Graphic: The road to 200,000 Trebling of per capita GDP implies 10x opportunity in discretionary and 4x opportunity in savings and investment services, he said. Besides Agrawal, some other market experts and pundits have earlier forecast six-figure levels for the Back in 2017, Mark Galasiewski of Elliot Wave International had reiterated that he expects the S&P BSE Sensex to hit the 100,000 mark by 2024. The index was at 30,750 levels then. In 2014, Varun Goel, then head of portfolio management services at Karvy predicted the S&P BSE Sensex would hit the 100,000 mark by calendar year 2020 (CY20). READ ABOUT IT HERE Ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, too, had called the market rally 'the mother of all bull run' some years ago. Meanwhile, Agrawal of suggests that the government now needs to aggressively divest its holdings in public sector enterprises. The government, he said, should clear all 'blockades' for the divestment process, focus on job creation and kick-starting growth. Covid, he believes, is now a 'known beast' with vaccination marking the beginning of the end of the pandemic. He expects a K-shaped recovery where larger businesses will recover faster from the impact of the pandemic. Investment strategy As an investment strategy, Agrawal suggests investors opt for value migration, where value (i.e. profits & market-cap) migrates from outmoded business design to superior business design. Value migration, he believed, creates a huge opportunity for sectors that see value inflow. Telecom, information technology (IT), private banks, private life insurance, according to him are the ones to bet on. The other theme he is bullish on are the 'open-up plays' - i.e. the sectors that will benefit from the economy opening up after the Covid impact. These sectors, he believes, are likely to see pent-up demand get released. These include autos, consumer durables, paints and selective industrials. Phoenix Mills announced that the company, Island Star Mall Developers (subsidiary of the company) (ISML) and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) on 27 May 2021 have executed a Further Funding Subscription Agreement (eSubscription Agreementf). The Company and CPPIB had earlier in April 2017, entered into definitive agreements to develop, own and operate retail led mixed used developments across India and pursuant to which CPPIB had acquired 49% holding in ISML with 51% being held by the Company. Pursuant to the execution of the said Subscription Agreement, Company and CPPIB shall infuse in aggregate up to Rs.800 crore in multiple tranches towards subscription of Equity Shares of the ISML on Rights basis and the said infusion of capital shall be deployed towards construction and development of the on]going projects of its subsidiaries at Wakad] Pune, Hebbal] Bangalore and Indore] Madhya Pradesh and for such other purposes as may be mutually agreed by the Company and CPPIB. Subsequent to the aforesaid subscription to equity shares by the Company and CPPIB, there is no change in the shareholding of the Company and CPPIB in ISML and they continue to hold 51% and 49% stake respectively. Powered by Capital Market - Live News (This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) Union Minister of Parliamentary Affairs on Saturday said there is no question of leadership change in as the Chief Minister's position is not vacant and the incumbent Yediyurappa is functioning efficiently. The Member of Parliament from Dharwad, whose name is being speculated as one among the probables to replace Yediyurappa, said no such discussions have taken place involving him, He said the focus now should be on managing the COVID-19 pandemic and not leadership change. "Whether legislators had come to Delhi, what they did, I'm not aware. No one has met me nor have I met anyone. Also, the Chief Minister's position is not vacant, Yediyurappa is functioning efficiently," Joshi said. Speaking to reporters here, he said the focus of everyone should be on managing the COVID situation and containing the spread of the pandemic, and not change of political leadership. "Though he (Yediyurappa) is aged, he is functioning efficiently. And, there has been no discussion about leadership change keeping his age as the factor. There is no vacant position as far as the Chief Minister is concerned, there is no question (of leadership change)," he said in response to a question. Speculations have been rife for sometime now that efforts were on within the ruling BJP to exert pressure for unseating Yediyurappa, the 78-year-old Lingayat strong man. Recent visit by State Tourism Minister C P Yogeeshwara and Hubballi-Dharwad West MLA Arvind Bellad to Delhi reportedly to meet the high command and express to it the need to rein in the Chief Minister has given credibility to such speculation. To a question about some legislators meeting him and putting pressure on him to become the Chief Minister, Joshi said no one has met him. "When I'm in Hubballi or in Delhi, Ministers from the State come and meet me as I'm a Minister at the Centre and have been working in the BJP for long on matters concerning the State and on work that has to happen from the Centre. Other than this, no other discussions have taken place," he said. Ruling out a leadership change, BJP president Nalin Kumar Kateel too said today that Yediyurappa is a "unanimous leader" and would complete the term. Earlier too, there have been speculations that the BJP high command is mulling leadership change in in the days to come considering Yediyurappa's advancing age. Though the BJP had officially denied such speculation in the past, it refuses to die down, with some within the party like senior MLA Basanagouda Patil Yatnal giving credence to it with his statements, setting repeated deadlines for Yediyurappa's exit. (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.) Electronics took over Chinese brand to become the world's second-largest vendor of wearable devices in the first quarter of the year, a report has showed, on the back of its wireless earbuds sales. The South Korean tech giant moved ahead of China's for the first time to take the runner-up spot with a market share of 11.8 percent, which was up 0.6 percentage point from a year earlier, according to the latest report from market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC). At third place, was the only company among the top five brands to suffer an on-year decline in its wearable devices sales. Xiaomi's market share dropped to 9.7 percent from 13.3 percent from a year ago after its wearable shipments slipped 1.8 percent on-year to 10.2 million units, , Yonhap news agency reported, quoting from the report. shipped 11.8 million units of wearable products in the January-March period, up 35.7 percent from a year earlier. "Driving its volumes higher has been its truly wireless earbuds, including the Galaxy Buds Live, Galaxy Buds+ and the most recent addition, the Galaxy Buds Pro," IDC said. "Also contributing to the company's growth were earwear shipments from its JBL subsidiary with its mass-market and less expensive models. Meanwhile, the company's smartwatches and wristbands sustained their growth, reaching new first quarter records," it said. Apple maintained its top position, but its market share dropped to 28.8 percent from 32.3 percent a year earlier as its sales growth was below the industry average. The US tech titan shipped 30.1 million wearable devices in the first quarter, up 19.8 percent from a year earlier. The worldwide wearables market grew 34.4 percent on-year to reach 104.6 million units in the first three months of 2021, the highest for any first quarter. Another Chinese tech powerhouse, Huawei, ranked fourth with an 8.2 percent share, down from 8.4 percent a year earlier. India-based BoAt took the fifth spot with a 2.9 percent share after its shipments more than quadrupled to 3 million units in the first quarter. --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.) Alphabet Inc's Google is nearing a settlement of an antitrust investigation in France over allegations it abused its power in online advertising, and will likely pay a fine and institute operational changes, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter. The French Competition Authority has said that Google's tool to help websites and apps sell ads gave Google's online ad auction system an advantage over rival exchanges, the people told the newspaper. Google offered to settle the matter by removing obstacles that it puts up against competitors, the newspaper reported. The settlement could be among the first resolutions in a wave of new investigations or lawsuits targeting Google's ads business, which generated $147 billion in revenue last year, more than any other internet company in the world. Most of Google's sales come from search and YouTube ads. But about $23 billion last year was tied to helping publishers sell ads and the connections between Google's dueling businesses is drawing antitrust scrutiny, including calls from critics for a break-up. The French case also alleged other forms of self-preferencing in the advertising side of Google's business, the people told the newspaper. Google spokeswoman Leslie Pitterson did not comment on the reported settlement but said that the company's third-party ad tech products work with both Google's partners' and competitors' products. "We continue to take in feedback and make updates to better serve users and the wider ecosystem," she said in a statement. If approved by the Competition Authority's board, the deal could be announced in weeks and would be binding only in France, the newspaper said. Texas, backed by other U.S. states, filed a lawsuit against Google in December accusing it of breaking antitrust law in how it runs its online advertising business in a case that appears to be similar to the French allegations. Google also is fighting lawsuits in the United States from several advertisers, rivals and publishers around the same issues. Also read: 10,800 women suing Google for gender pay gap win class-action lawsuit status South Korean electronics giant Samsung upstaged Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi to become the second largest seller of wearable devices in the world during the first quarter of 2021. Samsung did so on the back of its wireless earbuds sales, according to a report from market intelligence provider International Data Corporation (IDC). This is the first time that Samsung has managed to gain the number two spot and beat Xiaomi. Samsung currently has a market share of 11.8 per cent, which is up 0.6 per cent from last year, news agency IANS said quoting the report. Xiaomi, which is now in the third spot, was the only firm in the top five market share holders to see a decline in sales of wearable devices during the first quarter of 2021. Its market share slumped from 13.3 per cent in the year-ago period to 9.7 per cent in Q1 of 2021. Xiaomi's wearable devices shipment slipped 1.8 per cent on-year to 10.2 million units. Samsung, on the other hand, shipped 11.8 million units in the January-March quarter of 2021, 35.7 per cent higher as compared to the year-ago period. "Driving its volumes higher has been its truly wireless earbuds, including the Galaxy Buds Live, Galaxy Buds+ and the most recent addition, the Galaxy Buds Pro," the report said. "Also contributing to the company's growth were earwear shipments from its JBL subsidiary with its mass-market and less expensive models. Meanwhile, the company's smartwatches and wristbands sustained their growth, reaching new first quarter records," the news agency quoted from the report. Apple remains the undefeated champion in the wearable devices segment. However, its total share in the market dropped to 28.8 per cent during January-March quarter of 2021 from 32.3 per cent in the year-ago period. Its sales growth was below the industry average. Apple managed to ship 30.1 million units in the first quarter of this year, a 19.8 per cent increase from a year earlier. Also Read: Samsung imports 1 million low dead space syringes for India's COVID vaccination drive More than 1.82 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses are available with states and union territories, and over 4 lakh will be received by them within the next three days, the Union health ministry said on Saturday. The central government has so far provided, through the free of cost category and direct state procurement category, more than 22.77 crore vaccine doses to states and UTs. Of these, the total consumption, including wastages is 20,80,09,397 doses, according to data available at 8 am on Saturday, the ministry said. "More than 1.82 crore (1,82,21,403) COVID-19 vaccine doses are still available with the states and UTs to be administered. Furthermore, 4,86,180 vaccine doses are in the pipeline and will be received by the states and UTs within the next 3 days," the ministry said. As part of the nationwide vaccination drive, the Centre has been supporting the states and UTs by providing them Covid vaccines free of cost. In addition, it has been facilitating direct procurement of vaccines by the states and UTs. Vaccination is an integral pillar of the comprehensive strategy of Union government for containment and management of the pandemic, along with test, track, treat and Covid-appropriate behaviour, the ministry said. Implementation of the liberalised and accelerated phase-3 strategy of Covid vaccination has started from May 1, it said. Under the strategy, 50 per cent of the total Central Drugs Laboratory (CDL) cleared vaccine doses of any manufacturer would be procured by the government of India every month. It would continue to make these doses available to the states free of cost as was being done earlier, the ministry said. Also read: COVID-19 vaccine: Delhi to get 5.5 lakh doses for 18-44 age group in June, says Manish Sisodia The Himachal Pradesh government on Friday extended the coronavirus curbs till June 7 but announced relaxations, including increase in the opening hours of shops, an official spokesperson said. The decision was taken in a high level meeting chaired by Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur here, he added. Earlier, the curbs had been imposed in the hill state till May 31. However, the state government has decided to provide a few relaxations like opening of all shops and other establishments from Monday to Friday for five hours from 9 am to 2 pm, the spokesperson added. This decision will be effective from 6 am on May 31 till 6 am on June 7. It was decided that government offices would also function with 30 per cent attendance, except stand alone offices with a strength of up to four employees will remain open with full strength. The spokesperson said it was decided that milk, bread, medicine shops will remain open as usual during Saturdays and Sundays as well. However, all the educational institutions in the state will remain closed. Similarly, public transport will also remain suspended till further orders. All other restrictions and exemptions will continue as per guidelines already issued under the "corona curfew". Also read: Data from Surat's crematorium show 11 times more COVID deaths than official tally The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) has restrained Dominican authorities from deporting fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, until further hearing into the matter, to India after taking note of the submissions made in his habeas corpus petition. The matter will be heard next on June 2. Justice ME Birnie Stephenson, in her order, put in an injunction regarding the same and restrained the respondents from removing the applicant, Mehul Choksi, from the Commonwealth of Dominica whether via themselves, servants, agents, or representatives until further notice. The court also allowed Choksi to meet with his lawyers and be sent to a hospital for medical attention and for a COVID-19 test. It further directed the Dominican authorities to file affidavits in response to Choksi's application. Mehul Choksi's four lawyers representing him-- Wayne Norde, Julien Prevost, Cara Shillingford-Marsh, and Wayne Benjamin Marsh, appeared on his behalf, while Attorney General Levy A Peter represented the respondents, Dominican authorities in the matter. "The legal team has filed a habeas corpus petition in Dominica for Mehul Choksi and has also highlighted deprivation of access and constitutional rights to him for legal assistance," Mehul Choksi's lawyer from India Advocate Vijay Aggarwal said. Choksi's lawyers stated in their writ petition that he was denied legal rights and was not permitted to meet with his legal counsel initially. The fugitive businessman's lawyer also claimed that 'marks of torture' were found on Choksi's body. Meanwhile, Aggarwal also alleged that the fugitive diamantaire was forcefully picked up from Antigua and taken to Dominica. "I noticed that he was severely beaten, his eyes were swollen, and had several burnt marks on his body. He reported to me that he was abducted at Jolly Harbour in Antigua and brought to Dominica by persons whom he believed to be Indian and Antiguan police on a vessel he described to be about 60-70 feet in length," Choksi's lawyer Wayne Marsh told news agency ANI. Terming it a 'travesty of justice', Marsh stated that the whole country needs to speak out and he as a lawyer would do everything to stop Choksi's abuse. After Choksi went missing, Antigua and Barbuda authorities launched a massive manhunt and issued an Interpol Yellow Notice. He was traced and captured in Dominica. Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said the fugitive diamantaire, who was found in Dominica, will be repatriated to India and that Indian authorities are in touch with Dominican authorities. Choksi, along with his nephew, Nirav Modi, has been accused of siphoning off Rs 13,500 crore of public money from Punjab National Bank using letters of undertaking (LoUs). Edited by Mehak Agarwal; with agency inputs Also read: Mehul Choksi's repatriation stayed by Dominica court; lawyers allege he was forcefully picked up, tortured Also read: Dominica says Mehul Choksi entered illegally, to be repatriated to Antigua Also read: PNB scam: Have asked Dominica to deport Mehul Choksi to India, says Antigua PM A Delhi court on Saturday granted bail to businessman Navneet Kalra in a case pertaining to the seizure of oxygen concentrators from his upscale restaurants, including Khan Chacha, here. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg has directed the accused not to contact the customers to whom he had sold the concentrators, not to tamper with evidence or influence the witnesses, and join the investigation as and when called by the police. During a recent raid, 524 oxygen concentrators, which are a crucial medical equipment used for COVID-19 patients, were recovered from Khan Chacha, Town Hall, and Nege & Ju restaurants owned by Kalra. The businessman, accused of black-marketing the critical medical device, was nabbed from Gurugram on May 16 and formally arrested the next day. He had been on the run ever since the police raided his restaurants and seized the medical devices. A court had later sent him to judicial custody till June 3. During the course of hearing on the bail plea, Additional Public Prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, representing the Delhi Police, told the court that the businessman committed a white-collar crime and made profit by selling medical devices at exorbitant price to those on death beds. Kalra's lawyers, senior advocate Vikas Pahwa and advocate Vineet Malhotra, opposed the contentions of the police and said that their client is being made a scapegoat and had no criminal intent to cheat people as he sold the oxygen concentrators to merely help family and friends. The police claimed that the concentrators were imported from China and were being sold at an exorbitant price of Rs 50,000 to 70,000 a piece as against its cost of Rs 16,000 to Rs 22,000. Also Read: Khan Chacha owner Navneet Kalra arrested in oxygen black marketing case Vietnam health minister Nguyen Thanh Long said on Saturday the country has detected a new variant of the coronavirus, a mix of the Indian and UK COVID-19 variants that spreads quickly by air, online newspaper VnExpress reported. After successfully containing the coronavirus for most of last year, Vietnam is now battling an outbreak that is spreading more quickly. Nearly 3,600 people have been infected in 31 of its 63 cities and provinces since late April, accounting for more than half of the country's total infections. "After running gene sequencing on newly detected patients, we have discovered a new variant that is a mix of India and UK ones," Nguyen Thanh Long was quoted as saying. "More specifically, it is an Indian variant with mutations that originally belong to the UK variant," he said. VnExpress quoted Long as saying Vietnam would announce the newly discovered variant to the world soon. Vietnam had previously reported seven virus variants: B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 (the UK variant), B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 (the Indian variant). Laboratory cultures of the new variant, which is much more transmissable that the previously known types, revealed that the virus replicated itself very quickly, explaining why so many new cases appeared in different locations in a short period, Long was quoted as saying. The Southeast Asian country has registered 6,396 coronavirus cases so far, with 47 deaths. Also read: Russian group behind SolarWinds hack has new targets, warns Microsoft Loading the player... India's unemployment in 2020 at worst level in 29 years, shows study India's unemployment rate rose to its highest level since 1991 during 2020 as coronavirus pandemic caused the economy to come to a screeching halt, according to a study. The nation saw one of the toughest lockdowns in the world starting March last year as the pandemic claimed numerous lives, with stringent restrictions on mobility and economic activities across the board. India's unemployment rate sharply rose to 7.11 per cent in 2020 from 5.27 per cent in 2019, said a report by the Centre for Economic Data and Analysis (CEDA) based on the ILOSTAT database of the International Labour Organisation. Russian group behind SolarWinds hack has new targets, warns Microsoft Russian hackers behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020, have launched a new wave of cyberattacks on government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organisations, confirmed Microsoft in a blog. The hacker group Nobelium targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations. Explaining the conduct of the cyberattacks, Microsoft said that Nobelium launched the attacks by gaining access to the Constant Contact account of USAID. 10,800 women suing Google for gender pay gap win class-action lawsuit status Google was unable to persuade a judge to block a class-action lawsuit over gender pay disparity. The lawsuit was brought on behalf of 10,800 women who claimed that Google pays men more than women for the same job. A San Francisco state judge certified the class action on Thursday, allowing four lead plaintiffs to represent the women. The case reportedly seeks over $600 million in damages. The women allege that Google violated California's Equal Pay Act. Tata Digital acquires majority stake in BigBasket Tata Sons has acquired a majority stake in online grocery seller BigBasket through its subsidiary Tata Digital. The stake in BigBasket pits Tata against other rival bigwigs such as Amazon, Flipkart, JioMart and SoftBank-backed Grofers. While Tata Digital did not disclose the details, regulatory filings show that it has acquired a 64 per cent stake in Supermarket Grocery Supplies, the online grocer's business-to-business entity. COVID-19 relief, Black Fungus drug imports exempted from IGST till Aug 31: FM Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Friday that the GST Council has exempted COVID-19 relief imports from IGST till August 31, 2021. In light of the rising Black Fungus cases in the country, Amphotericin-B has also been included in the exemptions list. This decision was taken during the 43rd GST Council meeting. She added that exemption will apply to COVID-19 relief items "even if they are purchased, are meant for donating to the government or on the recommendation of the state authority to any relief agency". Information-Technology giant Infosys Ltd in its Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) report 2021-22 has revealed that it managed to cut carbon emissions by nearly 46 per cent in FY21. The company primarily did so through the successful enablement of work-from-home (WFH). "Enabling work from home effectively has helped bring down our overall Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions by about 46%, while paving the way for a hybrid workplace of the future. With most employees working from home, we moved towards a revenue-based intensity tracking for our environmental KPIs (key performance indicators) as opposed to the conventional employee-based intensity," Infosys said, according to LiveMint. Infosys' total carbon emissions for FY21 stood at 290,865 tonnes, of which 41.4% came from capital goods, 23.5% from global energy consumption, and 22.1 from work-from-home. The firm has stated that its ongoing ESG efforts have helped Infosys remain carbon neutral for two years in a row now. "In fiscal 2021, about 50% of our electricity consumption in India was met through renewable energy sources. Till date, we invested in 60 MW of solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity," noted Infosys chief executive Salil Parekh in a letter addressed to shareholders of the firm. Infosys first achieved carbon neutral status in 2020, 30 years before the 2050 timeline set by the Paris Agreement for doing so. "More recently, we also formed an ESG Committee of the board to guide the board in discharging its oversight responsibility on matters related to organization-wide ESG initiatives, priorities, and best practices," Parekh added. Also Read: Infosys co-founder SD Shibulal again buys company shares worth Rs 100 crore Also Read: Infosys CEO Salil Parekh's pay package jumps 45% to Rs 49 cr in FY21 What's Included With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 319-352-3334 or email legals@waverlynewspapers.com. The European Commission on Friday authorized Pfizer and partner BioNTech SE's COVID-19 vaccine for use in children as young as 12, paving the way for a broader roll-out in the bloc after similar clearances in the United States and Canada. The decision comes after European Medicines Agency (EMA) backed the use of the vaccine in 12- to 15-year olds earlier in the day. The agency's endorsement came weeks after it began evaluating extending use of the vaccine to include that age group. The vaccine is already being used in the European Union for those aged 16 and above. The EMA said two doses of the vaccine, branded as Comirnaty, were required in the 12-15 age group and should be administered with an interval of at least three weeks, the same as for adults, adding that it was up to individual EU states to decide if and when to offer the vaccine to teenagers. Distribution and administration of the vaccine by the EU member states will continue to be determined according to the populations identified in the EU and as per national guidance, Pfizer and BioNTech said. Germany on Thursday laid out plans to offer shots to 12-year-olds from June 7, pending the EMA's verdict. Italy has also said it is preparing to extend its campaign to over 12-year olds. Inoculating children and young people is considered a critical step toward reaching "herd immunity" and taming the pandemic, and Japan on Friday joined the countries with a go-ahead for Comirnaty in 12-year-olds. Youngsters have been much less likely to suffer severe disease, with many experiencing no symptoms, allowing them to unwittingly transmit COVID-19 to others. However, giving vaccines to younger people in affluent countries while many parts of the world await doses for older and more vulnerable people has raised concerns. Pfizer and BioNTech in March unveiled trial data showing their vaccine offered 100% protection against the infectious disease in a trial with 2,260 adolescents aged 12 to 15. It was also well tolerated. The pair managed to steal a march on other drugmakers, including AstraZeneca, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, who are working on vaccines for children, some as young as six months. The shorter duration of safety monitoring in trials so far in the 12-15 age group compared with older cohorts was not a concern, said Marco Cavaleri, EMA's head of health threats and vaccines strategy. "Based on the experience that we've gathered with many other vaccines throughout the years is that ... what we see with young adults is also seen in adolescents," he told a news briefing, when asked about side effects. He added that monitoring would intensify as vaccine recipients become younger in future. Others have voiced caution, however, such as a member of Germany's influential vaccine advisory committee Stiko. Paediatrics professor Ruediger von Kries has said the vaccine might only be called for in children with particular health risks, citing a lack of data on long-term side effects. At the briefing, EMA also said that reports of cases of an inflammation of heart muscles following vaccination with Comirnaty were no cause for concern as they continued to happen at a rate that typically affected the general population. Also read: Covaxin's production, supply time-taking process: Bharat Biotech COMPUTEX 2021 Virtual organized by TAITRA will take place from May 31 to June 30 online. To keep the industry updated with the most groundbreaking technology trends and provide participants with a comprehensive vision of the world, COMPUTEX extended its keynote and forum speeches to top CEOs and senior executives from leading international companies such as AMD, Arm, Intel, Micron, NVIDIA, NXP Semiconductors, Qualcomm and Supermicro. James Huang, TAITRA Chairman, pointed out that "COMPUTEX CEO Keynote has received great interest since its introduction in 2019. This year, COMPUTEX takes it a step further by leveraging the cross-industry capabilities of technology giants, providing a platform to share insights and exchange ideas in reshaping a post-pandemic future. Leading CEOs and Senior Executives of Tech Giants to Deliver Keynotes Monday, May 31, at 10:00 AM (GMT+8) Michelle Johnston Holthaus, Executive Vice President at Intel Corporation, will speak on the Innovation Unleashed and welcome Intels Steve Long, corporate vice president of Client Computing Group Sales, and Lisa Spelman, corporate vice president and general manager of the Xeon and Memory Group, to outline how Intel innovations help expand human potential by expanding technologys potential. Monday, May 31, at 2:00 PM (GMT+8) Arm CEO Simon Segars will give a keynote on Sparking the Worlds Post-Pandemic Recovery, analyzing how AI will accelerate tackling complex challenges surrounding climate change, security, and equitable access to technologies and connectivity, acting thus as a remarkable force for good. Tuesday, June 1, at 10:00 AM (GMT+8) Dr. Lisa Su, President and CEO of AMD, will present a keynote with the theme AMD Accelerating The High-Performance Computing Ecosystem, sharing the AMD vision for the future of computing and how AMD speeds up innovation with ecosystem partners to deliver a leadership product portfolio for innovative solutions. Tuesday, June 1, at 10:00 AM (GMT+8) Jeff Fisher, Senior Vice President of NVIDIAs GeForce Business Unit and Manuvir Das, Head of Enterprise Computing at NVIDIA will discuss The Transformational Power of Accelerated Computing, from Gaming to the Enterprise Data Center. They will present the massive opportunities that GeForce PC gaming represents for the Taiwan ecosystem and shifts driving the democratization of AI and how enterprises embrace them can thrive in the coming years. Wednesday, June 2, at 9:00 AM (GMT+8) Sanjay Mehrotra, President and Chief Executive Officer of Micron will focus his keynote on Innovation for the Data Economy: Why Todays Infrastructure Innovation Brings Data to Life, Powering Insights for All, opening for the AIoT Evolution session of the COMPUTEX Forum, and sharing Microns vision for how data transform modern life and creates new opportunities for memory and storage innovation. Wednesday, June 2, 10:30 AM (GMT+8) Supermicro President, CEO & Chairman of the Board, Charles Liang, will give a keynote on Performance Begins at the Edge for 5G and Intelligent IoT, presenting Supermicros newest solutions as well as its future strategy. Wednesday, June 2, 2:00 PM (GMT+8) NXP Semiconductors President and CEO Kurt Sievers will deliver a keynote on How AI Can Empower Industries, IoT and Automotive Industry, the opening session for the AI Empowerment of the COMPUTEX Forum by sharing NXP Semiconductors' development and plans in AI, broadening peoples imagination of intelligent places. Thursday, June 3, 8:40 AM (GMT+8) Qualcomm Senior Vice President and General Manager Alex Katouzian will speak on "5G and the Future of the PC," where he will share his unique perspectives on how 5G and the Always on, Always Connected PC are shaping the future of computing to meet the needs of a more mobile society. For more COMPUTEX CEO Keynote and show information, please check out the official COMPUTEX website: https://virtual.computextaipei.com.tw/events/ For more updates COMPUTEX website: https://www.computextaipei.com.tw InnoVEX website: https://www.innovex.com.tw/ About COMPUTEX TAIPEI (also called COMPUTEX): Established in 1981, COMPUTEX is one of the leading global ICT, IoT, and startup tradeshows with a complete supply chain and IoT ecosystems. Co-organized by the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) and Taipei Computer Association (TCA), COMPUTEX, based upon Taiwans complete ICT clusters, covers the whole spectrum of the ICT industry, from established brands to startups and from ICT supply chain to IoT ecosystems. With strong R&D and manufacturing capabilities and IPR protection, Taiwan is a strategic destination for foreign companies and investors looking for partners in global technology ecosystems. Follow COMPUTEX on its website at www.computextaipei.com.tw and Twitter @computex_taipei using the hashtag #COMPUTEX. About COMPUTEX 2021 Virtual: As a pioneer in technology, COMPUTEX has been at the forefront in embracing digital transformation. In 2021, the show will go online. Together with the key global technology players, the organizer of COMPUTEX, Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) introduces #COMPUTEXVirtual (including its global startups and innovations showcase #InnoVEXVirtual), an AI-driven virtual platform, and aims to deliver an exceptional virtual exhibition experience beyond the distance. About TAITRA: Founded in 1970, TAITRA is Taiwan's foremost nonprofit trade promoting organization. Sponsored by the government and industry organizations, TAITRA assists enterprises to expand their global reach. Headquartered in Taipei, TAITRA has a team of 1,300 specialists and operates 5 local offices in Taoyuan, Hsinchu, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, as well as 63 branches worldwide. Together with Taipei World Trade Center (TWTC) and Taiwan Trade Center (TTC), TAITRA has formed a global network dedicated to promoting world trade. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210528005147/en/ Scotsman, a Silicon Valley-based electric scooter brand, has unveiled its flagship product, the worlds first electric scooter custom 3D-printed entirely in carbon fiber composite. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210527005088/en/ Commute without compromise! Scotsman is breaking the mold with the world's first 3D printed carbon fiber composite scooter. (Photo: Business Wire) The Scotsman touts a true unibody construction, 3D-printed with single passes of continuous carbon fiber thermoplastic composite. Unlike other high-end scooters that have certain parts that are composite, the Scotsmans the entire frame, handlebar, stem, and baseboard is made of carbon fiber composite. Its constructed without joints or glue for seamless strength. The scooter is produced using the latest thermoplastic materials, making it extremely impact resistant, yet remarkably lightweight. Scotsman uses an advanced 3D-printing process allowing for unprecedented levels of customization. Each frame is tailor made for the owners body measurements and riding style. In designing the Scotsman, we wanted to elevate the scooter experience to a sophisticated means of transportation. One that appeals to the urban professional commuting to work and the performance geek who wants the latest in electric mobility too. 3D printing with carbon fiber composite enables us to pursue designs not otherwise possible in other materials and fabrication techniques, said Josh Morenstein, Founder of Branch Creative, the award-winning design studio behind the design of Scotsman. Previously, Branch Creative designed the Bird 2 electric scooter. In addition to the advanced materials and manufacturing techniques used, the Scotsman is packed with the highest-end features: high power motors (up to 2000 Watt output), a dual motor system for added stability, a dual regenerative brake system, a proprietary composite suspension system, a dual battery bay architecture for extended riding, a quick release battery system that doubles as a USB-C powerbank to charge your electronics, a fully connected (always on GPS + cellular) riding experience, including Find My Scooter and Unlock features, and a built-in dashcam that has a Record My Ride feature. The Scotsman is an incredible vehicle and a triumph not just in engineering but in demonstrating an entirely new way of bringing products to market. The team has reduced the long (years) and expensive process of the traditional manufacturing set up to a much faster (weeks) and more agile approach while simultaneously enabling mass customization. This is fulfilling the dream of additive manufacturing at scale, not just in physical build volume with printing an entire scooter, but in the quantity and speed of units being made, said Kota Nezu, an award-winning designer who was the Chief Concept Car Designer for Toyota and developed the zeCOO, the first eMotocycle made in Japan. The Scotsman electric scooter will retail for $2,999 and is available for pre-order now. Shipping begins in December 2021. About Scotsman is a U.S. scooter brand producing lightweight, impact-resistant electric scooters. Using advanced carbon fiber composite materials and innovative 3D-printing manufacturing, every unit is custom built for customers according to their size, riding styles, and use case. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210527005088/en/ Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the Colfax Fire is contained. Niece remembers life of WWII vet who will be part of Wexford honor wall The first-day gain was the eighth biggest of the year on a U.S. exchange, out of more than 450 listings of $100 million or more Jun 12, 2021 01:02 PM Courtney, whose district includes the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard in Groton, said the United States is unmatched in undersea naval power, but its fleet is aging and shrinking. As a result, its key tool of deterrence is in jeopardy, particularly against an aggressive and expansive reach by China in the Pacific. Become A Subscriber A subscription opens up access to all our online content, including: our interactive E-Edition, a full archive of modern stories, exclusive and expanded online offerings, photo galleries from Caledonian-Record journalists, video reports from our media partners, extensive international, national and regional reporting by the Associated Press, and a wide variety of feature content. Jaxon Sotirkys of New Bern, 5, places an American flag at the Beaufort Veterans Memorial during a Memorial Day ceremony Saturday. (Cheryl Burke photo) German biologist refutes COVID-19 lab leak theory Xinhua) 11:09, May 29, 2021 Medical workers wheel a patient into the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York, United States, March 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Michael Nagle) "Secret service reports usually have the property that they are secret and will remain secret. So we cannot check whether such a report actually exists, what is really there and what evidence is included, if any. The bottom line is that the current debate is based on hearsay." BERLIN, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 lab leak theory is falsely claimed and some media reports from the United States are based on hearsay, a German biologist has said. Matthias Glaubrecht, scientific director and professor from the Department of Animal Diversity at the University of Hamburg, made the remarks in a recent interview with German media Der Spiegel. So far the most impeccable hypothesis is from the World Health Organization that COVID-19 jumped to humans via intermediate hosts, according to the biologist. Passengers wearing face masks are seen in a subway car in Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Rahel Patrasso) "In nature, new virus variants are constantly emerging, (and) genes are changing. Even the best experts cannot tell where new sequences come from," Glaubrecht told Der Spiegel. He questioned some media reports that cited U.S. intelligence information suggesting that the virus is man-made and leak from a laboratory in Wuhan. Travelers wearing face masks are seen at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, Feb. 2, 2021.(Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua) "Secret service reports usually have the property that they are secret and will remain secret. So we cannot check whether such a report actually exists, what is really there and what evidence is included, if any. The bottom line is that the current debate is based on hearsay," said Glaubrecht. When asked about the origin of the coronavirus, Glaubrecht said it is difficult for scientists to give conclusive evidence where the virus came from. "We only have to estimate what is more plausible," Glaubrecht said. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) The floor was rotting and falling through and we couldnt get to a place of agreement with the landlord, Gamble said. But then he gave a little and we gave a little and we worked it out. Boulder - Barbara Ann Keirana, of Boulder, Colo., passed away on May 12, 2021. She was 87 years old. An out of state celebration of her life will be held at a future date. Barbara's final resting place will be with her husband, Alan Keiran, at Ft. Logan Naional Cemetery in Denver. Howe Mortu The government of Russia has warned the Walt Disney Company against distributing one of Pixars shorts films in the country, noting that the film violates Russian law. The short in question, Out, directed by Steven Clay Hunter and produced by Max Sachar, was released on Disney+ last year as part of Pixars Sparkshorts series. It features a lead character who is gay. Russias internet and communications regulator Roskomnadzor wrote in a letter to Disney that the film was harmful the countrys children because it denies family values and promotes non-traditional sexual relationships. Photo: Terramera CEO Karn Manhas Carbon in the soil, good. Carbon in the atmosphere, not so good. Its the basis of life, said Terramera Inc. CEO Karn Manhas, referring to photosynthesis, the process by which plants pull carbon from the atmosphere as they harness energy from sunlight and convert it into chemical energy. So while experts agree its best to sequester as much carbon in the soil as possible, the problem is that its hard to incentivize those efforts within the agricultural industry, according to Manhas. The current methods for measuring soil carbon are actually just too expensive, inefficient and unreliable, he said. But as of this week, Manhas Vancouver-based agtech firm is one step closer to creating the conditions to make those costs fall precipitously and help motivate the launch of a market for soil carbon credits in Canada. On Thursday, Sustainable Development Technology Canada (SDTC) revealed its awarding Terramera $7.9 million in funding to pursue technology that can better quantify carbon within farm soil without the reliance on expensive labour and lab work currently needed. The key thing that we've always been looking at is how do we start incenting that behavior, said Manhas. We've developed a scalable, accurate, low-cost remote sensing technology where we actually have sensors and data pulled out of the field. No market for purchasing carbon credits based on carbon sequestration in the soil currently exists in Canada. In the U.S., the market leans heavily on best estimates based on initiatives deployed by farmers, such as the growth of cover crops or soil-tilling practices. But if potential buyers of carbon credits are confident about the (potentially much less expensive) quantifications of carbon within the soil, Manhas sees the market for such credits opening up in Canada. Our focus is to drive down the cost of quantification towards $5 per acre, which really opens up the market and also enables Canada to establish a standard for consistent soil carbon quantification across the country, one that we can test alongside the traditional expensive ways to show that it's just as accurate, he said. Not only do they [farmers] get paid for the carbon they sequester, but it also improves their productivity in the medium and long term. Terramera is best known for its flagship chemistry technology, Actigate, which can be licensed to producers of both natural and synthetic pesticides to improve the efficiency, uptake and performance of the active ingredients in crop protection products. The technology would allow farmers to increase the performance of materials sprayed on agriculture while reducing the overall amount required. The investment in carbon sequestration signals another potential revenue source for the company, with Terramera offering what it says will be reliable and low-cost data for a market for soil carbon credits. [This can] establish not only a standard for Canada, but one that we can export to the rest of the world and create a global standard from Canada, Manhas said. Why that's so important is because it makes the market for soil carbon credits actually commercially viable. Photo: IHIT A body found dumped at the side of the highway this week in B.C.s Fraser Canyon has been identified as a 19-year-old woman. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team is calling on the public to help advance its investigation into the death of Melissa Elizabeth Steele. A passing motorist called police on May 26 at 1:50 p.m. to report a body at the side of Highway 1 between Hope and Yale. When officers arrived, foul play was immediately suspected and IHIT was called in. An autopsy will take place next week. Police say Melissa Steele was known to frequent the downtown area of Vancouver and led a transient lifestyle. Investigators are working to develop a timeline of Steeles activities prior to her death. They are also seeking dash cam video from anyone who was travelling between Boston Bar and Hope on May 25 and 26. Anyone with information or dash cam video is asked to contact the IHIT Information Line at 1-877-551-IHIT (4448) or by email at [email protected] Again Canada is in the World spotlight for the treatment of aboriginal children. Absolutely disgusting We have had no end of government investigations, federal and provincial. Our political parties for many years have been studying how to properly compensate families, and individuals who were treated so horribly and scarred for generations. Of course I am unable to comprehend the pain because I was not there. Our governments, police, and independent studies have identified over 5299 abusers, There have been less than 50 charged. Good God that's 1 %. Healing will never ever happen with just money. There needs to be criminal charges processed and let the abusers face the criminal courts. Canada and all of our citizens cannot continue to sit back and say " we didn't know" These are crimes against humanity and those alive should pay for their crimes. People working at the schools knew what was going on, but they turned their heads. Churches covered up, Governments remained quiet. In a civilized society there should never be a statute of limitations for crimes against humanity Ken Warren, Kelowna Photo: The Canadian Press This undated photo provided by the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office shows guns and ammunition magazines found at the residence of Samuel Cassidy, the suspect in the Wednesday May 26, 2021 shooting at a San Jose rail station. Cassidy the shooter who killed 9 at California rail yard had 12 guns, 22,000 rounds of ammunition at house he set on fire. (Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office via AP) The gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a California rail yard had stockpiled weapons and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at his house before setting it on fire to coincide with the bloodshed at the workplace he seethed about for years, authorities said Friday. Investigators found 12 guns, multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails at Samuel James Cassidy's house in San Jose, the Santa Clara County sheriffs office said in a news release. He also rigged an unusual time-delay method to ensure the house caught fire while he was out, putting ammunition in a cooking pot on a stove in his home, Deputy Russell Davis told The Associated Press. The liquid in the pot investigators don't yet know what was inside reached a boiling point, igniting an accelerant and potentially the gunpowder in the bullets nearby. The cache at the home the 57-year-old torched was on top of the three 9 mm handguns he brought Wednesday to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, authorities said. He also had 32 high-capacity magazines and fired 39 shots. The handguns found at the site were legally registered to Cassidy, Davis said, without elaborating on how he obtained them. Davis did not specify what type of guns officers found at his home, nor if they were legally owned. Authorities described a home filled with clutter, with items piled up to the point where it appeared Cassidy might be a hoarder, and weapons stored near the home's doorways and in other spots. Sgt. Joe Piazza told reporters the variety of spots where Cassidy stashed the guns might be so he could access them in a time of emergency, such as if law enforcement came to his house. Cassidy killed himself as sheriffs deputies rushed into the rail yard complex in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he fatally shot nine men ranging in age from 29 to 63. He had worked there for more than 20 years. What prompted the bloodshed remains under investigation, officials said. While witnesses and Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith have said Cassidy appeared to target certain people, the sheriffs office said Friday that it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could." Casssidys elderly father, James, told the Mercury News in San Jose that his son was bipolar. He said that was no excuse for the shooting and apologized to the victims' families. I dont think anything I could say could ease their grief. Im really, really very sorry about that. Neighbors and former lovers described him as moody, unfriendly and prone to angry outbursts at times. But they expressed shock he would kill. Cassidys ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago, describing him as resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments. U.S. customs officers even caught him in 2016 with books about terrorism and fear as well as a memo book filled with notes about how much he hated the Valley Transportation Authority. But he was let go, and a resulting Department of Homeland Security memo on the encounter was not shared with local authorities. Its not clear why customs officers detained Cassidy on his return from the Philippines. The contents of the memo, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, were described to The Associated Press by a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The memo notes that Cassidy was asked whether he had issues with people at work, and he said no. It refers to a minor criminal history, citing a 1983 arrest in San Jose and charges of misdemeanor obstruction/resisting a peace officer. San Jose police said they sought an FBI history on Cassidy and found no record of federal arrests or convictions. Mayor Sam Liccardo, a former prosecutor, said that while he has not seen the Homeland Security memo, its not a crime to hate your job. The question is, how specific was that information? he said. Particularly, were there statements made suggesting a desire to commit violence against individuals? The president of the union that represents transit workers at the rail yard sought Friday to refute a report that Cassidy was scheduled to attend a workplace disciplinary hearing with a union representative Wednesday over racist comments. John Courtney, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, said in a statement that he was at the facility simply to check on working conditions and the continual safety of the dedicated men and women who work there. The attack comes amid an uptick in mass shootings following coronavirus shutdowns in much of the country last year. Since 2006, there have been at least 14 workplace massacres in the United States that killed at least four people and stemmed from employment grievances, according to a database on mass killings maintained by the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University. Patrick Gorman, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he was not aware of any information about Cassidy, such as tips from the public, being shared with his division before the shooting. He said the entire San Jose field office responded to the crime scenes, along with other regional special agents. Kirk Bertolet, 64, was just starting his shift when shots rang out, and he saw some of his co-workers take their last breaths. Bertolet, a signal maintenance worker who worked in a separate unit from Cassidy, said he is convinced Cassidy targeted his victims because he didn't hurt some people he encountered. He was pissed off at certain people. He was angry, and he took his vengeance out on very specific people. He shot people. He let others live, he said. Video footage showed Cassidy calmly walking from one building to another with a duffel bag filled with guns and ammunition to complete the slaughter, authorities said. Bertolet said Cassidy worked regularly with the victims, but he always seemed to be an outsider. He was never in the group. He was never accepted by anybody there. He was always that guy that was never partaking in anything that the people were doing," Bertolet said. Yanceyville, NC (27379) Today Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 77F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 63F. Winds light and variable. Bill Cosby denied parole as board says former actor needs to meet more requirements Facebook on Wednesday said that it would apply stricter punishments on individual accounts that repeatedly post things that the companys fact-checkers have deemed misleading or untrue. Posts from habitual offenders will be circulated less in Facebooks news feed, which means that others are less likely to see them. In March, it enacted a similar policy for Facebook groups. remaining of Thank you for reading! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Police responded to 96 Walnut St. where security found AR-15 magazines underneath the Walnut Street Bridge. No bullets or casings were with the magazines. The magazines were covered in dirt and in a draw string bag. Security will be taking it to their lost and found at the ranger station at Coolidge Park. * * * A woman told police she was involved in a road rage incident a few days earlier near the Brainerd Road tunnels. She said her vehicle was parked downtown near her apartment complex for the next few days.She said she went to her parked vehicle to find a sticky note that day. The sticky note said "Maybe learn how to (expletive) drive? Also, lose the stickers. What are you? 5." The woman wanted documentation just in case a further incident occurs.* * *A person gave police personal documents found inside Le Nails, 5308 Brainerd Road. The items belonged to a female identified on them and were turned into CPD Property and made releasable to the woman.* * *A man said someone stole the catalytic converter from his F-150 while it was parked inside the auto shop at 3501 7th Ave. He said it is gated and believes whoever did it must have jumped over the fence.* * *A woman on Caine Lane called police because she wanted a man to vacate her mother's house. The woman has power of attorney over her mother and called for police for disorder prevention. She also said that the man is not on the lease, nor does he pay any bills for the residence. The man was able to get a ride and left without incident.* * *Police made a traffic stop on a red Mitsubishi sedan with an expired registration in the 600 block of Morrison Springs Road. The officer approached the passenger side and both the driver and passenger provided IDs. The car faintly smelled of marijuana, so the officer had the two exit the vehicle so he could search it. The officer asked them if they both consumed marijuana and they both said yes. The officer did not locate any marijuana in the vehicle, so he gave them a verbal warning about the expired registration.* * *An employee of the Circle K, 4900 Brainerd Road, told police an unknown woman (white jacket/dark jeans) approached his vehicle as he was preparing to start his shift. He said the woman began tapping on his window and asking for money. He said he told the woman to leave the property. He said she became argumentative, but left the business headed west on Brainerd Road, pushing a red bicycle. The woman was gone prior to police arrival.* * *A man staying at the Hampton Inn, 6145 Weir Way, told police that he parked his vehicle around 8:30 p.m. the night before. He said there was a bike rack on his vehicle with four bicycles on the rack. He said the rack was not locked. He told police that when he woke up and went outside that morning, one of the bikes had been taken from the rack. The hotel cameras were unable to be accessed, due to management not being on scene. No suspect information is known.* * *A manager at the Autozone, 4307 Rossville Blvd., told police he discovered that the catalytic converter had been cut off one of the company vehicles. He said someone last drove the vehicle and parked it there about 5 p.m. last Saturday, where it has remained since.* * *A woman on Cypress Street Court told police that she hung up her couch cover on her clothes line outside the night before around 7 p.m., which is the last time she saw it. She said this morning around 8:30 a.m., she discovered it was gone as she was getting back from taking her kids to school.* * *A woman told police she was at the East Lake Duck Pond, 3100 E 34th St., last Thursday and she left her vehicle, a blue 2013 Nissan Altima, parked in the lot around 7 p.m. She said when she got back to the vehicle around 8:15 p.m. she discovered some damage on it consisting of a medium-sized dent on the passenger side quarter panel. She said there have been no estimates yet on the damage. There is no proof of how the damage was done or if it was intentional or accidental.* * *An assistant maintenance manager at Life Care Center, 1020 Runyan Dr., told police that someone attempted to steal the catalytic converter off one of their buses there sometime over the weekend. He said the bus (2006 Ford E450) was last driven last Friday and was left parked there around 3 p.m. That morning around 8 a.m, it was discovered the pipe on the converter had been partially cut, but was not cut all the way through. He said that the converters had been stolen off two other buses there recently, which he believes has already been reported to police by other employees there.* * *A man on St. Elmo Avenue told police someone broke into his vehicle overnight. He said the vehicle was locked but upon return he found it to be unlocked. He said there were no signs of forced entry. He said $300 in coins and some documentation from the glovebox were taken.* * *A man in a room at Erlanger Main Hospital, 975 E. 3rd St., called police to report a theft. He said that on Friday at approximately 5 p.m. his sister brought him $3,500 cash in a bank envelope, as she had been tending to his home expenses while he was in the hospital, per his request. He said his ex-girlfriend had asked for $1,250 to pay Loanmax Title Loans (Brainerd Road) to keep her car, which she pawned, from being sold. The man said he had originally bought the 2008 Mazda 3 (unknown registration) for her and agreed to give her the $1,250. He said at approximately 11 p.m., his nephew was present in the hospital room when the ex-girlfriend came in. He said she was argumentative and was refusing to leave when he asked her to. He said he told her, "Take your money and leave," to which she said, "I need more money than that!" and took $3,500 which was laid out on the bedside table and left. He said his nephew had witnessed this. When asked why the ex-girlfriend was argumentative, he told police she was mad that he had given his nephew money. At this time he added that he had given his nephew $100 from the bank envelope. Police again asked the man how much money was in the bank envelope his sister had brought him and he said it was $3,700. When asked about the unaccounted $100 he added that he had given it to his sister and asked her to deposit it into his savings account. He told police that today he had called Loanmax to find out if the payment had been made on the car. He was told by the manager that the payment had not been made and the car had been subsequently sold. Police spoke with the nurse on shift who said that she had worked the night of the incident, but did not have specific knowledge of it. She pulled up the nurses' log from that evening and one of the registered nurses had made notes documenting that the man had "willfully given the ex-girlfriend $3,500" and had then called for police at 4:30 a.m. to report a theft of the money. Police attempted to call the man back for a statement and left a voice mail message to contact the non-emergency number, which the officer provided. The officer then attempted to call the sister for a statement and the phone number provided was out of service. The man could not provide more accurate contact or identifying information for the people involved. The theft of $3,500 is unfounded due to the computer written notes in the nurses' log documenting the willful transfer of $3,500 and inconsistent recorded victim statements on separate calls.* * *A caller reported a catalytic converter theft that occurred at the Ridgedale Baptist Church, 1831Hickory Valley Road. Over the weekend, someone cut off the catalytic converter from one of the church vans, a Ford Econoline van. The catalytic converter is estimated to be valued at $1,500.* * *A man on Hoyt Street told police he let his nephew drive his car on Saturday and he has not yet returned it. The man said that he would like to report his car as stolen. He said that he has tried to call "Shorty," his nephew, and he has not answered. Police tried to call two numbers for "Shorty" and received no answer. The vehicle was entered into NCIC. An out of town jury will hear the trial in which the former postmaster for Soddy Daisy is charged with the traffic death of a rookie Chattanooga Police officer. The jury will be brought back to Chattanooga for the start of the trial on Sept. 20. Judge Don Poole said in open court that he has decided to grant a motion by the defense for a change of venue. He said a written order would be put down to that effect. Ms. Hinds allegedly hit Officer Nicholas Galinger with her vehicle while he was inspecting an overflowing manhole on Hamill Road on Feb. 23, 2019. Officer Galinger was originally from Cincinnati. There was testimony earlier that Ms. Hinds had had drinks at a restaurant near Ringgold prior to heading home along Hamill Road. She was not taken into custody for several days and briefly went on the TBI's Most Wanted List. District Attorney Neal Pinkston and Assistant Cameron Williams are trying the case for the state. Ms. Hinds is represented by attorneys Ben McGowan and Marya Schalk. Hot ziggety we open with our new quiz format! THIS WEEKS QUIZ OF WISDOM 1. The giant squid has a brain in the shape of A) a pencil; B) a doughnut; C) Judy Bellenfants left foot; D) a triangle. 2. Human beings have about 3 million smell receptors. How many are in the nose of a dog? A) one million; B) ten million; C)100 million; D) 300 million. A knot is a unit of speed for a ship. What is that in miles-per-hour? A) 1.15 mph; B) 3.2 mph; C) .75 mph; D) 6.2 mph (10 kilometers). 3.A knot is a unit of speed for a ship. What is that in miles-per-hour? A) 1.15 mph; B) 3.2 mph; C) .75 mph; D) 6.2 mph (10 kilometers). 4. Identical twins do NOT have the same . A) taste buds; B) hair follicles; C) fingerprints; D) the same parents. 5. Heterochromia iridis is A) the hue in the distance from Clingmans Dome; B) why your reflection is backwards in a mirror; C) when your two eyeballs are different colors; D) what Chip Baker looks like before he combs his hair after a shower. THIS WEEKS RIDDLE: If twos company a threes a crowd, what are four and five? * * * A TRUE STORY FROM MY FRIEND KEN DRYDEN I had shoulder-repair surgery (this week) to remove a bone spur and fix a tear in the tendons. Arriving at 7:25 a.m., I checked in with the desk nurse and signed numerous forms. As I signed the HIPPA form, I was told that for reasons of privacy, I would be addressed as a number, rather than by name, even though I saw no one else during my stay in the waiting room. As the nurse called out "1400," I told her that she wouldn't get this joke, but I stated, "I am not a number, I AM A FREE MAN!" She laughed, though not as hard as each week's Number 2 did in the opening credits to the 1960s TV series "The Prisoner." * * * THIS WEEKS AWARD-WINNING JOKES * * * TWO BLONDES ON THE SAME AIRPLANE Two blondes were flying to New York from Los Angeles. Fifteen minutes into the flight, the captain announced "One of the engines has failed and the flight will be an hour longer. But don't worry we have three engines left". Twenty minutes later, the captain announced "One more engine has failed, and the flight will be two hours longer. But don't worry we have two engines left". Fifteen minutes later the captain announced "One more engine has failed, and the flight will be three hours longer. But don't worry we have one engine left". One blonde looked at the other blonde and said: If we lose one more engine, we'll be up here all day!" * * * MORE ENGINE TROUBLE ON THE AIRPLANE An airliner was having engine trouble, and the pilot instructed the cabin crew to have the passengers take their seats and get prepared for an emergency landing. A few minutes later, the pilot asked the flight attendants if everyone was buckled in and ready. "No sir, Captain," came the reply, the lawyers are still passing out business cards." * * * HALF OFF FOR WIVES ON BUSINESS An airline recently introduced a special half fare for wives who accompanied their husbands on business trips. Expecting valuable testimonials, the PR department sent out letters to all the wives of businessmen who had used the special rates, asking how they enjoyed their trip. Letters are still pouring in asking, "What trip?" * * * TWO WITH MEMORY PROBLEMS An older couple was having memory problems and were easily distracted. The man usually woke up before his wife, fixed his breakfast and when his wife got up later, she fixed herself breakfast. The man went into the kitchen and put a coffee pod into the coffee maker. He noticed it was the last pod, so he went to the pantry to get a new box and returned with a can of soup. Next he picked up the bread, there was only one slice left so he put it in the toaster. He threw the wrapper away and planned to get another loaf when he went to the store. He placed the coffee and toast on the counter. Normally he went outside to get the morning paper while waiting for the coffee and toast, then read it while eating breakfast. Realizing he hadn't gotten the paper, he went outside. He noticed someone had thrown a fast-food drink cup in his yard. He went and picked it up and placed it in the garbage can. He then went to pick up his paper and saw that all the neighbors had pushed their garbage cans to the curb. He placed the paper under his arm and pushed the garbage can to the street. While he was outside, his wife went into the kitchen and saw the coffee and toast on the counter. Since her husband wasn't around she thought he had made breakfast for her, so she ate the toast, drank the coffee, washed the plate and cup, and placed them in the dish drainer. Her husband came in, laid the paper beside his chair, and went to the kitchen. He saw the plate and cup in the drainer and concluded that he had already had breakfast. He returned to his chair, saw the newspaper, and figured he had already read it. His wife came in and thanked him for fixing her breakfast and asked if he was finished with the paper. He replied Yes, I am and you're welcome. Remind me to get milk when I go to the store. * * * THE LONE RANGERS FAITHFUL TONTO SPEAKS Tonto speaks Tonto came riding into camp, bruised and bloodied. The Lone Ranger asked him what happened. Tonto replied, Me drink fire water, see tracks, follow tracks, put ear to ground, hear loud noise, get run over by train. * * * THE WIDOWS FULL REPORT Sometime after Sidney died, his widow, Rachel, was finally able to speak about what a thoughtful, considerate, and wonderful man her late husband had been. "My Sidney thought of everything", she told her friends. "Just before he died, he called me to his bedside. He handed me three envelopes. 'Rachel', he told me. 'I have put all my last wishes in these three envelopes. After I am gone, please open them and do exactly as I have instructed. Knowing you'll do this; I can rest in peace'." What was in the envelopes?" her friends asked. "The first envelope contained $5,000 with a note, 'Please use this money to buy a nice casket'. So, I bought a beautiful mahogany casket with such a beautiful lining that I know Sidney would be very pleased. "The second envelope contained $10,000 with a note, 'Please use this for a nice funeral'. It made sure Sidney had a very dignified funeral." "And the third envelope?" asked her friends. "The third envelope contained $25,000 with a note, 'Please use this to buy a nice stone'. Rachel held up her hand and pointed to her ring finger, on which was a gorgeous diamond ring. "So?" said Rachel, "You like my stone?" * * * THIS WEEKS ANSWERS 1. B a doughnut (whats more, the squids throat goes through the doughnut hole) 2. D 300 million. Go ahead, count em. 3. A 1 knot = 1.15 miles per hour 4. C fingerprints 5. C Eyeballs (It can happen in animals, too.) Riddle answer Nine. ----- THIS WEEKS BEST VIDEOS * -- MEMORIAL DAY, 2021 The U.S. Navy Sea Chanters shares a set by Dominick DiOrio, You Do Not Walk Alone, a traditional Irish Blessing "May you always hear, even in your sorrow, the gentle singing of the lark" it is dedicated on Monday Memorial Day to all who have given their lives in defense of this great nation. #NavyMusicRemembers their honor, courage, and commitment. CLICK * -- MEMORIAL DAY, 2021 The U.S. Navy Sea Chanters shares a set by Dominick DiOrio, You Do Not Walk Alone, a traditional Irish Blessing "May you always hear, even in your sorrow, the gentle singing of the lark" it is dedicated on Monday Memorial Day to all who have given their lives in defense of this great nation. #NavyMusicRemembers their honor, courage, and commitment. CLICK HERE * -- THE CARLSBERG movie ad, highlighting courage, has been seen by 18.8 million and when you see this practical joke youll know why. CLICK HERE. * -- THE CARLSBERG movie ad, highlighting courage, has been seen by 18.8 million and when you see this practical joke youll know why. * -- GOD ONLY KNOWS is, arguably, the best song the Beach Boys did due to the harmony on Brian Wilsons masterpiece. This video was recorded at the Beach Boys historic concert at Knebworth House in England on June 21st, 1980. It proved to be the last time that the original Beach Boys: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Alan Jardine, would appear together on a UK stage. If you go back to about the two-thirds mark, you can see Carls delight as the harmony blend is flawless -- as always. CLICK HERE. * -- GOD ONLY KNOWS is, arguably, the best song the Beach Boys did due to the harmony on Brian Wilsons masterpiece. This video was recorded at the Beach Boys historic concert at Knebworth House in England on June 21st, 1980. It proved to be the last time that the original Beach Boys: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Carl Wilson, Dennis Wilson, and Alan Jardine, would appear together on a UK stage. If you go back to about the two-thirds mark, you can see Carls delight as the harmony blend is flawless -- as always. * -- ONE OF MY TOP joke sharers included this video, and you must see it! First, the backstory: The Hallelujah Chorus, part of Handel's Messiah, is one of the most revered Christmas songs of all times. All across the world, whenever this song is sung, people rise to their feet in respect and are enraptured by the praise ringing forth to God through a multitude of voices. Isn't this how the angels must have sounded on that night in Bethlehem? Well, prepare yourself for a slightly different "visual version" of the Hallelujah Chorus - this one "sung" by the Silent Monks. Monks, of course, are those individuals who cloister themselves away in a silent monastery - living lives of denial and solitude in order to get to know God better through a life of simplicity. CLICK HERE. * -- ONE OF MY TOP joke sharers included this video, and you must see it! First, the backstory: The Hallelujah Chorus, part of Handel's Messiah, is one of the most revered Christmas songs of all times. All across the world, whenever this song is sung, people rise to their feet in respect and are enraptured by the praise ringing forth to God through a multitude of voices. Isn't this how the angels must have sounded on that night in Bethlehem? Well, prepare yourself for a slightly different "visual version" of the Hallelujah Chorus - this one "sung" by the Silent Monks. Monks, of course, are those individuals who cloister themselves away in a silent monastery - living lives of denial and solitude in order to get to know God better through a life of simplicity. * -- REST VERY EASILY -- If you worry that you hear about bumps during the night, the Viking Nightstand will reassure you not to be scared of anything! CLICK HERE. * -- REST VERY EASILY -- If you worry that you hear about bumps during the night, the Viking Nightstand will reassure you not to be scared of anything! * * * When A Million Little Things Season 1 began in 2018, Delilah Dixon (Stephanie Szostak) was a central character. Her husband, Jon Dixons (Ron Livingston) death by suicide brought the rest of the characters together to reevaluate how they lived their lives. However, Delilah is missing from A Million Little Things Season 3, and some fans hope she doesnt return to the series. A Million Little Things Season 3: Stephanie Szostak as Delilah Dixon, Chance Hurstfield as Danny Dixon, and Lizzy Greene as Sophie Dixon | Jack Rowand/ABC/ Getty Images Where is Delilah on A Million Little Things Season 3? Delilah left for France in A Million Little Things Season 3 Episode 3. After watching the heartache Jons death caused with her daughter, Sophie (Lizzy Green), Delilah decided she had to spend more time with her father before he died. So, she planned a trip to France with her father, Lenny (Paul Guilfoyle). RELATED: Where Is the Mom on A Million Little Things? Is Delilah Ever Coming Back? However, while Delilah traveled in Europe, the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic wreaked havoc on the world. At first, Delilah couldnt secure a flight home. However, when she finally almost boarded a plane, her father fell and broke his hip. So, she had to remain in France with Lenny until he recovered from his fall. Fans continually ask about Delilah. They also wondered how Sophie could travel to visit her mother in France and return home, but Delilah couldnt come home. However, the root of the problem is that Lenny needs more time to heal enough for the pair to travel home. Why isnt Stephanie Szostak in A Million Little Things Season 3? Stephanie Szostak lives in New York with her husband and two sons. However, A Million Little Things films in Vancouver, Canada. The actor updated her followers on Instagram with an explanation on April 21, 2021. She explained that she couldnt go back and forth between filming and home because of quarantine due to the coronavirus pandemic. So, the story about Delilah in France on A Million Little Things Season 3 was born to explain her departure. Some fans hope Delilah doesnt return to A Million Little Things Many viewers enjoyed Delilahs absence from A Million Little Things Season 3. The show revolved around her storyline for so long because of Jon and her affair with Eddie Saville (David Giuntoli). Fans like delving deeper into other storylines. Overall, Ive really liked this season, one fan wrote on Reddit. Its been nice seeing the development of Gary and Darcys relationship, Regina and Romes fostering of Tyrell, and its been so nice not having everything revolve around Delilah! [I] was super tired of her and glad shes been in France this whole season. RELATED: A Million Little Things Season 3 Episode 16, No One Is To Blame: Whats the Story? Finding out the truth about Jon played such a massive role that viewers love the change from the first season. It was hard to watch the scenes between Delilah and Sophie through the teenage girls rebellion. Viewers enjoy Maggie Bloom (Allison Miller) and Regina Howard (Christina Moses) mentoring Sophie through her sexual assault. So some fans dont want Delilah to return to A Million Little Things at all. Will Delilah return for A Million Little Things Season 4? In the Instagram post referenced previously, Szostak told fans that she would return to A Million Little Things. Delilah returns for the A Million Little Things Season 3 finale on June 9, 2021. Shes finally back from France and by the looks of the image above, Danny and Sophie are not happy with their mother. Delilah wasnt written out of the show permanently, so fans should also expect her to return for A Million Little Things Season 4 in the fall of 2021. Barefoot Contessa star Ina Garten is no stranger to a delicious chicken dinner. The cookbook author and Food Network star has spent years crafting easy recipes for her audience most of which use basic household ingredients. Her chicken with shallots dish is no exception and takes only minutes to make. Barefoot Contessa star Ina Garten in 2019 | Brad Barket/Getty Images for The New Yorker The purpose of Gartens Food Network show is to give fans quick, doable recipes for every occasion, from weeknight dinners to holidays and dinner parties. Garten loves to entertain, but her recipes never get out of hand. Those who have seen her show or read her cookbooks might recognize that Garten uses almost only well-known ingredients that can be purchased at the local grocery store. Garten doesnt have any professional culinary training, and shes said that this helps her better relate to fans. Garten revealed that, despite being in front of cameras, cooking is actually quite hard for her and she learned everything she knows from Julia Childs cookbooks. Barefoot Contessa star Ina Garten in 2017 | Nathan Congleton/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank RELATED: Barefoot Contessa: Ina Garten Adds 1 Ingredient to Her Potato Salad For the Perfect Summertime Twist Ina Gartens chicken with shallots uses basic ingredients and is ready in no time Ingredients: 4 boneless chicken breasts, skin on Salt and pepper 3 tablespoons vegetable oil 1/2 cup dry white wine, such as Pinot Grigio 1/3 cup fresh lemon juice 1 large shallot, chopped 3 tablespoons heavy cream 1/2 stick butter, cut into cubes Directions: Preheat oven to 425. Season chicken generously with salt and pepper. Heat a cast iron skillet with 3 tablespoons of vegetable oil over medium-high heat. Add chicken, skin side down, to the skillet. Cook 5 minutes. Flip chicken, then put the entire skillet in the oven for 12-15 minutes to allow chicken to cook through. While the chicken cooks, add white wine, lemon juice, and shallot to a medium pan. Cook over medium high heat until mixture reduces down to 2 tablespoons about 5 minutes. Once sauce is reduced, add heavy cream, plus 1 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon black pepper. Add butter to pan and remove pan from heat. Swirl butter in pan to thicken sauce. Remove chicken from the oven, and add chicken to a large plate. Pour sauce directly over chicken and serve. Barefoot Contessa star Ina Garten poses with one of her cookbooks in 2018 | Noam Galai/Getty Images for NYCWFF Ina Garten has her husband to thank for her career Garten might have a food empire now, but that wasnt always the case. Growing up, she wasnt anticipating becoming a celebrity chef. She married Jeffrey Garten in 1968, and the two moved to Washington D.C., where Garten originally was a housewife. But at Jeffreys encouragement, she pursued a career working in budgeting for the White House and Jeffrey fully supported his wife when she wanted to make an even bigger change. Garten saw a specialty foods store for sale in East Hampton, New York a place neither her nor Jeffrey had ever been. He went with her to look at the property, and they purchased it on a whim. I hold it all to Jeffrey, Garten once said in an interview with Meredith Vieira. Yacht Stops is a new Below Deck-type reality show where American Idol type musicians become yachties while throwing free impromptu concerts in different ports along the Southern U.S. East Coast. From the mind of Last Comic Standing, Yacht Stops was originally supposed to be about a bus filled with traveling musicians. But Covid-19 had other plans so creator Michael Bloom had to pivot. I originally met Michael Bloom through ReverbNation, Yacht Stops musician Angelyn Iturbide told the Sun-Sentinel. He was doing a casting call. We sent in some stuff, well I did. And he liked it. The idea [for Yacht Stops] was originally Bus Stops. It was going to be about the same thing touring musicians and the ins and outs of how a tour works, the hard things that we have to go through and endure and also the good things. Yacht in Spain, Ibiza-Stadt| Clara Margais/picture alliance via Getty Images Yacht Stops turns musicians into Below Deck yachties The yachting spin meant that musicians would have to learn about boating before embarking upon their adventure. The first week there was boat boot camp, Iturbide admitted. It was hard. I honestly heaved overboard a few times. It was not good. The sea is not nice to people, she added. If it doesnt like you, it will tell you. We figured it out though. We had some good teachers. And we got to go on a fishing boat and catch some fish. That was new experience; Ive never done that before. Even experienced yachties get seasick. Below Deck Mediterranean viewers watched as stew Kasey Cohen was horribly seasick. RELATED: Below Deck Season 8 Made History 4 Shocking Ways According to the series website, the musicians end up juggling between performing concerts and maintaining the boat. Our Captain will assign these duties accordingly, according to the Yacht Stops site. As a result of their duties, the band mates may want to mutiny at some point, but they wont and despite the implied hardships, these band members will forge a bond not ever possible any other way. They will have each others backs when things get rough and will be applauding each other when the job is well done. Yacht Stops could be stopping at a port near you The series already started dropping episodes on Amazon Prime. The five-member band will spend the next two months, playing at 14 marinas in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina. Yacht Stops promoted their latest show on Instagram. Were coming to @inletharbormarina in Ponce Inlet, FL THIS Saturday May 29th! Show is at 7pm, so come earlier to their restaurant! Shows typically kick off at 7 p.m. and end at 8:30 p.m. SOS Were coming to Inlet Harbor Marina in Ponce Inlet, FL THIS Saturday May 29th! Show is at 7pm, so come earlier to their restaurant! Game on FLORIDA! ;) #ponceinlet #daytonabeach #yachtstops pic.twitter.com/ZcrcCOtbG0 YachtStops (@yachtstops) May 28, 2021 RELATED: Below Deck: Kate Chastain Unmasks the Mythical Crew Member Who Fixes Everything on Valor Musician Kelly Morris said joining Yacht Stops is a dream come true. This is a vacation for me, he told the Post and Courier. Im always busking, always recording, always worrying, always trying to get music out and done. Now I get to have fun playing and singing and collaborating on a yacht. I cant believe this is happening still; someone pinch me. Yacht Stops is on Amazon Prime and will have 22 episodes. The consequences of that is a sort of a lie that we tell ourselves collectively about who we are as a society, who we have been historically, thats set some of these things up as aberrations, as exceptions of what we understand society to be rather than endemic or intrinsic parts of American history, said Joshua Guild, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Princeton University. Dani Soares from Below Deck Sailing Yacht announced on May 29 that her baby girl has arrived. She is here. She is perfect. And we trying to figure this thing out. We both healthy and happy. Thank you for all the support, she shared on Instagram along with a photo of her childs tiny hand. Will post more once mummy had some rest. Only days prior to the birth of her daughter, Soares posted a pregnancy photo and the caption, Enjoying the sun and little baby inside the belly. Below Deck Sailing Yacht Season 2 cast photo of Dani Soares |Laurent Basset/Bravo A new Below Deck Sailing baby is born Soares daughter is the second baby born to a cast member on the show. Chief stew Hannah Ferrier from Below Deck Mediterranean was the first cast member franchise-wide to have a baby. In fact, Ferrier lives near Soares in Sydney, Australia, and suggested the former yachties get their infants together for playdates in the future. Weve talked a little bit, Soares dished with Showbiz Cheat Sheet about being in touch with Ferrier. Shes been on holiday for a little while. But as soon as shes back well definitely catch up for a coffee or get to exchange those mommy stories. RELATED: Below Deck Sailing Yacht Producers Think Barrie Drewitt-Barlow Should Have His Own Reality Show Her daughter is so precious, Soares added. Such a gorgeous little baby. She then said Instagram followers should prepare for a flood of newborn photos. Soares didnt plan to share with viewers that she was pregnant. But a fan leaked a photo of her, which forced her to go public. Despite the way she shared her news, the outpouring of support has been positive. Honestly, Ive been receiving so much support. People have been so nice. Ive had some weird messages, but, you know, thats always gonna happen, she told Bravo Insider. But the vast majority is amazing people sharing their stories with me, and I appreciate that so much. And that really does make a difference. Im happy its out there now. Is Dani Soares family in town to meet her baby? Having new moms like Ferrier nearby will be helpful as Soares said her family could not be with her in Australia. I dont have my family here, unfortunately, she told Showbiz Cheat Sheet. I couldnt bring my mom because of COVID. And thats really sad because obviously you really want your mom there. But the place I work at now, people are so amazing, she said. My coworkers are being so supportive. I only work with women and theyre just like, Were here for you and well babysit, well take care of you. And Im like Oh my God, you guys are amazing. #BelowDeckSailing star @Dore_Alli shared her reaction to Dani Soares' pregnancy & revealed she's known about it for a while now. #WWHL pic.twitter.com/tDyeYD3Uip WWHL (@BravoWWHL) May 11, 2021 RELATED: Below Deck Sailings Paget Berry Only Speaks to 2 Crew Members From Season 1 Cast members and friends shared congratulations on Soares post and many are planning to visit her as soon as possible. Super mum!!!! Alli Dore wrote, who has promised to visit her in Sydney as soon as possible. Captain Glenn Shephard added his congratulations to the thread. OMG Congratulations Dani, Im so proud of you, he wrote. Izzy Wouters from Below Deck Season 8 wrote, Cant wait to meet her! So proud of you. Soares daughter will soon be joined by another Below Deck alum baby. Tiffany Copeland from Below Deck Med Season 1, who lives in the U.S. is also pregnant with a baby girl. She has been enjoying her pregnancy and had a cute mermaid or pirate gender reveal in Feb. Kate Chastain from Below Deck recently mused about the possibility of becoming a yacht broker if she ever needed some extra cash. Its kind of been suggested that I could become a yacht broker, Chastain said on the Reality Life with Kate Casey podcast. My friend is here in Ft. Lauderdale and there are so many yachts. Honestly, if paying the bills ever becomes scary, or an issue I might do that. Below Deck Season 7 cast photo of Kate Chastain |Karolina Wojtasik/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank Below Deck Med alum Bobby Giancola is a yacht broker in Ft. Lauderdale Bobby Giancola from Below Deck Mediterranean Seasons 1 and 2 has already become a yacht broker. He is based in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, and works for Denison Yachts. Giancola has shared photos from some pretty impressive yacht listings with most selling in the multi-millions of dollars. In December he featured the 105 Broward Stella Maris: Listed at 1.1M. He also offered an insider tour of a 2002 Viking Princess V50. The boat was listed for $249,000. RELATED: Below Decks Hannah Ferrier Reveals 1 Thing Shed Never Ask Her Stews to Do While Shading Below Deck Sailing Guests He posted about another yacht on Instagram that was listed for a cool $46 million. Spanning three decks the Westport W172 model is currently under construction and is scheduled for delivery in 2021 some of her features are a top speed of 21.5 Knots & a cruising speed of 19 Knots [plus] she can accommodate 12 guests in 6 cabins. During her chat on the podcast, Chastain pondered if she would be into selling luxury real estate like on Million Dollar Listing. Her sales strategy would be to just throw parties because I had jobs in sales before and it was not for me. Below Deck alums can make serious money as a yacht broker Giancola probably isnt worried about paying his bills. The average yacht broker makes about $121,000 per year, according to Go Downsize. Career site, Indeed estimates the average salary is closer to $154,322. But yacht brokers who sell the multi-million dollar yachts could be raking in closer to $300,000 annually. Like real estate brokers, yacht brokers make the majority of their money from the sales commissions. While most yacht brokers earn about 10% of the price of the yacht they sell, commission percentages may vary. RELATED: Below Deck Yacht Owners Reveal Jaw-Dropping Cash They Make From Producers and Their Reaction to Crew Partying on Their Boat Transitioning from being a yachtie to selling yachts seems like a natural career evolution. But yacht brokers (like crew) need special certifications and training before they can even show a boat. Professional organization The Yacht Brokers Association of America, recommends brokers hold CPYB certification. The acronym stands for Certified Professional Yacht Broker, according to Yachtworld. Also, most brokers have at least a bachelors degree and some states require the broker to obtain a license Brokers usually also need about three years of yacht sales experience. Plus, yacht companies would like to see a track record that demonstrates the broker has experience managing sales contracts and escrow accounts. Giada De Laurentiis rose to fame through her delicious dishes in Italian cuisine. Born in Italy, the Food Network star lived there until she was seven years old and visits her home land each year for the spectacular scenery and scrumptious food. Somewhat of a connoisseur of the European country, the Everyday Italian host finds this part of Italy often overlooked by tourists. Giada De Laurentiis | Amy Sussman/Getty Images for Food Network) Giada De Laurentiis recommends visiting Sicily and nearby Naples Known for her wide range of Italian recipes, De Laurentiis is well-versed in the culture and offerings in each region of the country. The Giada at Home star named Sicily and Naples as untapped gems when it comes to cuisine. Sicily is the undiscovered part of Italy that people dont go to very often, and then the outskirts of Naples, she told the New York Times in 2018. The government doesnt spend as much money in tourism there, but it honestly has some of the best food, the best farmers markets. De Laurentiis relatives had their own food establishments in Italy, where the Food Network personality credited the region for sticking to tried-and-true homemade methods. My grandfathers family had a pasta factory right outside of Naples, she explained. His parents made pasta and sauces, and he and his siblings would go door to door to sell it when he was a child. That whole area was all pasta factories. Think of a building, and part of the building they make pasta all day. They hang it on the roof, O.K.? Like on clothes lines. Theres blocks and blocks of that. Its phenomenal. RELATED: Giada De Laurentiis Almost Specialized in This Cuisine Instead of Italian Rome is Giada De Laurentiis starting point When heading over to Italy, De Laurentiis usually has a routine for touring. Every trip is centered around visiting family. I usually start in Rome, because thats where my family lives, she remarked. When I land, the first thing I have is warm pizza bianca with mortadella inside. My mom usually gets it for me, but a lot of places have it, like Antico Forno Roscioli which means old oven in Italian. De Laurentiis frequents a luxurious boutique hotel in the beautiful countryside of Tuscany, and recommended the establishment for those seeking some R&R. The great thing about Italy is its so small, the Giada Entertains star said. You can take a train or drive to this place up in the hills of Tuscany: Monteverdi. Its just beautiful up there and very serene. Its a place to recharge. For me, a very peaceful thing is to walk through the vineyard, through the vines. Giada De Laurentiis has a favorite gelato parlor The culinary guru is very transparent about having a sweet tooth. When in Rome and its neighboring regions, De Laurentiis makes sure to swing by her favorite gelato shop in Florence. RELATED: Why Giada De Laurentiis Had Some Days in Italy With Bobby Flay Where She Thought OK, Ive Had Enough of Him Gelateria De Neri, in Florence, is a good one, she shared. I love espresso, pistachio, and fig and rum, something I started having when I lived in France. They also have a really great walnut, which I know is not everybodys favorite, but I think its quite delicious. When it comes to bringing mementos back to the U.S., De Laurentiis goes vintage. I like going to fun antique shops on this really cute street in Rome called Via dei Coronari, she said. Im a huge lover of baby spoons and forks I like petite things, so I collect them. These are family heirlooms from all over. Its been more than two decades since Princess Dianas death, yet people around the world are still fascinated with her life. Many royal fans cant learn enough about the Peoples Princess and one question that has been asked on forums is what her favorite makeup brand was and if the products she used are still available today. Read on to find out the answers to those questions, plus the one brand the Princess of Wales avoided wearing for a heartbreaking reason. Princess Diana wearing par earrings and a black dress at event to receive an award as Humanitarian of the Year in 1996 | Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images The makeup brands Princess Diana used Princess Dianas makeup always looked flawless every time she was photographed out and about, which is why many folks want to know what brand and products she used. The late royal did have the help of a team when she got glammed up including veteran makeup artist Clayton Howard. He created Dianas look for the Vogue magazine shoot that would produce her official engagement photo. The Daily Mail shared the face chart Howard made detailing the products he used on the princess. According to the chart, Howard used Max Factor Sheer Genius Foundation in Honey Touch which has been discontinued along with Max Factors Tint of Pink Lipstick that is no longer for sale either. Howard also applied Elizabeth Arden products, a brand Diana was very fond of. Its also is a favorite of Queen Elizabeths as well. For the shoot, Howard put Rice and Timberland shadows on Dianas eyelids as well as Navy Elizabeth Arden mascara and Blue kohl eyeliner. While the Blue kohl 636 pencil is no longer available, the company still has blue shade options in its High Drama Eyeliner to choose from. Princess Diana wearing blue eyeliner and a white and blue lace and sequin evening coat | Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images RELATED: Rare Photos of Princess Diana With Long Hair Why Dianas makeup artist had her stop wearing blue eyeliner Diana eventually moved away from wearing her signature blue eyeliner when she met royal makeup artist Mary Greenwell, who didnt think the bold color was the best choice for the Princess of Wales. [Diana] was someone who was in the public eye presenting herself all the time to the public. It isnt particularly appropriate to go on changing your look every five seconds, Greenwell explained to Yahoo. She did change her makeup a bit. Its just that it wasnt changed dramatically. I think dramatic change is not really something for somebody whos in the White House or in office or in a royal family, as its just not really appropriate. So what shades did Greenwell have Diana wear instead of the electric blue? Beiges and browns, she said. [They] are just so much prettier. Simple as that. Princess Diana is seated showing her side profile as she dons a green suit during a visit to Derbyshire, U.K. in 1992 | Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images RELATED: Princess Diana Really Didnt Want to Dance With John Travolta Because She Was Hoping This Star Would Ask Her The brand the princess avoided Just like she ditched the blue eyeliner, there is one iconic brand known for more than just cosmetics that Diana swore off. Designer Jayson Brundson revealed to Harpers Bazaar Australia that when it came to her accessories especially the princess stopped wearing Chanel. He explained that he found this out when he was helping her choose something to wear for an event in Sydney in 1996. She went back to her bedroom and she came holding like handfuls of shoes and bags and just dumped them all down on the couch. Then said, What do you think? so I went through them all and I found a pair of Chanel shoes, and I said, Well these would look great with the Versace, Brundson recalled. She said No, I cant wear linked Cs, the double C. So I asked why, and she said: Its Camilla and Charles. The designer added that the princess didnt have anything against the French fashion house, in fact, she wore Chanel multiple times prior to her divorce. It was just at that time the logo was a painful reminder to her of the princes extramarital affair with Camilla. Food Network is home to the best cooking shows on television. Fans love the shows because they add something more than just cookingthe chefs give audiences a glimpse into their real lives, building a connection that was missing in more traditional cooking shows. The Pioneer Woman is one of Food Networks most popular shows. Ree Drummond went from a busy mom blogging about her passionfoodto a celebrity chef who has built an empire. Her television show, cookbooks, and product lines are a huge hit with her millions of fans, and she continues to build that fan loyalty with her delicious recipes and cheerful demeanor. Who is Ree Drummond? The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond | Tyler Essary/Getty Images Ree Drummonda.k.a. The Pioneer Womanis a celebrity chef, food blogger, and photographer. She quickly rose to stardom in 2006, when she started her food blog. The blog became an instant hit with home chefs everywhere. She invited her audience into her home on a sprawling Oklahoma ranch, sharing her favorite recipes and kitchen tips. Drummond was born in Oklahoma. After high school, she moved to LA to attend USC. She had very different career plans at the timeshe was going to move to Chicago to pursue a law degree. However, she met her husband and it was love at first sight. She changed her plans, moving to Oklahoma with her husband. The two now own over 430,000 acres of land and have four children and one foster child. The blog was the launching point for Drummonds success. In 2011, the blog drew more than 20 million views per month, and she was offered her big break: a television show. The Pioneer Woman shows the beauty of life on a ranch The Pioneer Woman aired on Food Network in 2011. Drummonds fans were thrilled to get a more in-depth look at the chefs lifethey learned about herding cattle, homeschooling kids, and making meals that please everyone in a big family. One of the biggest draws of The Pioneer Womanlike other popular cooking showsis the unique setting. Audiences enjoy watching because they are swept into a beautiful world that is unfamiliar to them. The old days of cooking shows where a person stands in a kitchen built inside a television studio are gone. Todays most popular cooking shows are not just about foodtheyre also about lifestyles. An average of 8 million viewers tune in every month to watch Drummond share her kitchen secrets and catch a glimpse of her favorite animals on the ranch. Its the most-watched show among women between the ages of 25 and 54. In addition to enjoying her recipes and tours of her ranch, her audience absolutely loveS her magnificent kitchen. Drummonds favorite dishes will make your mouth water My kids shot my @FoodNetwork show again, and it starts this morning at 10et/9c! The little silver top falls off my pepper mill, boiling water sloshes out of my pasta pot, and I come close to crying. Hope you enjoy! pic.twitter.com/QcpUGlgVsl Ree Drummond The Pioneer Woman (@thepioneerwoman) May 2, 2020 Most of the dishes on The Pioneer Woman are delightfully rich comfort foods. In fact, there is one rich ingredient that Drummond loves to use generouslybutter. Many of her recipes use a stick of butter or more, like her mashed potatoes. In addition to two sticks of butter, her potatoes have heavy cream and cream cheese. Other fan favorites include pulled pork with a sweet sauce made with two cans of Dr Pepper, enchiladas draped in three different kinds of cheese, and a grilled cheese sandwich with cheddar, caramelized onions, and crispy bacon. Drummond defends her use of heavy ingredients by reminding fans that shes cooking for a husband and kids who do manual ranch labor for 8-10 hours a day. She also doesnt serve her family these calorie-laden comfort foods on a daily basis. To keep her family full and energized, Drummond creates dishes with plenty of protein and filling ingredients. One of her favorite lunches is chicken salad, one that she refers to as the perfect lunch, but her recipe has a few twists. She makes a chunky salad with bacon, bleu cheese, avocado, and sour cream thats perfect for a deliciously hearty bread. Drummond notes: This Cobb salad is mixed and stuffed in a sandwich! Its a hearty bite, perfect for an on-the-go lunch. RELATED: The Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond Takes on the Tik Tok Tortilla Challenge ACLU files lawsuit against Arkansas ban on puberty blockers, trans surgeries for kids Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the state of Arkansas in federal court, arguing that a new law banning hormonal and surgical gender-transitioning of minors is unconstitutional. The lawsuit, Brandt et al v. Rutledge et al, is being brought by four Arkansas families who are challenging HB 1570, also known as the Save Adolescents From Experimentation Act. The law bans medical providers from prescribing experimental puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones to children or performing elective cosmetic surgeries such as double mastectomies and orchiectomy (removal of the testes), on children younger than 18. The law also prohibits insurers and state taxpayers' dollars from funding these practices and allows insurance companies to deny coverage of surgical genital mutilation, chemical castration and related procedures at any age. The SAFE Act is the first law of its kind in the nation and passed despite a last-minute veto by Gov. Asa Hutchinson, a Republican, who argued that it violated limited government principles. The Republican-majority state Legislature subsequently overrode his veto. Joining the families in challenging the law are Drs. Michelle Hutchison and Kathryn Stambough, who argue that it prevents them from treating patients with "medically-necessary" care and prevents them from referring them to other providers. The lawsuit argues that "by prohibiting any medical treatment 'related to gender transition,' [the law] denies adolescents medically necessary treatment and prevents parents from obtaining medically necessary care for their children. It further prohibits doctors from treating their patients in accordance with the well-established standards of care or from referring patients to other doctors to receive the appropriate care." "It violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment because it discriminates on the basis of sex and transgender status by prohibiting certain medical treatments only for transgender patients and only when the care is 'related to gender transition,'" the suit continues. That constitutional clause states that U.S. states cannot make or enforce laws that "abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." The suit also argues that the Arkansas ban is an affront to free speech, violating the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution by prohibiting doctors from referring their patients in accordance with what they deem as accepted standards of care. The defendant named in the suit is Attorney General of Arkansas Leslie Rutledge who has vowed to defend the law. I will aggressively defend Arkansas law which strongly limits permanent, life-altering sex changes to adolescents. I wont sit idly by while radical groups such as the ACLU use our children as pawns for their own social agenda, Rutledge said in a statement. The sponsor of the contested law in the state House, Rep. Robin Lundstrum (R-Elm Springs), said that she was saddened to hear of the legal action against the state's efforts "to protect children from chemical and surgical castration" and that the damage to the human body will be seen from those who regret going through the experimental procedures. "Our children are incredibly precious and deserve the right to grow up safe and healthy," Lundstrum said. She added: "I am so thankful that we have a capable attorney general in Leslie Rutledge and her wonderful staff who will fight hard to protect children against those who would harm them for political purposes. Sadly, there will be children in years to come who will be asking, Where were the adults and why didnt someone say no, this is not healthy for me to do to my body?" Police in North Carolina on hunt for men who killed pastor days after his ordination Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A 25-year-old North Carolina pastor, whose ministry sought to end violence, was shot to death outside his home this week, days after he was ordained and proposed to his girlfriend. Robert Booth, 25, the father of a 2-year-old son and who started Hood Holiness Church in High Point a few months ago with the goal of ending violence, was shot on Tuesday night after he walked up to some young people wearing black ski masks in his neighborhood, Dwayne Waden Jr., Booths associate pastor, told WFMY. He probably looked at those boys and saw himself, Waden was quoted as saying. He wasnt encouraging gang violence. He wasnt selling dope. He was preaching the Word of God. Thats it. And they just took his life. Waden added, Its crazy because he texted me two hours before it happened and just told me, if anything happens to me, keep a lookout for my church. Booth, who had a gift for music that he used for his ministry, had proposed to his girlfriend during his ordination service, according to a Facebook post he wrote last Saturday. Years ago, when I met you at the kivvet store, I knew I was gone marry you, Booth wrote. I told the gang about how I thought it was love at first sight, and they told me to shut up and put the blunt down lol. But that was years ago, now we finna do it fr, and we finna do it RIGHT!! I just wanted to show you, how much I want to spend the Rest of my Natural life with you. I love you, sweetheart. We finna get MARRIIEEDDD. Booths friend, Brandon Smith, told McClatchy News, The thing that hurts me the most is we went from talking about wedding plans on Sunday to now his family is planning his funeral. He believed in street ministry, Smith added, according to Fox 8. He would go to the corner where the homeless were and just minister to them and just feed them, practically give you the shirt off his back. Police are investigating the shooting as a homicide and are looking for two suspects and a car seen leaving the scene, according to a news release. The vehicle was described as possibly a burgundy Hyundai Santa Fe or Nissan Rogue. There is never will, never be another Robert Booth, Smith added. To the guys (who shot him), you didnt even give him a chance to live. You didnt give him a chance to be that husband, to be that great father. You took his life before it could even begin. Bishop Kerry Thomas, who ordained Booth, told WXII 12, The streets were Roberts pulpit. Just the very fabric of who he was, outside of him being a pastor, outside of him being clergy, he was just a good human being. Thomas added that Booth could strike up a conversation with anyone. He instantaneously had just this gift to know a stranger. Hed embrace that person, not for what they were at that moment, but for who they could be. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Before joining the policy world, I taught history in Catholic schools. One of my favorite units was on the Supreme Court. Students were required to memorize the justices names, review various cases, and argue how the justices should rule in each case. The biggest challenge I faced as a teacher was convincing students that their determination of how justices should rule needed to be based in the United States Constitution, not in personal opinion. Sadly, this is not a problem only middle school teachers face but one confronting all Americans who recognize the role and purpose of the highest court in the land. Last week, the Supreme Court agreed to review Dobbs v. Jackson Womens Healtha case asking whether Mississippis ban on abortion after 15 weeks is constitutional. The Courts decision to review this case is terrifying pro-abortion activists across the country because not only does Dobbs have the potential to overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey, but if the Supreme Court justices follow their obligation to the Constitution, the Dobbs decision should overturn Roe and Casey. In Roe, the Court argued that under the 14th Amendment, the Due Process Clause, a woman has a right to privacy, and as such, she has a constitutional right to an abortion. As part of this decision, the Court said that the states had the power to regulate abortion in the first trimester for any reason, in the second trimester in the interest of the womans health, and in the third trimester, the state could outlaw abortion. In the Courts 1992 decision Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, the Court reaffirmed Roes finding that a woman has the right to an abortion but changed the requirements for outlawing abortion from the trimester framework to a viability framework. As any former student of mine should be able to attest, the words right to privacy that are used to justify the right to an abortion in both Roe and Casey do not appear anywhere in the Constitutionneither do the words viability or trimester. The seven justices who ruled in favor of Roe, and the five justices who ruled in favor of Planned Parenthood fell into the same trap that plagued my 8th graders. They ruled based on their personal opinionnot on the United States Constitution. Many have speculated that the outcome of Dobbs will be less than satisfactory to those in the pro-life movementsuggesting that the decision will likely favor a more incremental walk-back of Roe and Casey rather than a full reversal. I hope they are wrong. If my middle school students (who were very bright, but still, middle school students) were the ones deciding Dobbs, I could understand another failure to decide an abortion case based on the Constitution. I could understand that for a third time, middle school students might substitute their own opinions and create their own framework for when and how abortion should be allowed. But the nine individuals deciding this case have been educated far beyond middle school by teachers and professors far more knowledgeable than me. In fact, these nine men and women are some of the best and the brightest this country has to offer, and more importantly, they have taken an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution. As the Dobbs case is argued and the opinion is written, the pro-life movement must pray that the nine justices are able to recognize that overturning Roe and Casey is not a form of judicial advocacy, a decision based on religious principles, or an ideological answer to the pro-life movement. Overturning Roe and Casey is what fidelity to the Constitution requires. The DOTs five-year capital plan includes $900 million worth of projects for highway and bridge construction and repair, she said, and more than half of it is in her eastern Connecticut district. If her post had remained vacant because of the managers salary problem, she said over $500 million would [have been] administered by a district that had no manager in place. ... If the state of Connecticut is going to make good use of this [federal] infrastructure money thats going to be coming, they need to have solid managers in place. ready to hit the ground running. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Can anybody name a square inch spot on the planet anywhere where Marxism has brought anything good? Certainly not in China, Russia, Cambodia, Vietnam, Cuba, and Venezuela. And now, Marxism is allegedly making inroads into the U.S. military at present. So says a whistleblower, who just got fired from the military. Critical Race Theory (CRT), which is now being taught in many of schools and even some churches, is the mean by which Marxism is allegedly gaining ground in the military. Recently, Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier was relieved from his post as a Space Force officer because he wrote a book denouncing CRT and Marxism in the U.S. military. The book is entitled, Irresistible Revolution: Marxisms Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military. The book has now shot up to #1 on Amazon. Im sure a lot of would-be readers are trying to get their hands on the volume that the Biden Administration doesnt want you to read. Lohmeier said recently in a podcast, "What you see happening in the U.S. military at the moment is that if youre a conservative, then youre lumped into a group of people who are labeled extremists, if youre willing to voice your views. And if youre aligned with the left, then its OK to be an activist online because no ones going to hold you accountable" (quoted in The Epoch Times, 5/17/21). He added, "My intent never has been to engage in partisan politics. I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically nonpartisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history." As of this writing, some congressmen are coming to Lohmeiers defense. The Epoch Times reports (5/20/21): "A group of Republican lawmakers sent a letter to the acting secretary of the U.S. Space Force on May 19, urging him to immediately reinstate a lieutenant colonel who was relieved of his command after publishing a book that warned of the spread of Marxism and critical race theory (CRT) in the military." We constantly hear about CRT these days. I thought one of the simplest definitions came from Paul Blair, a Baptist minister in Oklahoma. Blair heads up Reclaiming America for Christ. I interviewed him recently on the radio on the subject of CRT (and the schools). Blair told me, "Critical Race Theory is a Trojan horse for Marxism. Karl Marx tried to stir a pot of friction between property owners and non-property owners. And out of that he hoped a revolution would foment and throw off the existing economic system. So he would replace it with his socialist utopia. Well, the economic friction never took root in America because in America everyone owns property." But after World War I, the Marxists regrouped and created critical theorybasically using any wedge they could find to try and create a revolution. And the most successful wedge the Marxists found to attack America from within was race, because of slavery, Jim Crow, "separate but equal," and other examples of racism in America's past. Blair notes, "What Critical Race Theory teaches our kids is that the system is racist. The American economic system, our constitutional republic, is a racist system. Therefore, its the system that must be destroyed. And, of course, thats what Marxs goal was to replace the [capitalist] system with his socialist utopia. And they teach this idea that if you are white, you are an oppressor. And were not concerned with what you actually do. Because you are born white, you are an oppressor, and you must be the one that becomes oppressed." Thus, being born white is a crime, according to the critical race theorists. And now we have a whistleblower expelled from the military for exposing this reported trend in Bidens military. Many veterans oppose this new development. One such veteran is Mike Donnelly, who works as a constitutional attorney defending home schooling. Says Donnelly, who served in the first Gulf War, "As a veteran of the U.S. Army, I think it's extremely important that our government stand up for the truth and for the values of our Constitution, which includes the First Amendment. This includes the right for people to believe and to worship and to express themselves, and it's very concerning that any administration should seek and target Christians or people of any faith, because of their faith, in the military." In this dangerous world, the military is very important to a nation. We remember around Memorial Day the sacrifices of those brave men and women who paid "the last full measure of devotion" to their country, that we might be free. But did they die so this nation might spread Marxism? No. Im sure they did not. Televangelist Jim Bakker blames his 1989 imprisonment for fraud on cancel culture Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Televangelist Jim Bakker isnt happy with cancel culture and believes his imprisonment for fraud in 1989 aided by a group of preachers but mostly the media at the height of his ministry's success was an early example of cancel culture. They canceled me, Bakker declared on The Jim Bakker Show last Friday. Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. According to The New York Times, government prosecutors argued that Bakker bilked followers of his PTL Ministry out of $158 million by offering promises of lifetime vacations he could not provide. He was also accused of diverting about $3.7 million to support a lavish lifestyle, including an air-conditioned dog house and a fleet of Mercedes-Benzes and Rolls-Royces. He was found guilty on all 24 counts on Oct. 5, 1989, and sentenced to 45 years in prison. He was ordered to pay a $500,000 fine. Bakker later filed an appeal. In 1991, an appellate court upheld his conviction. But he was granted a sentence-reduction hearing, during which his sentence was reduced to eight years. He served almost five years before he received parole in 1994. But Bakker argues that when he looks back at what happened, he was really canceled by preachers who wanted to take over his ministry and the media. It was a group of preachers earlier that worked with them but mainly it was the media," he said. "And the media got a Pulitzer Prize for putting me in prison. Thats what they do. They reward the enemies of the Gospel. ... We had the largest ministry of its type in the world Heritage USA. Millions of people came there, and it was millions being saved around the world. And they literally took it away, put it into bankruptcy. [They] said they were going to care for it. It was all lies. It was a takeover plan. And it was done in front of the world. And that is what cancel culture is." He further argued that "one of the biggest agencies of the federal government produced video from my show video and edited it and put me in prison." "They testified that it was that video that made people believe, Well, something must be wrong,'" he contends. "They made me say things I didnt say. They just put pieces together, thousands of pieces of my show. And so, when I went to trial for the last trial after I got out of a prison, I was put on trial again and in that, the lawyers got all that tape that the government had edited the government did it! Just like now, this is cancel culture and they took it apart and put it back the way it was on the show. And the lies they made me tell lies that werent there. When the courts heard this, they saw the first video that the government had edited and then they saw the one from the original. They voted unanimously that I wasnt guilty. As The Charlotte Observer points out in a 2018 article about how Bakker's online biography stated that his case was "overturned," that his website "combines its narrative of his criminal case with a later civil class action suit." "Those PTL partners, numbering close to 160,000, later won a $129.7 million civil suit against Bakker, but found he had no money. So they filed a class action suit to try to collect insurance money to cover their losses," the report states. "They lost that bid when a federal jury concluded in 1996 that the partnerships were not securities or investments. The people who paid for those 'lifetime partnership' vacation plans will never get their money back." A recent study of cancel culture by the Pew Research Center shows that while some people see the controversial term as a way to hold people accountable for their actions, many others, particularly conservative Republicans, see it as a form of censorship. Conservative Republicans who had heard of the term were more likely than other partisan and ideological groups to see cancel culture as a form of censorship, Pew noted. About a quarter of conservative Republicans familiar with the term described it as censorship, compared with 15% of moderate or liberal Republicans and roughly one-in-ten or fewer Democrats, regardless of ideology. RZIM apologist who wrote book with Ravi Zacharias admits shortcomings, says he was deceived Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment An apologist who worked closely with Ravi Zacharias and co-authored a book with him said he was deceived by the late apologist who was embroiled in several sexual abuse allegations that were substantiated by an independent investigation released earlier this year. In an interview with Josh and Sean McDowell that was streamed online Friday, Abdu Murray, who has been in the leadership of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries since 2017, explained why he believed the late apologists version of events when accusations were made public, and apologized for how he and the ministry handled making statements when the allegations arose. We really cannot afford to elevate ministry above people or certainly above Jesus, Murray said, speaking about what he learned amid the gradual exposure of Zacharias that took place the past few years. I think that we have this mentality in ministry that somehow ministry is itself sacred, that ministry is itself untouchable. And so when an allegation of abuse happens, we find it unbelievable because these people could not possibly have done it. Yet the Bible says otherwise, he continued, as many who had a calling from God committed terrible acts. Murray co-authored Seeing Jesus from the East: A Fresh Look at History's Most Influential Figure with the late apologist, which was released weeks before Zacharias died after a battle with cancer in May 2020. When asked what contributing factors led so many to believe Zacharias deceptions for so long, specifically regarding what happened with Brad and Lori Anne Thompson the Canadian couple at the center of much of the scrutiny of the apologist when allegations of sexual misconduct first emerged in 2017 Murray said he could not answer for what others thought, but that he considered Zacharias unblemished record as proof of his trustworthiness. Zacharias had portrayed the Thompsons' as a couple who were attempting to extort money from him and denied any inappropriate interactions with them, especially Lori Anne, whom he groomed into an illicit online relationship. Zacharias subsequently filed a racketeering (RICO) lawsuit against the couple. Adding to his belief that Zacharias was trustworthy was that he believed in and employed women who wanted to study and do apologetics, and he wanted them to be in leadership positions across RZIM. Zacharias presented an Im not going to hide ... let the truth be known approach to the allegations in 2017, Murray said, noting that he first learned of them when the RICO legal action was announced in the organization. This is the actions of an innocent man, he said, recalling his thinking at the time. Ive since learned something very important ... that this can be a tactic to silence people. Once more damning information emerged, my thinking should have given way, Murray said, to a more critical examination, but the reality of it was that I didnt want it to be true. Emails obtained by The Christian Post show that Murray wrote to Zacharias in November 2017 to give him encouragement because he believed the allegations amounted to a spiritual attack on the ministry, given its effectiveness worldwide in reaching people for Christ. Murray elaborated in the interview with the McDowells that realizing that the allegations of misconduct against Zacharias were true presented another irony that he came to faith in Christ, not wanting the Gospel message and claims of the Christian faith to be true. When I came to faith, I did so despite my desire for it not to be true. Ive often said that I value truth over comfort. But the reality is this, its that even though youve done that in your life, and I did that in my life, it doesnt mean you cant be vigilant all the time now. You have to be ever-vigilant, he reiterated, guard your own heart ... Is this true or are you claiming its false because you dont want it to be true? I think thats a big part of why a lot of people were able to believe [Zacharias] side of the story. They just could not possibly fathom it. But I think we have to embrace the truth no matter how inconvenient it is. The RZIM leader admitted that he was skeptical when additional charges emerged in August 2020 from massage therapists who had repeatedly interacted with Zacharias over the course of several years. But regardless of how uncomfortable it was, he and others within the ministry pushed for an independent investigation and they wanted the truth. RZIM hired the Atlanta firm Miller & Martin to conduct the review, and its full report was published in February. During the interview, Murray also addressed a statement that was circulated in the media and attributed to him about him wanting to hire a rough Atlanta ex-cop to investigate women who made sexual misconduct allegations against the late apologist with the goal of discrediting them. What actually happened, Murray said, was that he was asking a lawyer, Brian Kelly, about potential investigators who were reputable. Kelly told him and the only one he knew of was a rough Atlanta ex-cop who doesnt have a light touch. When he relayed that to the RZIM team in a meeting amid mounting questions about Zacharias conduct, Murray recalled saying that they could not go that route and advocated not using such a person. In an email to CP on Tuesday, Steve Baughman, an attorney and author of the book, Cover-Up in the Kingdom, who brought Zacharias sexual misconduct and misrepresentation of his academic credentials to light, said he believes Murray when he said he didn't suggest they hire a rough ex-cop to investigate the women who accused Zacharias of abuse, and that it's a particularly ugly thing to be falsely accused of doing. Yet, Murrays reputation is widely known as Ravis pitbull, he maintained. Despite his recent mea culpa, RZIM insiders have revealed that Murray pressured team members who questioned Ravi, he wanted to use attorney-client privilege to keep ugly information from the public, he put a positive spin on Ravis 2016 written suicide threat to Ms. Thompson, he defended Ravi for the false statements in the press release announcing the lawsuit settlement, and more, Baughman said. Abdu Murray can now plead blindness. But his blindness was knowingly and willingly self-inflicted. Abdu made it his mission to snuff out the red flags. Since the release of the Miller & Martin report earlier this year, RZIM has announced that it's changing the ministry's name and restructuring to become a grant-making organization supporting evangelism and abuse victims, laying off the majority of its staff. The Bible condemns polygamy, it doesnt endorse it: 9 Marks editor Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Despite its regular appearance in the Old Testament, polygamy is actually condemned in Scripture, according to Sam Emadi, author and senior editor at 9Marks, a church ministry resource organization. In an essay published at the theology website Desiring God on Tuesday titled, Why Did God Allow Polygamy?, Emadi wrote: Among Israels patriarchs and kings, polygamy and concubinage seem almost a matter of course. More than that, some Old Testament passages appear not only to describe these practices but to sanction them. Christians need to understand how Scripture advances the normativity of monogamy and how that squares with the many polygamous saints found in the pages of the Old Testament. Emadi wrote that when the Bible speaks of the polygamous relationships of various Old Testament figures, it is simply describing the relationships and not endorsing them. Recording an action even an action of an otherwise upstanding hero of the biblical narrative is not in itself a commendation of that action, he wrote. Few characters in Scripture emerge as heroically as the apostles, but no one suggests the Gospel writers want us to imitate Peters denial of Jesus. Emadi pointed to Genesis 2:24 (Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh) as an example of marriage being described as monogamous, and cited other scripture passages that condemned the inclusion of other romantic partners. Jesus, as we have seen, affirms the goodness of Gods design for monogamy in Mark 10. Similarly, the churchs elders, whose lives should serve as examples of faithfulness for all Christians (1 Peter 5:3), must be one-woman men (1 Timothy 3:2), Emadi added. The reason Scripture records so many instances of polygamy and concubinage is not to endorse these actions, but to condemn them and show just how destructive such sexual perversity proved to be. Emadi noted examples of rivalry and brokenness within the polygamous relationships described in detail in the Old Testament as evidence that the Bible was warning against the practice. Whereas explicit commands in Scripture teach the people of God that polygamy is wrong, the stories show it to be ugly a hideous perversion of one of Gods greatest gifts, he concluded. Emadi joins others, among them Old Testament professor Peter Gentry of Phoenix Seminary, in explaining that the Old Testament does not endorse the practice of polygamy. When you read the Bible, the Bible is not promoting polygamy. It's showing us that only royal figures had many wives, said Gentry in a 2019 video for The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary's YouTube channel. It's also showing us that this is not ideal, that this caused all kinds of difficulty and hardship and trouble and the fighting among the wives. And it's not a satisfactory relationship. Kenneth Reid, a writer for the ministry LightWorkers, penned a column posted by The Christian Post in 2020 likewise addressing polygamy, telling readers that they should not confuse Gods permissive will with Gods perfect will. Its important to remember that the examples of polygamy we read in Scripture are biblical narrative. In biblical narrative, the authors rarely offer commentary on what they write. Instead, they tell the story as it happened, wrote Reid. The Bible lays out a clear standard for marriage in Genesis, chapter two. Then in subsequent passages, it tells stories of people who fell short of those standards. Just because God didnt strike them down doesnt mean He condoned their actions Abortions reached record levels in Scotland during COVID-19 pandemic Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Scotland's abortion numbers were at their highest since 2008 during the COVID-19 pandemic, latest figures show. New data from Public Health Scotland revealed that 13,815 abortions were carried out in 2020, up 209 from 2019 and a 12-year high. The abortion rate per 1,000 women, aged 15 to 44, also rose from 13.2 in 2019 to 13.4 in 2020, the highest rate recorded since regulations were changed in 1991 to require the sign off of two doctors. Figures show there were 209 disability-selective abortions last year, and a 10% rise in repeat abortions, rising to 5,020 from 4,581 the previous year. Pro-life group Right to Life U.K. attributes the increases to DIY home abortions, which were introduced after the start of the pandemic. The controversial use of abortion pills delivered by the postal service allows women to receive abortion pills in the mail after a phone or e-consultation with an abortionist. The scheme, which the Scottish government is considering extending, has come under scrutiny after anundercover investigation found evidence that abortion pills were sent to women who gave false personal information and gestation dates. Last year, a regional chief midwife at NHS England warned of the "escalating risks" of home abortions in a leaked email. Police also launched a murder investigation after a baby was aborted at home at 28 weeks. Catherine Robinson, the spokesperson for Right To Life U.K., said: "It is a national tragedy that 13,815 lives were lost to abortion in Scotland last year. "Every one of these abortions represents a failure of our society to protect the lives of babies in the womb and a failure to offer full support to women with unplanned pregnancies. "In 2020 Scotland came together as a nation and made great sacrifices to protect the vulnerable from COVID-19. Sadly, at the very same time as protecting one group of vulnerable people, we as a society have also ended thousands of young vulnerable lives through abortion. "This significant rise in abortions coincides with the temporary measures allowing 'DIY' home abortions in the U.K. Since governments permitted 'DIY' home abortions, many stories of illegal late-term abortions and safety abuses have come to light. "We are calling on the Scottish Government to end these 'DIY' home abortion schemes immediately." Originally published at Christian Today Children butchered to death by Fulani herders in attacks on Nigerias Christian villages Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Suspected Fulani herdsmen brutally killed dozens of Christians, including children and eight members of one family, in attacks on Christian villages in Nigerias Plateau State, according to reports. In one attack last Sunday, suspected armed jihadist herdsmen "butchered to death" 14 Christians, including children, in Kwi village in Riyom County near Jos, Morning Star News reported, quoting area resident Solomon Mandiks, a Christian rights activist. Then, in a separate attack the same day, eight Christians were killed in Dong village in Jos North County, Asabe Samuel, a member of the local Evangelical Church Winning All congregation, was quoted as saying. I was by the central area of the village, which has shops and serves as a market, when I heard Fulani gunmen shooting around my house, Samuel said. This forced us to run to hide. Samuel added that despite the gunshots being shot from the direction of her house, I still rushed to my house, and just as I was getting closer to my house, I found that one Istifanus Shehu, 40, a member of COCIN (Church of Christ in Nations) who has had mental health challenges, was shot dead, and his corpse was lying beside my house. We heard the attackers retreating and shouting Allahu Akbar (Allah is greater). The herdsmen were also communicating with themselves in the Fulani language. Police arrived the following morning, Pastor Jonathan Kyoomnom Bala of the ECWA church in Dong, was quoted as saying. These herdsmen carried out the attack on us for about 40 minutes and left without intervention from soldiers or the police, he said. Before the 22 Christians were killed Sunday, 15 others were murdered by suspected herdsmen last month in the same state. The U.S.-based persecution watchdog group International Christian Concern designates the Fulani Militia as the fourth deadliest terror group in the world and says it has surpassed Boko Haram as the greatest threat to Nigerian Christians. Many believe that the attacks are motivated by jihadist Fulanis desire to take over farmland and impose Islam on the population and are frustrated with the Muslim-dominated government that is believed to be enabling such atrocities, it adds. The number of Christians murdered within the first four months of this year 1,470 was the highest since 2014 and surpasses the number of Christians killed in 2019, according to a recent report released by the Nigerian civil society group, Intersociety Rule of Law. Northwestern Kaduna state recorded the highest number of Christian deaths, at 300. The Northcentral Benue state witnessed 200 murders of Christians, followed by the Central Plateau state with 90 Christian deaths, said Intersociety, an organization headed by Christian criminologist Emeka Umeagbalasi. The Northern Muslim-controlled Nigerian Army also killed at least 120 Christians in the states of Benue, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Imo, Abia and Ebonyi, the report added. In the first four months of this year, at least 2,200 Christians were abducted, with Kaduna state recording the highest number at 800 abductions. The Global Terrorism Index ranked Nigeria as the third-most affected country by terrorism and reported over 22,000 deaths by acts of terror from 2001 to 2019. The U.S. Commission on International and Religious Freedoms 2021 report warned that Nigeria will move relentlessly toward a Christian genocide if action is not taken. Islamic extremism, particularly in Northeast Nigeria, has led to thousands of deaths and millions displaced in recent years. Nigeria was the first democratic nation to be added to the U.S. State Departments list of countries of particular concern under the International Religious Freedom Act for engaging in tolerated systematic, ongoing and egregious violations of religious freedom. Pro-life groups slam Biden for excluding Hyde Amendment from $6T budget proposal Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Pro-life groups are slamming President Joe Biden for failing to include the Hyde Amendment in his over $6 trillion budget proposal for fiscal year 2022. Biden released his budget proposal Friday, outlining to Congress his priorities for fiscal year 2022, which begins Oct. 1. Interest groups on both sides of the aisle quickly noticed that the budget did not include the Hyde Amendment, which prevents taxpayer dollars from funding abortions. In a statement, Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, slammed Biden for abandoning that longstanding, bipartisan campaign promise out the window to fulfill a campaign promise to the radical abortion lobby. She encouraged Congress, the body ultimately responsible for passing a budget, to be fearless in fighting to preserve the common-ground Hyde principle and to reject any budget that omits vital pro-life protections. For more than four decades, the Hyde family of pro-life policies has kept American taxpayers out of the abortion business, with the Hyde Amendment itself saving nearly 2.5 million lives, she added. Once a supporter of policies that protect the lives of the unborn and their mothers, President Biden caters today to the most extreme voices within his party. National Right to Life Carol Tobias echoed Dannenfelsers remarks, characterizing the budget proposal as a scorched earth campaign by pro-abortion Democrats who are marching hand in hand with the most extreme demands of the abortion industry to eliminate all limitations on abortion as well as require taxpayer funding of abortion. Ahead of the release of Bidens budget proposal, pro-life groups, including Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life, wrote a letter to the leaders of both houses of Congress, urging them to work to preserve the Hyde Amendment. In addition to Dannenfelser and Tobias, the more than 60 signatories included Lila Rose, president of the pro-life group Live Action, Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, and Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council. A strong majority of Americans support the first Hyde Amendment, with 58% of voters including 31% of Democrats, 34% of self-described pro-choice voters, and 65% of Independents opposing taxpayer funding of abortion, they wrote. These lifesaving provisions across federal appropriations have been consistently supported by Republicans and Democrats in Congress for decades. Every president from Carter to Bush to Obama to Trump have signed into law appropriations incorporating critical, status quo protections. The pro-life activists also mentioned the importance of including other pro-life amendments in appropriations in the decades since 1976 in the budget. These Hyde-like amendments include protections for the vulnerable at home (Hyde, Dornan, Smith) and abroad (Helms, Siljander, Tiahrt), in research (Dickey-Wicker), for medical providers and others who object to abortion (Hyde-Weldon, Nickles). Citing the millions of lives saved as a result of these amendments, the leaders asserted that Congress has the duty and privilege to continue this legacy of protecting the vulnerable. After declaring that there has never been such an important time for Congress to recognize the dignity of every life by reaffirming support and retaining the Hyde family, the signatories concluded the letter by simply stating, Hyde saves lives. Democrats control the White House and have narrow majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate. While a budget without Hyde Amendment protections will likely pass the House, the future of such a bill remains uncertain in the Senate, where a handful of Democrats have supported Hyde Amendment protections in the past. Earlier this year, Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., introduced an amendment to apply Hyde Amendment protections to the American Rescue Plan, the coronavirus relief package Congress was considering at the time. Three Democrats supported Lankford's amendment: Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, Tim Kaine of Virginia, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. The amendment failed to receive the 60 votes necessary to pass, meaning that the bill passed without Hyde Amendment protections. While the presidents budget proposal was met with swift criticism from the pro-life movement, pro-abortion groups cheered the exclusion of the Hyde Amendment from his budget request. The Twitter account for Planned Parenthood Action, the activist arm of the nations largest abortion provider, posted a statement praising the budget as a statement of values. President Bidens budget proposes to end the harmful Hyde amendment making clear that federal law should support everyones ability to access health care, including safe, legal abortion in this country. Budgets are a statement of values. President Bidens budget proposes to end the harmful Hyde amendment making clear that federal law should support everyones ability to access health care, including safe, legal abortion, in this country. #ReproBlueprint#BeBoldEndHydepic.twitter.com/BNO1SZQgwa Planned Parenthood Action (@PPact) May 28, 2021 After thanking Biden for investing in sexual and reproductive health, rights, and justice, the abortion advocacy group called on Congress to end anti-abortion restrictions, like the Hyde, Weldon & Helms Amendments, support sex ed & increase funding for Title X, permanently repeal the global gag rule, [and] expand health care access here & abroad. As The Christian Post has previously reported, congressional Democrats highlighted their desire to do away with the Hyde Amendment both before and after the 2020 presidential election. Last summer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was one of the top Democratic lawmakers who told their colleagues that they would not add the prohibition to any government funding bill beginning next year. Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., a close ally of Pelosi, remarked, Its an issue of racial justice and its an issue of discrimination against low-income women, women of color, (and) women who dont have access to what middle- and upper-income women have in terms of the choice to have an abortion. Lee was one of several pro-abortion lawmakers celebrating the Biden budgets exclusion of the Hyde Amendment, expressing gratitude that Biden has become the first president in decades to remove the Hyde Amendment from the budget. Lee predicted that the absence of the Hyde Amendment from the budget will help advance our fight to end this racist & discriminatory policy once and for all. Her tweet was accompanied by the hashtag #BeBoldEndHyde. GREAT news: @POTUS has become the first president in decades to remove the Hyde Amendment from the budget, helping advance our fight to end this racist & discriminatory policy once and for all. #BeBoldEndHyde Rep. Barbara Lee (@RepBarbaraLee) May 28, 2021 At a hearing late last year discussing abortion affordability, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., who now serves as chairwoman of the influential House Appropriations Committee, alleged that the time has come to abandon the Hyde Amendment. She lambasted the discriminatory policy, seconding Lees claims about its negative impact on communities of color. DeLauro vowed that this is the last year that the Hyde Amendment will be included in the federal budget. Women controlling husbands with sex, other means is destructive, Transformed Wife warns Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Lori Alexander, a married Christian woman who's also known through her blog The Transformed Wife, is warning married women that their desire to control their husbands through a matriarchal spirit using sex, an insistence on being right, always having the last word and others means could lead to the destruction of their marriage. We dont use sex to manipulate our husbands. We dont deprive our husbands sexually. We give it to him willingly and freely because we love pleasing our husbands. So women, rid yourself of that matriarchal spirit today. Just give it to the Lord. Its an idol in your life. Its hurting your marriage, could potentially destroy your marriage. Begin building your husband up. Respect his opinions. Stop arguing with him. You dont need the last word. You dont need to be right, and youll be shocked at how much better your marriage is and how much happier your husband is, Alexander, who has been married to her husband since 1980, warned in a video shared on YouTube Sunday. According to Daughters of Promise, the matriarchal or Jezebel spirit uses seduction, womanly wiles, or sexual means to control men. If those dont work, it uses shame and sarcasm, scorn and arrogance. This spirit, according to the ministry, specifically targets the weak and the wounded, the hurt, rebellious and rejected. It uses flattery, smooth words, prophecies and tears to seduce these targets out from under authority. Most women, says Alexander, have the matriarchal spirit. The grandmother of nine, who is a mentor to women, has been featured in publications such as USA Today. She says she suffered 23 difficult years in her marriage but turned things around using Gods principles and believes older women must share their wisdom with younger ones. My ministry is based upon Titus 2:3-5 in which God commands that older women teach younger women to be sober, love and obey their husbands, love their children, be chaste, discreet, good, and keepers at home, she writes on her blog. In her message to women on Sunday, she insisted that the Bible doesnt endorse the matriarchal spirit. Women, I just want to encourage you today to get rid of your matriarchal spirit. God is a God of patriarchy. He created Adam first, and thats why were not to preach or teach in the churches, because thats His authority structure. It has nothing to do with value, but it has to do with order. Just like in I Corinthians 14, right before God tells women to be silent in the churches and its a shame for women to speak in the churches, and if they have a question, they need to ask their husbands at home right before that verse, it says that God is not a God of confusion but a God of order, she added. And His order is that women need to be quiet in churches and men are to be the leaders, preachers, pastors and teachers. And the order in the home is the husband is supposed to be the head over the wife, the leader of the home. And we are supposed to reverence our husband, respect their leadership, submit to them and even obey them, she continued. We dont need to be right. If you are always insisting on being right and having the last word, you will never have a good marriage. This absolutely tears down marriage ... this matriarchal spirit that we women can so easily have. It belittles our husbands. It emasculates them. It causes them to feel unworthy. Its like the verse that says that we tear our homes down with our hands. This is one of the greatest ways that we tear homes down, is by being in control, having to have the last word, being right. She further argued that the matriarchal spirit isnt feminine and its the opposite of what God wants women to be. Being right doesnt matter! God doesnt care that you are right. God doesnt care that you are right. He cares that youre submissive and that you have a meek and quiet spirit. Being a mate, having a matriarchal spirit, is completely the opposite of having a meek and quiet spirit. Being a mate, having a matriarchal spirit is completely the opposite of having a meek and quiet spirit thats precious in the sight of God. Its the opposite of being feminine. Its the opposite of what God wants us to be, she said. Only 6% of Americans have a biblical worldview, research from George Barna finds Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Only 6% of Americans have a "biblical worldview," according to research from notable evangelical pollster George Barna released as part of a new endeavor with the Christian conservative advocacy organization Family Research Council. In a statement Wednesday, FRC announced that Barna, who founded the influential evangelical polling organization Barna Group, joined the organization as a senior fellow of their newly launched Center for Biblical Worldview. FRC President Tony Perkins said that the center is "designed to give Christians a firm foundation so that they can engage the culture by being rooted in Gods Word." Every Christian can and should obtain a biblical worldview which is only achieved when a person believes that the Bible is true, authoritative, and then taught how it is applicable to every area of life, which enables them to live out those beliefs," Perkins stressed in a statement. As part of the center's launch, FRC released research conducted by Barna's Metaformation research group. Some of the new report includes questions and data compiled for the American Worldview Inventory produced by the Barna-led Cultural Research Center at Arizona Christian University. The data found, among other things, that while 51% of American adults said they have a biblical worldview, only 6% of American adults actually hold this worldview. Barna drew the conclusion of inconsistency among the 51% reporting a biblical worldview by noting that many of the questions to determine worldview found this group technically outside of what the pollster defined as a biblical worldview. For example, of the 51%, 49% said that reincarnation was a possibility after they die. Meanwhile, only 33% said they believed that human beings are born with a sinful nature and can only be saved from the consequences of sin by Jesus Christ. Data for the research came from a May survey featuring a nationally representative sample of 1,000 adults, with a sampling error of about plus or minus 3.2 percentage points. Christians have a duty to stand against the prevailing cultural tides and proclaim Gods truth to a dark and wandering world," Perkins stated. "But before you stand, you need solid ground." The data comes as similar results have been found by other surveys in recent years. Last September, the Cultural Research Center revealed survey data compiled in January 2020 that showed that 2% of millenials hold a biblical worldview even though 61% identify as Christian. In 2017, a survey from the American Culture and Faith Institute found that about 10% of Americans hold a distinctly biblical worldview even though 46% claimed to lead a Christian life. In addition to Barna serving as a senior fellow, FRC's new Center for Biblical Worldview will be headed by David Closson, author of FRCs "Biblical Worldview Series" who has written pieces for publications including National Review and The Gospel Coalition. Owen Strachen, the provost and research professor of theology at Grace Bible Theological Seminary in Arkansas, also joined the center as a senior fellow. I am excited to work more closely with FRC to apply the research findings in ways that help to transform individuals lives and American culture," Barna said in a statement. "Given FRCs track record of making a difference in our society based upon its unwavering commitment to biblical principles, I look forward to an effective and fruitful partnership using research to guide our efforts. The founder and namesake of the Barna Group, Barna also founded the Cultural Research Center in March 2020. University of Alabama sued for restricting students' 'spontaneous' expression ADF attorneys say university policy violates state law Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Students from a Young Americans for Liberty chapter filed a lawsuit last week against the University of Alabama for requiring students to obtain a permit to speak on campus five business days in advance, which they say violates a state free speech law. Since applications for speaking permits undergo university approval, attorneys for the students argue that university policy allows administrators to be selective of the speaking events or viewpoints they allow. They say the policy illegally prevents students from spontaneous expression or promoting their events. The lawsuit argues that the university policy goes against Alabamas Campus Free Speech Act and the Alabama Constitutions Free Speech Clause, which restricts public colleges from inhibiting students free speech rights. YAL is a nationwide libertarian youth organization that advances liberty on campuses. The group is represented by attorneys from Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization that advocates for free speech and has won several U.S. Supreme Court cases in recent years. All students regardless of viewpoint have the freedom to share their beliefs and engage in civil debate on campus without first asking college administrators for permission to speak, ADF Legal Counsel Michael Ross said in a statement. Universities are supposed to be the very places where students are free to explore diverse ideas and engage in civil and meaningful debate, but the University of Alabama is shutting down this debate with its burdensome speech policies." YAL students often refrain from engaging with other students about gun control policy, federalism and other policy issues due to the suppressive speech policies, ADF reported. Young Americans for Liberty exists to promote the principles of individual liberty, but the University of Alabamas policies severely restrict our students ability to speak freely about these principles on campus, YAL Director of Free Speech JP Kirby said. Students dont need a permit to speak freely on a public campus, Kirby continued. And they dont give up their constitutionally protected freedoms when they step onto campus or hold a specific viewpoint. The university has seven designated free speech zones that make up less than 1% of the campus where students can engage in spontaneous expression. University officials cant banish freedom of thought to the remote corners of campus, keeping certain ideas out of sight and out of mind, ADF tweeted on Monday. The lawsuit highlights how the university's policies have restricted the club from being able to recruit members, which has led to decreased funding for their organization. The Christian Post reached out to the university for comment on the lawsuit. A response is pending. Tyson Langhofer, ADF senior counsel and director of the Center for Academic Freedom, said that legal action wouldn't be necessary if university officials respected the states law protecting free speech on college campuses. Todays college students are our future legislators, judges, and voters. Thats why its so important that public universities model the values theyre supposed to be teaching students and that colleges and universities in Alabama respect state law, Langhofer said. We are grateful that Gov. Ivey signed the FORUM Act [Forming Open and Robust University Minds] into law," Langhofer continued, "but now university officials must act consistently with that law to ensure that pro-liberty students like all students have the freedom to share their beliefs anywhere on campus, and without first asking college administrators for permission to speak." The 2021 Spotlight on Speech Codes, a study conducted by Foundation for Individual Rights in Education [FIRE], revealed that 88% of American universities restricted free speech in some form after surveying 478 colleges and universities. In March 2019, former President Donald Trump signed an executive order to deny grants to universities that stifle free speech and said public institutions would not be allowed to violate their students constitutional rights. "Under the guise of speech codes, safe spaces and trigger warnings, these universities have tried to restrict free thought, impose total conformity and shut down the voices of great young Americans like those here today, Trump said at the time. Consistent with the latest CDC guidance and following consultation with public health experts, AMC Theatres guests who are fully vaccinated are no longer required to wear face coverings at AMC locations, unless it is mandated by state or local ordinances, AMC said in a statement. Guests who are not fully vaccinated are asked to continue wearing masks. All other aspects of the AMC Safe & Clean policies and procedures, including seat blocking, remain in place at this time. Parents raise concerns over 'woke' ideology infiltrating Catholic schools despite 'conflict' with Church teachings Parents raise concerns over 'woke' ideology infiltrating Catholic schools Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment Parents of students at a private Catholic school in Chicago are raising concerns that woke ideology that has infiltrated secular schools has also extended into Catholic schools despite its apparent contradictions with the Catholic Church's teachings, according to Noelle Mering, a scholar with the Ethics & Public Policy Center. Mering wrote an op-ed for The National Catholic Register last week, outlining how the woke toxicity of critical race theory assaults the Catholic Churchs teachings by promoting a rejection of the person, a rejection of reason and a rejection of reverence. She elaborated on the incompatibility between woke ideology and the Catholic Church's teachings in an interview with The Christian Post. The Christian message is that people are defined by the love of God, and the woke message is that people are defined by the hatred of society, she said. From that implies two very different courses of action. Mering asserted, The message of the Gospel is to spread the good news that we are loved. The message of the woke is to spread the bad news that we are either hated or haters. She characterized the latter message as a fundamentally divisive and rather despairing ideology, acknowledging that while it appeals to peoples instincts to be compassionate and to fight real evils and injustices that do exist and ought to be fought by Christians, the result of its implementation will have long-lasting negative consequences for American society, she added. Its a bit of a Trojan horse in that it takes ... good instincts and inserts all of these ideological poisonous bombs that are going to end up really erasing the possibility of a relationship with Christ in the hearts of men and women. So I do think the stakes are high and the more aware we can be, the better, she continued. Mering warned that although critical race theory and woke ideology promises friendship and reconciliation it actually leads to greater division and an inability to live a flourishing human life. In her op-ed for The National Catholic Register, Mering wrote that the woke toxicity consisting of a top-down implementation of extreme antiracism and gender ideology in the curriculum is not just happening at secular schools. She detailed recent events at the Chicago-area Loyola Academy, a Catholic high school with an annual tuition of $17,750, as an example of the broader national trend. Mering spoke of high-paid diversity consultants brought in for the sake of training faculty students as well as teachers including their gender pronouns in Zoom meetings. She added: Students were racially segregated for school assignments on privilege. A working-class student was bewildered to learn that because of his skin color, he is an oppressor to his peers, some of whom live in multi-million-dollar homes. Speaking to CP, Mering recalled how a mutual friend put me in touch with some of the parents at the school, and they were very distraught over what was happening at the school. The thing Ive learned in the interim is how deeply loyal they are, she said. Mering described the parents she spoke with as multi-generational families that are really invested in seeing the school continue its legacy of just being a well-regarded and strong institution. They are concerned, she said, about the escalation of woke ideology coming from the top down injected into the community into the student body that they believe has caused a lot of strife, [and] a lot of division. Theyre really concerned and they dont want to abandon the school. They really want to reform it and get it back to a place where they feel like theyre a unified community again, she added. Mering told CP that a group of parents with children at Loyola Academy have started a website called kidswinloyola.com where they are trying to bring more attention to whats happening. The group of concerned parents who started the website maintain that Loyola Academys recent aggressive adoption of an intolerant Identity Curriculum has created a growing crisis in the school that conflicts with the Jesuit tradition of rigorous open inquiry and discernment by excluding any other alternative approaches. The parents cited the lack of intellectual diversity and development of critical thinking skills and intolerance of alternative views and stifling of student discussion as two examples of the negative impact the curriculum has had on the Loyola community. Other negative effects of the curriculum listed by the parents included indoctrination of students and faculty, verbal and cyberbullying of students, deterioration of school spirit and division among student groups, [and] increasing levels of anxiety, depression and isolation in students. Prior to creating the website, kidswinloyola.com, the parents shared their concerns about the new curriculum with the school. As Mering explained, the leaders of Loyola Academy wrote a letter ... initially after the initial pushback, but it was rather vague. In the letter, obtained by CP, the schools leadership acknowledged that they had received inquires and comments about the schools efforts in the area of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Everything we do at Loyola must be grounded in our Catholic, Jesuit mission, Loyola Academy President the Rev. Patrick McGrath and Chair of the Board Nancy Paridy wrote in the April 9 letter. We dont always do this work perfectly, and we will stumble in our human efforts to put into action the call of Christ, but our goal and teachings are always rooted in our Catholic faith. The schools leaders vowed to work with an outside, independent consulting firm to gather information via surveys and focus groups in an effort to evaluate the parent perspective and create additional venues for feedback. They implied that the implementation of the new curriculum, never explicitly mentioned in the letter, was the result of a recommendation from the most recent review of the schools Catholic and Jesuit identity, which includes annual visits from a representative of the Midwest Jesuit Province and a visitation by a team of Jesuit educators occurring every six years. Among the recommendations in the most recent review was for Loyola to dedicate itself to important questions about diversity. More specifically, we were encouraged to promote a greater sense of belonging and connection among students and to engage students in challenging conversations regarding race, gender, and politics from the onset of the high school experience. In a statement to CP, Loyola Academy denied segregating students by race during a discussion on privilege and said the staff never suggested that white students from lower-income households were oppressors over minority students from wealthier households because of their race. When asked to respond to Merings assertion that critical race theory is incompatible with Catholic Church teaching, Robin Hunt, Loyola Academys director of Public Relations, maintained that Loyola Academys commitment to creating a more inclusive community flows from our Catholic faith and Jesuit school mission. Hunt pointed to a 20-year-old pastoral letter from then-Archbishop of Chicago Francis Cardinal George and a 2018 pastoral letter from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops as evidence that discussions on race are not incompatible with Catholic Church teaching. The 2001 pastoral letter asserted that the U.S. still suffers from spatial, institutional, internalized and individual racism despite the fact that overt racism had declined sharply. George urged the Archdiocese of Chicago as a whole, individual parishes, as well as Catholic educational institutions to address racial and systemic injustice, including by holding Anti-Racism workshops. The 2018 letter also contended that the roots of racism have extended deeply into the soil of our society, suggesting that racism was an issue the Church needed to address directly. Mering called on parents to continue giving pushback to the schools and organizing other parents to resist this and to push back on it. She stressed that if the school refuses to change course, parents have an obligation to pull the kids out and send them to another school or homeschool them. Merings op-ed came less than one week after the publication of her latest book,Awake, Not Woke: A Christian Response to the Cult of Progressive Ideology. Mering began writing the book before the novel coronavirus pandemic caused much of the nation to shut down and continued to write it throughout the summer. She alleged that the infiltration of critical race theory and woke ideology into American schools has accelerated dramatically in the past year, as exemplified by the situation at Loyola Academy. At that particular school, its escalated over the past year. Its escalated, I think, at a lot of schools throughout the country, she asserted. I think this has been coming on for quite a while, actually. I think were just now becoming more awakened to it because of the escalation. While the ideology behind critical race theory dates back more than 100 years, Mering contends that it has become commonplace in schools over the past 30 years: It seemed like it started on college campuses in the high schools and elite prep schools, but its also now extending all the way into grammar school, so its something we need to be aware of. I dont think anyone can be complacent. If youre a parent to assume that your school is not being affected by this is no longer an option. As concern about critical race theory continues to grow, states have considered bills to ban public schools from teaching the controversial curriculum. A ban on critical race theory has already become law in Idaho, while the Tennessee House of Representatives passed a similar ban earlier this month. Email Whatsapp Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment I know a lot of people who take pride in being truth-tellers. You know them too. They are the ones who are quick to proudly proclaim, I tell it like it is. But no one ever feels very loved around them. Others love well but have a hard time ever landing on a spot from which they cannot be moved. They are the ones Paul describes in Ephesians as tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes (Ephesians 4:14). So what is the balance between the two? How do we hold both truth and love in tension? Our times are often described as postmodern. Postmodernism is the idea that truth is subject to change and open to individual determination. The spirit of the age says what is true for you might not be true for me. While this is typically thought of as a product of the second half of the twentieth century, Pontius Pilate delivered the signature phrase of postmodernism back at the beginning of the first century. After Jesus was arrested earlier in the night, he was brought for trial before Pilate, the governor of the Roman province of Judea. As Pilate was interrogating Jesus, he asked, So you are a king? Jesus replied, You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I have come into the worldto bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice (John 18:37). Pilates response, What is truth? (v. 38) would fit in very well in our postmodern world. Jesus said he came into the world to bear witness to the truth. Pilate, probably having heard a lot of arguments in his role as governor, had given up on the idea of truth. I was teaching a class at Vanderbilt University when a student stopped me in the middle of a discussion and asked if I believed there was such a thing as truth that was true for everyone. She was surprised when I said I did. She was even more surprised when I said I thought she did too. I pointed out that her backpack and laptop were both covered with pins and stickers demanding rights for various groups. If there is no such thing as transcendent truth truth that is true regardless of the situation then where does the idea of rights come from? If truth is relative and dependent on the situation, then it is hard to claim that moral rights exist. Jesus does not give us the alternative of deciding what may be true for you might not be true for me. I am the way and the truth and the life (John 14:6) is about as far away from a postmodern statement on truth as you can get. Likewise, he does not give us the alternative of deciding who we will love. The well-known passage on love from 1 Corinthians 13 has become best known for being read at weddings. As the loving couple stands at the altar, we all nod our heads as the reader reminds us that love is patient and kind; it does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude; it does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; and it does not rejoice at wrongdoing but rejoices with the truth. The hard part is when we are reminded that Paul did not write that passage for wedding ceremonies but for all of life, including politics. We are clearly called to love our fellow believers: By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13:35). But that is the easy part. He also tells us that we are to love even those we dont like and those who are on a different political side, when he says we are to Love your enemies (Matthew 5:44). Its not an either-or type of situation when it comes to truth and love. Its a both-and. There is a strong consensus that American democracy is in trouble and very few look to people of faith to help bridge the divide and solve our biggest problems. I think it is for a time like this that Christians are called to the public square, but not in the ways that we have traditionally approached it. These times call out for people who understand that our cries for justice have to be accompanied by a humble and merciful spirit. These times require citizens who are committed to both truth and love, not one without the other. We can be people who truly seek the peace of the places we have been exiled, knowing that God has tied our welfare to the welfare of the places he has called us. Adapted from Faithful presence: The promise and peril of faith in the public square Copyright 2021 by Bill Haslam. Published by Thomas Nelson. Available wherever books are sold. UK Baptist group warns against occultism amid rise in grief-stricken seeking to contact the dead Email Print Img No-img Menu Whatsapp Google Reddit Digg Stumbleupon Linkedin Comment A Baptist group in the U.K. is warning against occult spirituality following the rise in people trying to communicate with the dead, particularly those grieving the loss of loved ones who died from COVID-19. The Baptist Deliverance Study Group of the Baptist Union in Great Britain, which oversees the deliverance ministry for the organization, has raised concerns about the increasing number of people seeking to contact their dead relatives through the use of mediums. The Rev. Jayne Irlam, the group's project lead for Education, Research and Training, said it's "completely understandable that those desperate to say goodbye to their loved ones would be attracted by a spiritual philosophy which offers communication with the dead." But she cautioned: "Communication with the dead in this way is specifically forbidden in the Bible by a loving God who wishes to keep people safe from bondage to preternatural or demonic powers. ... Becoming involved in activities such as Spiritualism can open up a doorway to great spiritual oppression which requires a Christian rite to set that person free." Irlam said the Baptist group has been approached by people seeking to be "set free" from spiritualism after enduring "horrific consequences." During an interview with Premier Christian News, Irlan noted that due to the lockdowns spurred by COVID-19, many families weren't able to see their loved ones before they died nor have the funerals they wanted. "The fact that people have often not been able to say goodbye properly there's often been very limited contact at the end with loved ones, and even limited numbers in funeral services. And therefore, it stores a lot of unmet psychological needs in people," she said. Irlam, who's also a co-minister of the Church Without Walls in Manchester, added: "We need to think carefully as the church about how we meet that, and how Christ wants to meet that in order to persuade people that they don't need to turn to these practices, which invariably leads to bondage and suffering in the end." The group is urging people to stay away from spiritual practices aimed at contacting the dead because it may "open up a doorway to great spiritual oppression which requires a Christian rite to set that person free." Irlam told the outlet that many people who reached out to them for help after they became entangled in the occult, including satanism, said they felt they belonged more in those communities than they did from the established Church. "I think that's a real challenge toward the Christian Church, to think very carefully about why people perceive that. It is very sad that somebody might actually feel but they get a greater sense of purpose and belonging, and even support from a group dedicated to something like witchcraft than they do from the Christian Church," Irlam said. "My advice to churches would be to look out for people who are searching and may wander into the church, who have also been looking around at over spiritual options. And make sure that your doctrine is clear that you cannot combine following Christ with the odd visit to the spiritualist church." Her words come amid a surge in interest in spiritualism. In January, the U.K. Times reported that applications for membership in the Spiritualists National Union increased by 325% during the first month of the lockdowns. A similar rise in interest in spiritualism occurred after World War II, and the outbreak of the Spanish flu, approximately 100 years ago. In their normal daily routine people are extremely busy and dont have the time to ask the question: what happens when we die? All of a sudden people found themselves with a lot of time on their hands and were being bombarded with death rates on the news. It is extremely worrying and people are experiencing stresses that we probably havent experienced since the Second World War, Steven Upton of the Spiritualists National Union, told the U.K. Times. The Spiritualists National Union reportedly oversees a network of approximately 300 churches across the U.K., where spiritualists channel the dead during services. The pandemic is no match for romance, and love is in the air in Houston. The reality show "Ready to Love" recently put the Bayou City back to the test with Season 3 of the dating competition. FINDING LOVE: Flavor Flav wants to help Melinda Gates find love through new television show The show explores the real-life dating interactions of Black men and women in their 30s and 40s who are looking for lasting love. Putting a unique twist on a typical dating show, "Ready to Love" highlights the men's observations and experiences in the search for true love in Houston. Native Houstonian and cast member on the show Alexis Jones gave us the inside scoop on her experience with the dating show. Jones, 36, said she gained a lot of knowledge from the show, as the competition-style show was a new experience for her. "It was a very challenging one when it comes to dating multiple men all at the same time," she said. Bringing her fiery personality and vibrant demeanor to the show, Jones rose to the occasion despite the show being about finding love, it was still a competition to win. "The producers told us straight on, 'if you come in here on day one and you're being timid, or you're being shy, you're going to lose out," Jones said. "You're going to have to come here and pack a punch if you don't want to be sent home.'" Jones told me theatrically about the pep talks she would have with herself ahead of certain events, revealing that the mansion mixer was a bit intimidating for her. Jones recalls telling herself "'okay girl, you're going to have to build up some confidence,'" she said laughingly. While Jones reiterated that a prize was on the line for the competition, she said her real competition wasn't her castmates, but herself. While she had to strut her stuff and show the world what she's got, the reality romance show doubled as a gauge for Jones to show herself what she's truly capable of. Jones brought her Christian values to the show and spoke her mind, sharing what she was or wasn't going for. "Because I'm a believer, I do believe that it's 'he who finds a wife, finds a good thing, and finds favor with the Lord,'" Jones recited. "So it's not really about a woman finding a man, but a man finding the right queen for himself, and the woman choosing to accept his gesture to her." Having been married once before, this wasn't Jones' first rodeo her first marriage gave her the real keys to figuring out what she wants in a partner and being outspoken about her needs. "A lot of the men that I talked to on the show had never been married before, and that's something that I kind of kept in the back of my mind. Initially, AJ [one of her potential love interests] was standoffish because I am a divorced woman," Jones explained. "I think some men think you know, 'there may be something wrong with her because she didn't make it through her marriage.' But on the flip side of that, once we started talking and getting to know one another more, I think he realized that there's wisdom in a woman that's been married before." While this season of "Ready To Love" is still airing on television, Jones shared one of her most intimate experiences on the show. In one of the episodes, she is at the Masquerade Ball when Jackie Miles, married to host Thomas "Nephew Tommy" Miles, shares words of wisdom about love and marriage. "To have what I like to call a Titus 2 woman come to me while I was just sitting and thinking, approach me and give me sound advice and wisdom was really something that I needed," Jones said. "Having her on the show was truly an asset." BLACK LOVE: Slim Thug shares his love for Black women with '#BlackQueens' Alexis shared her drive to always be confident and rise above the haters and the cyber attacks, or "keyboard thugs" as she calls them. "The people online can be very cruel, but they don't really know the real us, just the character that's being presented on the television. I just remind myself that 'I am beautiful, I am fly,'" Jones said, reciting her mantras. "Even if nobody else tells me that, I know it for myself." Jones adds a unique flavor to the dating show and left a mark on the entire cast. After walking away with nothing but lessons, Jones left me with this final reflection. "This journey was new for me as I re-entered into the dating world," Jones said. "One of the successes I've gained from the show is self-reflection. Any perceived losses were not losses at all but lessons to live by." Click here to read the full article. More than a year after the pandemic reached the U.S. and less than six months after vaccination began, the country reached a milestone Friday now more than 50 percent of the population has received at least one Covid-19 vaccine dose. According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, upwards of 166 million Americans, or 50.1 percent of the population, have gotten their first shot, and 133 million Americans are fully vaccinated. Increasing vaccination rates are pushing the country toward a summer that looks more normal than last year, as the CDC issued guidance Friday saying that summer camps can ease mask requirements. According to the CDC, camps where everyone is fully vaccinated can return to full capacity, without masking, and without physical distancing. Adolescents and adult staff who are fully vaccinated can go without masks, and children younger than 12, who cannot be vaccinated, are strongly encouraged to mask indoors but can be outdoors without a mask unless in a crowd or near others for a prolonged period of time. However, if a camp cannot tell who is vaccinated and who is not, they should follow prior CDC guidance that recommends everyone wear masks. Camps should also allow vaccinated campers to wear masks if they so choose. Although people who are fully vaccinated do not need to wear masks, camp programs should be supportive of campers or staff who choose to wear a mask, the CDC said. The CDC also cautioned camps to be aware of the transmission rates in their local communities or areas where their campers may be traveling from and, if rates are high, camp officials should consider mandating everyone wear masks indoors. A CDC official told the Washington Post that so far 2.5 million adolescents aged 12-15 have received one dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. This summer camp guidance comes as an update to earlier guidance issued in April that lawmakers and public health experts said was too strict. As summer kicks off with Memorial Day weekend, state official urge Michiganders to stay safe while having fun. AAA Michigan predicts more than 1.1 million Michigan residents will travel 50 miles or more during the Memorial Day holiday weekend, a 57% increase from last year, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation. With an increase in road travel, the Michigan State Police encourages everyone to buckle up. "Being buckled up helps keep you safe and secure inside your vehicle and reduces the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passenger car occupants by 45%," MSP stated in a news release announcing its 2021 'Click it or Ticket' campaign. For example, of the 13 fatalities during Memorial Day weekend in 2019, only two were wearing seatbelts, according to Michigan data. MSP also points out the importance of wearing seatbelts correctly and provides the following guidelines. The lap belt and shoulder belt are secured across the hips and shoulder, which are more able to withstand crash forces than other parts of your body. Place the shoulder belt across the middle of your chest and away from your neck. The lap belt rests across your hips, not your stomach. Never put the shoulder belt behind your back or under an arm. Michigan's Click It or Ticket campaign will run through June 6. Here are a few more ways to stay safe during the Memorial Day weekend. SAFETY FIRST ON THE WATER With 26,266 inland lakes and 120 major rivers covering about 36,350 square miles (Source: www.canr.msu.edu), there's a good chance many people will be on a Michigan waterway this holiday season. The Department of Natural Resources reminds people to put safety first by becoming familiar with updated laws and restrictions and making sure that equipment is in tip top shape. "Taking time now can prevent potential problems later, because accidents can happen at any time and weather can quickly affect water conditions on inland waters and the Great Lakes," Lt. Tom Wanless, state boating law administrator and recreational safety, education and enforcement supervisor with the DNR, said in a news release. "Familiarizing yourself and your fellow boaters with valuable safety tips and equipment can mean the difference between a great day on the water and a needlessly tragic outcome." According to the DNR's boating safety website, there were 181 Michigan boating accidents reported last year, including: 33 fatalities (only 21% of people were wearing a life jacket) and 20 drownings. To stay safe, the DNR offers the following guidelines: 1. Wear a life jacket: According to the U.S. Coast Guard, drowning was reported as the cause of death in 79% of all fatalities in 2019. Of the people who drowned in a recreational boating accident, 86% were not wearing a life jacket. 2. Boat sober: Alcohol can impair a boater's judgment, balance, vision, and reaction time. It can also increase fatigue and susceptibility to the effects of cold-water immersion. 3. Check boat and equipment: Before going out on the water, make sure the boat is properly equipped and equipment is in good working condition. In addition to legally required equipment such as life jackets and fire extinguishers, always carry a first-aid kit, nautical charts and an anchor. 4. Have a float plan: Inform someone who is not boating with you about the details of your trip including where you will be boating and how long you will be gone and schedule check-in times. 5. Stay alert: Watch for other boats, swimmers, skiers and objects in the water. Be aware of commercial fishing nets and buoys. 6. Carry a cell phone or marina radio. Learn more about boating opportunities, safety information and other resources at Michigan.gov/Boating. IF YOU CAN'T STAND THE HEAT West Central Michigan has already seen its share of out-of-control fires. Residents of about 30 homes in Webber Township, north of Baldwin, were temporarily evacuated last week until authorities could get a blaze under control. And as of Wednesday evening, DNR crews were still battling a 425-acre fire in northern Wexford County. If building a campfire is part of your weekend plans, the DNR provides the following tips: Never leave a fire unattended Always keep a shovel, metal bucket and water source nearby Build your fire in a fire ring or on mineral soil. When finished with your fire, douse it thoroughly with water, stir the ashes and douse again. Repeat until cool. Soak all used fireworks in water before discarding. The DNR also reminds campers to leave the firewood at home. "Moving firewood when you camp, hunt or head out for a weekend getaway means you risk carrying tree-killing insects and diseases inside the firewood," state officials said in a news release. "Bugs can crawl out, infesting trees and carrying diseases that can forever change the landscape of the places you love." To avoid spreading diseases, the DNR suggests: Buy firewood that was cut within 50 miles of where you'll have your fire. Use FirewoodScout.org to find a firewood vendor near your destination. With over 350 Michigan listings, you can comparison shop before you arrive. If entering a campground that requires USDA certified, heat-treated wood, look for a federal stamp or seal on the package, and keep the firewood in the original packaging Remember that not all aged or seasoned wood is safe. Just because it is dry doesn't mean it's clean. Its best to start a fire with kindling, not flammable liquids. Avoid burning treated wood, which often can be identified by a manufacturers stamp and a greenish color. Dont toss trash, plastic food wrappers, foam cups or hazardous materials in your campfire its illegal, not to mention stinky and unhealthy. If you buy firewood and don't burn it all, don't bring it home or to your next destination. NEW MILFORD It was quite surprising to new resident Lauren Burke that New Milford the largest town in Connecticut by square mileage didnt have any Pride events planned for the month of June. Burke, originally from western Massachusetts, was used to big Pride celebrating the LGBTQIA+ community. She moved to New Milford in 2020, and lives with her cat and dog in Gaylordsville. And as Pride month approached this year, Burke began asking other residents what the town usually did to celebrate the occasion. They were all like, what are you talking about? Burke said. If were the largest town then we should have a big Pride event. Pride, a month-long celebration of the LGBTQIA+ communities during June, was originally started as a commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall Uprising in New York City and has since spread across the country, promoting visibility and equality for the queer community. While places like Danbury, Ridgefield, Bethel, Norwalk, Hartford and others have established Pride events or parades that take place every year, New Milford does not. Now, Burke and residents Adam Murphy and Dez Noa Volnixshin have teamed up to change this. Having worked for various social justice initiatives, and in the non-profit and legal spaces, Burke has been keenly aware of the mental health impacts the pandemic has had on LGBTQ+ populations and wanted to help provide a safe space for the local community to gather. The first official Pride event will take place on June 12 in the form of a Pride picnic. And a new group, Southern Litchfield Pride, founded by Burke, Murphy and Volnixshin, is officially putting down roots in the town. Volnixshin, who identifies as queer and uses she/they pronouns, had been spurred into action after one of their 9-year-old archery students came out to her. They wanted to help this young person find support.Murphy, a transgender man, said the isolation of the pandemic was what spurred him into action. While Burke emailed the Parks and Recreation Department to see about securing permits, Murphy and Volnixshin separately approached Murphys sister, Laura Murphy, the departments director of programs and events, about a group or event to support the queer community in New Milford. Dez and I approached Laura saying we felt the need to have an LGBTQ+ safe space, Murphy said. I always knew that this is something I wanted to do and be a part of in my own community. Volnixshin, who has lived in New Milford for a long time and is very connected to the queer community, said people are dying for some kind of representation, adding, New Milford doesnt really have anything when it comes to queer spaces. Now, Picnic for Pride! is taking place from noon until 2 p.m. on June 12. Residents are encouraged to bring their own picnic to the town green, and then the group plans to migrate to The Silo. The venue recently agreed to work together with the Pride event after Burke asked if theyd be willing to partner with them. There will be games, music, drinks, and food, Burke said. EVERYONE is welcome to celebrate love in all its forms! a Facebook event description states. Currently, there are already 63 people marked as interested and 24 marked as going on the event page. The ideal turnout is at least a few hundred people, in my dreams, my wildest dreams, Volnixshin said. Finding local support When Burke sent her initial email to the parks and recreation department, she wasnt sure what the response would be. Some people told her there might be pushback. Instead, she quickly received an enthusiastic reply from Laura Murphy who wanted to connect the three residents. She then set up a call with several other town-wide agencies, spanning from the towns youth to the senior center, to get the ball rolling. She really did an incredible job getting a bunch of different groups together to show support, Burke said of Murphys efforts. Mayor Pete Bass has also expressed support for the towns inaugural Pride event, noting that New Milford is proud of the way residents celebrate diversity. I think its a great thing, he said. It shows New Milford is an inclusive welcoming community, so Im excited for that. And since posting on Facebook about the event, Burke said shes heard from several other gay community members who are excited about the event. Shes met new couples and friends including Murphy and Volnixshin through her efforts to get this off the ground, which she said was difficult since she moved to town at the outset of the pandemic. Helping organize the event has made her realize she can find a community in town. Its been really exciting to see, wow, there is a really big and strong community here, she said. The picnic is just the first step, the organizers reiterated. They are all hoping to see this event spur more of a sense of community among LGBTQ+ people living in New Milford, as well as increase membership and visibility for Southern Litchfield Pride. This is our kick-off event to get people to come together, Murphy said. The group plans to set a first meeting date before the Pride Picnic so that they can encourage others to attend during this inaugural event. They hope to get input from others about what they might want out of a group like this. Im hoping this moves into something bigger, Volnixshin said. PHOENIX (AP) Theres a lot of unintentional irony surrounding Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer. He first became known in political circles for auditing the office he now controls when it was occupied by his predecessor and political opponent Adrian Fontes in 2019. Now hes becoming a national figure as he speaks out about the Senate audit of the 2020 election, which Maricopa County Supervisors Chairman Jack Sellers calls a grift disguised as an audit. Richer, who was a corporate transactional lawyer before seeking his first political office in 2020, made sure to point out that what he did and what the Arizona Senate is doing could not be more different. I think you would find that the F word is not mentioned once in the (audit) report, he said referring to accusations of fraud from the election where he won by 4,599 votes. Mine was entirely based on news reports, statutes and interviews. I did not jump to a single conclusion, and where conclusions could not be drawn, I acknowledge as such. After nearly five months in public office, Richer, a conservative Republican who identifies as a hardcore libertarian, is still relatively unknown outside of a handful of tweets and recent media appearances. Hes a nerd at heart who has found a great obsession with his face buried in a book, usually in the fantasy fiction genre. He said he reads a lot and it became a big part of his life growing up. Thats when all he wanted to do was play StarCraft or sports, until Harry Potter came into his life. Back then his mom essentially forced him to read the first book of the series. She said, Im gonna read these first two chapters to you and you have to sit and listen to this and she did and then I just took it upstairs that night and I just kept reading and that was the first time in my life that I enjoyed reading and I started reading just for fun, he said. As his Twitter presence and occasional quotes in stories have shown, he also has a keen appreciation of Star Wars and is ready to go toe-to-toe with anybody on pop culture references. Whether its related to fantasy, or a rom-com or even a Channing Tatum dance movie from the mid-2000s. I hosted a birthday party by renting out the theater for a new Step Up movie one time, he told Arizona Capitol Times during a phone interview after a 12-hour day at his office in downtown Phoenix. Richers political life has gone the way he didnt really anticipate. During his campaign for office against the incumbent Fontes, he was hoping for more media attention, but didnt really get it. Now, he wants nothing more than to make the Recorders Office boring again and stay out of the spotlight, but the world had other plans. He ran for office because he said he likes being a part of society. I always found this world to be fascinating, he said. I was certainly a consumer of politics. The only thing Im not really is, ironically by nature, a very confrontational person. He said he chose to run for the Recorders Office because he heard unflattering stories about the way Fontes ran it and he wanted to change that. That was exciting to me and it was a nice blend between the world of politics and the world of management, which are the two things I really enjoy. He won the race and spent several months learning how to operate the office, spending between nine and 12 hours a day there. Then, it took weeks and months of intense scrutiny of the office followed by an onslaught of defamatory statements and accusations that he broke the law for him to start fighting back and defending his office and other county officials. What put him in the national spotlight was saying on Twitter on May 16 that President Trumps allegation that the Maricopa County voter database had been deleted was unhinged. But the next day at a press conference he said he would rather make his office boring again and normally tries his best to hide from an Arizona Republic reporter. He prefers exchanging memes with the Capitol Times than giving quotes. He then launched into a full-throated defense of the people in his office and called for an end to the defamatory lies. This isnt a game. These are real humans. These are people who work in the county. they work hard, theyre good people, theyre normal people who go home and they root for the Suns or they watch Netflix, he said. They are not monsters and stop treating them as such. In 2019, after authoring the audit into the Recorders Office on behalf of the Arizona Republican Party under former Chairman Jonathan Lines, Richer joked to a crowd of party members that he was the only speaker to have his name on-screen behind him because he was relatively unknown compared to the other speakers, most of whom were elected officials. He still acts like thats his current reality. Who would want to read that? he asked Capitol Times before agreeing to an interview for this story. Its sometimes hard to tell when hes being overly sarcastic and when hes not. But when he wants to come off as serious, he will do so without leaving it open for interpretation. The serious attitude came across without question in a letter he presented to the county Board of Supervisors on May 17, responding to accusations Senate President Karen Fann, R-Prescott, and her team of hired contractors lobbed against him. He reiterated those points and defended his frustrations, saying he gets exasperated when people are trying to argue that the election is fraudulent, but will still run for higher office anyway and act like theres nothing bizarre about that. It is so illogical, it makes my skin crawl, he said. RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) A former leader of the Salvation Army in the Black Hills accused of receiving and possessing child pornography is being held without bond until his trial. A federal magistrate on Friday ordered Javier Moreno, 40, detained during a hearing on Friday, the Rapid City Journal reported. DOVER, Del. (AP) A Delaware judge has ruled against the company that privatized operations at the port of Wilmington several years ago in a dispute over a planned buyout of the ports former stevedoring firm. The judge ruled Friday that GT USA Wilmington is bound by the terms of a 2018 letter agreement regarding the purchase and sale of 100% of the equity interest of Murphy Marine Services. Vice Chancellor Sam Glasscock III also ruled that the agreement prohibited accounting firm KPMG from considering the financial effect of privatization in its analysis of Murphy Marines value, as GT had wanted. Finally, Glasscock agreed with Murphy Marine that the price point in the deal should be in the midpoint of KPMGs valuation range. A spokeswoman for GT USA Wilmington did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment. The ruling comes in one of several lawsuits in which GT USA Wilmington has become enmeshed since signing a privatization deal with Democratic Gov. John Carneys administration in 2018. Last year, a different Chancery Court judge issued a preliminary injunction preventing GT USA Wilmington from blocking access to an adjacent fuel storage terminal pending resolution of a fee dispute with the owner of the terminal. In March, Norfolk Southern filed a federal lawsuit claiming that it is owed several hundred thousand dollars by GT USA Wilmington for costs related to rail car storage. GT USA Wilmington is a subsidiary of port management company Gulftainer, which is based in the United Arab Emirates. It obtained the rights to operate the Wilmington port for 50 years in exchange for agreeing to make significant upgrades and to pay the state at least $3 million annually in concession fees based on cargo volume moving through the port. According to court records, state officials did not require GT to buy Murphy Marine, but both companies have said they felt pressure from the state to make a deal. The companies finalized the letter agreement in April 2018 and agreed shortly thereafter that KPMG would conduct a valuation analysis of Murphy Marine. KPMG estimated Murphy Marines equity value to be between $21.5 million and $26.1 million. GT officials were not happy with those numbers and asked KPMG to fix its analysis, according to court records. A key concern for GT was that the effect of the port privatization was not included in KPMGs valuation. GTs privatization of the port of Wilmington, if GT did not acquire Murphy Marine, would have a drastically detrimental effect on Murphy Marines value, Glasscock noted. GT, which is the largest privately-owned port operator in the world, could have started its own stevedoring business and shuttered Murphy Marines business entirely by denying it access to the port. In a footnote, the judge referenced internal emails indicating that GT officials knew privatization was not to be considered. In one email, a GT director stated that, after he requested the privatization be considered, an attorney for Murphy Marine responded that he had crossed a line and violated (the) agreement which was to not consider privatization. The GT official agreed that Murphy Marines lawyer had a fair point, but said tough luck, I need to protect our position. In another email, a GT principal wondered whether the company should still accept Murphy Marines position that privatization would not be considered. It brings the risk of a higher price but on the other hand the value of (Murphy Marine) would be very little if privatization is fully included, the GT official wrote. In response, another GT principal wrote play the card of the port privati(z)ation but be reasonable. If we want to finish this(,) we should be looking at accepting a value of less than $8M, without screwing them completely. Murphy Marine is seeking enforcement of the binding letter agreement, which required GT to pay fair market value, as determined by KPMG, for Murphy Marines shares. The agreement also notes that KPMGs decision will be final and binding upon the parties. Despite the agreement, GT pointed out that KPMGs engagement letter noted that its pricing analysis could not be used to determine the purchase price, and was intended only to provide a range of prices. Glasscock ruled that the engagement letter supported the agreement but was not incorporated into it and did not alter its terms. He determined that the letter agreement is the sole document governing the sale of Murphy Marines shares and that it precludes incorporation of privatization in the value analysis. Fridays ruling paves the way for a second phase of the trial to consider other issues in the lawsuit, including what information Murphy Marine presented to KPMG for use in forming its valuation. What is now known as the Trent House is on the market, and its owner is hoping for someone who wants to take care of the house and its stories. LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) A man was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison Friday for his role in a home invasion robbery that resulted in the death of a Lincoln woman. William Boothe III, 57, of Lincoln, helped set up a robbery in north Lincoln on July 31, 2018, during which Jessica Brandon, 36, was shot and killed. LONDON (AP) A teenager from south London appeared in court Saturday on charges that he was involved in the shooting of a prominent member of the Black Lives Matter movement. Cameron Deriggs, 18, is charged with conspiracy to murder Sasha Johnson, who was shot in the head Sunday at a house party in southeast London. Johnson, a 27-year-old mother of two, remains hospitalized in critical condition. BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) A Michigan man arrested on drug charges in Bismarck two months after he got out of prison for armed robbery has been sentenced to three years in prison. Jamill Passmore, 30, of Westland, Michigan, pleaded guilty to drug delivery and drug conspiracy charges. South Central District Judge David Reich sentenced Passmore to three years on each charge to be served at the same time, the Bismarck Tribune reported. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) State lawmakers left tens of thousands of Missouri residents facing big debts by failing to pass a seemingly popular measure to stop the state from clawing back mistaken overpayments of unemployment benefits. The General Assembly's session ended this month about four hours early because of a fight over abortion, blocking the measure to waive unemployment debts. The Kansas City Star reports that roughly 46,000 people could be affected. LAS VEGAS (AP) Uber and Lyft will be able to resume surge pricing in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada after Gov. Steve Sisolak late Friday ended a ban meant to prevent price gouging during the pandemic. The Democratic governor's emergency order took effect immediately. App-based ride-hailing firms, known formally as transportation network companies, generally raise their prices during periods of high demand, which they say reduces wait times by encouraging more drivers to work. But thats been banned during the public health emergency declared in March 2020. Uber said last month that the loss of surge pricing led to a shortage of drivers because it depressed their earnings, and it urged users to pressure Sisolak to ease the restriction. The Nevada Transportation Authority said peak wait times have jumped 225% since March 2021, with some riders waiting as long as 30 minutes, according to documents released by Sisolak's office. In future emergencies, surge pricing will only be banned for 30 days. SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) New Mexicos child welfare agency is promising technology improvements and increased transparency after its use of an auto-deleting messaging app came under fire by state lawmakers and others. When I came in the (Children, Youth and Families Department) was described fairly or not to me as a black box, said Cabinet Secretary Brian Blalock, who was appointed in 2019. And so we wanted to fix that." Blalock said the use of the encrypted Signal app was suspended, that public records request staff has been expanded under his watch, and the agency is on track with the largest software upgrade in decades that will improve agency operations ranging from the foster care system to juvenile justice system. Blalock made his remarks to The Associated Press in an interview May 17, before news broke that he had fired on May 6 top staffers who had advised him and senior deputies on both the use of the app and the software development efforts. The fired staff members said that a culture of punishing dissent threatens an upgrade of the agency's data system essential for federal funding and exacerbated a recent public relations crisis over the use of the encrypted messaging app. Debra Gilmore was the director of the Office of Childrens Rights until she was fired May 6 along with her husband, Cliff, who worked as the agencys spokesman. The Searchlight New Mexico investigative reporting website first reported the firing of the Gilmores. She said the department reprimanded her for failure to form productive and professional work relationships, including with project managers tasked with upgrading the agency's Child Welfare Information System, a database that is essential to running New Mexico's foster care system and meeting federal data reporting requirements. Debra Gilmore said the project managers were upset because she pushed them to account for the project's sprawling scope and nebulous deadlines. I just could not get a satisfactory answer to the how how are we going to do that? said Gilmore, a lawyer and certified project manager with decades of experience in social work project management. Cliff Gilmore said he raised concerns about the use of the Signal app, which in some conversations was set to delete messages every 24 hours. The department ultimately stopped using the app altogether after a report by Searchlight New Mexico uncovered the practice and fueled criticism over the possibility that public records were being destroyed. Our office is pleased that CYFD has discontinued the use of the app, and we are reviewing to ensure that the agency is complying with the law and best practices for retention of public information, said Matt Baca, spokesman for the New Mexico Attorney Generals Office. Cliff Gilmore said he and his wife were aggressively recruited by the child welfare agency last year because of their extensive experience, including his decades of work as a spokesman for the military where he oversaw a team of 65 press officers serving a 55,000-strong Marine force. The couple says Debra Gilmore was hired in December, because of her decades of experience in state government and NGOs, including running a foster care advocacy organization in Oregon. I had never, until this time, been in a room where if I said, I think we got a problem here' that the answer would be anything other than OK, tell me more he said. But I got, Oh youre new, you dont understand. Instead, he said that his advice to not use the Signal app and the auto-delete feature was ignored, though the agency eventually stopped using the app. The department disputed nearly every aspect of the couple's account of problems at the agency. What the Gilmores have, and are asserting is ill-informed and is not based on experience or expertise in New Mexico state government, state procurement laws, state IPRA and records retention laws, or importantly the technology needs of CYFD, spokesman Charlie Moore-Pabst said. It is unfortunate in their very short time in NM government they have chosen to criticize CYFDs operations without all the facts and without an understanding of New Mexico law. The agency has struggled in the past with employees claiming they have been retaliated against. We welcome whistleblowers, we welcome attorneys and demand letters. We welcome any opportunity to improve CYFD, Blalock said in the May 17 interview. "Theres a tension between allegations of whistleblowing and when you have an employee thats just not working out. The department has said that the technology upgrade is key to meeting federal requirements, both for efficient case management and organizing and sending data to the federal government and the public. But the department said it is on schedule in the next round of software upgrades. The $44.9 million project has seen delays in receiving approval for federal funding, threatening the budget, according to a recent Legislative Finance Committee IT project status report for the first quarter of the 2021 fiscal year. Out of nine state agency IT projects reviewed, the Children, Youth and Families Department's was the most at-risk of failure. The current system makes it hard for the department to report required data to the federal government and hinders public access. When The Associated Press tried to compile a 50-state survey of a dozen child welfare indicators, New Mexico was one of 14 states that did not produce the data within a matter of weeks and free of charge. Debra Gilmore said that without answering the tough questions she believes got her disciplined, the software project will fail to improve case management. I am concerned because it is an opportunity to tailor the next generation of software to the needs of the children and families being served, she said. Cliff Gilmore added that he would expect policies that deal with communication among employees and data to be articulated clearly in writing and publicly available, but that doesn't appear to be the case. While Blalock has said the agency has policies and procedures in place to prevent destroying records that should be retained, the department confirmed that there was no official policy on the use of Signal specifically. It also doesn't have a guidance document on whistleblower protections, relying only on state statutes. Moore-Pabst said the department has recently updated its retaliation policy, though it focuses more on employees participating in formal investigations rather than dissenting views. On May 25, the department began offering drop-in training on the ethics of whistleblowing, optional for senior staff and required for certain caseworkers. ___ Attanasio is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues. Follow Attanasio on Twitter. ___ This story corrects the location of a foster care advocacy organization run by Debra Gilmore. LUDOWICI, Ga. (AP) A nonprofit group says it has bought more than 6,150 acres (2,488 hectares) of forest to be kept in conservation in southeast Georgia. The Conservation Fund purchased the land along the Altamaha River in Long County from the forest products company Rayonier, the nonprofit said in a news release. ELKTON, Va. (AP) Ann Tinnell of Shenandoah had an errand to run before getting home from work on Thursday. She was picking up prescriptions for her 72-year-old mother, Joan Mitchell, at Elkton Family Pharmacy. However, journeys like Tinnells that include stops at independently owned pharmacies are decreasing not because of a reduced need for medical products and drugs, but because of the dwindling number of independent pharmacies themselves. Independent pharmacies, such as Elkton Family Pharmacy, are being squeezed by corporate health care consolidation, according to current and former independent pharmacy operators. John Seymour worked for CVS for 20 years, but on his 45th birthday, he decided he wanted to spend more time with his family and started his first independent pharmacy in 2005. Ive been on both sides of this fence, said Seymour, who is a board member of the Virginia Pharmacists Association. Independent pharmacies not only need to remain committed to customers and adapt to survive, but must also make difficult decisions when presented with only bad options from health care conglomerates, according to Seymour. If youre not at the table, youre on the menu, Seymour said. And pharmacies have been on the menu for too many years. The number of independent pharmacies in Virginia was rising until it peaked at 398 in 2014, according to data provided by the National Community Pharmacists Association. But their numbers have withered at an increasing rate, dropping to 328 in 2019. Data for 2020 will not be available until October. Nationwide, 630 rural American communities that had at least one pharmacy in March 2003 had none 15 years later, according to a report from the University of Iowa Center for Rural Policy Analysis. Bridgewater is one area locality without a pharmacy since the independent shop in town closed earlier this year. The town is struggling to attract another because the two largest pharmacy companies, CVS and Walgreens, are not interested in opening there. The decision for West Virginia native Mel Anderson to start his Medicap Pharmacy in Harrisonburg 14 years ago was terrifying, he said. Its worse today as business rests on contracts, according to Anderson. The advantages that (the large chains) have over an independent are size, buying power and the ability to negotiate better contracts with the insurance companies, Anderson said. These changes and more have transformed the sector from 30 to 40 years ago, according to Seymour. One such difference is the rise of pharmacy benefit manager firms, which are middlemen between insurers, pharmacists and drug producers. The margins are now razor thin because of the PBMs, Seymour said. When I got out of pharmacy school in 1983, all of our business was basically cash. Now, 95% is insurance. The power of the PBMs, of which only three take up 80% of the market, and the other parts of health care conglomerates leave pharmacists little room to negotiate better deals for themselves in what is a take it or leave it contract, according to Seymour. Other businesses can adapt to these price fluctuations, but pharmacies cannot because they lack control over their own prices, according to Seymour. Say my landlord raises my rent. If Im a pizza parlor, I start charging more for large pepperoni pizzas to cover my rent, passing (the cost) on, Seymour said. Theres no way we can pass it on because of the fixed contracts. The pharmacists said that if they turn down a bad deal, it will only make things worse. Once out of coverage for customers, the pharmacy loses a sizable chunk of their customers who will likely no longer be able to afford medication from the independent pharmacy due to the increased price of buying out of pocket. Insurance companies, they will force you into signing a contract, Anderson said. They know you have to access their patients in order to fill prescriptions and have business. And many of these companies will give preferential treatment to their own subsidiaries, charging other firms, including competing chains, more for the same product, according to Seymour. For example, CVS acquired insurer Aetna in 2018. Theres no bargaining room at all cause they dont really need us, even though we can provide better service. Its not about that, Anderson said. Its about money. Another issue that could be chilling the entrepreneurial spirit of pharmacists is the increased burden of student debt, according to Anderson, who graduated in 1999. The fees to go to college have probably tripled in the last 20 years, so your average pharmacist that gets out of school owes way more than I did when I got out, he said. For Tinnell, there is a comfort in having an independent pharmacy rather than a chain, she said. The comfort comes from the expectation that the care and attention her mother are given are not sacrificed, she said in the shade outside Elkton Family Pharmacy before leaving Thursday. They know more about her stuff and spend more one-on-one time with her, Tinnell said, and if she has questions, they can answer her more so. Organizers who called off a headline commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre said Friday the event was canceled after an agreement couldnt be reached over monetary payments to three survivors of the deadly attack by a white mob, highlighting broader debates over reparations for racial injustice. Attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons told The Associated Press that he submitted a list of requests to the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission in order to have the survivors attend the Remember & Rise event Monday at ONEOK Field in Tulsa. The commission had enlisted Grammy-award-winning singer and songwriter John Legend to headline the event, and voting rights activist Stacey Abrams was to deliver the keynote address. After months of zero communication and under immense pressure that John Legend and Stacey Abrams may no longer participate if the survivors were not centered, a meeting was scheduled for Saturday," Solomon-Simmons said in a text message to the AP. Immediately following that call, our legal team submitted a list of seven requests to ensure the survivors' participation with the commission's scheduled events." The agreement was to have answers on each of the requests by (Tuesday). That didn't happen." Solomon-Simmons is representing the survivors and their descendants in a lawsuit against the city of Tulsa and other defendants seeking reparations for the destruction of the city's once thriving Black district. State Sen. Kevin Matthews, the chairman of the commission, said after meeting with Solomon-Simmons and other representatives of the survivors, the commission agreed to provide $100,000 to each of the three survivors, along with $2 million in seed money for a reparations fund. We raised the money and we were excited the survivors were going to accept these gifts," Matthews said Friday. Unfortunately, on Sunday they reached out and increased the amount of the $100,000-per-survivor gifts to $1 million, and instead of $2 million, they asked for $50 million $50 million in seed money. We could not respond to those demands." To be clear, I absolutely want the survivors, the descendants and others that were affected to be financially and emotionally supported. However, this is not the way." Solomon said the $50 million figure was never a non-negotiable demand. Messages left with representatives for Legend and Abrams seeking comment were not returned. Reparations for Black Americans whose ancestors were enslaved and for other racial discrimination has been debated in the U.S. since slavery ended in 1865. Now they are being discussed by colleges and universities with ties to slavery and by local government s looking to make cash payments to Black residents amid the ongoing national reckoning over the killing of George Floyd. The Tulsa Race Massacre which left up to 300 people dead and burned the city's prosperous Black neighborhood known as Greenwood to the ground is one of the starkest examples of Black wealth being decimated, leaving parents nothing to pass down and forcing generations to start from scratch. Over the last five years, Matthews says the Centennial Commission has raised more than $30 million, including $20 million for the construction of the Greenwood Rising museum. Other funds have been raised for art projects, commemoration activities and renovations to the Greenwood Cultural Center. But some of Tulsas Black residents question whether the money for the construction of the Greenwood Rising museum in an increasingly gentrified part of the city could have been better spent helping Black descendants of the massacre or residents of the citys predominantly Black north side several miles away from Greenwood. Disagreements among Black leaders in Tulsa over the handling of commemoration events and millions of dollars in donations have led to two disparate groups planning separate slates of events marking the massacre's 100-year anniversary. In addition to the Centennial Commission, the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival has scheduled a series of events over the next several days, and they will continue as planned. Solomon-Simmons is associated with the Legacy Festival, along with City Councilwoman Vanessa Hall-Harper and Tiffany Crutcher, the twin sister of Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed by a Tulsa police officer in 2016. President Joe Biden is scheduled to be in Tulsa on Tuesday to commemorate the anniversary. But the disagreement between the two Tulsa groups has grown especially testy in recent months. In April, Solomon-Simmons sent a cease-and-desist letter to Armstrong, the commission's project director, over the use of one of the survivor's name and likeness in promoting the Greenwood Rising project, a 7,000-square-foot museum being constructed in Greenwood to tell the story of the massacre. The commission also booted Oklahoma's Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt from the panel after he signed a bill that prohibits the teaching of certain race concepts in public school, and U.S. Sen. James Lankford also stepped down from the commission in recent weeks. Lankford's office cited a drift from the original goals of the commission to a more partisan political agenda" as the reason for his decision. It is just a mess," said former state Sen. Judy Eason-McIntyre, a member of the commission who says she believes the overarching dispute is both about a struggle for power and control over some of the millions of dollars that have flowed into the community from private foundations. I've seen stink before ... and it's all about money." Many Black Tulsans say they're upset the two separate factions couldn't work out their differences and reach an agreement that benefitted the city, particularly its Black residents. Im just disappointed," said Marq Lewis, a Black activist in Tulsa who said he's not associated with either group. I'm disappointed that adults could not come to the table and not air out our dirty laundry nationally." We all have disagreements ... but in some way we have to look at the bigger picture." ___ Find APs full coverage of the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre: https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre PHOENIX (AP) Phoenix police say theyve arrested a man in connection with six sexual assaults dating to at least 2016. Kedrin Wardell, 48, was arrested on Thursday in Chandler after DNA evidence connected him to four assaults. When we first got on the phone she said that her AC had failed, and that it just got really hot in the house, Chandler said. After the fact, she texted me and told me that somehow their heat got switched on in the house, and that is what caused heatstroke. TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Republican legislators have hatched a plan for returning the Kansas Statehouse's meditation room to its original spot after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly moved it to create more space for her staff. Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, outlined the proposal this week during a meeting of top lawmakers. A decision is likely later this year. DETROIT (AP) Mental health issues experienced by young adults will be the topic of a 10-episode podcast from Michigan State Universitys Science Gallery Detroit and WDET-FM public radio. The first episode of the latest Science of Grief podcast is scheduled to air Wednesday. The series makes space for young adults to share stories, science, and solutions for those who are exploring their grief and mental health. MONCKS CORNER, S.C. (AP) Santee Cooper is taking applications from companies that want to use its extra fiber and transmission lines to bring broadband internet to rural areas. The state-owned utility said it has 1,200 miles (1,930 kilometers) of extra lines, many in the most rural areas of South Carolina that currently dont have broadband access. NEW CASTLE, Pa. (AP) A high school in western Pennsylvania was placed on lockdown during a procession for students attending the prom after what officials called credible" threats made by an unnamed person against students, authorities said. The New Castle city police department said it received information Friday about threats to students and schools, and an investigator was able to speak to the individual who did reiterate the threats," police said on their Facebook page. WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) Writing used to be something Justin Nash would do in secret. In the sliver of time after school when he was the only person in his familys Smyrna home, Nash would sit upstairs at his computer and type out his stories. On May 21, the now 22-year-old was awarded the Sophie Kerr Prize, the nations largest undergraduate literary award worth $65,580. Named after the Eastern Shore author, the Sophie Kerr Prize is awarded to a graduating senior each year at Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. The prize money comes from the endowment Kerr left to the college in her will. Since its inception in 1968, the prize is awarded to the senior who demonstrates the best potential for future achievement in a literary endeavor, school officials said. Nash was one of six finalists. An English major with three minors, Nash has served as editor-in-chief of campus literary magazines and journals. He was the vice president of the campus Writers Union, and has spent his college career interning in publishing, with hopes of becoming an editor with a nonprofit publishing press one day. His portfolio, titled Prestidigitate, examined travel, childhood, and conceit through a combination of poems, stories and essays. Justin grasps the power of writing to move the world, one thoughtful and witty and well-edited line at a time, said Sean Meehan, chair of the Department of English at the college. Growing up on a farm in Smyrna, Nash was raised with attention to how to tend to animals and make things grow. Focusing on the natural world and attachment to place bled into his writing, Nash said. He focuses on subjects like rural life, death and desire. I do owe that to how I was raised and where I was raised, Nash said. He said he cant remember when exactly he started writing. But a creative writing club, formed by his fifth-grade teacher, James McGuigan, jumpstarted the passion. McGuigan teaches at John Bassett Moore Intermediate School in Smyrna. The two havent spoken since Nash was in fifth grade. But last week, Nash sent him a friend request on Facebook, in case he needed to share news of the prize. I just thought, god if I win this thing, he needs to know about it, he said. For McGuigan, news of Nashs award made his school year. He was an amazing student, very studious with such a mature work ethic, McGuigan said of his former student. He had an astounding imagination, and he could weave stories and create characters with true depth and flow. Nash plans to put the money toward graduate school, to pursue an MFA in poetry. When Nashs name was called last Friday night, his mind went blank. There arent words, he said as he began his acceptance speech. In his pocket was a list of the people he wanted to thank. But in that moment, he abandoned the paper filled with names the people he wanted to focus on and thank the most were the finalists sitting with him. Friends since freshman year, the finalists had spent the past four years reading and editing each others work, pushing each other. So, Nash turned to his fellow classmates, and invited them to join him at the podium. The six tearfully hugged as Nash brought his acceptance speech to a close. I think its one of the great shames of any prize like this, that only one person can win it, Nash said. I just refuse to let this moment be about anything other than all of us at once. STAMFORD When she first started at Sacred Heart University, Victoria Ho hardly set out to be a nationally recognized advocate for a more diverse physician-assistant workforce. I had no intention of doing all this advocacy work, she said. It just fell into place. Ho was named 2021 Student of the Year this week by the American Academy of Physician Assistants. Shes the next director at large for the LBGT PA caucus and the co-founder of a LGBTQIA+ pre-PA support group. My entire platform for everything I do is to increase diversity within the PA profession, she said. Its a profession thats mainly been white-dominated. As Asian American with immigrant parents, I want to see more diversity within the PA profession. The Student of the Year Award honors those who further the image of PAs and PA students, give time and effort to service, demonstrate leadership and professionalism and strive to provide accessible and quality health care and education, according to the American Academy of PAs. Ho was nominated by her friend and mentor Jonathan Baker, whos also involved in the LBGT PA Caucus. Previously, Ho was an LBGT PA Caucus Student Leader Fellow with goals of diversifying the field and educating staff and peers on how to be what she called an ally provider. She got involved with committees and board meetings, and served as a panelist for presentations, including Teaching Sexual & Gender Minority Content in the PA Education and It Takes a Village: Leveraging Diverse Skill Sets for LGBTQ+ Health Advocacy. While a fellow, Ho created the LGBTQIA+ pre-PA support group to increase awareness of the profession and the acceptance rate of LGBTQIA+-identifying PA students. The group tackles dilemmas like coming out during the application process and communicating pronouns. Ho said she made pre-PAs her focus because theyre the catalysts for change in the workforce. Theyre the core of the future, she said. She hopes groups like hers can remove barriers to enter the profession by focusing on students who dont have the resources to do volunteer work or unpaid shadow hours that she said are often requisite to breaking into the field. While a graduate student at Sacred Heart University, Hos been thankful her program encourages students to get involved in advocacy on a national platform. In March, the school made accommodations so she could attend a virtual American Academy of PAs Leadership and Advocacy Summit representing Connecticut. They have been nothing but supportive, she said, allowing us to continue our passions and take on leadership roles. Sacred Heart, in turn, commended her work. Victoria was honored for her work on diversity, said Maura Iverson, the dean of the College of Health Professions at Sacred Heart University. We are so proud that our students embrace the mission of SHU mission regarding social justice and diversity. We are hopeful that our students will continue to promote diversity and social justice as they deliver health care. We are very proud of Victoria for her hard work and strong representation of all SHU stands for, she said. Ho will graduate from her program in December, but she plans to continue striving for a PA workforce that better represents the populations it cares for, especially in under-served and underpopulated areas. When the smoke cleared in June 1921, the toll from the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was catastrophic scores of lives lost, homes and businesses burned to the ground, a thriving Black community gutted by a white mob. The nightmare cried out for attention, as something to be investigated and memorialized, with speeches and statues and anniversary commemorations. But the horror and violence visited upon Tulsas Black community didn't become part of the American story. Instead, it was pushed down, unremembered and untaught until efforts decades later started bringing it into the light. And even this year, with the 100th anniversary of the massacre being recognized, its still an unfamiliar history to many something historians say has broader repercussions. The consequences of that is a sort of a lie that we tell ourselves collectively about who we are as a society, who we have been historically, thats set some of these things up as aberrations, as exceptions of what we understand society to be rather than endemic or intrinsic parts of American history, said Joshua Guild, an associate professor of history and African American studies at Princeton University. Indeed, U.S. history is filled with dark events often involving racism and racial violence that havent been made part of the national fabric. Many involved Black Americans, of which the Tulsa Race Massacre is considered among the most egregious in its absolute destruction, but other racial and ethnic communities have been impacted as well. Americans not knowing about these events or not recognizing the full scope of the country's conflict-ridden history has impacts that continue to reverberate, Guild said. If we dont understand the nature of the harm ... we cant really have a full reckoning with the possibility of any kind of redress," he said. Manisha Sinha, a professor of American history at the University of Connecticut, agreed. Its really important for Americans to learn from the past, because you really cannot even understand some of our current-day political divisions and ideas unless you realize that this conversation over both the nature and the parameters of American democracy is an ongoing and a really long one," she said. Terrible events that many Americans don't know about include long-ago history, such as the Snake River attack in Oregon in 1887, where as many as 34 Chinese gold miners were killed, and the 1864 Sand Creek massacre of around 230 Cheyenne and Arapaho people by U.S. soldiers in Colorado. Others are within the lifetimes of many Americans living today, like the 1985 bombing by Philadelphia police of the house that headquartered the Black organization MOVE, killing 11 people. As odd as it may sound, the mere fact that something happened isn't enough for it to be remembered, said Robin Wagner-Pacifici, a professor teaching sociology at the New School for Social Research, who has written about the MOVE bombing. You can never assume, no matter how huge an event may be in terms of its literal impact on numbers of people, that its going to be framed and recognized and move forward in time, in memory, by future publics or state apparatuses or political forces," she said. In Oklahoma, the massacre largely wasnt discussed until a commission was formed in 1997 to investigate the violence. For decades, the states public schools called it the Tulsa race riot, when it was discussed at all. Students now are urged to consider the differences between calling it a massacre or a riot. How an event is presented can make a difference, Wagner-Pacifici said. That could include whether its connected to other historical moments and what parts are emphasized or downplayed. All sorts of political forces and actors will kind of move in, to try to name it and claim it, in order either to tamp it down in its impact or to elaborate it in its impact, she said. She pointed to a current example: the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection by a predominantly white mob at the U.S. Capitol. Some Republicans have attempted to minimize or even deny the violence, and on Friday GOP senators blocked the creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the attack. In Tulsa, word of unrest that started on May 31, 1921, and ran through the night and the next day made it to news outlets. Front-page stories and accounts from The Associated Press spoke of a race clash and armed conflict. But the aftermath of a community shattered - was relegated to inside pages at best before being swept under the rug. In one example, a story weeks later well inside the pages of The New York Times reported in passing that a grand jury in Oklahoma had determined the catastrophe was due to the actions of armed Black people and the white people who got involved were not at fault. It just shows that remembering is never just actually about remembering, Wagner-Pacifici said. It's always motivated," she said. Who remembers what about the past, who allows a past to be remembered, to be brought back to life and and in what ways ... its absolutely fundamental to who you decide you want to be in the present." ___ Hajela is a member of The Associated Press Race and Ethnicity team. Follow Hajela on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhajela ___ For more AP coverage of the Tulsa Race Massacre anniversary, go to https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) As more companies start selling tickets to space, a question looms: Who gets to call themselves an astronaut? Its already a complicated issue and about to get more so as the wealthy snap up spacecraft seats and even entire flights for themselves and their entourages. Astronauts? Amateur astronauts? Space tourists? Space sightseers? Rocket riders? Or as the Russians have said for decades, spaceflight participants? NASAs new boss Bill Nelson doesnt consider himself an astronaut even though he spent six days orbiting Earth in 1986 aboard space shuttle Columbia as a congressman. I reserve that term for my professional colleagues, Nelson recently told The Associated Press. Computer game developer Richard Garriott who paid his way to the International Space Station in 2008 with the Russians hates the space tourist label. I am an astronaut, he declared in an email, explaining that he trained for two years for the mission. READ MORE: 5 THINGS TEXAS BEACHGOERS SHOULD KNOW BEFORE THE 2021 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON If you go to space, youre an astronaut, said Axiom Spaces Michael Lopez-Alegria, a former NASA astronaut who will accompany three businessmen to the space station in January, flying SpaceX. His $55 million-a-seat clients plan to conduct research up there, he stressed, and do not consider themselves space tourists. On Tuesday, Axiom Space announced a second flight for next year that will be led by the companys Peggy Whitson, a retired NASA astronaut whos spent 665 days in space, more than any other American. Her No. 2 will be businessman-turned-race car driver John Shoffner, of Knoxville, Tennessee, whos also paying around $55 million. Ive asked Peggy to throw the book at me in training. Make me an astronaut, he said. Theres something enchanting about the word: Astronaut comes from the Greek words for star and sailor. And swashbuckling images of The Right Stuff" and NASA's original Mercury 7 astronauts make for great marketing. Jeff Bezos rocket company, Blue Origin, is already calling its future clients astronauts. Its auctioning off one seat on its first spaceflight with people on board, targeted for July. NASA even has a new acronym: PAM for Private Astronaut Mission. Retired NASA astronaut Mike Mullane didnt consider himself an astronaut until his first space shuttle flight in 1984, six years after his selection by NASA. It doesnt matter if you buy a ride or youre assigned to a ride, said Mullane, whose 2006 autobiography is titled Riding Rockets. Until you strap into a rocket and reach a certain altitude, youre not an astronaut. It remains a coveted assignment. More than 12,000 applied for NASAs upcoming class of astronauts; a lucky dozen or so will be selected in December. But what about passengers who are along for the ride, like the Russian actress and movie director who will fly to the space station in October? Or Japans moonstruck billionaire who will follow them from Kazakhstan in December with his production assistant tagging along to document everything? In each case, a professional cosmonaut will be in charge of the Soyuz capsule. SpaceXs high tech capsules are completely automated, as are Blue Origins. So should rich riders and their guests be called astronauts even if they learn the ropes in case they need to intervene in an emergency? Perhaps even more important, where does space begin? The Federal Aviation Administration limits its commercial astronaut wings to flight crews. The minimum altitude is 50 miles (80 kilometers). Its awarded seven so far; recipients include the two pilots for Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic who made another test flight of the company's rocket ship Saturday. Others define space as beginning at an even 100 kilometers, or 62 miles above sea level. Blue Origins capsules are designed to reach that threshold and provide a few minutes of weightlessness before returning to Earth, By contrast, it takes 1 1/2 hours to circle the world. The Association of Space Explorers requires at least one orbit of Earth in a spacecraft for membership. The Astronauts Memorial Foundation honors all those who sacrificed their lives for the U.S. space program even if they never reached space, like Challenger schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe and the test pilot killed in a 2014 Virgin Galactic crash. Also on the Space Mirror Memorial at NASAs Kennedy Space Center: X-15 and F-104 Air Force pilots who were part of a military space program that never got off the ground. The astronaut debate has been around since the 1960s, according to Garriott. His late father, Owen Garriott, was among the first so-called scientist-astronauts hired by NASA; the test pilots in the office resented sharing the job title. It might be necessary to retire the term altogether once hundreds if not thousands reach space, noted Fordham University history professor Asif Siddiqi, the author of several space books. Are we going to call each and every one of them astronauts? Mullane, the three-time space shuttle flier, suggests using astronaut first class, second class, third class, "depending on what your involvement is, whether you pull out a wallet and write a check. While a military-style pecking order might work, former NASA historian Roger Launius warned: This gets really complicated really quickly. In the end, Mullane noted, Astronaut is not a copyrighted word. So anybody who wants to call themselves an astronaut can call themselves an astronaut, whether theyve been in space or not. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Go to form Family was on President Bidens and First Lady Jill Bidens minds a lot during their Memorial Day weekend stop at Langley, visiting with more that 100 airmen and soldiers at the 27th Fighter Squadron hangar. The president was accompanied by three of the states more prominent Democrats - Gov. Ralph Northam, U.S. Rep. Elaine Luria and U.S. Robert C. Bobby Scott. He came to Hampton after an event in Alexandria with Northam, at which he praised the states progress in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Florida, FL (34429) Today Mostly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms this evening becoming more widespread overnight. Low near 75F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Administratorii portalului nu poarta raspundere pentru continutul postarilor si materialelor plasate de utilizatorii site-ului. Utilizati informatia din acest articol pe propriul risc. The prayer that Anderson-Exum wrote for this years Norfolk ceremony contains some words from a man whose death inspired many of those first, unofficial Memorial Days: President Abraham Lincolns promise at Gettysburg that We here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. Beachwood, OH (44122) Today Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 80F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Celebrate the Class of 2020 Submit a profile of your favorite graduate to have them featured in our Virtual Graduation 2020 special section. Tout their accomplishments, share their photos, and wish them well! Submit profile In fact, there have been many warning shots, so we must defend our nation against these threats, and at the same time we must make advances in things that youve been learning things like quantum computing and artificial intelligence and robotics and things that will put our nation at a strategic advantage, Harris said. Mikah Boyd | The ItemJustin Killingsworth opened his new salon, The Color Bar, earlier this year. After seeing enough neighborhoods suffer in Sussex County, Anthony Cannon decided that it was time to get outside of the church walls and brin Danville, IL (61832) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 93F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Considerable clouds this evening. Some decrease in clouds late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chinese market a source of opportunities for all countries 13:52, May 29, 2021 By Zhang Fan ( People's Daily Photo taken on May 5, 2021, shows the Hainan International Convention and Exhibition Center, venue of the first China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE), in Haikou, south China's Hainan province. (Photo by Yuan Chen/People's Daily Online) China's super-large market and huge consumer demand are attracting wide attention as economic recovery keeps accelerating in the country. China's reviving consumer demand, which creates a vast market space for the rest of the world, is an important part of the rare opportunities created by the country's development. The Chinese market is still actively opening to the world. Earlier this month, the first China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE) was held in Haikou, south China's Hainan province, where 2,628 consumer brands from 70 countries and regions displayed their products in an 80,000-square meter space. The grand event manifested the vitality of the Chinese economy, as well as the appeal of the Chinese market, offering countless business opportunities for global enterprises. At the exhibition, Switzerland displayed the splendid sceneries of the Alps and sophisticated Swiss commodities, while seafood from South Pacific Ocean, Spanish ham, and fresh fruits from Australia's Tasmania were also brought to the visitors at the Fashion Life Exhibition Hall. At the exhibition area of central China's Hubei province, what were displayed included not only food and drinks, but also smart technologies and intangible cultural heritage items. Apart from the CICPE, a series of other grand economic and trade fairs were and will be held in China, including the 129th session of the Canton Fair, the 2021 China International Fair for Trade in Services, and the fourth China International Import Expo. They represent China's efforts to build platforms of win-win cooperation, sending a clear signal of the country to further expand opening up and demonstrating its sincere hope to share opportunities with the rest of the world. The CICPE, as China's first national expo focusing on consumer products, will surely become another calling card of the country's opening-up. With concrete actions, China is proving to the world that its door will never be closed, and will only open still wider. A staff member of an exhibitor at the first China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE) introduces products to visitors, May 9, 2021. (Photo by Zhang Wujun/People's Daily Online) These grand expos, targeting both domestic and international enterprises, not only contribute to China's further opening up, but also offer a window into the country's economic development for the rest of the world. Futuristic products are always favored by visitors attending these events, while commodities showcasing innovation and cultural elegance are also closely followed. Such high-quality consumer demand mirrors the upgrading of China's consumption structure, as well as the country's high-quality economic development. Besides a super-large market made up by a population of 1.4 billion, China's economic development boasts huge potential of consumption restructuring and consumer demand upgrades, which will surely drive the development of emerging industries and new forms of businesses. As China and the rest of the world are intertwined closer, it has become easier for Chinese consumers to shop the world at home. A robot plays Chinese dulcimer at the first China International Consumer Products Expo (CICPE), May 9, 2021. (Photo by Zhang Wujun/People's Daily Online) China's consumption potential is not only bringing more business opportunities for global market players, but also satisfying the growing needs of consumers around the world and making their life better. The Chinese market is an opportunity for the world and will infuse strong vitality into global economic recovery. Sharing opportunities, China hopes to work with the rest of the world to create a brighter future. It is improving both its products and services, and reinforcing its status as a "world factory" and "world market." The country's vitality will pave new paths for and make new contributions to the high-quality development of global trade and investment. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Crocker says he knows Nazario wasnt reaching for his weapon, but pointed out that he had a firearm at his right leg. You get our perspective though, on the safety issue for us as well? You get that? One of the most dramatic stories in corporate finance and bankruptcy over the past decade has been the Caesar's Palace battle between a bunch of hard nosed distressed debt hedge funds and big bad private equity shops. A bunch of masters of the universe types fighting it out to the death. (For my part: I'm interested in this because some of the big players from the Argentine pari passu battle are involved and there was a battle over the aggressive use of Exit Consents). Turns out that this Caesar's story is going to be front and center at an upcoming bankruptcy conference that three good friends, Bob Rasmussen, Mike Simkovic and Samir Parikh are running, where one of the authors of "The Caesar's Palace Coup", the FT's Sujeet Indap, is going to be on a panel with the heavy hitters, Ken Liang, Bruce Bennett and Richard Davis. I always find it fascinating to hear how financial journalists and law professors, both of whom have dug deep into a set of events, tell the same story. The formal announcement, courtesy of Samir Parikh, is here: Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. The only test of this was by a third-party lab paid by the company last July. The lab used a nebulizer to spray a mist with a virus similar to COVID-19 in a small room, then sampled the air to measure how much of the virus was in the air. Then it used the humidifier filled with Ionogens solution and tested the air again. They found a 94% to 97% reduction in the amount of coronavirus in the air, depending how far from the humidifier they tested. To enjoy our website, you'll need to enable JavaScript in your web browser. Please click here to learn how. Hyderabad: More than 1,000 black fungus patients are undergoing treatment in government and private hospitals here while the health department has advised doctors to use posaconazole injections to treat them. In a break-up of the patient numbers, Gandhi Hospital has 250, Government ENT Hospital 300 and Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital six persons under treatment. A 200-bed facility is to be created at Sarojini Devi Eye Hospital to shift patients who have undergone surgery in the ENT Hospital, for further medical recovery in the eye hospital. Private hospitals in Hyderabad have more than 500 patients and the situation there is being monitored by the government-appointed nodal center. The main challenge in treatment continues to be scarcity of amphotericin B liposomal, which is the first line of medicine for treatment. Director of health Dr Srinivas Rao had a meeting with ENT doctors from private hospitals on Friday. He told them that amphotericin B liposomal injections were scarce and they must instead administer posaconazole injections to black fungus patients. Posaconazole is available in the market. Amphotericin is available but it is highly toxic and doctors are not keen on using it on patients. An ENT specialist says, "There is a trinity at work in black fungus cases -- uncontrolled diabetes, Covid19, and excessive and improper use of steroids. This trio is creating havoc in the body. If we use lower grade medicines, the liver and kidney functioning may be affected. This will have to be monitored for the next three to six months in these patients. They have to control their sugar levels and the functioning of these two organs have to be tested to avoid complications." Due to the toxicity of the medicines, many doctors are in a dilemma. They have to cure the patients and they also have to save the patients life. Another ENT doctor said, "We can opt for treating with posaconazole in patients who have black fungus infection in nose, cheeks and the facial region. Those who have invasion in their eyes will require amphotericin. We have to use medicines judiciously." The government supply is five vials per patient per day. The rules are not changing even as a minimum of 20 patients are reporting to different hospitals with black fungus complaints every day. A relief is that the paperwork has been simplified and private hospitals will only have to list the name of the patient and their status. Another ENT doctor said: "We are going to see patients till June end as those suffering from Covid19 and recovering will be coming to hospitals with black fungus complaints. The good thing is that there is awareness and this is bringing patients early to hospitals. This will help patients. Till the nose region, this can be managed well." Experts say those who have taken steroids must check their sugar levels and work towards building cell immunity to protect themselves from black fungus. 99 cent introductory offer Includes everything we offer online for 24-7 news. This option allows you to read unlimited stories at ctnewsonline.com, and access our e-Edition (digital replicate of the daily newspaper). $7.99 per month after the introductory offer. This service comes with a complimentary CT Select Card allowing for local discounts. Rates are subject to change. FAIRFIELD Ashley Langer and her husband spent the past 13 years living in New York City, but they always planned to move to Connecticut. Langer grew up in Old Saybrook, while her husband is from Long Island. The couple saw Fairfield as a great compromise between the two locales. The community itself also had everything they were looking for, especially when considering their two young children. I just love it here, Langer said. Its fabulous. Theyre among the hundreds of residents who made Fairfield home in the past year or so causing the town to rank 10th in net gains in newcomers, according to a CBRE analysis of change-of-address notifications filed with the U.S. Postal Service within Connecticut and New York communities from the Hudson River Valley on down. Fairfield had 400 net moves in 2020, part of a mass exodus of New Yorkers leaving the city during the COVID pandemic and resulting lockdowns. The towns available acreage, beaches, accessibility, shops, restaurants, outdoor recreation, as well as the schools and universities were all drivers for those moving to Fairfield, according to listing agents, those who moved and longtime residents welcoming newcomers. Langer and her husband experienced the frenzy of people looking and buying during COVID firsthand with the pandemic hitting in the middle of their house hunt. They also experienced the other side of it while selling their Queens home before coming to Connecticut in October. It was an absolute rat race, she said. They looked at a lot of houses, placing offers on many only to be outbid. They made an offer on the house they ultimately bought in the university area before even seeing it in person, but falling in love with it online. It checked all of our boxes, Langer said, adding it had a home office, home gym, guest room, powder room, a room for each of their daughters and a nice yard. She also liked the sidewalks, which allow her to get out and walk with the stroller or go for runs. The abundance and quality of restaurants was also a draw. Both are things she enjoyed about living in New York City and appreciates having that continue here with the added accessibility to the highways and stores. COVID impact Rick Higgins, owner of Higgins Group, said these are popular features his clients are requesting, especially home offices and yards. The demand for a yard has really driven interest for the Greenfield Hill neighborhood where there are a lot of two-acre lots, as well as other neighborhoods above the Merritt Parkway. He said COVID has influenced what people are looking for, including what quarantining or working from home would be like. I dont think people are going to forget the pandemic any time soon, Higgins said. Its always going to be in the back of their minds. Fairfield had already been rebounding in home sales but he saw a real spike a month or so into the pandemic. COVID brought people out of New York like crazy, Higgins said, adding the switch to people working from home helped because Fairfield is on the outer limits of what people might consider an ideal commute into the city. Another appeal is the diversity in housing stock within Fairfield. He said people can get something for $100,000 or $200,000 in certain parts of town, while he also has a listing for $18 million. This allows people to stay in Fairfield as they purchase progressively expensive homes. People are buying anything and everything, he said, adding homes up to $2 million sell fast with multiple offers on the property. The more expensive ones also sell, just not right away. The demand has backed off a little, but its still there with houses receiving four offers instead of eight or so at the peak during the pandemic, he said. Were not at 2007 prices, but were getting close, Higgins said. Whos coming Debbi OKeefe, founder of ConnectFairfield, said shes also seeing a lot of the newer residents coming from New York, especially Brooklyn. She started ConnectFairfield at the beginning of this year to help newcomers meet each other and other residents through various events, including one scheduled for right after the Memorial Day parade at the Scandinavian Club. Im finding there are a lot of people moving to this town, OKeefe said, adding about 400 people have joined the group online already 80 percent of whom moved to Fairfield in the past year. Most people are young families who moved here for the community and the schools, she said. There are also older people moving to be closer to their grandchildren and young professionals just starting out. A husband and wife decided to come to Fairfield from Rockland County after they learned about the town because their twins attend Sacred Heart and Fairfield universities, OKeefe said. Shes largely hearing people chose Fairfield because there was a lot to do, the downtown and the beaches. I got to the beach and my jaw hit the sand, Langer said. Not just New Yorkers While a bulk of the newcomers are from New York City, not all of them are coming from across the state line. Katrina Davis and her husband fell in love with Fairfield as students at Sacred Heart University. After graduating, they stayed in the area, living in surrounding communities like Shelton and Bridgeport, but nothing had that same feeling Fairfield offered. Were very outdoorsy and we wanted to live in a community that had opportunities to be outdoors with our children, she said. In February 2020 they started looking for a home in Fairfield. They fell in love with the first house they saw. It was in a nice neighborhood where their children could play outside something Davis and her husband couldnt do when they were growing up and it was close to Jennings Beach. They looked at some other houses in town, but signed the papers on that first one just before COVID hit last March and moved in September. Were lucky, she said. She said it has been hard to meet other families though during the pandemic, which is why she launched the Fairfield Motherhood Cooperative, a group that hosts playdates and meetups for mothers with children 1 to 4 years old. Shes seeing a lot of newcomers there too, largely from New York City. A lot is COVID-related, Davis said. People were really feeling the pressure of being in their apartments all of the time and not getting out like we can in Fairfield. The schools are also a large factor. Davis is a former teacher and worked in several districts, including Fairfield. There are other places that dont compare to Fairfield when it comes to education, she said. We knew we wanted our kids to be in this district. Both Davis and Langer said they liked that Fairfield was a large town but still had that small town, community feel. Fairfield has something for everyone, and I may be biased because I grew up here, raised a family and started a small business here, but I think Fairfield is the best town in Connecticut, First Selectwoman Brenda Kupchick said. Its no surprise to me that many families are choosing to move to Fairfield. She said the town has a lot to offer. Fairfield is a picturesque and historic coastal community, she said. We offer urban-style amenities in a family friendly suburban setting with three train stations, and close proximity to New York. Our excellent schools are an attraction for young families, our two flagship universities provide a pool of talent for businesses, and their students provide youthful energy. A 42-year-old Branford man was arrested Friday on a criminal complaint charging him with possession and distribution of child sex abuse imagery, according to federal authorities. Michael Holm is charged with distribution, transportation and possession of child pornography and obscene visual depictions of minors engaged in sexually explicit conduct, the U.S attorneys office for the District of Connecticut said in a statement. From about Sept.1, 2014, to March 8, 2021, , Holm allegedly used various websites, messaging apps and file storage platforms to distribute, transport, and store material depicting the sexual abuse of children, the statement said. In 2010, Holm pleaded guilty in federal court to possession of child pornography, the statement said. He was sentenced in 2011 to three months in prison and five years supervised release on that conviction, the statement said. Investigators believe Holm allegedly engaged in some of this conduct while he was on federal supervised release, the statement said. The U.S. attorneys office said the more recent allegations against Holm were the result of an investigation by Homeland Security Investigations with the assistance of state and Branford police. On March 8, the U.S. attorneys office said, investigators searched Holms residence in Branford and seized his iPhone. A search of the phone allegedly turned up 31 images and videos of child sex abuse imagery. A search of a file storage account owned by Holm found he allegedly had uploaded and stored over 100 images and videos of child sex abuse imagery, the statement said. Holm was ordered detained Friday during an appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert M. Spector in New Haven, the U.S. attorneys office said. If convicted, Holm faces up to mandatory minimum sentence of 15 years and up to 30 years on the distribution and transportation charge. He also faces and a mandatory minimum of 10 years and up to 20 years on the possession charge, the U.S. attorneys office said. The statement noted the sentencing would be enhanced based on his previous conviction. The minister at the inauguration of the 100-bed area hospital at Thippapur village near the temple town of Vemulawada in Rajanna Sircilla district. (Photo: Twitter/@KTRTRS) Hyderabad: State minister K.T. Rama Rao said on Friday that the central government was doing injustice to the people here by allowing vaccine export to other countries. While inaugurating a 100-bed area hospital at Thippapur village near the temple town of Vemulawada in Rajanna Sircilla district, the minister alleged that the central government was also doing an injustice to states by imposing restrictions on allotment of vaccine stocks. "Everyone knows that Hyderabad is the vaccine capital of the world and has the capacity to manufacture vaccines required for the entire world," he said and added that the Central government however centralized the vaccine supply. It took 85 per cent of the production under its control and gave only 15 per cent of what was produced here to the state and private hospitals. "There is no foresight on the part of the Central government led by Narendra Modi. Without thinking about the future needs of the people of this country, it exported vaccines to other countries and supplied limited doses to states. Companies producing the vaccines are fixing different prices for the Centre and the states," he said. However, he said steps will be taken for increasing the process of vaccination in the district. Global tenders were invited. The target is to vaccinate all people in the state by end of this year. In Rajanna Sircilla district, around 1.22 lakh people were administered the vaccination, including healthcare, municipal and village panchayat workers. Around 65,000 persons who crossed 45 years of age got first dose of vaccination and the second dose was given to around 6,000 persons in the district. The 100-bed area hospital the minister inaugurated is equipped with a waiting room and reception hall, an OP Block, an operation theatre, ICU, Pharmacy and emergency wards, a mortuary and ambulance facility. It was built at a cost of Rs 22.5 crore. The temple had donated four acres of its land in Thippapur village to the state for the construction of the hospital in the name of Sri Raja Rajeshwara Swamy. CHICAGO (AP) Illinois is poised to become the first state to require that public schools teach their students the history of Asian Americans, who have endured an increase in anti-Asian hate crimes amid the Covid-19 pandemic. The Illinois Senate passed the Teaching Equitable Asian American Community History Act, known as the TEAACH Act, by a unanimous vote of 57-0 on Tuesday. The legislation, introduced in January by Illinois State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz, D-Glenview, passed the state House in April. The House has to approve a Senate amendment before it will head to Gov. J.B. Pritzkers desk for his signature. The bill would require every elementary and high school in the state to devote a unit of curriculum to the history of Asian Americans in the United States, including in Illinois and the Midwest. School districts would have until the start of the 2022-2023 school year to comply. ___ The nonprofit news outlet Injustice Watch provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News. ___ The TEAACH Act requires schools to include in U.S. history courses the role that Asian Americans have played in advancing civil rights and highlight their contributions to the countrys development. State Sen. Ram Villivalam, D-Chicago, who sponsored the bill in the Senate, said education is one part of a multipronged strategy to tackle the rise in discrimination against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Addressing the issue will also require better hate crime reporting, more representation in government, and training people to be better bystanders who intervene when they witness anti-Asian harassment, he said. Illinois Sen. Ram Villivalam the first Asian American in the Illinois Senate said laws like the TEAACH Act can help deter anti-Asian hate crimes and dispel the model minority myth that all Asian Americans are successful. We are also minorities, said Villivalam, who is Indian American. We need to make sure that our issues are also being taken in that same lens (as other minorities) and we stand together in solidarity. The TEAACH Acts backers expressed hope that the legislation could help combat stereotypes and ignorance about Asian Americans that they said dehumanize and marginalize the group and create an environment in which acts of hate and violence against Asian Americans are accepted. The bill gained momentum in the aftermath of a series of mass shootings, first at several Atlanta-area spas in March that killed eight people, including six Asian women, then at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis in April that killed four members of the Sikh community. Unfortunately, this really stark rise in anti-Asian violence has played a role in peoples willingness to take action, said Grace Pai, director of organizing at Asian Americans Advancing Justice ' Chicago, which helped draft the legislative language, worked closely with the bills sponsors, and coordinated outreach efforts. If the TEAACH Act is signed into law, the superintendent of the Illinois State Board of Education could prepare free teaching materials for local school boards to use in developing curricula about Asian American history. But the bill leaves most of the details up to individual districts and schools. One of the bills sponsors is Illinois State Rep. Theresa Mah, D-Chicago, who became the first Asian American elected to the Illinois General Assembly in 2016. Mah was also one of the first Asian American studies professors at Northwestern University, after students went on a hunger strike to demand the creation of an Asian American Studies Program in the 1990s. Mah said she hopes teaching Asian American history in schools will help dispel the stereotype of Asian Americans as perpetual foreigners. During debate about the bill, she shared a story about sitting outside the Faneuil Hall Marketplace in Boston, when a group of middle-school-aged kids passed by and one of them asked, Who are the Ching Chongs? while the others laughed. Asian Americans tend to experience this othering, she said. People see us as not belonging to the country, not real Americans. Forever foreigners or a model minority Sohyun An, a professor of social studies education at the Kennesaw State University whose work is grounded in critical race theory, said the way that schools teach Asian American history has real-world implications. In 2016, An examined how Asian American history is taught in 10 states and found that history lessons about Asian Americans tend to focus almost exclusively on early Chinese immigrants and Japanese internment camps during World War II. These lessons reinforce stereotypes about Asian Americans as forever foreigners and teach students that Asian Americans are an economic and military threat to the United States, An said. These racist stereotypes of Asian Americans fueled the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, she said. Whats being written in class, whats being included or not included or when theyre included, how theyre being represented its not just a scholarly or academic debate, An said. Its a life-and-death issue. Albert Chan, a history teacher in Skokie, a Chicago suburb, said a close read of American history shows that events such as the Atlanta-area shootings or the anti-Asian hate stoked by former President Donald Trump are nothing new. Since the 1800s, Asian Americans have been depicted as dirty and carrying diseases, and Asian women as sex workers, Chan said. Such characterizations have been used to stoke resentment against Asians living in America that has erupted into violence before. Its a resurgence of those old stereotypes, he said, that now explode into these acts of violence against Asian people. An said whats often missing in school curricula are lessons highlighting the history of Asian Americans fighting for civil rights, including the 1965 Filipino farmworker unionization, the 1885 California Supreme Court decision in Tape v. Hurley that desegregated schools for Chinese Americans, and the Yellow Power Movement of the 1970s. Instead, Asian Americans are depicted as a successful, hardworking, law-abiding, compliant minority, which serves to erase their long history of resisting oppression, An wrote in an article in the journal Theory & Research in Social Education. Education scholars call the lack of representation and accuracy in curricula curriculum violence. An said the phrase refers to the ways that lack of representation in school kills the spirit and humanity of nonwhite youth and sends a message to white students that others are racially inferior and unworthy of this country. The dominant white group (is) using the model minority myth to control minority groups who are suffering under a white supremacist system, An said. They are pitting minority groups against minority groups, so they are fighting each other when they should be united to fight against this whole system. Skokie teacher offers a model for Asian-American history Though the TEAACH Act doesnt dictate exactly how Asian American history must be taught in Illinois schools, Chans class at Niles North High School could be a model. Starting from the first Filipinos who set foot in America in 1587, Chan covers the mass migration of immigrants from various Asian countries, looks at laws that discriminated against them, and ends with Asian American activist movements. In his lessons, he unravels how Asian Americans have struggled to assimilate and survive in America, covering identity, stereotypes, and critical race theory. Chan first proposed an Asian American studies course in the north suburban school district in 2005, but it took until 2017 for Chan and a fellow teacher to generate interest and convince school administrators to approve a pilot class. Since then, the class has become a staple, with 40 students at Niles North taking the course this school year. Since 2019, Chan has also taught the course at Niles West High School. If you dont have access to people, knowledge, culture, all of the things that make you foreign become normalized, Chan said. The same is true when (students) see a lack of representation and invisibility of themselves and their people in the curriculum; they internalize that. Betty Huynh, a 17-year-old student at Niles North, said taking Chans Asian American studies course helped her contextualize and validate her lived experience of feeling like an outsider while simultaneously feeling the need to assimilate and stay within a box of Asian stereotypes that society imposed on her. Betty Huynh, a 17-year-old Niles North High School student helped organize to pass the TEAACH Act. Huynh said taking an Asian American Studies class helped validate and contextualize her lived experience as an Asian American. One time in summer school, she remembers other students asking why she was taking extra math classes because Asians are supposed to be good at math. In high school, she has felt an immense pressure to be a good student. There were moments in which students hovered over her shoulder because they thought she had the right answers to an assignment and yanked the paper from her hands, Huynh said. She ignored these microaggressions growing up because her parents would say, Dont talk about it, dont tell anyone about it because were in America. And its not really our country. And so we have to obey by their rules because weve been given this opportunity, she said. When I started taking Asian American studies, I finally realized that Ive ignored a lot of things growing up, Huynh said. Hunyh and other students who took Chans class organized with the HANA Center, a community organization focused on empowering Korean American and multiethnic immigrant communities, and lobbied to help get the TEAACH Act passed. They spoke to different student groups about the bill, collected witness slips, and successfully encouraged some of their state representatives to sign on as co-sponsors of the bill. Zaina Anarwala, a senior at Niles North, said she thinks the bill will reduce anti-Asian bias by teaching students about different groups of Asian Amerians and humaniz(ing) them. I think its really easy to direct your hate towards a group of people that you dont know about, Anarwala said. Huynh said she advocated for the TEAACH Act because she wants to educate others about how Asian Americans have been placed on a pedestal as exemplary minorities, when the reality is that they dont fit into that stereotyped image. Since organizing, she said, she is no longer afraid to voice her opinion. I never understood why I always felt different or like I didnt belong, Huynh said. Now I know how to be in control of my life and understand what it means to be Asian American. ___ This article was produced in partnership with Report for America. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) The Biden administration is urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that could stand in the way of Florida and other states importing prescription drugs from Canada. In a legal brief filed Friday, the White House argues that the lawsuit filed last year on behalf of U.S. pharmaceutical companies was premature because the federal government has yet to approve any importation programs. The administrations legal filing came on the same day Florida's Republican governor, who is considering a run for the White House in 2024, called on the Biden administration to approve its drug importation application. Florida and New Mexico are the only two states thus far to formally ask the U.S. government to allow federally approved drugs to be imported from Canada, arguing that doing so would save Americans millions of dollars. Other states are poised to follow, despite a lawsuit raising concerns over safety and costs that was filed by the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, the trade group that represents U.S. drug producers. In its legal filing, President Joe Biden's administration argues that drug companies pre-emptively launched this wholesale attack on a program that has yet to be implemented. Although two proposals have been submitted to FDA, no timeline exists for the agency to make a decision, the governments motion states. During a Friday news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Floridians could save as much as $150 million in drug costs in the program's first year. DeSantis signed a bill in 2019 allowing prescription drugs to be imported from the neighboring country, but the plan awaits federal approval. In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under then-President Donald Trump issued a ruling, which DeSantis said was based largely on Florida's plan, further opening the door for states to pursue importing prescription drugs. That same month, the trade group filed its lawsuit. The governors office on Friday issued a statement asserting that the current government's legal filing puts the Biden Administration on the record in support of the FDA rule. The Florida governor has increasingly taken a combative tone against the Biden administration as he positions himself as one of his party's leading critics of the current White House. It is disappointing that the FDA appears to have no timeline to review any state importation proposals as referenced in todays filing, the governor's statement said. Floridians have been waiting long enough for lower drug prices, and there is no good reason to keep them waiting." Some consumers have long crossed into Mexico and Canada to buy medicine that sells for far less than in the United States. But it's against federal law to import drugs. The lawsuit filed by the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America accuses the federal government of failing to demonstrate the safety of importing medicine and any actual cost savings. DeSantis and others have dismissed those concerns, saying that Canada, like the United States, has stringent pharmaceutical guidelines, and "we obviously would have our process to ensure quality. DeSantis said his state is ready to act swiftly to put its program into place should the federal government approve its request to launch a drug importation program. Connecticut has long had a commitment to public higher education, a commitment that has been manifest in the support for the Connecticut State University system. The Board of Regents charged with overseeing that system has a mission which specifically states that the four Connecticut State Universities ... advance and extend knowledge, research, learning and culture while preparing students to enter the workforce and to contribute to the civic life of Connecticut's communities. Through a variety of living and learning environments, the universities ensure access and diversity to meet the needs of a broad range of students. That mission is in danger. The proposals that the BOR has put forward in ongoing contract negotiations with the faculty union at the four universities actively undermine the stated goals by cutting the very resources that are essential to their achievement. The BOR contract proposals do not advance and extend knowledge and research, but rather restrict access to funding and release time for research, conference attendance, curriculum, professional development and other aspects of intellectual inquiry and advancement. Increasing work loads while also undermining shared governance risk turning the stellar state universities into diploma mills. In other words, the regents proposals seek to stifle innovation, research and development. The proposals make it harder for faculty to mentor students who will stay in and grow the economic backbone of Connecticut. An educated, flexible and talented workforce is the magnet for economic growth in Connecticut; undermining the system that develops this resource is short-sighted, and frankly, less than what we expect from a Lamont administration. Investments in the core mission of the Connecticut State Universities, their faculty and students offer dividends for the future. Our students may come from humble beginnings, but with the dedication, passion and expertise of CSU faculty, they often far exceed expectations. Here are a few examples from Southern Connecticut State of what a real university education can lead to: Rep. Jahana Hayes, U.S. congresswoman for Connecticuts Fifth District, attended Southern Connecticut State University, graduating in 2005 with bachelors degree. She was recognized as National Teacher of the Year in 2016. Jacquelynn Garafano was recently named CTO at Connecticut Center for Advanced Technology, Inc. Jacqueline graduated from Southern Connecticut State University with an honors degree in physics, and minors in chemistry and math in 2006 and went on to get her masters and PhD at the University of Connecticut. Asma Rahimyar was awarded the Rhodes Scholarship and Truman Scholarship, and named one of the 40 most influential young adults in the state by Connecticut Magazine. Asma was the only Rhodes Scholar from Connecticut in 2020-2021 and was chosen Truman Scholar for the state in 2019-2020. Southern Connecticut State University has now produced as many Rhodes Scholars as the University of Connecticut. Nangolo Mbumba graduated from Southern Connecticut State University in 1971. Nangolo went on to UConn for a masters in biology. After a long career in public service, he is now the vice president of Namibia. Michaela Garland received her bachelors in 2017 and her masters in 2019 at Southern Connecticut State University. She and fellow student Louie Krak who received his BA in 2019 and is currently in the MS program at Southern Connecticut State University co-created the Long Island Sound Ocean Cluster, a research and innovation hub that aims to further the blue economy focused innovation ecosystem and support the blue economy start-up community in the New Haven and the greater Long Island Sound Region. Michaela is a PhD student at UConn. These examples demonstrate the power of the Connecticut State Universities to deliver a quality education that prepare graduates to enter the workforce and contribute to the civic life of Connecticuts communities. It is a betrayal of its mission for the BOR to gut the Connecticut State Universities in its misguided pursuit of austerity and centralization. It is misguided and short-sighted to hollow out the very system that is the engine of economic growth for middle- and working-class students in this state. Gov. Lamont, get the regents back on track; dont let the BOR take the university out of the state university system. Kathleen N. Skoczen is a professor of anthropology and Stephen Monroe Tomczak a professor of social work at Southern Connecticut State University. Weather Alert ...Thunderstorms with frequent lightning, soaking downpours, gusty winds, and small hail this afternoon... At 120 PM CDT, NWS meteorologists were tracking scattered thunderstorms across northern Illinois capable of producing frequent lightning, soaking downpours, small, non-damaging hail, and gusty winds strong enough to down small tree limbs. The storms were moving southeast at about 20 to 25 mph, and may intensify. Locations impacted this afternoon may include... Chicago, Aurora, Joliet, Naperville, Elgin, Waukegan, Cicero, Hammond, Arlington Heights, Evanston, Schaumburg, Bolingbrook, Palatine, Skokie, Des Plaines, Orland Park, Tinley Park, Oak Lawn, Berwyn and Mount Prospect. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... These storms may intensify, so be certain to monitor local radio stations and available television stations for additional information and possible warnings from the National Weather Service. && The YSRC ministers and legislators stated that from assuming office in the summer of 2019, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, during the two years, has changed the grammar of governance. (Photo: DC/Narayana Rao) VIJAYAWADA: The Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) turned as a boon to the beneficiaries in the past two years with the Jagan government in Andhra Pradesh directly crediting Rs 95,528.50 crore into the accounts with no role of middlemen. The YSR Congress leaders said that YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had assumed charge as Chief Minister of AP on 30 May 2019 but unfortunately Covid-19 broke out in March 2020 hence their government spent the majority of 14 months on the containment of pandemic in the past two years. The YSRC government created a new record by door delivering welfare schemes as nowhere in the country. The YSRC ministers and legislators stated that from assuming office in the summer of 2019, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy, during the two years, has changed the grammar of governance, delivered social justice system, empowered weaker sections and women, even while weathering the stormy pandemic effectively besides steering YSRC to landslide in local body elections. Explaining about the honesty of Jagan Mohan Reddy, ministers Botsa Satyanarayana, Perni Venkataramaiah and Kodali Venkateswara Rao and ruling party legislators said in the past two years, the state government had directly credited Rs 95,528.50 crore into the beneficiaries accounts with no role of middlemen and indirectly spent over Rs 36,197.05 crore on Sampoorna Poshana, free power to farmers, Goru Muddha and many more schemes, aggregating to Rs 1.31 lakh crores. The pensions and other welfare services are being door delivered to beneficiaries through village and ward volunteers on the first of every month, rain or shine. They stated that seeing the plight of the poor in the 3,648 km padayatra, YS Jagan Mohan Reddy had brought a manifesto and nearly fulfilled all promises in two years. Towards Jagananna Amma Vodi alone, the government had credited Rs 13,022.90 crores directly in mothers' accounts of 44,48,865 students. Further, the state government had decided to implement CBSE syllabus from 2021-22 academic year to improve standards of students and further revamp Anganwadis as YSR Free Primary Schools offering PP1, PP2 and Pre-first Class. The YSRC ministers and legislators stated that in the past two years the government paved the way for social justice. In the municipal elections, 10 out of the 11 Mayor posts were given to weaker sections and six of them went to women who are heading big cities like Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam and Tirupati Municipal Corporations. Of the 86 posts of mayors and chairpersons, 52 are women, logging 60.47 percent, while the normal quota is only 42 posts. Similarly, of the 728 posts of chairpersons and directors to the 56 BC corporations, 368 are women, marking true political empowerment. On the social front, the government had provided 50 percent reservations to SCs, STs, BCs, minorities in nominated posts and prioritised women with 50 percent reservations. On many occasions, the Chief Minister had stated that the true development comes with women empowerment, and the government has kept its word in truly empowering women by assisting with schemes like YSR Aasara,YSR Cheyutha, YSR Sunna Vaddi Runalu focusing entrepreneurship in dairy, grocery, and other chosen fields. Dr. Ken Johnston has been an ENT surgeon in Kankakee since 1976. He has been on several community boards and has been involved with clubs and organizations. He has lived in Bourbonnais since 1981. He can be contacted through the Daily Journal at editors@daily-journal.com or directly at Ken_Johnston@comcast.net. Joe Yurgine is a practicing attorney, Of Counsel with Corboy & Demetrio, Chicago. He can be contacted through the Daily Journal at editors@daily-journal.com or directly at joeyurgine@yahoo.com. Local Employers face shortage of workers rponder / Reggie Ponder/The Daily Advance Theresa Harris of No Loose Ends stands next to a Help Wanted sign in the window at her salon, Friday, May 28. Help Wanted signs seem to be everywhere right now as employers face a severe labor shortage. David Whitmer and Emily Nicholson, of the Northeastern Workforce Development Board, said this week they are hearing constantly from employers who say they are struggling to find employees. Whitmer said that in March of this year the number of people reported as unemployed in the 10-county region was 4,302. With just over 9,000 new job postings in the region there would be a significant shortage even if everyone found employment, Whitmer said. Savvas Rallis, owner of The Villa, said restaurants across the city are struggling to find cooks, waiters and other staff. The Villa has recently reduced its hours but Rallis noted some other restaurants had recently returned to takeout-only because they were unable to hire waitstaff. Rallis said he believes the stimulus money and other benefits the state and federal governments have been providing have taken away many peoples incentive to work. Whitmer said extended unemployment benefits may play a role in the labor shortage those benefits are frequently cited as a factor by employers but he noted the causes are varied and complicated. There is more than one driving factor, Whitmer said. He noted that COVID-19 has taken a lot of people out of the workforce. Some people have had health concerns about being in the workplace and others have had school or child care issues, he said. What were seeing is that people are starting to get back into the workforce now, he said. Whitmer said more people were working in March than in February and more were working in March of this year than in March 2020. That shows were headed in a positive direction, he said. Nicholson noted that not everyone who is unemployed receives unemployment benefits. They noted that low wages also are a factor, especially in the hospitality industry. An employer not paying a competitive wage is going to have a more difficult time attracting employees, Whitmer said. Nicholson said that with many female-headed households with children in the region, child care is an important issue. Whitmer and Nicholson said that employers every day, all day long are asking for help finding employees. Whitmer said the NC Works Career Centers are holding a lot of job fairs, both for individual employers and in conjunction with community institutions such as Elizabeth City State University. Theresa Harris of No Loose Ends salon said she is closing on Mondays and Tuesdays for now because we just have no staff. She said the stimulus money may be one reason its hard to find staff. Other factors might be the challenges people have been facing with school and child care, she said. I dont know where all the hair stylists went because we just cant find one, Harris said. Were desperate for hair dressers. Harris said she hopes when the Coast Guard change-of-station occurs this summer there might be some new Coast Guard spouses who are hair dressers. And College of The Albemarle will graduate some new stylists in December, she said. Elizabeth City, NC (27909) Today Cloudy with a few showers. High 73F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy. Low near 65F. Winds NE at 10 to 15 mph. Jagan said works for interlinking Vamsadhara and Nagavali rivers should be completed soon. (Photo: File/Twitter/@AndhraPradeshCM) Vijayawada: Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy called for completion of interlining of Vamsadhara and Nagavali rivers at the earliest. Speaking at a review meeting on Polavaram and major irrigation projects at the CM camp office at Tadepalli on Friday, he asked officials to focus on constructing the Naredi barrage on Vamsadhara river and consider it a priority project. The Chief Secretary informed that a letter was already written to Odisha Chief Secretary and he would discuss the matter with the Odisha government soon. The officials said the construction of Nellore barrage would be completed by June 31 and 84 per cent of works related to Sangam barrage are over and the project will be completed by July 31. Works are in progress on both the sides of Owk tunnel and works for a stretch of 116 metres are only pending and will be completed in next three months. On the Veligonda project, the officials said the tunnel -1 is ready and head regulator works at it are almost completed. The CM said works for interlinking Vamsadhara and Nagavali rivers should be completed soon without any further delay. He directed the officials to expedite the works of Tunnel -2. He said there should be no delay in the works and instructed the officials to come up with an action plan for the next meeting. Reviewing the phase-2 of Vamsadhara stage-2, he said the project is taken up as priority project and there should be no delay. Regarding the Thotapalli barrage progress, the officials said land acquisition issues were sorted out the pending works would be completed soon. When the CM enquired about Gajapathinagaram branch canal, they said land acquisition was set to be completed soon. Explaining the progress of Tarakarama Thirtha Sagaram reservoir works, the officials said the contractor who did some work during the TD regime moved the court. Next, the CM asked for earliest completion of repair works at Brahmasagar and Paidipalem projects and insisted that the former be filled at full capacity. The Chief Minister also reviewed Rayalaseema projects, AP Godavari Krishna Salinity Mitigation and Water security projects, Palnadu drought mitigation projects and Sujala Sravanti projects. The officials said a special purpose vehicle had been set up for Rayalaseema Drought Mitigation project and added that Power Finance Corporation agreed to provide `12,056 crore for this project. Rural Electrification Corporation sanctioned a loan of `2,750 crore to YSR Palnadu Drought Mitigation Project and it already released `850 crore in March. The CM asked the officials to release all bills related to relief and rehabilitation (R&R) and land acquisition for all projects, and take up all pending issues. Water Resources Minister Dr P. Anil Kumar, Chief Secretary Adityanath Das, Water Resources Secretary J. Syamala Rao, Finance Principal Secretary S.S. Rawath, Irrigation ENC C. Narayana Reddy and other officials were present. Jon Broderick, of Cannon Beach, is a founder of the FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria. He and his family have fished salmon commercially in Bristol Bay for more than 30 years. Kate Crump and her husband own Frigate Adventure Travel in Rockaway Beach. They spend half the year in Bristol Bay and the other half in Oregon guiding guests. Myrle Millers arrest Thursday in the poisoning of her husband marks the second time shes been brought before a judge on such accusations, only this time it resulted in a homicide charge. Following a grand jury investigation, state police charged Miller, 76, of Winfield, with first-degree homicide and related counts in the 2018 death of 77-year-old John W. Nichols. Shes charged in Union County and is being held without bail in Northumberland County jail. Then known as Myrle Rovenolt, she was acquitted in July 1988 of attempted homicide by a Montour County jury. Police alleged that she poisoned drinks with ant killer in 1986 and served them to her former husband, her first, Ronald Rovenolt. PSP: Winfield woman poisoned, killed husband in fraud scheme A Winfield woman arrested Thursday in the poisoning death of her husband, John W. Nichols, professed her love to other men online, fraudulentl Rovenolt became severely ill, was diagnosed with acute arsenic poisoning and suffered long-term damages to his limbs, internal organs and nervous system, according to reporting at the time by The Daily Item. His now ex-wife accused him of careless use of a powerful weed-killer. The former couple married in 1961, and both were still in high school when they became engaged, according to a wedding announcement at the time. Miller filed for divorce one month before her 1988 arrest, The Daily Item reported, citing Northumberland County court records. Miller is the grandmother of Corey Edkin, a 2-year-old boy who went missing from his Union County home in 1986 and hasnt been seen since. Edkin was the son of her daughter, Debbie Mowery, the former girlfriend of Charles Burgess III of Sunbury who suspiciously died in a New Jersey motel in 1999 and is the subject of a cold case homicide. These are Millers most serious cases brought to court but not her only arrests. Miller has several arrests and convictions in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s on charges related to thefts and bad checks, including at least one stint in state prison. The grand jury report stemming from the Nichols homicide notes that Miller had 10 summary convictions for bad checks between 1977 and 1988 bad checks made to Sears, Bell of Pennsylvania and PPL among others. Miller was sentenced in 1992 under the name Myrle Plotts to serve 14 1/2-to-59 months at the Muncy prison for women for her involvement in a burglary ring in Northumberland County. That sentence included a probation revocation for a previous conviction on charges she stole two rifles from an elderly couple, also in Northumberland County, for whom she worked as an in-home nurse. She was in prison when police charged Miller and her then-husband Jack Plotts, her second husband, with theft and related charges for allegedly stealing approximately $30,000 from the Milton Eagles Club. The couple married in 1990, just 11 days after Millers divorce from Rovenolt was settled, according to court records. In that arrest on attempted murder, Miller was accused of having an affair with Plotts, who was identified in court documents, according to archived reports by The Daily Item. Police said both of the Plottses admitted to writing checks for themselves and spending the money on Christmas presents and other personal items. Jack Plotts was the club secretary. They both pleaded guilty and received probation sentences plus orders to repay the club in full six years probation for Myrle and five years probation plus up to 23 days in jail for Jack. The grand jury report in the Nichols homicide states that one of Millers sons with Rovenolt said his mother would spend Jack Plotts paychecks immediately, $700 to $1,000 would be literally gone but household bills often went unpaid. Miller and Plotts moved in 2002 to 391 Lamey Road in Millmont, just 300 feet from Nichols and his then-girlfriend, Joan Madden. One house separated the Plotts and the Nichols homes, Google Maps shows. The grand jury report states that the couples became friends within a few years. Plotts died of cancer in December 2011. That same month, Madden also died unexpectedly. Miller eventually lost the home due to unpaid mortgage claims after it went into default on Jan. 1, 2012, according to the grand jury report. She moved in with Nichols and they married at the end of 2012, the report states. He was her third husband. Investigators allege Miller began to defraud Nichols less than one year into their marriage, ultimately draining at least $87,000 from his bank accounts, fraudulently obtaining sole beneficiary status on at least two life insurance policies and opening loans against those policies in his name without his consent. Sometime after Nichols death on April 14, 2018, Miller again remarried her fourth marriage. She now stands accused of killing her husband with her own prescription heart medications shortly after an investigation into the alleged abuse of his finances was authorized by Nichols himself. Attempts to seek comment from Miller on Friday at the Northumberland County jail were unsuccessful. Daily Item reporter Francis Scarcella contributed to this report. @ChescoCourtNews on Twitter Michael P. Rellahan has been a staff reporter and editor at the Daily Local News since 1982. He has covered all kinds of news over the years but is now assigned to report on court and legal news, as well as Chester County government news and politics. Being a lab technician helped him get acquainted with the victim's family some years back. (Photo: Representational/PTI) Hyderabad: A 26-year-old lab technician, Seeli Kiran Kumar, who cheated a family by issuing fake RT-PCR tests reports, claiming to be original, was arrested by Jawahar Nagar police of Rachakonda Commissionerate. Investigation revealed that even without sending samples to any lab, he created fake RTPCR test reports by editing the old Medcis pathlabs RT PCR PDF report and sent them to the family. According to police, being a lab technician helped him get acquainted with the victim's family some years back. The victim Dhami Reddy Sunil Kumar and some of his family members showed symptoms of Covid-19 and he contacted Kiran Kumar. "Kiran collected the swab samples of the victim and his family for RT-PCR tests and charged Rs 1,000 for each sample. Two days later, Kiran forwarded the reports on social media and informed that Reddy and all his family members had tested negative," said police. However, the victim's wife Naga Laxmi and daughter Yashvi showed Covid-19 symptoms and again called Kiran for a second time. This time he again collected the samples and sent reports that they had tested positive. Meanwhile, Naga Lakshmi complained of stomach pain and Reddy called up Kiran, who brought two doctors to his house and collected blood samples. He charged Rs 7,500. On completion of home quarantine, when Reddy enquired with Medcis path lab, he was told that his samples were not tested by them. He realised that he was cheated.He lodged a complaint with Jawahar Nagar police, who booked a case and investigated and arrested the accused on Friday. Rachakonda police commissioner Mahesh M. Bhagwat appealed to the public to get tested in government testing centres and ICMR-recognised private testing centers. 'ALL GAVE SOME, SOME GAVE ALL' Memorial Day returns Locals from Downingtown to Kennett Square ready to honor veterans again Now that the terrifying Dominic Cummings is the hero of the Left, perhaps well see him at the head of whatever party takes over from Labour. Maybe he could share the leadership with another enthusiast for using Covid as the excuse for strong, benevolent state power the hardline millionaire communist Professor Susan Michie. After all, his stated view that what the country needed was a sort of kingly dictator is not very far from her vintage Stalinism. It was wonderful to watch the Islington Left, who have long hated Mr Cummings because of his role in the EU referendum, and his wild ride to Barnard Castle, sinking with soft sighs into his manly arms because he attacked someone they loathe even more Boris Johnson. Now that the terrifying Dominic Cummings is the hero of the Left, perhaps well see him at the head of whatever party takes over from Labour Well, regular readers here will know that I am not keen on Mr Johnson either. But if we dont, as a people, wake up pretty soon, well get something even worse. Almost every word spoken by Mr Cummings during his one-man show last week was based on a huge, slimy falsehood. That falsehood is, and was, that shutting down the country saves lives. This untrue claim is rather undermined by what evidence we do have. Many countries praised for their severity in closing down life at the start of the panic later faced major resurgences of the disease they claimed to have controlled. Countries which did not strangle themselves, notably Sweden and Japan, did not come off notably worse than most of the world and did better than some places. The same pattern can be found among the states in the USA, which had many and varied approaches. Regular readers here will know that I am not keen on Mr Johnson either. But if we dont, as a people, wake up pretty soon, well get something even worse So fuming that Johnson caused great loss of life by not acting sooner is just speculation at best and wrong at worst. In my view, Mr Johnson did terrible damage anyway, even if he did less than he might have done if Cummings had been in charge. The devastation of the health service, from NHS dentistry to GP services and cancer prevention and treatment, is and remains frightful and will cost lives for years a total for which nobody is being blamed. As for the cost to the old in loneliness and despair and to the young in ruined education, it is simply uncountable. But it exists and we will pay for it for decades to come. The same is true of the devastation of small business and the crazy squandering of non-existent money which only idiots think we will not have to pay back one day. People who want power love crises and fear. They flourish at times of panic and dismay. Could it be that they think they will benefit if they make things look worse than they really are? And could it be that, in fact, they have no answer, except Me! Me! Give it to me! Make me King!? If youre happy to have your confidential medical records shared with unnamed third parties by the NHS, dont read on. If you are not happy, you have until June 23 to opt out of this amazing plan. Theres an item on the Peter Hitchens blog explaining how to do so. Some time ago, I visited Belarus and wrote critically about its very nasty leader Alexander Lukashenko. Since then, when travelling by train in the area, I have thought it wiser not to transit across Belarus. My family mocked me for this. Now they have stopped doing so. Lukashenko is not just any old tyrant. By comparison, Russia is pretty rational. In another strange alliance between the fashionable Left and its opposite, the unpleasant Max Mosley, who died last week, got a generous send-off from the BBC and other Left-liberal media. People who would never normally have any time for anyone even faintly associated with Fascism, as Mosley was, and open racial bigotry, as Mosley was (though he lied in court to hide it), found nice things to say. His loathing for a vigorous free press was more important to them than all that. So what do they really care about? Midwives? No, abortionists in all but name Its time to rename Call The Midwife. It would be a good way of marking its transformation from engaging historical drama to relentless politically correct propaganda vehicle. May I suggest Call The Abortionist? Yet again, the fourth time by my count, it has waded into the abortion issue. The thing could have been written by some pro-abortion workshop. We had the cliche of the poor working-class family, overburdened with children, in which the husband beats the wife and the wife, naturally, inserts a rusty old skewer into herself rather than have yet another baby. It is suggested that this is a common outcome of the then abortion laws (under which legal abortion was difficult but not impossible). In fact, a report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, published in the British Medical Journal of April 2, 1966, disputes this claim. But this grisly event impels the sainted Nurse Trixie played by Helen George , right to write to The Times in favour of making abortions easier We had the cliche of the poor working-class family, overburdened with children, in which the husband beats the wife and the wife, naturally, inserts a rusty old skewer into herself rather than have yet another baby. It is suggested that this is a common outcome of the then abortion laws (under which legal abortion was difficult but not impossible). In fact, a report by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists, published in the British Medical Journal of April 2, 1966, disputes this claim. But this grisly event impels the sainted Nurse Trixie played by Helen George , right to write to The Times in favour of making abortions easier. As a result she is invited on to BBC Radio, where pompous, heartless, complacent upper-class old men talk over her. But, of course, she fights them off, claiming that under the new planned law, nobody will take the decision to abort lightly, a claim not borne out by events since 1966. Almost the entire cast gather round their wireless sets, applauding her view. No reasoned opposition is heard from a likeable character. The BBC claims this sort of caricature of reality is not biased and, anyway, bias in drama doesnt matter, a ridiculous argument. Drama influences far more than news. The BBC ignores its legal responsibilities to be impartial, in return for which it gets all that lovely licence money. That is why it needs to be shut down and replaced by a new organisation prepared to listen to and fairly portray both sides of vital questions. Dont get rid of public service broadcasting. Just get rid of the BBC which refuses to serve the public. Heres how to halt this terror on our streets And still we seem determined to make a mistake we shall regret forever, the licensing of e-scooters. They are not green. They will actually lead to people taking even less exercise. And somewhere near you, a child or an old person will have her bones broken by one ridden at crazy speed on the pavement by an idiot. The supposed experiment, permitting these nasty devices to operate in some areas in spite of laws against them, spreads this week to London. As a recent ITV documentary pointed out, its pretty clear that where these experiments have taken place, there has been a lot of unchecked illegal abuse. There is no effective way of making sure they are ridden only by insured, responsible people. They are a terror to the blind and deaf, driven at speed on the pavement. And they are I here predict this the ideal vehicle for the bag-snatcher, the mugger and the drug-dealer. They can zip up behind you silently. They can carry two people, one to drive and one to rob. And they can disappear down a narrow alley in seconds before you know what has happened to you. And that is on top of the general danger. This experiment has been begun at the urgings of slick lobbies who see a money-spinner in e-scooters. It will be said to have succeeded, unless we write, in large numbers, to our MPs, saying we are against this change for the worse. Writetothem.com and email make this easy. Please do so soon. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens click here I remember first meeting a fresh-faced Nick Clegg in the lead-up to the 2005 General Election. He was the Lib Dem candidate for Sheffield Hallam, the constituency adjoining the one I was proud to represent for many years. Clegg was seeking election to the Commons after his party's sitting MP, Richard Allan, stood down to join an up-and-coming tech company called Facebook. The new man struck me as someone worth watching: confident, articulate and clearly determined to do well for himself. The rest, as they say, is history. Cosying up: Nick Clegg, David Cameron and George Osborne 'are in thrall to the Californian tech titans' Rising quickly through the ranks to become his party's leader, he reached the heights of Deputy Prime Minister, somehow squaring his Lib Dem conscience to join David Cameron's Conservative-dominated Coalition in 2010. Of course, it might have helped that both men were Southerners from very rich families, educated at private schools and Oxbridge. But then the good folk of Sheffield Hallam burst the Lib Dem bubble in 2017 and surprisingly returned the Labour candidate. Chastened by defeat, and saying, 'You live by the sword, you die by the sword,' Clegg took a job with guess who? Facebook! A company so mighty that it has no fear of national governments, let alone mere citizens. A company, too, that he had previously criticised for its apparent approach to minimising the taxes it paid and what he called a 'grating culture'. I'm sure Sir Nick Clegg, as he is now, will be comfortable in Silicon Valley, California, and not just because he can cycle to work in shorts and sandals. This is, after all, the land of 24-hour virtue signalling, where preaching to others sits alongside the acquisition of enormous rewards. LORD BLUNKETT: I remember first meeting a fresh-faced Nick Clegg in the lead-up to the 2005 General Election Like Google, Amazon and the other US tech giants, Facebook continues to expand its profits and its global influence over our lives with every passing day. As head of global affairs, the genial Sir Nick is the liberal face of a profoundly illiberal organisation. And woe betide those who dare to disagree. When, for example, the democratically elected government of Australia dared to say that tech giants should pay something to newspapers whose stories they routinely lift and recycle, the potentates of Facebook responded in the way we now expect. With a ban. Facebook withdrew news from its service in Australia until the government reached a compromise, caring not a jot that it denied the public access to vital health and emergency information. Equally disturbing was Facebook's attitude towards free speech. When internet users attempted to discuss the growing evidence that Covid-19 might have first escaped from a Wuhan laboratory specialising in dangerous viruses a story on which The Mail on Sunday has led the way Facebook, which makes proud claims about its openness, censored the subject and barred mention of the claims. Only now that President Joe Biden has endorsed further investigation into the Wuhan laboratory has Facebook changed its mind. In a world of conspiracy theories and geopolitical power games, who knows the truth? But Joe Biden needs to tread carefully, for the Silicon Valley giants can be fickle. Facebook spent years allowing incendiary statements by Donald Trump to drive up user numbers and advertising revenue. Until, that is, the President fell from office and the tech titan preferred to 'cancel' him completely, as did Twitter. Of course, Sir Nick and Facebook say they are a 'platform', not a publisher. So, when faced with complaints that it hosts images of appalling child sexual abuse, lies spread by Russian trolls or damaging conspiracy theories about Covid vaccinations, Sir Nick and his team insist they are blameless because they have not created the material. Only now that President Joe Biden has endorsed further investigation into the Wuhan laboratory has Facebook changed its mind Freed from the strict rules that govern traditional publishers and broadcasters, Facebook can concentrate on making unimaginable profits ($9.5 billion, or 6.6 billion last year) as it imperiously professes to 'give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together'. This influence peddling has now reached a new and dangerous level, with reports that Facebook (which has denied involvement) and Google have secretly interfered in the appointments process of the British media regulator, Ofcom. It is absolutely not the business of global giants based more than 5,000 miles away to meddle in such appointments, even if they think it's their God-given right. So why would Californian tech giants care? Perhaps because Ofcom is about to be given the power to hold companies such as Facebook to account for any damaging content they publish and publish is the correct word. But the bigger question is this: how has Silicon Valley gained such a position of influence in the way we run our country? For an answer, look no further than Sir Nick and his fellow Coalition partners, David Cameron and George Osborne, who went out of their way to cosy up to the Californian behemoths. The former Prime Minister, for example, is a close friend of Rachel Whetstone, a former Tory aide who became head of Google's public relations. She is married to Cameron's former strategist, Steve Hilton. Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive officer, was on Cameron's Special Business Advisory Board when he was Prime Minister. Is that why, in 2016, Google was allowed to pay a mere 130 million settlement in unpaid taxes for a six-year period, despite the vast scale of wealth it generated in this country? That 130 million is said to have been an effective tax rate of three per cent at a time when corporation tax was 20 per cent. Separately, Cameron and Osborne face questions about what influence they may have brought to bear when the internet-based taxi service Uber faced limits on its activities in London. Whetstone once worked there, too. No wonder that Facebook bosses think they, too, can hold sway in Westminster. If the likes of Clegg, Cameron and Osborne are in thrall to these tech titans, so are a number of key Establishment figures and their supporters. Who will stand up to these men and women if our politicians, the professional classes or the members of our increasingly out-of-touch elite seem so bewitched? Our priorities should be reversing the disintegration of our towns and villages, the hollowing out of our institutions, and the steady destruction of national government by global financial interests. Meanwhile, former Ministers earn seven-figures salaries to serve our new 'Masters of the Universe' who are neither liberal nor democratic. It has been almost 18 months since the world learned of the coronavirus pandemic. The first known case of Covid-19 was reported in Wuhan, a teeming city of 11 million people, on December 8, 2019. Since then, the virus has moved from city to city and country to country, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Yet we still know worryingly little about how the pandemic started. The Mail on Sunday was the first mainstream newspaper to raise the prospect that the virus could have leaked from a Chinese laboratory and has pursued the story relentlessly ever since in the face of stonewalling from the Beijing regime and from sections of the global scientific establishment. Now, finally, the rest of the world is catching up. Last week, The Wall Street Journal published evidence from a US intelligence report revealing that three workers from the Wuhan Institute of Virology had fallen ill with Covid-like symptoms as early as November 2019. The Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, in China's central Hubei province It is a finding which builds on the same claims made by American investigator David Asher in this newspaper last March. And it is a potentially devastating insight into the real origins of the virus and true timescale of its spread. Since the threat of Covid-19 first emerged, most scientists have asserted with no real evidence that the virus was a natural mutation from an animal. They were quick to reject allegations that it had leaked out, whether deliberately or accidentally, from the Wuhan institute. The leading scientific journal, The Lancet, went so far as to publish a letter last February by 27 experts saying: We stand together to strongly condemn conspiracy theories suggesting that 2019-nCoV does not have a natural origin. Thanks to interventions such as this, the science establishment shut down debate for well over a year. But the questions they tried to bury can no longer be avoided. Today it seems likely Covid-19 was circulating in Wuhan well before Chinese authorities admitted the problem, a mistake that meant the loss of our most valuable commodity in this global battle time. And, tragically, that has resulted in the loss of countless lives. Such is the alarm caused by the information now emerging that American President Joe Biden a man, remember, who is more friendly to China than his predecessor has ordered his intelligence agencies to give him a full report within three months. It cannot come too soon. Governments around the world are holding inquiries into their own handling of the pandemic, but we need to ask more fundamental questions. Where did this virus come from? What did the Chinese know and when did they know it. We still dont have the answers because powerful interests have blocked or diverted inquiries at every turn. First we were told Covid-19 had emerged from live animals in a wet market in Wuhan. Initially this seemed a plausible explanation. But as time went by it became clear there was no corroborating evidence. Far from it. There has been no evidence of transmission of Covid-19 from animals to humans anywhere in the world, despite 80,000 samples having been tested. A laboratory technician working on samples from people to be tested "Fire Eye" laboratory in Wuhan A 2002-03 SARS outbreak was accurately traced to markets in Guangdong province within a matter of weeks. Both scientific methods and testing capacity have improved significantly since then. Yet the scientific community has persisted with this false line of reasoning. And the question is, why? One key player in this scientific wild goose chase is Dr Peter Daszak, president of an American charity called EcoHealth Alliance. Daszak is a British scientist whose expertise lies in zoonosis, the process by which a disease transfers from animals to humans. He was one of the authors of The Lancet letter which dismissed any suggestion of a lab leak in February last year. He also wrote an article for The Guardian urging the world to ignore the conspiracy theories. Yet, as Dr Daszak explained in his piece, he had been working with the Wuhan laboratory for more than 15 years an admission which should have raised alarm bells. It has been claimed that, through the way American funds were channelled, Dr Daszak has helped finance some of the laboratorys work. Another red flag, surely. We expect that any scientist is both impartial and objective, yet Dr Daszak has strong ties to the Wuhan institute. He dismissed legitimate concerns about the official Chinese story and had no evidence to support his own conclusions. The scientific establishments distrust of President Donald Trumpwas another factor in the way debate has been suppressed. When Trump asserted the virus might have originated from the Wuhan lab, the claim was dismissed as political theatre. His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, even ordered an investigation. Although it was unable to ascertain the origins of the pandemic, the report criticised the Chinese authorities for deceit and disinformation. Trump might well be proven right. However, even scientists who were concerned about a laboratory leak stayed silent, knowing that to agree with him in public might damage their own reputation. If Bidens intelligence agencies are to get to the bottom of how the virus started, they will need assistance from the Chinese authorities. Well, good luck with that! A security guard stands outside the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market where the coronavirus was detected in Wuhan on January 24, 2020 China is now global arch-rival to the United States and will not reveal any information that might weaken its leadership or strategic position. Just look at the coronavirus inquiry that was led by the World Health Organisation. The investigating agents who, notably, included Dr Daszak were approved by the Chinese government. They were allowed only three hours access to the Wuhan institute. All of their data came from official Chinese sources. No direct research was permitted. It was, in short, an embarrassing sham. And the conclusion that it was extremely unlikely the virus had escaped from the lab was widely seen as no more than the Beijing party line. The report even pushed the ludicrous Chinese claim that Covid-19 could have arrived in Wuhan on imports of frozen food. Some commentators have likened the WHO study to the farcical hunt for weapons of mass destruction before the 2003 Iraq War. But that analogy is not quite accurate. A closer comparison would be the disastrous Chernobyl nuclear meltdown of 1986. Soviet Union leaders initially denied there was a problem. When faced with indisputable evidence of the worst nuclear accident in history, they suggested that the problem wasnt so bad. Only when the worst of the crisis had passed did they ask for international help. Like the Soviet Union, China is a closed-off, paranoid, one-party state. It has repeated these same mistakes. And we are all now paying the heavy price of Communist secrecy. It is doubtful that we will ever get to the bottom of what happened in the final months and weeks of 2019 when it seems the virus first appeared. But that must not stop us trying. We need a full and frank investigation, led by scientists embracing proper scientific methods. Was this virus man-made or a natural mutation? Was it transmitted by an animal or did it leak from a lab? We must get the answers, not so we can attack the Chinese, but for our protection in the future. There should be strict international rules compelling complete and early notification when dangerous diseases first emerge. We should consider new rules for research laboratories that deal with dangerous pathogens and inspection regimes to enforce them. And, powerful as China is, we must require it to comply if it wishes to have full membership of the worlds trading community. If we are to prevent the next pandemic, we must start by understanding the true origins of Covid-19. And take whatever action is required. Since sex pest Tory MP Rob Roberts refuses to fall on his sword, there are cross-party efforts to give him the push, I can reveal. Talks between Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg and his Labour counterpart, Thangam Debbonaire, are increasingly focusing on tabling a Motion for Expulsion, multiple sources said last night. It would be the first time since 1954 that the mechanism was used. Past cases include MPs found guilty of perjury, forgery, fraud and corruption. Roberts, 41, has been suspended for six weeks by the newly formed independent panel that handles sexual misconduct cases. Since sex pest Tory MP Rob Roberts refuses to fall on his sword, there are cross-party efforts to give him the push Talks between Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg and his Labour counterpart, Thangam Debbonaire, are increasingly focusing on tabling a Motion for Expulsion, multiple sources said last night But the MP avoided a by-election thanks to a parliamentary loophole thats left colleagues shocked apart from perhaps those in Tory Party HQ with a nervous eye on their mans slender majority in Delyn, North Wales. Meanwhile, Rees-Mogg and Debbonaire, both said to be absolutely disgusted by the MPs behaviour, are working hard behind the scenes to ensure he doesnt return to Parliament. Rees-Mogg has already dropped a strong hint that resigning would be the honourable thing for Roberts to do. Last night, Ms Debbonaire echoed the sentiment, telling me: Someone who has been found to have committed sexual misconduct should do the decent thing and resign. Roberts was found guilty of making repeated unwanted sexual advances to a member of staff. One option is to ask the Standards Commissioner to endorse his suspension and add another ten sitting days, which would trigger a recall vote. But its understood neither side are keen on such a retrospective punishment. Thats left expulsion as the most likely route, with Labour expected to table the motion on an Opposition day. For now, Randy Rob is standing firm. Financial worries are understood to be one reason. He was splitting from his wife when he repeatedly hit on male and female staff and now faces a costly divorce...and the dole. No getaway for list of questions for Boris Another day, another question mark over Boris Johnsons personal finances. Senior sources say the Standards Commissioner, whos already probing the PMs Mustique getaway with Carrie, should look into Boriss failure to mention in his MP Register of Interests Lord Brownlow paying some of the invoices for the 200,000 Downing Street refurb. No 10 insists the redecoration is not in scope for the register but my sources say the payments definitely are. The Standards Commissioner is probing Boris Johnson's holiday in Mustique with Carrie Symonds, pictured Just another potential headache for our perennially cash-strapped PM. At least hes found a tenant to pay the 4,025-a-month rent for his Oxfordshire pile. Priti Patel looks weak after backing down in a tug-of-war over the publication of an eight-year report into police corruption around the unsolved axe murder of private detective Daniel Morgan in 1987. Baroness OLoan, who chairs the independent panel, refused to hand over her report for vetting. Last Friday, it was agreed officials will only get to read the report at OLoans office and run any redaction past the now utterly fed-up Morgan family before its publication in Parliament on June 15 with a statement from the sheepish Home Secretary. Priti Patel looks weak after backing down in a tug-of-war over the publication of an eight-year report into police corruption around the unsolved axe murder of private detective Daniel Morgan in 1987 Cabinet figures are increasingly nervous that the PM is in no rush to move their rubber-stamping meetings off Zoom. Two Ministers expressed concern to me that his resounding local election performance has delayed the return to socially distanced but in-person sessions, which stopped in December. Some recent Zooms of the full Cabinet have lasted only ten minutes with serious decisions made in sub-committees by a handful of Ministers. Hearing Dominic Cummings describe the Cabinet as a Potemkin exercise, referring to the fake villages built along the road to impress Catherine the Great as she rode past, will only add to Ministerial jitters. Beijing's efforts to impede a full investigation into whether the pandemic started as the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory were last night compared to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster by former Cabinet Minister David Davis. Mr Daviss intervention, in an article for todays Mail on Sunday, comes amid mounting scientific evidence from around the world pointing to the possibility that the disease first spread in November 2019 after workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became infected by one of the viruses they were experimenting on. Efforts by other countries to probe the origins of Covid have been repeatedly frustrated by the Chinese. Citing the 1986 nuclear meltdown in the Soviet Union, the former Brexit Secretary writes: The Soviet Union initially denied there was a problem. When faced with indisputable evidence of the worst nuclear accident in history, it suggested the problem wasnt so bad. Only when the worst of the crisis had passed did it finally ask for international help. Like the Soviet Union, China is a closed-off, paranoid, one-party state. It has repeated these same mistakes. And we are all now paying the heavy price of Communist secrecy. David Daviss (pictured) intervention, in an article for todays Mail on Sunday, comes amid mounting scientific evidence from around the world pointing to the possibility that the disease first spread in November 2019 Mr Davis adds: We need a full and frank investigation, led by scientists embracing proper scientific methods. Was this virus man-made or a natural mutation? Was it transmitted by an animal or did it leak from a lab? We must get the answers, not so that we can attack the Chinese, but for our own protection in the future. The Mail on Sunday was the first mainstream media outlet to report on fears of a lab leak, with an article on April 5, 2020, revealing intelligence experts feared the virus had first spread as the result of an accident at the institute, where researchers were examining coronaviruses obtained from bats in caves nearly 1,000 miles away from the centre of the outbreak. A subsequent MoS article the following week, revealing the bat experiments were part-funded by the US Government, led President Trump to cancel the grants; since then, this newspaper has published a string of groundbreaking reports which have challenged the theory that the outbreak started naturally in Wuhans wet market, exposed the conflicts of interest of scientists who rubbished the idea of a lab leak as a conspiracy theory and detailed the apparent complicity between Beijing and senior figures at the World Health Organisation, which is supposed to be investigating the origins. A new study claimed yesterday that Chinese scientists had created Covid-19 in a Wuhan lab before reverse-engineering versions of the disease to make it seem like it came from bats. The authors of the 22-page British-Norwegian vaccine paper, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr Birger Sorensen, wrote that the virus had no credible natural ancestor and said that it was beyond reasonable doubt that the disease was produced through laboratory manipulation. They said that there was deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data in Chinese labs and Chinese scientists who wished to share their knowledge have not been able to do so or have disappeared. Beijing's efforts to impede a full investigation into whether the pandemic started as the result of a leak from a Chinese laboratory were last night compared to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster by Mr Davis. Pictured, the sign marks the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone Publicly, the British Government is still sticking to the line that its original assessment that the virus spread zoonotically, rather than through a leak, will not change unless new intelligence emerges. But that view has been increasingly challenged from within Whitehall and the Tory Party after President Joe Biden announced last week that intelligence agencies will redouble their efforts to determine if Covid-19 was accidentally released, after receiving an intelligence report from an Allied country that scientists at the lab had fallen ill and been taken to hospital in November 2019. It was reported yesterday that Britains intelligence agencies had teamed up with their US counterparts to help with the investigation, which Biden has ordered to report back within three months. David Asher, who led the US State Department inquiries into Covid-19s origins, told this newspaper: We did not get anything from the UK. I cannot recall any of the information coming to light from the UK, yet they have always before been right alongside us on issues such as North Korea, Iran and suchlike. A subsequent MoS article the following week, revealing the bat experiments were part-funded by the US Government, led President Trump to cancel the grants; since then, this newspaper has published a string of groundbreaking reports which have challenged the theory that the outbreak started naturally in Wuhans wet market (pictured) The French have been great, although they built the damn lab. But this is the most complex investigation I have seen because there are so many falsehoods spread by the Chinese in their cover-up. In a separate move, it is understood that the UK Government is planning to set up a China Unit to deal with the threat posed by the country. It will be modelled on the Russia Unit which operates out of the Foreign Office. A source said: China is the main foreign policy concern now and will be for a long time to come. It would pull together all the expertise and produce an overall strategy in responding to China. A No 10 source said that the Government was urging the WHO to mount a full and proper investigation into the origins. Well, thats it then. Job done, as they say. My eldest finished school for ever on Friday. Meanwhile, my youngest said goodbye to his friends from Year 11 in preparation for starting sixth-form in the autumn. Quite why theyre chucking out the Year 11s for the summer already is a mystery to me. The nations 16-year-olds now have bog all to do for the next three months, apart from sit around playing computer games and making a nuisance of themselves. There arent an awful lot of summer jobs around. And it seems like such a missed opportunity, given how far so many have fallen behind during the pandemic. But what do I know? Im just a parent. Im sure Education Secretary Gavin Williamson knows what hes doing. Either way, such a bittersweet moment, such a huge rite of passage. And an experience shared by countless families. By lunchtime on Friday, Year 11 was trending on Twitter as students and teachers took to the internet to share videos and pictures. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, posted a picture of himself on his last ever school run. A friend rang me. Have you seen Andy Burnhams wife? she said. Shes gorgeous! I laughed: Thats his daughter, you idiot. Stunned silence. Oh. But she looks so grown-up. The Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, posted a picture of himself on his last ever school run. A friend rang me I know. Kids do that and its really most disconcerting. One minute theyre all pigtails and muddy knees, the next theyre using your razor in the shower, booking holidays to Portugal with their mates, and giving you heart attacks by going to parties with people youve never heard of in postcodes you never knew existed. The house in the evenings is suddenly eerily quiet. No more endless requests for glasses of water, no more padding around in pyjamas sneaking biscuits. At last you can sit peacefully in front of the telly for hours on end. Bliss, right? Ha. Be careful what you wish for. Children turn your world upside down when they come into it, and they turn it upside down again when they leave. Or start to leave. Or begin to show even the tiniest signs of leaving. Ive never thought of myself as one of THOSE mothers. The clingy, treasure-every-moment type. Ive always been quite no-nonsense and unsentimental about my children. But for some reason last week really knocked me for six. At least my daughter is still living in the same country as me, and if I ever get really worried I can always track her on social media (file image) Its not as though I didnt know it was going to happen. After all, I did it myself to my own parents, and how. In fact, compared with what they had to put up with, Im lucky. Aged 18 I left them in Italy, where they lived, and went to live on my own in Brighton. God knows how my poor mother must have felt, especially since there were no mobile phones and internet then. I dont think I even had a landline. At least my daughter is still living in the same country as me, and if I ever get really worried I can always track her on social media. Somehow, though, back then it felt different. Not so scary, not so momentous. But thats because it wasnt me doing the letting go. I didnt have the fear of knowing what the adult world holds, what dangers might lie ahead. Now the EU is funding torture Some might think the best way to deal with Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko who last week ordered the hijacking of a Ryanair plane to arrest two dissidents on it would be to freeze him out. Not Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. She favours a bribe and has offered 3 billion (2.57 billion) to Belarus if it starts its peaceful democratic transition. Lukashenko is a murdering terrorist in the pay of Russia. Giving him money is tantamount to funding torture. Brexit may not be perfect, but at least it means we dont have to be party to that. Advertisement I dont think any parent is really ever ready for that moment. Sure we joke that we cant wait to get rid of them so we can turn their room into a yoga studio or extra bathroom; so that finally we can open the fridge and not find a half-eaten Jammie Dodger stuck in the yogurt pot. But when it comes to the crunch, thats not what we really want at all. What we want is what we dont have: time. The chance to slow the clocks, perhaps freeze the moment, until were finally ready to let go. And maybe even the opportunity to do it all again, only without the mistakes. The chance to re-sit that great defining test of adulthood, being a parent, and to pass with flying colours. Because the truth is, you never quite get it right. I dont think any parent reaches their childs 18th birthday without wishing they had done some things differently. And for those of us whose children have made that final journey into official adulthood against the background of the pandemic, there is perhaps even more cause for regret. My daughter was 16 when this whole nightmare began. She is 18 now, and still lockdown hasnt fully lifted. She had a term-and-a-half of lower-sixth before Covid closed the schools. She, like countless others, has spent the last 18 months living a surreal existence, cut off from friends and teachers, and pretty much having to study for A-levels alone. She and others her age have missed out on what, under normal circumstances, are some of their most formative years. A time when you build your first romantic relationships, work out who you might be or want to be, to start to strike out on your own as a quasi-adult. This is when a young persons world begins to open up, where you finally start to see beyond the parameters of your own upbringing, catch a glimpse of pastures new. And yet, for those who said their final farewells to teachers and classmates on Friday, its all been so very different. Face masks and social distancing, long hours spent in solitude. No proms, no parties, no concerts, no memories. Or not many you would want to treasure. For me too, it feels like its ending not with a bang but with a whimper. I wasnt allowed to attend my daughters farewell church service, or the small tea party afterwards. She went alone, on the Tube as normal, just like any other day. Except it wasnt. It was her last day of school ever, and I should have been there with her, just as I was on her first day. To mark the moment, to embarrass her in front of her friends, to annoy her by taking too many pictures. And to savour, for a few final moments, the closing of another chapter in all our lives. The inquest into the murder of Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, by London Bridge terrorist Usman Khan has returned a verdict of unlawful killing. But it seems to me that a major factor in the deaths of these two young people was an excess of political correctness on behalf of the charities and agencies so desperate to believe their own agenda that they ignored the very obvious warning signs of Khans murderous intent. The truth is men like Khan are just evil, and no amount of woke magical thinking is ever going to change that. The head of Stonewall, Nancy Kelley, has told the BBC that believing in biological sex is the equivalent of antisemitism. This is the kind of swivel-eyed thinking that cannot and must not be tolerated. Stonewall is a respected, long-standing organisation that receives a good deal of taxpayers money from a number of government agencies. Time to sever those ties. England rugby star Henry Slade, 28, says he doesnt want the Covid jab because be doesnt fancy it. None of us fancy it, Henry, but its a question of public health. There are times when its not all about the individual something that Henrys generation, I fear, sometimes struggles to understand. So sad that Eric Carle has passed away. I would have been about two when The Very Hungry Caterpillar was first published, but I used to read it to my little brother. I did the same with my children, watching their faces light up as the ravenous grub munched its way through the story, their pudgy little fingers poking through the holes. I would have been about two when The Very Hungry Caterpillar (pictured) was first published, but I used to read it to my little brother It was that combination of simplicity and wonder that made it such a perfect childrens book. Especially when you compare it to the sanctimonious twaddle that passes for childrens literature these days. The news that Trudi Juggernauth-Sharma, wifelet No 68 of the late Marquess of Bath, is being turfed out of her cottage on the Longleat Estate by his son and heir, Ceawlin, now the 8th Marquess, does not surprise me one bit. Ive never met a toff who didnt put land and class above all else. It doesnt matter how bohemian they may seem on the outside; if youre not one of them, dont expect any favours. London Mayor Sadiq Khans latest bid to ease congestion and pollution is to introduce green person authority traffic lights that favour pedestrians over motorists. This, apparently, will make the capital more walkable. Nonsense. It will just disrupt traffic flow, cause huge jams full of angry red-faced people, and make London even nastier and smellier for everyone. Former princess Tessy of Luxembourg has shared a sweet sonogram of her baby - months after she announced she is expecting her first child with her hunky Swiss businessman fiance. Taking to Instagram today, the ex royal, 34, shared a snapshot, and revealed her adorable nickname for the baby is 'little bean', writing: '"Our life together has just begun. Youre part of me my little one". Tessy has spent much of the year in lockdown with her two sons Prince Gabriel of Nassau, 14, and Prince Noah of Nassau, 12, whom she shares with ex-husband Prince Louis of Luxembourg, 34, who she divorced in 2019. She is believed to have known financier and CEO Frank Floessel, for several years, and announced her engagement to him on New Year's Eve. Former princess Tessy of Luxembourg has shared a sweet sonogram of her baby - months after she announced she is expecting her first child with her hunky Swiss businessman fiance The former royal has not revealed how far along she is or when her due date is, but she announced her pregnancy in February. Alongside the image of the sonogram, Tessy wrote: 'Meet little Bean. Your big brothers and sister are super excited to be meeting you in the summer for real in person and not just your strong karate kicks.' She continued: 'Thank you all for your wishes, cards, letters, prayers, and numerous gifts already received for little bean. 'We are looking forward to be receiving more of them over the next weeks and months. We are planning on replying in July to all of them.' The couple, who are believed to have known each other for years, announced their engagement on New Year's Eve She added: 'We feel very blessed and are humbled that you chose to share our joy with us in such a meaningful way. Such an act of compassion, kindness and love.' Tessy announced her pregnancy several months ago by sharing a snap on Instagram cuddling up with Frank, while the businessman's hands gently rested on the mother-of-two's growing baby bump. It comes after the couple announced their engagement to one another at the end of last year, with Tessy posting on Instagram : 'Yes to 2021 and many more years together.' Frank also shared his own joy over the big news, telling RTL Today: 'After having mastered the extraordinary and difficult last year together, I took my chance to take the next step in our relationship and I am overjoyed that Tessy said yes.' Tessy shares sons Prince Gabriel of Nassau, 14, and Prince Noah of Nassau, 12, with ex-husband Prince Louis of Luxembourg, 34, who she divorced in 2019 Entrepreneur Frank got his master's degree in ETH Zurich and Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently CEO and president of CBA Finance. The former royal appears to have known Frank for several years, having written about his work on her blog in September 2018. He has also acted as a trustee for the organisation Professors Without Borders, which Tessy co-founded in 2016. In 2019, Tessy told Hello magazine that it 'took a long time' after her divorce, when she was stripped of her royal titles, explaining: 'After every relationship it takes a while to heal when the heart has been broken. It has been really, really wonderful for me to realise that I am able to trust and love again. It's nice to see that life goes on.' Former princess Tessy announced she is expecting her first child with her hunky Swiss businessman boyfriend in February Tessy went on to reveal how she is 'very happy' that her ex-husband Prince Louis maintains a close bond with their sons, despite the fact they can't see each other during quarantine. She said her son's 'love and trust' with their father had 'become stronger' because of the separation during the pandemic. Tessy has previously told how her family 'suffered greatly' when she became a princess in 2006 after marrying Prince Louis, whom she met in 2004. Speaking on Sky News special report The Meghan Effect, Tessy explained: 'My little cousin needed to change schools twice. My twin brother was incredibly bullied at work he still is today. Tessy became a princess in 2006 when she married Prince Louis, with the couple sharing two sons and going on to divorce in April last year Frank was first pictured on a family hike with the proud mother and her two boys last year, with Tessy captioning the photos 'Family is all that matters' with two love heart emojis 'My sister, my parents suffered, my oldest brother doesn't talk to me anymore because of that, because it was too much for him to handle. 'That was when I married in, and when I got divorced, oh my gosh the same.' Born a commoner, Tessy joined the Luxembourg Army in 2002 at the age of 18, rising to the rank of corporal. Two years later, when she was one of a handful of female UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, she met Prince Louis, who was visiting the army. His family only became aware of their love affair when Tessy fell pregnant and gave birth aged 19, and unmarried, in September 2005, providing Grand Duke Henri with his first grandson. Born a commoner, Tessy joined the Luxembourg Army in 2002 at the age of 18, rising to the rank of corporal. Two years later, when she was one of a handful of female UN peacekeepers in Kosovo, she met Prince Louis, who was visiting the army It infuriated the royal family, and Prince Louis renounced any claim to the title of Grand Duke due to the constitutional crisis they had created by having a child out of wedlock. When Tessy married Prince Louis in September 2006, six months after giving birth, in a modest country church wedding, the Grand Duke stripped her of any claim to his title. The couple's fairytale marriage broke down in 2016, and they were granted a decree nisi in February last year. The couple's fairytale marriage broke down in 2016, and they were granted a decree nisi in February 2019 Tessy, who in 2017 was named Woman of the Decade by the Women Economic Forum for her work in women's empowerment, now lives in London with Gabriel and Noah, while Louis lives in Paris - though she appears to be in isolation somewhere more rural. The philanthropist is the co-founder of social enterprise Professors Without Borders which aims to improve access to higher education across the globe. She also works as a consultant, public speaker and is a UN Association patron. Queen Letizia of Spain cut a stylish figure as she joined King Felipe for a ceremony marking Armed Forces Day in Madrid earlier today. The Spanish royal, 48, donned a blush pink blazer dress with a pair of fuschia heels and a matching clutch bag as she stood alongside King Felipe for the event in the city this morning. The couple donned sanitary masks in keeping with coronavirus regulations in Spain while attending the event. Queen Letizia of Spain, 48, cut a stylish figure as she joined King Felipe, 52, for a ceremony marking Armed Forces Day in Madrid earlier today The mother-of-two walked alongside Madrid's regional acting president Isabel Diaz Ayuso and Spanish Defence Minister Margarita Robles (left and right) The Spanish royal donned a blush pink blazer dress with a pair of fuschia heels and a matching clutch bag as she stood alongside King Felipe for the event in Spain this morning The typically stylish royal opted for subtle makeup, adding just a dash of blusher on her cheeks to complement her natural glow. Meanwhile she swept her brunette locks into a low bun, revealing dangling green earrings. It comes amid a busy period for the royal, who yesterday joined the rest of her family to attend her daughter Leonor's confirmation. The young Princess, 15, who is a student at Santa Maria de los Rosales school, opted for a royal blue dress which she coordinated with a pair of nude beige pumps, and wore a navy mask in keeping with coronavirus regulations. Queen Letizia swept her brunette locks into a high bun, revealing green drop earrings, as she attended the event earlier today Queen Letizia could be seen waving to the crowd as she walked alongside King Felipe at the event today The royal, who was joined by her sister Princess Sofia and parents, King Felipe and Queen Letizia, was confirmed at the Parroquia de la Asuncion de Nuestra Senora de Aravaca, which is the same church where she made her First Communion in 2015. The teen, who turns 16 in October, will study at the renowned UWC Atlantic College, based at the 12th century St Donat's Castle in Wales, from September. Princess Leonor wore her shoulder-length blonde locks loose, and opted for no jewellery, while her younger sister, Infanta Sofia, 13, opted for a floral dress and wore her hair in loose curls which cascaded past her shoulders. At one stage, the royal couple bowed their heads during the ceremony, while King Felipe gave a salute Queen Letizia opted for a pink ensemble for the occasion, matching her heels with a pretty clutch bag The couple could be seen speaking with soldiers during the event today alongside Spanish Defence minister Margarita Robles Meanwhile, their effortlessly stylish mother Queen Letizia donned a monochrome ensemble, pairing a white blouse with smart black trousers. And days ago, the royal chaired an event reflecting on female leadership in the workplace in Madrid. She opted for a recycled Hugo Boss dress for the meeting of the Spanish Federation of Businesswomen, which she first wore in 2019 during an event which marked Rare Diseases World Day. The royal couple waved to crowds as they departed the event in Madrid this morning (pictured together) King Felipe VI's wife, who is the honourary president of the Federation, paired the favoured frock with black and white stiletto heels and added a white cross body bag, which she hung from her left shoulder. The event aimed to encourage female leadership in business and discuss ways to end gender discrimination at work. Letizia banked on the recycled look to make an impression as she arrived at ESADE Auditorium in Madrid. The dress featured an asymmetrical neckline and a thin black belt which cinched the royal in at the waist. Prince Andrew appeared in high spirits today as he shared a laugh with a group of locals while taking an early morning ride on his horse in the grounds of Windsor Castle. The Duke of York, 61, who sported a pink polo shirt, blue jacket and a riding hat, appeared relaxed as he enjoyed a horse ride at his mother's home along with his two grooms. The father-of-two could be seen grinning before bursting out with laughter after encountering a cyclist alongside her three children during the outing. The royal was later spotted driving away from the castle grounds in his personalised Range Rover. Prince Andrew appeared in high spirits today as he shared a laugh with a group of locals while taking an early morning ride on his horse in the grounds of Windsor Castle The father-of-two could be seen grinning before bursting out with laughter after encountering a cyclist alongside her three children during the outing (left and right) Prince Andrew, who recently became a grandfather for the first time after Princess Eugenie welcomed her son August earlier this year, could be seen smiling as he approached the group of young children on his horse. Meanwhile the Duke could be seen bursting into laughter after appearing to speak with the small group. His grooms could be seen riding by his side, and also appeared to share in the joke with the royal. Andrew's outing comes weeks after his eldest daughter Princess Beatrice announced she is expecting a baby with her Italian property developer husband Edo on 17 July last year. The Duke, who sported a pink polo shirt, blue jacket and a riding hat, appeared relaxed as he enjoyed a horse ride at his mother's home along with his two grooms The Queen and both families are said to be 'delighted' with the news the couple are expecting, which will have brought much joy to the monarch who is mourning the loss of her husband Prince Philip, who died last month aged 99. Princess Beatrice's baby will be the second grandchild for Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson and the Queens 12th great-grandchild following the arrival of Prince Harry and Meghan's Markle's second child in the summer. The reports come as royal experts predicted the Duke of York was 'trying to rehabilitate himself' and get back into the royal fold - despite his brother Prince Charles pushing plans for a slimmed-down monarchy. Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams told MailOnline that Andrew would 'obviously like to be rehabilitated', but must first answer FBI questions on his links to Jeffrey Epstein. The royal was later spotted driving away from the castle grounds in his personalised Range Rover The royal opted for a bright pink polo shirt for the outing at Windsor Castle earlier this morning Prince Andrew stepped down from royal duties in November 2019 following a disastrous interview with Newsnight and scrutiny over his friendship with the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. However his latest appearance comes after it was suggested Prince Charles is planning to slim down the monarchy in the wake of his father's death and after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to trade in royal life for LA. Last month, the Duke of York sat next to the Queen at his father's funeral before leaving in his new 220,000 Bentley. On April 11, he also spoke to television cameras outside the Royal Chapel of All Saints at the Royal Lodge in Windsor, two days after his father's death. That appearance, where he paid tribute to the Duke of Edinburgh, was the first time he had directly addressed cameras since his car crash interview about his friendship with Epstein. As is often the way, when Tamsin Hewitt and her partner Simons first child arrived five years ago, their sex life took a back seat. Even so, at least once a month when daughter Tessa was tucked up in bed, theyd make time for each other. After six years, things like work and children get in the way of sex, but it was still important to both of us, says Tamsin, a 44-year-old writer from South London. Quality was more important to us than quantity, and that worked perfectly well. Working from home and spending all day every day together can impact a relationship But this all changed when the first lockdown hit last year. Tamsin says: Simon was furloughed, and I work from home, so we were suddenly in each others pockets all the time. We quickly began to grate on each other. I resented the fact he was sitting around doing nothing while I worked, and he lost his temper quickly. We started fighting constantly. Then we lost interest in each other physically. By the summer, the couple were down to having sex once every two months, and by September not at all. She adds: I tried to get us to reconnect emotionally by encouraging physical intimacy, even though I wasnt in the mood. Neither of us particularly enjoyed it we didnt feel connected. He tried a couple of times but I felt no attraction to him any more. It was heartbreaking. We wouldnt even cuddle in bed, sticking to our opposite sides. Its a trend thats playing out in bedrooms across the country, say relationship experts. Recent data collected by the long-running National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found physical intimacy between British couples halved during the first lockdown. Other studies of the under-35s have found that during the three lockdowns, a third of couples were having less sex with their partner and a quarter none at all. Recent data collected by the long-running National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles found physical intimacy between British couples halved during the first lockdown American polls noted a drop in sex drive in half of respondents there too, with similar results in Italy and India. Which begs the question: with millions of couples suddenly given ample opportunity to dive into the bedroom together, why arent they? Some of the explanation is not surprising. With couples locked in one space together for so long, the exposure to irritating, unattractive habits increases, reducing the desire for your significant other. But theres a biological reason why seeing too much of one another kills the mood studies have shown that familiarity is one of the biggest drivers of lapsed sexual desire. Humans have evolved to be attracted to new things, says Dr Anna Machin, evolutionary anthropologist at the University of Oxford. The brain releases a hit of dopamine one of the reward and pleasure hormones involved in sexual attraction when we see or do something different to our normal routine. While scientists arent entirely sure why this is, Dr Machin suggests its an evolutionary tool that has helped humans innovate new methods of survival in ever-changing adverse conditions. Another theory is that once couples have been together for a number of years, they begin to adopt each others traits, such as mannerisms. While this connects them emotionally, studies show it can reduce feelings of attraction because we are biologically programmed to seek out a partner with traits that complement ours but are not identical. Psychosexual therapist Murray Blacket, who is seeing more couples than he was pre-pandemic, says: You stop recognising the unique qualities in your partner that made you attracted to them in the first place. Other specialists say the mundane routine of lockdown made it hard to connect with sexual feelings. Sexuality is often seen as something different and extra to our everyday lives, says sex therapist Marian OConnor from the relationship counselling charity Tavistock Relationships. The routine of lockdown has meant that many couples find it hard to get into that sense of otherness or specialness. With couples locked in one space together for so long, the exposure to irritating, unattractive habits increases, reducing the desire for your significant other While women are twice as likely to lose sexual interest in their partner compared with men, according to a study by University College London, other researchers lay the blame for the lack of lockdown libido on that mood-killer stress. All of the polls during lockdowns have shown that women bear the brunt of domestic stress by leading the home schooling or doing the endless cooking, says Dr Machin. Researchers from Texas State University used surveys to track sexual desire in Americans during the first peak of the pandemic, and found that as Covid-related stressors increased job losses, illness or childcare worries sexual attraction to partners decreased. Experts say the cascade of stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline disrupt the production of other hormones involved in sexual arousal testosterone, dopamine and oestrogen. Studies also show anxious feelings inhibit sexual performance and enjoyment. If the brain perceives a threat, it sends signals to divert oxygenated blood towards the arms and legs in preparation for escape or attack, diverting it away from the genitals where it is crucial for feeling aroused. So can you relight the fire and if so, how? Dr Machin says taking a gym class together could help. Endorphins, the stress-relieving chemicals released during exercise, also play a role in helping us bond to other people, as does the hormone oxytocin which has a similar effect and also peaks after exercise. But all the experts say the most useful activity is touch. Blacket recommends an exercise called sensate focus whereby couples take turns placing one hand on each other, working their way down from head to toe but avoiding intimate body parts. It helps couples relax into the sensation of touching and being touched without the pressure of having sex, he says. Experts say the cascade of stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline disrupt the production of other hormones involved in sexual arousal testosterone, dopamine and oestrogen They are encouraged to talk about what feels nice, which boosts confidence and increases physical connection. Often people have to feel desired to want sex. Blacket says in roughly nine in ten of the couples he treats, this technique leads to increasing the frequency and enjoyment of sex. OConnor suggests talking about the lack of intimacy but pick your moment carefully. Do not start the conversation late at night in the bedroom, she advises. Instead she suggests bringing up the subject during a shared activity, such as cooking, so the sole focus is not on the conversation. She also suggests carving out time for a date night or making sure youre both alone in the house one evening. For the more adventurous, experimenting with sex toys or role-play can also help, as can massage. Thankfully, with the country slowly returning to normal, experts believe our collective libido will soon be back up and running. OConnor says even recounting gossip that you might pick up in the office about other peoples relationships will inject excitement into your own. People will start to go out again and come home to their partner, which will feel novel and theyll be pleased to see them, says Blacket. She adds: Some people have less sex than others, and that is perfectly healthy. It becomes a problem when one partner is unhappy with the quantity or quality. The experts tips come too late for Tamsin and Simon, who have called time on their six-year relationship. If the physical connection was still there, I would have been hopeful that there was something to salvage, says Tamsin. But we didnt want to touch each other at all and had no interest in changing that. It was a clear sign we just didnt want to be together any more. A Sydney yoga teacher has issued a powerful plea for law reform to allow voluntary assisted dying by recounting the agonising final weeks of his father's life. Ari Levanael's father Barry James, 77, a former truck driver in the racing industry, died in late April after a battle with a brain tumour and lymphoma. His family believes Mr James unnecessarily suffered in his final weeks due to 'a 24-hour slow drip morphine and cocktail of other drugs' administered to keep him 'comfortable', but which kept him in a state of distress for weeks before he died. Ari Levanael has called for law reform around voluntary assisted dying after watching his father, Barry James, suffer and lose his dignity in the final weeks of his life in two powerful and moving blog posts. Mr Levanael, his son Finn, and Mr James are pictured together above Barry James during the final few weeks of his life in Sydney In two powerful and moving blogs Mr Levanael, 47, described his father's slow demise and the family's unhappiness at the use of drugs given to him. He claimed that doctors kept Mr James 'drugged out of his mind... for seven weeks' in an effort to keep him 'comfortable' - and equated his father's suffering to 'animal abuse'. 'Pumping people full of drugs isn't the right way to go,' he told Daily Mail Australia. 'He never took drugs during his life, why should be be forced to take them at the end of his life?' 'He definitely wouldn't have wanted what happened, not any of it.' Mr Levanael just wanted to be able to 'go home, mow the lawn and walk the dogs' - and if he couldn't do that, he didn't want to be resuscitated Ari Levanael holds hands with his father, Barry James. He has become involved with the voluntary assisted dying movement and the Go Gentle organisation championed by former leading journalist Andrew Denton. After witnessing his father's agonising decline over two months, he plans to become involved with campaigning to see law reform in New South Wales later in 2021. An assisted suicide scheme has been in place in Victoria since mid-2019 and similar programs are expected to begin in South Australia and Western Australia this year and in Tasmania next year. Mr Levanael said before dying his father made it clear if he couldn't 'go home, walk the dog and mow the lawn, then not to resuscitate me.' 'He was a very dignified man and wouldn't have wanted to lose dignity in the way he did. He wanted to be able to shower himself and dress himself and it became demoralising that he couldn't.' Barry James worked for the horse racing industry and drove trucks delivering racehorses for years In one blog, Mr Levanael wrote, 'Its f***ed you know, that my dad got up at 4am every morning for a lower-than-average wage to pay off the house of his dreams, raise a family with a woman he's loved for 60 years, paid loads of taxes, didn't complain about any of it because that is "what he wanted to do" and now the result is this.' Mr Levanael told Daily Mail Australia that his father was distressed, delirious and hallucinating for weeks before his death. 'I know he was. He was seeing birds fly around the room, people who weren't there, he thought there were dogs in the room.' Mr James could not eat because of painful ulcers in his mouth. Mr Levanael added that his mother Lyn, 75, was 'freaked out' watching the demise of the man she was married to for 60 years. 'She said don't let them touch me, do not let me go out that way.' 'There's no way I want to go out like that.' Barry James pictured in good health laughing at a family barbecue Mr Levanael wrote that his dad Barry was funny, wise, obstinate, passionate and an animal lover Mr Levanael's blog writing was far more than a campaign for voluntary assisted dying though. It was also a tender tribute to his dad's 'Barry-ness' and a brutal insight into the experience of the death of a family member. 'It was extremely heartbreaking but also strangely mystical,' he wrote. He wrote about watching his father's favourite cowboy movie, Shane, on the night of his death and sitting with him while the family listened to a playlist of Mr James' favourite country songs. His favourite song was Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colours. He also described the process of washing his father's body after his death and wrapping him in a bed sheet from home. 'He lit a fire under my a*** in relation to everything around death,' Mr Levanael wrote. Advertisement The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, have been found buried at a former residential school for indigenous children in Canada. Those youngsters were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978, according to the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation, which said the remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist. None of them have been identified, and it remains unclear how they died. Survivors fear more bodies will be found at the same site - as well as at the 80 other former residential school sites across Canada. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted his horror at the discovery. He said: 'The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our countrys history. 'I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you.' 'It's a harsh reality and it's our truth, it's our history,' Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir told a media conference Friday. 'And it's something that we've always had to fight to prove. To me, it's always been a horrible, horrible history.' Casimir said they had begun searching for the remains of missing children at the school grounds in the early 2000s, as they had long suspected official explanations of runaway children were part of a cover-up by the state. 215 pairs of children's shoes are seen on the steps of the Vancouver Art Gallery as a memorial to the 215 children whose remains have been found The children whose remains were found were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia (pictured) that closed in 1978 The Kamloops school was established in 1890 and operated until 1969, its roll peaking at 500 during the 1950s when it was the largest in the country. Children were banned from speaking their own language or practicing any of their customs. This undated archival photo shows a group of young girls at the school Canada's residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted 'cultural genocide,' a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015. The system was created by Christian churches and the Canadian government in the 19th century in an attempt to 'assimilate' and convert indigenous youngsters into Canadian society. They were forcibly removed from their families to attend the schools. Many of the children found dead are feared to have suffered deadly diseases including tuberculosis, although survivors say physical and sexual abuse was rife. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of state governments from the 1840s to the 1990s. It found more than 4,100 children died while attending residential schools. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canada's largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery shared on Friday. Survivors who attended the school say had friends and classmates who disappeared suddenly, and were never spoken of again. A survivor of the Kamloops school, Chief Harvey McLeod of the Upper Nicola Band, said the gruesome discovery had brought up painful memories of his time there. McLeod was taken to the school in 1966 with seven of his siblings, and says he suffered physical and sexual abuse there. His parents had also attended the school, and said it must have been traumatizing for them dropping off their children knowing the misery that awaited them. 'I lost my heart, it was so much hurt and pain to finally hear, for the outside world, to finally hear what we assumed was happening there,' McLeod told CNN. 'This is a tragedy of unimaginable proportions,' British Columbia premier John Horgan said in a statement, adding he was 'horrified and heartbroken' that 215 bodies had been found at the site. Chief Harvey McLeod, of the Upper Nicola Band, said children would go missing from the Kamloops residential school and never be heard from again. Fellow survivor Jeanette Jules, right, recalled hearing guards come to abuse kids at night Chief McLeod, left, as a child. He said the gruesome discovery had brought up painful memories, but would also allow his community to heal In 1920, the Canadian Government passed a law making it compulsory for children between 7 and 15 to attend the residential schools. Many children died of abuse and neglect, and infectious diseases such as tuberculosis The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site. Many area feared to have succumbed to diseases including TB, although abuse was rife at the school Children would disappear suddenly from the residential facility, and no one would question where they had gone. 'It was assumed that they ran away and were never going to come back. We just never seen them again and nobody ever talked about them,' he told CTV. Chief McLeod said despite the pain and trauma that the discovery had resurfaced, he hoped it would allow he and other survivors to heal. 'I have forgiven, I have forgiven my parents, I have forgiven my abusers, I have broken the chain that held me back at that school, I don't want to live there anymore but at the same time make sure that the people who didn't come home are acknowledged and respected and brought home in a good way,' he told CNN. Another survivor Jeanette Jules said the news had 'triggered memories hurt, and pain'. Jules, who now works a a counsellor with Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Indian Band, said she was haunted by memories of the guards coming to the children's rooms at night. 'I would hear clunk, clunk...and it is one of the security guards...then the whimpers,...the whimpers because here is the guy who molests people,' she told CTV. The Canadian PM Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news 'breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history.' The Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1937. The school was established in 1890 and operated until 1969, its roll peaking at 500 during the 1950s Residential schools in Canada: A shocking history of abuse More than 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families and placed in residential schools from 1863 to 1998. The system was created by Christian churches and the Canadian government in the 19th century in an attempt to 'assimilate' and convert indigenous youngsters into Canadian society. There, they were banned from speaking their own languages or any of their traditional practices. In 2008, the Canadian Federal Government formally apologized for the practice, and launched a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The investigation found at least 4100 students died while attending the schools, many from abuse or neglect. Infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis, malnourishment and accidents were also common causes of death at the schools. The commission into ill treatment of indigenous children brought out horror stories of sexual and physical abuse and neglect. Many of those who survived the schools suffered chronic illnesses and disabilities. Released in 2015, the commission's report admitted the policy was 'cultural genocide'. It established The Missing Children Project to document the thousands of children who died while attending the schools. The project had found 4100 before the latest discovery at Kamloops. Advertisement Once the largest school in Canada, with about 500 pupils at its peak, Kamloops was run by the Catholic Church until 1969, when the federal government took over. In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system. The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation said it was engaging with the coroner and reaching out to the home communities whose children attended the school. They expect to have preliminary findings by mid-June. Whether the discovery leads to a class action lawsuit against the church or the State, or even an attempt to bring criminal charges, depends on how the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc decide to proceed, Thompson Rivers University law professor Craig Jones told Castanet Kamloops. Jones said identifying the victims and building a picture of who they were and whether they have surviving relatives could determine any future litigation. 'In the ordinary course, if we were investigating a mass grave in Rwanda or Mexico or the former Yugoslavia, then you would just have a sort of team of forensic experts taking DNA samples without much regard to the gravesite as anything but a source of evidence,' he said. 'Here, we have cultural sensitivities and very delicate protocols that may actually mitigate against finding out all that we can from the remains of the victims.' Jones said he expects the discovery will lead to a fresh wave of lawsuits, but not criminal charges. 'Absent the sort of individual evidence where you could attribute a particular death to a particular act or oversight, you're not going to have a criminal case,' he said. In a statement, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee called finding such grave sites 'urgent work' that 'refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia.' The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation discovery was the first time a major burial site has been discovered. The Kamloops Indian Residential School, located on the outskirts of Kamloops, 250 miles northeast of Vancouver, was one of a network of dozens of boarding schools set up by the Canadian Government's Department of Indian Affairs in the 19th Century to assimilate the native people into 'European cultural practices'. Once there, the students were completely disconnected from their customs and language and forced to speak English or French and indoctrinated with the racist attitudes towards indigenous that were prevalent in Canadian society during the period. The Kamloops school was established in 1890 and operated until 1969, its roll peaking at 500 during the 1950s when it was the largest in the country. From 1892, it was run by a Catholic order called the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate. According to The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, the school's principal in 1910 said it did not receive enough money from the Government to properly feed students. The Catholic Church's rollcall of shame 2017 Ireland: A mass grave containing the remains of 800 babies and children is found at the site of the former Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home in Tuam, County Galway. Most of the dead children - aged between 35 weeks and three years - were buried there in the 1950s. The home, run by a religious order of nuns, was a shelter for unmarried pregnant women to give birth. 2013 Ireland: The Irish Government apologizes to the estimated 10,000 women who had their childhoods 'stolen away' after being sent to workhouses run by the Magdalene Sisters. Unmarried mothers and petty criminals were sent to ten laundries to wash clothes and linen in slave-like conditions between 1922 and 1996. 2002 Boston, USA: Five Roman Catholic priests are charged and later convicted of child sex offences after a major cover-up operation orchestrated by the church. The convictions resulted in more than $100 million in compensation payouts to victims, and a 2015 movie on the Boston Globe's expose of the scandal, Spotlight, won the Oscar for Best Picture. The Massachusetts case was arguably the most infamous of the hundreds of sex scandals involving the church from the 1950s onwards all around the world. In 2002, the Associated Press estimated the settlements of sex abuse cases involving the church from 1950 to 2007 totaled more than $2 billion. That figure was estimated to have grown to more than $3b by 2012. Advertisement A portion of the school was destroyed in 1924, and in 1969 the Federal Government took over administration of the school. The deaths of more than 6000 children were found to have occurred in the school system, with many thousands more children unaccounted for. Conditions were so rife with disease, abuse and neglect that the odds of dying in Canadian residential schools were about the same as for those serving in Canada's military during World War II. In 2017, Justin Trudeau formally asked Pope Francis to apologize for the role of the Catholic Church in the school system. The next year, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement saying the Pope would not personally apologize, but that he had not 'shied away from recognizing injustices faced by indigenous peoples around the world'. This week, the Catholic church again formally apologized for its role in the tragedy. 'The pain that such news causes reminds us of our ongoing need to bring to light every tragic situation that occurred in residential schools run by the Church,' the Archbishop of the Vancouver Archdiocese, J. Michael Miller, said in a statement. 'The passage of time does not erase the suffering.' Horgan, the British Columbia premier, said he 'honored' the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc people as they grappled with this 'burden from a dark chapter of Canadian history'. Horgan said he was fully committed to 'bringing to light the full truth of this loss'. 'It is a stark example of the violence the Canadian residential school system inflicted upon Indigenous peoples and how the consequences of these atrocities continue to this day.' Casimir, chief of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation, said she expected more bodies may be found at the site as there were more areas of the school grounds to search. 'Given the size of the school, with up to 500 students registered and attending at any one time, we understand that this confirmed loss affects First Nations communities across British Columbia and beyond,' she said after the discovery was revealed. The First Nations Health Authority CEO Richard Jock said the discovery 'illustrates the damaging and lasting impacts that the residential school system continues to have on First Nations people, their families and communities'. Experts warned more mass burial sites would be found in the coming years. 'There are residential school burial sites all over Canada, some of which have yet to be discovered,' Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society, told CTV News Channel. After hearing reports of the bodies being discovered at the school, Canadian artist Tamara Bell created the display of 215 sets of children's shoes at the Vancouver Art Gallery so people could understand the scale of the tragedy. 'I was so emotional. I was mortified,' she Bell. 'Then this morning I woke up and I realized I really, really wanted to do something I wanted to start healing. I had to do something. I wanted to create a visual so people could see what 215 children look like.' This year's Great British Spring Clean got off to a flying start yesterday as volunteers nationwide tackled the blight of rubbish. An army of recruits answered the Daily Mail's rallying cry to help make Britain beautiful again by cleaning up streets, parks, beaches and even mountains. The Great British Spring Clean, backed by the Mail and organised by Keep Britain Tidy, runs until June 13. A total of 151,244 people have answered our call, pledging to clean 957,872 miles of Britain bringing the magic target of cleaning one million miles tantalisingly close. Ten volunteers, including three children under ten, braved persistent rain to climb Caerphilly Mountain in southern Wales with their litter pickers Environment minister Rebecca Pow was among those who took part in a local litter pick in her constituency of Taunton Deane, Somerset. She was joined by nine members of staff from KFC, which has partnered with Keep Britain Tidy. Hailing the campaign and thanking the thousands joining in across the nation, she said: 'The blight of litter on our environment has come into sharp focus over the past year. 'As we all spend more time enjoying the great outdoors, many of us have seen our favourite walks, beauty spots and green spaces suffer from plastic bottles or food wrappers. That is why the Great British Spring Clean is so important to get our environment back on track.' Pupils gave up playtime to brighten beach In Hove, pupils aged six to 11 from Deepdene Prep School went litter picking on the beach for an hour. School head Tracey Hayward said: 'On Friday afternoons the children have 'golden time' that they have earned through working hard in the week, and normally play games... but they volunteered to do an hour's beach clean instead. They found lots of small bits of plastic and lots of rusty beer bottle lids and fishermen's nets. They were concerned that these could hurt a dog on the beach or fish in the sea. I think it makes them more committed to not dropping rubbish themselves.' In Hove, pupils aged six to 11 from Deepdene Prep School went litter picking on the beach for an hour Advertisement Braving the elements to do their bit Ten volunteers, including three children under ten, braved persistent rain to climb Caerphilly Mountain in southern Wales with their litter pickers. Organiser Andrew King, of Keep Wales Tidy, said: We picked up 20 bags of litter off the mountain and surrounding areas in an hour-and-a-half. One of the issues is that there is a snack bar in the car park. People buy drinks, go up the mountain for lovely views but leave their litter behind. Before the pandemic, we organised weekly litter picks in Caerphilly but they have been cancelled until now because of Covid. This was our first event to coincide with the start of the Mail campaign and we have two more planned over the weekend. Advertisement Gove got his hands dirty too Michael Gove joined in the Great British Spring Clean in his Surrey Heath constituency yesterday and joked that picking litter was a nice change from life in Westminster. The Cabinet Office minister joined around 20 volunteers to gather 20 bin bags full of rubbish. Their contents included lager cans, an empty champagne bottle, a car tyre, and a plastic manhole cover at a car park near Blackwater park in Camberley, Surrey. Mr Gove said: The Great British Spring Clean is a brilliant initiative. Its now become part of the calendar, thanks to the Daily Mail and Keep Britain Tidy. After the year we have had, people want to be outdoors enjoying nature. Im always amazed by what gets thrown away. You find so much, its a sign of a thoughtless minority. He added: Its always nice to be away from Westminster. After a week like this, its nice to be out and about. Michael Gove joined in the Great British Spring Clean in his Surrey Heath constituency yesterday and joked that picking litter was a nice change from life in Westminster Advertisement We've been applauded in the street Pupils in the Eco Warriors club at Manchester Enterprise Academy in Wythenshawe have been litter-picking every Wednesday for four months, cleaning up in and around the school. Aged between 11 and 14, they have pledged to clean up around 160 miles during the Great British Spring Clean. Geography teacher Brittany Furness has organised the group and said one elderly couple had applauded the children for their good work, adding: That really spurred the kids on! Miss Furness, 27, said the children have brought community spirit to the school and find the clean-up really rewarding. She added: I think they see that they can make a difference. I say to them all the time, they are the future and they can do whatever they want. They understand its importance and they can make a difference. Pupils in the Eco Warriors club at Manchester Enterprise Academy in Wythenshawe have been litter-picking every Wednesday for four months, cleaning up in and around the school Advertisement While schoolchildren were busily picking litter yesterday, all age groups are expected to take part in the clean-up in their droves. Over the weekend, groups in areas across the country from Burwell, Cambridgeshire, to Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and Castlefield, Manchester will be out and about as part of the immense effort. While many volunteers will be joining organised events, lone litter pickers can also take part. Anyone joining the Great British Spring Clean is urged to pledge how many hours they expect to devote to picking litter by entering the information on the Keep Britain Tidy website. The charity's chief executive Allison Ogden-Newton said: 'The response of the great British public on the opening day of this year's campaign has been overwhelming. 'After an incredibly difficult year for everyone, the response to the Great British Spring Clean and the willingness of individuals, communities and businesses to join us on our million-mile mission shows that people have learned to value the environment on their doorstep, want to tackle the litter pollution that blights it dropped by a thoughtless minority and are ready and willing to take action. 'We thank each and everyone of them for loving where they live.' Among the more unusual items picked up yesterday was an 84-year-old beer bottle found in a Worcestershire churchyard. It was discovered by a group of 90 pupils from Kidderminster's Hartlebury Church of England Primary School. The group's organiser Karen Blanchfield said: 'The children were very excited about today's finds in the churchyard. There was a rusty bell, an old candle holder and a beer bottle from 1937.' Donald Mullins, 44, was sentenced to between four and six years in prison on May 20 for assault and robbery An Ohio man convicted of assaulting and robbing an 82-year-old man attempted to flee from his sentencing hearing by jumping over a balcony outside the courtroom - only to end up with a broken leg, smashed face and more prison time. Donald Mullins, 44, was convicted thanks to DNA he left at the scene, when munching an Oreo cookie. On May 20 he was at the Franklin County Government Center in Columbus, Ohio, for sentencing on charges of aggravated burglary, robbery and theft. Judge Mark Serrott gave him four to six years in prison. Mullins then asked for a few days off before going to prison to have surgery for health issues. Mullins threw himself over the balcony railing of the sixth floor, and landed on the fifth floor beneath him. Shocked court officials quickly surrounded him as he tried to crawl away The judge's office noted that Mullins appeared feeble during the hearing, NBC reported, but Serrott denied the extension. Mullins then managed to break free from guards and run out of the door from the courtroom. In the corridor, he hurled himself over a sixth floor balcony, falling to the fifth floor. An onlooker began recording the incident as sheriff's deputies responded, and her footage showed Mullins writhing on the ground with his face covered in blood, attempting to crawl away despite a seeming broken leg. Sheriffs quickly handcuffed him and called an ambulance, which was on the scene eight minutes later. Mullins was told to remain calm by the court officers, who called an ambulance The 44-year-old was taken to Grant Medical Center in Columbus, and was then handed additional charges of escaping from custody He was taken to Grant Medical Center for treatment following his failed escape. Mullins has now been charged with an additional offence, of escaping custody. According to the complaint, Mullins had been given money from an 82-year-old man by claiming to be his neighbor and saying he needed it to pay his electric bill. Mullins returned two more times asking for more money, but the man refused. In January 2020, Mullins showed up at the man's house again with a package of Oreos. He ate some and then asked to use the bathroom. When he failed to return for some time, the elderly man went to look for him. On entering his bedroom, Mullins shoved the man to the floor and took $400 to $500 in cash out of the man's pocket. DNA from the Oreo's was used to help confirm Mullins' identity. A Maine woman has been found safe four days after she vanished from Times Square when she got into a car with man and two women. Christine Hammontree, 29, was reported missing to the Falmouth Police Department in Maine where she lived with her family on May 25 after she failed to return home from visiting the Big Apple with her boyfriend. Hammontree was found in the Queens borough of New York City after she went drinking in Manhattan and took an Uber to a hostel, police sources told WNBC. She has been taken to a local hospital as a precaution though no foul play is suspected, the outlet reported. It is unclear what she was doing during the days she was missing as family and friends frantically searched for her. Falmouth, Maine police released this photo, which was May 21, the last time Hammontree was seen before getting into a car in New York City Falmouth police released this image of Christine before she went missing, taken at a McDonald's in Times Square The NYPD's CrimeStoppers has released images showing Christine Hammontree, 29, who went missing in Times Square The NYPD also announced that Hammontree was found in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens Hammontree was supposed to fly home from LaGuardia Airport on Monday but she told her family she was staying in NYC, the NYPD told DailyMail.com. Instead of getting on the flight, she was last seen on surveillance footage from a Times Square McDonald's getting into a car with unknown people. The Falmouth Police Department said in a press release on Friday that Hammontree 'has been located safely and in good health in New York City.' Sources with knowledge of the investigation had told WNBC that she was last seen interacting with people at the McDonald's while drinking cocktails. Her phone last pinged in the theater district around 4am Monday and nobody was able to contact her for days. She was reported as missing by her parents on Tuesday. Hammontree then entered a car with a man and two other women, according to WABC. It remains unclear if that car, its driver or other passengers were tracked down by police. Falmouth police Lt. Jeff Pardue told CentralMaine.com that Hammontree used to live in New York but had moved in with her parents in Falmouth. Pardue told the outlet that cops have spoken with Hammontree's boyfriend, who was not identified, since her disappearance. CentralMaine.com reported that Pardue declined to answer if the boyfriend had also lost contact with her. Investigators searched through cellphone information and bank activity in order to find her, Pardue told the outlet. Hammontree's disappearance was investigated by detectives with the Falmouth Maine Police Department since her address is in Maine with the help of the NYPD and other law enforcement agencies. Falmouth, Maine police posted this statement on Facebook around 1pm Friday Hammontree was described as 5'9 in height with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing an oversized blue T-shirt with cut off light blue jeans and sandals, while carrying an orange backpack Friends have posted pictures of her with her mask on to help find Hammontree Judy Hammontree, her mother, told WNBC that she believed her daughter was in 'grave danger' and said her and her daughter 'never go a day' without texting each other. She hadn't heard from her since Saturday when she told her mom she was fine. The concerned mom saw the surveillance tape and says neither she - nor Christine's friends - recognize any of the people. 'Christine just started a new job that she was very excited about. She hasn't worked and has not been in touch with any family or friends which has never happened in the past,' a statement released by her family Friday said in part. Police in Falmouth, Maine, where the Hammontrees live, released the final known photo of Christine around 1pm Friday. In the photo, she was wearing a baggy, light blue shirt with a picture of a sun with a face on it, what looks like a Fitbit or Apple watch on her left wrist, an orange backpack, cut-off light blue jeans, sandals and her hair in a bun. Actress Cynthia Nixon has been described as out-of-touch by the owner of her local CVS in Manhattan, after she criticized the store for putting some of its products under lock and key. The Sex and The City star on Thursday tweeted that it saddened her to see the products behind glass, and said prosecuting poor people was not the solution. Yet Vincent, the manager of the SoHo CVS close to Nixon's $3.2 million apartment, said she was not living in the real world. 'Miss Cynthia Nixon, I don't think you understand what is going on,' he told DailyMail.com 'If you feel that way, maybe one day you should come here and see what we go through. 'Because people are in danger too - they come in here, and start with customers and they start with the people here that work.' Vincent, who manages Cynthia Nixon's local CVS in SoHo, said that the Sex and the City actress was unrealistic to ask for the locks on products in his store to be removed. He said the shelves were regularly raided, with people carting away backpacks full of items, which were then sold on to local bodegas CVS has for years put many of its small, pricey and easy-to-steal items behind clear plastic cages. To buy, customers must call a shop attendant, who arrives with a key to unlock the desired shelf Nixon in a recent Zoom appearance. She lives in $3.2million apartment in SoHo, one of Manhattan's most expensive neighborhoods, and on Thursday complained about her local CVS pharmacy Vincent said he had no choice but to lock away some of the most valuable and easily-stolen products, such as pricey skincare creams, toothpastes, detergent and cosmetics, because they were regularly stolen and resold to bodegas. He said the scale of the theft was shocking. 'The main reason why we are doing lockdown is because it's not a petty crime any more,' he said. 'They are going above and beyond, and taking shelves. They are putting it in knapsacks and taking everything.' He told Nixon that he has sympathy for those New Yorkers suffering financially, but said he did not believe those stealing were doing it because they are hungry. 'The empathy for the people I have - if they take one item, I'm not going to stop them,' he said. 'But they clear shelves. 'It's not about them surviving to eat. It's about getting money to buy drugs.' Vincent managed this SoHo branch of CVS, which is closest to Cynthia Nixon's home which she shares with her wife and their three children The SoHo store is in one of the most affluent areas of Manhattan, and attracted thieves with backpacks waiting to empty the shelves Small, expensive, creams for the face and hands were among the most prized objects for thieves, Vincent said, because they can easily be stolen and sold on Toothpaste, which is always behind lock and key, is another item which Vincent said is sought-after by thieves in his store The products are stolen and sold at local bodegas, he said Vincent said that locking away some of the products was for the good of all customers, who did not want to be confronted by empty shelves, pillaged by looters. 'I just want the people out there to know that we try to keep a safe environment, so when people come out to shop there are items on the shelves. Not stolen. And that's what it's all about,' he said. 'We try to keep it safe and be courteous to everyone. Including the people who come in to steal. 'I hope this gets out there. 'This CVS is not about locking down, and not giving to the customers. 'It's about making sure the items are still on the shelves for them to buy.' The actress and failed New York gubernatorial candidate tweeted on Thursday that she had noticed her local CVS in SoHo had 'started' locking up 'basic items like clothing detergent.' 'As so many families cant make ends meet right now, I cant imagine thinking that the way to solve the problem of people stealing basic necessities out of desperation is to prosecute them,' Nixon tweeted. She was condemned by people who said the solution was not to invite theft. CVS, Walgreens and Duane Reade have been locking up items for years to deter thieves amid a widespread decriminalization of shoplifting. Nixon was responding to a tweet which pointed out that several Manhattan DA and Mayoral candidates say they would not prosecute shoplifting because it 'criminalizes poverty'. Critics said her tweet pointed to how irregularly she visited the stores, which have been locking things up since long before the pandemic began. Vincent said that he has sympathy for those in need, but he did not believe those stealing from his store were taking food for themselves or their families. He said it was to resell the goods and buy drugs The CVS manager said he would not stop someone from stealing food that they desperately needed, but he had to prevent his shelves from being ransacked Vincent said taking items out of their locked cases would encourage a free-for-all and mean there was nothing left on the shelves for his genuine customers CVS is not the only store to employ such tactics. Walgreens, Duane Reade and Rite Aid all keep some of their products locked behind plastic cases Her comment about CVS on Thursday came as Governor Andrew Cuomo warned of the escalating crime rate in New York City, which has become so high he said New Yorkers no longer feel safe. Crime in New York City soared by 30 per cent this week compared to the same week last year and robberies were 70 per cent higher. Cuomo warned that if it doesn't settle soon, it'll hamper New York's economic recovery from COVID. Over the past four weeks murders in the city are up 67 per cent from 27 in the same period last year to 45. Rapes are up 25 per cent, robberies 54 per cent. Shootings have risen by a staggering 130 per cent. Shoppers told DailyMail.com that the restrictions certainly made their lives a little more complicated, but they fully understood why stores needed to keep products inside locked cases Small tubs of body creams and facial moisturizers were attractive targets for thieves Vincent said he locked the products up out of necessity Last spring, in a bid to slow the transmission of the virus, the city started housing thousands of homeless people in hotel rooms left empty as tourists fled. Mayor Bill de Blasio is expected to end that program at the end of June. Then those people will be back on the streets. Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is so concerned he is calling for a commission 'that reaches beyond law enforcement and the justice system to gather the information necessary to issue evidence-based recommendations on all local problems that implicate safety and justice-involvement for New Yorkers, from housing to mental health to bail,' he wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News. So far this year, shooting incidents in the city are up 82 percent from last year, and murders are 22 percent from last year and 45 percent from 2019 levels. In total in 2021, there have been 32,695 major crimes reported. There have been nearly 400 more major crimes reported this week in New York than there were in the same week last year - a surge in 30 per cent. One shopper at CVS told DailyMail.com she found the locking up of products irritating, but understandable given the crime. 'It annoys me, if I come to CVS and anything I want to grab and go is locked up,' she said. 'But I get it. Otherwise it's grab and go. 'It hurts me that so many people struggle to get by. 'I want my CVS open, of course. I want them to stay in business.' The woman, who lived in SoHo and owned a business, said crime in the city she has called home for the past 20 years was almost as bad as the 1980s. 'It's terrible,' she said. 'I've seen things... It's been 20 years I've lived here. It's like the 80s. 'I have a business in the neighborhood. We cannot leave the door of our business open. We lock the door and buzz people up. 'I don't wear my nice watch to work. In the subway I'm nervous. I don't ride with a fancy handbag. I have a fabric tote. 'I don't really recall of being aware of not making myself noticed until recently. It's not even during the pandemic - it's lately.' Joe Biden has been slammed for 'creepy' remarks he made about a young girl during a speech at a Virginia military base on Friday. The Commander-in-chief, 78, went off-script to point out the 'elementary school- aged' girl as he delivered an address at Joint Base Langley-Eustis ahead of Memorial Day. 'I love those barrettes in your hair, man,' the President said to the girl, who was sitting at the side of the stage 'I tell you what, look at her, she looks like she's 19 years old, sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed,' Biden bizarrely continued. The girl's mother had reportedly introduced Biden to the stage prior to his speech. Her full name and aged have not been publicly released. Footage of Biden's odd remarks was shared to The Post Millennial's Twitter page, with many users perturbed by what they heard. 'Your president people... there is a reason they don't let him talk in front of cameras often..' one stated. Joe Biden has been slammed for 'creepy' remarks about a young girl he made during a speech at a Virginia military base on Friday A second person chimed in: 'This would be front page news on the New York Times and the lead story on CNN for two weeks if Trump did this. And no, this isn't whataboutism,' one person remarked. Another defended Biden, but did concede that there was media bias. 'He's socially awkward. He says it like he's trying to be sweet. Innocent in his head meanwhile everyone else is like 'Uhhh what??'' the person wrote on Twitter. '[But I] Gotta agree with some comments here. If Trump said it then it would have been front page news. That's how biased our news outlets are.' The President's press team have not addressed the remark. Biden and his wife, Jill, are pictured at the Virginia base together on Friday. It's unclear whether the young girl pictured on stage is the same one Biden made the bizarre remarks about Hundreds of social media users were left perturbed by Biden's comments, but others came to his defense Biden has a history of making eyebrow-raising remarks about girls and women. Last year, during an event in Florida, Biden told a group of underage female dancers: 'I'm coming back and I want to see these beautiful young ladies, I want to see them dancing when they are four years older too!' In 2019, he told a 10-year-old girl: 'I'll bet you're as bright as you are good-looking.' He has also been photographed over the years kissing and touching young girls and women during public events. Biden leans in to say something to Maggie Coons, next to her father Sen. Chris Coons after Biden administered the Senate oath to Coons in 2015 During his presidential campaign, three women also came forward accusing him of acting inappropriately. Biden responded with a public statement, saying: 'In my many years on the campaign trail and in public life, I have offered countless handshakes, hugs, expressions of affection, support and comfort. 'And not once never did I believe I acted inappropriately. If it is suggested I did so, I will listen respectfully. But it was never my intention.' Former Senate staffer Tara Reade has also accused the President of assaulting her while she worked for him back in 1993. He has vigorously denied the allegation on multiple occasions. Vice President Joe Biden kisses a niece of incoming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell Biden tweeted a two minute video to respond to the scandal Netflix series The Crown will feature Martin Bashir's interview with Diana despite Prince William's calls for it never to be aired again, it has been claimed. The next instalment of the popular series will cover the BBC reporter's 'dishonest' and 'deceitful' 1995 Panorama interview across two episodes, reports suggested. A source close to the show, which is written by British playwright Peter Morgan, told The Telegraph 'scripts are already out there' after being written last year. They added: 'The team were doing the most incredible research and they've got it all in there: the build up to the interview, how Bashir effectively groomed Diana, the interview itself, and the aftermath are all factored in over more than one episode.' Reacting to findings of Lord Dyson's report, which concluded Bashir was in the wrong, Prince William said last week the interview now held 'no legitimacy', had established a 'false narrative' for 25 years, and the BBCs failings had let his mother, his family and the public down. A senior royal source told the Mail: If there are any plans to continue to commercialise and exploit this, not just by the BBC but by any other outlets upcoming episodes of The Crown, or whoever it might be that would be of deep concern to him. Emma Corrin as Princess Diana and Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles in The Crown. The next instalment of the popular series will cover Martin Bashir's 'dishonest' and 'deceitful' 1995 Panorama interview across two episodes, reports suggested A source close to the show, which is written by British playwright Peter Morgan, told The Telegraph 'scripts are already out there' after being written last year. Pictured, Mr Bashir and Princess Diana during the interview The Duke of Cambridge (pictured) read his bombshell statement to camera in a courtyard at Kensington Palace his London residence and the home of his late mother The Duke of Cambridge read his bombshell statement to camera in a courtyard at Kensington Palace his London residence and the home of his late mother. Appearing on a Panorama special about the scandal, the princess's brother Earl Spencer linked his sister's death to the BBC and the crisis of trust he claimed engulfed her after she was deceived by Bashir. His devastating verdict came as a judge ruled the shamed journalist hoodwinked the princess with an elaborate fiction that painted some of those closest to her as traitors. The 'rogue reporter' commissioned fake bank statements to secure his interview with Princess Diana - but covered up his 'deceitful behaviour' in a 'shocking blot' on the BBC's near 100-year history. Bashir, 58, slated for how he hoodwinked Princess Diana into giving her Panorama interview 25 years ago, was not sacked despite details of his wrongdoing being widely-reported. Pictured, during the interview Ex-chief superintendent Dai Davies said: 'It seems to me that there is clear and unequivocal evidence that the Met Police should be at the very least investigating these allegations' Richard Ayre, then BBC controller of editorial policy, believed Bashir may have committed a crime when he used fake bank slips to secure his 1995 interview with Princess Diana Bashir is still being paid his estimated 100,000 a year salary by the BBC, its Director-General admitted this morning, as he promised to publish a report next week into how he was hired again. The journalist, 58, slated for how he hoodwinked Princess Diana into giving her Panorama interview 25 years ago, was not sacked despite details of his wrongdoing being widely-reported. Key conclusions of the bombshell report that brought shame on the BBC Instead DG Tim Davie told Radio 4's Today programme he had been allowed to work a three-month notice period, due to health reasons and consideration of any further legal problems. It means Bashir is still being paid by the BBC and technically still working for the broadcaster after he resigned in April. The surprising situation was revealed in a wide-ranging interview where he apologised again to whistleblower Matt Wiessler, the artist commissioned to make the fake bank documents at the centre of the scandal. Mr Davie said they were looking into why Bashir was rehired by the BBC despite issues raised about him. He said: 'We will have all the information out in the public domain next week, we will be completely transparent about that. 'He is working out a short notice period because he resigned and thats where we are now. 'I made that decision I think for three reasons: Martin Bashir offered his resignation prior to us seeing the Dyson report. 'I think there were three reasons why I accepted the resignation: the first were that there were very significant medical care issues, which in terms of Martin Bashir as a staff member regardless of all the situation around it, is a factor. In a statement, Prince William told of his 'indescribable sadness' that the controversial Panorama interview increased his mother's 'fear, paranoia and isolation' in her final years. Pictured, Diana with Prince William and Harry) Timeline of the Diana-Panorama scandal 1986: Martin Bashir joins BBC as news correspondent and works on programmes including Songs of Praise, Public Eye and Panorama. November 1995: The famous interview with Princess Diana turns Mr Bashir into TV's hottest property. 1996: The Mail on Sunday reveals claims that Mr Bashir used faked bank documents to persuade Diana to talk. The BBC holds internal inquiry dismissed as a 'whitewash'. 1999: Moves to ITV's Tonight with Trevor McDonald. His scoops include interview with Stephen Lawrence suspects and documentary on Michael Jackson. May 2004: Quits to host ABC's Nightline in US. Suspended in 2008 after making 'Asian babes' remark at Asian American Journalists convention. 2010: Joins NBC News as an MSNBC anchor. He resigns in 2013 after controversial remarks about vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. 2016: BBC re-hires Mr Bashir as religious affairs correspondent. He is later promoted to religion editor. October 2020: Channel 4 documentary alleges there was 'elaborate plot' by Mr Bashir to trick Diana into talking. November 7: The Daily Mail reveals a shocking dossier held by Diana's brother Earl Spencer revealing alleged royal smears, lies and tricks that Mr Bashir used to land his interview. November 18: BBC orders six-month inquiry by former judge Lord Dyson. May 14, 2021: The BBC announces Mr Bashir has handed in his notice on health grounds. Advertisement 'The second is that it allowed a clean break with no pay-off, which I thought was in the licence fee payers interest to make sure there was a clean process. 'The third is that there is no restraint in us getting to the truth, this was not an honourable discharge, we were able to go after that report and fully expose. 'Hes got a three month notice period, three months from the moment he resigned so we are nearly out. The broadcasting chief told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he would meet with Mr Wiessler to say sorry. He added: 'I will again reiterate full and unconditional apology to him. 'And I would like to meet him. I think we need to engage with people to talk to him and the apology is fulsome I feel shocked. 'This does need to go through a legal discussion, we will engage in that discussion because clearly we were at fault. 'I commissioned Lord Dyson it was 25 years, we had to get to the truth.' The Dyson report is currently being assessed by detectives from the Metropolitan Police to see if there is any new evidence of any criminal wrongdoing. Scotland Yard said in a statement that they had determined in March that 'it was not appropriate to begin a criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful activity in connection with a documentary broadcast in 1995, but should any significant new evidence emerge it would be assessed'. But they added: 'Following the publication of Lord Dyson's report we will assess its contents to ensure there is no significant new evidence.' Critics say the report had provided 'clear and unequivocal evidence' that must be pursued. Last week it emerged that Richard Ayre, the BBC's controller of editorial policy in 1995, believed Bashir, the BBC's former religion editor, may have committed a crime when he used fake bank statements to secure his interview with Diana. In evidence to Lord Dyson, Mr Ayre said: 'I have no doubt that if he did what is, as I understand it, alleged, that of course would have been unacceptable.' Matt Wiessler, who was sacked from the BBC after details of his role in making the bank statements emerged, spoke to the BBC's Today Programme on Tuesday 'I was the fall guy', says designer asked by Bashir to draw up the fake bank statements Graphic designer Matt Wiessler, who was commissioned by Martin Bashir to create mocked-up documents, said Lord Dyson's report showed he had been made 'the fall guy'. He said in a statement: 'After a quarter of a century of cover-ups and smears, it's good to know the truth is finally out that I acted with integrity and responsibly from day one. By blowing the whistle on the deception, I suffered the fate of the fall guy. 'Lord Dyson correctly found the BBC investigation carried out after I raised the alarm was seriously flawed and a smokescreen to protect Bashir. The order from BBC management to make sure I never got any more work from the BBC was despicable. It had a devastating effect on my career and professional reputation. 'I hope those responsible for the cover-up will now do the right thing and apologise to me. Tim Davie's attempted apology today is so bland as to be meaningless. So much damage has been done, not only to me but also to Princess Diana and her family.' Advertisement He suggested it would be a criminal offence to approach anyone with a forged document that defamed people. 'Of course it would have been indefensible,' he added. A lawyer for Earl Spencer's former head of security, Alan Waller, made an official complaint to Scotland Yard Commissioner Dame Cressida Dick in January alleging potential fraud. He accused Bashir of 'dishonest conduct' and said the BBC had 'benefited' while being aware that his actions were 'unlawful'. But after spending three months assessing the claims, police announced they would be taking no further action. That decision was described as a 'farce' yesterday by a former head of royal protection, who said many questions had been left unanswered. Ex-chief superintendent Dai Davies, who once led the Metropolitan Police royal protection unit, said: 'It seems to me there is clear and unequivocal evidence that the Met Police should be at the very least investigating these allegations. 'I simply cannot understand why they won't investigate given what I understand from the testimony may be a crime. 'It seems there's one rule for the BBC and one rule for the rest of us. Normally there would be a criminal inquiry before a civil inquiry. 'I'm absolutely flabbergasted that there was not enough basic evidence of forgery and fraud here. It beggars belief.' Mr Davies added: 'What is it the Met don't understand about the word dishonest? 'My concern is that others may have covered this up and if it was a crime, they may have conspired to conceal forged documents and that concealment could amount to conspiracy to pervert the course of justice.' Metropolitan Police Commander Alex Murray, who leads the force on specialist crime, announced in March that legal advice had been sought from the Crown Prosecution Service and independent lawyers before it was decided not to launch a probe. Lord Hall (left), the BBC's former director general, was accused of helping covering up the scandal, with his 1996 internal inquiry concluding his star reporter Bashir (right) was an 'honest man'. MPs want him to explain himself The commander has previously come under fire for not pursuing another alleged scandal in 2019, after Virginia Roberts alleged she was trafficked to Britain by paedophile Jeffrey Epstein to have sex with Prince Andrew, who denies the claim. What did Martin Bashir say in response to damning BBC report into Diana interview? On Princess Diana: 'I never wanted to harm Diana in any way and I don't believe we did. 'Everything we did in terms of the interview was as she wanted, from when she wanted to alert the palace, to when it was broadcast, to its contents ... My family and I loved her.' 'I dont feel I can be held responsible for many of the other things that were going on in her life, and complex issues surrounding those decisions. 'I can understand the motivation but to channel the tragedy, the difficult relationship between the Royal Family and the media, purely on to my shoulders feels a little unreasonable. 'The suggestion I am singularly responsible I think is unreasonable and unfair.' 'She was a pioneering princess. When you think about her expressions of grief in her marriage, when you think about the admission of psychiatric illness - just extraordinary! And her sons have gone on to champion mental health. On Lord Dyson's report: 'I don't understand what the purpose of this is ultimately? OK, maybe you want to destroy me, but outside of this, what's the point? 'I did something wrong... but for pity's sake, acknowledge something of the relationship we had and something of what she contributed through that interview. 'One of the saddest things about all of this has been the way the content of what she said has almost been ignored.' On William and Harry: He said he is 'deeply sorry'. 'I can't imagine what their family must feel each day, although I know a little of that myself having lost a brother and father prematurely.' On Diana visiting his wife in hospital after she gave birth to their third child: 'We were friends. She was spectacular. 'She said to me: "You must let me know the moment the baby arrives," and an hour later, there was a knock on the delivery room and in she walked.' On showing Earl Spencer the forged bank statements: 'Obviously I regret it, it was wrong. But it had no bearing on anything. It had no bearing on [Diana], it had no bearing on the interview.' On failing to approach graphic designer Matt Wiessler who made the forgeries: 'I don't think I did, no. I am sorry about that.' Advertisement A Met spokesman said: 'In March 2021, the [force] determined it was not appropriate to begin a criminal investigation into allegations of unlawful activity in connection with a documentary broadcast in 1995 but should any significant new evidence emerge it would be assessed. 'Following the publication of Lord Dyson's report, we will assess its contents to ensure there is no significant new evidence.' The BBC is also returning all awards the explosive interview accrued, including a Bafta TV gong won in 1996. Bashir announced he was stepping down from his role as the BBC News religion editor earlier this month on health grounds, but actually resigned in April. Patrick Jephson, the Princess of Wales' private secretary at the time, also appeared in a documentary on May 24. He told Panorama Diana was 'cast adrift' from her 'royal support structure that had guided and safeguarded her for so many years' because of Bashir's claims and the fallout from the interview. Mr Jephson added: 'Inevitably it made her vulnerable to people who were unable properly to look after her.' The documentary also shows a note written from Diana to her brother Earl Spencer after he informed her of Bashir's elaborate allegations that she was being spied on. The note - addressed to the earl with Diana's pet name for her brother 'Carlos' - reads: 'Darling Carlos, I so appreciated the contents of our telephone call this morning, it all makes complete sense to what is going on around me at this present time. '"They" underestimate the Spencer strength! Lots of love from Duch x'. The programme also revealed a confidential internal BBC management document written by the outgoing head of TV Current Affairs, Tim Gardam. It states Bashir misled his bosses by denying he had shown the fake bank statements to anyone. The journalist later admitted he had, in fact, shown them to Earl Spencer in order to 'foster' their relationship. A statement drawn up by former BBC director-general Tony Hall for the corporation's governors in April 1996 described the fakes as just 'graphics' and said Bashir had no explanation for why he'd created them. He went on: 'I believe he is, even with his lapse, honest and an honourable man'. In the same statement to the BBC's governors, Mr Hall also acknowledged that Bashir regarded Spencer as 'the best route' to 'get to the Princess of Wales.' Film and theatre director and former BBC governor Sir Richard Eyre - who attended the April 1996 meeting - told Panorama had Hall disclosed to the governors that Bashir had lied, they would have insisted on a full inquiry. He said: 'The fact that Bashir lied should have been made clear to us, but in my memory, it never was. 'Constitutionally we, the governors, deserved at the very least to be given an honest report of what was going on. 'We can see now that the false bank statements were the lever that opened the doors to the access to Diana. 'If we had known at the time, there's no question that this would have been ruthlessly investigated, because [the governors] were very, very, very hot on a sense of propriety of the organisation.' Season five of The Crown will feature events leading up to Princess Diana's death in a car crash in Paris in 1997. The final season will take the viewer as far as the Queen's Golden Jubilee in 2002. Mr Morgan has already promised not to cover the last 20 years. A woman has revealed the humiliating moment she found out her 'bad boy' prison boyfriend was cheating on her - after he was busted at McDonald's with another girl. Jana Hocking, 36, who hosts the podcast Kinda Sorta Dating, spent five years with a man who found himself spending weekends in jail on two separate occasions during their relationship. She admitted she was completely head over heels for the 'naughty boy' who she started dating as a 20-year-old while studying a journalism degree at Charles Sturt University. As he was caught breaking the law twice, she'd offered to drive him to his weekend detention stints in Sydney - even leaving uni early so she could make it there in time. Jana Hocking who hosts the podcast Kinda Sorta Dating spent five years dating a man who found himself spending weekends at jail on two separate occasions during their relationship 'I was going out with a really naughty boy, he went to jail, well, weekend detention,' Ms Hocking said in the news.com.au podcast with jewellery designer Samantha Wills. 'He was the worst boyfriend in the whole world, and I used to go pick him up from weekend detention while I was doing my journalism degree.' But because Ms Hocking had to return to her university dorm in Bathurst on Sundays she couldn't pick him up again. Instead he arranged for his other girlfriend to come collect him. She offered to drive the man to his weekend detention but had to go to Bathurst on Sundays for university so she couldn't pick him up The 36-year-old then found out another girl was picking up her boyfriend and was even spotted having a meal with her at McDonald's 'When we finally broke up I found out that a girl used to come and pick him up,' she said. 'And the reason I found out is because my mum's best friend saw them at McDonald's together.' Ms Hocking, who also works as a Triple M radio producer, said eventually the pair broke up and admitted it was her 'rock bottom'. She is now dating millionaire publican Stu Laundy who won the 2017 season of The Bachelorette. Advertisement Jasmine Hartin has been arrested following the death of a senior police chief An American woman living in Belize has been arrested following the death of a senior police officer on Friday morning. Jasmine Hartin, a well-known property developer and real estate agent, was arrested following the death of Superintendent Henry Jemmott in San Pedro, the main town on the island of Amergris Caye. Hartin is married to British developer Andrew Ashcroft, 43, whose billionaire father Lord Ashcroft is one of Britain's most high-profile political donors. Lord Ashcroft has long ties to Belize, owning a home in the country and having Belizean citizenship as well as extensive business interests. Jemmott, who joined the police in 2000, was found with a single gunshot wound to the right side of his head. Chester Williams, commissioner of police, told a press conference that Jemmott and Ashcroft were socializing on a pier when he was shot dead. His body was retrieved from the waters right next to the pier. Superintendent Henry Jemmott was found floating in the sea with a single gunshot wound to the head in the early hours of Friday morning. Jemmott and Hartin has been socializing together on the pier at the time, the police commissioner said. Jemmott was previously in charge of policing the region, but had been promoted to work in Belize City. He was back on the island to deal with 'personal issues', the commissioner said, without elaborating Jemmott's body is seen being brought to shore on Friday morning The death of the police chief, who had spent over 20 years in the force, shocked people in Belize, where he was a well-known figure Jemmott's body is seen being retrieved from the sea on Friday morning. He died from a single wound to the head, fired from his own service weapon The police chief's body was found floating off the end of this pier in the early hours of Friday Jemmott was commander of precinct two in Belize City, the largest city in the Central American country. Prior to that, from 2016-19, he commanded the Coastal Executive Unit - an area that included San Pedro. Williams said that Jemmott was on the island on leave, to solve what he described as 'some personal issues'. Williams said: 'I was not aware he was out on San Pedro until I got the call last night that he had died. 'It's a sad situation, and it is something that we as a department will have to find a way to deal with and will as best as we can. 'The police have spoken to several persons living near the area of the incident and will use such information in their investigation.' Jemmott was a well-known figure in Belize, particularly in the San Pedro area which he commanded for several years. On Friday, as news of his death spread, shocked colleagues sent their condolences to his family Jemmott was a long-serving member of the Belize police force, having joined the force in 2000 Superintendent Jemmott was commander of precinct two in Belize City, the largest city in the Central American country. He had taken some time off to deal with 'personal issues' and returned to San Pedro (pictured) - an area he previously worked in He said a post-mortem will help determine whether Jemmott pulled the trigger himself. Hartin is not cooperating with police until her lawyer arrives, The Belizean reported. She has hired Godfrey Smith, the former Attorney General of Belize, to represent her, local media said. Smith was seen on the island on Friday morning, in footage obtained by 7 Belize. Smith is yet to respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment. Godfrey Smith, the former Attorney General of Belize, is seen on Friday morning. He has flown in to the island to represent Hartin Godfrey Smith, Hartin's lawyer, is seen leaving the San Pedro policer station on Friday morning Jasmine Hartin is pictured with her husband Andrew Ashcroft at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new resort on May 7 Hartin works as the Director of Lifestyle and Experience at the resort, which opened May 7 Jasmine Hartin's husband Andrew Ashcroft, 43, has lived in Belize for over 20 years, he said. His father is Lord Ashcroft, a well-known British political donor and former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party Lord Ashcroft (left) has business interests in Belize, and has spent time in the country since he was a young man. Pictured: Lord Ashcroft and Lord Steinberg in the Robing Room of the House of Lords Hartin worked for a real estate company before joining the team at Alaia The incident occurred on a beach near Grand Caribe Resort, which is close to the Alaia Belize Resort. The Alaia is owned by Hartin's husband, in partnership with Marriott, and opened officially on May 7. Hartin works as Director of Lifestyle and Experience at the resort. 'With deep family roots in Belize and calling it my home for over 20 years, I wanted to ensure that Alaia Belize captured the lively spirit, genuine hospitality and friendliness of the destination and locals,' said Andrew Ashcroft. 'My team and I worked closely with the Marriott International team to bring it all to fruition and allow our future guests and owners an opportunity to immerse themselves into the Belizean culture.' Ashcroft is the youngest of Lord Ashcroft's three children from his first marriage, and is a citizen of Belize. He is a former director of the British Caribbean Bank and has been responsible for funding a number of high-profile real estate developments in Belize and the surrounding region. Alaia Belize opened at the beginning of May - the first such resort for Marriott in the country Andrew Ashcroft said that he wanted Alaia to 'captured the lively spirit, genuine hospitality and friendliness of the destination and locals' The hotel features 155 guest rooms and suites, and the resort also contains 71 studios, two- and three-bedroom condominiums and eight oceanfront villas. Owners who don't reside full-time in Belize can opt to enroll their condominiums or villas into a rental program booked through Marriott International's reservation system Andrew Ashcroft, seen on May 7 at the Alaia launch, was a former director of the British Caribbean Bank The Alaia website states: 'Along with her husband, Andrew Ashcroft, Jasmine has played an integral role in shaping the vision for Alaia Belize from the very beginning. 'Her passion for Belize and her appreciation for the local nature and culture have been guiding forces as she has collaborated with the entire development team on every aspect of the experience, from the master plan and amenity curation to interiors and social programming.' Tributes have been paid to Superintendent Jemmott, who was well known in Belize. The country's coast guard, which works closely with the country's police force was among the first to express its sorrow. Acting Commandant Commander Gregory Soberanis wrote to Belize's police chief, Chester Williams: 'His service to his Department and country will not be forgotten. Today we mourn his loss, but honour is duty to service. 'On behalf of the Belize Coast Guard our deepest sympathies as we stand together with the Police Department in this time of bereavement.' A devoted husband has opened up about his wife's brave battle with cancer and the terrifying moment she suffered a stroke while saying goodnight to her daughter. Au Van Der Zalm's health problems first started in 2017 when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The 38-year-old mother from Melbourne underwent a hysterectomy to remove the cancer but a year later they found out it had spread to one of her lungs. Then during the height of the Covid pandemic last year Ms Van Der Zalm was tucking her six-year-old daughter Emme into bed when she suffered a stroke - leading to the devastating discovery of tumours on her brain. Au Van Der Zalm's battle first began back in 2017 when she was diagnosed with cervical cancer. Au is pictured right with her daughter Emme and husband Dan She is now undergoing radiotherapy to give her as much time left with her young family as possible. 'My wife is the most amazing person in the world - she's so happy and caring,' Ms Van Der Zalm's husband Dan told Daily Mail Australia. 'She keeps saying ''I'm going to beat it'', we know she isn't, but she stays positive.' After her first operation in 2017, Mr Van Der Zalm said the family were hopeful that would be the end of their terrifying ordeal. It wasn't until Ms Van Der Zalm's stroke that they found out the cancer had spread. Ms Van Der Zalm is now suffering seven tumours in her brain as the cancer spread around her body - but her husband says she remains positive Around five weeks ago the family were given the devastating news Au had seven tumours on her brain 'I was downstairs and she was putting Emme to bed when I just heard a thud,' an emotional Mr Van Der Zalm said. 'I went racing upstairs and she was on the ground, my daughter was beside herself.' To make matters worse, her stroke happened in the peak of Melbourne's Covid-19 lockdown so when his wife was raced to hospital, Mr Van Der Zalm had to stay at home. He recalled the horror of having a surgeon explain to him over Zoom what procedure he was about to perform on his wife's brain. 'We didn't know if she was going to leave the operating table,' he said. It was during surgery that surgeons found three tumours on her brain and she underwent surgery to have them removed. But five weeks ago the family were hit with even more devastating news - the tumours had grown and Ms Van Der Zalm now has seven scattered around her brain. Ms Van Der Zalm is seen undergoing therapy as she continues to battle her illness The family have been told the beloved wife and mother may have just a year to live. 'I feel so sorry for my daughter, she's spent the last five years thinking hospital visits and medical appointments are normal and no little girl should have to go through that,' Mr Van Der Zalm said. Dan has since become his wife's full-time carer, putting his job as a mechanic on hold, but the medical bills have 'exhausted' all their savings. He said he was constantly in awe of his 'selfless' wife who even after surgery last year would cook up several meals to drop off to the staff at the hospital. 'She's just so positive, she's braver than I am,' he said. A GoFundMe page was recently set up by a close friend of the family, Samantha Grant, to help cover their medical bills. 'My friend had approached me awhile ago about setting it up but I'm a pretty humble person so I said no,' Mr Van Der Zalm said. 'But when we got those last test results, she just said ''I don't care, we're doing this to give you as much time with her as possible.''' The fundraiser has garnered close to $15,000 - something Mr Van Der Zalm has struggled to comprehend. 'It sounds silly but seeing all the strangers who have donated has inspired me that humanity can still be at its best,' he said. 'It's overwhelming for me, I've never been through something like this so it's nice to know I'm not alone.' The mother has undergone intensive radiation therapy for the past two weeks and will have another MRI scan on her brain in about a month's time. Mr Van Der Zalm said the family are 'praying for a miracle' and hope if anything her story will encourage others to get regular health checks. 'If my wife's story can prompt just one other person to get tested that's a good outcome,' he said. 'Nobody should have to go through what we have.' Rep. Matt Gaetz claims money he wired to 'malicious actors' to close the sale on a $155,000 yacht his fiancee Ginger Luckey wanted to buy 'went missing'. Both 'Rep. Gaetz and Ms. Luckey were the target of a financial crime', though Luckey was the yacht's potential buyer, a spokesperson for the Florida congressman said in a statement to WFLA. His office declined to reveal to the outlet how much Gaetz and Luckey paid for the 41-foot boat named Ol' Pappy before the deal fell through. Gaetz did not identify who the 'malicious actors' were other than saying they were 'first domestic and now foreign.' His office claimed that federal law enforcement officials are 'aware of and actively pursuing' the case, though it was not clear what agency is investigating. Rep. Matt Gaetz claims money he wired to 'malicious actors' to close the sale on a $155,000 yacht his fiancee Ginger Luckey wanted to buy 'went missing' Gaetz claims he was targeted by 'malicious actors' but did not indicate who they were, other than saying they were 'first domestic and now foreign' His office declined to reveal how much Gaetz and Luckeyy paid for the 41-foot boat named Ol' Pappy, pictured His office claimed that federal law enforcement officials are 'aware of and actively pursuing' the case, though it was not clear what agency is allegedly investigating Gaetz and his fiancee were spotted on a 41-foot yacht docked at Pier 4 at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina in March Witnesses said that since the deal fell through the boat's Ol' Pappy name was removed and replaced with Thirsty Gaetz and his fiancee were spotted on a 41-foot yacht docked at Pier 4 at the St. Petersburg Municipal Marina in March - about a week after it was revealed he may be connected to the sex-trafficking case involving his former ally Joel Greenberg. Several boat owners recalled seeing Gaetz and Luckey onboard the yacht to survey the boat during an inspection. The deal allegedly fell through a month later in April, WFLA reported. 'He was on the phone the whole time while they were doing the survey,' said Jon Golly - who owns a yacht in a slip across from the one Gaetz and Luckey boarded. The yacht had been listed for sale on a number of websites. Mediate noted that those listings have since been removed from those websites. Some of the listings have been archived despite being removed and reveal that the yacht is a three-cabin 2011 Beneteau 41.3 Dual Helm designed with two staterooms. Witnesses told WFLA that since the deal fell through the boat's Ol' Pappy name was removed and replaced with Thirsty. Edwards Yacht Sales owner Brett Harris told WFLA that his company brokered the deal and the boat's owner closed with another buyer last Friday. The name of the buyer and seller were not revealed, and the seller declined to comment to WFLA. Matt Gaetz' so-called wingman Joel Greenberg penned a letter confessing that the pair allegedly paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl, it has been claimed Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg leaves the federal courthouse in Orlando after making a first appearance following his indictment on a federal stalking charge Matt Gaetz, center, is pictured with Roger Stone, left, and Joel Greenberg Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida poses with President Donald Trump in photos from his official Facebook page Gaetz, a close ally of former President Donald Trump, is being investigated by the Justice Department over whether he paid for sex with a 17-year-old girl. The Florida age of consent is 18 years old and sexual intercourse with anyone underage is statutory rape. However, the state has a so-called Romeo and Juliet law that allows minors who are 16 or 17 to have sex with someone who is at most 23 years old. Gaetz is 39. Gaetz has not been criminally charged by federal prosecutors and has always denied having had sex with the underage girl and transporting her across state lines. His so-called wingman has pleaded guilty to charges including sex-trafficking of a minor at a court hearing in a deal to cooperate with prosecutors, which may spell trouble for the Republican congressman. TIMELINE OF THE GAETZ SAGA MARCH 30: The New York Times reports that Gaetz is under investigation for a sexual relationship with an underage girl. Details are sparse but the relationship is said to have happened two years ago. Gaetz went on Tucker Carlson's FOX News show that night to deny the allegations and claim he was the victim of an extortion plot. He names David McGee as a DoJ official who is extorting him. McGee denies it. MARCH 31: Gaetz's father Don tells Politico that the extortion plot is real and that he was working with his son and the FBI to expose it APRIL 1: Texts emerge to support Gaetz's claim that he was being extorted and they introduce a new element to the saga - that the extortion plot was part of a ruse to rescue American hostage Robert Levinson from Iran. WHO'S WHO Rep Matt Gaetz Gaetz, 38, is the representative for Florida's 1st congressional district. He is a Trump ally who has ties to Roger Stone and he's been known to fan the flames of controversy in the past. He has DUI convictions, has been accused of inciting violence on Twitter and claimed that facial recognition technology proved some of the January 6 Capitol rioters were not Trump fans, but 'antifa' masquerading as them. Don Gaetz Gaetz's father who was a well-liked Senator. He sold his company with his partners for $406million in 2004. They had founded VITAS Healthcare in the 1980s. He was a senator for ten years from 2006 until 2016. David McGee McGee was a prosecutor with the Department of Justice but he is now a private practice attorney. According to his bio on his law firm's website, he spent six years as the First Assistant at the United States Attorney's Office and for seven years as the Lead Attorney for a United States Department of Justice Organized Crime Task Force. Bob Kent Kent is an Air Force intelligence officer whose involvement in the alleged plot was only revealed on Wednesday night through the texts. Robert Levinson Levinson spent 22 years working for the FBI before he vanished in Iran in 2007. The government claimed they knew nothing about it but later admitted he had been working there for the CIA. The last time he was seen alive was in 2011, when he appeared in proof of life photos. His family say that this month, they were given reason to believe he was dead. Advertisement Joel Greenberg, a former tax collector in Florida's Seminole County, is central to the federal probe into whether Gaetz trafficked a minor for sex. Greenberg was arrested last year and immediately started telling the feds about Gaetz and how they 'sex trafficked' together to get himself a deal. Federal prosecutors recently dropped 27 charges against Greenberg in exchange for his cooperation and testimony. Greenberg admitted to introducing the minor he trafficked to other adult men, who allegedly engaged in sex acts with the minor in Greenberg's presence, court papers showed. The papers did not identify the other adult men. Gaetz has not been charged with any crimes and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing. He was not mentioned in the plea agreement or during the court hearing. It was also revealed in a letter obtained by Daily Beast, which Greenberg penned to Trump confidante Roger Stone seeking a pardon, that the pair paid for sex with the minor who 'was involved in sexual activities' with Gaetz. Investigators are seeking to determine whether Gaetz had sex with the same 17-year-old Greenberg was accused of trafficking, according to reports and a law enforcement source who spoke with Reuters. Court papers show that Greenberg, who is married, is thought to be ready to accuse Gaetz of paying at least 15 young women for sex including an escort named Megan Zalonka after a cocaine-fueled party at a Trump fundraiser. A recent report alleged Gaetz snorted cocaine and had sex Zalonka, an escort and amateur Instagram model, who was Gaetz's date in October 2019 at the Trump Defender Gala in Orlando. After the gala, an after-party was held in Gaetz's hotel room, The Daily Beast reported. Zalonka, 28, chopped up lines of cocaine, which she and Gaetz took together, the report claims. She is also said to have been paid up to $15,000 of government money by Greenberg after he hired her for a social media manager job in Seminole County that did not require Zalonka to do any work, the report claims. Two sources told the site that Zalonka and the Florida congressman had an ongoing financial relationship in exchange for sex. However, the Daily Beast could not confirm that Zalonka and Gaetz had sex the night of the gala. A former Capitol Hill intern who dated Gaetz has also reportedly agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors. The unnamed woman worked on Capitol Hill and was linked to the Florida congressman as far back as 2017, CNN reported. The ex-girlfriend, who is not being named publicly, was on a trip Gaetz took to the Bahamas in 2018 that allegedly involved drug use and arrangements with women, including paying them for sex. Gaetz's ex is considered key to helping prosecutors piece together transaction records, which they believe to be payment for sex. In April, Politico reported that the former girlfriend had told friends she was worried that the 17-year-old tried to get her to incriminate him after the teen called her to discuss the Bahamas trip. The call took place sometime after Greenberg was indicted for the sex crime in August, it was reported. Gaetz was accompanied in the Bahamas by two other Florida Republican political players - Jason Pirozzolo, a former Orlando-area aviation authority member, who has acted as a fundraiser for Governor Ron DeSantis; and Halsey Beshears, a former state representative. Federal authorities are examining the Bahamas trip to see if it violated the Mann Act, which forbids transporting people across state lines to engage in prostitution. One of California's most notorious murderers will not be executed after his victim's family decided it would be too painful to try and have the punishment reinstated. Scott Peterson discovered on Friday that he will instead spent the rest of his life in prison after a prosecutor in Sacramento, California, said there were no plans to have his 2005 death sentence reinstated. It was thrown out after a court ruled jurors should not have been excluded from Peterson's murder trial for being anti-capital punishment. District Attorney Birgit Fladager, who made the announcement on Friday, said victim Laci Peterson's family found the legal process 'simply too painful to endure once again.' Laci was Scott's wife, and vanished from their home in Modesto while pregnant with their son Conner on Christmas Eve 2002. Her corpse was found floating in San Francisco Bay in April 2003, with Conner's fetus found to have been mutilated. Peterson was convicted of his wife's murder in 2005 after jurors were told how he had a masseuse mistress called Amber Frey. Frey did not realize Peterson was married when they first began dating. He is also said to have dreaded becoming a father. Scott Peterson, pictured, will no longer be executed for the 2002 murder of his pregnant wife Lacey, a prosecutor said Friday Peterson and Laci. He was cheating on her with a masseuse called Amber Frey at the time of her murder, and is said to have dreaded becoming a father The family has 'no doubt' Peterson killed his wife and unborn son Conner and deserves the death penalty but doesnt want to pursue that punishment because 'this process is simply too painful to endure once again,' District Attorney Birgit Fladager said her filing in San Mateo Superior Court. Peterson, now 48, was convicted in the San Mateo court after his trial was moved from Stanislaus County due to the massive pre-trial publicity that followed the Christmas Eve 2002 disappearance of 27-year-old Laci, who was eight months pregnant. Investigators say Peterson took the bodies from their Modesto home and dumped them from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later. Peterson took Laci's corpse out on his fishing boat, pictured, after killing her, then dumped the body in San Francisco Bay. Peterson, pictured in 2005, was cleared after a judge ruled jurors should not have been barred from trying him in 2004 for being anti-capital punishment Peterson maintains his innocence, and claims Laci was killed after disturbing a burglary. A judge is considering whether to grant a new trial because a juror failed to disclose that she had sought a restraining order in 2000 against her boyfriends ex-girlfriend. She said in seeking the order that she feared for her unborn child. The judge must decide if that amounted to juror misconduct, and if so, whether it was so prejudicial that a new trial is warranted. If no new trial is granted, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. One of Petersons attorneys said the announcement is not a precursor to a plea deal and that his client will seek a new trial if a judge decides his first one was tainted by juror misconduct. Peterson began an affair with masseuse Amber Frey, pictured, who didn't realize he was married to Laci when they began seeing each other Peterson maintains his innocence, and claims Laci was killed after disturbing a burglary at the couple's home in Modesto, California (pictured) Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said she hopes to make a decision this year whether Peterson merits a new trial. Its not clear if prosecutors could again seek the death penalty if there is a new trial and he was again convicted, said defense attorney Pat Harris, who is handling the death sentence portion of the case. A different attorney, Andras Farkas, is representing Peterson on the issue of whether he gets a new trial. Farkas did not respond to an email requesting comment. 'Its not clear to me that theyre saying no matter what, were taking the death penalty off the table ... or theyre saying if we go back to trial were reserving the right to put the death penalty back up again,' Harris said. 'It sounds like theyre kind of holding back that if the judge orders a new trial, they could put the death penalty back on the table.' That could be cleared up at what was supposed to be procedural hearing on Tuesday, he said. The district attorney's office did not comment. Laci and Conner's grave is pictured in 2005. Peterson could still face a retrial, amid claims his case was not fairly tried Harris noted that prosecutors had earlier said the family supported again seeking the death penalty, and contended that their new motion is a gambit to avoid a new airing of the case. 'The truth of the matter is they have determined ... that the handwriting is on the wall and if we go back to trial were going to prove Scotts innocence,' he said. He said he can prove that there was a nearby burglary the day Peterson disappeared, aiding the defenses contention that someone else killed her when she stumbled upon the crime. If prosecutors were to proceed with a new penalty phase, they would essentially have to retry the entire case before a new jury - so that new evidence would come out even if jurors could not acquit him and could only recommend a sentence of death or life in prison, he said. 'The truth will have come out. Bottom line is people will know what happened' even if he doesnt receive a new trial on his guilt or innocence, Harris said. Scott Petersons family and supporters made a similar argument in a Facebook post, that Harris request last week for evidence in the hands of prosecutors triggered their decision. 'We are grateful that Stanislaus County is no longer seeking to put Scott to death, but its #Time4aNewTrial,' the post said. The man accused of shooting and injuring three people in Times Square earlier this month has been charged, after arriving in New York from Florida where he was arrested. Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, is charged with attempted murder and multiple counts of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal use of a firearm, the New York Police Department said on Friday. It was unclear when he was extradited. Muhammad was seen in handcuffs, being led away from the police station to jail after he was charged. He was still wearing the same red shoes as he had on at the time of his arrest. Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, is charged with attempted murder and multiple counts of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal use of a firearm. He is seen on Friday evening being led away from the police precinct where he was charged The 31-year-old was arrested in Florida on May 12, four days after the Times Square shooting Muhammad was aiming for his brother, his brother told police, and shot the three people by mistake. Muhammad insists he was not in New York City at the time Farrakhan Muhammad is charged in the Times Square shooting on 5/8 that injured three people including a 4 year old. Muhammad was arrested by US Marshals in Florida and was extradited to NYC today. @CBSNewYork @NYPDnews pic.twitter.com/tLOiDe3EGy Aundrea Cline-Thomas (@AClineThomas) May 29, 2021 US Marshals in Starke, Florida, shared this photo of Muhammad after his arrest on May 12 Muhammad has denied that he is responsible for the shooting on May 8 that wounded two women and a four-year-old girl. The victims did not know each other. James Essig, New York Police Department Chief of Detectives, said that Muhammad was identified as the gunman by his brother, who told officers he was the intended target of the shooting. Four-year-old Skye Martinez, 23-year-old Wendy Magrinat and 43-year-old Marcela Aldana were all injured in the attack. The shooting occurred at around 5 p.m. Saturday night in front of the Minskoff Theater. It normally hosts the hit musical Lion King, but which is currently closed due to COVID-19 restrictions. Upon hearing gunshots, many victims have said they felt panic and confusion, with dramatic footage showing frightened crowds scattering as they realized what was happening. Magrinat said onlookers began filming her with their mobile phones rather than help in the immediate aftermath of the shooting. She was on a sightseeing trip from Rhode Island when she was shot in the leg while standing with her husband Yoel, their two-year-old daughter Elise, and her mother, stepfather and eight-year-old sister. Magrinat said she started screaming after she had been shot in the leg: 'I don't want to die, please help me! The pain was too much, and I dropped to the floor. 'I understand people get in shock. But if you're in shock, you shouldn't be recording. But that's how people are right now.' Danae Romero, 16, meanwhile, said she was waiting in line at a toy store with her four-year-old niece Skye when the shooting began. Romero said the pair ran for their lives - but described how Skye was struck by a stray bullet in her calf. 'She didn't feel anything. Even when we noticed when we were at the corner, she wasn't crying,' Romero told the Post. Instead, she sat there, as Police Officer Alyssa Vogel sprinted down the tourist spot. stopping at Skye and immediately applying a tourniquet to her leg. Body camera footage shows Vogel then scooped up the child, and ran her to a nearby ambulance. 'I think any officer that would've responded to a job just like that would've done the exact same thing,' Vogel previously told DailyMail.com. Police officers are seen arriving on the scene in Times Square on May 8, moments after three people were caught in crossfire at around 5pm and shot Times Square is seen with a heavy police presence in the aftermath of the May 8 shooting, outside the theatre which normally hosts The Lion King Cop Alyssa Vogel was filmed running from the tourist hotspot with four-year-old Skye Martinez in her arms after a gunman opened fire (right). Vogel said she was just doing her job In an interview with DailyMail.com, Vogel said she thought any police officer in that situation would have done the same thing U.S. Marshals arrested Muhammad near Jacksonville, Florida, four days after the shooting, along with a woman who authorities said traveled with him from New York. Muhammad spoke to WCJB-TV from county jail in Florida telling them that he had not been in New York at the time of the shooting. 'I still don't know nothing of nothing,' Muhammad told a WCJB reporter. Muhammad insisted that he was out of the state when gunfire erupted in Times Square. Wasn't him: Times Square shooting suspect Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, told a WCJB reporter in a jailhouse interview that he was not in New York City at the time of the incident Muhammad, who was caught near Jacksonville, Florida, on May 12, claimed that he had been evicted from his New York apartment and traveled to New Jersey to stay with his girlfriend's family 'I left New York a few days ago. I was in [New] Jersey,' he said. Muhammad claimed that he had been evicted from his apartment in New York and traveled to New Jersey with his two dogs to stay with his girlfriend's family. New York State lawmakers previously extended a statewide moratorium on residential and commercial evictions through August 31, meaning landlords should be unable to evict their tenants until the end of the summer. Muhammad and his girlfriend, 22-year-old Kristine Vergara, later made their way to Bradford County, Florida, where he said they stayed with other family members. The suspect confirmed that he and Vergara were near the McDonald's in Starke at the time of their arrest on Tuesday, but claimed that they were on their way to look at an apartment for purchase. They changed their minds about the property after a Confederate flag was spotted flying over the apartment building, and instead headed to the McDonald's for lunch. 'We parked by McDonalds so we could eat McDonalds real quick and thats what happened,' claimed Muhammad. US Marshals apprehended Muhammad and booked him into the county jail on an out-of-state warrant, charging him with being a fugitive from justice. His girlfriend, who lives in Jacksonville, is facing a count of accessory to second-degree attempted murder. A suspect said to be Farrakhan Muhammad has been arrested on suspicion the May 8 shooting in Times Square, which left three people injured Muhammad made his initial court appearance in Bradford County, Florida, on May 13 and opted to delay his extradition Colonel Brad Smith, with the Bradford County Sheriffs Office, told DailyMail.com that although Muhammad initially was leaning towards not fighting extradition back to New York, during his first court appearance on May 13 he changed his mind. Smith said the judge told the defendant that he could be assigned a public defender who would explain his legal options to him, and Muhammad agreed to it. Another hearing was scheduled for May 20. Muhammad was in New York City for his May 28 charging. Spectrum NY1 reported that Muhammad's attempted escape came to an end due to fuel shortages caused after Russian hackers targeted the Colonial Pipeline. The fuel line supplies much of the United States east coast, with ongoing disruption caused by the hack causing gas shortages and panic buying across much of the south east. An estimated 10 per cent of Florida gas stations have run out of fuel. NYPD detectives told a press conference that they obtained intelligence shortly after the shooting which suggested that Muhammad was heading south. Muhammad (left) was booked into jail on an out-of-state warrant. His girlfriend, Kristine Vergara, 22 (right), faces a charge of accessory to attempted murder He was later spotted traveling through Fayetteville, North Carolina, and eventually picked up another 436 miles away in Starke. ABC News correspondent Aaron Katersky tweeted a photo of Muhammad's arrest, with police saying he'd shaved his long hair short in an attempted disguise. Muhammad's apprehension came four days and 975 miles way from the scene of the shooting. His girlfriend was driving the car when Muhammad was arrested, but has not been charged with any crime. Officers said Muhammad had shaved his hair to try and disguise himself. This map shows the 975 mile trip Muhammad took from New York after the shooting, which ended when his car ran out of gas because of fuel shortages, police sources say Muhammad was arrested after being caught in a car with his girlfriend and their two dogs in the parking lot of this McDonald's in Starke, Florida, on May 12 The two apparently left New York City together after the shooting, according to one senior law enforcement official, though it's not clear if the woman knew he was wanted in the Times Square gunfire at that point. NYPD detectives checked cameras that showed him leave Times Square after the gunfire and go to a hotel near West 42nd Street, NBC reported. There he changed clothes and was seen leaving with his girlfriend. The shooting began at 5pm on May 8 in front of the Minskoff Theater that hosts the hit musical Lion King, but which is currently closed due to COVID-19 restrictions Crosstown traffic was shut down indefinitely following the shooting, as police investigated the incident that left three injured Police presence increased in Times Square in the days that followed the shooting The shooting came amid criticism from the Sergeants Benevolent Association and mayoral candidates. They said the shooting was proof of the need of more funding for the NYPD, who had their budget slashed by $1billion last summer by Mayor Bill de Blasio. He was celebrating his 60th birthday when the shooting occurred, but later tweeted he was glad the victims were in stable condition. 'The perpetrators of this senseless violence are being tracked down and the NYPD will bring them to justice,' he wrote. 'The flood of illegal guns into our city must stop.' Violent crime has skyrocketed in New York City over the last few years. Data from the New York Police Department shows there have been over 2,600 grand larceny arrests in April alone and 1,630 assault cases. Those figures are up 62 and 35 percent, respectively, from the same time last year. Violent crime has skyrocketed in recent months, with shooting at their most frequent since 1998 Shootings, meanwhile, are at their most frequent since 1998. 'Live from Times Square Disney in NYC the center of the world and the 'Happiest Place on Earth' where 4 year old girls are shot in broad day light, only feet away from a police precinct,' the SBA tweeted about the incident that night, including a photo of the Times Square Mickey Mouse. 'Tourists avoid NYC dont become a victim, please go to the real Disney in Florida.' Tourists were just starting to come back to the Big Apple following a 18-month break in travel thanks to COVID-19, mayoral front-runner Andrew Yang said, who added that the Big Apple 'cannot afford' to listen to left-wing calls to defund its police department. 'When I talk to New Yorkers, I get a very different message every single day. Nothing works in our city without public safety, and for public safety we need the police. 'My message to the NYPD is this: New York needs you, your city needs you. We need you to do your jobs professionally, responsibly and justly. I will have your back.' His rival Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain who edged ahead of Yang in a recent poll, slammed Yang for only now picking up on the rise in crime, which he said has been prevalent in poorer neighborhoods for years. 'You know what, Andrew? These shootings have been happening blocks from my house for years and blocks from the houses of poorer New Yorkers for years. 'It is time for us to recognize it when it is in every square block of our city. Shame on you for not realizing that,' he said. One of Adams' campaign promises is to reinstate the disbanded NYPD anti-crime unit which de Blasio canceled last year amid criticism of its violent tactics. NYC Mayoral candidate Andrew Yang has pledged to establish a new 'anti-violence plain clothes unit to reduce guns and gun violence'. 'The police will be key to our recovery,' he said. Times Square has remained a popular tourist destination despite a rise in crime In a news conference following the shooting, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said that his officers have been taking guns off the streets at an 'alarming rate over the past two years.' 'It's time now that we have consequences for those,' he added, seeming to refer to bail reform policies that see many suspects, including those caught with illegal firearms, walk free without posting cash bond. 'How many more kids do we need to be shot before we realize that bad policies have consequences?' said Shea. 'We need action, and we need policies regarding laws to have consequences.' Advertisement Tens of millions of Americans have hit the highways and taken to the skies ahead of Memorial Day Weekend. Almost 40 million citizens are expected to travel far-and-wide for this year's annual holiday, which marks the country's unofficial start of summer. With COVID rules relaxing and infection rates plunging, optimistic Americans are finally ready to venture out after being cooped up at home. On Friday, some got a head start on the fun, packing pools in Las Vegas and heading to beaches in Miami. In Sin City, the Mandalay Bay hotel was full of vacationers, many of whom were spotted splashing about in the pool and topping up their tans on the sun loungers. Meanwhile, in Miami, there was not a facemask in sight, with revelers ready to party amid the prospect that the pandemic may finally be nearing its end. Many have been taking road trips to the party hubs, and up to 34 million Americans are expected to hit the road this weekend. That has prompted the price of gas to surge to $3.03 a gallon - its highest price in seven years. LAS VEGAS: Americans are ready to celebrate this Memorial Day Weekend amid the prospect that the pandemic may finally be over. At the Mandalay Bay hotel in Vegas, vacationers got a head start on the holiday weekend LAS VEGAS: On Friday, some got a head start on the fun, deciding to extend the three-day weekend by an extra day MIAMI: Revelers were ready to party as they hit the beach in Miami MIAMI: Bikini clad beauties waded into the water as they relished the warm weather and the sunshine COCOA BEACH: On Cocoa Beach in Florida, vacationers set up tents and umbrellas for a day at the beach COCOA BEACH: Americans young and old were seen hitting the sand, with many feeling carefree after receiving their COVID vaccines MIAMI: Some celebratory citizens in Miami were seen guzzling beer on the beach, as others unpacked their coolers and set up their umbrellas Some celebratory citizens in Miami were seen guzzling beer on the beach, as others unpacked their coolers and set up their umbrellas. Crowds spilled out of nearby bars with a party atmosphere pervading the air. More holidaymakers are expected to arrive in Miami in the coming days. More than 37 million people are expected to travel 50 plus miles this year, a 60 percent increase over last year when stay-at-home orders forced people to stay home. At least 2.5 million Americans are also set to take to the skies, with TSA boss Alejandro Mayorkas warning of airport lines for the first time since the COVID-19 outbreak stopped many Americans flying last year. MIAMI: Crowds spilled out of bars as a party atmosphere pervaded the air MIAMI: More holidaymakers are expected to arrive in Miami in the coming days, with revelers arriving by plane and by car MIAMI: Many of those who were out and about on Friday had just jetted in to the Sunshine state MIAMI: Young Americans are eager to party after being cooped up inside SAN DIEGO: One tourist from Arizona was seen taking a surfboard out to the beach with his family MIAMI: Traffic was heavy as sunseekers poured into Miami on Friday ahead of the long weekend However, most of those who are traveling will be taking a car, forcing the price of gas to surge to $3.03 per gallon - the highest its been in seven years. 'You're dealing with a year's worth of pent up demand and it's being unleashed on travel,' Adrienne Woodland, spokesperson for AAA in Michigan, told WWMT. 'As Americans anticipate the kickoff to the summer travel season, which would be Memorial Day, we've seen an increase in bookings. AAA travel has seen an increase in bookings, online traffic, and booking travel.' The COVID-19 vaccine - which President Joe Biden said has been administered to more than 50 percent of the country's adults - is the biggest reason for the expected bump in travel this year, according to Paula Twidale, senior vice president of AAA Travel. 'As more people get the COVID-19 vaccine and consumer confidence grows, Americans are demonstrating a strong desire to travel this Memorial Day,' Twidale said. 'This pent-up demand will result in a significant increase in Memorial Day travel, which is a strong indicator for summer, though we must all remember to continue taking important safety precautions.' NEW YORK CITY: Some Big Apple residents tried to make an early break on Friday afternoon, but traffic was already bumper to bumper NEW YORK CITY: Heavy traffic continued long into the nigh on Belt Parkway in Brooklyn with residents trying to escape the city CHICAGO: Traffic was heavy heading out of the Windy City on Friday afternoon SAN DIEGO: Vacationers are pictured after touching down in the Californian city on Friday LAS VEGAS: Many travelers in Vegas kept their facemasks on as a precaution as they waited for their luggage after landing NEW YORK CITY: Last Memorial Day Weekend, JFK was eerily empty. This year, it's a different story ORLANDO: On Friday there were long lines in airports that have not been seen since the start of the pandemic ORLANDO: Officials say more than 2.4 million Americans will take to the skies this weekend A young woman has died after falling from the fire escape of her friend's Manhattan apartment building as she tried to reach the roof on Friday. Tyler Marie Thorp, 26, fell from the five-story building at East 28th Street in Kips Bay around 1am, according to police. Thorp, who lives in The Bronx, is the second young woman in a week to die after falling from a building in the city. The New York Post reports that Thorp fell from the fifth-floor fire escape into a courtyard at the back of the building and she was found unconscious by police, before being declared dead at the scene. Tyler Marie Thorp, 26, fell from the five-story building at East 28th Street in Kips Bay around 1am, according to police. Authorities are seen responding to the scene Thorp fell from the fifth-floor fire escape into a courtyard and she was found unconscious by police, before being declared dead at the scene Her death comes less than a week after finance worker Cameron Perrelli, 24, fell down an airway between the two buildings in the early hours of Saturday morning at a boozy rooftop birthday party on the deck of an apartment building in East Village. She was was raced from the scene on Avenue A near the corner of East 12th Street to nearby Bellevue Hospital by first responders but did not survive. The NYPD said Perrelli might have been trying to jump to the next building when she fell down the airshaft between the 202 building and its neighbor; since then, they have said they're still investigating after an uncle said she might have simply slipped. Exclusive DailyMail.com photos show just how perilous it would have been to attempt the rooftop crossing. Cameron Perrelli, 24, plunged to her death 3am Saturday down the airway of a building in NYC's East Village after trying to cross next door, police say There's an approximately 4-foot gap between the Topanga building at 202 Avenue A and the neighboring building at 200 Avenue A. That airway between the buildings is where police told DailyMail.com she fell. A sign on the deck wall near where police say Perrelli fell warns people to remain 10 feet from the edge. Her father Louis Perrelli said he was upset to hear of frequent late-night parties in the neighborhood. 'It's not like her to be a risk-taker,' Louis told the New York Daily News. 'She was always the designated driver, the good person, the peacemaker. She was an angel.' Perrelli, originally from Connecticut, completed a degree in business management at the University of Florida, according to her Linkedin account. She moved to New York City in 2019 to start work at finance company Third Bridge Group. The airway gap between the buildings is where police say Perrelli fell to her death 202 Avenue A in NYC's East Village on the left is where Perrelli was attending a rooftop gathering before she died. She fell down an airway between 202 and 200 Avenue A on the right Family said she was a regular gym goer, had a large social network of close friends, and used to go to New York Rangers and Yankees games with her father. 'Her heart definitely belonged to New York, that's for sure,' her father told the Daily News. In a statement, NYPD spokesman Edward Riley said police were called to the address at approximately 3:13am on Saturday after receiving a 911 call bout an unconscious person near Avenue A and East 12 St. 'Upon arrival officers were informed a 24-year-old female fell from an elevated position (rooftop). 'EMS transported the victim to Bellevue where she was pronounced deceased. The investigation remains ongoing.' Kamala Harris' 'woke' joke about female Marines fell flat during her commencement speech at the US Naval Academy on Friday. The Vice President was the first woman to deliver the keynote commencement address at a Navy Academy ceremony, and she made sure to reference female empowerment as she spoke to the group of graduates. 'You are electrical engineers who will soon help convert solar and wind energy into power, convert solar and wind energy into combat power,' she stated during the speech. 'Just ask any Marine today, would she rather carry 20 pounds of batteries or a rolled up solar panel, and I am positive she will tell you a solar panel - and so would he'. Harris subsequently burst into her trademark laugh after making the joke, but the reaction from the crowd was far more muted. Some soft clapping ensued, but the joke was panned on Twitter, where video of the speech has been viewed more than half a million times. Kamala Harris' woke joke about female Marines fell flat during her commencement speech at the US Naval Academy on Friday Newsmax host Benny Johnson wrote: 'Cadets groan as Kamala cackles awkwardly alone onstage.' Another responded: 'Demonstrating once again that there's nothing funny about being woke.' Others remarked that solar panels often require batteries to store energy collected from sunlight. It comes just a week after jokes President Biden made at the Coast Guard graduation ceremony similarly fell flat. 'As your commander in chief I've been looking forward to being able to do this for a long time. I want to keep the longstanding tradition: I hereby absolve all those serving restrictions [for] minor infractions absolved' the President told the crowd of graduates in New London, Connecticut. 'You have no idea how much I wish you'd have been able to do that in my graduation,' he joked. 'You all think I'm kidding. I'm not. Minor infractions like using a fire extinguisher to hose down a room assistant, but other than that ...' he said, alluding to a prank he carried out on his dorm advisor at the University of Delaware. When the crowd failed to respond he stated: 'You're a really dull class. I mean, come on, man, is the sun getting to you?' It comes just a week after jokes President Biden made at the Coast Guard graduation ceremony similarly fell flat Meanwhile, in her commencement address on Friday, Harris also spoke to the graduates about the work Marines did during the COVID-19 pandemic. 'Naval researchers also figured out how to use 3-D knitting machines to make masks. Naval labs monitored the spread of the disease,' she stated. 'And the Marine Corps and the Navy are leading on making the connection between the pandemic and medical readiness of our fighting forces for the future. 'The American people are depending on you.' She later shook hands with many members of the graduating class without wearing a facemask. US Naval Academy graduates throw their caps at the conclusion of the commencement ceremony Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. A man whose beloved golden retriever was mauled to death by a gang of vicious pit bull terriers appears to have taken brutal revenge on the killer dogs. Queensland Police were called to a home on Bligh Street in Heatley, Townsville, at about 2am on Saturday following reports multiple dogs had been killed. The owner of a dead golden retriever allegedly shot three pit bulls with a compound hunting bow and arrow. Two of the terriers were killed while the third was injured, the Townsville Bulletin reported. Three pit bull terriers were allegedly shot with a hunting bow and arrow in revenge attack after a man's golden retriever was mauled to death (pictured: stock image of pit bulls) It is understood the person who allegedly shot them owned the dead golden retriever and the dogs lived in neighbouring homes. He allegedly attempted to intervene when the pit bulls attacked his dog and was bitten. Queensland Police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that no charges have been made and investigations are continuing. The incident comes after another pit bull recently attacked and killed a smaller dog at a Brisbane shopping centre. The 'unrestrained' pit bull mauled a smaller dog to death in front of terrified shoppers. A man whose golden retriever was mauled took revenge on the killer pitbull terriers (pictured: stock image of a gold retriever) The awful incident occurred outside Bunnings Warehouse in Stafford, Brisbane. Before the attack, witnesses said employees told the owner of a large, brown pit bull to put him on a leash before entering the store. Within moments, the pit bull had lunged at a smaller dog and grabbed him by the neck, leaving shoppers and employees shocked. Britain's intelligence forces are reportedly assisting US investigations into the origins of Covid-19 after President Joe Biden ordered a 90-day push to discover how the virus emerged. Intelligence officials in the UK have conducted their own investigation into the origins of the pandemic amid claims that Covid was leaked from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. And a senior Whitehall security source told The Telegraph that British intelligence is also cooperating with the new American investigation in a bid to 'establish the truth'. The source told the publication: 'We are contributing what intelligence we have on Wuhan, as well as offering to help the American to corroborate and analyse any intelligence they have that we can assist with.' A Whitehall security source reportedly said UK intelligence forces are helping with American investigation into Covid origins. Pictured: Researchers at Wuhan Institute of Virology The origins of the virus are under fresh scrutiny with the collapse of the scientific consensus that it emerged from human contact with an infected animal, with some experts now arguing that the virus was man-made. David Asher, who led a task force investigating the origins of Covid, said evidence pointed to a leak from a biological weapons program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which the Chinese government has repeatedly denied. This week, President Joe Biden ordered the intelligence community to re-examine how the virus originated, including the lab accident theory. He ordered a 90-day intelligence push to get to the bottom of the question. His announcement followed the revelation that a previously undisclosed intelligence report had been made to the White House, claiming that several researchers at the Wuhan institute were hospitalized with illness in November 2019. The document was uncovered this week by the Wall Street Journal. Both the US and Britain are stepping up demands for the World Health Organization to take a closer look into the origins of the virus, including a new visit to China where the first human infections were detected. US health officials have also come under fire for allegedly funding researchers' controversial and risky experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This week, President Joe Biden (pictured) ordered the intelligence community to examine how the virus originated, including the theory that the virus emerged in a lab accident in Wuhan US House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and more than 200 of his GOP colleagues have also called for Nancy Pelosi to direct her Democrat-led committees to investigate China's complicity in causing the Covid pandemic. In a letter to the Democratic House Speaker, the Republicans said there is 'mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab' and the Chinese Communist Party 'covered it up'. 'If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide. These questions about the CCPs liability are not a diversion, as you falsely claimed,' the letter reads. Meanwhile, an explosive new study claims Chinese scientists created Covid in a Wuhan lab, then tried to cover their tracks by reverse-engineering versions of the virus to make it look like it evolved naturally from bats. The paper's authors, British Professor Angus Dalgleish and Norwegian scientist Dr. Birger Srensen, wrote that they have had 'prima facie evidence of retro-engineering in China' for a year - but were ignored by academics and major journals. Dalgleish is a professor of oncology at St George's University, London, and is best known for his breakthrough creating the first working 'HIV vaccine', to treat diagnosed patients and allow them to go off medication for months. Srensen, a virologist, is chair of pharmaceutical company, Immunor, which developed a coronavirus vaccine candidate called Biovacc-19. Dalgleish also has share options in the firm. The shocking allegations in the study include accusations of 'deliberate destruction, concealment or contamination of data' at Chinese labs, and it notes the silencing and disappearance of scientists in the communist country who spoke out. The journal article, obtained by DailyMail.com, is set to make waves among the scientific community, as the majority of experts have until recently staunchly denied the origins of COVID-19 were anything other than a natural infection leaping from animals to humans. While analyzing COVID-19 samples last year in an attempt to create a vaccine, Dalgleish and Srensen discovered 'unique fingerprints' in the virus that they say could only have arisen from manipulation in a laboratory. David Asher, who led a task force investigating the origins of Covid, said evidence pointed to a leak from a biological weapons program at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured) While China has tried to insist the virus originated elsewhere, academics have begun to contemplate the possibility it escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology They said they tried to publish their findings but were rejected by major scientific journals which were at the time resolute that the virus jumped naturally from bats or other animals to humans. Even when former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove spoke out publicly saying the scientists' theory should be investigated, the idea was dismissed as 'fake news'. Over a year later, leading academics, politicians and the media finally flipped, and have begun to contemplate the possibility that COVID-19 escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China - a lab where experiments included manipulating viruses to increase their infectiousness in order to study their potential effects on humans. Dalgleish and Srensen have authored a new study, which concludes that 'SARS-Coronavirus-2 has no credible natural ancestor' and that it is 'beyond reasonable doubt' that the virus was created through 'laboratory manipulation'. In the 22-page paper which is set to be published in the scientific journal Quarterly Review of Biophysics Discovery, the scientists describe their months-long 'forensic analysis', looking back at experiments done at the Wuhan lab between 2002 and 2019. Wally the Walrus has abandoned British waters for France after travelling near 400 from his last sighting in Cornwall. The Arctic mammal has brought delight to communities in Ireland, Pembrokeshire, Cornwall over the past few months in his nearly 2,000 mile adventure from his home in Greenland. He was last spotted earlier this month near Padstow, having first arrived in the British Isles in March, when he was seen in County Kerry in Ireland. It means Wally has swam a staggering 390 miles from his stop-off in Cornwall. The mammal has been on quite an adventure from his home in the artic circle. Six days after first appearing in Ireland in March, the RSPCA were called out to check on the creature - which was 'underweight' - at the bottom of a cliff near Broad Haven South beach in Pembrokeshire, Wales. Pictures show Wally the Walrus sunbathing on the rocks in Les Sables d'Olonne, France Wally is believed to have drifted on ice from Greenland to County Kerry, Ireland before making his way to Tenby in Wales, then to Cornwall, and now to the western coast of France But after becoming a known figure in the area, animal welfare groups believe he left after becoming 'obviously disturbed' by day-trippers getting too close. Irresponsible tourists tried to approach him using jet-skis, paddleboards and drones as he rested on a RNLI slipway in the town's harbour. It became a concern for RNLI volunteers, who had to resort to shooing Wally off the slipway, using brooms and airhorns to try to move the animal. Wally was last spotted earlier this month near Padstow, 390 miles away from France It is believed he has been hit by a boat in his journey, but is being looked after by experts The RSPCA Cymru and Dyfed-Powys Police had to issue a plea to tourists to keep their distance from Wally, who is protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. Having spent months basking in the Welsh sunshine, he then travelled further south, popping up in Cornwall for a few days. But, he has now migrated further south to Les Sables d'Olonne in western France, making it the town's first sighting of a Walrus in 50 years. The town's Facebook page has revealed that the animal appears to have been hit by a boat during his journey, and that he is being cared for by experts. Wally the Walrus travelled from Wales to Cornwall, and has now migrated further south Photographs show Wally basking in the French sun on the rocks on May 27. People in Tenby are hopeful that Wally will return to Wales after his time in France, because he has become a local celebrity, with many shops selling Wally the Walrus merchandise. Experts believe that Wally may have initially dozed off on a block of ice and drifted across the ocean. RSPCA animal rescue officer Ellie West described Wally's plight as 'sad' during Radio 4's Today programme back in March. Wally cause quite a scene in Wales when he lounged on the RNLI's slipway Wally has become an icon back in Tenby, Wales, where shops are selling walrus merchandise It is hoped that the mammal will return to Tenby after his visit to the French coast She said at the time: 'Whilst it is a very unusual sight [...] it is quite a sad occurrence because we have to remember that this walrus is a very, very long way from where he should be. 'We're talking about a wild animal that's still very mobile. He's very big, we're talking about much bigger than our normal seals. This one, although he's of a large size he is a bit underweight.' A team of UFO hunters could be relaunched by the Government to monitor the skies over Britain in the wake of a report by the US into extra-terrestrial life, a source has said. The now-defunct Ministry of Defence division, which was axed in 2009 after nearly 60 years of official research and investigations, could once again relaunch depending on the findings of a looming Pentagon report into UFOs. The report from the Director of National Intelligence will be sent to the US Congress next month, with an unclassified version being made available to the public. Pentagon officials have made clear that their real interest is in whether UFOs, or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), could represent actual threats here on earth. The release of the report could now pave the way for the Ministry of Defence's UFO desk to be revived. A UFO team could be relaunched by the Government in the wake of a report by the Pentagon into alien life. Pictured: A doughnut-shaped phenomenon was photographed by a retired RAF officer in Sri Lanka in 2004 A colour sketch of a 'spaceship' creating crop circles was sent to the Ministry of Defence in 1998 A UFO sighting was reported to the Ministry of Defence above Stonehenge in Wiltshire in January 2009 A source told The Telegraph: 'I think that if there was enough evidence to suggest that there was something, and that we needed to do it as well as the US, then of course we'd think about it. We'd look at it. 'There's all sorts of things that we wouldn't rule out, and this would certainly be one of them.' Last August, the Pentagon formed a task force 'to detect, analyse and catalog UAPs that could potentially pose a threat to US national security.' However an official said that many UFO sightings could be everyday objects that increasingly clutter air space such as weather balloons, metallic party balloons and amateur and professional drones. They also said that sightings could also be of the Pentagon's own highly classified experiments and prototypes. Sue Gough, a Department of Defense spokesperson, said: 'The Department of Defense takes reports of incursions into our airspace - by any aircraft, identified or unidentified - very seriously, and investigates each one. 'As we collect additional data, we expect to close the gap between identified and unidentified and avoid strategic surprise regarding adversary technology.' Meanwhile Luis Elizondo, the former Director of Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program at the Pentagon, said on the ABC News program 'This Week' that some of the objects that have been sighted 'can outperform anything that we have in our inventory.' He said: 'We know that whatever it is in our skies is real. The question is, what is it? 'The bottom line is, we simply don't know.' Mr Elizondo added that while he hoped the report would give Congress what it needed, 180 days to produce the detailed report was not enough time. He told CNN: 'I hope the report gives Congress what it asked for and also what it deserves and that is a current assessment of the situation. 'My only concern in 180 days is not a sufficient amount of time to provide a comprehensive report. 'When I was working at the Pentagon we did this for nearly a decade and there is a lot of information to go through. A unidentified flying object is spotted flying over the clock tower over Retford Town Hall in Nottinghamshire in 2004 An object is spotted above a a Lancaster Bomber as it flies over Withernsea, East Riding of Yorkshire, in June 2002 A sketch of a UFO seen by a MoD Police Sergeant at the Royal Ordnance Factory at Blackburn, Lancashire, in 1979 (left) and another drawing of a UFO seen near Woolwich in 2011 (right) A drawing and description of a UFO sighting from a flight out of Heathrow in July 1993 'My fear is 180 days is not going to be long enough to provide that comprehensive report to Congress.' This month, defence minister Baroness Goldie said the UK 'does not have a role' in the US's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force bit had been made 'aware' of the approaching report. In 2016, Nick Pope, who headed the now-defunct Ministry of Defence division for UFOs from 1991-1994, said that of the 12,000 sightings that the programme investigated, approximately 5 per cent remained unexplained. The former investigator said in 1980 the department were alerted to a UFO close to the Bentwaters and Woodbridge airbases. The team later concluded that radiation levels at the site had been 'significantly higher than the average background'. Meanwhile in 1993, multiple sightings of a UFO were reported over a period of six hours overnight in Cosford, Shropshire. However in 2016, the team were disbanded amid a series of financial cuts and a statement released by the department explained that the MoD 'had no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extra-terrestrial life.' A drawing and description of a UFO sighting over Smethwick in the West Midlands that was sent to the Ministry of Defence The statement read: 'The MOD has no opinion on the existence or otherwise of extraterrestrial life. However, in over fifty years, no UFO report has revealed any evidence of a potential threat to the United Kingdom.' Following the move, Mr Pope criticised the decision to close the department without a public consultation. He told The Sun: 'We're leaving ourselves wide open to terrorist attack.' The investigator added: 'There has been no announcement in Parliament and no public consultation.' In 2019, it was revealed that NASA would scan hundreds of the nearest exoplanets in search for alien life. The American agency announced a new partnership with SETI scientists leading the $100 million Breakthrough Listen project and said it would identify anomalies in the stellar 'light curves' and listen for 'technosignatures'. Dr. S. Pete Worden, Executive Director of the Breakthrough Initiatives, said at the time: 'It's exciting that the world's most powerful SETI search, with our partner facilities across the globe, will be collaborating with the TESS team and our most capable planet-hunting machine. 'We're looking forward to working together as we try to answer one of the most profound questions about our place in the Universe: Are we alone?' Kim Jong-un reportedly ordered for North Korean man to be shot by firing squad for illegally selling films and music, while his family were forced to watch his execution. The father, whose surname was Lee, was arrested in Wonsan, Gangwon province, before allegedly being executed 40 days later in front of a crowd of 500 people. Lee, who was a chief engineer at the Wonsan Farming Management Commission, was accused by authorities of 'anti-socialist acts' for trading the South Korean videos, a source told Daily NK. The publication claimed that Lee was caught by the daughter of his 'people's unit' leader, or neighbourhood watch group, while secretly selling the films and music. Lee was executed just 40 days after he was arrested while his wife, son and daughter were forced to stand in the front row and watch his final moments. Kim Jong-un (pictured) reportedly ordered for North Korean man to be shot by firing squad for illegally selling films and music, while his family were forced to watch his execution North Korean authorities reportedly ruled: 'This was the first execution in Gangwon Province for anti-socialist acts under the anti-reactionary thought law.' Authorities said people used to be sent to labour or re-education camps, but added that 'reactionaries should not be allowed to live without fear in our society'. The 'anti-reactionary thought law', which brought in execution for anti-socialist behaviour last year, is believed to be supreme leader Kim Jong-un's crackdown to ban outside influences. The source said that after the guilty verdict was given, Lee's 'lifeless body was rolled into a straw sack and loaded into a box, and then taken somewhere'. They continued: 'The family's neighbours burst into tears when they saw the four security guards picking up Lee's collapsed wife and throwing her [into the van] like a piece of luggage, but they had to clamp their mouths shut and weep in silence for fear of being caught in the criminal act of having compassion for a reactionary.' Lee reportedly confessed to selling the CDs and USBs, and authorities are said to be hunting down people who bought the content from him, believed to have been sold for between five and 12 dollars. The 'anti-reactionary thought law', which brought in execution for anti-socialist behaviour last year, is believed to be supreme leader Kim Jong-un's (pictured) bid to ban outside influences There are a further 20 other people who are in the process of being prosecuted after being accused of selling South Korean music and films, the publication reported. NORTH KOREA CLAIMS ORPHANS ARE 'VOLUNTEERING' TO WORK IN STATE-RUN MINES AND FARMS Orphans allegedly 'volunteered' to work in state-run mines and farms in North Korea to 'repay the love the party showed', according to Daily NK. Around 150 children from two state-run orphanages have reportedly 'volunteered' to work in 'difficult and labor-consuming fields'. Ceremonies to 'congratulate' the orphaned children (pictured) for 'volunteering' to work were reportedly held on May 26 The Korean Central News Agency said: 'Dozens of orphan children rushed out to the Chonnae Area Coal-mining Complex to fulfill their oath to repay even just a millionth of the love the party showed.' Ceremonies to 'congratulate' the orphaned children for 'volunteering' to work were reportedly held on May 26 at the Tonghae and Sohae Schools for Orphans. The state has denied using forced child labour despite accusations from human rights groups. Advertisement The source added: 'Nowadays, if you are caught watching a South Korean video, you receive a sentence of either life in prison or death, so nobody knows who will be executed next. 'You can receive a seven-year sentence just for not reporting someone. The entire population is shaking with fear.' It comes after a report claimed that Kim Jong-un executed a University minister after he 'complained' about work and didn't hold 'enough Zoom calls', according to The Sun. The North Korean dictator was said to have sentenced the leading chairman to death after a 'failure to 'implement the Distance Education Act'. Meanwhile, Kim Jong-un, 37, has also declared a war on cats and pigeons and has ordered authorities to 'eliminate' them as he believes the animals are spreading Covid-19. Authorities along the border have been seen shooting at birds and searching for cats as the supreme leader believes they are bringing coronavirus from China. And a family-of-four in Hyesan, Yanggang Province, were placed in an isolation facility on May 24 for secretly raising a cat, Daily NK reported. A source told the publication: 'The family was given a punishment of 20 days in isolation for illegally raising the cat following an order not to do so in the [Sino-North Korean] border region.' The family reportedly told authorities that their cat had died but the cat was then spotted on May 22 near a fence on the border. The family were said to have been sentenced to 20 days in isolation and were not allowed to stay in their own house, while the cat was captured taken away. But many people expressed their disbelief that the cat would have been able to cross the river into China and then return again, the source added. Earlier this week, it was also claimed that Kim Jong-un banned mullet hairstyles and skinny jeans over fears that 'decadent' Western culture will influence young North Koreans. Earlier this week, it was claimed that Kim Jong-un (pictured) banned mullet hairstyles and skinny jeans over fears that 'decadent' Western culture will influence young North Koreans The country will be ripped down 'like a damp wall' if more is not done to stop the 'invasion of a capitalistic lifestyle', a state-run newspaper claimed. Those who repeatedly flout strict laws on fashion - including a ban on colourfully-dyed or spiked up hair and piercings - will be sent to labour camps under laws put in place by dictator Kim Jong-un in December. Those who don mullets also face these impossibly harsh consequences. North Korean newspaper Rodong Sinmun - which is owned by the ruling Worker's Party - wrote on Thursday: 'History teaches us a crucial lesson that a country can become vulnerable and eventually collapse like a damp wall regardless of its economic and defence power if we do not hold on to our own lifestyle.' It went on to say: 'We must be wary of even the slightest sign of the capitalistic lifestyle and fight to get rid of them.' North Koreans can choose from between 15 approved hairstyles under the country's laws, it has been claimed. A Coles supermarket, Taco Bell restaurant and university library have been added to Victoria's extensive Covid hotspot list - as the state records five new cases. The Department of Health identified the new venues on Saturday, as the state's latest Covid cluster reached 35 infections. Health authorities have listed La Trobe University's Bundoora campus library, Taco Bell on Chapel Street, Edu-Kingdom College and Peninsula Hot Springs reception as Tier 1 exposure sites. Anyone who visited the Tier 1 locations must immediately isolate, get a Covid test and quarantine for 14 days. The Taco Bell on Chapel Street in Melbourne (pictured) has been identified as a Tier 1 exposure site A Coles supermarket in Tooronga Village is a new Tier 2 exposure site in Victoria on Saturday Victoria recorded five new local cases of coronavirus Saturday after entering second day of lockdown The Coles supermarket in Glen Iris is the only new venue considered a Tier 2 site - requiring visitors to get tested for and isolate until a negative result is received. Mount Ridley College in Craigieburn in Melbourne's southeast is also on high alert after the school was added to the list of exposure sites. Victoria's testing chief Jeroen Weimar confirmed a food delivery driver infected four people across two households, including a Mount Ridley college student. Laura Petreski, whose son attends the school, said her 'heart sank down to her stomach' when an email was sent out to families to notify them of the case. 'I was in absolute shock, I was disgusted, just to receive a generic message, that wasn't good enough,' she told the Herald Sun. La Trobe University's Bundoora campus library is another Tier 1 exposure site in Melbourne Anyone who visited La Trobe University's Bundoora campus library (pictured) should get tested and isolate immediately She said all the parents were panicking as they discovered via Yuroke MP Ros Spence's social media the infected student attended college on May 25. 'They have to protect that child's identity, but as parents we have the right to know what year level the student is in,' she said. The concerned mother said every time she hears her son 'cough, sneeze, I'm going to be paranoid.' Health authorities have identified more than 150 Covid exposure sites in relation to the latest outbreak. New Melbourne exposure sites Saturday May 29 Abbotsford - Dukes Gym Abbotsford, 571-573 Victoria Street; 6:15pm 8:15pm on May 24 Bundoora - La Trobe University, Library Level 1, Plenty Road & Kingsbury Drive, 11.45am - 3pm on May 25 Craigieburn - Edu-Kingdom College, 67A Hamilton Street, 1.20pm - 5pm on May 22 Fingal - Peninsula Hot Springs, reception only, 140 Springs Lane, 3pm - 3.45pm on May 21 Glen Iris - Coles Tooronga Village, Tooronga Road, 4pm 4.30pm on May 23 South Yarra - Taco Bell Chapel Street, 352 Chapel Street, 5.30pm - 6.45pm on May 23 Advertisement Australian Medical Association former president Tony Bartone said the number of exposure sites and 15,000 recorded close contacts is a 'really huge' outbreak for Victoria. 'It's going to be an effort required to get it all under control and give us the necessary confidence to release that seven day lockdown,' Dr Bartone told Channel 9's Today. Dr Bartone said the 'diligent' contact tracing teams are one of many factors working in Melbourne's favour. 'The fact that we quickly went into those restrictions on Tuesday or Wednesday this week with the masks and the other restrictions that were put in place before the circuit breaker lockdown,' he said. Victoria's total local cases has reached 35 on Saturday morning - with all of them affected by the Indian strain of the virus. Health authorities also confirmed two new cases of coronavirus are currently in hotel quarantine, bringing the total active cases across the state to 45. The state administered 21,626 vaccine doses on Friday after a record-breaking 41,000 jabs on Thursday. The hotline for booking vaccinations crashed for a third consecutive day as Victorians scrambled to get the AstraZeneca and Pfizer jabs while in lockdown. There were 56,624 tests conducted on Friday as the list of tier one sites expanded by 61 overnight. Mount Ridley College in Craigieburn (pictured) in Melbourne's southeast is also on high alert after the school was added to the list of exposure sites. Delaying the easing of coronavirus restrictions in England beyond June 21 could hamper the economic recovery, a pub chain boss warned. Chief Executive of the Shepherd Neame brewery and pub company Jonathan Neame said a week would leave a 'marginal impact' but five weeks would be a 'real damper'. He warned recovery is 'happening quite fast at this moment in time' and said any continued lockdown 'will really undermine consumer and business confidence'. It comes as experts continue to debate the pros and cons for the country of opening up further on June 21. Professor Sir Tim Gowers, whose argument against herd immunity helped trigger England's first lockdown, warned caution is needed. Professor Christina Pagel, a member of Independent Safe from University College London, agreed, saying reopening should be delayed a few more months. But Nervtag member Robert Dingwall said it was 'hard to see any reason' why June 21 could not go ahead. Chief Executive of the Shepherd Neame brewery and pub company Jonathan Neame (pictured) said a week would leave a 'marginal impact' but five weeks would be a 'real damper' He warned recovery is 'happening quite fast at this moment in time' and said any continued lockdown 'will really undermine consumer and business confidence'. Pictured: A pub in Scotland last week Mr Neame told the Today programme: 'If it's delayed for, say, seven days but there's still a certain outcome the restrictions will be lifted in full after that, then that will be a marginal impact. 'If, on the other hand, we're going into a cycle of a further five weeks of data review and uncertainty and more reviews at that time, then I think that will put a real damper on the recovery which is happening quite fast at this moment in time, and will really undermine consumer and business confidence.' Meanwhile experts debate whether reopening the country completely on June 21 is a good idea. Prof Sir Tim, Professor of Mathematics at Cambridge University, told the Guardian the downside of being 'a bit more cautious' was a lot smaller than the downside of getting it wrong. Asked about the next step in lockdown easing in England, due on June 21, Prof Gowers said he did not believe the plans were necessarily at risk, but urged caution. 'Because Boris Johnson has made a big thing about all the steps being irreversible, I think he's put himself in a position where once he takes a step, he'll be extremely reluctant to reverse because that would be a big U-turn, an embarrassing climbdown,' he said. 'So I think if that's the way you're going to play things, then you should be very, very cautious about every step you take ... And maybe everything [will] be OK, maybe the number of people who are vaccinated will be just enough ... 'R' will broadly speaking stay below one even with Indian variants. 'But if it's not OK, we know, because of mathematics, that things will get bad very, very quickly. Or at least, maybe it won't look that quick to start with, but it'll grow exponentially. 'So it'll pick up speed and become a big problem.' It comes as Britain on Friday recorded more than 4,000 daily cases for the first time since April, while there were 10 deaths The Guardian said Prof Gowers sent the PM's former chief adviser Dominic Cummings a five-page document warning of the need to 'move urgently to extreme containment measures' in March last year. Other experts on Friday argued restrictions should remain in place until more of the population had received both vaccine doses. Professor Christina Pagel, a member of Independent Safe from University College London, said reopening should be delayed a few more months. But Prof Dingwall, from Nottingham Trent University, told Times Radio it was 'hard to see any reason' why June 21 could not go ahead, adding that those who currently catching Covid tended to be younger and would get less sick. Asked whether hospital admissions could get out of hand, leading to local lockdowns, he said: 'I think we've got to look quite carefully at what hospitalisation means. 'The anecdotes that the clinicians are coming up with is to say these are not really, really sick people like they were seeing in January, so more people who just need a little bit of extra help with breathing, they come in, they get oxygen and dexamethasone for maybe three or four days, and then they go home again. 'And in that sense I think hospitalisations may not be a very good indicator of the severity of these infections.' He said there was a need to 'break this link in our minds between 'this is very transmissible, this spreads very easily'.. and 'this is as dangerous as things were when the Wuhan virus first hit last spring''. The map shows the following areas in darkest orange, marking the highest likelihood of them becoming a hotspot: (left) Kirklees, Burnley, Rossendale, Blackburn, Bury, Manchester and Bolton; (right) Renfrewshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow, Clackmannanshire and Midlothian The PM told reporters on Thursday he 'didn't see anything currently in the data' to divert from the June reopening target before adding: 'But we may need to wait.' The Times reported face coverings and work from home guidance may remain in place after June 21, when all legal limits on social contact are due to be lifted in England. It said ministers were increasingly concerned the spread of the Indian variant could undermine the easing of restrictions and were drawing up plans that could lead to a partial end of lockdown. But the paper added the Treasury was prioritising the removal of the 'one-metre plus' and 'rule of six indoors' measures in order to help the economy recover. A review of what measures will be relaxed on June 21 was due by the end of May but has been pushed back due to the Indian variant. Meanwhile, a Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) source told the Telegraph it is expected to set out 'options and consequences' of vaccinating children rather than offering a firm recommendation for ministers to follow. The source said: 'It's likely that the JCVI will come up with a menu of options saying what the consequences of each of them would be, rather than making an actual recommendation.' Their comments come after the European Medicines Agency recommended the use of the vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech be expanded to children aged 12 to 15. A single-shot coronavirus vaccine from Johnson & Johnson has also been approved for use in the UK and should be available towards the end of the year. The vaccine is part of the UK's Cov-Boost study which is examining the effectiveness of a range of vaccines that could be used as a booster shot in the autumn. The Department of Health and Social Care announced on Friday further surge testing was being deployed in Lancashire after more cases of the Indian variant were detected. England's R rate - the number of people infected by each coronavirus case - has risen back above one meaning the national outbreak is probably increasing in size again, which was expected to happen as lockdown rules are lifted People living, studying and working in areas including Burnley, Pendle, Hyndburn and Rossendale are being urged to take a PCR test even if they do not have symptoms, while additional mobile testing units and Covid-19 tests are being deployed to higher educational settings. Current data suggests although hospital admissions are rising in some parts of the country affected by the Indian variant, overall admissions remain broadly flat. Data for England published on Friday by the Office for National Statistics shows an estimated one in 1,120 people in private households had Covid-19 in the week to May 22 - broadly unchanged from one in 1,110 in the previous week. The estimate for Scotland is around one in 630, up from one in 1,960, putting Scotland back to where it was around a month ago. Meanwhile, the reproduction number - the R value - for England is 1 to 1.1, up from 0.9 and 1.1 the previous week, suggesting the epidemic is growing. The latest seven-day average for daily hospital admissions in England is 88 (up to May 25), which is an increase of 15% on seven days earlier. The figure means hospital admissions are back to where they were at the start of May and remain 98% below the second-wave peak in January. Public Health England data shows the majority of people with the Indian variant have not been vaccinated, with just 3% of cases (177 out of 5,599) from February 1 to May 25 having received both doses. Over the period there were 12 deaths linked to the variant, of which eight were among the unvaccinated. Dr Mike Tildesley, from the University of Warwick and a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (Spi-M) group, told the BBC that cases would go up but the vaccines are proving helpful. He said experts needed to 'gather as much evidence as we can over the next week or two' then 'try to predict what we expect may happen should this June 21 relaxation go ahead'. Boris Johnson will be forced to decide if children as young as 12 should receive the coronavirus vaccination by the end of next month. The joint committee on vaccination and immunisation (JCVI) are expected to 'come up with a menu of options' for the Prime Minister but will not offer a definitive recommendation on jabs for those under the age of 18. The group, who will meet with the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency next week to discuss the matter, will present Mr Johnson with the benefits and consequences of the move and also address the legal and ethical issues. It comes after the European Medicines Agency gave the green light for children between 12 and 15 to receive the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine paving the way for EU countries to start vaccinating children. Earlier this month, US regulators, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), also authorised the Pfizer vaccine for use in children aged 12 and above, making another 17 million young Americans eligible for the shot. Medical experts will present Boris Johnson with 'a menu of options' so that he can decide if children as young as 12 should receive the coronavirus vaccination A source from the JCVI told The Telegraph: 'It's likely that the JCVI will come up with a menu of options saying what the consequences of each of them would be, rather than making an actual recommendation. 'There are a lot more things to consider with this than with the adult vaccination programme.' Earlier today, the deputy chair of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI) Professor Anthony Harnden said there would be 'a range of different options' when it came to selecting certain children to be immunised. He told BBC Breakfast: 'Clearly with children there are a range of different options that involve whether we select certain children to be immunised on the basis of risk, we do know that the majority of children do not have huge risk of complications, whether we vaccinate for educational purposes, whether we vaccinate to protect others in the population, these are the ethical issues, there are a lot of issues to think about. 'It's a complicated position to decide on the immunisation of children, of course, then there's the wider global ethical argument about the use of vaccine in children when there are other people in the world that are at risk of not being vaccinated. 'So we need to think about all these issues, we probably will give the Government a range of options.' He added: 'It's complicated, but we will think through these issues deeply and give some really good advice.' Prof Harnden went on to say that while vaccines do help tackle transmission this was 'only to a certain extent' and therefore 'he did not think the country would be able to vaccinate children to prevent huge amounts of transmission within the community'. In April, Oxford University paused trials of its coronavirus vaccine in children as regulators probed the jab's link to rare blood clots. A spokesperson for the university said the move was precautionary and that there were no health issues among any of the youngsters involved in the trial. Oxford began studying the vaccine in five-to-17-year-olds in February, with the aim of eventually scaling up the trial and testing it in 200 people. But scientists stopped recruiting new volunteers and it is not clear how many children have already been given a dose. According to scientists while children are at low-risk of falling ill from Covid-19, they do still play a role in transmitting the virus to those who could fall seriously ill. But experts are divided on whether Britain should press ahead with the policy, given that youngsters are at such tiny risk of Covid. Scientists will present the PM with the benefits and consequences of immunising children as young as 12. Pictured: A public health digital board advises the public to follow the coronavirus rules in Bolton This month, Professor Anthony Brookes, professor of genetics and genome biology at the University of Leicester, said: 'We should be worried about the completely unknown and unknowable long-term risks of vaccination of the young.' And professor David Livermore, a medical microbiologist at the University of East Anglia, said he expected vaccines to be approved for children in the UK but warned it posed an ethical dilemma. He said: 'Children gain very little from the vaccination but may run some small hazard to harm.' Giving children coronavirus vaccines is morally complicated, and UK health chiefs have already said it would only be done if it was deemed necessary. Advocates of the move argue it would help protect older people by allowing Britain to move one step closer to 'herd immunity', curbing the spread of the virus. They also warn that while the immediate harms of Covid seem small to children, the dangers of 'long Covid' on them are still somewhat unknown. But critics say offering jabs to children would be unethical because it would only be done to protect older people not youngsters themselves. WHY ARE PEOPLE WORRIED ABOUT VACCINES? SIDE EFFECTS One reason some people are fearful of having a vaccine is the risk of side effects. Side effects are normal because the vaccines trigger the immune system, which is how they work, and the immune system is usually what causes symptoms of illness. Things like fever, aches, headache and tiredness are all normal signs that the immune system is reacting to something and are often caused jabs but are not serious. They tend to clear up by themselves within days, and can be controlled with drugs like paracetamol and ibuprofen. A tiny proportion of people suffer more severe side effects, such as going into shock or having a severe allergic reaction, but this is extremely rare and usually only happens in people with a history of bad reactions. Everybody who receives a jab on the NHS is monitored for at least 15 minutes to make sure they don't have a bad reaction, and vaccination teams have treatments on hand to help if this happens. FERTILITY Part of the reason for young women being concerned is understood to be myths about the vaccine affecting fertility or the health of unborn babies. Although vaccines are not recommended for pregnant women, this is only because they have not been trialled on them specifically the same reason children are not eligible for the jabs. There is no evidence to suggest the vaccine would be capable of harming an unborn child and certainly not any more than the real coronavirus but it is not being given to pregnant women out of caution. And on long-term effects on fertility, Professor Van-Tam said no vaccine has ever led to infertility and there was no reason the Covid ones would do so. ONLINE CONSPIRACY THEORIES Online conspiracy theories also claim that jabs have tracking microchips in them, contain animal products or use cells from human flesh none of which are true. Experts have called for spreading lies about vaccines online to be criminalised, and Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it 'total nonsense'. Advertisement Just 57 people under the age of 20 in England have died with Covid since March 2 last year, but teenagers are thought to be just as likely to spread the virus as adults. Cambridge University academics believe the risk of infants dying of the coronavirus is around 0.00088 per cent or one in every 125,000. By contrast, the risk is thought to be around 15 per cent in the over-75s. There is nothing to suggest the Pfizer vaccine will not be safe in children but some have branded it controversial because studies are still ongoing. There is more doubt about the AstraZeneca vaccine which has been linked to extremely rare blood clots in young adults. Klaus Okkenhaug, professor of immunology in the Department of Pathology at the University of Cambridge, said the Pfizer vaccine could be a potential candidate to use on children due to its safety record. Appearing on Times Radio, he conceded it was a 'fair point' when it was put to him that one or two 'bad cases' of vaccine side-effects could 'spook' a large number of people. Prof Okkenhaug said: 'I think the lower in age we go, the lower the risk from the virus is, then the more risk-averse we become with relation to the vaccine.' He highlighted that, with data from the tens of millions of people who have been vaccinated, 'if you go for children, you would want to go for the safest vaccine'. 'And I think probably an argument could be that for children you go for the Pfizer, if that pans out, as it looks to be, (to) have an even better safety record.' Prof Okkenhaug said the decision on whether to give children jabs is a 'difficult question' which requires balancing wider benefits against the direct ones for children. 'I think for a whole population it would of course help for children to be vaccinated because it also reduces their opportunities to transmit this virus to their teachers,' he said. Prof Okkenhaug added that when considering the 'direct benefits to the children' it is 'a little bit of a fine balance because they are so unlikely to be affected by the virus'. 'But I think, given the phenomenal safety records of some of the vaccines out there, there's a good argument for going ahead at least with older children, say 12 and above.' Prof Okkenhaug said the idea of using a nasal spray to administer the Covid vaccine to children was 'really interesting', with the approach used before for flu vaccines, but there was a current lack of data. Earlier this month Professor Adam Finn, a paediatrician at the University of Bristol and member of No10's vaccine advisory panel the JCVI, said: 'It is important we have confirmation of the safety and adequacy of immune responses of Covid vaccines in children particularly because there are some children who are at enhanced risk of serious illness because they have underlying health conditions that render them more vulnerable. 'However, most children who get SARS CoV2 infection do not get seriously and, indeed, most don't get sick at all. 'Although the importance of children in transmission of the virus within the community is not entirely clear, the evidence we have suggests that it is not great, especially where younger children of pre-school and primary school age are concerned. 'Accordingly immunising children is a low priority and if vaccine-induced protection in the adult population is high from high uptake, good persistence of protection and sustained protection against viral strains as they evolve to evade immunity, then it may not be necessary to immunise children in a general way at all. 'This is even more likely for young children than adolescents.' He added: 'At this point in the pandemic, when there are global shortages of vaccines and very large numbers of people at high risk of severe disease mostly elderly worldwide who remain unimmunised a priority for them but also for us is to prevent large epidemic waves like the one currently playing out in India. 'Those outbreaks pose a global threat as they drive evolution of vaccine-resistant variants and their dissemination around the world. 'So, for now we should make sure that the doses of vaccines that exist are used as strategically as possible and giving them to children is unlikely to be the priority, at least for now.' England's R rate - the number of people infected by each coronavirus case - has risen back above one meaning the national outbreak is probably increasing in size again, which was expected to happen as lockdown rules are lifted This month, the Food and Drug Administration in the US, expanded its vaccine rollout by authorising the jab for 12 to 15-year-olds. Speaking on the move acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said: 'The FDA's expansion of the emergency use authorisation for the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 Vaccine to include adolescents 12 through 15 years of age is a significant step in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. 'Today's action allows for a younger population to be protected from Covid-19, bringing us closer to returning to a sense of normalcy and to ending the pandemic. 'Parents and guardians can rest assured that the agency undertook a rigorous and thorough review of all available data, as we have with all of our Covid vaccine emergency use authorisations.' The European Medicines Agency also gave the green light for the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to be used in those 12 and above this month. Head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy at the EMA, Marco Cavaleri, explained that it would be up to individual countries to decide if they wanted to vaccinate children. He told the Financial Times: 'It is up to them to decide whether they want to restrict the use just in adolescents who are at higher risk of Covid-19 because of comorbidities or other factors, versus using this vaccine in a broader population.' Yesterday, Britain recorded more than 4,000 daily Covid cases for the first time since the start of April, amid mounting fears the rapid spread of the Indian variant will scupper 'Freedom Day' next month. Department of Health bosses posted another 4,182 positive tests, up by almost half on last Friday's count. Meanwhile figures also showed a total of 24,478,052 in the UK had now received both doses of the Covid vaccine. A couple who claimed they are 'living in fear' amid a dispute with neighbours about a village green outside their home have been accused by locals of being the real troublemakers. Bridget Kelly and partner Richard Woznaik moved to the 50-strong village of Rosgill in the Lake District six years ago, and have since become embroiled in a heated row with their neighbours, which has seen them accused of being 'townies'. The community dispute, which kicked off less than two years after they moved into the three-bedroom cottage, is over the public's right to park and drive around a small triangular patch of grass and track in front of their house. Their neighbour Chloe Randall insisted the patch of grass, which the couple say they own, is a 'village green', and is now at the centre of a 40,000 libel battle with Mr Woznaik and Ms Kelly for her comments on an online blog. Although the couple claimed they have been ostracised from the community, locals have now hit back and alleged that the couple are 'troublemakers' who have been 'intimidating people' and throwing their 'weight around'. Residents claim the couple regularly storm out of their renovated cottage to confront anyone walking or parked on the disputed plot. A 'Townie' couple who claim they are 'living in fear' over a dispute about a 'village green' (pictured) outside their home in Rosgill, Lake District, are the troublemakers, locals claim Former accountant Bridget Kelly (left), who moved in with her partner Richard Wozniak six years ago, is suing their neighbour Chloe Randall (right) for 40,000 in a libel battle amid the dispute over the village green One said: 'We have never had any problems with the land until Bridget and Richard turned up. 'They bought the house from the Lowthers and then started saying the land belong to them. 'Then they tried to stop people going on it, which was crazy because it's always been used by everyone living here.' She added: 'Neither of them have really tried to integrate despite what they say.' After the couple put up CCTV aimed at the patch of land and installed posts on the unadopted road to prevent vehicle access, neighbours opposite the 'townies's' Abbot House have also installed cameras to stop any potential disputes. Villagers say the triangular patch of land has been used by residents for hundreds of years and is believed to be owned by the Lowther family. Another villager, who has lived in the Rosgill for almost 40 years, said for decades farmers had used the land. He said: 'The farms have been here a lot longer than they have. 'Farmer would use it to park 4x4s and cattle trailers and that was the norm. Everybody accepted it. 'Then they bought Abbott house and made claim to the land in front of it. 'The guy would come out and shout at anyone on the land and he put up metal posts to stop people going on it. 'People don't want to see others moving in and making claims to land which isn't theirs. It's not right. 'It's good that there are people living here who care and are standing up to them. 'You can't just come into a place, where people have got along well for decades, good country people, and start throwing your weight around. Residents claim the couple, who moved in six years ago, regularly storm out of their renovated cottage to confront anyone walking or parked on the disputed plot (pictured) 'They are definitely troublemakers. They are the ones intimidating people. 'We just want to live in peace and tranquillity but they have caused a lot of people heartache.' The resident said the couple complained when workmen parked outside their three-bedroom home in February. He said: 'The wall running along the main road has all been rebuilt. 'The wallers parked their vehicles on there and she (Bridget) came out all hysterical, telling them not to park there. 'A few weeks ago, a woman was driving a 4x4 vehicle with a horse trailer on the back. 'One of the horses got a bit jumpy and the woman thought the trailer was going to tip over so she pulled up at the side of the green to sort it out. 'He then came out and gave her a lot of abuse.' Villagers think the couple has now gone to Lowther Estates to inquiry about leasing it from them. Ms Kelly and her partner are suing their neighbour Chloe Randall for 40,000 libel damages over her blog, which they claim ruined their standing locally and led to them being ostracised and left out of community events. Miss Randall insists the patch of grass is a 'village green' which residents of Rosgill and surrounding villages have been 'accustomed to using...for hundreds of years.' In an online blog titled 'Concerned of Rosgill' she brands the couple 'social pariahs' and 'townies' accusing them of being 'bullies and liars'. Ms Randall, an administrator and woollen tie maker who lives with her mother, denies libel, accusing the couple in court of 'years of harassment of members of the village and beyond' in what she termed 'The Battle for Rosgill Green'. HM Land Registry documents show the couple does not own the 'village green'. Records show Ms Kelly and her partner own land to the left and right of the disputed land. The Lake District National Park Authority has also ruled the roads surrounding the patch of grass near the couple's home should be classed as public bridleways. Dr Wozniak, who was a private dentist in Fleet, Hampshire, retired to the Lake District to develop his passion for wildlife photography while Ms Kelly took up bell-ringing at a nearby church. The couple say they toiled for months to transform Abbott House, which is believed to have cost around 300,000, from a dilapidated wreck into their dream home. But within two years of moving into their three-bed cottage, they were at the centre of a community row over the public's right to park and drive around a small triangular patch of grass and track in front of their house. The land in dispute is the triangle of grass at the centre of this picture which villagers say has been used as common land for 'hundreds of years, but Kelly and Wozniak believe they own Ms Kelly and her partner are suing their neighbour Ms Randall, claiming 40,000 libel damages over the blog, which they say ruined their standing locally and led to them being ostracised and left out of community events. 'All we wanted - and still want - is to be left in peace to enjoy our property,' Ms Kelly told High Court judge, Mr Justice Soole. But Ms Randall, an administrator and woollen tie maker, denies libel, accusing the couple in court of 'years of harassment of members of the village and beyond' in what she termed 'The Battle for Rosgill Green'. The court heard that Ms Kelly and Dr Wozniak previously lived in Hampshire, where Dr Wozniak had his private dental practice, before setting himself up as a wildlife photographer, venturing to remote areas of Africa to shoot exotic animals. Following his retirement and with Ms Kelly, who had worked for Price Waterhouse Cooper before qualifying as an accountant, working part time, they sold up and eventually moved to Rosgill in 2015 to pursue their country dreams. Ms Kelly told the court that they had only been in the north for a matter of months when friction began with campaigners over public use of the land the couple claim is theirs. They were accused of having 'colonised' the 'green' and endured a number of incidents including people mowing the patch, blocking their access, and driving a 4x4 over it, she told Mr Justice Soole. Ms Kelly added that she and her partner were also told they 'would be dealt with by 'community law' and that we would not be made welcome in the community'. The bad feeling over the 'green' came to a head with Ms Randall's online blog, set up in 2017, on which the couple claim she posted a series of nine libellous posts in 2019. One posting refers to 'townies' turning the countryside into a 'retirement park' and suggests that the couple did not understand the alleged long use of the patch as a community space. Dr Wozniak and Ms Kelly say they were accused online of stealing land, 'brainwashing' a vulnerable local into their camp, acting like 'liars, thieves and bullies' and 'spitefully' attempting to block the track. And they say the offending posts unjustly branded them 'social pariahs in Rosgill' - although they still have friends there - as well as labelling them 'hypocrites and idiots'. Both say the posts took a devastating toll on their reputations and enjoyment of life in the quiet village which they had thought would be a haven for them. 'The defamatory statements posted by Ms Randall have made me personally feel humiliated, embarrassed and harassed to the extent that they have actually ruined my life,' said Ms Kelly. 'Abbott House was very much our 'dream home' but the activities of Ms Randall have made me feel like a prisoner in my own house. HM Land Registry documents show the couple does not own the 'village green' (pictured). Records show Ms Kelly and her partner own land to the left and right of the disputed land Ms Kelly and her partner are suing their neighbour Chloe Randall for 40,000 libel damages over her blog Concerned of Rosgill (above), which they claim has ruined their standing locally 'At times I have been too frightened to go outside for fear that Ms Randall or one of her supporters might be there. 'Whereas I was once eager to engage in community activities, I now think twice before joining in for fear that other attenders have seen the comments made about us, and view us in a negative light.' Ms Kelly says that, although they claim ownership of the patch of grass, they were always happy to share use of the track, and never intended to fall out with anyone. But Ms Randall denies libel and says the 'Concerned of Rosgill' blog developed in tandem with her efforts to have the track alongside the green designated a public bridleway and to boost the campaign in 'the battle for Rosgill Green'. She says the area has been used by the whole community for generations and 'is widely known as Rosgill Village Green', telling the judge: 'The village has for hundreds of years been accustomed to using this piece of ground...for access, farming, leisure and commercial purposes.' At the time the blog was set up, she was pursuing a right of way application with the local council, which ultimately led to the track alongside the green being declared a bridleway, she said. She had intended the blog to 'remind the community of the lengths to which the claimants have demonstrated that they are prepared to go in pursuit of their determination to have exclusive use of the disputed ground.' 'Various individuals and bodies tried to explain the historic use of the land, but the claimants seem unable to accept that any activity of any sort has ever taken place in Rosgill prior to their arrival,' she added. She said the couple's exclusion from parts of village life - including not being invited to a local councillor's Christmas party - were nothing to do with the blog posts. 'Richard and Bridget's extraordinary campaign has led to their exclusion from a number of village events, hence the comment that they are social pariahs,' she said. Dr Wozniak and Ms Kelly had made repeated efforts to block access to the track and grass patch, which provide a convenient turning circle for villagers, she claimed. She also claimed in court the couple had installed CCTV, reshaped the track, spooked cattle, and tried to 'criminalise the reputations of so many in the community'. The trial continues. A fibro home in Sydney's blue collar western suburbs has sold for a whopping $1.81million - baffling both the real estate agent and delighted home owner. The 961 square metre block, on Gidley St in St Marys, was on the market for $890,000, only to be snapped up for double the reserve price. Records revealed it was one of the highest prices ever paid in St Marys and surrounding suburbs for a single block minus high density zoning. 'What happened was just exceptional, it is just amazing,' seller Pieter Boele told realestate.com.au. A fibro home in Sydney's blue collar western suburbs (pictured) has sold for a whopping $1.81 million The property at St Marys is close to shops, a public swimming pool and a train line to the Sydney CBD '(The auction) has changed everything. With this price, I dont have to worry for the rest of my life.' Mr Boele, 80, expected the property to sell for 'around $1million', despite $670,000 being the median house price in the working class suburb. He also paid close to $450,000 for the property in 2012. Selling agent Peter Diamantidis, from Ray White-St Marys, was stunned by the final price. He admitted he had 'no idea' why it was so high, and after selling property in the area for two decades, conceded he has 'never seen anything like this.' Daily Mail Australia understands the property was sold to an investor, who intends to rent out the home, which currently fetches $280 per week. An investor has snapped up the property in Sydney's west at St Marys, with the current tenants paying $280 a week in rent Bidding started at $900,000, before the final bid was a jaw-dropping $1.81 million. Sydney's sky high property prices have been a source of frustration for many Australians looking to own their own home in the Harbour City. Earlier this week, a Sydney unit barely bigger than some walk-in wardrobes went on the market for just under $400,000. The studio apartment at Balmain, in the city's inner-west, has just 13 square metres of space and is so small it has a bunk bed above the kitchen sink and a fold-out dining table for one. The property is relatively close to St Marys train station and the proposed Metro line While that's bigger than most standard bedroom closets, it is roughly the same size as a more deluxe walk-in wardrobe with lots of shelves. The Mort Street residence in the old heritage-listed The Star Hotel is close to Sydney Harbour and a two-minute walk to a nearby ferry terminal. House prices in Sydney are surging, rising by 11.2 per cent since January, according to CoreLogic data. Chinese premier stresses efforts to strengthen market vitality for development Xinhua) 15:15, May 29, 2021 Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, inspects the Ningbo-Zhoushan port, a major transit area for bulk commodities in China, in Ningbo City, east China's Zhejiang Province, May 24, 2021. Li made an inspection tour to the city of Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province from Monday to Tuesday. (Xinhua/Huang Jingwen) HANGZHOU, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has underlined efforts to further advance reform and opening-up, strengthen market vitality and actively deal with changing domestic and external situations for pushing forward the country's stable and sound economic development. Li, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, made the remarks during his inspection tour to the city of Ningbo in east China's Zhejiang Province from Monday to Tuesday. When inspecting the Ningbo-Zhoushan port, a major transit area for bulk commodities in China, Li called for paying close attention to the cyclical changes in the world economy and commodity price fluctuations in the international market. China should expand opening-up, further promote the facilitation of customs clearance and conduct free and fair trade, he said, adding that the country should give full play to the advantages of the port and use market-oriented methods to improve the import, storage and trading of bulk commodities. Li spoke with managers of several manufacturing enterprises to learn about the impact that upstream price changes in raw materials had had on their businesses. He said that rising commodity prices would not only bring excessive pressure to large and medium-sized manufacturing enterprises but also affect the small, micro and individual businesses, adding that consumption activities downstream would also be affected. Li called for making good use of policies, such as tax and fee cuts and inclusive financing, to support market entities, and ramping up market regulation to slow down the transmission of rising costs to the downstream sectors. Enterprises should also pay attention to tapping into their potentials and drawing on innovation to relieve cost pressures and improve competitiveness. During his visit to a government service center in the city, Li stressed that the country should relieve the pressure on enterprises, continue improving its business environment, and create a fairer market for competition. He also inspected a talent resource market to learn about the local employment situation. While visiting a local company, he encouraged it to develop more new products enjoyed by consumers. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Galt, CA (95632) Today Plentiful sunshine. High 91F. Winds W at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight A few passing clouds. Low 59F. SW winds at 10 to 20 mph, decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. Advertisement A five-year-old boy who was the sole survivor in a cable car crash which killed 14, including both his parents, asked: 'Where are mum and dad?' when he woke up in hospital. Israeli Eitan Biran miraculously escaped alive from the tragedy in the Alps, but his mother and father, younger brother and great-grandparents were all killed. The brave boy has been in intensive care for most of the week but is now breathing independently, though he still finds speaking to be difficult. When he woke to see his aunt Aya, 41, by his bedside at the Regine Margherita Children's Hospital in Turin, he first said: 'I have a sore throat,' before asking where he was and why she was there. It is not clear if he has been told the heartbreaking news that mother Tal, 26, father Amit, 30, little brother Tom, two, and great grandparents Yitzhak Cohen, 81, and Barbara Koninsky, 71, are all dead. The hospital's general manager, Giovanni La Valle, told BILD: 'Sometimes Eitan asks about his parents, but whatever: his aunt is always with him.' Well-wishers, including one of the rescuers on the scene, have left gifts for the young boy, while three families have also offered to adopt him following the tragedy. It comes as it emerged that the Italian cable car boss, accused with two others of deactivating the braking system that could have saved 14 lives on Sunday, is facing 30 years in prison. Luigi Nerini, 56, head of Ferrovie del Mottarone, the firm which manages the cable car, was arrested on Wednesday along with two colleagues Gabriele Tadini and Enrico Perocchio. Nerini is awaiting indictment in a cell at Verbania prison but may face 14 manslaughter counts, which could see him jailed for 30 years, according to the German paper. Tadini, a technician, meanwhile told magistrates on Thursday: 'It's all my fault,' La Republicca reported, explaining that he had deliberately tampered with the brakes to avoid delays following a malfunction. But investigators say this deactivation of the brakes - that could have stopped the car flying backwards when the cable snapped - was approved by his senior colleagues Nerini and Perocchio. The investigators allege that the two managers 'had been repeatedly informed and both Perocchio and Nerini endorsed this choice.' Israeli Eitan Biran miraculously escaped alive from the tragedy in the Alps, but his mother and father, younger brother and great-grandparents were all killed The remains of the wrecked cable car is inspected by officials on the Mottarone mountain in the Italian Alps on Thursday Luigi Nerini, 56, (left) head of Ferrovie del Mottarone, the firm which manages the cable car was arrested on Wednesday along with two colleagues Gabriele Tadini and Enrico Perocchio (right) Amit Biran, 30 (left), his wife Tal, 26 (right), and their two-year-old son Tom were among those killed in the cable car crash in Italy. Eldest son Eitan (bottom right), five, is in hospital The prison where the three suspects are being held in Verbania The coffin with the body of Serena Cosentino, one of the cable car accident victims, arrives on the hearse in the church of Gesu Buon Pastore where the funeral will be officiated in Diamante, Cosenza, on Thursday A picture of Alessandro Merlo and Silvia Malnati, a young engaged couple who died in the tragedy at the Mottarone cable car, during their funeral in Varese on Thursday 'It was a conscious choice, absolutely conscious. That's it,' prosecutor Olimpia Bossi told reporters. 'It was not an occasional omission or forgetfulness. It was a conscious decision to disarm... to deactivate this emergency system in order to remedy what we have been told were problems, technical problems that were occurring on the line,' she added. Although a maintenance team reportedly came to fix those problems on May 3, they remained unresolved, local Carabinieri police official Alberto Cicognani told Radiotre radio. 'To avoid further interruptions in the service, they chose to leave in 'the fork', which prevents the emergency brake from working,' said Cicognani. He claimed all three men admitted what had happened. The apparatus known as the fork had been inserted 'several times', said Bossi, suggesting the cable car had been unsafe for some time. 'Certainly Sunday was not the first day and this has been admitted,' Bossi told journalists. Eitan suffered thoracic and abdominal trauma, as well as fractures to his limbs, during the tragic incident last week and remains in a critical condition. Today, his psychologist, Marina Bertolotti, explained the delicate nature of this stage of the tragedy. She said: 'We don't ask, but we have to be able to respond to his questions. To find the right answers, we need to work with his family. If he screams, you have to intervene. But otherwise we have to first see what his psychological trauma is.' The bodies of his mother, Tal, father, Amit, younger brother Tom and his great-grandparents were lined up at the Milan Malpensa airport on Wednesday ahead of their repatriation to Israel. They were buried the following day in Aviel, as his aunt and grandparents stayed with him in the hospital, where doctors are still concerned over his chest and stomach. Eitan has received a number of gifts while receiving treatment, including a fire helmet from one of the rescuers at the scene, which now features his name. Three families have also offered to adopt the child, having contacted the Mayor of Stresa Marcella Severino, who visited the boy earlier in the week and has called the crash her town's 9/11. 'This is September 11 for Stresa,' the mayor said on Wednesday evening as a message from the Pope was relayed by the local priest during a service for the victims. 'The Holy Father thinks with emotion of so many lives tragically broken ... and sends his prayers to the victims and for little Eitan,' Father Gianluca Villa told the congregation which included firefighters, nurses and carabinieri who rushed to the Mottarone mountain in the Alps after the cable car fell. Rescuers found five bodies still inside the cable car, with the others strewn outside. Alessandro Merlo and Silvia Malnati, 29 and 27, also died in the tragedy. Friends said the couple had been engaged for 10 years but were planning to marry - prompted by Silvia's recent graduation from university Angelo Vito Gasparro, 45, wife Roberta Pistolato (together left and right), died when the cable car plunged 65ft during a trip to the mountains to celebrate Roberta's 40th birthday Vittorio Zorloni and Elisabetta Persanini (together left, and Vittorio pictured right) were also killed in the accident, along with their five-year-old son Mattia. The couple were engaged and due to be married next month, Italian media reported A woman cries over a white coffin during a ceremony for the members of the Biran family on Wednesday before they were returned home Engineers 'tampered with' the braking system (circled) on the Italian cable car as part of a botched fix in order to avoid delays, prosecutors said Picture reveals the red 'fork' that allegedly prevented the brakes from working on the cabin's wreckage covered with a tarpaulin Since the cable car reopened on April 26 after lockdown, technicians on the Ferrovie del Mottarone had noticed faults on the braking system (circled) The cable car hit a pylon, then hit the ground, tumbling down the mountain for about 500 metres (1,600 feet), before coming to a stop, according to news reports Graphic shows the cable car's route after the cable snapped as the car neared the station at the top of the mountain Among the dead were Eitan's family, including great-grandparents Itshak and Barbara Cohen, 82 and 70; Alessandro Merlo, 29, his fiance Silvia Malnati, 27; husband Angelo Vito Gasparro, 45, and wife Roberta Pistolato; Vittorio Zorloni, his fiancee Elisabetta Persanini, 38, and the couple's five-year-old son Mattia; and lovers Serena Cosentino, 27, and Mohammadreza Shahaisavandi, 23. The first funerals of some of the victims took place in both Italy and Israel on Thursday. Sunday's crash was the first fatal incident involving a cable car in Italy since 1998, when a low-flying US military jet severed a cable at a ski resort, killing 20 people. It came at the start of the country's much-anticipated reopening to tourists after coronavirus closures. This is the terrifying moment huge waves crash over an oil tanker as it battles against a ferocious storm in the middle of the Atlantic sea. The footage, captured by a sailor on board the ship last month, shows it bobbing up and down as it tries to move forward through an onslaught on high and very intense waves, and wind gusts. At one point, the sailor is completely blinded by water as waves crash down upon the deck of the oil tanker, covering the windows. The North Atlantic is known for its brutal weather which can create dangerous conditions for ships crossing the waters. Meteorologists put this down to intense areas of low pressure that form across the basin. These areas can fuel winds that can stir up the waters and create enormous waves and stormy conditions. This has resulted in record breaking waves, like one in February 2013 when a buoy located between Iceland and the United Kingdom recorded a wave height of 62 feet according to the World Meteorological Organisation (WMO). Footage shows the large waves crashing into the ship as it crosses the water At one point in the footage, the screen is completely covered with spray from the waves The North Atlantic is a dangerous body of water for ships to cross due to high waves The body of water also holds the world record for the highest wave sighted by a ship at a massive 60.7 feet in 2000. Around this time of year, the North Atlantic is increasingly monitored by the National Hurricane Centre (NHC) as it can be a hotbed for developing hurricanes and tropical storms. The hurricane season officially starts in June. India has recorded its lowest daily rise in coronavirus cases in 45 days. The tally of new Covid-19 infections in the country in the last 24 hours stood at 173,790 on Saturday, its lowest daily rise in little over a month, while deaths rose by 3,617. The nation's tally of infections now stands at 22.7 million, with the death toll at 322,512, according to Health Ministry data. It comes as the country's capital of New Delhi, is set to gradually end its weeks-long lockdown from Monday, when factories will be allowed to operate and construction work can resume. The city recorded peaks of 25,000 cases in April, but is now reporting less than 1,500 cases per day. Despite the easing of certain restrictions, experts have warned that people in the country should continue to follow safety protocols, reaffirming that the pandemic is not over in India just yet. Medical researcher Bhramar Mukherjee told the BBC: 'The notion that the peak has passed may give false sense of security to everyone when their states are in fact entering the crisis mode. 'We must make it clear that no state is safe yet.' The country has been left reeling after a deadly second wave of the virus hit in March. Health workers are set up around the country to record the temperature of citizens A health worker takes a swab sample from a man for a Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) test along a road in New Delhi Indian covid sufferers are now contracting deadly 'black fungus' infection with spike causing a shortage of the drugs to treat it A growing number of current and recovered Covid-19 patients in India are contracting a deadly and rare fungal infection, doctors said on Monday. Mucormycosis, dubbed 'black fungus' by medics, is usually most aggressive in patients whose immune systems are weakened by other infections. 'The cases of mucormycosis infection in Covid-19 patients post-recovery is nearly four to five times than those reported before the pandemic,' Ahmedabad-based infectious diseases specialist Atul Patel, a member of the state's Covid-19 taskforce, told AFP. In the western state of Maharashtra, home to India's financial hub Mumbai, up to 300 cases have been detected, said Khusrav Bajan, a consultant at Mumbai's P.D. Hinduja National Hospital and a member of the state's Covid-19 taskforce. Some 300 cases have been reported so far in four cities in Gujarat, including its largest Ahmedabad, according to data from state-run hospitals. The western state ordered government hospitals to set up separate treatment wards for patients infected with 'black fungus' amid the rise in cases. 'Mucormycosis - if uncared for - may turn fatal,' the Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR), the scientific agency leading the government's response, said in a treatment chart released on Twitter.o used steroids during their virus treatment, and those who had prolonged stays in hospital ICUs, the ICMR added. Reporting by AFP Advertisement Hospitals, morgues and crematoriums have been overwhelmed ever since, with many areas of the country suffering chronic oxygen shortages. In recent weeks, a horrifying Covid-19 complication has also swept the country, with thousands of people contracting black fungus. The wave of infections with the previously very rare condition has been blamed on excessive use of steroids to treat the country's millions of Covid patients, experts say. Mucormycosis, as it is scientifically known, is highly aggressive and surgeons sometimes have to remove patients' eyes, nose and jaw to stop it reaching the brain. The death rate is over 50 percent. India normally deals with fewer than 20 black fungus cases a year but now there are several thousand across the country including more than 2,000 in Maharashtra state, home to India's financial capital Mumbai. At least nine Indian states have declared the problem an epidemic. The cities of New Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bangalore have opened special wards. Before the coronavirus pandemic, only those with severely compromised immunity, such as HIV or organ transplant patients, were at risk. Earlier this week, analysis by the New York Times was published, which suggested that the death toll in the country could be as many as 1.6 million compared to the official 310,000 fatalities reported. The paper's 'more likely' scenario estimates the number of deaths to be 1.6 million, while the worst-case could be as high as 4.2 million. By comparison, Britain recorded just nine deaths on May 27 and more than 127,000 fatalities in total. The US has recorded about 590,000, also suspected to be an undercount, in a population of about 330 million. Official figures in India put the toll at 310,000 in a population of 1.4 billion. In consulting with more than a dozen experts, the Times said it found it difficult to get a clear picture even of the total number of infections in India due to poor record-keeping and a lack of widespread testing. Vinod Paul, head of India's coronavirus task force, dismissed the study and said it was 'not backed by any evidence and is based on distorted estimates. 'Our [fatality] number is 0.05 per cent of those infected. They've said 0.3 per cent. Why? On what basis have you decided that it's 0.3 per cent of that large infection universe? There is no basis at all. Five people get together, make phone calls to each other and then throw this number. That's how this report has been done,' Mr Paul told NDTV. Four relatives carry a dead body of a Covid-victim past shallow graves covered with cloths on the banks of the Ganges River in Shringverpur village Rains exposed the cloth coverings of bodies buried in shallow graves in the sand of the riverbank in Prayagraj, a city in Uttar Pradesh state 'There may be some late reporting of deaths but there's no intent of any state or the Centre. If I apply the same three times yardstick to New York, then there would be 50,000 deaths. But they say it's 16,000. So this is distorted,' he added. The last surviving veteran who was present at both Dunkirk and the D-Day landings has died aged 98. Now Alfred White's granddaughter Janey Doyle has teamed up with the Imperial War Museum to share Alf's recordings about his experiences. In the fascinating audio clips aired on Radio 4's Today this morning, the veteran, touches upon his various experiences during the war, including evacuating Dunkirk and the moment The Armistice was signed. Alfred White, who was the last known surviving veteran to have been present at Dunkirk and the D-Day landings, died a fortnight ago aged 98 (pictured) In the touching tapes, which will be available to the public at the Imperial War Museum, Alf (pictured) speaks about his experiences at Dunkirk and the moment the Armistice was signed In 1940 Alf, a driver in the first army tank regiment, found himself sitting on the beach at Dunkirk awaiting evacuation. He had arrived in the town after a lorry a few trucks up from his was hit and he, along with other soldiers, were directed to pick up whatever they could carry and follow a line of soldiers - eventually ending up in Dunkirk. Seeing how crowded the beaches were he walked into the town and eventually ended up at the dockside and hopped on the King Orry boat which he described as 'jam packed'. Shortly after setting off it was hit several times by artillery. In 1940 Alf (pictured right with brother Tom), a driver in the first army tank regiment, found himself sitting on the beach at Dunkirk awaiting evacuation and eventually managed to jump on a boat Due to the crowded beaches at Dunkirk, Alf (pictured in 2015) walked into the town and eventually ended up at the dockside and hopped on the King Orry boat which he described as 'jam packed' In a recording, which will be available for public access in the Imperial War Museum archives, Alf said: 'Whenever the shell hit the boat it sort of stopped and shuddered it was an awful feeling.' He also went on to explain that several soldiers lost their lives onboard the ship when the captain ordered them to the port side so the shells were hitting the top deck instead of sinking the boat. In some of the recordings Alf also discusses the night The Armistice was signed in 1945. Speaking about the moment the King Orry was struck by artillery, Alf said: 'Whenever the shell hit the boat it sort of stopped and shuddered it was an awful feeling.' The group he was with had been told not to make any noise that night because the field marshall was sleeping. Alf said: 'We were told not to be too merry about it. I felt relieved it was all over.' Janey, a BBC journalist, said her grandfather had barely spoken about his time in the war before she asked him about it for a school project when she was in primary school in the 1990s. When speaking to him she learned he had joined the Territorial Army in 1938 after being encouraged to by his elder brother Tom. The pair were then called up to the war in September 1939 when Alf was just 17 years and the brothers managed to stick together for the whole war. Alf joined the Territorial Army in 1938 and was called up to the war at the age of 17. Earlier this year he spoke with a fellow Dunkirk veteran (pictured) After the war ended he did not return home to Britain until 1946, instead choosing to head to Kiel in Germany to help rebuild the town. He also ventured to Belsen concentration camp to help with the clear out operation. Speaking about the loss of her grandfather, Janey said: 'He was remarkable, he was just such a lovely kind gentle soul. 'He was just the most kindest, generous gentleman and he's going to be very badly missed.' A young businesswoman has issued a stark warning as she fights for her life after discovering a mole on her leg had turned into a harmful cancer. Laura Thrum from Sydney's northern beaches noticed the 'ugly' mole on her leg had began to change last year and started taking photos of the concerning mark to show her doctor in April. 'She (the doctor) was like ''well it's changing let's take it out as a precaution and get a biopsy'',' Ms Thrum told 7News. Laura Thrum (pictured) noticed the mole on her leg had changed and booked to see her doctor After a biopsy the 26-year-old (pictured) was diagnosed with early stage three melanoma The 26-year-old had the mole removed a week later but her heart sank when the results confirmed she had an invasive malignant melanoma. She said the news left her feeling an 'overwhelming wave of fear' and she 'didn't know what the next step was'. 'You then go down the path of wanting to know more. It's isolating, you don't want to think of the worst but you don't want to be completely shocked if it is the worst,' she said. The owner of Meraki Mats had another biopsy on her leg and two of her lymph nodes removed to rule out the possibility the cancer had spread to the lymphatic system. But she was hit with more devastating news - as one of the lymph nodes has a small amount of cancer. She was then diagnosed with early stage three melanoma. The owner of Meraki Mats had the mole removed a week later but results confirmed she had an invasive malignant melanoma The business owner has experienced 'highs and lows' as she will now undergo further tests before moving into the treatment phase of her diagnosis. Ms Thrum said she now applies 'sunscreen all over' and doesn't think she'll ever be able to 'sit in the sun without feeling guilty again'. She is now urging others to be diligent and get their skin checked regularly by their doctor. 'Getting your skin checked is something we need to place a higher importance on. I'm a prime example of people thinking its never going to be them,' she said. A teenager has appeared in court charged with murdering a 16-year-old boy. The 17-year-old male, who cannot be named for legal reasons, made his first appearance at Northampton Magistrates' Court charged with killing Rayon Pennycook in Corby on Tuesday. Northamptonshire Police said two boys aged 15 and 17 have also been released on bail pending further inquiries. The force launched a murder investigation after Rayon was stabbed to death in Constable Road on Tuesday evening. East Midlands Ambulance Service (EMAS) said it was called to a private address in the town at 6.57pm after reports of a medical emergency. Two paramedics in ambulance cars, two crewed ambulances and the air ambulance were sent, but the victim died at the scene. The year-11 student is believed to have been visiting a friends house when he was fatally stabbed. Rayon Pennycook, pictured, was stabbed to death in Corby, Northamptonshire on Tuesday Forensic officers search hedgerows at the scene in Constable Road, Corby, Northamptonshire, following the fatal stabbing of 16-year-old Rayon Pennycook on Tuesday The accused has been remanded in custody and will next appear at Northampton Crown Court on Tuesday. Rayons family said they were devastated in a statement released earlier this week. They added: In fact, there are no words which can accurately describe the pain we are suffering. It is unbearable. He was just a boy, a 16-year-old boy with his whole life ahead of him. He had hopes, dreams and aspirations, and was in the process of applying for an apprenticeship, which would have seen him start the next chapter of his young life. Rayon is not a statistic and he will not be remembered as such he was a unique human being with a beating heart who was loved so dearly by his mum, dad, siblings, niece, nephew and friends. Rayon had a big heart and made it clear every day how much he loved us all. Rayon Pennycook was a bright, kind-hearted and creative young man who built strong relationships with many members of our student community and teachers at Corby Business Academy. This tragic news will come as a shock to many people across the school community and Rayon will be greatly missed.' The year-11 student was understood to have been visiting a friends house when he was stabbed to death. Bill Maher got into a fiery debate over the recent Israel-Gaza conflict on Friday night and took aim at the 'liberal media' over its news coverage before turning on progressives including supermodel Bella Hadid. 'One of the frustrations I had while I was off is that I was watching this war go on in Israel and it was frustrating to me because there was no one on liberal media to defend Israel, really,' Maher, 65, began. He was referring to a recent COVID-19 diagnosis that forced him off the air last week. 'We've become this country now that we're kind of one-sided on this issue. And I'd also like to say off the bat I don't think kids understand, and when I say kids I mean the younger generations you can't learn history from Instagram!' the 65-year-old Maher added. 'There's just not enough space.' Bill Maher got into a fiery debate over the recent Israel-Gaza conflict on Friday night and took aim at the 'liberal media' over its news coverage before turning on progressives The debate became heated as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested Israel had committed 'possible war crimes' against Gaza. 'Well, Gaza fired 4,000 rockets into Israel. What would you say Israel should have done instead of what they did?' Maher asked. 'International lawyers are pretty clear that they have a right to defend themselves but there is a sense that their response was probably a war crime because they did not sufficiently avoid civilian casualties,' Kristof explained. 'But they purposely put the rockets in civilian places. That's their strategy,' Maher responded. Maher then went into a detailed explanation that countered a oft-repeated narrative that Israel 'stole' the land. The debate became heated as New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof suggested Israel had committed 'possible war crimes' against Gaza 'The Jews have been in that area of the world since about 1200 B.C., way before the first Muslim or Arab walked the Earth. ... I mean, Jerusalem was their capital. So if it's who got there first, it's not even close,' Maher said. 'The Jews were the ones who were occupied by everybody; the Romans took over at some point and then the Persians and the Byzantines and then the Ottomans. So yes, there was colonization going on there. Beginning in the 19th century, they started to return to Palestine, which was never an Arab country. There was never a country called Palestine that was a distinct Arab country. 'Doesn't it behoove the people who rejected the half a loaf and continue to attack Hamas's charter says they just want to wipe out Israel. Their negotiation position is 'You all die,'' Maher said. 'The two-state solution has been on the table a number of times. There could be an Arab capital in East Jerusalem now if Yasser Arafat had accepted that in 2003. He did not. Bella Hadid joined protestors in Brooklyn earlier this month to demonstrate in support of Palestinians in New York. The State of Israel accused her of advocating 'throwing Jews into the sea' The accusations from Israel came after Hadid, pictured wearing a traditional dress, a Keffiyeh, a face mask and waving a large Palestinian flag, shared an anti-Semitic cartoon to her 42 million Instagram followers The State of Israel's official Twitter account said Hadid was advocating for sending 'Jews into the sea' Bella Hadid posted a picture of Waseem Awawdeh (circled) sitting on a car amid dozens of demonstrators at a pro-Palestine protest on May 16 in New York City. In her post Hadid wrote: 'The way my heart feels To be around this many beautiful, smart, respectful, loving, kind and generous Palestinians all in one place... it feels whole! We are a rare breed!!' 'I mean, they have rejected this and went to war time and time again,' Mayer continued, 'And, you know, as far as Gaza goes, it's amazing to me that the progressives think that they're being progressive by taking that side of it, the Bella Hadids of the world, these influencers. 'I just want to say in February of this year, a Hamas court ruled that a unmarried woman cannot travel in Gaza without the permission of a male guardian. Really? That's where the progressives are? Bella Hadid and her friends would run screaming to Tel Aviv if they had to live in Gaza for one day.' Kristof once attempted to defend Hadid's position and said that he didn't 'perceive' her as defending Hamas but for Gazan children who were killed during the fighting. But Maher referred the columnist to that slogan Hadid chanted while taking part in a pro-Palestine march in New York City earlier this month. 'From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.' The phrase is normally associated with the wiping out of Israel. Bella Hadid was seen at the peaceful demonstration that paraded through the Bay Bridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a black and white bandana and burgundy face mask. Later she sat on the back of a truck with other protestors waving Palestinian flags Earlier in the week, Bella Hadid attended the same pro-Palestinian protest as the man arrested for allegedly beating a bystander in Times Square last week and calling him a 'filthy Jew' - and posted a picture of him on her Instagram. The model posted a picture of Waseem Awawdeh, 23, sitting on a car amid dozens of protestors in a procession on May 16, along with several other pictures and a video of herself at the rally in New York City. In her post including a picture of Awawdeh among other protestors, Hadid wrote: 'The way my heart feels To be around this many beautiful, smart, respectful, loving, kind and generous Palestinians all in one place... it feels whole! We are a rare breed!!' Police say Awawdeh was among a gang of demonstrators who four days later punched a Jewish man to the pavement then pummeled him while he was down, yelling anti-Semitic epithets. He is charged with assault as a hate crime, gang assault, menacing, aggravated harassment as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon. Bella was seen in photos and videos immersed in the crowd as she protested last week Hadid, 24, has already earned an official rebuke from the Israeli government itself after she posted a closeup of herself on social media with tears rolling down her nose, saying she felt a 'deep sense of pain' for the Palestinian people following the outbreak of fighting in Gaza A source close to Hadid said she does not know the man, did not associate with him at the protest and condemns any anti-Semitic violence. Earlier, she shared photographs of herself at the earlier, peaceful demonstration that paraded through the Bay Bridge neighborhood of Brooklyn, in a black and white bandana and burgundy face mask, sat on the back of a truck with other protestors waving Palestinian flags. The supermodel has become a lightning rod for criticism from Israelis and the country's supporters after her outspoken backing of Palestinians in the conflict. Hadid, 24, has already earned an official rebuke from the Israeli government itself after she posted a closeup of herself on social media with tears rolling down her nose, saying she felt a 'deep sense of pain' for the Palestinian people following the outbreak of fighting in Gaza. 'You cannot allow yourself to be desensitized to watching human life being taken,' Hadid wrote. 'Palestinian lives are the lives that will help change the world. And they are being taken from us by the second.' The supermodel has become a lightning rod for criticism from Israelis and the country's supporters after her outspoken backing of Palestinians in the conflict and often posts about her pride in being Palestinian Following that picture and after Hadid appeared at the pro-Palestinian rally in Brooklyn, the Israeli Foreign Ministry's Twitter account tweeted: 'When celebrities like @BellaHadid advocate for throwing Jews into the sea, they are advocating for the elimination of the Jewish State. 'This shouldn't be an Israeli-Palestinian issue this should be a human issue,' the Israeli ministry account wrote. 'Shame on you.' There is no footage of Hadid calling for Israelis to be harmed, and fact-checking website Snopes labeled Israel's claim that Hadid wants to throw Jews into the sea as 'unproven.' On her Instagram account Hadid posted on May 12 'anti-semitism is NOT okay' and 'Jewish people are not responsible for the actions of the Israeli army or the government policies of Israel.' In a separate post which remains on Hadid's Instagram, the model wrote about her Palestinian heritage and longstanding support for demonstrators, sharing a picture of herself at a pro-Palestine protest four years ago. 'It has always been #freepalestine. ALWAYS. I have a lot to say about this but for now, please read and educate yourself,' she wrote. 'This is not about religion. This is not about spewing hate on one or the other. This is about Israeli colonization, ethnic cleansing, military occupation and apartheid over the Palestinian people that has been going on for YEARS!' The Cornish hotel hosting the G7 summit still 'looks like a building site' with just days to go before it welcomes world leaders, MailOnline can reveal. With under two weeks until the prestigious event is due to start, overflowing skips, bags of cement, stacks of timber and giant containers of rumble are all still clearly visible strewn around the Carbis Bay Hotel in Cornwall. World leaders will converge on the sleepy Cornish village on June 11 for the two-day summit. But on the approach to the hotel - where US President Joe Biden and Boris Johnson will be staying a beachfront car park is littered with construction materials. And parts of the main car park at the five-star hotel further down also resemble a builder's yard with construction materials and rubbish scattered around. The Carbis Bay Hotel in Cornwall still 'looks like a building site' with just weeks before it hosts the G7 summit The hotel - where US President Joe Biden and Boris Johnson will be staying is littered with construction materials Overflowing skips, bags of cement, stacks of timber and giant containers of rumble are still visible around the Cornwall hotel Teams of builders are now in a race against time to clear up as well as to complete three meeting rooms that sit above the 4,000 night lodges being used as accommodation for the summit. One local told MailOnline: 'It's a real mess and they're clearly in a race against time. Currently it looks more like a building site than a top international venue. 'The workers are rushing round like it's like watching the last five minutes of an episode of Home Front.' A builder working on the meeting rooms at the resort near St Ives told MailOnline he and his colleagues will be forced to work round the clock to make sure they are completed in time for the G7 summit opening. One recent guest at the hotel where rooms cost up to 1,500 and one of the beachfront lodges 4,000, wrote a scathing review on the consumer site Trip Advisor. The guest, who stayed at the hotel earlier this month, said: 'We were really looking forward to our holiday at this hotel as I thought that as we were staying there two to three weeks before the G7 summit, the place would be looking absolutely fabulous and in tip top condition. 'Well, I could not have been more wrong! The hotel is a building site with diggers, lorries and bulldozers coming and going in the carpark and we felt a bit of an inconvenience as paying guests for getting in the way!' World leaders are set to make their way to the Cornish village on June 11 for the two-day summit. Pictured: Construction materials outside the hotel The beachfront car park is still littered with construction materials just weeks before the hotel hosts the G7 summit Teams of builders are now in a race against time to clear up the litter around the hotel before world leaders arrive Much of the construction work is being carried out on three meeting rooms that sit on a cliff above the luxury beach lodges Another wrote: 'The hotel is currently a building site and neither the swimming pool nor the spa were open.' Much of the construction work is being carried out on three meeting rooms that sit on a cliff above the luxury beach lodges where the world leaders will stay - themselves the subject of a planning row. As well as the Carbis Bay the nearby Treganna Castle Resort and other locations in St Ives and around Cornwall will be used for the duration of the meetings. Thousands of police and private security firms are being drafted in to throw a ring of steel around Carbis Bay and nearby St Ives ahead of the arrival of prime ministers and presidents from the world's leading democracies. Members of the public walk pass the G7 Summit sign placed outside the G7 media centre at the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall Automatic police surveillance equipment is installed outside the G7 media centre at the National Maritime Museum as the area gears up for the summit A sign tells members of the public that temporary fencing is in place ahead of the G7 summit A temporary communications tower is put up outside the G7 media centre at the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall A person walks past two main public car parks which are closed off by temporary fencing as the location becomes part of the secure area adjacent to the National Maritime Museum in Cornwall Police have warned people walking on foot will be subject to ID checks and parts of the South West Coast Path which runs above the Carbis Bay Hotel will be closed. Residents who live close to the hotel will have to show two pieces of identification to pass security barriers. Holidaymakers who have booked for trips to St Ives have been warned to bring identification to reach hotels and B&Bs in the town. Extinction Rebellion is planning a series of mass protests on beaches, headlands and streets during G7. A spokesman for Carbis Bay Hotel did not want to comment. Former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Donna Brazile has left Fox News after claiming she's 'accomplished what she wanted' with Joe Biden's election win. Brazile has made multiple appearances on ABC News Sunday news show This Week and was listed as a contributor with the program on ABC last weekend. 'When my contract expired, they offered me an additional 2-4 years,' Brazile told The Daily Beast when asked about her departure from Fox, 'But I decided to return to ABC.' Brazile went on to say that 'all is good' between her and Fox, suggesting that the split was amicable. Donna Brazile's time with Fox News is over after she departed from the conservative network In an email to the New York Times, Brazile elaborated more about her time with Fox News. 'Fox never censored my views in any way,' Brazile said. 'Everyone treated me courteously as a colleague.' Brazile also added, 'I believe its important for all media to expose their audiences to both progressive and conservative viewpoints. With the election and President Bidens first 100 days behind us, Ive accomplished what I wanted at Fox News.' She joined Fox News as a contributor in March 2019, despite knowing she would be criticized by progressives for joining the outlet. Brazile stated that the 2016 election 'showed we have to engage that audience and show Americans of every stripe what we stand for rather than retreat into our 'safe spaces.'' Brazile recently joined ABC News as a contributor and is solidifying her role there Her time at Fox News was not always easy, though, filled with occasional shouting matches and frequent criticism from Donald Trump. In August 2019, Trump tweeted, 'So @donnabrazile gives Crooked Hillary the Questions, and now shes on @FoxNews,' expressing his displeasure. Trump tweeted about her again in June 2020: 'She gets fired by @CNN for giving Crooked Hillary the debate questions, and gets hired by @FoxNews. Where are you Roger Ailes?' She also once told Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel to 'go to hell' after McDaniel weighed in on the 2020 Democratic primary. Before working for Fox News, Brazile worked as a contributor for CNN. She resigned from the news company in October 2016 after a WikiLeaks email in 2016 revealed that she leaked presidential debate questions to Hillary Clinton's campaign. Her time at Fox was filled with occasional shouting matches and criticism from Donald Trump 'We are completely uncomfortable with what we have learned about her interactions with the Clinton campaign while she was a CNN contributor,' CNN said in a statement at the time of their split. Brazile expressed disappointment with the way things ended years later when talking to Variety. 'I dont like the way we split,' Brazile said. 'I came out of 2016 bruised and battered and emotionally distraught. I didnt think I would ever get myself to go back out there.' Brazile also has a long political history in addition to her time as DNC chairwoman, working with Jesse Jackson, Walter Mondale, and Richard Gephardt. She also managed the 2000 presidential campaign of Al Gore. Donna Brazile is the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Brazile is the third prominent figure to depart from Fox News recently, joining Fox & Friends Weekend co-host Jedediah Bila and former White House correspondent Kristin Fisher, who has been hired by CNN. Fisher was criticized by viewers for a November segment in which she debunked the election fraud claims of Trump's lawyers. Juan Williams also recently left The Five so he could stay in Washington DC with his family, though he is set to continue on at the network. Williams was the liberal voice on the round table show, a slot Brazile could have been a contender to fill. She is the second liberal voice to make a big move at Fox News recently after Juan Williams (pictured) left The Five, though he's expected to stay on with the network The New York Times reports that the various changes at Fox News is allowing more pro-Trump figures to make waves with the network. Greg Gutfeld and Dan Bongino, both Trump supporters, now have prominent time slots at the network. Fox News also canned politics editor Chris Stirewalt - who was a major part in the network's call for Joe Biden in Arizona during the election - and recently brought in a new editor, Kerri Kupec, who was a spokeswoman for William Barr. In other moves feeding into partisan politics on cable news networks, MSNBC replaced Chris Matthews with Joy Reid in primetime and CNN dumped Rick Santorum after he made remarks about Native Americans. A Fox News spokesperson said they are proud of their array of reporters, and cited foreign correspondent Trey Yingsts coverage of Israel, Jennifer Griffins coverage of the Pentagon, and Bill Melugin and Aishah Hasnie's coverage of the Mexican border crisis. Anti-immigration protesters marching against migrant crossings have brought traffic to a standstill in the busy port of Dover. Lorries lined up along the A20 and are unable to reach the key trade terminal and a heavy police presence is on the scene. About 50 people, many carrying England flags, were loudly demonstrating as they walk along the dual carriageway towards the town. The small group of mostly chanted 'English streets' while holding banners reading 'stop the invasion'. Anti-immigration protesters marching against migrant crossings have brought traffic to a standstill in the busy port of Dover Lorries lined up along the A20 and are unable to reach the key trade terminal, and a heavy police presence is on the scene Anti-migrant protesters block a street as they demonstrate in Dover against immigration and the journeys made by refugees crossing the Channel to Kent One protester, reclining on the tarmac in front of police, remarked: 'If you can't go abroad, lie in the street in Dover.' At one point a woman walked into the group of anti-immigration protesters to loudly confront them and was met with shouts. Officers have detained one man so far, pursuing him past a fun fair and confronting him in a shop. A large police presence is stationed around the Kent town to oversee the demonstrations, given levels of disorder in the past. A protest last September saw anti-migrant protesters bring traffic at the busy port to a standstill amid clashes with riot officers. A large police presence is stationed around the Kent town to oversee the demonstrations A protester holding up traffic chants as a police officer confronts him. A protest last September saw anti-migrant protesters bring traffic at the busy port to a standstill amid clashes with riot officers About 25 people wearing lifejackets and face masks were brought into Dover by Border Force earlier this morning About 50 people, many carrying England flags, were loudly demonstrating as they walk along the dual carriageway towards the town At one point a woman walked into the group of anti-immigration protesters to loudly confront them and was met with shouts An anti-migrant protester waving a St George's flag tries to block a road during a demonstration in Dover The demonstrations in 2020 carried out amid the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic saw 10 people arrested. The latest protest comes as people continue to make the dangerous journey across the English Channel in small boats. About 25 people wearing lifejackets and face masks were brought into the port by Border Force earlier on this morning. More crossings are anticipated as UK and French authorities continue to operate in the narrow Dover Strait. The number of people crossing the 21-mile stretch of water has almost doubled so far in 2021, with more than 3,100 reaching the English coast. Hartford City, IN (47348) Today Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. High 93F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 50%.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%. Advertisement The partner of billionaire Tory peer Lord Ashcroft's son is refusing to cooperate with police, officials say, after she was arrested over the fatal shooting of a senior police officer in Belize. American Jasmine Hartin - who is in a relationship with businessman Andrew Ashcroft - was held after the lifeless body of police chief Henry Jemmott was found floating in the sea off the eastern coast of Central America. Investigators say the pair are friends and had been drinking together before the body was discovered in the early hours of Friday morning. Locals heard a single gunshot ring out into the night and Superintendent Jemmott, a married family man, was found with a fatal wound to his head, behind his right ear, with his gun nearby. When officers arrived, an 'emotional' Mrs Ashcroft was on the pier above the water with her arms and clothes stained with blood, Belize police commissioner Chester Williams said. She was then arrested but is still not helping police with their enquiries into the tragedy, as it is understood she is waiting for legal representation. Commissioner Williams told a press conference her refusal to speak 'raises some red flags' despite it being her right under the Belizean Constitution. 'The situation is such that it does require an explanation from her,' he added. The Commissioner insisted he was keeping 'an open mind' as to whether the death was suicide, accident or murder, but Supt Jemmott's sister has emphatically rejected suggestions that her brother might have taken his own life. Ms Hartin, a former estate agent, is in a relationship with the leading Tory donor's son, and the couple live in the Caribbean nation, where they launched a luxury hotel together. Andrew, 43, is the youngest of Lord Ashcroft's three children from his first marriage and is a citizen of Belize, where he lives and works with Jasmine in San Pedro, the main town on the island of Amergris Caye. It lies off the coast of Belize and is a popular holiday destination. According to sources, American Jasmine Hartin is in a relationship with Andrew Ashcroft, who is the son of billionaire businessman and leading Tory donor and former deputy chairman of the party Lord Ashcroft Local media have named the dead officer as Superintendent, Henry Jemmott who was shot dead in the early hours of Friday morning Jemmott's body is seen being brought to shore on Friday morning after it was seen floating in the sea earlier that day The death of the police chief, who had spent over 20 years in the force, shocked people in Belize, where he was a well-known figure Lord Ashcroft has business interests in Belize. Pictured: Lord Ashcroft and Lord Steinberg in the Robing Room of the House of Lords Jasmine Hartin is pictured with her partner Andrew Ashcroft at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for their new resort on May 7 Lord Ashcroft: The Tory donor who has faced questions over his tax payments Born Michael Anthony Ashcroft in Chichester, West Sussex, he became one of the country's wealthiest men after buying up a string of companies. He also sat on the Conservative benches of the House of Lords until 2015, having been created a life peer in 2000. But Lord Ashcroft, who holds dual British and Belizean nationality, came under fire in 2017 when he was named in the controversial Paradise Papers - a leak of secret documents laying bare the financial affairs of the global elite. At one stage, he was forced to deny allegations he hid in the toilet to avoid questions about his offshore investments - claiming he just needed 'a pee'. The former deputy chairman of the party was filmed by a Panorama journalist and could be heard repeatedly saying 'dear dear dear' as he was followed around the Tory conference before heading to the toilet. Lord Ashcroft, who has an estimated fortune of 850million, faced a torrent of online abuse over the exchange and responded by repeating his words 'dear dear dear'. When asked if he was hiding from the journalist he said: 'No hiding..went in ...had a pee..and walked out'. The documents revealed the billionaire continued to avoid paying tax despite Parliament's efforts to make peers pay their full share. Lord Ashcroft was domiciled in Belize for tax purposes when it was widely believed he had given up his non-dom status to pay tax, the explosive papers showed. He refused to speak to the BBC's Richard Bilton when quizzed at the Tory Party Conference about having tens of millions in the offshore Punta Gorda Trust. He led Mr Bilton through the conference hall, at one point holding his hand, repeatedly muttering 'dear, oh dear, oh dear' under his breath. While most Britons have to pay tax on everything they earn, privileged non-doms are only taxed on the income they earn in the UK. When questioned, Lord Ashcroft, who has donated millions to the Conservative party and is still hugely influential in British politics, refused to comment. He denied any 'impropriety or wrongdoing' when asked questions about his non-dom status in 2010. When Lord Ashcroft entered the House of Lords in 2000, Parliament tried to force the controversial peer to pay the full amount of British tax. He promised to become a permanent resident in the UK, which would have meant giving up his status as a UK resident whose full-time domicile is out of the country. William Hague, who was then leader of the Conservative Party at the time, told Parliament that Lord Ashcroft becoming a peer would 'cost him [Lord Ashcroft] and benefit the Treasury tens of millions of pounds a year in tax'. Yet Lord Ashcroft, who was ranked the 74th richest person in the UK by the Sunday Times Rich List 2015, managed to convince officials that he should be allowed to become a long term resident of the UK rather than becoming a permanent resident. This slight distinction meant that Lord Ashcroft was able to retain his non-dom status in Belize, where he once served as the nation's ambassador to the United Nations. Advertisement After Ms Hartin was visited by one of Belize's most high-powered lawyers, Godfrey Smith, Supt Jemmott's sister declared that her brother would 'never' commit suicide. Asked about the possibility of suicide, Marie Jemmott Tzul told 7 News Belize: 'I would say bull! My brother would never kill himself. 'My brother had a passion for life, he looked forward for his children, his five children and his finance and me and the other family members.' She said the family knew nothing of Mr Jemmott's relationship with Ms Hartin, who according to police were friends. 'They only know that he got shot, there was a female there and he was found in the water, that's all the family knows so far,' she said. Asked whether she thought the single gunshot wound behind his right ear which killed her brother could have been accidental, she said: 'Well, I cannot say that, 'I will leave that to the investigators and I ask that God open their hearts and minds as they do this investigation, so that the truth may fall in place. 'What happened, we don't know, I don't know. So we are depending on the police investigation to set the record straight for us. I believe he was killed. Lord Michael Ashcroft, 75, once served as Belizes ambassador to the United Nations and is the former deputy chairman of the UKs Conservative Party. Commissioner Williams said the investigation will not be compromised by high-powered political pressure, but said he had briefed the Prime Minister of the former British colony on the eastern coast of Central America on the case. He said: 'We have to keep an open mind in the investigation. But there is no suggestion to say there is any third actor. 'Inspection of the body should tell us a lot in terms of proximity and trajectory which will assist in determining the distance from which the shot was fired as well as whether or not Mr Jemmott could have caused his own injury or it was caused by someone in his close proximity.' Mr Jemmott's service weapon was found nearby. The officer had requested 'personal leave' from the police before the incident. Commissioner Williams added: 'From what we have gathered so far Mr Jemmott and a female, one Jasmine, were socialising on a pier somewhere in San Pedro. This was after 12.30am which was [Covid] curfew time. 'One single gunshot was heard. And upon investigating police found the female on a pier. And she had what appeared to be blood on her arms and her clothing. 'A firearm was also seen. That has been retrieved. The firearm belonged to the police and was assigned to Mr Jemmott, so he had it on him at the time. 'And inside the waters right near the pier police recovered the lifeless body of Mr Jemmott with one apparent gunshot wound behind the right ear. 'He was taken to the San Pedro clinic where he was found dead on arrival. Currently we have Miss Jasmine Ashcroft in custody and she is being investigated in the shooting of Mr Jemmott.' The police commissioner said Mrs Ashcroft 'was somewhat in an emotional state' when she was found on the pier and was later taken into custody. Forensic tests were not carried out to swab her for gunshot residue, he said, and she had not initially co-operated with police. Lawyers were last night flying into Belize to represent her. 'She was not co-operating,' the police chief said. 'She requested that she needed to have an attorney present in order for her to say what she wants to say, which is part of her rights.' There was no surveillance footage from CCTV cameras available, Commissioner Williams told the media briefing. He added: 'They were alone on the pier and were fully clothed. I cannot say the nature of the relationship. Only they can say. We know they are friends.' A curfew is in place between midnight and 5am as part of the island's Covid restrictions but officers have interviewed people in the area in case they witnessed anything. Lord Ashcroft did not respond to a request for comment. Jemmott's body is seen being retrieved from the sea on Friday morning. He died from a single wound to the head, fired from his own service weapon The police chief's body was found floating off the end of this pier in the early hours of Friday morning Jemmott was a well-known figure in Belize, particularly in the San Pedro area which he commanded for several years. On Friday, as news of his death spread, shocked colleagues sent their condolences to his family Jemmott was a long-serving member of the Belize police force, having joined the force in 2000 Jasmine Hartin's partner Andrew Ashcroft, 43, has lived in Belize for over 20 years, he said. His father is Lord Ashcroft, a well-known British political donor and former deputy chairman of the Conservative Party American Jasmine Hartin Ashcroft works as the Director of Lifestyle and Experience at the resort, which opened May 7 Godfrey Smith, the former Attorney General of Belize, is seen on Friday morning. He has flown in to the island to represent Hartin Superintendent Jemmott was commander of precinct two in Belize City, the largest city in the Central American country Superintendent Jemmott was commander of precinct two in Belize City, the largest city in the Central American country. Lord Ashcroft has extensive business interests in Belize with his son Andrew recently responsible for overseeing the development of a luxury resort on Amergris Caye called Alaia Belize. Made up of lavish beach front condos, it states on its website that Andrew is a citizen of Belize and has ties going back to the country for 'generations,' while Jasmine Hartin is described as his partner who is the project's Director of Lifestyle and Experience. It also stated that Andrew is a former director of the British Caribbean Bank and has been responsible for funding a number of high-profile real estate developments in Belize and the surrounding region. Referring to Jasmine, it states: 'Along with her [partner], Andrew Ashcroft, Jasmine has played an integral role in shaping the vision for Alaia Belize from the very beginning. 'Her passion for Belize and her appreciation for the local nature and culture have been guiding forces as she has collaborated with the entire development team on every aspect of the experience, from the master plan and amenity curation to interiors and social programming.' Tributes have been paid to Superintendent Jemmott, who was well known in Belize. The country's coast guard, which works closely with the country's police force was amongst the first to express its sorrow. Acting Commandant Commander Gregory Soberanis wrote to Belize's police chief, Chester Williams: 'His service to his Department and country will not be forgotten. Today we mourn his loss, but honour is duty to service. 'On behalf of the Belize Coast Guard our deepest sympathies as we stand together with the Police Department in this time of bereavement.' Advertisement Thousands of people who claim the coronavirus pandemic is a hoax gathered in central London to protest against the mass vaccination rollout in a United for Freedom demonstration. Protesters gathered in Parliament Square on Saturday at a Unite for Freedom rally with some claiming the pandemic is a hoax while others carried placards reading 'My body, my choice'. Some held signs which read 'We do not consent', 'You have no power over us', and 'We're not guinea pigs'. This evening, a group staged a demonstration in the Shepherds Bush site of the Westfield shopping centre, causing 'significant disruption' for shoppers and leading to warnings from the police. Met Police wrote in a statement on Twitter: 'The third demo is now at Westfield and is causing significant disruption to the local community and businesses, police are at the location. 'The MPS strongly urge those who are taking part in this demo to go home. Failure to do so may result in enforcement action being taken.' Crowds clash with police outside Westfield London during the Unite For Freedom demonstration on Saturday Protesters held signs reading 'my body my choice' and set off smoke bombs at the demonstration in central London Several signs read 'you have no power over us', 'facts not fear', 'no to vaccine passports' and 'facts not fear' Several smoke bombs were set off during the protest at Parliament Square and one firework was also launched A London Bus is covered in anti-vaccine stickers near Trafalgar Square following the anti-vaccine protest in central London One sign reads 'I need to be able to tell my kids I wasn't silent' and another 'Sheeple, since when do you trust big Pharma?' It is thought many of the crowd travelled from outside of the capital to take part in the gathering. Earlier today several people set off smoke bombs and one launched a firework in demonstrations around London. One man, who did not give his name, said he had come to the capital 'because I want to be free and I want you to be free and the Government are lying to us.' Thousands gathered to protest against the vaccination rollout across the UK and lockdown restrictions It is thought that no one at the mass gathering was wearing facemasks and some held signs opposing masks One said they had attended the protest because the press 'are lying to us' and they did not believe the government A London bus was covered in anti-lockdown and anti-vaccination stickers near to the protest One protester holds a sign that reads 'say no to lockdowns, masks [and] vaccine passports' India Langman, 21, stands in a fountain at Trafalgar Square after attending the 'United For Freedom' rally on Saturday Protestors carried a large banner during the 'Unite For Freedom' march, which moved to Trafalgar Square Another said she had attended because the press 'are lying to us.' By lunchtime, the crowd had started to disperse and headed to Whitehall, with some walking to Trafalgar Square. Pictures showed a London bus covered in anti-vaccination stickers. The protest comes just one day after Johnson and Johnson's single dose covid vaccine got the green light from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), three months after it was submitted for approval. The vaccination will be available later this year. The approval makes it the fourth coronavirus vaccine to be given the green light in Britain, following ones made by Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Moderna. All of the other jabs currently being rolled out in Britain require two doses given at least eight weeks apart. Many who attended the protest said that they don't believe the government or press Many held signs protesting against vaccination passports when restrictions lift on June 21 One sign read 'we're not guinea pigs' as part of the protest against vaccinations and government restrictions One firework was also set off during the protest in Parliament Square on Saturday, and police were at the scene Several people carried yellow umbrella's with 'my choice' written on them while others carried placards and flags Social distancing rules were not adhered to during the protest in central London on Saturday and no masks were worn A demonstrator holds a placard during the protest which reads 'free your face' In April, the European Medicines Agency ruled that the jab should come with a clear warning about a serious blood clotting disorder. It made the same recommendation for AstraZeneca's jab. Both vaccines have been linked to serious blood clots that have occurred alongside abnormally low blood platelet count, known as thrombocytopaenia. Health Secretary Matt Hancock said it was a 'further boost to the hugely successful vaccination programme, which has already saved over 13,000 lives'. He added: 'It means that we now have four safe and effective vaccines approved to help protect people from this awful virus. 'As it is a single-dose vaccine, it will play an important role in the months to come as we redouble our efforts to encourage everyone to get their jabs and potentially begin a booster programme later this year.' Several people have said that they do not believe the press or government are telling the truth about the pandemic One sign read 'we are ordinary people trying to protect our freedom and rights so our children have a future' People turned out at the mass rally in central London to protest against vaccinations Several protesters had smoke bombs which they set off in Parliament Square as part of their demonstration A woman holds a sign reading 'we do not consent - reclaim your freedom' while others carry flags in the background A man holds a sign reading 'I'm not anti mask you are anti face' while others sit as part of the protest and wave flags As well as placards, demonstrators also carried flags in Parliament Square representing different areas in the UK Pictured is a man wearing a gas mask and carrying models of how the virus looks under a microscope Placard-waving protesters gathered near in Parliament Square this afternoon as part of the Unite for Freedom rally Some of the protesters were wearing specially-designed T-shirts for their day demonstrating in the capital, with this group stood near Winston Churchill's statue Police officers on bikes squeeze through a small gap near the protesters demonstrating for the Unite for Freedom march today Several protesters seem to be heckling the officers passing by the scenes of the march in Parliament Square while others took photos A protester sets off a flare near the Queen Tower and the Houses of Parliament while another saw an opportunity for a picture This demonstrator tried to get her point across with a sign as she is surrounded by other people on the Unite for Freedom march Stickers were plastered across London in the wake of the protestors on the Unite for Freedom march Earlier this month, MailOnline reported that surge testing was being carried out in Bolton, Greater Manchester, and the London Borough of Hackney over concerns related to the Indian variant. But, figures showed that most Covid-19 patients in Bolton hospitals alone had not taken up the offer of a vaccine and up to 10,000 vulnerable people had also still not been jabbed. They cited reasons for refusing the vaccine including fear of needles, government conspiracy theories and concern over potential blood clots. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been urged by Tory MPs to not delay the roadmap to freedom on June 21 for the sake of people who have been offered a jab and refused. President Joe Biden has ordered the government's leading research laboratories to join the search for the true origins of the COVID-19 pandemic by sifting through a massive trove of previously unexamined data, according to new reports. Biden on Wednesday ordered the 17 National Labs run by the Department of Energy to assist the intelligence community in a 90-day sprint to examine whether the virus leaked from a lab in China. The labs have been tapped 'because of their ability to crunch massive amounts of data' with their advanced supercomputers, a White House official told CNN. The government is not revealing exactly what kind of data is being submitted for analysis, but experts say it is likely previously gathered intelligence such as signal intercepts or biological evidence. President Joe Biden has ordered the government's premiere research laboratories to join the search for the true origins of the COVID-19 pandemic Equipment is seen at Livermore National Laboratory in California, one of the 17 National Laboratories to been called in to assist intelligence agencies in crunching data Intelligence agencies regularly collect more raw data than their analysts are able to effectively pore through, and the application of advanced algorithms to seek patterns in the massive data set could offer new breakthroughs. 'We want the science to be a big part of this,' the White House official told CNN. 'We are going to use the full resources of our intelligence and scientific community to try to get to the bottom of this.' Biden is also urging U.S. intelligence agencies and those of allies to hunt for new information that could shed light on whether China covered up a lab leak. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said the Biden administration's response was 'better late than never, but far from adequate.' 'Our intelligence community has been looking at this now for 15 months. They've done good work on it, but in the end the answer lies in the hands of Chinese communists, not people working for American intelligence agencies,' he told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Cotton said that officials in Beijing have not been forthcoming about how the pandemic began. 'We should be insisting that they come clean, that they provide us a clear and unvarnished look at what was happening in the Wuhan labs,' he said. Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains similar to the one responsible for COVID-19. Researchers are seen at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Biden's new 90-day probe will examine whether evidence supports the lab leak theory of the pandemic Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains China insisted early and often that the virus did not leak from the lab, claiming that crossover to humans must have occurred at a 'wet market' in Wuhan that sold live animals. Perhaps driven by animosity for Donald Trump, who embraced the lab leak theory early on, the mainstream U.S. media and academics heaped scorn on the possibility, calling it an unhinged conspiracy theory. But new evidence, including reports of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters. Frustration with China increased this week after Beijing said that it would not participate in any further investigations by the World Health Organization. Biden rebuked China in his announcement of the new intelligence review, calling on allies to help 'press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.' UK intelligence agencies are assisting in Biden's new 90-day intelligence review, a senior Whitehall security source told The Telegraph. The source told the publication: 'We are contributing what intelligence we have on Wuhan, as well as offering to help the American to corroborate and analyze any intelligence they have that we can assist with.' British intelligence agencies have generally been skeptical of the lab leak theory, while Australia's spies have been more open to it. While Britain and Australia already share intelligence with the U.S. as part of the Five Eyes partnership, Biden's new probe could prod them to redouble their focus on sharing evidence related to a possible lab leak. Meanwhile, House Republican Whip Steve Scalise and more than 200 of his GOP colleagues have also called for Speaker Nancy Pelosi to direct her Democrat-led committees to investigate China's complicity in causing the COVID pandemic. In a letter to the Democratic House Speaker, the Republicans said there is 'mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab' and the Chinese Communist Party 'covered it up'. 'If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide. These questions about the CCPs liability are not a diversion, as you falsely claimed,' the letter reads. Richard Walton (pictured), who led SO15 at the force from 2011 and 2016, blasted his old employers for saying they cannot stop every attack A former counter terror chief has slammed the 'creeping culture of complacency' at the Met and MI5 after the London Bridge inquest. Richard Walton, who led SO15 at the force from 2011 and 2016, blasted his old employers for saying they cannot stop every attack. He said it is 'unacceptable' to use this excuse for Usman Khan's November 2019 killings because mistakes were made. His scolding comes after an independent watchdog said extremists convicted of planning terrorist attacks should be given automatic life sentences. Jonathan Hall QC, the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, was speaking after an inquest jury concluded a litany of failings contributed to the unlawful killings of Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, at the hands of convicted terrorist Usman Khan. The senior lawyer said it was 'quite clear' Khan, who served eight years in jail for plotting to set up a terror training camp in Pakistan, was not safe for release. Meanwhile the Justice Secretary said convicted terrorists will be forced to take lie detector tests while they are on probation. Killers will face the polygraph testing to try to prevent a repeat of the London Bridge attack in 2019, according to Robert Buckland. Elsewhere ministers and the police apologised to the victims' families over the security 'shambles' that led to their deaths. But the relatives slammed the security services for their 'shambolic' blunders which contributed to the atrocity. Jack's parents David and Anne (pictured), both 56, said the way Khan was monitored was a 'shambles' and 'totally dysfunctional' Jurors concluded that 'missed opportunities' by the agencies contributed to the killing of Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, by jihadi Usman Khan Former Met counter terror chief Mr Walton told the Today programme: 'The errors here were very serious, should not have happened, it's unacceptable. 'What I'm concerned about is a creeping culture of complacency and I saw it again in the statement from the Met yesterday where they talked about the stark realities where you can never guarantee we will stop every attack. 'Well actually there's only one performance indicator in counter terrorism and that's the absence of terrorism. 'And in this case it could have been stopped so it's unacceptable to refer back to that point that not every attack can be stopped.' He added: 'What I'm not comfortable about is the current culture within the police and the intelligence services and I would like to see the Home Secretary and Secretary and State for Justice to commission a review of Jonathan Halls review of last year.' Mr Hall warned a similar attack by another released terrorist could not be ruled out and called for better sharing of information, including that held by the Security Service, to assess the risks posed by extremists once they are let out of prison. He said: 'I think it's hard to underestimate how serious Usman Khan's original offence was. 'He wanted to set up a training camp in Pakistan, to train terrorists to come back and kill people in the UK,' Mr Hall told BBC Radio 4's PM. 'My own view is that people who are convicted of attack planning should be given automatic life sentences and only released, if at all, when safe.' Mr Hall added: 'I think it's a shame that the law hasn't gone in that direction. 'Parliament has just changed the law on terrorism sentencing, but they didn't include that sort of provision.' He said the Government was acting to address the management of offenders following a review he carried out last year 'and I very much hope that what I found, which was the inability to share information, is going to be deeply remedied'. Mr Hall said an 'agile core group of practitioners' with the 'right security clearances' should be involved in managing offenders in the community. MI5 should be more confident about sharing information of an 'official sensitive' nature, below the highest levels of classification, 'rather than feeling it's too secret to share'. Ms Jones and Mr Merritt were stabbed by Khan at an alumni event put on by Learning Together, a prisoner education programme, on November 29 2019. Mr Hall warned that a similar attack could not be ruled out. 'Well, it can happen again. 'I mean, reoffending by terrorist offenders is extremely rare but you can't guarantee that they won't reoffend,' he said. 'When terrorist offenders are released, they will live amongst us. And they will be on licence for many, many years. And the authorities will never be able to completely exclude the possibility.' The government's Counter-Terrorism and Sentencing Bill, which was outlined in December, includes plans for terrorists under probation to have polygraph tests. It gives 'judges more discretion to decide a crime is terror-related, so that they can impose a tougher sentence'. The National Probation Service also created a National Security Division to double the specialist officers watching terrorism-risk offenders. Justice Secretary Mr Buckland said: 'Our security services, police, prison and probation officers epitomise public duty and these new powers and the Government's considerable investment will help them improve the tremendous, challenging work they do.' The government and police apologised to the victims of Usman Khan's terror attack in November 2019. Assistant commissioner of the Met Neil Basu said: 'The fact there were omissions or failures in the management of the attacker and in the sharing of information and guidance by the agencies responsible is simply unacceptable and I'm so deeply sorry we weren't better at this in November 2019.' Priti Patel said: 'It is important that the Government and operational partners learn lessons to prevent further incidents like this, and we will also consider the inquest findings.' The Home Secretary also vowed to 'always do everything in my power to keep the British people safe'. Khan was released from a maximum security jail in December 2018 after serving eight years for being part of a terror cell plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange London Mayor Sadiq Khan also said in a statement: 'My thoughts and prayers are with the families and loved ones of Saskia Jones and Jack Merritt. 'It's clear from the findings of the inquest that lessons must be learned and action taken to safeguard our communities and protect us from the dangers convicted terrorists pose in London and across the country. 'I want to pay tribute to the heroic efforts of our emergency services and the bravery of ordinary Londoners who ran towards danger that day to help save the lives of strangers. 'The way that our city responded and stood united in the aftermath of the attack showed the world once again that those who seek to divide us and destroy our way of life in London will never succeed.' The relatives of the two Cambridge graduates who were killed by Usman Khan lambasted the security services last night for their 'shambolic' blunders. At the climax of a dramatic inquest into the attack at Fishmongers' Hall in central London, a jury ruled MI5, the police and the probation service were all at fault. Jurors concluded 'missed opportunities' by the agencies contributed to the killing of Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, by jihadi Khan. They highlighted the 'serious deficiencies' and 'unacceptable management' of the team responsible for monitoring Khan, 28, after his release from prison for a previous terror offence. The jury said there was a 'blind spot to Khan's unique risk' because of his 'poster boy image' for prison rehabilitation. These failings meant police and probation officers believed he was a reformed character even though there were at least 40 warning signs that he craved martyrdom. Last night Jack's parents David and Anne, both 56, said the way Khan was monitored was a 'shambles' and 'totally dysfunctional'. The couple still cannot fathom why one of the UK's most dangerous terrorism inmates was allowed to travel 150 miles without a police escort to a prisoner rehabilitation conference in London within a year of his release. Dave Merritt, the father of Jack Merritt, speaks to the media alongside Jack's mother Anne Merritt (centre) outside the Guildhall, London, following the jury's verdict today Phil Jones, the uncle of Saskia Jones, speaks to the media outside the Guildhall, London, after the jury inquest into the attack Nightmare goes on for attack heroes Two heroes of the Fishmongers' Hall attack have seen their lives ruined after their criminal pasts were exposed. Images of John Crilly using a fire extinguisher to tackle Usman Khan on London Bridge were seen across the world. Mr Crilly, 50, was jailed in 2005 for the murder of Augustine Maduemezia, 71, who died in a robbery after being punched by his accomplice. The murder conviction was replaced with manslaughter in 2018. Mr Crilly had been out of jail for 11 months when he confronted Khan. But he now cannot find anyone prepared to rent a room to a man with a criminal record. 'I am trying to get into a homeless pod,' he said yesterday. Gareth Evans, 33, was another former criminal attending the rehabilitation conference. He attempted to comfort Saskia Jones, 23, after she was stabbed. 'I was trying to make sure she felt comfortable and safe,' he said. Mr Evans said: 'I am having flashbacks and nightmares. I have asked for help, some therapy, but am just getting passed around the system.' Advertisement It left Khan free to tape a knife to each hand and kill two and injure three others at the event. He was shot dead by police minutes later on London Bridge. In an interview with the Mail, Mr Merritt said: 'Ultimately it's the Government's responsibility it's the Ministry of Justice and the Home Office who dropped the ball. 'They had six years to decide what to do with Khan before he left prison and they messed it up. They just threw him into a haphazard system, which wasn't designed for terrorist offenders.' In a stinging attack, Saskia's uncle Philip Jones added: 'It is beyond understanding and astonishing that not one of the state agencies sufficiently considered the associated risk and therefore questioned the wisdom of sending Usman Khan unaccompanied to London.' The jurors were directed by Coroner Mark Lucraft QC to conclude that Mr Merritt and Miss Jones were unlawfully killed by Khan. They concluded their verdict by expressing 'heartfelt condolences'. Khan was released from a maximum security jail in December 2018 after serving eight years for being part of a terror cell plotting to blow up the London Stock Exchange. He had to wear an electronic tag and was supposed to be monitored by a multi-agency public protection arrangement (Mappa), made up of prison, probation and police officers. Mappa knew that Khan had spent his entire jail term trying to radicalise, bully and forcibly convert other prisoners. But astonishingly, officials believed he had changed his ways and sanctioned his trip to London. MI5, which had evidence of Khan's desire for jihad, and the police both chose not to send an escort. Speaking from Jack's family home in the village of Cottenham, Cambridgeshire, his mother told the Mail: 'The whole Mappa process was totally dysfunctional. 'It's life or death that they get these things right. It is catastrophic if that goes wrong. It is unforgivable.' 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 Victim Saskia Jones sat alongside Usman Khan at the London prisoner rehabilitation event Mrs Merritt added: 'There's no question in our minds that he was anything other than just as dangerous when he came out of prison.' Mr Merritt said: 'Everybody seems to have been walking around with their eyes closed and not seeing what they didn't want to see. Mappa was a shambles. It was badly run. They didn't know what they were dealing with.' Mr Merritt said there remains troubling questions as to why intelligence gathered by MI5 about Khan's desire for an atrocity was not widely shared. Despite the attack, they continue to support the rehabilitation ideals of Learning Together and reject the idea of longer prison sentences for terrorism offenders. The United States' top general has called on the White House to evacuate all 18,000 interpreters who helped US troops in Afghanistan over fears the Taliban will murder them. General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, says a plan has been drawn up to rapidly fly all 18,000 interpreters to safety - but the White House has pushed back against his call to use it. Speaking at a US Air force Academy commencement ceremony on Wednesday, Milley said: 'There are plans being developed very, very rapidly here for not just interpreters, but a lot of other people that have worked with the United States. 'We have a moral commitment to those that helped us.' Supporters of Milley's plea have called on the US to launch a similar effort to last year's COVID-19 repatriation flights, which saw 100,000 Americans quickly brought home to safety as the pandemic erupted. US troops are set to leave Afghanistan by July - well ahead of President Biden's desired September 11 withdrawal date. But military personnel warn that the hardline Taliban are already beginning to seize control of Afghanistan again - with its Islamist murder squads specifically targeting interpreters who have helped the US military. At least five have been murdered this month, with more than 300 killed since 2014. However, the White House immediately pushed back against Milley's call, with a National Security Council spokesman saying there were no 'plans for evacuations at this time' The spokesman added: 'The State Department is processing [special immigrant visa] applications in Kabul. They are focused on ensuring that the system functions quickly and consistent with U.S. security and other application requirements.' Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, pictured, called for all 18,000 interpreters who helped troops in Afghanistan to be evacuated to safety after the US withdraws Milley has since backtracked on his earlier comments, saying evacuations were one of many plans being considered. His spokesman Army Col. David Butler said: 'The physical evacuation of Afghans is one option of many being considered and it is not necessarily the primary option to safeguard Afghans at risk. An evacuation is not imminent.' Democrat and Republican lawmakers have also written to Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to impress upon them the urgency of the threat the interpreters are facing. Army veterans who fought shoulder-to-shoulder with the interpreters are also fundraising and lobbying the White House to save their comrades. At least five coalition translators have been murdered this year and former UK interpreters subjected to terrifying attacks as the Taliban regains territory held by the US since 2001. Retired U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Gerald Keen, of Grand Haven, Michigan, is among the most vocal campaigners for evacuation, and has started fundraising in an attempt to bring his interpreter to the United States. 'My fear is they will hunt him down,' said Keen, after the Taliban threatened to kill a young Afghan interpreter who worked with him. 'Not only him, his family,' Keen added. 'He'll be the last one killed if they find him. They'll kill his brothers, sisters, kids, wife and then, they'll kill him. And they'll behead him. They have no remorse.' As the US military prepares its final exit from Afghanistan, fears grow for the estimated 18,000 Afghan interpreters and families will be left stranded The interpreters face grave danger - torture and execution - from the Taliban, with five being murdered in the last month and 300 since 2014 Retired U.S. Army 1st Sgt. Gerald Keen says his interpreter Rahim and his wife and four kids will be murdered if they aren't brought out of Afghanistan Keen maintained a close friendship with his interpreter, who is referred to only by his first name of Rahim for his safety, soon after arriving in 2016. Before he left, Keen promised to do everything in his power to bring Rahim and his wife and four children to the United States. Keen said he suffered from PTSD from being under constant threat of attack during his deployments during Desert Storm, Iraq and Afghanistan. He said after one mortar attack on his base, he would seek out Rahim to make sure he was OK. 'He's just as much a soldier as I am because he helped the Americans and the coalition through the worst times of the war,' Keen told Woodtv.com. After returning to the United States in September 2016, Keen wrote to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services to support Rahim's immigration. 'He has shown tremendous strength and courage, while accepting a high degree of personal risk to himself, and family members,' Keen, who is from Grand Haven, Michigan, said. 'He and his family have been threatened and intimidated by Taliban, due to his faithful work with us. Additionally, rocket attacks occur near his village on a daily basis, which I, too, have experienced firsthand. As a result, he is afraid of what could happen if his family remains in Afghanistan.' Interpreters who have worked for two years are eligible for the State Department's special immigrant visa program. However, the program has been plagued by delays, resulting in many interpreters being stuck in limbo and fearing for their lives. Many interpreters who have risked their lives working with US troops for less than two years also complain that the program leaves them out unfairly. They say the length of service makes no difference to Taliban killers, who slaughter anyone locals who worked with the US military for any length of time. Rahim was approved for the special visa program in 2018, and submitted his official application two years ago. But the application has been held up in a bureaucratic quagmire. The interpreter told Woodtv.com that he had been placed on a Taliban hit list in January. He was told to take extra precautions for his and his family's safety. A relative had recently been shot in the face and killed by a Taliban sniper. 'Every morning, every evening, the (Taliban) are coming here, and they are attacking the checkpoints,' he told the Michigan-based station. 'They are not accepting the human rights. There is no humanity, and there is no love. Only the people are killing the people, which is very terrible.' The Keen family had raised $8000 on GoFundMe to cover medical exam expenses required. Afghan former interpreters for French forces gather during a demonstration at Shahr-e Naw Park in Kabul. No One Left Behind, a non-profit organization formed by veterans, has documented the deaths of more than 300 interpreters and their families since 2014. Its chairman James Miervaldis, who served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, told Fox News time was fast running out for the Pentagon to have the capability to help the stranded interpreters. 'The Taliban's going to attack the prisons, free all of their prisoners and then wreak havoc. You don't even need a crystal ball.' Florida Congressman Mike Waltz, a former Green Beret, agreed the situation was urgent. 'They're being hunted down right now as we speak. They are reaching out to me, these interpreters, in a panic,' he told Fox News. Attacks by the Taliban have intensified in recent months with at 231 civilians and 359 pro-Government forces being killed in the first two weeks of May. During a protest in Kabul on April 30, Afghan interpreters plead to be repatriated before the Taliban take over the country Twenty US Senators let by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire and Joni Ernst of Iowa wrote to Biden last week demanding the thousands of interpreters are provided with visas to come to the US. 'We are deeply concerned about the fate of these individuals after the departure of U.S. troops,' they wrote. 'There are already reports of Taliban threats targeting those who helped the U.S. once troops are withdrawn. These threats cannot be ignored.' Congressman Michael McCaul and Gregory Meeks, the ranking member and chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee have also expressed the dire need of the situation to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. 'The United States has a moral obligation and a national security interest in fulfilling its promises to those who have risked their lives to support our mission,' they told Blinken. The United States troops and their NATO allies intend to be out of Afghanistan by early to mid-July, well ahead of President Biden's September 11 withdrawal deadline, military officials said, in what has turned into an accelerated ending to America's longest war. Earlier in May, Mohammad Shoaib Walizada, an Afghan interpreter who worked with U.S. forces in combat operations between 2009 and 2013, told the AFP press agency the US must live up to its promises. 'The main thing we want is that we should be taken to the United States. That's what we were promised,' said Walizada, 31, who was shot in the leg when he was with U.S. forces in Ghazni in 2011. Another interpreter, who gave his name as Jaffry, pleaded for help. 'Please do not leave us behind, your forgotten heroes. The success of your fighting is because of the presence of these interpreters on the battleground.' Last week, the United Kingdom Government placed dozens of former Afghan interpreters on standby to leave the country. The UK's Ministry of Defence wrote to at least 50 interpreters telling them to be ready to relocate in weeks. 'Please make all necessary personal, professional, domestic and financial arrangements you need to in Afghanistan to facilitate this. Mothers of black sons and daughters killed by police have turned on Black Lives Matter and its departing director Patrice Cullors over their alleged greed. 'I don't believe she is going anywhere,' said Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot dead by Cleveland police as he played with a toy gun. 'It's all a facade. She's only saying that to get the heat off her right now,' she told the New York Post. Rice spoke after Cullors announced she was stepping down from Black Lives Matter on Friday, amid controversy over her $3 million property portfolio. The mom said that she had been in touch with Cullors over email in the hope of re-opening a federal investigation into her son's death in 2014, but said the pair had never met face-to-face. Samaria Rice the mother of Tamir Rice, has never met Patrisse Cullors, and believes she is only leaving Black Lives Matter to escape the heat over her $3 million property portfolio. In November 2014, Tamir Rice was killed in Cleveland, Ohio, by Timothy Loehmann, a 26-year-old white police officer. Rice was carrying a replica toy gun at the time of his killing Lisa Simpson the mother of Richard Risher has said she has not received a penny from BLM despite a local Los Angeles chapter offering to donate $,5000. RIght, Richard Risher was shot and killed by LAPD officers when he was 18-years-old in what police described as a 'running gun battle' Breonna Taylor's (right) mother Tamika Palmer (left) called out Black Lives Matter Louisville and using the word 'fraud' to describe the organization in a Facebook post last April Tamika Palmer gave credit to family, friends and local community activists for supporting her family in the year since her daughter's death, but described Black Live Matter as a 'fraud' 'They are benefiting off the blood of our loved ones, and they won't even talk to us,' she said. Rice's view is shared by Lisa Simpson, the mother of Richard Risher, 18, who died in July 2016 as he was chased by LAPD outside a housing project. Police said that Risher had a handgun leading police to fire 64 rounds. Breonna Taylor's mother, Tamika Palmer, has also said that BLM failed her. 'I have never personally dealt with BLM Louisville and personally have found them to be fraud (sic),' she wrote in an April Facebook post. Taylor was shot dead in a police raid at her home in Louisville, Kentucky in March 2020. Her killing became one of the key talking points of Black Lives Matter activists, and anti-police brutality campaigners, throughout last year. Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors announced on Friday she was stepping down as executive director of the organization amid controversy over her $3 million property portfolio Cullors faced fierce backlash over her personal spending - including the recent purchase of a $1.4 million home in a ritzy L.A. neighborhood (pictured) Speaking of Cullors' sudden departure from the organization, Simpson, 52, was blunt: 'Now she doesn't have to show her accountability. She can just take the money and run.' Simpson, who lives in Los Angeles, was told that her local BLM chapter raised $5,000 for her son's funeral. She has not received a cent. Simpson blasted Black Lives Matter for 'raising money in our dead sons' names and giving us nothing in return.' Black Lives Matter co-founder Patrisse Cullors has stepped down from Black Lives Matter but the organization she helped found is coming in for criticism from those it purports to help 'We never hired them to be the representatives in the fight for justice for our dead loved ones murdered by the police,' Rice and Simpson said in a joint statement earlier this year. 'The 'activists' have events in our cities and have not given us anything substantial for using our loved ones' images and names on their flyers. 'We don't want or need y'all parading in the streets accumulating donations, platforms, movie deals, etc. off the death of our loved ones, while the families and communities are left clueless and broken.' Simpson is hoping to secure justice for her son whom she claims was 'shot for running while black.' She set up the Richard Risher Foundation to raise funds after BLM activists did not help her. 'They called me an agent provocateur, a liar and crazy. I am the boots on the ground in this fight, not Black Lives Matter. 'I'm just a mother who lost my kid. I haven't gotten any justice and I don't even know what that looks like.' Black Lives Matter was established nearly eight years ago in response to injustice against black Americans but the foundation has recently been mired in controversy over its finances and the personal wealth of its founder, Patrisse Cullors. The BLM foundation revealed earlier this year that it managed to raise more than $90 million last year, following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. The foundation said it ended 2020 with a balance of more than $60 million, after spending nearly a quarter of its assets on operating expenses and grants to black-led organizations. But critics of the foundation contend more of that money should have gone to the families of black victims of police brutality who have been unable to access the resources needed to deal with their trauma and loss. Some have accused the group of profiting off the deaths including family members who have lost loved ones. On Friday, Cullors, 37, announced she was stepping down as executive director of the organization amid controversy over her $3 million property portfolio. Cullors and the foundation have said they support families, but without making public announcements or disclosing dollar amounts. Last summer, amid national racial injustice protests triggered by the police killing of George Floyd on Memorial Day, Taylor's name also became a rallying cry for those marching, demanding 'Justice for Breonna'. A protest is pictured in September 2020 On Friday, Patrisse Cullors said she was leaving BLM to focus on other projects, including the upcoming release of her second book and a multi-year TV development deal with Warner Bros. 'I've created the infrastructure and the support, and the necessary bones and foundation, so that I can leave,' Cullors stated. 'It feels like the time is right.' But her departure comes after it was revealed last month that she has amassed a $3 million property portfolio, despite describing herself as a trained Marxist''. Cullors faced fierce backlash over revelations about her personal spending - including the recent purchase of a $1.4 million home in a ritzy L.A. neighborhood. It caused many to question what percentage of BLM donations were actually going towards social justice programs, although there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of Cullors. However, she insists her resignation has been in the works for more than a year and has nothing to do with the personal attacks she has faced. 'Those were right-wing attacks that tried to discredit my character, and I don't operate off of what the right thinks about me,' Cullors told the Associated Press. Last month, she described the criticism as 'racist and sexist' smears deliberately put out by the 'right-wing media'. The head of New York City's BLM chapter has called for an independent investigation into the organization's finances after revelations about the property portfolio surfaced. 'If you go around calling yourself a socialist, you have to ask how much of her own personal money is going to charitable causes,' BLM organizer Hawk Newsome said. 'It's really sad because it makes people doubt the validity of the movement and overlook the fact that it's the people that carry this movement.' Black Lives Matter protesters take to the streets of Los Angeles in October 'TRAINED MARXIST' PATRISSE CULLORS' $3M PROPERTY PORTFOLIO In April, Cullors raised eyebrows when it emerged that she had spent $1.4 million on a Los Angeles property - her fourth home, and her third in the city - in an overwhelmingly white neighborhood. The plush property, located in Topanga Canyon, comes complete with a separate guest house and an expansive back yard. Cullors and her husband also purchased a 'custom ranch' on 3.2 acres in Conyers, Georgia last year for $415,000. The residence boasts its own pool and airplane hangar. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Cullors raised eyebrows when it emerged that she had spent $1.4 million on this residence in ritzy Topanga Canyon CONYERS, GEORGIA: Cullors and her husband also purchased a 'custom ranch' on 3.2 acres last year Additionally, property records show Cullors has bought two other Los Angeles homes in recent years. In 2016, she is said to have paid $510,000 for a three-bedroom home in Inglewood. In 2018, Cullors added another home to her property portfolio, by laying down $590,000 for a four-bedroom home in South L.A., the Post says. The New York Post reported that Cullors was also 'eyeing property at the ultra-exclusive Albany resort outside Nassau in the Bahamas where Justin Timberlake and Tiger Woods have homes.' The publication didn't cite sources for its information. LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: According to property records, Cullors also owns this LA home LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Cullors also owns a third LA property Advertisement Cullors has made much of her money from consulting on racial justice projects outside of BLM In 2020, the BLM foundation spun off its network of chapters as a sister collective called BLM Grassroots, so that it could build out its capacity as a philanthropic organization. Although many groups use 'Black Lives Matter' or 'BLM' in their names, less than a dozen are considered affiliates of the chapter network. In April, the foundation stated Cullors was a volunteer executive director who, prior to 2019, had 'received a total of $120,000 since the organizations inception in 2013, for duties such as serving as spokesperson and engaging in political education work.' 'As a registered 501c3 non-profit organization, (the foundation) cannot and did not commit any organizational resources toward the purchase of personal property by any employee or volunteer,' the foundation said in a statement. 'Any insinuation or assertion to the contrary is categorically false.' Cullors has made much of her money from consulting on racial justice projects outside of BLM. In 2018, she also released a best-selling autobiography titled: 'When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir. Meanwhile, Cullors has also been paid an advance for her second book. Cullors founded BLM with Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi in 2013, in response to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, who killed Trayvon Martin. A shopper was left horrified after spotting a mouse devouring $22.99-a-pound veal inside a butchery display case at a Manhattan Whole Foods supermarket. Brittany Ellis shared the clip on TikTok Monday, where it has since racked up more than 2.2 million views. In the footage, Ellis can be heard asking, 'Why is there a mouse?' The rodent can be seen nibbling on a raw slab of osso bucco veal, which retails for a pricey $22.99 per pound. Ellis told NBC New York that she began filming the mouse after trying to get someone's attention. Scroll down for video A viral video on TikTok is getting a response from Whole Foods after a mouse was seen eating on fancy veal in a butcher's case at a New York City grocery store In the video, the mouse can be seen approaching the fancy slab of raw veal 'I'm just there trying to get someone's attention, that's when I pulled out my phone and started recording because it was one in a million a mouse was just munching away,' Ellis said. Ellis captioned the video, '@wholefoodsofficials you doing bad guys not what I wanted to see today!!!!' @definebritt @wholefoodsofficials you doing bad guys not what I wanted to see today!!!! original sound - DefineBritt 'It made my skin crawl, I'm a big germaphobe,' Ellis continued to NBC. 'My mom didn't believe me at first, she had to get close and she was like, 'oh my God you're right.'' Ellis, 26, later told the New York Post that the gross incident unfolded at a Whole Foods location in Columbus Circle, Manhattan. 'I was extremely shocked,' Ellis told the Post about seeing the mouse. 'I talked to the manager and I talked to the butcher.' Brittany Ellis tried to get the manager to do something about the mouse, but was brushed off The video has racked up over 2.2 million views on the social media site since Monday Ellis, who was shopping with her mother, claims she was largely brushed off by the store's employees after bringing the problem to the staff's attention. 'First of all, he was a young kid, he was making a joke of it,' Ellis stated. 'The manager said he was going to bring this up to corporate, 'This is what Ive been telling corporate,' he said and then he walked offnothing was done.' 'You dont know what else [the mouse] could have been chomping down on,' Ellis added. 'It brings a lot of more questions to mind.' On Friday, butchery counter employees said they didn't know how a mouse could've gotten into the case. Whole Foods, for their part, said they are taking the video 'very seriously.' Brittany Ellis, who filmed the incident, has no plans to return to that Whole Foods location 'We immediately removed and disposed of all products in the case, performed a deep cleaning, and brought in a third party service for a thorough inspection,' a spokeswoman told the Post. 'The store diligently followed our detailed protocol in response and continues to work closely with our food safety team.' Nevertheless, Ellis has no plans to go back to that Whole Foods location ever again. That didn't stop at least one shopper from seeing the brilliance of the scurrying rodent, though. 'The mouse has expensive taste. He went for the good meat,' Bobby Matoney told the Post. 'We immediately removed and disposed of all products in the case, performed a deep cleaning, and brought in a third party service for a thorough inspection,' a Whole Foods spokeswoman told the Post (Columbus Circle location pictured) While most shoppers expect supermarkets to maintain high standards of cleanliness, most New Yorkers see bigger rodents on a regular basis. Newsweek estimated last June that there are around two million rats living in New York City. That would be the third-highest rat population in the United States, trailing only Chicago and Los Angeles. This is the dramatic moment a couple having a row on their second floor balcony crashed through the railings and plunged onto the pavement below. The seven-second clip shows Olga Volkova and Yevgeny Karlagin, both 35, appearing to be caught in a struggle on the floor of the balcony of their home in St Petersburg, Russia. In the footage caught by a passerby, the couple are suddenly hurled through the railings before smashing onto the concrete below. They were rushed to hospital with serious injuries, although they are not believed to be life-threatening. Witnesses said the pair, who share a young son, were arguing on the balcony at around 10am on Saturday. The St Petersburg state prosecutor's office is looking into whether the balcony was in disrepair, which could lead to prosecution. Olga Volkova and Yevgeny Karlagin, both 35, appeared to be caught in a struggle on the floor of the balcony of their home in St Petersburg, Russia, before crashing through the railing Olga Volkova can be seen falling first, wrapped in a cover, while holding onto her partner Yevgeny Eyewitness Denis told Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper: 'I was walking with my colleague and filming the historic street view. 'I noticed the row and began to shoot when this happened. 'Someone with medical experience was nearby, and checked their pulses, saying they had both survived. We called an ambulance.' While the man of the couple was dressed, the woman fell to the ground in her underwear with a cover wrapped around her. Local media said they both suffered broken limbs, but that there lives were not in danger. The couple fell from their balcony after getting into an argument at around 10am on Saturday, according to eye witnesses The pair are reported to have broken several limbs but are not believed to be in a critical condition at a hospital in St.Petersburg A Border Force patrol boat has been seen scouring the coastline near an upmarket Suffolk village today. At least three border force officers wearing protective gear were spotted in the vessel by a passerby off the coast of Walberswick. The well-off town has been dubbed 'Chelsea-on-sea' by locals due to it being a favoured 'bucket and spade' destination for affluent families from London. It is not known why the vessel was patrolling the water. Parts of the Suffolk coastline are used as landing spots for refugees smuggled across the North Sea in yachts and boats. A Home Office spokesperson told MailOnline: 'We do not routinely comment on the operational deployment of our Maritime assets.' A Border Force patrol boat has been seen scouring the coastline near an upmarket Suffolk village today So far at least 1,028 migrants landed in Britain in May alone. More people have arrived in May than any previous month this year, with 3,136 migrants arriving in 2021 so far. The figure is more than double the 1,330 who had arrived by May 15 last year. A Home Office spokesman said last week: 'Criminal gangs are putting people's lives at risk through these dangerous and unnecessary crossings. 'We are bringing legislation forward through our New Plan for Immigration which will break the business model of the people smuggling networks and save lives.' Earlier this week, it was revealed that illegal migrants who have overstayed their visa will have access to benefits such as the NHS automatically restricted under new plans to revolutionise the UK's border controls. Illegal migrants who have overstayed their visa will have access to benefits such as the NHS automatically 'switched off' under new plans to revolutionise the UK's border controls The plans, which were published on Monday, involve the introduction of digital visas which could come into effect as soon as 2025 and would allow the Government to restrict access to 'benefits, services and work' if their visa has expired. The digitisation of the country's borders will allow different Government departments to share real-time data with each other and even with employers. The Government believes the changes will reduce 'the major pull factors for illegal migration'. The document states: 'The accuracy and richness of operational data captured with the new model for digitising the border will enable greater certainty on whether a person is in or out of the UK at any given point in time. The use of automation to generate, or update, a digital status from a border crossing outcome event will enable the ability to accurately calculate and share a persons status with third parties and other Government departments that give access to benefits, services and work to those who are eligible. It will also deny them to those here illegally or without the necessary entitlements, reducing the major pull factors for illegal migration.' The document states an online service will be used to prove immigrants' right to work or right to rent. It will also allow system to system sharing of information with other government departments to enable access to public services such as the NHS. In an overhaul of border control, digital visas will allow Government departments to share data that can be used to prove immigrants' rights to work or receive benefits and access to the NHS The changes mean that departments such as the DWP would be able to automatically check an applicant's immigration status before approving universal credit payments, for example. Similarly, job applicants would no longer be required to prove their status because employers would already have access to the information. The Government says the work towards a digital system for immigration status will 'reduce costs and improve border security by reducing the possibility of forgery or theft' of identity documents. Priti Patel dodged the question of whether her major overhaul of the UK's immigration system will result in an increase or decrease in annual net migration when announcing the plans on Monday. On Monday Home Secretary Priti Patel (pictured) promised the wholesale reform of the UK's 'broken' immigration system as she unveiled plans for a 'fully digital border' within five years The Home Secretary vowed to 'fix' the 'broken' system as she claimed public confidence in British border control had been 'shot to pieces' in recent decades. She hailed the introduction of the UK's new Australia-style points-based immigration system and confirmed a crackdown on people arriving in Britain illegally as she said it is a 'sheer fantasy to say that we can give a home to anyone'. But she refused to be drawn on whether the overhaul will see net migration go up or down as she said she did not want to 'get into the language of old'. Responding to a question on the issue after her speech, Ms Patel added: This is not about the language of old and I am not going to get into that at all and of course on numbers, well, I think the big news actually is through the reform and my plans is that we will have greater accuracy on numbers. We will be able to count in and count out who is in our country for the first time ever so we dont have to work around the hypotheticals around net migration targets or numbers or things of that nature and even speculate about whether or not numbers will go up and down. Visitors wearing face masks as a precaution against COVID-19 arrive in the rain at Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul, May 28. AP-Yonhap Daily new COVID-19 cases here stayed in the 500s for the second consecutive day Friday as the health authorities strive to contain infection clusters and the spread of virus variants. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) reported 533 more coronavirus cases, including 505 local ones, raising the total caseload to 139,431. There were five additional fatalities, raising the death toll to 1,951, for a fatality rate of 1.4 percent. Daily caseloads have been going through some ups and downs between the 400s and 700s in recent months with no significant signs of a letup as infection clusters continue to be reported across the country. Of the 505 new local infections, 343 cases were in the greater capital area, with 190 in Seoul, 136 in Gyeonggi Province and 17 in Incheon, 40 kilometers west of the capital. Allies of Jeremy Corbyn were last night accused of preparing for a Labour leadership contest amid warnings that Sir Keir Starmer will be 'finished' if the party loses a crucial by-election this summer. Ian Lavery, the party chairman when Mr Corbyn was leader, faced claims of plotting to boost the hard Left's grip on Labour's grassroots membership, who will play a vital role in picking a new leader. In an email seen by The Mail on Sunday, Mr Lavery told fellow members of the giant Unite union whose leaders has been fiercely critical of Sir Keir that they could change the direction of the Labour Party if they became more active. Allies of Jeremy Corbyn were last night accused of preparing for a Labour leadership contest amid warnings that Sir Keir Starmer will be 'finished' if the party loses a crucial by-election this summer Mr Lavery, a former miner, urged them to take positions on Labour constituency parties, saying that it would mean doubling the power of Unite members in the party. The move came just weeks after former Corbyn aide Karie Murphy, a close ally of Mr Lavery, revealed that a 'new Left' was mobilising and raised the prospect that it would take back control of Labour. It also comes ahead of a parliamentary by-election on July 1 in the Labour-held seat of Batley and Spen in West Yorkshire, with predictions that Sir Keir will be a 'dead man walking' if his party fails to hold the seat after losing its former stronghold of Hartlepool to the Tories earlier this month. Ian Lavery (above), the party chairman when Mr Corbyn was leader, faced claims of plotting to boost the hard Left's grip on Labour's grassroots membership, who will play a vital role in picking a new leader Last night, allies of Sir Keir accused Mr Lavery of being part of a plot to prepare the ground to install a 'Corbyn Mark 2' leader later this year. They also hit out at Unite whose general secretary, Len McCluskey, has warned that Sir Keir could be consigned 'to the dustbin of history' for allegedly wasting 2 million of its members' money in a failed libel battle with ex-Labour MP Anna Turley. One senior Labour MP said the union could have settled for an apology to Ms Turley and less than 5,000 of her legal costs, but instead presided over a 'shocking waste of its members' money'. Unite insisted last night the 2 million figure was 'false' and denied it had wasted members' money. A spokesman said it had been defending the union's reputation and denied that the case could have been settled so cheaply. However, Mr Lavery's intervention last week fuelled concerns across the party over Sir Keir's leadership after the Hartlepool defeat and ahead of the by-election at Batley, where the party has a slim 3,525 majority over the Tories. The Mail on Sunday understands that even some on the Right of the party are resigned to having to replace Sir Keir but hesitate to trigger a leadership contest because they fear members will elect another Corbyn-style, hard-Left leader. To boost its hopes of holding the seat, Labour's candidate will be Kim Leadbeater, sister of former Batley MP Jo Cox, who was murdered in 2016 by a far- Right extremist. However, in a major blow to the party's prospects of holding Batley, maverick former Labour MP George Galloway confirmed last week that he would fight the seat for his Workers Party of Britain. Last night, allies of Sir Keir accused Mr Lavery of being part of a plot to prepare the ground to install a 'Corbyn Mark 2' leader later this year Mr Galloway sought to appeal to Labour voters disillusioned with their leader by saying that defeat would be 'curtains for Keir' and would make him 'the only Opposition leader in history to lose two seats to the Government in the same year'. But Mr Galloway's main threat to Labour holding the seat is thought to come from the pro-Palestinian campaigner's appeal to Batley voters of Pakistani and Kashmiri origin in the wake of the recent explosion of violence between Palestinians and Israel in the Middle East. Last night, Mr Lavery insisted it was 'utter nonsense' to see his intervention as a 'potential takeover', saying that he was simply trying to 'encourage discussion and debate'. He also denied that he was still angry at Sir Keir for sacking him as party chairman last year, saying: 'I wasn't bitter then and I'm definitely not bitter now.' But one senior Labour MP said: 'It's crystal-clear what's going on here. It's all part of what Karie Murphy was threatening, with Lavery gingering up the Unite activists to get control of local Labour parties and make sure they nominate a suitably Left-wing leadership candidate.' A violent foreign criminal desperate to leave Britain has been kept in detention for eight months because the Home Office cannot get him on a plane home and he is now suing the Government for compensation. Michal Dolana, 41, was convicted of grievous bodily harm after attacking his girlfriend last year. Dolana, who came to the UK from the Czech Republic two years ago, was arrested in March 2020 and held on remand until his conviction in September. He pleaded guilty to GBH and was sentenced to 21 months in jail, but volunteered to leave the UK on October 2 as part of an early removal scheme for jailed foreign offenders. Michal Dolana, 41, was convicted of grievous bodily harm after attacking his girlfriend last year His lawyers say he could have been removed after signing the early removal agreement, but flights to the Czech Republic were halted due to Covid-19. Dolana, who had been living in Gillingham, Kent, has asked the Home Office to let him take an indirect flight back to Prague via Paris or Amsterdam, but immigration officials are understood to have said that is contrary to Government policy and an escort could not be provided. Instead they are said to have issued four separate dates for his removal in March, April and two earlier this month, including one last week though none has been fulfilled. Flights to Prague from Stansted Airport have now resumed, but Dolana remains at Harmondsworth immigration detention centre, near Heathrow, at an estimated cost of 670 a week. Officials are believed to have issued a new removal date of June 21, but Dolanas lawyer Zafar Abbas said: We dont know whats going to happen on June 21. Theyve booked many flights before and nothings happened. He should have been moved after that [signing the early removal agreement] but he is still in detention. He added: We are bringing a claim that it is unlawful detention and asking for damages. Now they are just wasting our time and last week the Secretary of State [Priti Patel] asked for another seven days to respond. Dolana's lawyer accused the government of 'wasting time' and last week the Secretary of State [Priti Patel] asked for another seven days to respond The case comes as foreign criminals are avoiding deportation by refusing to take Covid-19 tests. Lucy Moreton, from the Immigration Services Union, said: We have a real issue with criminals refusing to take tests. A number of countries require negative tests and if they [foreign criminals] dont want to comply, theres very little we can do about that. Its an effective get out of jail free card. Countries including Pakistan, Jamaica, Nigeria and Ethiopia currently require all arrivals to provide negative Covid tests before entry. Latest Government figures show a record 10,373 foreign criminals who are subject to deportation orders are living in the UK. Last night, a Home Office spokesman said: We have removed more than 700 foreign national offenders this year. The Government is bringing forward a New Plan for Immigration that will stop the abuse of the system and expedite the removal of those with no right to be here. A retired Southwest Airlines pilot was sentenced to probation Friday after pleading guilty to exposing his genitals to a female first officer and watching pornography on a laptop during a flight from Philadelphia to Florida. Michael Haak, 60, apologized and expressed remorse for his actions before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson sentenced him to one year of unsupervised probation and a $5,000 fine. 'It started as a consensual prank between me and the other pilot. I never imagined it would turn into this in a thousand years,' Haak said during a remote hearing. Michael Haak pled guilty having been charged in federal court with lewd, indecent or an obscene act which was 'a prank' (file photo) Federal prosecutors said that Haak had never met the first officer before that flight bound for Orlando on August 10, 2020. After the plane reached its cruising altitude, Haak got out of the pilot's seat, 'disrobed' and began watching pornographic material on a laptop computer in the cockpit, prosecutors said. 'As the plane continued its flight, Haak further engaged in inappropriate conduct in the cockpit, as the first officer continued to perform her duties as an assigned aircrew member,' the statement says. The first officer submitted a statement to the court but didn't speak during Friday's hearing. The judge told Haak that his actions had a traumatic effect on the co-pilot and could have impacted the safety of passengers and other co-workers. Haak 'had a duty to comport himself in a much more responsible manner,' Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Cunningham said. Haak was in the cockpit commanding a Southwest Airlines flight from Philadelphia to Orlando on August 10 when he exposed his genitals to a female first officer (file photo) 'This is not the kind of aberrant behavior that anyone should accept,' the prosecutor added. Cunningham said the first officer 'unfortunately suffered some consequences' as a result of the incident that Haak 'didn't have anything to do with,' but he didn't elaborate. 'She had a right not to be subjected to this kind of behavior, regardless of what may have motivated it or prompted it,' the prosecutor said. Haak was charged in April with intentionally committing a lewd, indecent or obscene act in a public place, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 90 days in jail. He was charged in Maryland because it was one of the states that the aircraft passed over that day. Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of probation without requiring Haak to register as a sex offender. The judge wasn't bound by that recommendation. Haak, a resident of Longwood, Florida, was a Southwest Airlines pilot for 27 years until his retirement. His last flight for the Dallas-based airline was on August 31, 2020, three weeks after the incident that led to the criminal charge. Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz said in a statement that the airline 'does not tolerate behavior of this nature and will take prompt action if such conduct is substantiated.' Southwest only learned of Haak's behavior after he voluntarily left the airline, according to Mainz. 'Nonetheless, Southwest did investigate the matter and as a result, ceased paying Mr. Haak any benefits he was entitled to receive as a result of his separation from (the airline),' Mainz said. Defense attorney Michael Salnick said Haak had a sterling career as a commercial pilot and received numerous accolades and supportive letters from passengers and colleagues, including one from Southwest chairman and CEO Gary Kelly on the day of Haak's retirement. 'We are blessed that Southwest has been your home for so many years,' Kelly wrote. Haak accepts responsibility for his conduct and 'offers no excuses,' his lawyer said in a court filing. 'What began as a consensual prank at the encouragement of Mr. Haak's co-pilot has certainly grown into something Michael Haak never anticipated,' Salnick wrote. 'He is sorry and remorseful for his actions.' Salnick argued that Haak deserves a lenient sentence given his 'lifetime of hard work and kindness.' 'The embarrassment and resulting publicity of this incident has in and of itself been humbling to Michael Haak and has served as punishment in many ways,' he wrote. A university has apologised for sending staff a photograph of Prince Philip opening its library after it sparked complaints about the Dukes history of racist and sexist comments. Left-wingers working at Kings College London reacted angrily to an email bulletin they received after the Dukes death in April, featuring a photograph of him opening the universitys Maughan Library with the Queen in 2002. Following weeks of simmering tensions, Joleen Clarke, the associate director at Kings College libraries, sent out an extraordinary apology for the harm caused by including the photo in her email. The picture was included as a historical reference point following his death, she wrote last week. The inclusion of the picture was not intended to commemorate him. Left-wingers working at Kings College London reacted angrily to an email bulletin they received after the Dukes death in April, featuring a photograph of him opening the universitys Maughan Library with the Queen in 2002 Through feedback and subsequent conversations, we have come to realise the harm that this caused members of our community, because of his history of racist and sexist comments. We are sorry to have caused this harm. Free speech campaigners and MPs last night condemned the apology, labelling it the latest example of a cancel culture by woke activists on university campuses. Royal experts insisted it was wrong to accuse the Prince of being racist or sexist. Following the Dukes death, aged 99, the universitys interim principal, Professor Evelyn Welch, issued a public statement praising his long and valued association with Kings. He had been a governor since 1955. But internally there was outrage from the universitys Anti-Racism Community of Practice over Ms Clarkes email, which accompanied the photo with the explanation: As the nation marks the death of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, we thought you might like to see this photo of the Duke at the official opening of the Maughan Library in 2002, which some colleagues will remember. Those angered by the message include the colleges head of partnership and liaison, Vanessa Farrier, who was appointed in a new role last June to decolonise the librarys collection following Black Lives Matter protests. The universitys anti-racism group complained of harm caused by the email because the Prince had made a number of racist and sexist comments during his lifetime. The colleges head of partnership and liaison, Vanessa Farrier (pictured) He infamously referred to slitty eyes during a 1986 trip to China, and in 1961 he complained that British women cant cook. A source claimed Ms Clarke had been made to account for herself in a kangaroo court by colleagues, despite having played an active role in the universitys anti-racism programme. Rubbishing accusations that the Duke was racist, Royal expert Hugo Vickers said: Prince Philip and the Queen have spent their whole lives in service helping the Commonwealth. 'He may have said things at certain times to get a rise out of people, but he was the least racist person. In fact, he was very engaged in questions of equality and multi-racial societies going back to the 1950s. 'I dont think these people at Kings College know what they are talking about, frankly. Tory MP Sir John Hayes said: Kings College London is at the extreme end of the spectrum when it comes to inhibiting free speech. ' We need to flush out people in our universities who are determined with an almost Maoist zeal to close minds in places which ought to be bastions of free and open debate. Free speech campaigners and MPs last night condemned the apology, labelling it the latest example of a cancel culture by woke activists on university campuses. Royal experts insisted it was wrong to accuse the Prince of being racist or sexist. pictured, the Duke with the Queen Toby Young, of the Free Speech Union, added: The irony is that if it wasnt for people like Prince Philip putting their lives on the line to defend liberty and democracy, university lecturers wouldnt now enjoy the freedom to attack people like him. 'When a war hero dies, shouldnt these republican firebrands just say Thank you for your service, and save the political point-scoring for another day? Kings College London said: As we previously highlighted in an official university statement, Prince Philip had a long and valued association with Kings. For most of us, moths are merely the annoying pests that ruin our cashmere cardies in the wardrobe. But that view appears to be changing, as Britain now has 20,000 dedicated 'mothing' experts twice as many as when Covid hit. Incredibly, the new total is even more than during mothing's heyday in the Victorian era. Sales of the moth traps enthusiasts use to catch, identify and then release the insects have rocketed over the past year. Dr Zoe Randle, from the Butterfly Conservation charity, which is launching the UK's biggest moth conservation project in East Kent, said: 'Moths are seen as boring, drab, jumper-munching pests, and we want to change that. 'There are 2,500 different moths in Britain, and only two species eat clothes.' She also said the belief that moths were strictly nocturnal and were less beautiful than butterflies was unfair, adding: 'There are 145 day-flying moths in this country compared to 59 butterflies and many moths are just as beautiful, striking and colourful as butterflies. Around 10,000 Britons have taken up 'mothing' after 'getting closer to nature' during the coronavirus crisis During Covid, people got closer to nature and we believe there is now an opportunity for a massive renaissance for the moth.' Nature writer James Lowen, who has joined the crusade, said: 'For 20 years I thought they were small, brown, dull, eerie creatures of the night that destroyed my suits. But in 2012, I was converted when I saw a poplar hawk-moth. 'It was very large, silvery and angular and I was immediately smitten.' Mr Lowen, who has just published Much Ado About Mothing, a book about a 248-day trek he made across Britain searching for rare species, added: 'Moths are benign and glorious. 'They help pollinate our crops and wild plants and provide food for birds and bats. We should all be planting honeysuckle, jasmine, fuchsias and privet, which look good and help moths.' Advertisement Boris Johnson married girlfriend Carrie Symonds in a secret ceremony yesterday morning, the Mail on Sunday can reveal. Mr Johnson, 56, exchanged vows with Ms Symonds, 33, in Catholic Westminster Cathedral in front of a handful of close friends and family - becoming the first Prime Minister to marry in office since Lord Liverpool married Mary Chester in 1822. It comes just six days after the couple - who became engaged on the Caribbean island of Mustique in December 2019 and have baby Wilfred, aged one - sent out save-the-date cards to guests telling them to keep Saturday, July 30, 2022 free for a marriage celebration. Despite sending out the cards, the couple are understood to have been secretly planning the small ceremony for six months. Under current Covid rules there is a limit of 30 guests at weddings - although the cap is expected to be lifted on June 21st - 'freedom day' - when most restrictions are set to be lifted. With Mr Johnson pegged to be back at work next week, it looks unlikely the couple - who will make their debut appearance as husband and wife at the G7 summit in June - will have a honeymoon. One-year-old Wilfred attended the wedding, as did two official witnesses. Ms Symonds shared a picture of their son yesterday in a field of bluebells - which some speculated was a nod to the tradition of 'something blue'. Mr Johnson's sibling's Rachel, Jo and Leo Johnson are also understood to have attended, along with his father Stanley. The PM's top advisers in Number 10 were said to be astonished that the secret wedding had taken place. Boris Johnson married girlfriend Carrie Symonds in a secret ceremony yesterday morning, the Mail on Sunday can reveal Mr Johnson, 56, exchanged vows with Ms Symonds, 33, in Catholic Westminster Cathedral (pictured) in front of a handful of close friends and family - becoming the first Prime Minister to marry in office since Lord Liverpool married Mary Chester in 1822 The couple became engaged on the Caribbean island of Mustique in December 2019 and have baby Wilfred, aged one (pictured together with their dog Dilyn) Ms Symonds shared a picture of their son yesterday in a field of bluebells - which some speculated was a nod to the tradition of 'something blue' Mr Johnson's father, Stanley, was photographed outside No10 this evening with his daughter Julia, shortly after attending the service It comes just six days after the couple sent out save-the-date cards to guests telling them to keep Saturday, July 30, 2022 free for a marriage celebration. Pictured: Guests leaving Downing Street after the wedding. It is not clear what their relation to the newlyweds is Despite sending out the cards, the couple are understood to have been secretly planning the small ceremony for six months. Pictured: A guest leaving Downing Street after the wedding. It is not clear what their relation to the newlyweds is Musicians were also seen leaving Downing Street this evening. Ms Symonds wore a white dress, without a veil, for the ceremony and walked down the aisle to the strains of classical music One guest described Ms Symonds as looking 'extremely happy' and Mr Johnson as 'very smart and dapper....he didn't take his eyes of her'. Pictured: Musicians leaving Downing Street this evening The ceremony was officiated by Father Daniel Humphries (pictured). He baptised the couple's one-year-old son Wilfred last year and gave them their pre-marriage instructions. How can divorced people get married in a Catholic church? Carrie Symonds is a practising Catholic. Boris Johnson has also been baptised as a Catholic - a first for a sitting PM. Mr Johnson had earlier abandoned his mother's Catholicism, becoming an Anglican while at Eton. He said deeming himself a 'serious, practising Christian' would be 'pretentious' in a 2015 interview. But the PM - who is twice divorced - yesterday married Ms Symonds, 33, in Catholic Westminster Cathedral. They kissed after exchanging their vows for Father Daniel Humphreys, who baptised their son Wilfred into the faith at the same cathedral last autumn. He also gave the newlyweds their pre-marriage instructions. The Roman Catholic church does not allow divorcees to be married in its churches - but there are a couple of ways the newlyweds could have gotten around the rules. Catherine Pepinster, Catholic author and broadcaster, explained that as Boris Johnson was himself baptised a Catholic but married previously in non-Catholic settings, the church did not recognise his previous marriages. She said: 'As far as the Church is concerned, this is his first marriage. 'They don't need to be annulled. They didn't happen, according to Roman Catholic canon law.' In the eyes of Catholic law, civil divorces do not have any bearing. Those who are officially divorced are still married in the eyes of the Catholic church. As someone cannot be married to more than one person, divorcees cannot technically re-marry. But, previous marriages can be annulled in the eyes of the church. This relies on the church finding that the marriage was never properly entered into in the first place. The church recognises that divorce is sometimes necessary for non-Catholics to settle civil matters, such as childcare. Advertisement During Covid, many couples have held a small marriage ceremony with just close friends - while arranging a larger celebration for after the end of all restrictions. The 30 guests were invited at the last minute, with only a handful of church officials involved in the preparations for the service at 2pm yesterday. Armed police stood guard as visitors were ushered out half an hour earlier by staff who told them the building was going into lockdown. Ms Symonds wore a white dress, without a veil, for the ceremony and walked down the aisle to the strains of classical music. They kissed after exchanging their vows for Father Daniel Humphreys, who baptised Wilfred into the faith at the same cathedral last autumn. He also gave the newlyweds their pre-marriage instructions. Last night, cathedral chaplain Father Michael Donaghy admitted even he didn't know the identity of the VIP bride and groom until it was all over. He said: 'It's been kept very confidential.' One witness told how the party was 'bundled into a car' after leaving the cathedral. Ms Symonds is a practising Catholic. Mr Johnson was also baptised as a Catholic - a first for a sitting PM. A Westminster Cathedral spokesperson told the Sunday Times: 'On Saturday 29 May, the wedding of Carrie Symonds and Boris Johnson took place in Westminster Cathedral. 'The bride and groom are both parishioners of the Westminster Cathedral parish and baptised Catholics. 'All necessary steps were taken, in both church and civil law, and all formalities completed before the wedding.' A No10 spokesman said: 'The Prime Minister and Ms Symonds were married yesterday afternoon in a small ceremony at Westminster Cathedral. The couple will celebrate their wedding with family and friends next summer.' Mr Johnson had earlier abandoned his mother's Catholicism, becoming an Anglican while at Eton. An image of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus appears above the altar in the cathedral's Lady Chapel, where the couple were wed. One guest described Ms Symonds as looking 'extremely happy' and Mr Johnson as 'very smart and dapper....he didn't take his eyes of her'. A marquee was later spotted in the Downing Street garden, with reports of guests singing Don McLean's hit American Pie. Big Issue seller Adrian Richmond, 52, who was in the area that the time of the wedding, told The Sun: 'Somebody I recognise came out of a service there earlier in the day and said, "You wont believe who's getting married here later!" He said, "It's Boris Johnson". 'My jaw nearly dropped to the floor. This is smack bang in central London.' He added the PM 'deserved some happiness' after going through 'so much' with his coronavirus hospitalisation last year. It comes just six days after the couple - who became engaged in December 2019 and have baby Wilfred, aged one - sent out save-the-date cards to guests telling them to keep Saturday, July 30, 2022 free for a marriage celebration. Pictured: The PM's father Stanley Johnson outside No10 yesterday Ms Symonds waved with now-husband on the steps outside the famous black door following the Conservatives' thumping victory in 2019 Decor, dog fights and 'I dos': The Prime Minister's rollercoaster week Boris Johnson's reported wedding tops off a bumpy week that saw him savaged by his former right-hand man, condemned for Islamophobia and criticised for his laissez-faire approach to his finances. Here is a breakdown of the many fronts the Prime Minister has been fighting. May 24: 'To be or not to be' in the Cobra meeting, that was the question Mr Johnson had to face. No 10 was forced to deny that claims published in the Sunday Times that Mr Johnson skipped emergency planning sessions in the early days of the pandemic to work on a biography of William Shakespeare. The paper claimed the PM had been frantically working on the tome because he needed the money to fund his divorce from Marina Wheeler, his second wife. Asked if the Prime Minister had spent time on the book, his official spokesman said: 'No, not that I'm aware of.' May 25: Mr Johnson was forced to eat humble pie over comments in a 2018 Daily Telegraph column claiming women who wore the burka look like 'letter boxes' and 'bank robbers'. An independent review into alleged Islamophobia and discrimination in the Conservative Party found the PM's comments gave the impression the Tories are 'insensitive to Muslim communities'. Mr Johnson said he was 'sorry for any offence taken' over the comments, telling the investigation: 'Would I use some of the offending language from my past writings today? Now that I am Prime Minister, I would not.' May 26: Mr Johnson's embittered former chief adviser Dominic Cummings was out to do as much damage as possible as he gave evidence to MPs about the handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. In a marathon seven-hour sitting of the Science and Technology Committee, Mr Cummings said he regarded Mr Johnson as 'unfit for the job' of Prime Minister. Mr Cummings repeatedly referred to Carrie Symonds as the PM's 'girlfriend' rather than 'fiancee' - perceived by some as a sly dig at the woman who reportedly helped force him out of his job. The architect of the Vote Leave campaign also seemed determined to do his best to sink Health Secretary Matt Hancock, saying he had repeatedly called for him to be sacked. He claimed Mr Hancock had lied about his ability to deliver on his policy of carrying out 100,000 Covid-19 tests a day in April 2020, branding it 'criminal, disgraceful behaviour'. May 27: Thursday was a day of fire fighting for the PM, as he insisted the pandemic response had been an 'incredibly difficult series of decisions, none of which we have taken lightly'. The PM said: 'At every stage we have been governed by a determination to protect life.' Asked whether he said he would rather see 'bodies pile high' than order a third lockdown, Mr Johnson said: 'I have already made my position very clear on that point. Downing Street denied Mr Johnson was 'obsessed with the media', as claimed by Mr Cummings. Mr Johnson's spokesman also denied Ms Symonds had tried to fill jobs with her friends, saying: 'All appointments made in No 10 are done in the normal way, that's always been the case.' May 28: Mr Johnson's 'John Lewis nightmare' continued after the new adviser on ministerial standards said he had 'unwisely' allowed the refurbishment of his Downing Street flat to go ahead without 'more rigorous regard for how this would be funded'. Some reports suggest the upgrades hit the 200,000 mark, with Tory peer Lord Brownlow telling Cabinet Office officials he had settled an invoice for the works on the flat directly with the supplier. But Lord Geidt, the independent adviser on ministers' interests, found the PM knew 'nothing about' payments for the work until reports surfaced in the media. The peer said Mr Johnson should have been 'more rigorous' about the funding of the renovations. May 29: Ms Symonds shook off the girlfriend label for good on Saturday morning, according to reports in the Mail on Sunday and the Sun. The pair are said to have exchanged vows in Westminster Cathedral in front of a small group of close friends and family. Downing Street would not comment on the reports, and the Sun reported even senior aides were totally unaware the couple were about to tie the knot. Advertisement While their official guest list is still under lock and key, Mr Johnson's father, Stanley, was photographed outside No10 last night with his daughter Julia, shortly after attending the service. Northern Ireland First Minister Arlene Foster was the first political figure to send her best wishes, writing on Twitter: 'Huge congratulations to Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds on your wedding day.' Keir Starmer said: 'Congratulations to Boris & Carrie. Whatever our political differences, I wish them a happy life together'. Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the Speaker of the House of Commons, said: 'What pleasant news. I wish the Prime Minister and Carrie well, and hope he has time for a honeymoon!' But Labour former frontbencher Jon Trickett said the wedding was 'a good way to bury this week's bad news' on Mr Cummings' testimony, the spread of the Indian coronavirus variant and the row about funding of the Downing Street flat. Meanwhile, shadow justice minister Karl Turner swiped that weddings were meant to be 'happy events' but people were asking 'who paid' because they assumed the PM was up to 'some sort of fiddle'. And Veteran Labour MP Barr Sheerman tweeted: 'Where did the Prime Minister's previous marriages take place should there be blue plaques?' Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi told Sky News had had not been invited to the wedding. 'I want to congratulate the PM and Carrie Symonds on tying the knot. 'It is a great feeling as you come together and of course it is a wonderful thing for both of them that they have really sort of made their marriage vows to one another.' He said he would not 'extrapolate' from the timing that the numbers of people that can be invited to weddings will not be increased from June 21. Until yesterday's ceremony, the pair had been the first unmarried couple to reside in Downing Street. They live in a flat above No.11 Downing Street with their son and a Jack Russell-cross puppy called Dilyn. Ms Symonds, who becomes the third Mrs Johnson, announced their engagement on social media in February 2020, at the same time as she disclosed her pregnancy. Friends of the couple say the pandemic interrupted their plans to marry sooner. It has been suggested in the past that Ms Symonds could not become a fully-fledged 'first lady' until the couple were wed. Mr Johnson was coy when asked about the subject in 2019, telling reporters that marriage speculation was 'a tiny bit premature'. The marriage to Ms Symond's is Mr Johnson's third, after he was first married at the age of 23 to Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987. They met while they were students at Oxford. Their union was annulled in 1993 after it emerged he was having an affair with childhood friend Marina Wheeler who he married in 1993. But they separated in 2018. Their divorce was finalised after he arrived in Downing Street in 2019. Mr Johnson and Ms Wheeler have two daughters, Lara Lettice, 26, and Cassia Peaches, 22, and two sons Milo Arthur, 24, and Theodore Apollo, 20, together. Mr Johnson had affairs with three women during their 25-year marriage. The PM also has a fifth child, Stephanie Macintyre, with art consultant Helen Macintyre. It is now known if his children attended the wedding yesterday. In 2013 it emerged during another court hearing that Mr Johnson had fathered a daughter during an adulterous liaison while Mayor of London in 2009. In 2004, he was sacked from the Tory frontbench over a reported affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt. Claims that Mr Johnson squeezed the thigh of journalist Charlotte Edwardes, at a private lunch at The Spectator magazine's HQ shortly after he became editor in 1999 overshadowed his first Conservative Party conference as PM. Ms Symonds, a former Conservative Party communications chief, was romantically linked to Mr Johnson just months after the announcement of his separation from Ms Wheeler. She joined the Tory party media machine in 2009, first as a press adviser, then head of broadcast at Conservative campaign headquarters ahead of the 2015 general election. Her association with Mr Johnson dates back to the early years, having worked on his successful re-election bid at City Hall in 2012. But a row that saw police called to their home in the early stages of the Conservative leadership race offered a glimpse into the complicated private life about which Mr Johnson tries desperately to avoid answering questions. The couple had been living together at Ms Symonds's flat in Camberwell, south London, until the well-publicised row recorded by neighbours in June 2019. When she announced the news of the engagement she captioned the intimate holiday picture, in which he was kissing her cheek: 'I wouldn't normally post this kind of thing on here but I wanted my friends to find out from me... many of you already know but for my friends that still don't, we got engaged at the end of last year... and we've got a baby hatching early summer.' Weeks later the couple was thrown into turmoil as the Prime Minister lay in intensive care with Covid and was given a 50-50 chance of surviving. The Roman Catholic church does not allow divorcees to be married in its churches. But Catherine Pepinster, Catholic author and broadcaster, explained that as Mr Johnson was himself baptised a Catholic but married previously in non-Catholic settings, the church did not recognise his previous marriages. She said: 'As far as the Church is concerned, this is his first marriage. 'They don't need to be annulled. 'They didn't happen, according to Roman Catholic canon law.' Downing Street declined to comment last night. While he was still married, he began dating PR guru and Tory adviser Ms Symonds (pictured in 2019 at the party conference in Manchester) Mr Johnson and Ms Symonds watch the 2019 Election results on the TV in his study in No10 Downing Street The couple chose to live at the larger four-bedroom flat at No11 Downing Street instead of the smaller two-bedroom official residence at No10 It has been suggested in the past that Ms Symonds (pictured with the PM) could not become a fully-fledged 'first lady' until the couple were married 'Very much in love': How Boris Johnson's relationship with Tory aide Carrie Symonds survived 'everything thrown at them' but they have 'come out the other side still smiling' By Ian Gallagher For The Mail On Sunday Only their closest friends, one imagines, were privy to the birth of the Boris-Carrie love affair. Everyone else was left to pick up a trail of tantalising clues. But it was ever thus with the now thrice-married Prime Minister who probably more than most politicians finds the dissection of his love life distinctly uncomfortable. Having split from Marina Wheeler, his second wife of 25 years, in 2018, there was little pause before Mr Johnson was publicly linked to Carrie Symonds, described at the time as a 'party-loving Tory aide'. By then, in fact, she had been a high-profile figure in Westminster for almost a decade, holding senior positions at Tory HQ and as an adviser to Cabinet Ministers. Tellingly, noted the gossips, she was inclined to praise Mr Johnson, then Foreign Secretary, on Twitter. Mr Johnson and Ms Symonds watch the 2019 Election results on the TV in his study in No10 Downing Street Typical was one comment accompanying a link to a speech. 'This is really worth watching. Boris absolutely brilliant in debate on Brexit and Foreign Policy earlier this week,' she wrote. It wasn't long before they were said to enjoy a 'strong friendship', prompting closer scrutiny of Mr Johnson's glamorous friend. Profiles at the time recorded that she attended leading private girls' school Godolphin and Latymer in West London, became a Tory press officer in 2009 and worked on the successful 'Back Boris' campaign to re-elect Mr Johnson as London Mayor in 2012. She was appointed director of communications at Conservative Campaign Headquarters but left amid claims of rows with No10 over her closeness to Mr Johnson's camp. By September 2018, with rumours about her friendship with Mr Johnson swirling around Westminster, it was reported he had been seen in Rules restaurant in Covent Garden with a 'young attractive' blonde woman. They are said to have spent two hours at a corner table while two bodyguards sat nearby. At the time, one onlooker was reported as saying: 'It seemed quite an intimate meal and hardly anything to do with any great matters of State.' Was Carrie the mystery blonde? Nobody seemed to know for sure, but just a week before the dinner, they had been photographed together at the Conservatives' fundraising Black and White Ball in London. Firmer evidence emerged in the form of 'mischievous text messages from Boris' which Ms Symonds showed to friends at a wedding. One fellow guest reportedly said: 'Carrie was having a good time and was quite thrilled with all the texts she was getting. Then all of a sudden a car turned up and everyone said Carrie was off in Boris's car. There was speculation that it might even have been a ministerial car that picked her up because it was a nice motor.' But for many, the clincher came when Mr Johnson attended Ms Symonds's Abba-themed 30th birthday party. 'Crikey,' said one pal at the time. 'He must really be smitten to endure that.' Their deepening relationship emerged in headlines. At one event they were described as 'inseparable'. A few months later, they were 'very much in love'. Then Ms Symonds had a picture of a smiling Mr Johnson as a screensaver on her phone and then she was referring to him affectionately as 'Bozzie Bear'. What was true and what creative licence is unclear but their romance had become such that they co-hosted a New Year's Eve champagne and canapes party at her South East London flat in 2018 for a small group of friends. Friends commented on Mr Johnson's new slimline look he'd lost around 18lb, for which he credited his girlfriend. A smart haircut which replaced his famously disorderly mop, was also her doing. At the time, one friend noted: 'Carrie and Boris have an extremely passionate relationship it can also be a tad volatile from time to time. Neither are short of an opinion and Boris loves that she stands up to him and holds her own.' This volatility found vivid expression in June 2019 when police were called to their home after neighbours heard a loud altercation involving screaming, shouting and banging. Wine was a key factor. Nosey neighbours heard Mr Johnson refusing to leave the flat and telling his girlfriend to 'get off my f****** laptop' before a loud crashing noise. Ms Symonds then accused him of ruining the sofa with red wine. 'You just don't care for anything because you are spoilt,' she reportedly said. Ms Symonds released an intimate picture (pictured), also thought to have been taken during the trip, on her personal Instagram page depicting the unshaven Prime Minister kissing her cheek Friends of the couple later explained that the laptop was being used to search the internet for solutions to remove wine stains from upholstery. Had the episode irreparably imperilled their relationship? Feverish speculation ensued, but in riposte, canny PR Carrie triumphantly rustled up evidence that talk of a crisis was wide of the mark: a picture of the couple locked in a gaze, hands entwined, against the verdant backdrop of the Sussex Downs. Crucially, this serene image of love and tranquility was captured, said friends, after the crockery-breaking barney, which in any case, had merely been a lovers' tiff. What's more, the allies added, the couple were preparing to get married. Nimco Ali, an activist and close friend of Ms Symonds who accompanied her to the launch of Mr Johnson's leadership campaign, said on the subject of marriage: 'That's the expectation. They are happy and good for each other. Carrie is an amazing woman.' Another confidante said at the time: 'The truth is that they love each other very much and want to get married as soon as the time is right. Boris only has eyes for Carrie and she is totally smitten with him.' Something of an official seal on their romance came a few months later when Carrie met the Queen during Mr Johnson's formal visit to Balmoral on Royal Deeside. It was the first time that an unmarried partner had accompanied a serving Prime Minister on the traditional annual engagement. From then on, Ms Symonds didn't put a foot wrong. It was, however, at her now husband's side during his December 2019 Election victory that she really came into her own, demonstrating what some called a masterclass in how to be a successful First Lady. Having been labelled by cynics as 'the other woman' and cast by gossips as little more than another notch on Mr Johnson's bedpost, the campaign had brought out the best in Ms Symonds, allowing her to prove that she was unpretentious, smart and unfailingly cheerful with it. The stage was set for a special announcement, which after much speculation, came in March the following year: the couple were engaged and expecting their first child It is thought that Mr Johnson proposed during a romantic break in Mustique over Christmas. Ms Symonds released an intimate picture, also thought to have been taken during the trip, on her personal Instagram page depicting the unshaven Prime Minister kissing her cheek. The accompanying message said: 'I wouldn't normally post this kind of thing on here but I wanted my friends to find out from me... many of you already know but for my friends that still don't, we got engaged at the end of last year... and we've got a baby hatching early summer.' In another first for Ms Symonds, it was noted that she was the first unmarried partner of a Prime Minister to live in Downing Street. Her life there, by any reckoning, has been extraordinary. She caught Covid-19, saw her fiance almost die from the virus and had her first child. Then she was splashed all over newspapers' front pages portrayed as the Machiavellian power behind the throne who had somehow single-handedly engineered a purge of the once all powerful Downing Street team led by Dominic Cummings. It became known that she vehemently opposed the appointment of former Vote Leave adviser Lee Cain as the PM's chief of staff. Briefings about the war between Ms Symonds and Mr Cummings abounded many of them personally insulting and sexist. 'When she was first with Boris she was dismissed as a bimbo. 'Now she's Lady Macbeth as if women can only be typecast into those two roles,' said one ally. 'It's totally sexist.' Newspapers picked by Ms Symonds's enemies were informed by unnamed sources that she was known on Whitehall as 'Princess Nut Nut' and described as emotionally demanding. 'Heaven knows there can be few couples who have endured more,' said one friend. 'They have had everything thrown at them but it is a testament to the strength of their partnership and to their love that they have come out the other side still smiling and still very much in love.' THREE weddings, three affairs and a pole-dancing tech-guru: The very busy love life of Boris Johnson By Nick Enoch for MailOnline The news that Boris Johnson has married Carrie Symonds marks the latest chapter in the PM's turbulent love life. His first marriage at the age of 23 to Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 collapsed six years later after it emerged he was having an affair with childhood friend Marina Wheeler. Boris's subsequent marriage to Marina lasted 25 years - during which he had affairs with three women. Here, we outline the Prime Minister's colourful past relationships - as well as his links to one alleged lover of his - former pole dancer, and tech guru, Jennifer Arcuri. 1987: The first wife, Allegra Mostyn-Owen, whom he met at Oxford Boris married his Oxford University sweetheart Allegra Mostyn-Owen in 1987 when they were both aged 23. They divorced in 1993 after his affair with the woman who would become his second wife, Marina Wheeler. The daughter of renowned art historian William Mostyn-Owen and flamboyant Italian writer Gaia Servadio, Allegra was a socialite and former Tatler cover girl whose beauty had besotted young men falling at her feet at Oxford University. 'When we got married, that was actually the end of the relationship instead of the beginning,' Allegra would later say. Their relationship ended after six years following revelations of his affair with Marina Wheeler QC, who was a childhood friend of Boris. Marina became pregnant with the first of their four children before his divorce from Allegra was finalised. Johnson later reconciled with Mostyn-Owen before they separated in February 1990 and divorced in 1993 - just 12 days before he married Marina Wheeler, whom he had a child with five weeks later. Boris Johnson married Oxford University sweetheart Allegra Mostyn-Owen (pictured together) in 1987 when they were both aged 23 1993: Boris marries Marina Wheeler - the woman who stood by him for years... but left her just as he was on the brink of becoming PM Marina Wheeler married Boris on May 8, 1993 - just 12 days after his divorce from Allegra was finalised on April 26. Together, Boris and Marina have four children: Lara Lettice, Milo Arthur, Cassia Peaches and Theodore Apollo. After first meeting Boris at the European School of Brussels, they also attended private boarding school Bedales in Hampshire together before she went to Cambridge. Born in Berlin in 1964, she is of English and Indian Sikh descent. After being called to the bar in 1987, Marina returned to London. Marina and Boris met again in London when they were both in their mid-twenties. The couple remained married for 25 years despite Boris's spectacularly colourful love life. Marina endured multiple public humiliations over Boris's well-publicised affairs - locking her high profile husband out of the house more than once - only to forgive him, prior to their final split in 2018. Marina Wheeler married Boris married on May 8, 1993 - just 12 days after his divorce from Allegra was finalised on April 26. (The pair are pictured in 2015) Together, Boris and Marina (above, in 2008) have four children: Lara Lettice, Milo Arthur, Cassia Peaches and Theodore Apollo The affairs 2004: Petronella Wyatt and the 'inverted pyramid of piffle' In 2004, Boris's four-year affair with journalist and society author Petronella Wyatt (pictured), the daughter of Labour grandee Lord Wyatt, became public Around seven years into his marriage to Marina, she became aware that Boris was having an affair with Petronella Wyatt, daughter of Margaret Thatcher's favourite journalist Woodrow Wyatt. In 2004, it was reported that 'Petsy' may have had an abortion, to which Boris declared to The Mail on Sunday: 'I had not had an affair with Petronella. 'It is complete balderdash. It is an inverted pyramid of piffle.' Boris was soon found to be lying and after days of publicity, Tory leader Michael Howard sacked Johnson from his position as Shadow Culture Minister. 2006: Emergence of liaisons with Anna Fazackerley Alongside this, Marina was also alerted to another affair that Boris had been having with journalist Anna Fazackerley, which emerged in 2006. When the affairs garnered publicity, it also became public knowledge that Marina had become pregnant at the time that Boris was still married to Allegra, who was quoted saying: 'I divorced him for adultery. It enabled him to marry Marina.' The divorce had been finalised on April 26, 1993 and Boris married Marina on May 8 of the same year, with Lara Johnson being born on June 12. Marina threw her husband out of their home after his affair with Anna was publicised, but they soon worked things out. In 2006, it emerged Boris had been having an affair with journalist Anna Fazackerley (left). Mr Johnson is said to have fathered a child with art consultant Helen Macintyre (right) in 2009. It is understood Miss Wheeler again kicked him out of the family home 2009: The love child with Helen Macintyre In 2009, Mr Johnson is said to have fathered a child with art consultant Helen Macintyre. It is understood Mrs Wheeler had, again, kicked him out of the family home at the time. Mr Johnson's fatherhood of Miss Macintyre's daughter was first revealed by the Daily Mail in July 2010. In 2013, a court ruled that it was in the public interest for the Press to report Mr Johnson was the father. Boris Johnson's divorce from Marina Wheeler Boris Johnson and his estranged wife Marina Wheeler agreed a divorce settlement on February 18 2020, following a legal dispute over money. Judge Sarah Gibbons oversaw a private hearing in the Central Family Court in London, which neither party attended. During the short hearing, she gave Ms Wheeler permission to apply for a Decree Absolute, which would bring the marriage to an end. A case number revealed Mr Johnson, who is now living with Carrie Symonds at Downing Street, and Ms Wheeler were involved in a dispute over money or assets. Marina Claire Wheeler was named as the 'petitioner' and 'applicant' in the case, while Alexander Boris De Pfeffel Johnson was named as the 'respondent'. Mr Johnson was said to have had 6.5million in cash and assets as of September 2018, but will have likely seen his wealth rise since becoming Prime Minister last July. It is therefore plausible that Ms Wheeler will be receiving around 4million if it is an equal split. However, the judge said no detail from the case relating to money can be revealed in reports, apart from what is already in the public domain. Judge Gibbons gave Ms Wheeler permission to apply for the decree absolute 'out of time'. This suggests that she was granted a decree nisi by the courts more than a year ago. Those who are successfully granted a decree nisi have up to a year to apply for the next stage of divorce, the decree absolute. A former Islamic extremist has lodged a complaint with police, accusing his parents of radicalising him as a child. The 29-year-olds case could lead to the first prosecution of its kind in the UK, but experts fear that current legislation may not allow charges to be brought. The man, who is British-born of Pakistani origin, alleges his parents began radicalising him from the age of five after falling under the influence of a fundamentalist branch of Islam known as Salafism. They taught me to hate this country and the West, and not make friends with non-Muslims, he said. The man alleges that he attended study sessions led by Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki (pictured), who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen They told me there is a war going on with Islam and I have to train and be ready to fight this country. The would-be terrorist said his siblings were similarly radicalised while growing up on a London council estate. He has had no contact with his family for more than five years. He also alleges that he attended study sessions led by Al Qaeda preacher Anwar Al-Awlaki, who was killed in a drone strike in Yemen. The former radical, whom The Mail on Sunday is not naming, also claims to have suffered physical and mental abuse at the hands of his parents. He made a complaint to police two weeks ago and has since been interviewed by counter-terrorism officers. He will soon be moved to a safe house before his parents are interviewed under caution. While legislation allows for parents to be prosecuted for abusing their children, legal experts fear there is no law that makes it a criminal offence for parents to radicalise their offspring. Naomi Campbell's charity is facing calls to improve its governance after accounts revealed it spent more than 1.6 million on a spectacular fundraising gala in Cannes yet gave only 5,000 to good causes over the same period. Fashion For Relief, a charity set up by the 50-year-old supermodel, hosted the glitzy event in May 2018 to raise money for Times Up, an organisation established after the MeToo movement to support women in the workplace. Celebrity guests including Paris Hilton and Carla Bruni watched as Ms Campbell, who recently revealed she has become mother to a baby girl, took to the catwalk with supermodel friends such as Erin OConnor and Natalia Vodianova. Accounts lodged with the Charity Commission covering the period from April 2018 to July 2019 show that event charges ran to almost 1.5 million, with an additional 43,000 spent on a fashion team, 18,000 on an operations director, and more than 57,500 on public relations. Fashion For Relief, a charity set up by Naomi Campbell (pictured), hosted the glitzy event in May 2018 to raise money for Times Up, an organisation established after the MeToo movement to support women in the workplace During the same 15 months, according to the accounts, Fashion For Relief handed 5,515 to good causes. Times Up says it has received no funds directly from Ms Campbells charity since the event in Cannes. Fashion For Relief insists the latest accounts should not be viewed in isolation and subsequent filings will provide a more comprehensive picture. It also says it operates as a third party, effectively a conduit between donors and the good causes it works with. However, the charity admits it does not have a formal process for monitoring the number and value of donations made indirectly as a result of the events that it organises. Bianka Hellmich, one of the charitys trustees, who received 77,000 for her role in 2018-19, said: We are a fundraising platform not a charity and we do not operate like most charities. We connect donors to charities. Donations do not always come through us and this is not reflected in the accounts every time. We prefer not to handle donations for various reasons, including tax purposes and legal set-up. Fashion For Reliefs website says it has raised over $15 million (10.5 million) since it was launched by Ms Campbell (pictured) in 2015 Fashion For Reliefs website says it has raised over $15 million (10.5 million) since it was launched by Ms Campbell in 2015. But asked if she knew how much had been raised since it was registered as a charity in the UK in 2015, Ms Hellmich replied: We cant do that because when we connect donors and the public to the charities, we do not have the ability to monitor [this] and neither do the charities. The Charity Commission, which regulates the sector, states in its rules that trustees should periodically review what the charity is achieving, and how effective the charitys activities are. Since 2015, Fashion For Relief has reported total income of almost 2.9 million, with expenditure of 2.69 million and grant awards of 289,000. The Mail on Sunday asked Dr Gareth Morgan, emeritus professor of charity studies at Sheffield Hallam University, to review the latest documents filed by Fashion For Relief. After doing so, he said: I would encourage the Charity Commission to look into this charity and possibly to use its powers of inquiry in order to consider whether there may have been any failures of governance. Even where there has been charitable expenditure, the accounts tell us nothing about where it has gone. Bella Hadid, Naomi Campbell and Natalia Vodianova walks the runway during Fashion For Relief Cannes 2018 event Ms Campbell at the launch of her Fashion For Relief charity pop-up store at Westfield London on November 26, 2019 In addition to the catwalk show, the event in Cannes which coincided with the French resorts film festival featured a cocktail reception, gala dinner and art auction. A guest who bought one of the lots said he paid D&G Group, a corporate events firm. Times Up said it had no record of receiving funds from D&G. Fashion For Reliefs latest accounts for 2018-19 say charities that benefited from its work included Save The Children and the Mayors Fund For London but do not stipulate what sums were given. It said the details will appear in subsequent filings. Kirsty McHugh, chief executive of the Mayors Fund For London, which provides opportunities for disadvantaged youngsters, said it received 100,000 last year following a Fashion For Relief fundraiser at the British Museum in 2019. Save The Children said it had received 100,000 from an event in 2018. Fashion For Relief said: Fashion For Relief is a charity formed to raise awareness and funds for a number of different charitable causes, principally through the running of global, high-profile events in aid of other charities. Often donations are made directly to those charities following the events and Fashion For Relief acts as a third party in respect of those donations. Fashion For Relief uses the sponsorship monies and other funds it receives from partnerships to organise the events and initiatives, which include major and small events and charitable trips and visits. A Charity Commission spokesman said: We will assess these concerns in line with our regulatory framework. We cannot comment further at this time. One of Englands first electric scooter trials descended into such chaos that local politicians described it as a nightmare. Correspondence between councillors in Northampton, disclosed under Freedom of Information legislation, reveals that the rental vehicles were used to hold scooter discos in car parks after the pilot scheme launched last year. Jonathan Nunn, the councils Conservative leader, noted in an email that it seems relatively easy to remove the tracking devices, which means that the scooters have not been reducing their speed when they reach the edge of the town. He added: Theyve also been popular with people on pub crawls and returning from an evenings drinking, which has accentuated risks. In another email, Tory councillor Anna King called the new scheme an absolute nightmare, adding: I was nearly knocked over by two. Correspondence between councillors in Northampton, disclosed under Freedom of Information legislation, reveals that the rental vehicles were used to hold scooter discos in car parks after the pilot scheme launched last year. Pictured, an e-scooter in Northampton She later contacted fellow councillors to tell them: I have received footage recorded at 7.29pm today of what looks like a scooter disco taking place in Aldi car park. A Northamptonshire Police officer admitted: I dont have enough officers to be able to police this issue and I dont see it getting any better. Last week, The Mail on Sunday saw people riding the orange scooters on pavements through the town centre with multiple riders. Deputy council leader Phil Larratt said: If we cant address the significant issues then the last resort is to suspend the trial. More than 50 electric scooter trials are running around the country and a scheme will be launched in London on June 7. Clinton Henry, 28, was pulled over by police when they spotted him accelerating away from traffic lights at around 30mph on an e-scooter (pictured) Andy Hacker, an orthopedic surgeon in Buckinghamshire who has treated nearly 100 trauma cases caused by e-scooters, said: I can only imagine what the injuries will be like in London once you combine e-scooters with buses and bikes and pedestrians and busy streets. Sarah Gayton, of the National Federation of the Blind, said: It is imperative that an independent inquiry is held into what happened in Northampton. It is clear the dockless model of rentable e-scooters is unsafe. A West Northamptonshire Council spokesman said: The vast majority of users ride their scooters sensibly and correctly and we have received lots of positive feedback from users. President Moon Jae-in / Yonhap President Moon Jae-in expressed optimism Saturday that South Korea will attain its goal of getting 13 million people inoculated against COVID-19 by the end of June. "Vaccinations are gaining speed," he wrote on Facebook. Just over the past two days, 1.2 million people received vaccine shots, raising the total to 5.23 million as of Friday, or 10.2 percent of the nation's population, he noted. If the current pace is maintained, there will be no problem in achieving the aim of getting 13 million people vaccinated within the first half of the year, he added. Moon pointed out that South Korea is taking advantage of its advanced information technology (IT) sector, especially the use of a real-time search, notification and reservation system for residual doses of vaccines from no-shows. From a drab industrial estate on the outskirts of Peterborough, Rishi Sunak sends a message designed to be heard by the tech giants in the sunshine of California: The right companies arent paying the right tax in the right places. The 41-year-old Chancellor is hoping to bolster his reputation as the wunderkind of British politics and the heir apparent to Boris Johnson by claiming victory in his tussle with Washington over the super-profits earned by the internet monoliths and to do so after President Bidens Air Force One has landed in the UK for next months G7 summit. For a man whose future path to Downing Street hinges on support from voters in the newly Conservative former Red Wall seats of the Midlands and post-industrial North, he has every incentive to establish a reputation as a silicon Robin Hood, redistributing the gigantic profits earned by the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon to help level up the left-behind areas of the country. Sunak seems confident of a breakthrough on tax at the G7, saying that the negotiations are going well. Fundamentally, the global tax system isnt working... thats not fair and thats something that I want to fix, he adds A deal could be struck as early as this week, when the G7 finance ministers meet in London. It also offers the chance of a change of narrative for a Government bruised by the Greensill lobbying scandal and Dominic Cummingss takedown of Ministers handling of the pandemic. Cummings singled out the Chancellor for praise during his testimony last week and awkwardly for Sunaks relations with No 10 claimed he shared his reservations about Mr Johnsons leadership. Is that true? The PMs got an exceptionally hard job which I see up close every day, says Sunak, displaying a Tony Blair-like ability to swerve around potholes. The decisions he has to make are just extraordinarily difficult. I think people appreciate that and realise that all of us are working as hard as we can to try to do the best job we can in difficult circumstances. The PM carries this enormous burden of trying to get these awful decisions right. The Chancellor must have cringed when he heard Cummingss compliments, knowing it would spark speculation that the former adviser was eyeing a return to Government under a Sunak Premiership a parasite looking for a new host as one political figure put it privately last week. I havent spoken to Dominic Cummings since he left Government whenever, says Sunak. But I try, with everyone I work with, to have a constructive, cordial, productive, working relationship. I think thats the best way to be and its the best way to try to get things done. I havent actually seen or heard the full thing and I havent spoken to Dominic since he left. If the deal on a global tech tax is signed, it will also be testimony to Sunaks diplomatic skills, after he built a consensus among EU countries, which he then used to help combat American opposition to the plan. He is pictured above with The Mail on Sunday's Glen Owen Asked about Cummingss attack on Matt Hancock, in which he accused the Health Secretary of criminal, disgraceful behaviour that caused serious harm particularly with respect to the release of Covid-infected patients into care homes Sunak performs another jink. Matt is also working incredibly hard and has been throughout this crisis, and he addressed at length... what we were trying to do which was to put in place enormous support for care homes, Sunak says. Despite the unprepossessing surroundings we are talking in a BT Openreach centre where the Chancellor is showcasing the boost to broadband investment delivered by his new super-deduction tax break Sunak still looks more West Coast than Red Wall. The son of a GP father and pharmacist mother who emigrated from East Africa to the UK in the 1960s, Sunak studied at Oxford University and then Stanford on a Fulbright scholarship, where he met his wife Akshata. Her billionaire father is N R Narayana Murthy, one of the richest men in India, and Akshata holds shares in her familys tech firm worth a reported 430 million. Sunaks critics say that he goes missing when the Government hits trouble, ducks controversy and has yet to establish a distinctive political credo. Yet his supporters praise his intelligence, judgment and work ethic, and point to the loyalty he engenders among his staff. If the deal on a global tech tax is signed, it will also be testimony to Sunaks diplomatic skills, after he built a consensus among EU countries, which he then used to help combat American opposition to the plan. Washingtons prospective agreement was secured in return for Sunaks support for US calls for a global minimum corporation tax rate, likely to be set at 15 per cent. We understand why an agreement on global corporation tax is important for our American friends, Sunak says. Sunaks critics say that he goes missing when the Government hits trouble, ducks controversy and has yet to establish a distinctive political credo. Yet his supporters praise his intelligence, judgment and work ethic, and point to the loyalty he engenders among his staff We need them to understand why fair taxation of tech companies is important to us. Theres a deal to be had, so Im urging the US and all of the G7 to come to the table next week and get it done. It also helps that he has established a productive rapport with his opposite number, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Janet is hugely experienced, she has a remarkable CV and is an inspiration to millions including my two girls, he says. Weve begun to forge a great working relationship and Im really looking forward to finally meeting her in person next week. Sunak seems confident of a breakthrough on tax at the G7, saying that the negotiations are going well. Fundamentally, the global tax system isnt working... thats not fair and thats something that I want to fix, he adds. Theres a big prize here but we need to stick to our guns to get it over the line. As a stopgap measure, Britain imposed a unilateral digital services tax last year on tech companies with global revenue of more than 500 million and sales in Britain exceeding 25 million, a move which angered the American Government. In addition to the tech tax and the global corporation tax agreement, the Treasury is looking at a separate online sales tax, the aim of which would be to help protect the high street by imposing a levy on internet deliveries. It means companies such as Amazon could be taxed twice on each delivery and again on their profits. I want to make sure we get the right deal for British taxpayers, that we level the playing field for British high streets and thats what Im doing, says Sunak. Large multinational companies, particularly digital companies, are able by the nature of their businesses not to pay the right tax in the right places. And thats not fair and means there isnt a level playing field with high street businesses. And thats what I want to fix. Thats what were fighting hard to fix in these negotiations. If everyone works hard over the next few days and weeks, Im confident that we can find a good place. It also helps that he has established a productive rapport with his opposite number, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen. Janet is hugely experienced, she has a remarkable CV and is an inspiration to millions including my two girls, he says But it has to be the right deal for Britain and thats what this weeks negotiations will be about. He adds: Everyone wants a deal. Even large tech companies Facebook being an example and others I have spoken to are keen to have a resolution on this issue. They want to have an international agreement which gives them certainty and stability. Lots of countries are in the same place as us. As part of further efforts to clip the wings of the tech giants, the Government launched a regulator, the Digital Markets Unit, two months ago to ensure fair competition in digital advertising, while Ministers are also examining whether to force companies to pay newspapers for the articles which they reproduce, similar to a system which has been introduced in Australia. In the UK, Google and Facebook took 80 per cent of the 14 billion spent on digital advertising in 2019, while national and local newspapers took just four per cent. Asked whether companies such as Facebook are too powerful, Sunak says: I think its important that large companies like that are appropriately regulated. The Digital Markets Unit will ensure that those companies which have this strategic market power cant exploit it. What is his reaction when he sees former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg defending the interests of his new employer, Facebook? Another swerve: I think the identity of the people doesnt drive how we react to things. Its the merits of the case and the arguments that people are putting forward. I think we have been pretty consistent on the need to have an updated approach to regulation for large, powerful tech companies. Earlier this year, Sunak was dragged into the row over David Camerons lobbying on behalf of the Greensill company when it emerged that the former Prime Minister had texted the Chancellor over business support during the pandemic which, despite his best efforts, was not forthcoming. Sunak brushes the issue aside, saying: David Cameron can speak for himself. All I can do is account for what the Treasury did and what I did. During the pandemic, the Chancellor has been a strong voice in the Cabinet arguing against unnecessarily strict restrictions not surprisingly given the cost of the crisis is close to 400 billion. Now the rise of the Indian variant has placed a question mark over whether restrictions will be lifted on June 21. He says: We have to look at the data as it comes in. We will know more as we approach the date. The Chancellor is optimistic about a resurgence for the economy, pointing out that households have built up savings of 140 billion. Its an enormous sum of money and its partly a reflection of our economic policy that protected peoples incomes last year, he says. In the face of a once-in-300 years decline in economic output, household disposable income broadly didnt change at an aggregate level. Thats why at the Budget, I had to take these difficult decisions in order to get debt back on a more stable path, to get borrowing back on to a more reasonable level. Those difficult decisions included a rise in the corporation tax rate to 25 per cent by 2023, offset by the super-deduction perk which effectively gives companies a 25p tax cut for every pound they invest: They have built up about 100 billion of excess savings and I want to unlock some of that. Taking a swipe at Labour for criticising the plan, he says that they think that jobs just fall out of the sky... they dont. His critics might struggle to define Sunakism is he a buccaneering free-enterpriser or a Heseltine-style state interventionist but the Chancellor takes a non-dogmatic view when he is looking for inspiration from history. I have three pictures of my predecessors up in my office, one from each party. William Gladstone is there. Nigel Lawson is there, right behind my desk, keeping an eye on me. And Hugh Gaitskell Labour is there. All had a strong work ethic and all of them took the intellectual side of the job seriously. He concludes: Ive also spoken to all my predecessors, and theyre all very kind privately with their advice and support. I am keen always to try to get advice and support from people, they have done the job before me. Not everything is political. President Biden spoke at joint military air base in southern Virginia Friday, warning troops that China thinks it will 'own America' within the next 15 years. To make his point, Biden referenced past conversations he had with Chinese President Xi Jinping. 'I've spent more time with President Xi [Jinping] of China than any world leader has,' Biden said while making his Memorial Day remarks. 'For 24 hours of private meetings, with just an interpreter, 17,000 miles traveling in China and here. 'He firmly believes that China before the year 2035 is going to own America, because autocracies can make quick decisions. But America is unique. And all nations in the world, we're the only nation organized based on an idea. 'None of you get your rights from your government; you get your rights merely because you're a child of God. The government is there to protect those God-given rights. No other government has been based on that notion. No one can defeat us except us.' President Joe Biden told the service members the world is in a battle between autocracies and democracies Biden spoke at joint military air base in southern Virginia Friday, warning troops that Chinese President Xi Jinping thinks he will 'own America' within the next 15 years Biden did not go into further details as to what he meant by 'own America' and made no other remarks about the country during his 23-minute speech. Biden shared China's worrying prediction after previously insisting the Communist country was 'not competition for us' while on the presidential campaign trail in 2019, but tensions between the US and China have grown in recent weeks as a growing number of scientists question whether COVID-19 leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. On Wednesday, he ordered the 17 National Labs run by the Department of Energy to assist the intelligence community in a 90-day sprint to examine whether the virus leaked from a lab in China, by sifting through a massive trove of previously unexamined data. President Joe Biden has ordered the government's premiere research laboratories to join the search for the true origins of the COVID-19 pandemic Intelligence agencies regularly collect more raw data than their analysts are able to effectively pore through, and the application of advanced algorithms to seek patterns in the massive data set could offer new breakthroughs. 'We want the science to be a big part of this,' the White House official told CNN. 'We are going to use the full resources of our intelligence and scientific community to try to get to the bottom of this.' Biden is also urging U.S. intelligence agencies and those of allies to hunt for new information that could shed light on whether China covered up a lab leak. Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican, said the Biden administration's response was 'better late than never, but far from adequate.' 'Our intelligence community has been looking at this now for 15 months. They've done good work on it, but in the end the answer lies in the hands of Chinese communists, not people working for American intelligence agencies,' he told the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Cotton said that officials in Beijing have not been forthcoming about how the pandemic began. 'We should be insisting that they come clean, that they provide us a clear and unvarnished look at what was happening in the Wuhan labs,' he said. Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains similar to the one responsible for COVID-19. Researchers are seen at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Biden's new 90-day probe will examine whether evidence supports the lab leak theory of the pandemic China insisted early and often that the virus did not leak from the lab, claiming that crossover to humans must have occurred at a 'wet market' in Wuhan that sold live animals. Perhaps driven by animosity for Donald Trump, who embraced the lab leak theory early on, the mainstream U.S. media and academics heaped scorn on the possibility, calling it an unhinged conspiracy theory. But new evidence, including reports of three workers at the Wuhan lab who fell seriously ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019, has forced a sober reassessment among doubters. Frustration with China increased this week after Beijing said that it would not participate in any further investigations by the World Health Organization. Biden rebuked China in his announcement of the new intelligence review, calling on allies to help 'press China to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence.' Circumstantial evidence has long raised questions about the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where researchers were known to be conducting experiments on bat coronavirus strains Back at Langley, Biden moved on to speak to the small contingent of troops present about the sacrifices that military members and their families make. He spoke emotionally for a long period about his late son, Beau, whom he credited with humility and said had to be ordered to display his military medals and achievements. 'Here at Joint Base Langley-Eustis you enable the success of our mission around the world and provide intelligence support and air power. You ensure are soldiers of and airmen are ready trained to deploy ... around the world, including this year adhering to covid-19 safety protocols and quarantine before your ship out,' Biden said. 'You make up 1 percent of the population defending 99 percent of the rest of us. We owe you,' he added. Biden touted improvements in the nation's response to the coronavirus earlier in Northern Virginia with Gov. Ralph Northam. He spoke to the troops near the mouth of the Chesapeake Bay as he made his way home to Delaware for the long weekend, on a day his team was releasing his detailed budget proposal for 2022. He recalled flying into Baghdad and asking an air crew how long they had been deployed. Some were on their third and fourth tours, with one on their fifth. Biden visited the base as he prepared to kick off Memorial Day weekend He spoke at length about his late son who was deployed to Iraq as a member of the Delaware Army National Guard. 'I shouldn't be talking so much about my son, but I'm not going to apologize for it,' he said. He recalled how Beau had asked to have his military uniform display the name Hunter, his mother's maiden name, so as not to call attention to his namesake father, who was serving as vice president at the time. 'No other war have you gone in, served, got back up again and go back again and again and again,' he intoned. 'Once, wiping the blood off a seat of up-armored Humvee is enough to get you focused. Then to saddle up next time and go back? And back again? You're incredible.' He spoke emotionally about his late son Beau Biden, who served in Iraq, and is seen here at Camp Victory on July 4, 2009 near Baghdad 'The country, they owe you. And this time, they're more appreciative.' Biden also acknowledged people in the audience, including lawmakers, a military vet, and people who may have been apparent family members, one of whom Biden singled out. 'I love those barrettes in your hair. Man I'll tell you what, look at her she looks like she's 19 years old sitting there like a little lady with her legs crossed,' he said during the acknowledgements. He spoke of ending the longest war in U.S. history, the Afghanistan war he says will end by September 11th. Biden spoke alongside an F-22 aircraft He said the U.S. went in 'with the clear purpose to get the people attacked us on 9.11. and to prevent Al Qaeda from using Afghanistan as a base from which to attack America in the future.' 'We achieved that purpose. You achieved that purpose,' in what he called a 'God-forsaken landscape.' 'The greatest threat and likelihood of attack from al-Qaeda or ISIS is not going to be from Afghanistan,' he said. 'It's going to be from five other regions of the world that have significantly more presence of both al-Qaeda and organizational structures, including ISIS.' 'Our son did not die in Iraq, but he came back went as an incredibly healthy young man and came back with a severe brain tumor, because his hooch was just down wind from those burn pits. I don't know if that's the reason, but when he came home, it was just a matter of how long,' he said. He was referencing burn pits that many U.S. veterans blame for causing a series of ailments linked to their service. Police have launched a murder probe after a 'flower seller' was stabbed to death in north London. The victim, aged in his 50s, was found on Essex Road in Islington with stab wounds around 5.30pm today. Tributes have been paid to the flower seller online, with friends naming him as Tony Eastlake. Sources said Mr Eastlake had intervened in a mugging when he was fatally stabbed. One person wrote: 'You will be truly missed Tony, serving our community for over 30 year's, making everyone you spoke to smile. You were not just a local businessman, but a friend to many.' Police have launched a manhunt for the knifeman and no arrests have been made 'at this early stage', detectives say. The victim has been named locally as Tony Eastlake, who is understood to have worked as a flower seller Police remain on the scene this eveningas detectives hunt the kinfeman following the daylight stabbing The incident occured around 5.30pm on Essex Road in Islington, north London. Officers in uniform and high viz coats were seen on the road this evening as detectives launched a murder probe Emergency services were called to the scene and tended to the man as he lay injured on the street. But despite the best efforts of police officers and paramedics, he was pronounced dead at 5.38pm - sparking a Metropolitan Police murder probe. An air ambulance was also pictured landing near the scene this afternoon. Islington residents claimed 'the man ran a flower stall and tried to stop a mugging'. The victim's family has been informed, detectives say. Police have launched a manhunt for the knifeman and no arrests have yet been made An air ambulance was pictured landing near the scene before the man was pronounced dead Islington residents claim 'the man ran a flower stall and tried to stop a mugging', according to reports In a statement, Metropolitan Police said: 'Police were called at 5.27pm on Saturday, May 29 to reports of an injured man on Essex Road, N1. 'Officers attended and found a man suffering from a stab wound and immediately provided first aid. 'Despite their efforts, and that of the London Ambulance Service, the man, believed to be aged in his 50s, was pronounced dead at the scene at 17:58hrs. At this early stage, there have been no arrests.' A post-mortem examination will be held in due course, the statement added, and formal identification awaits. A crime scene remains in place with police cordons erected in the area. The summit in the Californian sunshine could hardly have gone better, judging by the warm note sent by a finance minister to Facebook's newly appointed global affairs supremo Nick Clegg. 'Dear Nick, hope early days of role are continuing to go well,' Ireland's Paschal Donohoe wrote in the handwritten message. 'I hope our paths cross again soon.' The meeting at Facebook's head office in Silicon Valley was an opportunity for the Irish delegation to meet the man who billionaire founder Mark Zuckerberg hoped would rehabilitate the tech giant's increasingly tarnished reputation. Nick Clegg was hired as a global affairs supremo for Facebook who wanted to rehabilitate its tarnished reputation But for the Facebook bosses, led by Sir Nick who had taken up his role just three months earlier it was a chance to address the growing threat to Facebook of punishing new taxes. Minutes of the meeting obtained by The Mail on Sunday reveal how Facebook sought to cushion the blow of sales taxes on tech companies which were being threatened by several European countries by easing its tax burden in Ireland, where the company declared more than half of its 39 billion global revenues. The revelation is likely to raise eyebrows given that just three years earlier, former Deputy Prime Minister Clegg had criticised Facebook and questioned whether it should be paying more tax. The note and minutes form part of an extraordinary cache of documents that give a fascinating insight into how Clegg went from the Liberal Democrat leader, who led his party to electoral disaster in 2015, to become one of the world's top power brokers. They show how he defended the tech giant following criticism of sickening self-harm images on its platforms and was involved in a lobbying campaign to protect Facebook's vast profits from the threat of new taxes. Clegg traded in his 1.5 million townhouse in Putney, South-West London, for a 7 million mansion in the sleepy Californian hamlet of Atherton (pictured) It comes as Chancellor Rishi Sunak today tells the MoS that he will attempt to broker a deal with US President Joe Biden to slap a tax on the super-profits of tech giants at the G7 meeting in Cornwall next month. And it follows mounting pressure on Facebook over plans to introduce strong encryption on its messaging apps a move which will make billions of online messages secret and, according to the head of MI5, give terrorists a 'free pass'. Appointed in October 2018 as vice-president for global affairs and communications, Sir Nick commands a reported salary of 2.7 million and has been tasked by Mr Zuckerberg to defend the tech giant's interests abroad. How vile child abuse pictures are posted to Facebook every second More than one child abuse image, video or post is uploaded to Facebook every second, a harrowing report has revealed. Official documents seen by The Mail on Sunday show the social media giant took down 35.9 million pieces of content relating to child nudity and exploitation last year. Facebook last night insisted its technology identified and removed '99 per cent' of those posts before they were flagged by users. However, this newspaper understands that the firm does not track who has seen the content or how long it remains online before it is taken down. It also means as many as 360,000 child abuse posts had to be reported by concerned members of the public before they were removed. The total number of child abuse images circulating on Facebook could be even higher because it is not known how many go undetected by its technology or its users. Facebook has previously admitted that it failed to spot vast amounts of dangerous content towards the end of 2020 due to a 'technical issue'. Children's charities criticised the company for doing too little to tackle appalling online content. Andy Burrows, of the NSPCC, said: 'It's vital this horrific content is removed as soon as possible. Behind every image is a child who has been sexually abused.' The horrifying harm being caused to children and teenagers online was revealed in a report buried on the Government website. The study found that tech firms, which are legally required to report child abuse posts to US authorities, logged almost 70 million such cases in 2019 in total. Of these, 79,798 related to UK victims or offenders and were passed on to our National Crime Agency. The UK is now set to start collecting its own data on child abuse online. The report also looked at how children and teenagers can freely access self-harm, suicide and other damaging material on social media sites. It said YouTube had to remove 1.4 million videos flagged as dangerous by users. The Government is planning an Online Safety Bill, which will hit social media firms with huge fines if they fail to curb harmful content. A Facebook spokesman said: 'Using industry-leading technology, 99 per cent of this content is proactively detected and taken down before it's reported to us. 'All of these figures are published regularly so we can be held to account for the progress we're making on this internet-wide problem.' Advertisement Trading in his 1.5 million townhouse in Putney, South-West London, for a 7 million mansion in the sleepy Californian hamlet of Atherton, Clegg has embraced the Silicon Valley lifestyle. Neighbours include tech titans Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer. Soon after Clegg's appointment, he launched a charm offensive to win over key power brokers in Brussels. In fact, he held at least 12 meetings with European Commissioners the EU's most powerful officials in less than three years. The day after his appointment was announced, he emailed Margrethe Vestager, a Danish politician and the then European Commissioner for competition. 'I know you have reservations about social media, and perhaps FB in particular, but I hope you'd agree it's good to have a European and a liberal in the heart of Silicon Valley!' he wrote. A senior figure in Brussels, Ms Vestager has taken on the biggest technology companies in the world, including Facebook, which she fined 110 million (96.5 million) for being opaque about its takeover of WhatsApp. It should also perhaps have been no surprise that one of Clegg's early key meetings at Facebook's headquarters near San Francisco was with Irish politicians and officials. Ireland plays a critical role for Facebook as it employs 5,500 people there and its Dublin office is one of the biggest of the company's locations outside of California. Perhaps more importantly, Ireland's generous tax regime, and the complex way Facebook's business empire is structured, have allowed it to avoid paying billions of pounds in tax in other countries. In 2018, one of Facebook's holding companies in Ireland recorded revenues of 21 billion, more than half of the company's total global turnover of 39 billion. That same year, Facebook's main Irish subsidiary paid 75 million in tax while recording profits of more than 10 billion equivalent to just 0.8 per cent. But while Ireland has been keen to offer Facebook financial incentives, other European countries, including the UK, have grown increasingly frustrated at how little the company pays in tax. Around half of European countries have either proposed or implemented new taxes on technology firms, with the UK Government last April imposing a 2 per cent tax on the revenue that internet companies gain from British users. Under such a system, Facebook can be taxed twice on the same revenue in two different countries. Minutes of the meeting in California in January 2019 marked confidential reveal how Facebook lobbied to ease its tax burden in Ireland to offset the hundreds of millions of pounds it faced paying out as other EU countries imposed new taxes. 'Facebook raised an issue with regard to whether payment of national digital sales taxes in some jurisdictions through its Irish subsidiary could be offset against Irish tax,' the minutes state. Facebook has since wound up the key Irish holding company, and two others, amid criticism that it was shifting profits to Ireland to avoid tax. In 2016, Clegg criticised Facebook and suggested the company should be paying more tax. 'I'm not especially bedazzled by Facebook,' he wrote in the London Evening Standard. 'While I have good friends who work at the company, I actually find the messianic Californian new-worldy-touchy-feely culture of Facebook a little grating. 'Nor am I sure that companies such as Facebook really pay all the tax they could though that's as much the fault of governments who still haven't got their tax act together.' Neighbours include tech titans Eric Schmidt, former head of Google, and Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer Former Cabinet Minister David Jones highlighted how in 2017 Clegg also told The Times that companies such as Facebook were 'flagrantly, blatantly on the wrong side' on tax and should pay up. He added: 'Clegg should explain why what was wrong in 2017 was OK just two short years later.' Facebook last night said the Irish delegation had requested the meeting and it was the tech firm's finance team, not Sir Nick, who raised the issue of tax. A spokesman added that Clegg has 'been clear that tech companies should be prepared to pay more tax in Europe, which is why Facebook has backed new international tax rules for the digital economy'. 'He has argued very publicly that these much-needed reforms can only succeed if they're done globally, rather than through a patchwork of unilateral action by individual countries.' The documents also reveal how just five days later Sir Nick hosted a cocktail party in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in a bid to woo EU officials responsible for regulating big tech. The party on January 24, 2019, came the day after a devastated father accused Facebook of helping his teenage daughter kill herself. Speaking publicly for the first time since his 14-year-old daughter Molly died in 2017, Ian Russell told the BBC that she had taken her own life after looking at pictures on Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, that glorified self-harm and suicide. The next day, Facebook hosted the world's business and political elite at a venue opposite Davos's Grand Hotel Belvedere to discuss 'the responsibility and action' the firm was taking to tackle 'the biggest challenges of the digital age'. When asked about Molly's death four days after the Davos conference, Clegg told the BBC: 'I can tell you firstly we're going to look at this from top to bottom, change everything we're doing if necessary, to get it right.' The files also reveal how Clegg defended Facebook after it blocked access in Australia to media pages on its website in a row about paying for news. The tech giant prevented its 17 million Australian users from sharing news or accessing pages for more than a week in retaliation against legislation to make it and other tech companies pay for journalism. In an email to Ms Vestager on March 1 this year, Sir Nick defended Facebook over the storm and said claims the company stole journalism 'always were and remain false'. In other emails, Clegg defended Facebook against allegations that it hosts horrifying self-harm and suicide images. In a message to Ms Vestager on March 11, 2020, he said he wanted to address a 'Danish documentary you mentioned regarding Instagram and suicide and self-injury content'. He insisted that the tech giant did not allow the promotion of self-injury and suicide and 'some of the images shown in the piece were against our policies, and we removed them'. Clegg claimed Facebook had 'new machine learning technology' to find such images. He has also sought to influence MEPs, the documents reveal. Emails obtained from the US Trade Representative, a US government agency, indicate that Clegg claimed he was meeting MEPs to 'advise' them on tech regulation. Robert Gerber, a director at the agency, emailed a group of colleagues: 'In fact, he said he has been leading sessions with MEPs in Brussels to advise them on the development of regulations.' One replied: 'Sounds like Clegg knows his stuff.' Last night Facebook said: 'Facebook and Nick Clegg have spent the last few years vocally calling for regulation of the internet, so it should be no surprise that he meets with regulators. 'As vice-president for global affairs at Facebook, Nick also regularly makes himself available to outside interests including publishers seeking to pursue their own commercial interests on social media.' A mistake by a leading Chinese official may have disclosed the name, address and details about one of the first people suspected of being infected with Covid-19 in Wuhan, three weeks before Beijing authorities claim they detected the initial case. The astonishing error, revealed in a screen-grab sent to a Chinese medical journal, shows that the 61-year-old woman, known as Patient Su, lived about a mile from one of the citys main coronavirus research labs. She was also close to a stop for the high-speed rail line that is believed to have played a key role in spreading the virus around the city of 11 million people. Tom Tugendhat MP, chairman of the Commons foreign affairs committee, said: The time has come for China to open up all its files so the world can find the truth about the origins of this pandemic. We cannot protect against future risks if there is not recognition that we all need to share knowledge and learn from any mistakes. The astonishing error, revealed in a screen-grab sent to a Chinese medical journal, shows that the 61-year-old woman, known as Patient Su, lived about a mile from one of the citys main coronavirus research labs (pictured) This latest development emerged as the result of an interview given to a Chinese medical journal by the scientist tasked with compiling the countrys official data on cases. Professor Yu Chuanhua, professor of biostatistics at Wuhan University, told Health Times that he had 47,000 cases on his national database of confirmed and suspected cases by late February 2020. These included one suspected fatality of a patient who fell ill in late September 2019. There is data on a patient who became ill on September 29, he said. The data shows the patient has not undergone nucleic testing and the clinical diagnosis is a suspected case. The patient has died. The data has not been confirmed. The academic then detailed two more suspected cases reported to Wuhan doctors on November 14 and 21, along with several others before December 8 the date that China gave to the World Health Organisation for the earliest onset case. The Health Times article included a screenshot of the two November cases on the professors database. Although personal details were blurred out, some were visible, including the hospital name and home district. They show Patient Su was treated at Rongjun Hospital in Wuhan and, given the building and street numbers, almost certainly lived in the Kaile Guiyan community on Zhuodaoquan Street, about 600 metres from the medical centre. Both the hospital and the residence are in the Hongshan district near where much of the bat-related coronavirus research was taking place in several laboratories. This latest development emerged as the result of an interview given to a Chinese medical journal by the scientist tasked with compiling the countrys official data on cases. Pictured, the Wuhan Institute of Virology These include a laboratory run by Chinas Centre for Disease Control with the second-highest global levels of biosecurity little more than one mile away, while downtown sites run by Wuhan Institute of Virology are less than three miles away. David Asher, former lead investigator for the US State Department, told The Mail on Sunday in March that three researchers at the institute had become ill with a mysterious respiratory condition in November 2019, with the wife of one scientist dying. Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported these researchers ended up in hospital although China has furiously denied the claims. On Thursday, President Joe Biden ordered US intelligence services to carry out a fresh probe into the pandemics origins. One Washington source told The Mail on Sunday that US intelligence on the Wuhan researchers was collected in late 2019 in data-scraping from routine surveillance. It is thought to include tapped phone conversations, texts and emails. He said it was not discovered until efforts were intensified last year to investigate the pandemics origins and any possible links with Wuhan laboratories and that it is backed by testimony from a source with access to one of the units. It is also understood that Washington has been surprised by the lack of input from British intelligence into Chinas cover-up, given their liaison over other global concerns. The UK seemed surprisingly reticent, he said. The area where Patient Su lived and was treated is more than 13 miles from the Huanan market originally blamed by Beijing as the source of Covid-19 and which was rapidly cleaned up after Taiwan notified the WHO about the emerging crisis. The second patient in November was listed as a 62-year-old man called Wang, who was treated at Hanyang hospital. Professors Yus interview with Health Times took place on the day Chinas health authorities issued a silencing gag on the novel coronavirus as President Xi Jinping tried to regain control of the situation. The area where Patient Su lived and was treated is more than 13 miles from the Huanan market originally blamed by Beijing as the source of Covid-19 and which was rapidly cleaned up after Taiwan notified the WHO about the emerging crisis. Pictured, the Wuhan Institute of Virology Yu rang the journalist within two days to retract this information, claiming the dates had been entered incorrectly and all the other suspected cases before December 8 needed verification. The details were discovered by Gilles Demaneuf, a member of the Drastic group of online digital activists who have uncovered many of the facts seen as contradicting the official Chinese narrative that Covid-19 was a disease that crossed over naturally from animals. We were able to pinpoint the exact name, age and address of a very early suspected case nearly one month before the official first case, said Demaneuf, a French data scientist who works for a New Zealand bank. That address is right next to the subway line No 2 and also not far from a Peoples Liberation Army hospital that treated some of the other earliest cases. This rail system carries a million people a day and connects the wet market, Wuhan Institute of Virology and an international airport. Demaneuf argues these new findings show many more clues might be accessible if there are continued and determined efforts to evaluate the lab leak theory rather than wishful acceptance at face value of statements from China. The WHO was widely condemned for its whitewash investigation earlier this year when it allowed Beijing to vet its team of experts. It adopted Chinas narrative that a lab leak was extremely unlikely while pushing discredited theories that Covid might have been imported on frozen food. The organisations joint report even backtracked on an influential Lancet study by Chinese scientists which examined the first 41 patients admitted to hospital and gave the date of the first case as December 1, 2019. This man, whose wife and son also fell ill as the first confirmed family cluster of Covid, was excluded because his respiratory condition allegedly responded to antibiotics. Meanwhile, a well-sourced report in the South China Morning Post in March claimed there were nine cases by the end of November, involving four men and five women aged between 39 and 79, with the first diagnosis on November 17. Southampton University modelling experts suggested China could have cut global cases by 95 per cent if it had taken action to contain the disease three weeks earlier instead of covering up the outbreak and pressing ahead with New Year festivities that involved millions of people moving around the country. Three-quarters of adults will have received at least one Covid jab within days and almost half will be vaccinated with both doses before the end of the week. As the latest milestones of Britains extraordinary vaccination programme approach, official figures showed yesterday that 39,068,346 people have had their first shot and 24,892,416 have had the second. As Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed the fantastic progress, the number of Covid patients being treated in hospital continued to fall despite an increase of cases involving the Indian variant. Just 870 people with coronavirus are being treated in UK hospitals the lowest figure since mid-September. Official figures showed yesterday that 39,068,346 people have had their first shot in Britain But deaths and hospital admissions have risen slightly. In the past seven days, 59 Covid-related deaths were recorded, up 44 per cent on the previous week, and 870 new hospital admissions, up 23 per cent. Cases have also risen 23 per cent week on week, with 21,469 recorded in the past seven days. However, fears that the vaccination campaign could be hampered by vaccine hesitancy or apathy in younger groups appears unfounded. More than half of those in their 30s in England are already jabbed, even though invitations to that group were sent out only a fortnight ago. Sir Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, said: This success is no happy accident but the result of months of careful planning and the sheer hard work and dedication of NHS staff. Health Secretary Matt Hancock hailed the fantastic progress of the vaccination programme It comes as Chancellor Rishi Sunak said it was not certain that the complete lifting of Covid restrictions, planned for June 21, would happen. In an interview with The Mail on Sunday, he said: We will know more as we approach the date. But he said he was confident that the economy would bounce back thanks to 140 billion in savings amassed during lockdown. Mr Hancock urged those eligible for vaccination, who include the vast majority of adults, to take up the offer, adding: Vaccines are saving lives, are safe, effective and our way out of this devastating pandemic. The rapid pace means Ministers are increasingly confident of reaching the target of offering a first jab to all over-18s by the end of July. They are now looking ahead to an autumn booster campaign in which over-50s could get a third shot potentially of a different vaccine to the one theyve already received. The idea is to provide broader protection against Covid by mix and matching a vaccine such as Pfizer or AstraZeneca with another. One of the eight vaccines being tested in a Government-funded COV-Boost trial into a third jab is the single-shot Janssen vaccine, which was approved by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency on Friday. It was 85 per cent effective at stopping severe Covid illness in trials. A Government source indicated that some of the 20 million Janssen doses ordered could be used as boosters if the trial is successful. Meanwhile, it was claimed last night that Ministers failed to reveal the presence of the Indian variant in the UK for a fortnight after they were alerted. The Sunday Times reported that Public Health England sounded the alarm on April 1, but no official statement was made until April 15. India was not placed on the travel red list until April 23. It said that during those three weeks, more than 20,000 passengers flew into Britain from India. Media regulator Ofcom faced questions about its transparency last night after it refused to disclose information about meetings between its chief executive and Facebook lobbyist Nick Clegg. The former Deputy Prime Minister met Dame Melanie Dawes shortly before he reportedly tried to interfere with the appointment of a new chairman of the watchdog. The Mail on Sunday has established that Sir Nick met Dame Melanie on two occasions April 16, 2020, and February 3 this year but Ofcom has refused to reveal what was discussed. In response to a Freedom of Information request lodged by this newspaper, the regulator said it could not release any details without Facebook's permission, or unless the law required it and neither condition had been met. Media regulator Ofcom faced questions about its transparency last night after it refused to disclose information about meetings between its chief executive and Facebook lobbyist Nick Clegg The refusal came after governments from five countries, as well as the European Union, fully co-operated with our requests, releasing a slew of documents and minutes about exchanges involving Sir Nick. They included details of an email conversation between the former Lib Dem leader and Margrethe Vestager, a Danish politician who was the European Commissioner for competition when Clegg was appointed Facebook's head of global affairs in 2018. The day after his new role was announced, Sir Nick emailed her: 'I know you have reservations about social media, and perhaps FB [Facebook] in particular, but I hope you'd agree it's good to have a European and a liberal in the heart of Silicon Valley!' The former Deputy Prime Minister met Dame Melanie Dawes (above) shortly before he reportedly tried to interfere with the appointment of a new chairman of the watchdog. The Mail on Sunday has established that Sir Nick met Dame Melanie on two occasions April 16, 2020, and February 3 this year but Ofcom has refused to reveal what was discussed Sir Nick later joined forces with Google to lobby against the proposed appointment of former Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre as head of the watchdog, according to the Daily Telegraph. Mr Dacre emerged as Boris Johnson's favourite to chair the watchdog's board last summer because of his willingness to 'challenge the status quo'. Facebook denied interfering with the appointment process, which is now being re-run after Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden said he had become aware of concerns 'about lobbying and undeclared interests from candidates'. The interview panel containing outside executives and a civil servant could now be replaced. The tech giants were reported to favour the selection of Lord Vaizey, who enjoyed friendly relations with the sector when he was Culture Secretary under David Cameron. The other candidates are Ofcom's deputy chairman Maggie Carver and Sir Tom Winsor, Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Constabulary. The refusal came after governments from five countries, as well as the EU, fully co-operated with our requests, releasing a slew of documents and minutes about exchanges involving Sir Nick. They included details of an email conversation between the former Lib Dem leader and Margrethe Vestager (above), a Danish politician who was the European Commissioner for competition when Clegg was appointed Facebook's head of global affairs in 2018 Ofcom currently regulates telecoms, broadcasting and the postal services, but its remit is being broadened to include the internet too. Ministers will give Ofcom powers to regulate social media companies as part of the Online Safety Bill, meaning the successful candidate would oversee the implementation of rules holding the web giants to account for child sexual abuse images, terrorist material and harmful content about suicide on their services. Last week, Julian Knight, the chairman of the Commons Culture Committee, criticised the 'unnecessary delay' to the process, saying: 'We are concerned about the lack of clarity on why the process... needs to be re-run. 'As a result of this unnecessary delay, the communications regulator finds itself without a chair at what could not be a more critical time as the Government prepares to legislate against online harms.' A Facebook spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: 'Facebook has long called for new rules to set high standards across the internet. We already have strict policies against harmful content on our platforms, but regulations are needed so that private companies aren't making so many important decisions alone.' An Ofcom spokesman said: 'It's a vital part of the chief executive's role to meet senior representatives from every industry we regulate. 'These conversations must be open, frank and of commercial nature and therefore confidential. 'We will continue to meet with senior leaders as we carry out our oversight of these important sectors.' A neighborly quarrel reached stratospheric heights after Google Earth captured images showing someone had mowed the word 'bitch' into the lawns of a house in Salt Lake City, along with an arrow pointing at a neighboring property. An eagle-eyed internet user spotted the image and posted it to Reddit with the caption: 'I don't think the neighbors get along very well.' Another commenter added, 'epic find'. The Utah discovery is the latest of many amusing shots of everyday life to have wound there way onto Google Earth. The Google Earth image shows someone mowed the word bitch into his lawn, along with an arrow pointing towards the next door house The image in Salt Lake City, Utah, was spotted by an eagle-eyed internet user and posted to Reddit, along with the caption: 'I don't think the neighbors get along very well' A building shaped like a swastika, Jesus Christ's face in a field and a disturbing image of a lake in Iraq are among the more unusual images picked up by Google Earth over the years. Last year, Google satellite confirmed a mysterious smooth metal obelisk found during a helicopter survey of bighorn sheep in southeastern Utah had been there since at least 2016. The monolith captured the attention of UFO spotters, conspiracy theorists and Stanley Kubrick fans around the world. Hailed as an extraordinary tool to learn about the world by some, Google Earth has also been criticized for intruding on privacy, and even as a threat to national security. A student body closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party has been accused of harassing activists in British universities for criticising human rights abuses in Hong Kong. The Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) is disrupting pro-democracy rallies on campuses across the UK. Demonstrators have been filmed, with some too scared to return to Hong Kong in case Chinese security services arrest them. A student body closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party has been accused of harassing activists in British universities for criticising human rights abuses in Hong Kong, pictured, pro-Hong Kong democracy supporters in London The Chinese Students and Scholars Association has branches in more than 100 British universities and claims to support 120,000 Chinese students in Britain The CSSA has branches in more than 100 British universities and claims to support the 120,000 Chinese students in Britain. But Western intelligence agencies say it is part of the United Front Work Department, an agency tasked by the Beijing regime with recruiting overseas Chinese nationals for propaganda and espionage. Two years ago, the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee said of the CSSA: Its stated aim is to look after Chinese students, but it also reports on them to the embassy and authorities, tries to stop discussion of topics sensitive to China and takes more direct action under guidance of the embassy. Critics say universities turn a blind eye to the threat because of the estimated 2.1 billion in fees Chinese students pay each year. The Mail on Sunday has spoken to students who say the CSSA targeted them on British campuses. All were too scared to be named. When a 22-year-old medical science student at University College London formed a group in 2019 to highlight police brutality against Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, their stall on campus was besieged by 40 people waving Chinese flags and filming on phones. She said: They were shouting and verbally intimidating us things like, Your family will be ashamed of you because you are doing this. Security staff told the stallholders to leave for their own safety. A Cambridge student claims he was intimidated by the CSSA in 2019 when he urged Wolfson College to withdraw an honorary fellowship from Carrie Lam, Hong Kongs pro-Beijing chief executive, who studied at Cambridge. He said he was bombarded with pornographic spam and death threats asking me and my mother to die. At Exeter, a student from Hong Kong said 20 pro-democracy protesters were accosted in 2019 by a gang of CSSA supporters who grabbed their placards. They were calling us cockroaches, traitors, the student said. The protest was filmed and their identity was shared by CSSA members. The student is now too scared to return to Hong Kong. The student said a friend at Sheffield University was hurt when a CSSA group threw bottles at a pro-Hong Kong rally. The assailant was given a police caution and suspended. The CSSA did not respond last night to a request for comment. The Chinese Embassy said: We have never exerted any political influence on normal academic activities in British universities. As for the voluntary expression of indignation and opposition of Chinese students and other Chinese citizens overseas against words and deeds that attempt to separate China and smear its image, this is completely understandable and reasonable. UCL, Cambridge, Exeter and Sheffield universities said they were committed to protecting student freedoms and the right to protest peacefully within the law. For months Facebook banned any comments that dared to suggest Covid-19 was a man-made virus which came from a Wuhan lab. But last week the social media giant made a dramatic U-turn, after US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence agencies to launch an inquiry into the lab leak theory. It had previously sided with Left-leaning media organisations that scoffed at the idea that the Chinese government had covered up the source of the virus. Liberal critics rubbished the notion when it was suggested by then-President Donald Trump last year. For months Facebook banned any comments that dared to suggest Covid-19 was a man-made virus which came from a Wuhan lab. But last week the social media giant made a dramatic U-turn, after US President Joe Biden ordered intelligence agencies to launch an inquiry into the lab leak theory MPs criticised Facebook's global policy chief Sir Nick Clegg as 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network over discussions of the theory The pioneering tech firm reversed its ban just hours after President Biden set up a probe to establish the truth and report back to him in 90 days. It came after The Wall Street Journal reported that three researchers from Wuhan Institute of Virology became sick enough in November 2019 that they sought hospital care, according to a previously undisclosed US intelligence report. 'In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,' Facebook announced on Wednesday. MPs criticised Facebook's global policy chief Sir Nick Clegg as 'feeble' for allowing months of censorship on the social network over discussions of the theory. Tory MP Bob Seely called Facebook's behaviour 'contemptible' and he hoped the company would now respect free speech rather than 'ingratiating' themselves with China, which has officially banned the website but remains a 3 billion-a-year advertising market for the social media giant. Facebook has insisted that its ban was based on advice from experts, including the World Health Organisation (WHO). The theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute has gathered pace after Beijing strictly controlled an on-site visit by WHO researchers in January. The WHO team was allowed only three hours inside the lab and was unable to examine any of the Wuhan Institute's safety logs or records of testing on its staff. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director-general of the WHO, admitted that the visit was inconclusive, adding that 'all hypotheses are open' and warranted future study. Following Facebook's about-turn, Conservative MP Peter Bone said: 'It does seem to me that Facebook is not an open platform for people to put their views on. 'It is an open platform for people to put their views on, as long as they agree with Facebook.' Former Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan Smith said: 'You have a real problem. I think the power now of the social media giants is transcending the power of governments. These are decisions about debate. They are not about conspiracy.' gettyimagesbank South Korea established a presidential committee Saturday to serve as the control tower of the nation's carbon neutrality drive. President Moon Jae-in said the government-private panel would be a "pivot" in uniting national efforts to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. He admitted that it would not be easy for the country to attain the goal, given its heavy reliance on manufacturing industries and fossil fuels. "Carbon neutrality is an unavoidable task, with which mankind should go. We can do it," Moon said during the panel's inauguration ceremony at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) in central Seoul. Prince William fears his brothers truth-bombing will go a step too far and further damage relations with the Royal Family. A friend told The Mail on Sunday that William was disappointed and greatly concerned after Prince Harrys latest fusillade about the perceived lack of support for his wife Meghan when she was struggling with her mental health. Harrys criticism of his family during a 95-minute episode of his TV programme The Me You Cant See with Oprah Winfrey on Friday was less pointed than in a previous appearance to promote the series or during the controversial interview he and Meghan gave to the US chat show host in March. A friend told The Mail on Sunday that William was disappointed and greatly concerned after Prince Harrys latest fusillade. Pictured, Prince Harry and William at Prince Philip's funeral But he did appear to snipe at his family by referring to the shame felt by relatives when confronted with mental health problems. As parents, as siblings, certainly from what Ive learned, theres an element of shame we feel because were like, How could we not have seen it? But we all know when people are suffering and people are struggling that were all incredibly good at covering it up, he told the actress Glenn Close, who was a guest in the episode. Prince William and Catherine at a Beating Retreat by The Massed Pipes and Drums of the Combined Cadet Force in Scotland on May 27 In his earlier appearance he accused Prince Charles of leaving him alone to suffer the trauma of the death of his mother, Princess Diana. My father used to say to both William and I, Well, it was like that for me so its going to be like that for you, he claimed. That doesnt make sense. Just because you suffered doesnt mean that your kids have to suffer. In fact, quite the opposite. A source said last night that there were concerns rather than fears at Buckingham Palace that Harry and heavily pregnant wife Meghan will make further allegations. A Tennessee hat shop has been slammed on social media for selling stick-on yellow stars featuring the words 'Not Vaccinated'. HatWRKS in Nashville announced that the items were on sale Saturday in a post shared to Instagram. 'Patches are here!! They turned out great. $5ea. Strong adhesive back... we'll be offering trucker caps soon,' the post - which has since been deleted - read. The products are modelled on the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe during the 1930s and 40s. Those yellow stars were used to identify, isolate and humiliate Jewish people. The 'Not Vaccinated' stars appear to have been inspired by a recent reference Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene made comparing Covid-19 guidelines to the Holocaust. 'Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi's forced Jewish people to wear a gold star,' Taylor Greene wrote on Twitter earlier this week. HatWRKS has now been blasted by a number of public figures on both the left and the right. HatWRKS in Nashville has been slammed on social media for selling stick-on yellow stars featuring the words 'Not Vaccinated' 'I am ashamed to know that I've given these people business in the past; I've sent people there. This is vile and repulsive. They trumpet that they're proud to 'Stand Up Against Tyranny' Well, I am proud to say GO F**K YOURSELF. I'll purchase my chapeaus elsewhere,' actor W. Earl Brown wrote. Republican commentator Ana Navarro concurred, writing: 'I could not believe this could be for real. I like to think such stupidity, insensitivity and ignorance in America cannot be commonplace. Its real.' Elsewhere, former Senior Advisor to Donald Trump, AJ Delgado, said that the products were 'beyond disgusting'. Ivo Daalder, the former US Ambassador to NATO, wrote: 'As a young school girl in Holland, my mother was forced to wear a yellow star by the Nazis to identify her as a Jew. Its beyond grotesque to sell this evil symbol to proclaim ones not vaccinated. Where does this end?' HatWRKS has now been blasted by a number of public figures on both the left and the right The products are modelled on the yellow stars Jews were forced to wear in Nazi-occupied Europe during the 1930s and 40s. Those yellow stars were used to identify, isolate and humiliate Jewish people The controversy comes after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was roundly condemned for comparing the discrimination unvaccinated people face to the discrimination Jews experienced in Nazi-controlled Europe. Earlier this week, she tweeted: 'Vaccinated employees get a vaccination logo just like the Nazi's forced Jewish people to wear a gold star. Vaccine passports & mask mandates create discrimination against unvaxxed people who trust their immune systems to a virus that is 99% survivable.' Attached to the tweet was a news article about Food City supermarkets dropping mask requirements for vaccinated workers. Greene said it was a slippery slope to require some sort of identification on whether a person is vaccinated against coronavirus or not. The Georgia representative also tweeted: 'Pretty soon it will be.. 'We only hire vaccinated people, show your vax papers.' 'We only admit vaccinated students, show your vax papers.' 'These bathrooms are only for vaccinated people, show your vax papers.' 'Then.....scan your bar code or swipe your chip on your arm,' she predicted. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene was roundly condemned for comparing the discrimination unvaccinated people face to the discrimination Jews experienced in Nazi-controlled Europe During Senate floor remarks on Tuesday, Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer also lashed out against Greene. 'This morning, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican congresswoman from Georgia, once again, compared preparations taken against COVID to the Holocaust,' Schumer, who is Jewish, said. 'These are sickening, reprehensible comments,' he added, 'and she should stop this vile language immediately.' Greene defended her comparison of Covid restrictions to Nazi Germany by claiming 'any ration Jewish person' doesn't like either. 'I think any rational Jewish person didn't like what happened in Nazi Germany and any rational Jewish person doesn't like what's happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing vaccine policies,' Greene told Arizona TV outlet 12 News. Vladimir Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko have 'agreed a loan deal' during a yacht tour in Sochi amid international uproar over the hijacking of a Ryanair flight to detain a dissident journalist. The Russian President and Mr Lukashenko held a second day of talks - as well as a yacht tour - in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Saturday. The former-Soviet superpower will move ahead with a second 352million loan to Belarus next month amid the latest standoff with the West. Lukashenko ordered the hijacking of a Ryanair plane as it crossed Belarusian airspace so he could arrest dissident blogger Roman Protasevich and girlfriend Sofia Sapega this week. Putin is the only world leader to defend Lukashenko over the hijacking. Russia promised Belarus a 1.06billion loan last year as part of Moscow's efforts to stabilise its neighbour and longstanding ally. Minsk received a first installment of 352million in October. Several Western countries accused Belarus of piracy this week after Belarusian air traffic control informed the pilot of the Ryanair passenger jet of a hoax bomb threat. Vladimir Putin and Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko 'agreed a loan deal' during a yacht tour in Sochi amid international uproar over the hijacking of a Ryanair flight to detain a dissident journalist Minsk scrambled a MiG-29 fighter plane to escort the jetliner down, and then arrested Protasevich, a blogger and critic of Lukashenko who was on board. Arrested with Protasevich was his girlfriend, a Russian citizen. Putin on Saturday raised the topic of Sapega, the TASS news agency reported, citing Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov. 'President Lukashenko informed his Russian colleague in detail about what happened with the Ryanair flight,' TASS cited Peskov as saying. 'On the initiative of the Russian president the topic of the Russian citizen, who was detained, was raised .... Naturally, we are not indifferent to her fate,' Peskov was cited as saying. He added the Kremlin would take note of the fact that Sapega also has a Belarusian residency permit. Putin and Lukashenko completed the day of talks with a yacht tour in Sochi. A video appeared to show the two leaders laughing and spotting dolphins off the Russian coast. The Russian President and Mr Lukashenko held a second day of talks - as well as a yacht tour (pictured) - in the southern Russian city of Sochi on Saturday The former-Soviet superpower will move ahead with a second 352million loan to Belarus (the leaders on the yacht tour, pictured) next month amid the latest standoff with the West Most of Belarus's neighbours and many other European nations have banned flights by Belarusian national airline Belavia following Sunday's forced landing of the Ryanair jet, which was en route to Lithuania from Greece. The issue of air travel for Belarusian citizens was raised during Saturday's meeting, Peskov was cited by Interfax as saying, adding the transport ministries of Moscow and Minsk had been tasked with helping Belarusian citizens currently in Europe to return home. Yesterday, the EU offered to give 2.8billion to Belarus if Lukashenko steps aside and the country peacefully transitions to democracy. Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the 'development funding' is ready once 'the democratic choice of the Belarusian people' is respected - after elections last year which Lukashenko claimed to have won but is widely thought to have lost. Von der Leyen said: 'To the people of Belarus: We see and hear your desire for change, for democracy, and for a bright future. 'And to the Belarusian authorities: No amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime.' It comes after Lukashenko ordered a Ryanair flight to divert to Minsk so he could arrest a dissident journalist and his girlfriend who were on board (pictured) Belarusian President Lukashenko and his son Nikolai on the boat trip with President Putin The West had already slapped sanctions on Belarusian officials involved in the vote and crackdown against protesters and is now promising more. Many observers warn that Lukashenko has become easy prey for the Kremlin, which may use his isolation to push for closer integration. 'Lukashenko is scared, and the Kremlin may demand payment for its political support by pushing for the introduction of a single currency, the deployment of military bases and more,' said Valery Karbalevich, an independent Minsk-based analyst. 'In this situation, it would be much more difficult for him to resist and bargain with Putin.' Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the top opposition candidate in Belarus' last election who left the country under official pressure, charged that Lukashenko was acting out of a sense of impunity in diverting the flight. 'The European Union has to be stronger, braver in its resolutions and decisions,' she said after meeting Dutch caretaker Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague. Moscow has helped buttress Belarus' economy with cheap energy supplies and loans, but the ties have often been strained with Lukashenko scolding Moscow for trying to force him to relinquish control over prized economic assets and eventually abandon Belarus' independence. In the past, the 66-year-old Belarusian leader has tried to play the West against Russia, raising the prospect of a rapprochement with the EU and the United States to wring more aid out of Moscow. Roman Protasevich (left), a journalist who reported on protests against Lukashenko, and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega (right) have been in jail in Minsk since Sunday Such tactics no longer work after Lukashenko's brutal crackdown on protests last fall in the wake of a vote that handed him a sixth term but opposition said was rigged. More than 35,000 people were arrested amid the protests and thousands beaten - moves that made him a pariah in the West. The flight's diversion has now cornered the Belarusian strongman even more. Some in the West have alleged Russia was involved in the Ryanair flight's diversion - something Moscow angrily denies - and warned that it could exploit the situation to draw Belarus ever closer and possibly even incorporate it. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis charged Thursday that 'Lukashenko is playing with Putin, and trying and helping Putin to annex the country,' adding that 'we should send the signals to Russia as well that annexation wouldn't go well with Europe.' On Friday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova denounced the EU's decision to ask European airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace as 'utterly irresponsible and threatening passengers' safety.' As European airlines seek to skirt Belarus, Russia has refused some requests to change the flight paths of service to Moscow over the past two days in an apparent gesture of support for Lukashenko but allowed some flights to proceed Friday. Austrian Airlines, for instance, canceled a flight from Vienna on Thursday, though the carrier said it was given permission to avoid Belarus for flights on the route Friday, according to the Austria Press Agency. It is still awaiting word on further flights. Air France canceled flights from Paris to Moscow on Thursday and Friday. Rishi Sunak today calls on the US Government to sign up to a groundbreaking new global tax targeting the super-profits of tech giants such as Google and Facebook. In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the Chancellor urges President Biden's administration to conclude negotiations over the new tax which would bring in billions of pounds in extra revenue in time for next month's G7 summit in Cornwall. It comes after years of criticism about the way technology companies have channelled profits through tax havens to minimise the amount they pay on their vast revenues. The Biden administration has indicated that it is prepared to drop its opposition to the 'tech tax' in return for an agreement to introduce a new minimum level of corporation tax around the world. That is expected to be set at 15 per cent. Rishi Sunak today calls on the US Government to sign up to a groundbreaking new global tax targeting the super-profits of tech giants such as Google and Facebook. In an exclusive interview with The Mail on Sunday, the Chancellor urges President Biden's administration to conclude negotiations over the new tax which would bring in billions of pounds in extra revenue in time for next month's G7 summit in Cornwall It comes after years of criticism about the way technology companies have channelled profits through tax havens to minimise the amount they pay on their vast revenues Mr Sunak says the tech tax which will be determined by the profit margins enjoyed by the world's biggest companies is necessary because 'the global tax system isn't working'. He adds: 'The right companies aren't paying the right tax in the right places. 'That's not fair and that's something that I want to fix.' The G7's foreign ministers will meet in London at the end of this week to discuss the proposed deal, ahead of the leaders' summit a week later. Calling on the US to sign up, Mr Sunak says: 'We understand why an agreement on global corporation tax is important for our American friends. We need them to understand why fair taxation of tech companies is important to us. 'There's a deal to be had, so I'm urging the US and all of the G7 to come to the table next week and get it done.' The Treasury is also examining plans to help protect the traditional high street and raise further revenues through an online sales tax levied on items bought over the internet for home delivery. Mr Sunak's intervention came as a cache of emails and letters obtained by The Mail on Sunday revealed how: Former Deputy Prime Minister Sir Nick Clegg has been transformed into a key fixer for Facebook; Sir Nick led a team of Facebook executives who sought to protect the tech giant's vast profits from the threat of new taxes despite previously suggesting the firm should pay more; As Mark Zuckerberg's right-hand man, the former Lib Dem leader launched a charm offensive to win over power brokers in the EU, telling one senior official: 'It's good to have a European and a liberal in the heart of Silicon Valley!' During his interview, Mr Sunak said negotiations with the US were 'going well', adding: 'There's a big prize here but we need to stick to our guns to get it over the line... 'Large multinational companies, particularly digital companies, are able by the nature of their businesses not to pay the right tax in the right places. That's not fair and that means there isn't a level playing field with high street businesses.' Under the terms of the US plan, if a company such as Facebook tried to channel its profits on its UK operations through a haven with a rate of 1 per cent, for example, the UK Government would be able to force it to pay the 14 per cent difference. The move would hit countries such as Ireland, which has tried to attract businesses by fixing its rate at 12.5 per cent. UK corporation tax is 19 per cent, but will rise to 25 per cent by 2023 to help repair the damage caused by the pandemic. Calling on the US to sign up, Mr Sunak says: 'We understand why an agreement on global corporation tax is important for our American friends. We need them to understand why fair taxation of tech companies is important to us.' (Above, Joe Biden in March) A total of 137 countries are involved in discussions about the tech and corporation taxes through the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. As part of further efforts to clip the wings of the tech giants in the UK, the Government has set up the Digital Markets Unit regulator to ensure fair competition in digital advertising. Ministers are also examining whether to force the companies to pay newspapers for any articles which they reproduce, similar to a system that has been introduced in Australia. Google and Facebook last year took 80 per cent of the 14 billion spent on digital advertising in the UK in 2019, while national and local newspapers took just 4 per cent. Boris Johnson and Joe Biden will seek a way to 'unlock' travel between Britain and the US during the G7 summit next month. Government sources told The Mail on Sunday that talks on how to ease Covid travel restrictions will be 'on the table' when the Prime Minister meets the US President in Cornwall. British tourists cannot enter the US which is on the Government's amber list and those flying into the UK have to quarantine at home or in the place they are staying for ten days and take covid tests. While it is thought unlikely that America's status will change when the lists are reviewed this week, insiders say Mr Johnson and Mr Biden will want to announce progress during the summit, which begins on June 11. Boris Johnson and Joe Biden will seek a way to 'unlock' travel between Britain and the US during the G7 summit next month. Government sources told The Mail on Sunday that talks on how to ease Covid travel restrictions will be 'on the table' when the Prime Minister meets the US President in Cornwall 'This is the kind of thing you use the G7 for,' said a source. 'Both Boris and Biden will want to come back with some announcements and this is an obvious one for them to talk over. We have been trying to get this sorted, but it is the higher-ups who can unlock it. The G7 is the place you'd do it.' The Joint Biosecurity Centre, which was created last year to provide independent analysis on Covid-19 to Ministers, is working on its three-week review of the status of foreign countries. The announcement of new lists is expected on Thursday, with any changes coming into force the following week. Twelve countries and territories are on the green list, but with the exception of Portugal and Gibraltar they are remote or are not allowing travellers from Britain to enter. While it is thought unlikely that America's status will change when the lists are reviewed this week, insiders say Mr Johnson and Mr Biden will want to announce progress during the summit, which begins on June 11 There is, however, a chance that some Greek and Spanish islands could this week be added to the list. During the first assessment, there was frustration at officials' failure to look at individual islands whose rates differed from the mainland. According to the latest figures, mainland Spain had 68 infections per 100,000 people reported over the past seven days. The rate in the Balearic islands, which includes Majorca, Menorca and Ibiza, was 17 per 100,000 lower than Portugal. But Tory MPs last night warned that adding more countries to the green list could be undermined by continued concerns about the ability of UK Border Force officials to cope with extra passengers. Henry Smith, whose constituency includes Gatwick, said: 'The Border Force should be staffing desks at arrival airports across the UK to full capacity.' Travel to France in the near future is unlikely after it slapped new quarantine and testing rules on visitors from tomorrow. The decision came after French scientists estimated that of the estimated 10,000 people entering France from the UK each day, one will likely be infected with the Indian variant. Sergio Aguero is adamant that he will not officially sign for Barcelona until he knows whether Lionel Messi will stay at the club, according to reports. Manchester City ace Aguero looks set to move to the Nou Camp this summer as a free agent and there were even indications that he would undergo his medical on Monday - just two days after the Champions League final. But the situation now looks to have taken a twist at the 11th hour with Mundo Deportivo claiming that the green light will only come from Aguero when the future of talisman Messi is clearer. Sergio Aguero's move to Barcelona may hinge on Lionel Messi signing an extension at the club The deal for Aguero looked to have been sealed with the terms of his lucrative contract agreed and City emotionally confirming his departure after a trophy-laden decade of service. His friendship with Messi is a potential snag, however, with Aguero believing they would work well together on the pitch and that he would fit in alongside the mercurial superstar's dazzling playing style. Barcelona president Joan Laporta admitted recently that discussions with Messi over a new contract are 'going well', but no agreement has yet been reached, with Paris Saint-Germain and City still thought to be interested in signing him this summer. Messi is yet to agree to stay at Barcelona this summer following another disappointing season Barcelona have been left in the lurch after a disappointing campaign, which may also see boss Ronald Koeman leave this summer, and Aguero was earmarked as the first big-name addition to help spark a recovery. It is believed Aguero's camp have told Barcelona that they are keen not to rush into a final decision, although the club remain confident the switch will get across the line sooner rather than later. However, despite the Catalan outfit being confident an agreement is just a matter of time, there are a number of other clubs interested in swooping to snap up Aguero. A host of Premier League teams are thought to have pushed for the veteran ace in recent days, and Juventus are also keeping a keen eye on City's all-time record scorer. Aguero and Messi are Argentina team-mates and will hope to keep up the connection in Spain The same outlet add that Aguero's priority is to take up the next chapter of his career at Barcelona alongside compatriot Messi - but his other potential suitors are hopeful of stealing in. It has been reported that Aguero, however, may still press ahead with his original plans to join Barcelona by having his medical checks before putting pen to paper next week ahead of linking up with Argentina for the Copa America. Mundo Deportivo say that these developments would suggest Messi is close to agreeing to remain at the club. Departing Manchester City ace Aguero bid farewell to the top-flight in the victory over Everton Aguero was also able to lift the Premier League trophy once again before he leaves for free Fresh from City sealing another Premier League title this month, a teary Pep Guardiola revealed Aguero was 'close' to joining Barcelona and admitted that the champions 'cannot replace' the striker. Aguero signed off in the top-flight in typically devastating fashion, having netted a brace in the 5-0 win over Everton and come close on several occasions to notching a memorable hat-trick. 'We love him so much,' Guardiola told Sky Sports. 'He is a special person for all of us. He is so nice, he is so nice. He helped me a lot, he's so good.' Every week our Holiday Hero Neil Simpson takes an in-depth look at a brilliant holiday topic, doing all the legwork so you dont have to. This week: Fantastic ferry routes for summer. Ferries are sailing to the rescue for would-be holidaymakers concerned about using crowded airports and squeezing on to planes. Passenger numbers have been cut on many routes so there is more room to spread around on wide-open upper decks and plenty of fresh air to keep you safe and blow away those lockdown cobwebs. A Stena Line ferry enters the River Mersey on its way back from Belfast And the plastic screens, hand-sanitising stations and one-way systems we now expect on land are all present at sea. Take a car and you can avoid terminal buildings altogether and drive straight on and off the ferry in socially-distanced style. For a longer trip, families can remain in their bubble by booking en suite cabins. Flexible tickets are available on most routes, so if needed you can change dates or cancel. Better still, you dont even need to leave the UK to find a world-beating holiday experience with a ferry. Missed out on a great American road trip since US borders closed last spring? Ferries can swiftly get you to Northern Ireland for an awesome alternative the Causeway Coastal Route. A six-day, family-friendly drive starts in Belfast (home of the Titanic museum), and takes in the Giants Causeway, the Carrick- a-Rede rope bridge, Rathlin Island, the medieval Dunluce Castle and plenty of Game Of Thrones filming locations before ending 130 miles away in Londonderry. Stena Line sails to Belfast from Liverpool in about eight hours, or from Cairnryan in Scotland in just over two. Return ferry tickets for two adults in a car, plus a suggested itinerary, directions and six nights in hotels along the Coastal Route, cost from 400pp (stenaline.co.uk). Caledonian MacBrayne ferries can take you to the beaches of Berneray, Canna and Colonsay from Oban (pictured) If you have been craving the vibrant sea and sand colours of the Caribbean, a ferry can take you to the Hebrides, where white-sand beaches and rich blue waters easily match those of Bermuda, the Bahamas or Barbados. And strong winds, part of the Gulf Stream, make Scottish islands a great place for windsurfing and kitesurfing. From Oban, Caledonian MacBrayne ferries can take you to the butter-white beaches of Berneray, Canna, Colonsay and more in under three hours. Foot-passenger fares for two adults and two children start at about 45 return (calmac.co.uk). If its snorkelling and sea creatures youve missed, take a ferry to the Isles of Scilly, where you can swim with seals in clear waters. From Penzance, expect amazing views of the Cornish coastline on the two-hour 45-minute voyage to St Marys. Day-return fares start at 30 for adults and 15 for children, while dogs go free (islesofscilly-travel.co.uk). Easy does it: A ferry from Penzance in Cornwall passes St Michaels Mount on its way to the Isles of Scilly World-class star-gazing normally means heading to distant locations such as the Canaries, South Africa or New Zealand. Yet a ferry can take you to the Isle of Man, one of the UKs best spots to see the Milky Way and planets. The island, due to reopen to tourists by July, has more than two dozen dark sky discovery sites and tours led by astronomers. Travel on the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company from Liverpool or Heysham in Lancashire in about three hours. Foot-passenger fares are 18.75 each way, or return fares for two in a car start at about 108 (steam-packet.com). Find inspiration on dozens of other ferry routes and holiday ideas at discoverferries.com. When it comes to reality TV influencers, former Married At First Sight bride Martha Kalifatidis is arguably at the top of the ladder. The pint-sized star has amassed over 600,000 Instagram followers since finding fame two years ago and has racked up endorsement deals with some of Australia's biggest brands in the process. From beauty and wellness products to activewear, liquor, shopping apps and even ice cream, the 33-year-old is making serious money on social media. Money maker! Former Married At First Sight star Martha Kalifatidis has become one of Australia's most successful Instagram influencers over the last two years On a recent episode of The Celebrity Apprentice, Martha bragged that she's so successful that she can early a yearly wage in just a month. 'I'm a beauty influencer who probably makes your yearly wage in a month. So, you should probably take some notes because this is not a fluke,' she said. And while the comment ruffled some feathers, it's easy to see how Martha became so successful by looking at her brand deals over the last two years. The brunette got her first major endorsement shortly after MAFS when she became one of the new ambassadors for skincare brand Nip + Fab. Early days: The brunette got her first major endorsement shortly after MAFS when she became one of the new ambassadors for skincare brand Nip + Fab It was quite a coup for the star, who was branded a 'Kmart Kardashian' by trolls, as Kylie Jenner was previously the face of Nip + Fab in the U.S. Shortly after, Martha collaborated with Australian beauty brand Aceology to launch their gel sheet masks. After she featured one of the masks on her Instagram page, they immediately sold out online, proving just how influential she is. Bottoms up! Dan Murphy's is another major Australian brand that Martha works with The Aussie beauty brand confirmed the news to Daily Mail Australia, stating that they received 'an influx of email requests and Instagram messages' about the mask after Martha wore it. The reality star's influence has only grown from there, leading to deals with major brands like Magnum ice creams, Dan Murphy's, Olay skincare, Armans Fine Jewellery and Chemist Warehouse. She's also starred in a television commercial for ShopBack and become one of the new ambassadors for Myer to promote Levi's denim. Small screen: The brunette has even appeared in a TV commercial for the Shopback app Martha is currently the second most followed Married At First Sight star on social media, second only to Jules Robinson. The former TV bride is now stanning on the new season of The Celebrity Apprentice Australia, where she's already ruffling feathers for some remarks she made about her finances. 'Nobody listens to me because they think I'm just a beauty influencer. They don't understand,' Martha said of her team. Influential: Olay skincare and Armans Fine Jewellery are just two of the other brands Martha has worked with 'I'm a beauty influencer who probably makes your yearly wage in a month. So, you should probably take some notes because this is not a fluke.' Some viewers found the remark distasteful, with one posting on Twitter: 'Talk about having a chip on your shoulder.' Another said: 'Martha, do you really genuinely think that your one-off face mask and teeth whitening sponsored Instagram posts earn you more than The Veronicas? Please come back to earth.' Icon: Martha has even made it to the big leagues by working with Myer on a denim campaign for Levi's One simply commented 'wow', while another described her as 'so vain'. However, it wasn't all negative feedback, with one Twitter user commending Martha for her ability to 'fight for herself' while another praised her as a 'business guru'. Martha previously told Daily Mail Australia that 'never in her wildest dreams' did she believe creating sponsored posts at home would become her full-time job, and expressed her surprise at how financially viable it is. Confident: 'I'm a beauty influencer who probably makes your yearly wage in a month. So, you should probably take some notes because this is not a fluke,' she recently said 'It is surprising. I worked as a makeup artist for so long and I knew that big brands turn over so much. And the number one thing that they all invest in is marketing,' she said. Although Martha did not reveal the exact figure she charges for branded content, it's estimated she makes up to $3,000 for a single sponsored selfie. Some brands likely pay even more for multi-post deals, or to exclusively sign Martha up as the face of their campaigns across different platforms. Kim Kardashian may be a billionaire but even she knows the value of a dollar. On the May 27 episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, the 40-year-old star revealed that she ditched part of mom Kris Jenner's lavish birthday present because it was too expensive. After curating 65 designer looks on pricey mannequins for each year of the momager's life, Kim confessed that she tapered back a part of the surprise that she felt was 'stupid' to spend money on. Billionaire on a budget! Kim Kardashian, 40, confesses she scaled back part of Kris Jenner's lavish birthday surprise because it was too expensive Sweet surprise: A very taken aback Kris walked into a room of custom looks that ranged from Gucci to Jean Paul Gaultier and Commes des Garcons When planning a gift for Kris, Kim decided to splurge on 65 designer looks that included custom Gucci, Jean Paul Gaultier, Commes des Garcons and more. 'For your 65th birthday, I know how hard it's been for you to find clothes to wear and dress yourself, so I wanted to help you out. 65 looks,' she told a 'speechless' Kris. And she went all out with display mannequins which she said were 'just as expensive as half the looks,' but decided to forego the idea of black wigs to match Kris' likeness. 'I was going to do her do wigs to match so it looked like her, but then that's just, like, stupid spending money. I'd rather put it into the clothes.' Lavish gift: The billionaire decided to splurge on 65 designer looks for each year of her mom's life but scaled back wigs to match her mom's likeness because she thought it was 'stupid' to spend money on that One for each year: 'For your 65th birthday, I know how hard it's been for you to find clothes to wear and dress yourself, so I wanted to help you out,' Kim said as she unveiled the surprise Pricey duds: The SKIMS founder also confessed that the mannequins cost as much to rent as the designer pieces Before Kris' arrival now estranged husband Kanye West made his first appearance on the show this season to help with finishing touches. 'Kanye must have moved this thing around so many times just to make sure that it looks really dramatic for when my mom walks in,' Kim shared. And she elaborated on the process of securing mannequins to create an over the top 'experience', sharing that she hired a special production company to track them down which also cost a pretty penny. Perfectionist: Before Kris' arrival now estranged husband Kanye West made his first appearances on the show to help with finishing touches on the display Over the top: 'It's like my very own Met Ball,' an emotional Kris said of the curated 'experience' Doting daughter: 'It's certainly so generous, so kind, but the time and the energy that Kim took is the most amazing gift I've ever seen in my life,' Kris said of the gift in a confessional 'I had to hire a production company to find the mannequins. I think the mannequins were just as expensive as like, half of the looks just to rent them.' After seeing the elaborate display Kris likened it to having her 'very own Met Ball,' also sharing that it was one of the 'biggest surprises' she's had in her life. 'It's certainly so generous, so kind, but the time and the energy that Kim took is the most amazing gift I've ever seen in my life,' she shared in a confessional. The reality's stars billionaire status was minted in April after Forbes reported that her net worth skyrocketed from $780 million in October to $1 billion in a span of just six months. Media mogul: From October 2020 to April 2021 Kim's net worth soared from $780 million to $1 billion on account of the success of KKW Beauty and SKIMS Amid her divorce from West, Kim's successful businesses including SKIMS and KKW Beauty continued to reap a huge profit. And though she independently owns and operates them as West does with his Yeezy brand the pair are currently in the process of dividing assets including their Hidden Hills home, the Wyoming ranch (with $300K of livestock) where Kanye resides, and millions in art, cars and jewelry. Just a few days shy of what would have been their seventh year anniversary, reports surfaced that Kim was 'not ready to date,' despite an insider previously sharing that she was staying 'open,' amid attention from athletes, billionaire CEOs and royals. Kanye on the other hand has been romantically linked to supermodel Irina Shayk in recent days, despite previously saying he wanted to date an 'artist.' Tipsters wrote into celebrity tea-spilling account DeuxMoi and said that he and the Russian beauty were 'dating,' which was validated by a few other messages. Neither have confirmed any sort of romantic relationship, however. Video by Lee Min-young, Kim Kang-minThis documentary film is supported by the Judith Neilson Institute's Asian Stories project, in collaboration with Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, Indonesia's Tempo magazine, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, and Manila-based ABS-CBN.In July, 2019, two college students who call themselves "Team Flame" first broke the story of the "Nth room," a massive digital sex crime case where perpetrators blackmailed women including underage girls into performing sexually explicit acts on camera, with thousands of users paying in cryptocurrency to watch.What Team Flame started off an investigation into distribution channels of illicit, hidden-camera videos in the hope of submitting it to a journalism exhibition ended up revealing a nationwide scandal in Korea that horrified the public.Interactions among those involved in the digital sex crime-ring first began on social media services such as Twitter before conversations were moved to Telegram an encrypted messaging app. All of the exploitative videos were then distributed by chat room operators on Telegram to paid-up members. The number of users of the Nth Room and the "Doctor's Room," where the sexually abusive content was uploaded, may have numbered anywhere between the tens of thousands to more than a quarter of a million.Meanwhile, we're witnessing a similar phenomenon in other countries around the world sexual exploitation being transformed into a lucrative business with the advent of high-speed networks and sophisticated digital devices."There was also an incident in Hong Kong that was very similar to the Nth room case. We got a request from the authorities there asking us how the videos got taken down and deleted, so we shared everything we knew with them. There will be circumstances that are unique to each country, but the crime is fundamentally similar in nature," Seo Seung-hui, director of the Korea Cyber Sexual Violence Response Center, told The Korea Times.Numerous Chinese-language chat rooms similar to the Nth room were also found on Telegram. "We've gained access to four of those chat rooms which are clearly abusive, and one of them has over 30,000 users, and there are thousands more in the other ones," Team Flame said."Videos being circulated in those chat rooms included sexually-exploitative videos from the Nth room as well as others that appeared to have been filmed in China. There were thousands, tens of thousands of illicit videos being shared and distributed."To delve deeper into the evolving digital sex crime cases in Korea and across Asia, The Korea Times has been collaborating with four media organizations the South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, Tempo in Indonesia, and the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism and ABS-CBN in the Philippines on a special investigation into this issue over the last seven months.This hour-long documentary explains what happened in the Nth room chat rooms, how girls fell prey to the perpetrators, and how the digital world and social media platforms provide an optimal environment for online sex offenses to take place. We will also be looking into how similar cases are being seen in other Asian countries, and how and which social media platforms have become a central hub for criminals in Korea, China, Japan and other parts of Asia. Taika Waititi has received a dressing down by Marvel bosses over photos of him getting cosy on a balcony with his songstress girlfriend Rita Ora and actress Tessa Thompson, reports claim. According to the Daily Telegraph, Marvel executives were left vastly unimpressed after seeing images of the Thor director, 45, cuddling up with the two women on the balcony of his Bondi home last Sunday. Both Rita and Tessa are in Sydney filming scenes for the Kiwi filmmaker's upcoming Thor sequel Love and Thunder. Unimpressed: Taika Waititi, 45, (centre) was reportedly 'reprimanded by Marvel bosses' over photos of him cosying up with girlfriend Rita Ora, 30, (left) and Tessa Thompson, 37, (right) The publication claimed that Taika's display also ruffled feathers among the bosses at Marvel's parent company Disney. 'Not exactly the image they're looking to project in relation to one of their biggest franchises,' a Thor: Love and Thunder production insider told the publication. The insider claimed that, while Taika is known for being a 'party animal', the photos 'crossed a line' for company bosses. Not happy? The insider claimed that, while Taika is known for being a 'party animal', the photos 'crossed a line' for company bosses (pictured in April) In pictures obtained exclusively by MailOnline, Rita was seen smiling and leaning in for a kiss from her director beau while relaxing outside with the actress following an all-night party at Taika's home in Sydney. The trio appeared to be in great spirits as they wrapped their arms around each other and beamed smiles over al fresco drinks. Rita cut an effortlessly chic figure in a skin-tight black dress which she styled with a tan jacket and sunglasses while sitting outside with her beau and pal. Close: In pictures obtained exclusively by MailOnline, Rita was seen smiling and leaning in for a kiss from her director beau while relaxing outside with the actress Meanwhile, Tessa, who has starred in Taika's movie Thor as character Valkyrie, looked stylish in a black leather jacket and trousers which flashed a glimpse at her toned thighs. It was a busy day for the actress as on the same day, she was also spotted locking lips with model Zac Stenmark, reports Page Six. The duo were seen passionately kissing and laughing as they enjoyed a stroll together in Sydney, with Zac even spotted lifting Tessa' sunglasses so that he could gaze into her eyes. Tessa, known for her films Creed and Men in Black 4, looked thoroughly loved-up as she strolled with Zac - who is a famous model Down Under alongside his twin brother, Jordan. Kiss kiss: It was a busy day for the actress as on the same day, she was also spotted locking lips with model Zac Stenmark (Pictured in 2020) PDA: The duo were seen passionately kissing and laughing as they enjoyed a stroll together in Sydney (Zac is pictured here with his twin brother, Jordan [left]) Back to work: Tessa is busy filming Thor: Love and Thunder at Sydney's Fox Studios, alongside co-stars Chris Hemsworth (left), Christian Bale, Natalie Portman and Mark Ruffalo (right) The Stenmark twins are represented by IMG Models and WME Worldwide and have featured in various campaigns in Australia and the U.S. Daily Mail Australia has contacted Tessa and Zac for comment at the time. It comes amid rumours that Rita has taken her relationship with Taika to the next level by moving into his home. The couple went public earlier this month when they arrived together at the premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under at the Sydney Opera House. It's official! The couple went public earlier this month when they arrived together at the premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under at the Sydney Opera House They avoided being photographed on the red carpet, but took their seats side by side in the front row once inside the venue. As they awaited the start, Rita and Taika talked closely together, whispering in one another's ears as the singer appeared to lay her hand on Taika's shoulder. The outing was the latest in a series of meet-ups between the duo, who have reportedly been 'dating for over a month' while she has been in Sydney filming. Rita recently sent fans into a frenzy when she took to Instagram last month to share a cosy photo showing Taika hugging her as she posed for the camera. Meanwhile, last month Rita expertly dodged questions about her love life during an appearance on The Kyle and Jackie O Show. Her lips are sealed: Meanwhile, last month Rita expertly dodged questions about her love life during an appearance on The Kyle and Jackie O Show At the end of the interview, radio host Kyle Sandilands asked Rita: 'I know you don't want to talk to much about this stuff, but are you able to sneak lovers in and out of your joint or are you finding that difficult?' After a long pause, the Body On Me singer responded carefully: 'I think for me I'm just focusing on getting fit to be honest.' 'That's fantastic, I can read between the lines,' Kyle jokingly replied. Rita split from French director Romain Gavras earlier this year. The French director, who is based in London and directed music videos for US rappers Kanye West and Jay Z, began dating Rita following her split from songwriter boyfriend Andrew Watt in 2019. Separate ways: Rita reportedly became engaged to Romain Gavras, 39, in 2020 but it was revealed in March the couple were no longer together (pictured in 2018) Last October, the pair sparked engagement rumours when Rita was seen wearing a huge rock on a her engagement finger. But a source close to Rita told MailOnline: 'Rita and Romain tried to make it work but they both agreed it wasn't meant to be. The songstress has had several high-profile relationships and was previously linked to Calvin Harris, Rob Kardashian and James Arthur. Over: It is believed that Taika split from his wife, Chelsea Winstanley, in 2018 following seven years of marriage. They share two daughters, Te Hinekahu, eight, and Matewa Kiritapu, five It is believed that Taika split from his wife, Chelsea Winstanley, in 2018 following seven years of marriage. They share two daughters, Te Hinekahu, eight, and Matewa Kiritapu, five. Taika is currently directing the Thor sequel and last year scooped an Oscar for best Adapted Screenplay for Jojo Rabbit. Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as the Norse God, while Natalie Portman returns as astrophysicist Dr Jane Foster who will transform into the female version of Thor. Director: Taika is currently directing the Thor sequel where Chris Hemsworth reprises his role as the Norse God for Thor: Love and Thunder Rita jetted to Australia earlier this year to appear on The Voice - in the wake of her lockdown flouting in the UK. She previously apologised after breaking lockdown rules to host a 30th birthday party at a Notting Hill restaurant. The star apologised after being criticised for hosting the event at a time when gatherings of more than six people had been banned. Watch RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under on Stan. Daisy Lowe is reportedly being sued by celebrity builder Phil Turner for not paying him a 45,000 bill after he refurbished her 1.5 million home. According reports from The Sun on Friday, Phil's company TWP Interiors Ltd was hired by the model, 32, to refurbish her home, but she 'wouldn't pay her bill' after the work was complete. The star, however, argues that the work Phil carried out was unsatisfactory, and she is said to be prepared to fight him in court over the matter. Court: Daisy Lowe 'is being sued by celebrity builder over unpaid 45k bill after he refurbished her 1.5 million home but star is going to fight him in court', it was reported on Friday Discussing the work at a preliminary hearing, Phil, who appeared on BBC show House Invaders, said: 'She befriended me and I took the job on I didn't realise a celebrity like Daisy wouldn't pay her bill. 'She is living in a building that is complete, she cooks in a kitchen that's complete, and she is enjoying the surroundings built for her.' Phil's firm is suing Daisy over the alleged debts in a county court in London, and she is said to be ready to fork out 68,000 to defend her case. Case: According reports, Phil Turner's company TWP Interiors Ltd was hired by the model, but she 'wouldn't pay her bill' after the work was complete (pictured in 2014) The builder is representing himself in the case and claimed when she chose not to pay the items left outstanding were kitchen windows, doors and a roof light that he was waiting to be delivered. He is said to have told the judge that he'd already ordered and paid for the items at the time. However, her lawyers argued she didn't need to pay the bill because the work was not completed in a 'satisfactory manner'. Her barrister Harry Gillow told the publication: 'Our case is that Mr Turner did not carry out his services with reasonable care and skill.' Defence: Daisy, however, argues that the work Phil carried out was not completed in a 'satisfactory manner', and she is said to be prepared to fight him in court over the matter A trial between Daisy and Phil will be held at a later date. MailOnline has contacted Daisy's representatives for further comment. Daisy bought her three-bedroom Camden home in 2017, and she regularly holds Instagram lives from her kitchen. Phil made a name for himself on the Big Breakfast as a Builder of the Week, and he also appeared on House Invaders. Prior to their professional relationship, Daisy was a guest at Phil's 2019 wedding to make-up artist Gary Cockerill. Kristin Cavallari looked ready to kick off Memorial Day weekend after finishing an Uncommon James photoshoot in Palm Springs, California. The 34-year-old reality star flashed a large grin in a summery white linen dress as she headed out after another day on set. The blonde beauty showed off her size two frame and debuted a nice desert tan as she geared up for the long weekend following a busy few days of work. That's a wrap! Kristin Cavallari, 34, looks ready for the holiday weekend as she beams in a white linen mini dress after wrapping up another Uncommon James photo shoot in Palm Springs The Very Cavallari star has been putting in extra hours at work ahead of her jewelry line's summer drop. And after another stylized shoot, Kristin was seen bidding her trusty glam squad farewell before walking to a waiting vehicle. The Laguna Beach native opted for a white mini dress that showed off her toned figure with a simple pair of brown sandals and a cream-colored purse. Her hair was styled in soft beachy waves and she made sure to hydrate amid the sweltering heat with two water bottles. Glam squad: The jewelry designer was seen bidding farewell to her glam squad and other on-set associates before heading out for the day All smiles: The reality star looked overjoyed to be done with another busy day on set as she flashed a huge smile while waiting for her vehicle Over the past few days Kristin has showed off a variety of stylish looks for her brand's promotional images including a figure hugging black dress with a peekaboo cut out and a high waisted bikini designed by model Devon Windsor. She joked 'tan lines are in,' as she showed off sun kissed skin while modeling new pieces from the 'discovery collection,' which is inspired by vacation adventures. And as the world continues to open up following a year of COVID-19 lockdown, Kristin recently declared that she was single and focusing on her work and kids Camden, eight, Jaxon, seven, and daughter Saylor, five. After splitting from Jay Cutler last April following ten years of marriage, she was linked to comedian Jeff Dye in the fall, before things seemed to fizzle out in April. Sizzling snaps: Kristin joked 'tan lines are in,' as she showed off sun kissed skin while modeling new pieces from the 'discovery collection,' which is inspired by vacation adventures This month she seemed to confirm that she was definitely unattached as she spoke to E!'s Daily Pop. 'I'm focusing on me and taking care of my babes. That's it,' she shared. And the entrepreneur continued to say on the Scrubbing In podcast May 17, that the idea of being married again makes her 'cringe.' 'The thought of getting married right now, it's like, "Oh, my God," it makes me cringe,' she told hosts Becca Tilley and Tanya Rad, adding that she does 'believe in [marriage],' and thinks she'll 'meet someone eventually.' And during her appearance she did touch on her last romantic relationship but didn't name Dye, 38, by name. 'I dated somebody and it was great. He was the perfect guy to date after Jay,' Cavallari said. 'He was really sweet, made me feel really good. But now I just want to be by myself.' Romantic relationships: After splitting from Cutler in April 2020, she moved on to enjoy a fling with Dye before things seemed to fizzle out last month Despite stepping away from reality television to focus on growing her businesses which include Uncommon Beauty and a kids line called Little James she is set to make an appearance on this season of The Hills: New Beginnings. Speaking about having an 'OG' on the MTV reboot, castmate Brody Jenner who she dated on and off in 2005 teased that Kristin would be stirring up some drama. 'I mean, Kristin just adds so much to the show. She's so great, she's been doing this so long. She's a pleasure to be around, but she's a firecracker,' he said on People TV's Reality Check. He continued: 'She comes in, she stirs up the pot. She gets everybody riled up and definitely knows how to make some good television. It was nice to have her on,' he said. Call Me By Your Name director Luca Guadagnino has put plans for the 2017 romance film's highly-anticipated sequel on hold. It appears he has moved on from the idea in favor of other projects, including a reunion with Call Me By Your Name's Timothee Chalamet and Michael Stuhlbarg for his latest film, Bones & All, which began shooting on Thursday. 'The truth of the matter is, my heart is still there,' Guadagnino told Deadline of the sequel, before deferring to his already packed schedule for the coming years. Sequel sidelined: Director Luca Guadagnino, 49, appears to have put the sequel to the acclaimed film Call Me By Your Name (2017) on the back burner in favor of new projects 'But I'm working on this movie now, and I'm hopefully going to do Scarface soon, and I have many projects and so will focus on this side of the Atlantic and the movies I want to make.' Guadagnino, 49, first started deliberating over the idea of a sequel around the time the film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017. Since then he has issued statements about his hope to make the movie in 2020, and that he had confirmed the full cast of the original would be returning, including Chalamet and Armie Hammer. A follow-up to the novel, Call Me By Your Name, title Find Me, was also conveniently released back in October 2019. Sequel long discussed: Guadagnino first started deliberating over the idea of a Call Me By Your Name sequel around the time it premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017; the coming-of-age romantic drama starred Chalamet and Armie Hammer But all the talk has taken a back seat now that Guadagnino is fully engulfed in the production of Bones & All, a romance-horror film written by David Kajganich that's based on a novel by Camille DeAngelis. Complicating things even more: Chalamet will likely star in sequels to the much-anticipated Dune, and he's slated to play a young Willy Wonka in an origin story film. Meanwhile, Hammer, has seen his career take a major hit since multiple women came forward in January 2021 alleging that Hammer had abused them. Just two months later, the woman who initially came forward with abuse allegations on Instagram identified herself, and accused Hammer of violently raping her in April 2017, which the actor steadfastly denied. Plus, James Ivory, who won an Oscar for adapting Andre Aciman's novel for the screen, told The Film Stage in 2018 that he 'wouldn't want to be involved' in a sequel. Acclaimed: Call Me By You Name received four Oscar nominations( winning for Best Adapted Screenplay) and widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Guadagnino's direction, Ivory's screenplay, and the performances of Chalamet, Hammer, and Michael Stuhlbarg Call Me By Your Name premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2017 and began a limited release in November of that same year. It would go on to receive widespread critical acclaim, particularly for Guadagnino's direction, Ivory's screenplay, and the performances of Chalamet, Hammer, and Stuhlbarg. It quickly gained a large international fan base on the the heels of a number of accolades, which included four Oscar nominations at the 90th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Actor (Timothee Chalamet), Best Original Song (Mystery Of Love by Sufjan Stevens), and Ivory's win for Best Adapted Screenplay. Call Me By Your Name chronicles the romantic relationship between a 17-year-old, Elio Perlman (Chalamet) and Oliver (Armie Hammer), a 24-year-old graduate-student assistant to Elio's father (Michael Stuhlbarg), an archaeology professor. The coming-of-age romantic drama also starred Amira Casar, Esther Garrel and Victoire Du Bois. Piers Morgan has claimed ITV want him to return to Good Morning Britain after his bombshell exit from the show back in March. The presenter, 56, quit the breakfast show following his comments about Meghan Markle and subsequent onscreen clash with co-star Alex Beresford. He said bosses have 'reached out' about a possible return and that he believes he could 'take the ratings back to where I left them' after a slump in viewing figures. Drama: Piers Morgan has claimed ITV want him to return to Good Morning Britain after his bombshell exit from the show back in March He told The Sun: 'They reached out there have been approaches. Never say never. 'I have no doubt I could take the ratings back to where I left them but the doubt is, would anyone be allowed to do it that way again? 'I was hired to give very strong, honestly held opinions, which I did. But in the end I was asked to apologise for a genuinely held opinion.' He added: 'I have had some quite random third-party feelers put out to see if I would consider a return to the show.' Storming off: It follows a dip in ratings after the presenter, 56, left the show following comments he made about Harry and Meghan's Oprah interview He went on to say he felt 'sad' to see the hard work he did to beat the BBC in viewing numbers 'evaporate so fast'. The broadcaster also said he would 'seriously consider' going back if he could 'rip it all up' and 'do it my way', adding that he wished to produce and present the show. Piers also told the publication that ITV had not offered him therapy since his exit and that he still hasn't heard from Alex after their row sparked him walking off. ITV has been contacted by MailOnline for a comment. Confident: He said bosses have 'reached out' about a possible return and that he believes he could 'take the ratings back to where I left them' Piers stormed off GMB in March as he discussed the Harry and Meghan interview, where he expressed his belief that Meghan was lying during the chat with Oprah Winfrey and that the couple damaged the royal family's reputation. The outspoken host left the daytime series after he insisted he 'didn't believe a word' of Meghan's account of suffering suicidal thoughts and experiencing racism at the hands of the royal family. Piers then walked off set after a fierce debate with Alex, in which the weather presenter accused Piers of unfairly 'trashing' Meghan, and branded him 'diabolical'. When Piers walked off screen, Alex continued: 'I'm sorry but Piers just spouts off on a regular basis and we have to sit there and listen.' Piers, who refused to apologise, later announced his resignation and tweeted his thanks to the GMB team, praising them for their 'hard work and dedication' that led to them beating their main breakfast TV rival. And Piers shared his own reflections on the events of that fateful week in a piece for the Mail On Sunday shortly afterwards. Piers called Alex 'GMB's occasional stand-in weatherman' and 'uptight' in the telling account, adding that the presenter hasn't messaged him since his exit unlike others on the show. Reflecting on their now infamous encounter on GMB, which ended in Piers leaving the studio, Piers said he wasn't going to sit there and be 'whacked' by one of his own team. Pier's comments about the Duchess of Sussex's interview led to the highest number of complaints in Ofcom's history. The Duchess of Sussex also made a formal complaint to Ofcom about Piers after he dismissed her account of suffering suicidal thoughts and experiencing racism at the hands of the royal family. Travis Barker modeled a glittering necklace when he was spotted stepping out in sunny Los Angeles this week. The 45-year-old who shot to fame as the drummer for Blink-182 was seen carrying two disposable coffee cups. He draped his enviably svelte figure in a T-shirt and skinny black jeans, adding a splash of dazzle with a necklace. Out and about: Travis Barker modeled a glittering necklace when he was spotted stepping out in sunny Los Angeles this week Travis' latest outing comes amid his sizzling romance with Kourtney Kardashian which has been going on for months now. His ex-wife Shanna Moakler has recently been claiming that while they were still married Travis had an affair with Kourtney's sister Kim. Kim denied the rumors this week writing online: 'NO! False narrative! We've been friends for years and I'm so happy for him and Kourt' In his 2015 memoirs Travis maintained that he and Kim were never involved - though he confessed being attracted to her. On the move: The 45-year-old who shot to fame as the drummer for Blink-182 was seen carrying two disposable coffee cups During a recent TMZ interview alongside her beau Matt Rondeau, 28, Shanna accused the Kardashians of 'destroying my family twice.' She was referring in part to the fact that she is 'alienated' from her children with Travis - Alabama, 15, and Landon, 17. 'We just had dinner with our kids and all their friends three weeks ago. So, you know, this has all started since my ex started dating a certain person,' said Shanna. Alabama has accused Shanna of being an absent mother and recently claimed to have 'gone seven months without seeing my mom and her not calling me once.' On the move: He draped his enviably svelte figure in a T-shirt and skinny black jeans, adding a splash of dazzle with a necklace That broadside was not the first time Alabama publicly slammed her mother on social media, and she has also taken aim at Matt. 'Matthew is nothing but awful to her. Not only that, but he cheats on her. My mom has never completely been in my life. Can you guys stop painting her out to be an amazing mom?' Alabama alleged. The teenager continued: 'Did your moms ask to see you on Mother's Day cause mine didn't? I'm done keeping it a secret, reality shows.' Making it happen: Early in their relationship Travis had Kourtney's name inked onto his chest and then later he allowed her to tattoo: 'I love you,' on one of his arms 'Co-parenting is hard, but I have always and will continue to prioritize my children's happiness and well-being,' Shanna responded in a People statement. She pointed to a 'vindictive parenting competition' and said the 'claims of being absent from my children's lives are false and incredibly hurtful.' Shanna, who has appeared on Hollywood Exes, said: 'I know one day my children will see through the fame and money machine they have been thrust into and realize their mother loves and will always be there for them.' Erasing the past: As the romance went on he posted an Instagram snap of Kourtney sitting with him as he had his ink of Shanna's name covered up with a skull Meanwhile Matthew has insisted to Life & Style that he has 'never' been unfaithful and said: 'Shes an amazing mother, and I am with her because she loves and cares so much about her family. Thats just one of the reasons why I love her so much.' During an Instagram Q&A Shanna was asked why her children spend more time at Travis' home than at hers. 'Because he lives behind two gates, has a mega mansion and is cooler than me,' she dished. 'LOL, we have shared custody but our kids are older. We are very close.' Elsa Pataky enjoyed some much needed downtime with two of her children in Sydney on Thursday. The actress, 44, first stepped in to a local Chemist Warehouse to pick up some much needed items, which she carried in a plastic bag. She went back to her car, before being spotted later that day with two of her kids heading towards the Sydney Aquarium in Darling Harbour. Stepping out: Elsa Pataky was spotted picking up some items from a Chemist Warehouse in Sydney The Spanish stunner was dressed casually in a pair of flared black jeans and a striped shirt. She accessorised with a designer handbag and hid her famous face behind a pair of sunglasses. Elsa and husband Chris Hemsworth are parents to daughter India Rose, nine, and twin boys Tristan and Sasha, seven. Glamorous: Despite being dressed casually, the 44-year-old still looked effortlessly glam Stocked up: The actress, 44, stepped in to a local Chemist Warehouse to pick up some much needed items, which she carried in a plastic bag The Fast and The Furious star has been busy travelling between Sydney and Byron Bay in recent months while filming a new action movie. She recently told The Sydney Morning Herald that there are downsides to moving from the laid-back seaside enclave of Byron Bay to the big smoke. She said: 'It's a whole new experience... I can't dress down as much as I do in Byron Bay we hope to get back there on the weekends.' Time to go! After getting what she needed, Elsa made her way back to her car Quality time: The actress and two of her children were later spotted heading to Sydney Aquarium Elsa added that the couple's three children will be schooled in the city for the time being. Luckily the move to Sydney is only temporary, while Elsa and her husband Chris Hemsworth, 37, work on their separate projects in Sydney. The actress went on to say that living in Australia has been the right decision for the previously LA-based family. 'Byron has been beautiful. We made the right decision in 2014 to leave LA and come to Australia it's been great for the kids to be in nature, enjoy animals and go horse riding,' she said. Chris Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky stepped out for brunch in Sydney, on Saturday. The 37-year-old and his movie star wife, 44, were seen out for a stroll in the affluent suburb of Woollahra in Sydney's east. Joining the loved up actors, who are doting parents to three children, was the Thor star's parents Craig and Leonie. Double date! Chris Hemsworth and his wife Elsa Pataky looked loved-up as they stepped out for brunch in Sydney on Saturday Chris rugged up for the double date wearing a khaki jacket with the collar popped up, a white T-shirt and jeans. He teamed his casual look with a trucker cap, sunglasses and sneakers. Elsa wore a trendy burgundy leather jacket with a peachy turtle neck top and pink boot leg trousers. She teamed her Converse sneakers with a AUD$2,980 Fendi cross body bag. Awesome foursome! Joining the actors out for brunch in the affluent suburb of Woollahra was the Thor star's parents Craig and Leonie Keeping warm: Chris rugged up for the double date wearing a khaki jacket with the collar popped up, a white T-shirt and jeans Weekend look: He teamed his casual look with a trucker cap, sunglasses and sneakers The couple looked more loved up than ever as they strolled down the street hand in hand and enjoyed a conversation. As they waited for a traffic light, Elsa cosied up to Chris who had his armed around the Madrid-born beauty. The pair were later seen with Chris' parents Craig and Leonie. Fashionable: Elsa wore a trendy burgundy leather jacket with a peachy turtle neck top and pink boot leg trousers. She teamed her Converse sneakers with a AUD$2,980 Fendi cross body bag Cosied up: As they waited for a traffic light, Elsa cosied up to Chris who had his armed around the Madrid-born beauty All together: The pair were later seen with Chris' parents Craig and Leonie. Craig (centre) wore a similar outfit to his son's outfit as he rugged up in a black jacket with jeans, a cap and sunnies Craig wore a similar outfit to his son's outfit as he rugged up in a black jacket with jeans, a cap and sunnies. Leonie, much like her daughter-in-law, also wore a leather jacket - but brown in colour. She teamed her outfit with blue jeans, a scarf, sunglasses, white sneakers and a black bag. Casual look: Leonie, much like her daughter-in-law, also wore a leather jacket - but brown in colour Happy Hemsworths: The foursome appeared to be enjoying an animated conversation as they strolled through the leafy streets of Woollahra The foursome appeared to be enjoying an animated conversation as they strolled through the leafy streets of Woollahra. Elsewhere in the day, Chris was seen paying for their brunch, by simply tapping his card on the payment terminal. The famous couple were spotted by fans who asked for a photo with each of the stars. Just like us: Elsewhere in the day, Chris was seen paying for their brunch, by simply tapping his card on the payment terminal Meeting fans: The famous couple were spotted by fans who asked for a photo with each of the stars Smile! Elsa happily talked to a young fan whose mother was took a photo her son with the Spanish star Elsa happily talked to a young fan whose mother was took a photo her son with the Spanish star and later the Marvel hero. Meanwhile, Chris graciously spoke to another fan and smile for a photo with him. The Hemsworth brunch date comes after Elsa talked about travelling between Sydney and Byron Bay in recent months to film her new Netflix's action movie, Interceptor. Thumbs up: The lucky fan was later seen getting a photo with the Marvel hero Pleasing the fans: Chris later smile for another photo with another fan on the street She recently told The Sydney Morning Herald that there are downsides to moving from the laid-back seaside enclave of Byron Bay to the big smoke. She said: 'It's a whole new experience... I can't dress down as much as I do in Byron Bay we hope to get back there on the weekends.' Elsa added that the couple's three children will be schooled in the city for the time being. 'It's a whole new experience': Elsa recently talked about travelling between Sydney and Byron Bay in recent months to film her new Netflix's action movie, Interceptor. She recently said there are downsides to moving from the laid-back Byron Bay to the big smoke Luckily the move to Sydney is only temporary, while Elsa and her husband Chris Hemsworth, 37, work on their separate projects in Sydney. He has been busy filming Thor: Love and Thunder, directed by Taika Waititi, which began in January. Chris stars alongside Natalie Portman, Tessa Thompson, Christian Bale and Matt Damon. The film is being shot at Sydney's Fox Studios but elaborate structures have also been set up at nearby Centennial Park and in the city's western suburbs. British producer and director Ben Winston shed some light on a few of the most surprising absences from the long-awaited Friends reunion, which aired on Thursday. While fans were thrilled to see Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Mathew Perry back together after 17 years, many were upset that Paul Rudd and Cole Sprouse were absent from the HBO special. The star's absences, however, were simply due to the 'incredibly difficult' timing of the reunion, which was 'the one night' all six of the sitcom's stars could attend. Missed: British producer and director Ben Winston shed some light on a few of the most surprising absences from the long-awaited Friends reunion, which did not include Paul Rudd or Cole Sprouse; seen in 2020 Speaking of why Rudd, who played Phoebe's eventual husband Mike Hannigan, and Sprouse, were not present, Winston said: 'Well, we couldn't have everybody on, because it's only an hour and 45 minutes.' 'You've got to pay attentionthe main nub of the show has got to be about the six cast members,' he explained to TheWrap. 'So you can't have too many cameos because of course, there were hundreds of amazing people who were in Friends over the years. Sadly, we couldn't get everybody in.' He also noted that the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic made travel very difficult for 'some people' who were invited, but were shooting projects around the world. Incomplete: While fans were thrilled to see Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Mathew Perry back together after 17 years, many were upset that Rudd and Sprouse were absent from the HBO special; seen in 2020 Star-studded guest list: The star's absences, however, were simply due to the 'incredibly difficult' timing of the reunion, which was 'the one night' all six of the sitcom's stars could attend 'It's a complicated time to be making television now because, you know, some people couldn't fly internationally, some people were on other TV or film shoots, some people are in bubbles on stuff,' he reflected. At the time, Rudd was filming Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania overseas, while Sprouse was busy shooting Riverdale in Vancouver. Friends is arguably one of most successful sitcoms of all time, running for 10 beloved seasons and 235 episodes from 1994 to 2004, and fans had been clamoring for a reunion for many years. Big role: Rudd played Mike Hannigan, who eventually married Lisa Kudrow's character Phoebe Buffay Too cute: Cole was cast to play Ben Geller, Ross Geller's son, on Friends The special - which earned a flurry of reaction from die-hard fans when it launched on HBO Max in the US and Sky Go and Now TV in the UK - also saw a slew of guests make surprise appearances, including David Beckham, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber and Cindy Crawford. The special was filmed over a three-day period on the Warner Bros. lot, with the iconic fountain from the show used as a backdrop for the cast's main interview which was hosted by Late Late Show's James Corden. The British presenter - whose choice was quite controversial among fans - delved into the making of the show in a lively discussion, and reflected on the moment each actor landed their iconic part. Fiona Falkiner welcomed her first child, a baby boy, Hunter, with fiancee Hayley Willis in March. And on Saturday, the doting mum and model shared one of her son's major milestones. Posting to her Instagram, the 38-year-old gave fans a look at her little boy's first shower alongside his mum. Shower time: Fiona Falkiner (pictured has shared one of her son Hunter's major milestones. Posting to her In stagram on Saturday, the 38-year-old gave fans a look at her little boy's first shower alongside his mum 'Baby's first shower,' the blonde beauty captioned two photos of Hunter curled into his mum's chest. This sweet post comes after Fiona shared an adorable photo of the little boy aboard an interstate flight on Thursday. In the picture, the tot is seen nestled in Hayley's arms as she keeps amused with her phone. Big milestone: 'Baby's first shower,' the blonde beauty captioned two photos of Hunter Alongside the lovely picture, Fiona explained the parents were very nervous in the lead-up to their travels. 'I was so nervous to fly with little H, but honestly he pretty much slept the whole way,' she began. 'He may have had some blow outs, a few outfit changes but we managed pretty well! 'Proud of our boy 9 weeks old and already been to Vic and WA,' she added. Frequent flyer! Fiona and Hayley's baby son Hunter is only nine-weeks-old, but he's already proving to be quite the jetsetter. Pictured: Hayley Fiona and Hayley welcomed Hunter into the world on Monday, March 22 - and announced his arrival via a sweet Instagram post. Fiona announced her pregnancy in September, sharing a photo to Instagram of Hayley cradling her bump. They revealed they were expecting a boy the following month. The couple became engaged in April 2019 while on holiday in Vanuatu, sharing the sweet moment to Instagram. People walk past a poster for the movie "Fast & Furious 9" at a shopping mall in Beijing, May 26. WWE star and actor John Cena apologized after calling Taiwan a country in promotional interviews for his upcoming film "Fast & Furious 9." AP-Yonhap By David A. Tizzard Rob Mills has blasted the Australian government over Victoria's latest lockdown. The former Australian Idol Star, 38, shared an Instagram post on Friday, pinning the latest Covid-19 outbreak on 'poor management' of hotel quarantine. He addressed prime minister Scott Morrison in his comments and even called for Arts and hospitality industries to join together for a class action lawsuit. Anger: Rob Mills (pictured) has blasted the Australian government over Victoria's latest lockdown. The former Australian Idol Star, 38, shared an Instagram post on Friday, pinning the latest Covid-19 outbreak on 'poor management' of hotel quarantine Rob wrote: 'How long have we known that hotel quarantine doesn't work? 'I'm curious to know. Because we are all doing our best wearing masks and using QR codes. But for some reason governments are not pulling their weight. 'This lockdown is only happening because of poor management. Theatre is shut down. Restaurants. Bars and cafes, closed. This is money that we can't get back. 'Arts and hospitality unite... Lawsuit?' Legal challenge: He addressed prime minister Scott Morrison in his comments and even called for Arts and hospitality industries to join together for a class action lawsuit Rob wrote: 'No job keeper now. No job seeker because we only have these short contracts. @scottmorrisonmp please be better. Lead your country. Lead the Premiers. Don't think. Do!' Pictured: Scott Morrison He continued his rant in the caption of his Instagram post, writing: 'I'm not angry. I'm just disappointed. Actually, no I am a little bit angry. 'It's been over 12 months and we can't work out how to safely quarantine people who return to Australia. If this was Karen in HR, she'd be fired by now. 'Who's going to pay back the $$ for loss of earnings to the hospitality and ARTS community who can't just 'pick it up' next week?! He continued his rant in the caption of his Instagram post, writing: 'It's been over 12 months and we can't work out how to safely quarantine people who return to Australia. If this was Karen in HR, she'd be fired by now' 'No job keeper now. No job seeker because we only have these short contracts. @scottmorrisonmp please be better. Lead your country. Lead the Premiers. Don't think. Do!' The comments come as Victoria enters day two of its week-long lockdown after the Whittlesea outbreak expanded to 39 cases on Friday. Victorians have been told not to leave home except to shop for food and essential items, to provide or receive care, for exercise, work or study, or to get vaccinated. She gave birth to her first child Christian Georges Dumontet on May 15. And new mum Christine Quinn, 31, looked incredible as she headed out to take her dogs for a walk in a Gucci tracksuit on Friday in Los Angeles. The new mother has not shied away from the cameras since giving birth earlier this month, including appearing on E! News' Daily Pop on Tuesday morning. Bounce back: Christine Quinn , 31, showcased her incredible post-baby body in a Gucci tracksuit as she headed out on a dog walk on Friday, just two weeks after son Christian's birth Christine looked fresh faced for the makeup-free outing, carrying one pup under her arm while the other walked beside her on a neon green lead. The Selling Sunset star showcased her post-baby body in a colourful flower print Gucci tracksuit, with the jacket zipper half way up and the trousers cropped a little above her ankle. Always known for her fashion flair, Christine even wore designer footwear - opting for a pair of pink Gucci platform sliders. She wore her signature blonde locks down and let them flow over one shoulder. Chic: The new mother looked fresh faced for the makeup-free LA outing, carrying one pup under her arm while the other walked beside her on a neon green lead Christine welcomed a 'healthy baby boy' via an emergency C-section on May 15 in Los Angeles with her husband, Christian Richard, by her side. Speaking with E! News' Daily Pop on Tuesday the new mother shared a professional picture of her newborn. Quinn also took time to discuss the 'mom-shamers' that flooded her social media after learning that she had returned to work just days after her son's arrival. 'He's iced out,' said Quinn, who had her little one rocking a diamond encrusted Louis Vuitton chain for his first photoshoot. 'He's got a little bit of bling on. I just thought it was so cute, I had to do it.' The newborn was posed sweetly on his back in a black onesie with one hand behind his head, while his eyes remained closed. First look: Christine officially introduced her son Christian Georges Dumontet, whom she welcomed into the world on Saturday, May 15 Baby boy! The 31-year-old Selling Sunset star shared a professional snapshot of the newborn during an appearance on E! News' Daily Pop on Tuesday The hosts of E! News' Daily Pop, after ogling over Christian Jr., were curious to know how Christine has handled getting back to work so shortly after giving birth. And according to the reality TV sensation, she has received backlash from 'mom-shamers' over the decision. 'The mom-shamers are real, that's for sure," she revealed 'I've gotten both ends of the spectrum. 'I've gotten people who are like, "Oh I'm so happy you're getting back to work, that's great!" And then I have people who are like, "You need to give your body time to recover and heal, and who's taking care of the baby?"' she explained. Despite being inundated with critical social media messages, Christine has not taken any of it to heart. 'I'm like, "Listen, my husband's amazing. He's home, the baby's sleeping, what's the difference?" For me, I love to work,' she told the hosts. 'There are single moms out there every single day working two, three jobs, doing it. Women are so strong and they can do it. Parenthood: Christine and her husband Christian Richard welcomed their firstborn on Saturday, May 15 via emergency C-section; Christine and Christian pictured in May 'For me, I'm happy to be working. I'm thrilled to have a job and I'm thrilled to have a baby and be able to do it all. 'I think that's really the message here: Women really can do it all, so don't be shaming!' said Quinn, adding that she does currently plan to 'keep her work life and home life separate.' Although Christian Jr. has yet to meet any of Christine's Selling Sunset castmates, she revealed an introduction is in the near future. 'But hopefully this week so I'm really excited about that!' said Christine, who had taken issues with her costars during her pregnancy for 'not liking' her pregnancy announcement on Instagram. Further opening up about new motherhood, Quinn stated that her favorite part is 'just being responsible for this human that you made. 'It's something about this instinctual bond...It's just this love that I never, ever felt before. I have a whole new level of love. I didn't know that was possible,' she concluded. Soon, though! Although Christian Jr. has yet to meet any of Christine's Selling Sunset castmates, she revealed an introduction is in the near future Sharing the journey: Since his arrival, Quinn has been using social media to gush over Christian Jr., with the star recently writing that she 'could not feel more in love' Since his arrival, Quinn has been using social media to gush over Christian Jr., with the star recently writing that she 'could not feel more in love, blessed, and grateful. 'Words can not express the joy of being a mommy.' Christine uploaded her first post-birth selfie last Saturday, flashing a peace sign for her followers on her Instagram Story. 'This mommy is tired but she's still got work to do!' she captioned the post, which showed her rocking a noticeable glow and makeup-free visage. 'Love you all! Thank you for the wonderful warm messages.' Prior to confirming his arrival on Instagram, the news of Christine giving birth was first reported by Us Weekly. 'Christian Georges Dumontet was born a healthy baby boy on Saturday, May 15, at 4:22 p.m. in Los Angeles less than two days after she appeared at the MTV Movie & TV Awards: Unscripted taping,' a rep confirmed to the publication. Glowing: Christine uploaded her first post-birth selfie last Saturday, flashing a peace sign for her followers on her Instagram Story She jetted off to Portugal earlier this week alongside pals Abbie Holborn, Sophie Kasaei and Bethan Kershaw. And Chloe Ferry put on an eye-popping display on Friday as she squeezed her very ample assets into a tiny bikini as she soaked up the sun during her getaway. The Geordie Shore star, 25, wowed in a brown Louis Vuitton bikini top and matching skirt as she hit the beach with co-star Bethan. Hot stuff: Chloe Ferry put on an eye-popping display on Friday as she squeezed her very ample assets into a tiny bikini as she soaked up the sun during her Portugal getaway Chloe ensured all eyes were on her as she displayed her incredible physique in the tiny two-piece as she made her way along a walkway and headed toward the golden sand. The reality star wore her brunette tresses loose for the outing, while accessorising her look with a silver necklace and earrings. Meanwhile, Bethan, 26, slipped into a skimpy black bikini, while she carried their essentials in a large designer bag. Chloe and Bethan appeared in great spirits as they chatted and walked along the shore while making the most of the blazing sunshine. Beach babe: The Geordie Shore star, 25, wowed in a brown Louis Vuitton bikini top and matching skirt as she hit the beach with co-star Bethan Wow: Chloe ensured all eyes were on her as she displayed her incredible physique in the tiny two-piece as she made her way along a walkway and headed toward the golden sand The girls flew to Portugal on Tuesday and got picked up by a luxury taxi to take them to Leeds Bradford Airport. As well as their girls' trip, the foursome were also celebrating the tenth anniversary of Geordie Shore, which started on 24 May 2011, as they let off party cannons and held a sign. The foursome couldn't contain their excitement over their trip to Portugal as they took to social media to share several updates on their way to the airport and sipped on glasses of prosecco. Sizzling: Meanwhile, Bethan, 26, slipped into a skimpy black bikini, while she carried their essentials in a large designer bag Strike a pose: Chloe took a moment to pose for a pouty selfie before hitting the beach Portugal is one of the 12 countries currently on the UK's 'green list' following the easing of lockdown restrictions in Britain last week. The foursome have joined a collection of reality stars who have jetted off to the popular destination including Katie Price and Made In Chelsea star Tiffany Watson. It comes after Chloe revealed that she is dating a new secret boyfriend last week and claimed that her flirty Celebs Go Dating co-star Wayne Lineker, 59, still wants to marry her - despite the fact they are 'just friends'. Speaking to The Sun, the Geordie Shore star said: 'If Wayne could get his way and marry me he would. He's one of my best friends in the whole world. I love him so much. We get on so well but we are just friends.' Let's go: Chloe carried her phone in her hand as she and Bethan prepared to soak up the sun on the beach Excited: The girls looked thrilled to finally be in a sunny location after leaving the rainy UK behind Making a splash: Chloe and Bethan splashed their feet in the water as they walked along the shore Life's a beach: The reality stars appeared relaxed as they strolled along the beach together Wayne recently told The Sun that Chloe would be joining him in Ibiza for the summer so that they could spend some time together. But Chloe retracted the holiday plans in her latest interview and said that she didn't think it would be possible for her to get to the party island. 'We are not a couple by the way. He wishes. We are just friends,' the reality star added as she put the final nail in their romance coffin. Happy days: Chloe and Bethan appeared in great spirits as they chatted and walked along the shore while making the most of the blazing sunshine Looking good: They showed off their amazing figures as they slipped into skimpy bikinis for the beach outing Earlier this year she was officially dumped from her TV presenter role at Channel 10. But Georgia Love has landed right on her feet, by scoring a new gig at rival network, Channel 7. On Saturday, three months after beginning her stint, the former Bachelorette, 31, shared a photo of herself on-camera, boasting about how grateful she is. Hard at work: But Georgia Love (pictured) was dumped from her TV presenter role at Channel 10 earlier this year. She has scored a new gig at rival network, Channel 7. She shared this image of herself at work over the weekend saying she 'grateful' for the role 'More grateful than ever to get to do what I do, and what I love. @7newsmelbourne #covid19vic #lockdown4,' she wrote on Instagram. In the picture, a regularly beaming Georgia appeared to look seriously into the camera lens as she covered the news events surrounding the seven-day Melbourne lockdown. Posting to Twitter on On February 2, the news reporter first announced her new role at Channel 7 by sharing a photo of herself smiling, while holding a 7news microphone in hand. Hard at work: Posting to Twitter on On February 2, the news reporter first announced her new role at Channel 7 by sharing a photo of herself smiling, while holding a 7news microphone The TV presenter captioned the post 'In some personal news...' and tagged it '@7NewsMelbourne' and #newbeginnings. It comes after Georgia was dumped from she described as her 'dream job' at Channel 10 in January. A 10 spokesperson confirmed that Georgia no longer worked for the network. Gone! It comes after Georgia was dumped from she described as her 'dream job' at Channel 10 in January. A 10 spokesperson confirmed that Georgia no longer worked for the network They said in a statement: 'During her time with Network 10, Georgia Love made a valuable contribution as a freelance reporter. 'As with any casual position, the availability of work ebbs and flows with the requirements of the company.' On January 16, The Daily Telegraph reported that Georgia had exited the role under 'mysterious circumstances'. Axed: The rep said, 'During her time with Network 10, Georgia Love made a valuable contribution as a freelance reporter. As with any casual position, the availability of work ebbs and flows with the requirements of the company.' Pictured covering Derby Day in October A source said: 'Nothing was really said about it one day a memo just went around saying that "Georgia no longer works here".' The newspaper claimed Georgia's exit was likely part of the brutal Covid-19 cutbacks at the network last year, which saw least 25 jobs slashed. Georgia landed what she described as her dream job with the TV channel in 2017, as a reporter at Ten Eyewitness News Melbourne. Dreams: Georgia landed what she described as her dream job with the TV channel in 2017, as a reporter at Ten Eyewitness News Melbourne. In June 2018, the former reality star announced she would be presenting the weather for Ten Eyewitness News Cuts: In January, The Daily Telegraph reported that she'd exited the role under 'mysterious circumstances' with other staff informed of her departure in a memo She wrote on Instagram at the time: 'Eight years ago I did two weeks' work placement at Channel 10 News and absolutely fell in love with the workings of a metro newsroom. 'I knew I never wanted to do anything else with my life. Today, I worked my first day in that very newsroom.' In June 2018, the former reality star announced she would be presenting the weather for Ten Eyewitness News. Jessica Gomes has finally addressed rumours that she is dating Dustin Martin. The model, 35, was asked if she and the AFL superstar, 29, are in a relationship in this week's Stellar. Refusing to confirm, or deny, the talk, Jessica instead said that, just like Dustin, she likes to remain tight lipped on her private life. Rumours: Jessica Gomes (pictured) has finally addressed rumours that she is dating Dustin Martin. The model, 35, was asked if she and the AFL superstar, 29, are in a relationship in this week's Stellar 'For me, it's always worked best, and it keeps me safe, by keeping those things private,' she said. 'My life is so out in the open through social media and so to have that balance for my own mental health I feel the need to keep those things private. 'I hope women can feel there's a currency in what they're doing; it's not just who they're dating.' Private: Refusing to confirm, or deny, the talk, Jessica instead said that, just like Dustin, she likes to remain tight lipped on her private life. 'For me, it's always worked best, and it keeps me safe, by keeping those things private,' she said She added: 'My life is so out in the open through social media and so to have that balance for my own mental health I feel the need to keep those things private.' Pictured: Dustin Martin Jessica did admit that she was keen to settle down and start a family, with children hopefully on the cards. 'I want to have a family. And I want [my future children] to have the same kind of upbringing I had. 'I'm definitely looking for someone who's a family person,' she added. Family: Jessica did say she was keen to settle down and start a family, with children hopefully on the cards. 'I want to have a family. And I want [my future children] to have the same kind of upbringing I had. I'm definitely looking for someone who's a family person,' she said In April, Dustin Jessica were first rumoured to be in a romantic relationship. The Richmond Tigers premiership hero and the swimsuit model had enjoyed 'several' dinner dates in Melbourne this year, according to a report in the Herald Sun. While it is unclear if the pair are just friends or something more, a source confirmed they do know one another. Dates? In April, Dustin Jessica were first rumoured to be in a romantic relationship. The Richmond Tigers premiership hero and the swimsuit model had enjoyed 'several' dinner dates in Melbourne this year, according to a report in the Herald Sun Jessica declined to comment when approached by the paper, saying: 'I am so sorry, but I can't comment on this. I don't talk about my private life.' Martin's manager Ralph Carr also declined to comment. The Tigers star, who won the Brownlow Medal in 2017, is notoriously guarded about his private life and rarely gives interviews. Tight lipped: Jessica declined to comment when approached by the paper, saying: 'I am so sorry, but I can't comment on this. I don't talk about my private life.' Martin's manager Ralph Carr also declined to comment Jessica was linked to Australian Formula One ace Daniel Ricciardo in 2019, but he flatly denied the rumours. In 2016, she revealed that she was dating Australian actor Xavier Samuel, who starred in Twilight. The pair called it quits in 2017, but only made the announcement in May 2018 and assured fans they're 'still friends'. Busy: The model, who until recently was based in Los Angeles, appeared on Dancing With The Stars as a wildcard competitor earlier this year The model, who until recently was based in Los Angeles, appeared on Dancing With The Stars as a wildcard competitor earlier this year. Daily Mail Australia revealed in 2019 that Martin had broken up with glamorous Sydney food blogger and physiotherapist, Tania Acitelli. He has also previously been linked to Phoebe Carpenter, who once dated rugby league star Mitch Pearce. Rebel Wilson dropped an impressive 30kg after pledging to make 2020 her 'year of health'. On Saturday, the Australian actress, 41, was back at work on the set of her new film, Senior Year, and looking better than ever. Posting to her Instagram, the blonde beauty's flawless face was glowing as she posed for a mirror selfie. Flawless: On Saturday, Australian actress Rebel Wilson (pictured) was back at work on the set of her new film, Senior Year, and looking better than ever Joined by make-up artists, hairdressers and crew members, Rebel showed off her taut physique as she rocked an all-black ensemble. The star appeared to have in hair extensions, as she was rocking an extra-long and thick blonde plait. Earlier this week, Rebel again flaunted her trim figure, confirming she smashed her original weight loss goal by shedding even more kilos. She looked slimmer than ever while wearing a cheerleader uniform on the set of the high school comedy on Wednesday. Stunner: Posting to her Instagram, the blonde beauty's flawless face was glowing as she posed for a mirror selfie. The star appeared to have in hair extensions, as she was rocking an extra-long and thick blonde plait Having fun: Joined by make-up artists, hairdressers and crew members, Rebel showed off her taut physique as she rocked an all-black ensemble Fans would have noticed the difference in her toned figure as she shared a Boomerang clip to Instagram of herself with co-star Chris Parnell. The comedian wore a green, white and gold cheerleader costume, which had long sleeves and a short pleated skirt. She also wore white sneakers, and swept her blonde hair into a high ponytail secured with an oversized green bow. On set fun: Rebel looked slimmer than ever while wearing a cheerleader uniform on the set of high school comedy Senior Year on Wednesday. Pictured with co-star Chris Parnell Bring it on! The comedian showed off her trim figure in a green, white and gold cheerleader costume, which had long sleeves and a short pleated skirt Both actors held the 'spirit fingers' cheerleader pose, made famous in the 2001 film Bring It On, with one arm up and the other swinging back and forth. 'Living my BRING IT ON fantasy in #SeniorYear,' Rebel wrote in the caption, as she revealed the film's March 2022 release date. According to Deadline, the movie follows a cheerleader (played by Rebel) who wakes after a 20-year coma and returns to high school. Impressive! Rebel lost 30kg after pledging to make 2020 her 'year of health', and it now appears she has smashed her weight loss goal by shedding even more kilos Rebel's character attempts to regain her status and claim the prom-queen crown which had eluded her two decades earlier. After a year-long break from acting, Rebel is one of the busiest actresses in Hollywood again with a number of projects in the works. She recently wrapped filming The Almond and the Seahorse in the UK with French actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. Since the beginning of the pandemic, Australia has seen many ex-pats return home after years living in America. And actress Rachel Griffiths, 52, believes she knows why that is - and it's not just down to Covid. In a column for Stellar Magazine, the Muriel's Wedding star, who lived in USA for a decade before coming home, writes 'American freedom' is in 'tatters'. Exodus: Since the beginning of the pandemic, Australia has seen many ex-pats return home after years living in America. And actress Rachel Griffiths, 52, (pictured) believes she knows why that is - and it's not just down to Covid 'Over the past year, as I checked in with Australian friends in the US, I kept hearing the same thing: 'I just want to come home I've never felt more Australian.' 'It wasn't just the pandemic it was the exhaustion of trying to make sense of that country, of living between truths and lies,' she writes. 'Then the murder of George Floyd crystallised for many who have a home country to compare with that 'American freedom' lay (like its flag) in tatters on the streets, and that it was a poor substitute for collective responsibility.' Political? 'Over the past year, as I checked in with Australian friends in the US, I kept hearing the same thing: 'I just want to come home.' It wasn't just the pandemic it was the exhaustion of trying to make sense of that country, of living between truths and lies,' she writes Rachel, who has been back in Australia since 2012, added: 'I was hungry to come home and tell our own Australian stories with humanity and vigour. 'So I did, and the years since have been the most satisfying of my career. But the sense that a nation can so deeply lie to itself about what it actually is... came back with me'. A slew of Aussie have returned home over the past year, including actress Isla Fisher, 45, who brought her English husband Sacha Baron Cohen, 49, and their children, with her. She went on: 'Then the murder of George Floyd crystallised for many who have a home country to compare with that 'American freedom' lay (like its flag) in tatters on the streets, and that it was a poor substitute for collective responsibility' The pair, who are now based in Sydney, were fleeing America's tumultuous political climate, reports claim. 'They didn't want to raise their kids in Trump's America,' an insider told Sydney Morning Herald. The couple relocated to Australia in December, and have since enrolled their three children at a school in Sydney. Back: A slew of Aussie have returned home over the past year, including actress Isla Fisher (right) who brought her English husband Sacha Baron Cohen (left) and their children, with her. 'They didn't want to raise their kids in Trump's America,' an insider said In town: Aussie actress Rose Byrne (left) and her American partner Bobby Cannavale (right) arrived in Australia in recent months with their children Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, 37, and his Spanish wife Elsa Pataky, 44, moved from Los Angeles to Australia's Byron Bay in 2014. The actress has said that living in Australia has been the right decision for the previously LA-based family. 'Byron has been beautiful. We made the right decision in 2014 to leave LA and come to Australia it's been great for the kids to be in nature, enjoy animals and go horse riding,' she said. Returned: Nicole Kidman (right), her husband Keith Urban (left) and their daughters have also been back in town since last year Moves: Australian actor Chris Hemsworth, 37, and his Spanish wife Elsa Pataky, 44, moved from Los Angeles to Australia's Byron Bay in 2014. ' We made the right decision to leave LA and come to Australia it's been great for the kids to be in nature,' Elsa said. Both pictured Aussie actress Rose Byrne and her American partner Bobby Cannavale arrived in Australia in recent months with their children, and Nicole Kidman, her husband Keith Urban and their daughters have also been back in town since last year. American stars have moved Down Under, too, many to work on the slew of film productions sprouting up locally. The likes of Natalie Portman, Zac Efron, Matt Damon and Rita Ora are all currently busy working in Australia. They welcomed their first child - a baby boy called Brody - earlier this month. And Georgia Kousoulou, 29, took to Instagram on Friday to congratulate her boyfriend Tommy Mallet for celebrating his first birthday as a father as he turned 29. Alongside an unseen snap from the day their son arrived, The TOWIE star wrote: Happy birthday to my Tommy Mallet. First birthday as a daddy!!' 'First birthday as a daddy!': Georgia Kousoulou, 29, took to Instagram on Friday to congratulate her boyfriend Tommy Mallet for celebrating his first birthday as a father as he turned 29 In the sweet snap, Georgia could be seen breathing through the pain of labour while Tommy grinned next to her on the special day. Continuing her gushing birthday post, the new mum wrote: 'Thank you for being the best .. I couldnt have got through the last few weeks without you. We love you so much' This will be a very happy birthday for Tommy, who has taken to social media to tell his followers that his life is now 'full' since welcoming his son. In the same Instagram post, Georgia also wished a happy birthday to Tommy's close friend Benny Shamps, who has been spending lots of quality time with baby Brody. Doting dad: 'Thank you for being the best .. I couldnt have got through the last few weeks without you. We love you so much' Georgia gushed in the birthday post She wrote: 'Happy birthday to Benny Shamps. The best uncle ever!! We love you lots.' Benny could be seen feeding baby Brody with one hand while Benny showed him something funny on his phone in one of the photos Georgia shared. While in others of the unseen snaps the Essex boys sweetly cradled the newborn while he snoozed on their shoulders. Family friend: In the same Instagram post, Georgia also wished a happy birthday to Tommy's close friend Benny Shamps, who has been spending lots of quality time with baby Brody 'Happy birthday to Benny Shamps. The best uncle ever!! We love you lots,' wrote the reality star alongside happy pics of Tommy and Benny laughing while feeding the newborn Georgia and Tommy announced baby Brody had arrived earlier this month with a series of adorable Instagram posts. Taking to social media to share their joy, Georgia wrote: 'Introducing you .. Brody Fordham. 05.05.21 weighing 8lb 9, We are so in love.' 'Thank you for all your messages. I feel so blessed, the best experience of my life,' she added sweetly. New parents: Georgia also shared a throwback snap of her and Tommy on holiday before they welcomed their first child earlier this month Georgia looked radiant as she cradled her little boy, who was wrapped in a soft white blanket, while laying in a hospital bed alongside her beaming beau. Clearly proud of his new baby boy, Tommy penned at the time: 'Now my life is full! Welcome to the world young.' Doting new mother Georgia replied to the comment, and said: 'The best thing that's ever happened to us.' Congratulations! Georgia looked radiant as she cradled her little boy, who was wrapped in a soft white blanket, while laying in a hospital bed alongside Tommy when Brody arrived Georgia's 1.3million followers were quick to congratulate the couple, with many of their reality star pals also sending love. Chloe Sims commented: 'Congratulations! He's so precious love him already xxx' And Amber Dowding penned: 'I honestly cant even tell you how much this picture makes my heart burst. My besties.. Brody you're so loved my angel .. cant wait for cuddles I love you all so much.' Mrs Hinch, who is also expecting a baby boy in the coming weeks, wrote: 'So so amazing! Congratulations to you all beautiful family xxxxx' New arrival: Tommy gushed over his newborn son and declared his 'life is full' since Brody was born Georgia admitted that 'no one knew' she was expecting and insisted she wanted to film genuine 'real-life' reactions to the news on TOWIE, adding that 'it just felt so right' given that she and Tommy met on the reality show. Speaking after the big reveal she told her Instagram fans: 'Good morning. Honestly, I feel so overwhelmed this morning. I just feel so happy, so blessed, so lucky. 'It's been a mad year, and this is just the best news we've had all year... The reason we announced it last night was because we wanted to be the first to tell you all. 'That's why we shocked everyone last night and just announced it. I'm really glad we did, though, because it's just been amazing.' As vaccines continue to roll out throughout the UK, Olivia Bowen decided to jet abroad with her husband Alex. And the Love Island star, 27, turned up the heat on Saturday in a tie-dye bikini as she soaked up the Portuguese sun with her partner, 29. Olivia showed off her hourglass curves and incredible ample assets in the revealing swimwear as she captured her relaxing day to social media. Busty look: Olivia Bowen turned up the heat on Saturday in a tie-dye bikini as she soaked up the Portuguese sun with her husband Alex, 29 Olivia's cut-out two-piece exposed her collection of intricate tattoos and featured neon green straps and ruched detailing around the derriere. The former Love Islander added a touch of sparkle with delicate jewellery including hoop earrings and a horse shoe necklace. She sported chunky black shades and tucked her blonde tresses back in chic space buns for snaps. Olivia enhanced her visage with a soft make-up look as she posed for a loving selfie with Alex in their Serra de Sintra hotel. Wow! The former Love Islander, 27, showed off her hourglass curves and incredible ample assets in the revealing swimwear as she captured her relaxing day to social media Portugal is one of the 12 countries currently on the UK's 'green list' following the easing of lockdown restrictions in Britain last week. On Tuesday, the star got candid about her appearance as she revealed the secret behind her perky assets. Taking to Instagram, Olivia shared an advert for boob tape as she credited the 'party trick' for enabling her to go braless on nights out. Demonstrating the product, Olivia posed braless to show off her cleavage in one snap, before pulling open her blouse to expose her boob tape. Peachy! Olivia's cut-out two-piece exposed her collection of intricate tattoos and featured neon green straps and ruched detailing around the derriere Alongside the snaps she penned: 'Swipe for my party... So many of you ask how I wear styles without a bra especially when having larger tatas- I swear by @perkypearofficial for when cant wear a bra & want extra vavavooom & full support!' Olivia is known for keeping it real on Instagram, and was recently hailed as 'inspiring' after she bravely displayed her psoriasis in a lingerie shoot. In March, the reality starlet, who has previously spoken about dealing with the skin condition, shared snaps of herself donning pink lace lingerie along with an inspirational message. Posing in her bathroom, Olivia wrote: 'GROW through what you GO through & you will GLOW boo!' 'Reow!' The reality star wore space buns and enhanced her visage with a soft make-up look as she posed for a loving selfie with Alex in their Serra de Sintra hotel Olivia re-shared one of the photos to her Instagram Stories and said the reason she speaks about her psoriasis is because she would have loved to see someone talk about it when she was struggling with it as a teenager. She wrote: 'Some days I don't wanna look at my skin, some days I don't care, some days I love it. The reality is it just doesn't f*****g matter in comparison to what is worth our time in the world. 'I just get on with my life & do my work & enjoy being alive & live my best! The main reason I acknowledge my psoriasis online is because I KNOW how much I would have loved to see someone in the public eye with it when I had it last at 17 years old. 'It shouldn't even be a thing to be honest, but I know how on bad days it can get you down. Your messages on how much it helps seeing me confident with it are really lovely. Cheeky: On Tuesday, the star got candid about her appearance as she revealed the secret behind her perky assets Secret: Taking to Instagram, Olivia shared an advert for boob tape as she credited the 'party trick' for enabling her to go braless on nights out 'Really so sweet & I'm happy that you guys can take something away from seeing someone just living with it. You can too!' Olivia previously admitted her 10-year battle leaves her feeling 'terribly insecure' at times as she deals with flare-ups which can last up to four months. Psoriasis occurs when a person's skin replacement process takes place within days rather than the usual 21-to-28 days. The accumulation of skin cells builds up to form raised plaques, which can be flaky, scaly and itchy. Important: Olivia is known for keeping it real on Instagram, and was recently hailed as 'inspiring' after she bravely displayed her psoriasis in a lingerie shoot Her fans went into a frenzy earlier this week when a snap with her boyfriend Tommy Fury appeared to show they'd got engaged. And Molly Mae Hague took to Instagram on Saturday to hit back rumours her beau, 22, had proposed during a candid Q&A with her followers. The Love Island star, 22, said: 'Do you really think we'll announce to you that we're engaged by a sneaky picture of Tommy wearing a ring?' 'I'm not engaged!': Molly Mae Hague took to Instagram on Saturday to hit back rumours her beau Tommy Fury, 22, had proposed after a cryptic snap sent tongues wagging Molly had asked her followers to ask her questions while she procrastinated from her weekend tasks. And when one fan responded asking about 'sneaky engagements', the reality star took the opportunity to lay rumours to rest. Molly-Mae said: 'This really makes me laugh because I did see a few of you commenting on Tommy's last picture saying "he's wearing a ring". 'Like, do you guys really think we'll announce to you that we're engaged by a sneaky picture of Tommy wearing a ring? 'Like...no,' Molly added before pulling an exasperated face. 'HES WEARING A RING?': The Love Island star's fans went into a frenzy earlier this week when a snap with her boyfriend Tommy Fury wearing a ring The couple have been dating ever since they first met on Love Island in 2019 and moved in together shortly after dating. Back in April, Tommy told his 3.3 million followers that he was going to put a ring on his girlfriend Molly-Mae's finger 'sooner than you think'. When asked by a follower: 'When are you going to put a ring on Molly-Mae?' The reality star responded: 'Sooner than you think', while winking at the camera. On the subject of children another fan asked: 'When you gonna have some little Fury's?' Couple goals: Back in April, Tommy told his 3.3 million followers that he was going to put a ring on his girlfriend Molly-Mae's finger 'sooner than you think' True love: The couple have been dating ever since they first met on Love Island in 2019 (pictured) and moved in together shortly after the show ended Tommy went onto reveal he 'would like to have them sooner rather than later' and suggested asking Molly, 21, that question. 'Im not the person to ask that question too. I would like them sooner rather than later but maybe you should go and ask that to the Mrs.' During the Q and A, Molly-Maealso revealed to her fans that she 'smiled less' after removing her composite bonds because she felt less confident with her new teeth. She then gave her followers a first look at how her scar from having a mole on her leg removed was healing. Flashing the scar to the camera, she said: 'Excuse my hairy legs but this is my scar from where I had my mole removed, 'It doesn't bother me. I never really even notice it but it has kind of now spread out a bit as its healed more. It's kind of got a bit bigger but it doesn't bother me at all and I'm just so lucky that I got my mole removed.' 'It doesn't bother me at all': The reality star also spoke to her fans about a scar she now has on her leg after having surgery to remove a mole In November last year, Molly-Mae was given the devastating diagnosis that a mole of her leg was a malignant melanoma - a type of skin cancer. The influencer filmed herself being given the diagnosis for her YouTube channel. In the video, Molly candidly talked about what she's been going through following her 'shock' diagnosis, telling her fans: 'I was walking around with skin cancer on my leg.' Molly-Mae revealed that she learned her mole was a malignant melanoma during a work trip to Italy, when a doctor phoned her to deliver the diagnosis following a recent biopsy. The social media star initially got the mole on her leg checked out by two dermatologists but was told it was nothing to worry about. Horrible news: In November last year, Molly-Mae was given the devastating diagnosis that a mole of her leg was a malignant melanoma - a type of skin cancer Molly-Mae eventually sought third professional opinion during a routine check-up because she 'felt something wasn't quite right'. Speaking on her YouTube video, after the phone call from her doctor played out, she told fans: 'I got the call today and he's told me it is malignant melanoma - which is skin cancer basically. 'It's obviously petrifying, shocking and scary. I don't even know what to think or say. I cannot believe I was told by others doctors it was OK. I am so upset and angry. 'I just briefly asked this doctor when I was walking out. I was walking around with skin cancer on my leg! MELANOMA IS THE MOST DANGEROUS FORM OF SKIN CANCER Melanoma is the most dangerous form of skin cancer. It happens after the DNA in skin cells is damaged (typically due to harmful UV rays) and then not repaired so it triggers mutations that can form malignant tumors. Around 15,900 new cases occur every year in the UK, with 2,285 Britons dying from the disease in 2016, according to Cancer Research UK statistics. Causes Sun exposure: UV and UVB rays from the sun and tanning beds are harmful to the skin Moles: The more moles you have, the greater the risk for getting melanoma Skin type: Fairer skin has a higher risk for getting melanoma Hair color: Red heads are more at risk than others Personal history: If you've had melanoma once, then you are more likely to get it again Family history: If previous relatives have been diagnosed, then that increases your risk Treatment Removal of the melanoma: This can be done by removing the entire section of the tumor or by the surgeon removing the skin layer by layer. When a surgeon removes it layer by layer, this helps them figure out exactly where the cancer stops so they don't have to remove more skin than is necessary. Skin grafting: The patient can decide to use a skin graft if the surgery has left behind discoloration or an indent. Immunotherapy, radiation treatment or chemotherapy: This is needed if the cancer reaches stage III or IV. That means that the cancerous cells have spread to the lymph nodes or other organs in the body. Prevention Use sunscreen and do not burn Avoid tanning outside and in beds Apply sunscreen 30 minutes before going outside Keep newborns out of the sun Examine your skin every month See your physician every year for a skin exam Source: Skin Cancer Foundation and American Cancer Society Advertisement 'If I hadn't have asked, I'd still have that mole on my leg now and I'd be none the wiser. It could be spreading through my body, you just never know.' Molly-Mae continued, explaining how she was trying to be strong, despite breaking down, so that her loved ones didn't freak out. She said: 'I've already shed tears about it. I've already cried down the phone to every family member.' Molly-Mae concluded the video by urging her fans to have their moles checked out. Visitors wearing face masks as a precaution against COVID-19 walk in the rain at Gyeongbok Palace in Seoul, May 28. AP-Yonhap By Scott Shepherd Chloe Ferry has hinted that she is engaged after making her relationship to Owen Warner Instagram official on Saturday. The Geordie Shore star, 25, draped her leg over the Hollyoaks actor, 21, as they posed for a series of loved-up snaps during their Portugal getaway. She appeared to confirm they are set to tie the knot as she penned alongside the social media snaps: 'Now I no what love feels like @_owenwarner,' (sic) alongside a diamond ring emoji. Big news! Chloe Ferry has hinted that she is engaged after making her relationship to Owen Warner Instagram official on Saturday Chloe was seen wearing a skimpy yellow bikini which highlighted her hourglass curves while Owen sported grey swimming trunks. She rocked full coverage make-up and swept her chestnut locks back in a high ponytail as they relaxed on a sun-lounger. Her Geordie Shore pals were left confused by the apparent engagement news while others congratulated her on the announcement. Charlotte Crosby penned on the post: 'Right confusion is high right now if your gunna get a boyfriend can you please watsapp me and tell me all about it.' (sic) Sweet: The Geordie Shore star, 25, put on an affectionate display with the Hollyoaks actor, 21, as they posed for a series of loved-up snaps during their Portugal getaway Wow! She appeared to confirm they are set to tie the knot as she penned alongside the social media snaps: 'Now I no what love feels like @_owenwarner,' (sic) alongside a ring emoji Meanwhile Sophie Kasaei, who is also staying in Portugal with Chloe, wrote: 'Hahahahahahahahaha how many lads can 1 gal be in love with.' (sic) Her Celebs Go Dating co-star Kimberly Hart-Simpson commented: 'Mate,' with a series of heart emojis. Scarlett Moffatt also responded: 'Yesssssss x'. (sic) Owen also shared a video of Chloe playing around with a vacuum cleaner in a hotel lobby as he wrote: 'Love of my life'. Husband material? Owen is an actor who is known for playing Romeo in Hollyoaks and previously dated Stephanie Davis Mixed messages: Her Geordie Shore pals were left confused by the apparent engagement news while others congratulated her on the announcement Couple? Owen also shared a video of Chloe playing around with a vacuum cleaner in a hotel lobby as he wrote: 'Love of my life' Portugal is one of the 12 countries currently on the UK's 'green list' following the easing of lockdown restrictions in Britain last week. Chloe is believed to have been single for over a year following a turbulent relationship with Sam Gowland which began in 2017. The on-and-off couple parted ways for good in February 2020. Since then, the reality star has been embracing the single life and dating, having appeared on the 2020 series of Celebs Go Dating. It's over: Chloe began a relationship with Sam Gowland in 2017 but the on-and-off couple parted ways for good in February 2020 Rumours swirling: She reportedly dated Kieran Bishop, whom she met in the Celebs Go Dating mansion in 2020, but never publicly confirmed the romance Bachelor: She even shared a series of flirty exchanges online with her Celebs Go Dating co-star Wayne Lineker and also hinted they were getting married She built a connection with Kieran Bishop and they reportedly spent time together when they left the show's mansion. However, the alleged romance didn't last long as Chloe failed to confirm they were ever dating. She even shared a series of flirty exchanges online with her Celebs Go Dating co-star Wayne Lineker, 59, who previously sent fans wild when he posted a fake engagement photo. Having a laugh: Wayne previously sent fans wild when he posted a fake engagement photo Appearing on FUBAR Radio with host TOWIE's Bobby Norris earlier this month, Wayne was asked who his celebrity crush was, responding: 'Oh, that's Chloe [Ferry] obviously!' TOWIE star Bobby then said: 'Miss Ferry. I saw all about this engagement! How did it come about Wayne?' Club owner Wayne went on to explain: 'Me and Chloe just have a laugh all the time. We're in the mansion and she had a wedding ring. 'She went, "Come on, Wayne, let's pretend we're getting married". And we took all the pictures and everything and we didn't end up doing it, we just forgot about it. 'And she phoned me up last week. Because, I mean, we are seeing each other a little bit and having a bit of flirtatious banter and we'll see what happens in the summer. 'But she said, "Come on let's post it! Let's have a laugh!" I said, "You know it's going to go viral don't you?" She went, "Yeah of course I do!" Owen, meanwhile, was previously in a relationship with his Hollyoaks co-star Stephanie Davis but the pair split in 2019. She's known for constantly having a cigarette dangling from a lengthy holder. But Cruella de Vil had to quit cold turkey for Emma Stone's new smoking-free prequel Cruella. The 32-year-old Oscar winner revealed that Disney's longtime smoking ban forced a retooling of the 101 Dalmatians villain in an interview with The New York Times that was published Thursday. Snuffed out: Emma Stone, 32, revealed that Cruella de Vil's cigarette holder is missing from her new 101 Dalmatians prequel due to Disney's smoking ban in an interview with The New York Times; still from Cruella As for why Cruella isn't allowed to light up like she did in 1961's animated One Hundred And One Dalmatians or the 1996 live-action remake 101 Dalmatians, it's simply because of the times. 'That is not allowed in 2021,' Emma said bluntly with a laugh. 'We are not allowed to smoke onscreen in a Disney film,' she added. 'It was difficult to not have that cigarette holder.' The on-screen ban on smoking depictions first became standard for the family-friendly company back in 2007, more than a decade after Glenn Close lit up as Cruella de Vil in the live-action remake and its 2000 sequel 102 Dalmatians. Not allowed: 'That is not allowed in 2021,' Emma said bluntly of smoking. The practice has been absent from Disney films going back to 2007; seen May 18 in LA Quitting: In 2015, Disney CEO Bob Iger said that smoking would also be banned by Disney subsidiaries, including Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar; still from Cruella In 2015, Disney CEO Bob Iger announced at a shareholders meeting that not only would all Disney films be free of smoking, but so would all films from other companies owned by it. Marvel's superheroes won't be lighting up anytime soon, and neither will characters in movies from Pixar and Lucasfilm (which makes the Star Wars series). The studio has even faced pressure to ban smoking in new projects from 20th Century Studios (previously 20th Century Fox) after buying it up. Anti-smoking activists are so far only looking to ban smoking in films rated up to PG-13, leaving R-rated films alone, according to The New York Times. The studio makes more movies aimed at adults than any of Disney's other subsidiaries, so its intended audiences might be less influenced by depictions of smoking. Good example: 'I was so excited to have that green plume of smoke in there, but it was not possible,' Emmas said. 'I dont want to promote smoking, but Im also not trying to promote skinning puppies'; still from Cruella According to Emma, it was a real loss not to have her character show off some of her most recognizable traits. 'I was so excited to have that green plume of smoke in there, but it was not possible,' she said. 'I dont want to promote smoking, but Im also not trying to promote skinning puppies.' The La La Land star also opened up about her connection to Cruella, the alter-ego of the meek fashion designer Estella. Her character initially dyes her hair red for attention, and the actress, who's a natural blonde, famously went red for her breakout role in 2007's Superbad. Part of what attracted her to the role was that it was her first full-on villain, after playing characters who flirt with the dark side in the Netflix miniseries Maniac and the Oscar-winning period black comedy The Favourite. 'Ive really loved this phase of playing these women who are much less concerned with what people think about them, and simultaneously working on that myself in my life. Its definitely been a nice symbiotic relationship,' she said. Katya Jones looked typically stylish when she stepped out for a day of filming on Saturday in a figure-hugging denim jumpsuit. The Strictly star, 32, teamed the chic zip-up piece with a pair of yellow heels and appeared in high spirits as she recorded a segment for Mecca Bingo in London. Wearing her glossy brunette hair loose, Katya accessorised with a bold beaded necklace and wore a full face of glam for her day in front of the camera. Wow: Katya Jones, 32, looked typically stylish when she stepped out for a day of filming in London on Saturday in a figure-hugging denim jumpsuit The brunette bombshell was joined for a day of filming alongside Strictly co-star Giovanni Pernice as well as Ex On The Beach's Jess Impiazzi and presenter Craig Stevens. Giovanni, 30, cut a dapper figure in a suit and blue shirt while Jess, 31, slipped into a low-key outfit, teaming a pair of skinny black jeans with a red jumper. Jess also wore her hair loose and put on a playful display for cameras. It comes after Katya celebrated her 32nd birthday earlier in May, looking a little worse for wear after a five-and-a-half hour lunch with BBC co-stars Janette Manrara and Luba Mushtuk. Stylish: The Strictly star teamed the chic zip-up piece with a pair of sunshine yellow heels and appeared in high spirits as she recorded a segment for Mecca Bingo All in the details: Wearing her glossy brunette hair loose, Katya accessorised with a bold beaded necklace and wore a full face of glam for her day in front of the camera Wearing a mini-dress and thigh-high black boots, the Russian dancer was spotted on the streets of Soho as she posed with a red handbag and a 'Dancing Queen' sign. Katya, who has danced with celebrities such as presenter Mike Bushell, has in the past hit the headlines for her off-show antics. In 2018 she was pictured kissing her dance partner, comedian Seann Walsh while she was still married to now ex-husband Neil Jones. Co-stars: Katya was joined for a day of filming by Strictly co-star Giovanni Pernice as well as Ex On The Beach's Jess Impiazzi and Craig Stevens Earlier this month Katya paid tribute to former flame Neil on his 39th birthday with a series of 'embarrassing' throwbacks. The first shot saw Neil smile for the camera with friends as held a giant balloon which read 'Happy Birthday', while another picture saw the gang all pose on a boat as they partied. Katya also posted some vintage images of her and Neil from their marriage, including a shot of them alongside two pals who appeared to be at a party. Having fun: Katya and Craig put on a playful display for cameras with the former getting down on her knees in a playful snap Casual cool: Jess, 31, slipped into a low-key outfit, teaming a pair of skinny black jeans with a red jumper Hair down: Jess also wore her hair loose and put on a playful display for cameras The dancer captioned the post: 'Happy Birthday @mr_njonesofficial! Geez, you're getting old. 'But still full of life, energy and positivity! Keep that smile on your face and keep that hair ginger! Sorry I used to straighten it (swipe for some embarrassing phktos). 'May it be a great year for you!! Lots of love. #strictlycomedancing #birthday #happybirthday (sic)' Earlier this year, Katya spoke out about the demise of her seven-year marriage to Neil. Birthday girl: It comes after Katya celebrated her 32nd birthday in May, looking a little worse for wear after a five-and-a-half hour lunch with co-stars Janette Manrara and Luba Mushtuk In an interview with Waggel, the star reflected on how she found her 30th birthday 'challenging' because her marriage to Neil was going 'downhill'. Talking about the dark period, she said: 'In 2019 I turned 30, it was a challenging time. I didn't like where I was, it felt like I was in limbo actually. 'My relationship was going downhill. I didn't feel happy in my own company until May 2020, when I spent my birthday in lockdown.' Birthday boy: Katya paid tribute to ex-husband Neil Jones as she wished him well on his 39th birthday with a series of cheeky throwback photos earlier this month Katya also revealed she has used the time since her split from Neil to 'better myself' and hasn't dated since they broke up. She said: 'I've come out of a marriage, not even a long-term relationship, but a marriage. Neil and I were together for 12-years, married for seven.' The professional dancer said she hasn't even thought about dating because 'I've just been with this person for such a long time'. Still close: The dancer captioned the post: 'Happy Birthday @mr_njonesofficial! Geez, you're getting old. But still full of life, energy and positivity!' (pictured in 2019) Katya added she is 'happy on my own' but does have days where she wants to 'sit down and binge Netflix with someone else'. The Strictly star also ruled out the prospect of meeting someone on a dating app because she is an 'old romantic'. While Katya has remained single since the breakdown of her marriage, Neil had a turbulent brief romance with Columbian dancer Luisa Eusse. The couple split in January after their relationship was marred by claims Luisa had cheated on Neil and was also just using him for a visa into the country. Katya admitted she got 'jealous' when their dog Crumble, whom they share custody with, spent time with Luisa, but says she is sure if the situation arises again when one of them is in a relationship, it will be 'absolutely fine'. She recently revealed she is pregnant with her second child, her first with partner and childhood sweetheart Bobby Kootstra. And Katherine Ryan looked radiant as she showed off her blossoming baby bump when she arrived in style at the Chromantics: A Fashion Showcase event by designer Kitty Joseph, which was held at The Tide in Peninsula Square, London, on Saturday. The comedian, 37, covered her bump in a chic colourful dress that had a pleated design and featured stripes of blue, black, pink and red. Wow! Pregnant Katherine Ryan covered her blossoming baby bump in a chic colourful striped dress as she arrived in style at fashion show in London on Friday Katherine paired the stylish ensemble with a pair of black sandals as she enjoyed the sun-soaked weather. The blonde beauty pulled her locks back into a tight bun and she wore a light palette of make-up for the occasion. She opted to keep her accessories minimal so that all attention remained on her ensemble, and she wore a simple pair of hoop earrings. Radiant: The blonde beauty pulled her locks back into a tight bun and she wore a light palette of make-up for the occasion Comfy: Katherine paired the stylish ensemble with a pair of black sandals so she could enjoy the sun-soaked weather She took to Instagram earlier in the day to hit back at 'sexist' questions asking if she'll cancel her upcoming tour because she's pregnant. The comedian defiantly told her followers: 'I'm just gonna let that sexism wash over me. I'm not gonna let it affect my zen. No, I'm not cancelling my tour.' Katherine recorded the frustrated video in a cosy plaid padded jacket and went make-up free as she explained her plans to her followers. 'I'm not gonna let it affect my zen': Katherine took to Instagram earlier in the day to hit back at 'sexist' questions asking if she'll cancel her upcoming tour because she's pregnant Filming outside in front of a horse pen, the irritated comedian said: 'I've received a lot of really touching nice messages and a lot of rude messages... ...and a lot of messages - A LOT of messages - asking if I'm gonna cancel my tour...No I'm not cancelling my tour.' 'Your Dad Is Cancelling His Tour,' she humorously added, alongside a regal snap of her accentuating her burgeoning baby bump in a black T-shirt and jeans. Katherine is due to give birth over the summer and will go on her six-stop tour in the UK titled Missus from November 2021 to May 2022. 'Your Dad Is Cancelling His Tour': Katherine mocked her fans alongside a regal snap of her accentuating her burgeoning baby bump in a black T-shirt and jeans Katherine made her pregnancy announcement during a live recording of her podcast Telling Everybody Everything in Kentish Town on Thursday, before Bobby shared the bump shot and Katherine posted a selfie showing her stomach. She first revealed her baby bump during an appearance on Celebrity Juice last week, but did not discuss her pregnancy during the show and she has now shown the bump in a series of stunning shots. Katherine looked sensational in the shot as she posed in just a bra and low-slung trousers with her silhouette showing off her rounded stomach. Stunning: Katherine showed off her growing bump in a stunning snap shared by her childhood sweetheart Bobby Kootstra on Friday She revealed she is due to give birth over the summer at her podcast recording, but refused to give an exact date as she claimed her best advice to other pregnant women was not to reveal that information. At the live show she said she was keen to remain coy about her due date because it stopped people asking too many questions. She sported a skin-tight cream dress which showed off the full extent of her growing belly and was given flowers during the show. Sweet: Katherine recently revealed she is pregnant with her second child, her first with partner and childhood sweetheart Bobby She already has one daughter Violet, 11, who she is fiercely protective of, it is not known who the Your Face Or Mine? host shares her daughter with. She had a civil partnership with childhood sweetheart Bobby in December 2019, in a low-key ceremony in Denmark after the pair rekindled their romance. Katherine has most recently been spending time in Devon with Bobby where she has been filming new ITV2 dating show Ready To Mingle, which will be released later this year. Growing! She looked stunning in a selfie shared on Friday which showed off her bump In March, Katherine shared a snap where she posed in a stunning lemon yellow dress and posed with her arms crossed in her lap. A few fans speculated that the comedian might be pregnant in the snap, and even offered their heartfelt congratulations to her. This will be Katherine's first child with Bobby, who she married in December 2019. Speaking exclusively to MailOnline about her civil partnership shortly after the ceremony, she told how a big star-studded wedding was never on the cards. Debut: Katherine first revealed her bump during an appearance on Celebrity Juice last week while wearing a stunning green dress Keeping it secret: Katherine did not discuss her pregnancy during her appearance on Celebrity Juice Sweet: The child will be her first with partner Bobby, and Katherine has chosen not to reveal when she is due to give birth Support: In March, Katherine shared a snap where she posed in a stunning lemon yellow dress, a few fans speculated that she might be pregnant and offered their heartfelt congratulations She said: 'I don't want a big occasion because of the history of it and the fact women used to belong to their fathers and then belong to their husbands and put on a white dress because they're virgins, I mean I think it's gross and I don't want to do it. 'I appreciate that other people like to have a party but again I get to put on beautiful dresses and not have to make an invite list and arrange seating and hire a DJ, I just don't want to do those things at all.' Katherine reconnected with Bobby after 20-years when the pair agreed to have a one-night stand but their romance soon blossomed. Subtle: After appearing on Celebrity Juice, Katherine posed with her bump covered when smiling for a snap with RuPaul's Drag Race UK season two winner Lawrence Chaney Covering up: While in a promotional video for All That Glitters, Katherine covered her bump by wearing a loose-fitting yellow dress And she said she believes their relationship has only been made stronger by the fact Bobby was previously married. Katherine explained: 'I loved him so much I still have all of our letters that we wrote to each other when we were 15/16 and I had them made into a blanket for our one-year anniversary because I'm such a nerd. 'But then I was glad that we weren't together for 20 years as well because I went off and I did all of these interesting things and he went off and did all these interesting things. 'I don't think most men are really ready to be married until they've been divorced. I never really wanted to get married, it's when I became totally satisfied with the idea of being alone that he magically walked into my life. Like mother, like daughter: Katherine already has 11-year-old daughter Violet (L) who she is fiercely protective of, it is not known who she shares her daughter with Family: In 2019, Katherine opened up about the close relationship she has with her daughter, who she calls her best friend, saying 'it's special that I've been alone with her for a long time' 'I did everything I could not to marry him. I thought, this is not my plan but when it's meant to be it's just so easy and I wish I had known that all along.' In 2019, Katherine opened up about the close relationship she has with her daughter, who she calls her best friend, with The Mirror. She said of Violet: 'My daughter Violet and I have a unique relationship. I really like her and love her, and it's special that I've been alone with her for a long time, so we have a little bit of a sisterly relationship which I know can be dangerous when she gets older, but I'm risking it. 'We live in a democracy. I always say, we're not a mum and a 10-year-old. We're two 10-year-olds, but one of us has a credit card and a driving licence. We're unstoppable.' Romance: Katherine had a civil partnership with childhood sweetheart Bobby (right) in December 2019, in a low-key ceremony in Denmark after the pair rekindled their romance Jay-Z has shared that he took up swimming after his first child Blue Ivy was born so that he could keep her safe. The 51-year-old rap legend made the confession in the new season-opening episode of LeBron James' HBO talk show The Shop. According to the wordsmith, learning to swim was his first step in meeting his new daughter. Taking responsibility: Jay-Z, 51, revealed on the newest episode of LeBron James' HBO show The Shop that he took swimming lessons after his daughter Blue Ivy Carter, nine, was born; seen on The Shop 'It's amazing. It's a very grounding thing... I didn't learn how to swim until Blue was born,' he revealed.'There goes everything you need to know. This is a metaphor for our relationship.' The Dirt Off Your Shoulder rapper was confronting the fear that all new parents have that something terrible might happen to their child. 'If she ever fell in the water and I couldn't get her, I couldn't even fathom that thought,' he continued. 'I gotta learn how to swim. That's it. That was the beginning of our relationship.' Jay-Z's wife Beyonce gave birth to Blue, their first child, in January of 2012. Prepared: 'If she ever fell in the water and I couldn't get her, I couldn't even fathom that thought,' he continued. 'I gotta learn how to swim. That's it'; seen with Blue Ivy in March 2020 Growing family: Jay-Z also shares three-year-old twins Rumi and Sir with his wife Beyonce; seen together in 2019 in LA The former Destiny's Child member revealed she was pregnant during a performance at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards when she showed off her stomach to the audience. Jay-Z's eldest is already on track to have her own music career if she wants it after she won a Grammy Award for the song's music video. She also won a BET award for the track when she was only eight, making her the youngest winner to date. Jay-Z and Beyonce would go on to welcome fraternal twins Rumi and Sir, now three, in the summer of 2017. Rising star: Blue is already on track to have her own music career if she wants one after she won a Grammy and became the youngest BET award winner ever; seen in March 2020 Having a laugh: Jay also joked that Blue wasn't excited at all when he was nominated for the Rock& Roll Hall of Fame in February. 'She's like, "Bye, dad,"' he joked; still from The Shop Jay's talk show appearance also featured a hilarious anecdote about Blue's lack of interest in his nomination for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in February. 'I got the announcement [about the nomination], I was taking Blue to school, I was like, "This ain't no celebration,"' he complained jokingly. 'She walked away. I was like, "Yo, give me a kiss I'm in the Hall of Fame!" She's like "Bye, dad."' The chat with LeBron also went in more somber directions as the Big Pimpin' rapper (born Shawn Carter) remembered his late friend DMX. Getting serious: The chat with LeBron also went in more somber directions as the Big Pimpin' rapper (born Shawn Carter) remembered his late friend DMX For a pal: 'The first time I boycotted the Grammys was for him,' Jay-Z said. He skipped the 1999 ceremony after DMX's two #1 albums were shut out; seen in 2013 in Detroit, Michigan Out of solidarity for DMX, who died April 9 following a heart attack reportedly brought on by a drug overdose, Jay boycotted the Grammy's after DMX's first two #1 albums from didn't receive a single nomination. The late rapper had released It's Dark And Hell Is Hot and Flesh Of My Flesh, Blood Of My Blood in 1998, both of which were a hit with listeners and critics alike. 'The first time I boycotted the Grammys was for him,' Jay-Z said. 'We both came up that year. He didn't get nominated. He dropped two albums, had two number one albums in the same year. They didn't even nominate him.' MIA: 'I won that year for rap album. So my first Grammy win, I wasn't even in the building because I boycotted with him,' he explained; still from The Shop Out of solidarity with his friend he decided to skip the ceremony, despite being up for his own nominations. 'I won that year for rap album. So my first Grammy win, I wasn't even in the building because I boycotted with him,' he explained. 'So there was a competitive thing, but it was big love.' He joked that DMX was constantly trying to one-up him, even though they were still good friends. 'I never met a human being more competitive with me, not even my big brother.' She jetted off to Mexico last week and has been sharing scantily-clad snaps. And Eve Gale, who is away with her twin sister Jess, sent temperatures soaring on when she posed up a storm on Instagram wearing a bright orange thong bikini. The former Love Island 22, sizzled in the sunny photo and made sure her peachy bottom was front and centre in the snap, which she shared on Saturday. Sizzling: Eve Gale, 22, sizzled in a bright orange thong bikini on Saturday when she shared her latest Instagram snap from her and sister Jess' Mexico holiday Looking back over her shoulder, the blonde bombshell wore her glossy tresses loose and opted for a full face of glam for the impromptu shoot. Eve's barely-there bikini top tied delicately around her neck as the social media model quipped in her caption: 'No complaints.' Behind the TV personality, a beautiful Mexico beach was visible, with bright blue skies looming overhead. Days earlier, Jess and Eve showcased their curves and also gave fans a look at the resort they are staying in. Luxury getaway: Days earlier, Jess and Eve showcased their curves and also gave fans a look at the resort they are staying in The sisters stunned in baby blue and orange bikini tops as they posed for the camera and declared they intend to be 'more active' this summer. They revealed their beautiful palm tree-strewn resort featured stone detailing and white walls, and was situated right on the shoreline. The TV twins were just two of many celebrities who jetted to Dubai throughout the pandemic. Candid: 'This summer we are going to try and be more active,' wrote the twins on their joint TikTok account as they showed their social media fans around their holiday home They joined many other Love Islanders including Joanna Chimonides, Hayley Hughes and Francesca Allen. After Dubai joined UK's travel ban list, celebrities then began flocking to Mexico's bars and beaches as it established itself as the next COVID getaway destination. Many stars insisted their trips were for 'work purposes' after criticism from Home Secretary Priti Patel. Wow: The TV twins revealed their beautiful palm tree-strewn resort featured stone detailing and white walls, and was situated right on the shoreline Several influencers were forced to hit back at fans after they were criticised for jetting off on holiday during the global pandemic. Jess and Eve rose to fame on the first ever series of winter Love Island back in 2020. While Eve was booted off after less than a week, Jess made it to the final with Ched Uzor - with the pair going their separate ways shortly afterwards. Matthew McConaughey is considering a career in politics, but only if it means improving life for people down the line. The 51-year-old actor opened up about his desire to create lasting change during an interview Thursday on The Carlos Watson Show. Although the actor has previously steered clear of politics but he's now giving thought to a run for governor of Texas. Making a change: Matthew McConaughey, 51, said on Thursday he's interested in making big changes for the future in an interview for The Carlos Watson Show about the possibility of entering politics In the predictably discursive interview, McConaughey admitted he only wanted to pursue politics if it meant addressing longstanding civic problems. 'I'm not interested in going and putting a bunch of Band-Aids on that are going to be ripped off as soon as I'm out, I'm interested in building something that can last and I'm measuring what category that is. I don't know if that's politics,' he said. 'That whole embassy of politics has some redefining of its purpose.' Watson then quizzed the Oscar winner on whether he had the 'constitution' to take challenging stands and to go up against an opponent on the offensive. 'I trust my core beliefs enough, and my values enough, to feel comfortable listening to an opposing one,' he replied. 'We try to teach our kids delayed gratification but we don't like to think about further than tomorrow we need immediate results.' Looking forward: 'I'm interested in building something that can last and I'm measuring what category that is. I don't know if that's politics,' McConaughey told the host Lacking a spine: He criticized past and current politicians for only focusing on short-term wins, rather than risking reelection for larger long-term gains He criticized past and current politicians for only focusing on short-term wins, rather than risking reelection for larger long-term gains. 'How many things do actual leaders and politicians get done that now become realized later on after they're off? They never get credit for them,' he continued. 'You only get credit for wins and Ws and Ls for what you did in that bank of those years. 'We've got to make some sacrifices for larger rewards tomorrow,' he added. One example of politicians focusing on short-term political wins while failing to better society was Texas Governor Greg Abbott's decision to end the state's mask mandate back in March, despite more than 100 deaths and thousands of new cases before reported every day at the time. 'I think the best example, for my mind, this last year is the damn dispute over the masks that got politicized,' the Killer Joe actor said. 'I'm like, "C'mon man, I'm not believing you're really scared of this little cotton thing, and I'm not believing you really feel that takes away your identity and your freedom."' Rush to judgment: He criticized Texas Governor Greg Abbott for ending the state's mask mandate in March. 'There's no data that says it's not a good thing, no data that says it's harmful' Playing it safe: The actor was bashed by right-wing fans on May 14 when he shared a photo of himself hiking with a mask on, despite it not harming him or anyone else Masks have been a sore subject for McConaughey in recent days. He shared a photo of himself hiking outdoors on May 14 while alone in a desert, only for the comments to be filled with right-wing users lambasting him for wearing a mask while he was far away from anyone else. Days earlier, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said that vaccinated people can go without masks in almost all circumstances except heavily crowded indoor or outdoor settings, and even unvaccinated people can safely be unmasked when they're outdoors and able to social distance. Despite the fact that his mask wasn't harming him or anyone else, it stoked the rage of certain social media users. 'This is a short-term inconvenience for long-term freedom,' he said of the now-defunct mask mandate. 'There's no data that says it's not a good thing, no data that says it's harmful. Let's all take one for the team here.' That was then: Back in November he told Stephen Colbert that he was more focused on the impact he could make on society through channels other than politics McConaughey hasn't always been as interested in entering the world of politics. Back in November he told Stephen Colbert that he was more focused on the impact he could make on society through other channels. 'I have no plans to do that right now, as I said, that would be up to a lot of other people,' he said. But in March he seemed to have changed his tune when he told The Hill that he was 'looking into' a run for Texas governor. 'I'm looking into now again, "What is my leadership role?"' he said. 'Because I do think I have some things to teach and share. What is my role, what is my category in my next chapter of life that I'm going into now?' Gavin MacLeod, known for his lead roles on the classic television shows The Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has passed away at the age of 90. The veteran actor's nephew Mark See told TMZ that his uncle was surrounded by loved ones and caretakers when he died overnight on Saturday morning at his home in Palm Desert, California. Gavin's ex-wife Joan Devore revealed further details to the news outlet, confirming that MacLeod had been hospitalized over the past few months with various illnesses, though his actual cause of death was unclear. Sad: Gavin MacLeod, known for his lead roles on the classic television shows The Love Boat and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has passed away at the age of 90. Seen in 2004 According to both See and Devore, the beloved star's death was not related to COVID-19. Gavin is internationally known for starring as Captain Merrill Stubing on the ABC series The Love Boat, which aired from 1977 to 1986. He was one of only three cast members to appear in all 250 episodes of the Aaron Spelling-produced show in addition to three made-for-TV movies. He is also famous for portraying head television writer Murray Slaughter on CBS's The Mary Tyler Moore Show. MacLeod starred opposite Moore's lead character Mary Richards in all 168 episodes of its seven-year run from 1970 to 1977. The United States Air Force veteran launched his career at the age of 26 when he landed a role on The Walter Winchell File. Gavin's first regular television role began in 1962 when he was cast as Joseph "Happy" Haines in McHale's Navy, a part he played for two seasons before leaving to star in the 1966 film The Sand Pebbles, opposite Steve McQueen. All aboard: Gavin is internationally known for starring as Captain Merrill Stubing on the ABC series The Love Boat which aired from 1977 to 1986. He was one of only three cast members to appear in all 250 episodes of the Aaron Spelling-produced show in addition to three made-for-TV movies Classic: He is also famous for portraying head television writer Murray Slaughter on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. MacLeod starred opposite Moore's lead character Mary Richards in all 168 episodes of its seven-year run from 1970 to 1977 His prolific body of television work includes appearances on The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Untouchables, Dr. Kildare, Rawhide, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., The Man from U.N.C.L.E., My Favorite Martian, Hogan's Heroes, Combat!, The Big Valley, The Andy Griffith Show, It Takes a Thief, The Flying Nun, The King of Queens, and That '70s Show. Gavin was recently seen this past February when he joined his Love Boat co-stars for a virtual reunion on SiriusXM's Stars In The House. The streaming concert series benefits the Actor's Fund, which helps struggling artists amid the ongoing pandemic. MacLeod donned his signature captain's hat as he greeted his former cast members including Fred Grandy (Gopher), Ted Lange (Isaac), Bernie Kopell (Doc), Lauren Tewes (Julie), and Jill Whelan (Vicki) as well as fan favorite and frequent guest star Charo (April Lopez) and musician Jack Jones, who performed the series' famed opening theme song. Back together: Gavin was recently seen this past February when he joined his Love Boat co-stars for a virtual reunion on SiriusXM's Stars In The House. The streaming concert series benefits the Actor's Fund, which helps struggling artists amid the ongoing pandemic Good times: MacLeod donned his signature captain's hat as he greeted his former cast members including Fred Grandy (Gopher), Ted Lange (Isaac), Bernie Kopell (Doc), Lauren Tewes (Julie), and Jill Whelan (Vicki) as well as fan favorite and frequent guest star Charo (April Lopez) and musician Jack Jones, who performed the series' famed opening theme song Tell all: In 2013, the star opened up about his years-long struggle with depression and alcohol in his autobiography, This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life. Seen in 2014 In 2013, the star opened up about his years-long struggle with depression and alcohol in his autobiography, This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life. 'I've gotten to do what I wanted to do. I've been a captain!' MacLeod said in an interview with People. He became sober in 1974, suffered two heart attacks and was divorced twice. His first marriage to Devore ended in 1972 and he later remarried his second wife, Patti Steele, in 1985 after they first divorced in 1982. 'I've been given this incredible gift of life and now I want to use it to give back. 'That's why I'm sharing my story here, the fun parts and even some not-so-fun parts, in the hopes that maybe someone will take a nice walk down memory lane with me and maybe I'll even give someone a little bit of hope,' he told People. The actor who played the lovable captain later served as the global ambassador for Princess Cruises. In Gavin's autobiography, he shared a few tidbits about his famous co-stars throughout the years. Over the course of his stage and screen career, Gavin worked with legendary stars like Cary Grant, Bette Davis, Frank Sinatra, as well as Ronald Reagan, before he become President. Life imitating art: The actor who played the lovable captain later served as the global ambassador for Princess Cruises Saira Khan has candidly told how she believed domestic abuse was 'normal' while growing up as she reflected on her childhood experience. In a new column, the TV personality, 50, said she 'thought it was acceptable for men to shout at women and that hitting was part of our culture and normal'. The former Loose Women star was encouraging other South Asian women to 'speak up' about their experiences with domestic violence in their community. Growing up: Saira Khan, 50, has claimed she grew up 'thinking it was acceptable for men to shout at women and that hitting is part of our culture and normal' Saira, who was born and raised in Derbyshire to immigrant parents from Pakistan administered Kashmir - said of Asian women in the UK: 'Many come from places like Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, with no knowledge of the language.' '[They] are forced to be dutiful maids at the mercy of the families they have been married into.' Promoting a South Asian domestic abuse charity while writing in her latest column for The Mirror, she said in twelve months the Shanatona charity has helped over 1,000 women who did not want to go to the police. Detailing the case of one mother who 'always' had black eyes, Saira claimed it was 'unacceptable' that she was not helped by her own community despite her injuries. Call for action: Calling for women to 'speak up', Saira added '[They] are forced to be dutiful maids at the mercy of the families they have been married into' She concluded: 'It's domestic abuse and there are laws in this country to protect us from it.' In April, Saira claimed her Pakistani culture had been more restrictive to her progression than any racism she has encountered as an Asian woman in the United Kingdom. The presenter insisted she encountered no significant social boundaries while growing up on a council estate and credited British society for helping her make something of herself. Sharing a lengthy Instagram post at the time, Saira, who was raised a Muslim, insisted her biggest obstacles have come from within the Asian community itself. She wrote: 'As an Asian woman born in this country to immigrant parents, I am proud to be British, grateful for this country helping my parents to help me to recognise and realise my potential. Speaking out: In April Saira claimed her Pakistani culture has been more restrictive to her progression than any racism she has encountered as an Asian woman in the United Kingdom 'If I'm honest, as an Asian woman it's my Asian culture that has tried to hold me back more than any racism I have faced. That's my truth.' Saira also insisted racism is not the one-way street it has been portrayed through the spate of recent protests and marches conducted in major cities across the world. Using her mixed her mixed heritage marriage to husband Steven Hyde - with whom she raises two children - as an example, she added: 'We all have to play our part in tackling racism, so many of us are ignorant of each other's cultural background and religious beliefs which leads to misunderstandings and division. Divisive opinion: Sharing a lengthy Instagram post, the presenter insisted she has encountered no significant external boundaries as an Asian woman 'As a woman in a mixed marriage with a mixed race child, I can say from first hand experience, there is prejudice on both sides - it is not just White people hating on those of colour. 'The colour of my skin has not hindered my progress in this country. In fact right now, the world we live in, it's an advantage to be a woman of colour, because there is a need from all institutions for better representation of our society. 'The focus on white people and their unconscious bias has been documented well.' The presenter also urged minority groups to examine their own feelings towards other cultures, religions and skin colours. She wrote: 'I think it is also time for many Asian and Black communities to look deep at their own prejudices and admit that they too need to make changes in order to take advantage of all the opportunities this country had to offer. 'I grew up on a council estate. I know the socio /economic barriers- but this country does help those who want to help themselves. 'It was the British culture not the Asian one that was more encouraging for me to make the most of myself. It's hard to admit that, I know the backlash I will get. But that's my truth. 'Being a victim is easy. Getting off your a**e and making it happen with the right attitude is bloody hard. But that's what it takes.' She added: 'I am not an academic, I'm not in denial of racism, I'm in a fortunate position to see both sides and I know that what has worked for me is to treat everyone the way I would want them to treat me, regardless of my colour, religion, race sexual orientation, gender , education or class. 'If you harbour any prejudice, discrimination of any kind - you're a loser - that's a fact - regardless of the colour of your skin.' Saira previously announced she's no longer a practising Muslim after years of feeling 'guilty, caged and unhappy'. All change: Saira previously announced she's no longer a practising Muslim after years of feeling 'guilty, caged and unhappy' The former Loose Women panellist revealed she was led to share her life update after receiving a 'disgusting message from a troll' as she declared: 'This was the last taboo to overcome before I could live my best life.' The journalist confessed she doesn't want to 'inadvertently confuse, represent or unintentionally hurt others' of the Muslim faith after being met with assumptions about fasting for Ramadan, not drinking and abstaining from sex before marriage. She told The Mirror: 'Saying I'm Muslim and then having a boyfriend, wearing clothes that go against the Muslim dress code, having a drink and living a non-Muslim life only brings guilt, self-loathing, loneliness and a feeling of being caged.' Saira also clarified that while some Muslims 'are the most humble people I know' and most of her values are based on the 'spiritual aspect of the faith', she's influenced by other teachings and has only been 'hurting' herself by 'living a lie' for her loved ones. She added: 'It has taken me till the age of 50 to find the courage to say it. I'm doing it now for my own wellbeing. I want to be honest and feel free to live my life by my own rules. I have found a huge relief in being honest. Both ways: 'As a woman in a mixed marriage with a mixed race child, I can say from first hand experience, there is prejudice on both sides - it is not just White people hating on those of colour,' she wrote 'I know that one of the reasons I have been so angry and unhappy in my life is because of the many contradictions I've had to live with. I've not dared to share these feelings before because the very few Muslim women who have are called sinful and some have even been targeted with death threats.' Saira, who shares son Zac, 12, and daughter Amara, nine, with businessman husband Steve Hyde, was nominated for the Services to Media award at the British Muslim Awards in 2013 and 2015. The host left long-running lunchtime staple Loose Women in December 2020, shortly after Andrea McClean announced her resignation. gettyimagesbank This article is the first in a series about Koreans adopted abroad. Apparently, many Koreans never expected that the children it had sent away via adoption would return as adults with questions demanding to be answered. However, thousands of adoptees visit Korea each year. Once they rediscover this country, it becomes a turning point in their lives. We should embrace the dialogue with adoptees to discover the path to recovering our collective humanity. ED. By Lee Kyung-eun Support local journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by making a contribution. Education technology firm Plexuss recognized Stephen F. Austin State University as having the top forestry program in Texas. More than 6 million students utilize the online platform to connect with their peers, build professional networks and research colleges and universities. Plexuss determines university and program rankings through extensive input from education partners, data scientists, employers, parents and high school counselors. SFA photo You are the owner of this article. Contributed Photo NORWALK Two city residents who have traveled the globe in their decades together will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this weekend. John Fiore married Jan Heikkila on May 29, 1971, at the St. Frances X. Cabrini Church in Scituate, Mass. John Fiore was a law student at the time and Jan was a math teacher. Daytona Beach, FL (32114) Today Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 74F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 74F. Winds WSW at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 40%. The Korean throne in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection By Robert Neff Many people are fascinated with royal families. They are surrounded with pomp, elegance, wealth, travel and, more often than not, scandal. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the American community in Seoul also dabbled in a bit of royalty-watching. Emperor Gojong was often the subject of letters home. Some described him as a handsome man filled with kindness and intelligence; others, however, described him as weak. Empress Myeongseong (Queen Min), his wife, was described as intelligent, witty and with a sense of humor, but it was her horrible assassination in 1896 that gained the most attention. Following his wife's murder, Emperor Gojong's alleged secret romance and subsequent marriage to an American woman was widely reported in newspapers in the United States and Europe. Of course, none of this was true; he never married or expressed interest in an American woman. Deoksu Palace in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection The emperor's sons were also popular subjects in letters home, diplomatic reports and newspaper articles. Some accounts were flattering, as was the case with Prince Uihwa (Yi Kang) who was described as charming, good-looking (he had several American girlfriends while studying in the United States) and intelligent. Crown Prince (later, Emperor) Sunjong, however, was described as dull, fat and stupid even Korean officials mocked him as being a mama's boy. Unlike his older half-brothers, Imperial Prince Yeong (Yi Un) was relatively unknown in the foreign newspapers and the accounts we have of him come from a handful of Americans who had ties to the Korean court. He was known for his boyish mischief and kindness. He is the subject of this weekend's articles, as we look at his early childhood as seen through the eyes of American residents in Korea. In her diary, Elizabeth Greathouse complained about a horrible headache she had from the previous day and the medication she was taking to alleviate it. Perhaps it was this release from pain that caused her to describe Oct. 20, 1897, as "a very agreeable day." Sometimes children who died of smallpox were taken just outside the city gates and wrapped in straw or laid in plain view so that The Guest would be reminded that it had already taken a soul and need take no more. / Courtesy of Diane Nars Collection For some, according to The Independent, a local newspaper which published an English-language section, Oct. 20 was a day of liberation: by imperial decree, 39 prisoners were released from the city jail. Their release may have had something to do with the special sacrificial ceremony that took place at Deoksu Palace in memory of Empress Myeongseong on her birthday and was well attended by a large number of officials. In another part of the palace, there were preparations being made for the arrival of a new member of the imperial family. That night, at 10 p.m., palace attendant Lady Eom Emperor Gojong's favorite companion gave birth to the imperial prince. Generally, when a queen gave birth to a child, she did so on a delivery mat composed of dried grass, six straw bags, six straw mats, two sheets of wool, two sheets of oil paper, the hide of a white horse and two pelts of squirrels. The horse's pelt was believed to aid the queen in giving birth safely and to protect her and her child. Deerskin reins were also attached to the wall behind the woman so that she could pull on them while in labor. However, Eom was not a queen or empress when she gave birth, so there were some differences in the procedure. Surprisingly, there was very little mentioned about the birth in the English-language press or magazines in Korea, not even in the gossip-filled diaries of Yun Chi-ho and Elizabeth Greathouse. On Oct. 23, The Independent reported that in honor of the birth, all construction in and about the palace had been suspended. Later it reported, "On October 25th, Madame [Eom] was given her first title of 'Kui-in,' or 'Noble Lady,' being the title of an imperial concubine of the 2nd class." Of course, Lady Eom was not the only one to receive official recognition. The editor of the newspaper observed wryly that, "A number of office seekers will be gratified. Those who have served in some capacity in connection with the birth of the prince will be rewarded handsomely in the shape of a fat berth in the Government." A view of Seoul in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection For the next couple of years, the prince was not mentioned in the letters and commentary of the American community. The activities of his older imperial half-brothers, particularly the romantic exploits of Uihwa, commanded their attention. We can only speculate that Emperor Gojong pampered his youngest son the most for the emperor truly did love children and planned his future, even contemplating the palace he would build for him. It wasn't until 1903 that the young prince's name began to appear. Not because of his acts or scandals surrounding him but as a rite of passage for most Korean children. On April 12, 1903, "The Guest" paid an expected but unwelcomed visit to the young prince. "The Guest" was a polite way of referring to smallpox, a disease that was all-too-common in Korea and claimed a large number of children every year. It did not discriminate between a common laborer's child and the privileged son of an emperor; all were subject to its potentially fatal visit. So high was the mortality rate that children were often not named until after they had survived its visit. The Guest's visit to any household was viewed with apprehension, but its visit to the palace had the real potential to topple the throne. The U.S. minister to Korea, Horace N. Allen, explained to his sons the dangers the royal family faced caused by the young prince contracting the disease: "The Imperial Family cannot be touched with iron, so they have not been vaccinated, and as H.M. has never had the disease, his position is critical since, while it may not be very serious for the little prince, for a man over fifty, it would probably prove fatal." The approach to the palace in the early 20th century / Robert Neff Collection Thank you for reading! Please purchase a subscription to read our premium content. If you have a subscription and are still unable to access our content, please link your digital account to your print subscription If you have a subscription, please log in or sign up for an account on our website to continue. Rao said despite the Corona-induced financial crisis taking a heavy toll on the state government's revenue earnings, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government was committed to the welfare of farmers and would continue Rythu Bandhu as usual. (Representational Image/DC) HYDERABAD: Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao on Saturday announced that the state government would deposit Rythu Bandhu amount of Rs 5,000 per acre into the bank accounts of farmers from June 15 to 25 for the upcoming kharif season. Rao said despite the Corona-induced financial crisis taking a heavy toll on the state government's revenue earnings, the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) government was committed to the welfare of farmers and would continue Rythu Bandhu as usual. He said nearly Rs 7,300 crore would be deposited in the bank accounts of about 61 lakh farmers for the kharif season. He directed the officials to cover all eligible farmers who owned land before the cut-off date of June 10. The Chief Minister held a review meeting on agriculture with agriculture minister S Niranjan Reddy and senior officials at Pragathi Bhavan. He said the agriculture sector had achieved rapid growth in the last seven years of the TRS regime. "From a parched state in 2014 when Telangana state was formed, today 75 per cent of the tanks and reservoirs are brimming with water even in summer due to new irrigation projects and Mission Kakatiya taken up by the state government. Telangana stands only next to Punjab in the country in agriculture production. The day is not far when we will beat even Punjab and become No. 1 state in the country," the Chief Minister remarked. He directed the officials to keep required seeds, fertilisers and pesticides ready for kharif season as there are indications of bountiful rains this monsoon. He ordered the police, intelligence and agriculture officials to crack whip against those indulging in sale of spurious seeds, fertilisers and pesticides and book them under PD Act (Preventive Detention). The Chief Minister also directed officials to strictly implement QR codes for seeds and seed traceability system for kharif. Upon scanning the QR code through mobile phones, the farmers can assess and learn about the quality and genuineness of seeds. Once the QR code is scanned, immediately, all details about seeds, including the place of manufacture, time and manufacturer details, processing and packing locations, seed quality tests results, tests date and expiry details are flashed on the screen. The Chief Minister directed chief secretary Somesh Kumar to issue an ordinance if need be to check spurious seeds and fertilisers. He warned agriculture officials against colluding with traders of spurious seeds. If caught, such officials will not just be dismissed from the service immediately but also will be imprisoned for 10 years, he said. Sources said Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao wanted to achieve a below 5% positivity rate in the state and to continue these restrictions for a few more days to bring Covid under complete control. (Photo: twitter @TelanganaCMO) HYDERABAD: The state Cabinet will meet on Sunday at Pragathi Bhavan to discuss the lockdown being enforced across the state from May 12 and take a decision on whether to extend the lockdown further or not. The ongoing lockdown will end on May 30 and speculations are rife that the state government is in favour of extending lockdown by one or two weeks with more relaxations. Currently, a 20-hour lockdown from 10 am to 6 am is in force with four-hour relaxation from 6 am to 10 am. The government is reportedly in favour of extending relaxation period by two more hours from 6 am to 12 noon by enforcing an 18-hour lockdown from 12 noon to 6 am. The state government had initially imposed night curfew from 8 pm to 7 am from April 20 after the Covid second wave led to a steep increase in coronavirus positive cases and deaths. It was followed by the imposition of a 20-hour lockdown from May 12. The lockdown was initially imposed for 10 days until May 22 and subsequently extended till May 30. These restrictions have contributed to a reduction in Covid positive cases across Telangana. Sources said Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao wanted to achieve a below 5% positivity rate in the state and to continue these restrictions for a few more days to bring Covid under complete control. Vijayawada: In view of the huge pendency of cases in AP courts, at nearly 2.12 lakh, advocates urge that the 18 vacancies at the High Court be filled up immediately so that the court has its sanctioned strength of 37 judges. They also stress the need to fill up vacancies of supporting staff and ramp-up of infrastructure so as to expedite hearing of cases and do justice to the people. The HC is faced with a huge task of dealing with 1.12 lakh writ petitions and other cases. Taking a cue from the recent remarks of Chief Justice of India Justice N.V. Ramana, calling for filling up of all vacancies of judges at all the High Courts in the country, AP advocates have raised the demand for filling up all vacancies, especially those of judges. The advocates say that though the Parliamentary Committee on Law and Justice and Law Commission of India and other national forums on law have been calling for a strength of nearly 50 judges for every 10 lakh population in the country, at present, the ratio is abysmally low at 13 judges per a million population, leading to overwhelming of the judicial system for dispensation of justice. The advocates seek to draw attention to a new trend causing much delay in justice delivery. Private settlement gangs involving anti-social elements are taking advantage of the situation and fleecing both parties in the form of litigations. To speed up the recruitment process, they suggest that young talented advocates with requisite years of standing on bar even working at mofussil courts be considered for elevation as High Court judges. The Judges at HC can assist the Chief Justice in this regard, by finding out talented and eligible advocates for elevation to the High Court as the non-local CJs have less tenure and are not familiar with local talent. They want judicial officers even from district courts having requisite standing on the bench and known for their legal knowledge and integrity to be considered for elevation as HC judges at regular intervals in order to avoid shortage of judges. A classic case of delay of justice is that nearly 10 lakh poor children have failed to get admission in Class I at private schools free of cost in the last 10 years. The reason: the private schools management challenged the GO 44 issued to facilitate the Right to Education in July 2010 in the High Court and its final hearing has been pending. Interestingly, though the Supreme Court adjudicated the same issue in another case in 2012, with no hearing held, the issue remains unresolved at the High Court. AP Bar Council member Muppala Subba Rao said, There is an urgent need to strengthen judiciary at every level from mofussil to national levels by all means for quick disposal of cases and deliverance of justice. If not, there is a danger of an alternative system evolving in the form of settlement gangs whom people will be forced to approach for quick justice instead of courts. In another case of delay of justice, a woman lost her husband in a mishap and a lower court awarded a relief of Rs 3 lakh to her. But her mother-in-law moved the HC for a share in relief. The case remains unresolved for 12 years in East Godavari. Visakhapatnam Bar Association former president Prudhvi Raj said, Pendency of cases in courts should be curtailed by taking up all requisite measures to ensure justice to the petitioners and build confidence in judiciary. Another AP Bar Council member Guvera Ravi said, The strength of judiciary at AP and national level should be enhanced by appointing more judges and raising legal awareness among people to approach courts for justice. Seriously why do it? Why underplay death and play around with statistics. One can understand the logic behind the numbers being manipulated during elections (every administration is guilty). Or those stock market sharks who are trying to deceive investors by cooking the books and putting out misleading data before an IPO (due diligence be damned). The official Covid-19 charts have created a major credibility gap -- it is getting harder and harder to believe what is being publicised on a regular basis, when grim reality stares us in the face. The thing is this: Does one go by what the New York Times states (Just how big could Indias true Covid toll be?)? Or accept our governments version? The NYT has suggested that Indias death toll could be double the official count, in an optimistic scenario, and nearly 14 times higher in a worst-case scenario. Which is it? The NYT goes further, adding: The undercount of cases and deaths in India is most likely even more pronounced for technical, cultural and logistical reasons. Admitting also that the official figures miss deaths all over the world. The government has dismissed the report as baseless and false. Dr V.K. Paul, member (health) of the Niti Aayog, said that the NYT report is based on distorted estimates. Fair enough. Let me skip the charts and ask a straight-up question: What if our official channels decided to table numbers minus manipulation? Just be honest, guys! We can handle the truth Its the lies that insult every Covid-19 death that has taken place. Will citizens riot on the streets? Will there be a wave of fear and panic across the land? Both possibilities are unlikely. We are dealing with an unprecedented crisis. Citizens are aware of the gravity of the situation and are coping the best they can. They will continue to do so, regardless of the numbers game being played. This sounds like just another tawdry TRP scam -- but in reverse. Instead of increasing the tally, we are busy minimising it, by issuing data that nobody buys. A friend from Kolkata looking out of her window last week commented cryptically: I can see eight to 10 hearses parked outside one of Kolkatas top hospitals, waiting to take Covid bodies to the crematorium. We are forced to say: You arrive at the hospital in your own fancy car as a patient -- and leave in a hearse as a corpse. This scene is being repeated across the cities of India. Lets not even get to whats happening in our villages -- no hearses there to cart the dead. Just handcarts, cycles, and makeshift bamboo stretchers. I didnt have the stomach to look at the television clips of government-appointed volunteers, hastily removing temporary poles and saffron cloth left behind by thousands of mourners to mark the shallow, sandy graves of their loved ones, along the banks of Indias holiest river: the Ganga. The optics were hastily altered -- but did that alter the grim truth? Sweeping evidence under a carpet of sand --how awful! As for those loyalists blabbing on about Brand India getting tarnished due to the hostile coverage in the international media hello! The smart thing to do is FIX the brand first! And the coverage will take of itself. Why shoot the messenger? Are any of the reports fabricated? Are all those disturbing photographs really morphed or photoshopped? And dear loyalists, the entire propaganda machinery is in the hands of the government. Why not get Prasoon Joshi to write a lengthy poem -- create a slo-mo video roping in all the BJPs Bollywood favourites, bombard social media with the same and wait for the deaths to disappear by magic! Hows that for a quick image fix? Nobody, but nobody has the time for any organised India Bashing at a sensitive time like this. Coversely, nobody has the time for b***s*** either. Deceiving your own people is deception at its lowest. Besides, such a strategy always backfires. If we are craving for global approval and want to improve our dismal ratings, its time to do something more convincing than resorting to cheap slogans. Co-opting sympathetic industrialists to tweet about India getting unfairly trashed/bashed is a smart move but getting a reputed banker like Uday Kotak to say it like it is, works far better. Uday opened up in a recent interview and put it bluntly when he was asked whether we could have planned better for the second wave. Said Mr Kotak: You are driving the car. So, look at the windshield and not the rearview mirror. His suggestions for the way forward were practical and candid. He urged the government to pay a fair price for the vaccination, plus maximise production and distribution. We need to listen to more such voices from our other billionaires, but most have kept their mouths shut so far. Yes, Brand India has taken a major hit. Other countries and their leaders have also gone through this and more (BoJo and Britain, for example). It is important to deal with criticism and dissent in an upfront manner. It is even more important to pay attention to sound advice and to implement it. Our leaders change the texture of their skin as and when it suits them -- from acquiring a rhinos thick hide to behaving like fragile porcelain dolls, these cunning chameleons have played around with our sentiments for far too long. We need action heroes at a time like this, not self-pitying wimps pointing fingers at the mediawalas. One look at Barkha Dutts relentless coverage on Mojo is enough for any viewer to get the full picture. Call her a foreign agent paid to defame India. But provide proof, first. She is perhaps the only anchor out there who is risking her own life and the lives of her compact team, to get the gruesome truth to us. Most other star anchors have stayed put in their studios and expended precious lung power in barking at their studio guests. What do hapless citizens do to soothe their frayed nerves? Well, cuddling cows is the latest (and most ludicrous) global trend to cope with Covid stress. Perhaps Baba Ramdev can be roped in as Brand Ambassador? Chinese FM calls for expanded cooperation with Europe Xinhua) 15:17, May 29, 2021 Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi addresses a session on China at the Munich Security Conference via video link in Beijing, capital of China, on May 25, 2021. Wang elaborated on China's development, China's relations with the world, and China-EU cooperation. (Xinhua/Shen Hong) BEIJING, May 25 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday addressed a session on China at the Munich Security Conference via video link. Wang elaborated on China's development, China's relations with the world, and China-EU cooperation. Wang pointed out that China is a trustworthy partner of all countries, not an institutional rival that confronts others. "We will stick to the system and development path we have chosen, fully respect the independent choices of other countries, and will not engage in exporting its system," he said. Wang said China stands ready to practice true multilateralism with European countries and the world and safeguard the international system with the United Nations at its core. "We are willing to maintain and expand comprehensive cooperation with Europe based on the principles of mutual respect, mutual benefit, and win-win results," Wang said. He added that China has always viewed China-EU relations from a strategic perspective, believed that cooperation is the general direction and keynote of bilateral relations, and regarded Europe as a partner rather than an opponent. He noted that China will, as always, firmly support the European integration process, support the EU's unity and self-reliance, and support the EU to play a greater role in the international community. The two sides should prevent the political virus from undermining their unity and lay a solid public opinion and social foundation for the stability and long-term development of China-EU relations, Wang said. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) The Philippines has protested China's continuing "illegal presence and activities" near an island in the South China Sea held by the Southeast Asian nation, its foreign ministry said Saturday. Manila lodged a diplomatic protest Friday over the "incessant deployment, prolonged presence, and illegal activities of Chinese maritime assets and fishing vessels" in the vicinity of Thitu Island. It demanded its giant neighbor withdraw the vessels. The Chinese Embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours. Tensions between Manila and Beijing have escalated over the months-long presence of hundreds of Chinese boats in the Philippines' 200-mile exclusive economic zone. The Philippines says it believes the vessels were manned by militia, while Beijing has said they were fishing boats sheltering from bad weather. "The Pag-asa Islands is an integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction," the foreign ministry said in a statement. Thitu, known as Pag-asa in the Philippines, is 451 km (280 miles) from the mainland and is the biggest of the eight reefs, shoals and islands it occupies in the Spratly Archipelago. China has built a "mini-city" with runways, hangars and surface-to-air-missiles in the Subi Reef about 25 km (15 miles) from Thitu. This was at least the 84th diplomatic protest the Philippines has filed against China since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. An international tribunal that year invalidated China's expansive claims in the South China Sea, where about $3 trillion worth of ship-borne trade passes annually. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have competing claims to various islands and features in the area. Duterte shelved the favorable ruling and pursued rapprochement with Beijing in exchange for pledges of billions of dollars of loans, aid and investment, much of which are pending. (Reuters) OPINION Sound Off for Saturday, May 29 Republicans will hold an commemorative event in the Creggan area of Derry tomorrow. It is being organised to mark the 40th anniversary of the deaths of IRA men George McBrearty and Charles Pop Maguire as well as the hunger strikers who died in prison in 1981. Crann na Poblachta, which translates to Tree of the Republic, will be planted next to the George McBrearty mural at the junction of Rathkeele Way and Rathlin Drive during the event. The tree will also honour Georges brother, Pat. Mr McBrearty, 24, and Mr Maguire, 20, were shot dead by undercover members of the British Army on May 28, 1981, as they approached a stationary car on Lone Moor Road in Derry. They were killed at the height of the 1981 IRA and INLA hunger strike, one week after the deaths of Patsy OHara and Raymond McCreesh. Family and friends of George McBrearty usually gather to mark his anniversary. However, due to the pandemic a low-key commemoration was held last year. Ahead of this years commemoration, Mrs Bridie McBrearty said: This is the 40th anniversary of my son Volunteer George McBrearty and my son Pats 30th anniversary We also intend to commemorate our ten murdered hunger strikers on their 40th anniversary as well. With that in mind we will plant a tree named Crann na Poblachta. It will represent all those who have passed, those on rolls of honour, those many prisoners who have gone too soon, and the many people who contributed to our struggle in any way throughout the years. We ask the relatives and friends of those mentioned to put a little memento of their loved ones on or near the tree. Guest speaker at this years commemoration will be independent republican Richard Ricky ORawe. He was the former PRO for the hunger strikers and blanket men." Mrs McBrearty added: We invite everyone from across the republican spectrum, be they independent, party-affiliated, grouping-affiliated or community activists, to come along to remember our fallen. We also encourage you all to look after your personal health by taking proper precautions and adhering to safety standards at this time. The commemoration will begin at 2pm tomorrow and organisers are asking people to follow current safety regulations. Two organisations in Derry are to share more than 300,000 in funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The Arts Council this week announced funding of 13m for arts organisations throughout Northern Ireland. The Arts Councils Annual Funding Programme (AFP) is the most significant allocation of public funding for the arts in Northern Ireland each year. Void Gallery in Derry is to receive 193,130, while Greater Shantallow Community Arts (GSCA) is to be allocated 123,565. GSCA aims to provide direct access to the arts for those living in disadvantaged communities. GSCA is core funded by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland which enables the organisation to offer a year-round programme of creative activities benefitting over 1400 people every week, delivered from their community arts centre, 'Studio 2'. The local group has received Arts Council funding to support the employment of a dance officer to develop their dance classes. Void Gallerys programme focuses on the collaborative nature of art and its ability to add to artistic discourse through exhibitions, events, discussions and partnerships. Through their commissions they work with a network of arts organisations both nationally and internationally to create specific projects. Liam Hannaway, chair of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, welcomed the latest funding support. This years annual allocation of exchequer and National Lottery funding is largely standstill for most of our key arts organisation, he said. In order to mitigate the continuing impact of Covid-19, we have already released upfront payments of 50% of last years grant to 97 applicants. This offers an element of stability to many amidst current programming and strategic uncertainty, as the sector prepares to reopen." Commenting on the departments funding allocation to ACNI, Communities Minister, Deirdre Hargey, said, said such support was 'an important part of the foundations on which the work of our vital arts and creative sector is built'. These awards come at a point where the Executive has agreed a series of important relaxations that will make a real difference for participation in the arts and with the Culture, Arts and Heritage Recovery Taskforce beginning its work. Taken together these represent an important contribution to supporting the people and organisations who work across the arts to be able to do their important work. I recognise the pressure that continues to be felt financially, creatively and at a personal level across the creative community, even as we begin the process of reopening and recovery. I also recognise that more support will be needed this year and so I was particularly pleased to welcome the Executives decision last week to allocate a further round of 13m Covid funding to Arts, Culture and Heritage to support the social recovery. Pathan: Shah Rukh Khan's Comeback Movie To Be Filmed In Three European Countries? Read Deets Fans have been excitedly waiting for Pathan, the film that would mark Shah Rukh Khan's comeback after the 2017 film, Zero. While SRK had revealed in one of the QnA sessions that the film will release this year, the plans have been pushed due to the ongoing pandemic. Now, it looks like the makers are still onboard for a foreign shoot! In fact, the film might be shot in 3 different European countries. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) Yes, you read that right. According to a report in Bollywood Hungama, the film's cast and crew would not head for Russia or Finland but would rather go to Europe. A source revealed, Pathan will be shot in three European countries. Which these three countries would be and when this schedule will take place, its difficult to say right now. It all depends on the rules in the European Union when they plan to travel. Also, producer Aditya Chopra would like all unit members to be fully vaccinated as this can be mandatory. But the pace of vaccination is slow right now, though its expected to pick up in a few weeks thankfully. The makers are also considering whether they can get some crew members from Europe, who have completed their full dose of vaccination. A clearer picture will emerge in a few weeks from now. Once that happens, YRF (Yash Raj Films) will take a call on the three countries where the shoot will take place. The source also added that more than half of the shoot has been completed and it is on the last schedule that all the action-packed and grand shots will be brought to life. Earlier, details of Salman Khan's cameo sequence were also out. Pathan also stars Deepika Padukone and Jihn Abraham. Google recently revealed Smart canvas innovations at I/O 2021 that is meant to improve the connectivity of different professional tools of the company. Google has focused on Google Meet to improve its features as the ongoing lockdown situation held people to work as much online as possible. Google meet now allows host to display slides, sheets, and Docs in between the meeting.Instead of sharing Doc files separately, the meeting host can now present the files and other material to the participants directly. Whatever a host want to display be it Google doc, slides, or sheets, present to a meeting option will be present at the top front of Docs, slides, or sheets. Every meeting this is planned to happen in the future will be displayed on it. To avail this feature, a code is required that can be entered individually every time a meeting starts or one can set a default code that will going to be active automatically. In the second case, an option will be provided as Present tabs to the meeting. This option will let the user selects other tabs, or display entire screen to the meeting.According to Google, everyone can portray their presentations in the middle of the Google web meeting without disturbing the whole session. Files, documents, slides, sheets and more can be directly presented to the meeting. Without disturbing the flow of the meeting and focus of whole team, everything can be shared.Google is preparing to integrate Google Meet in the upcoming months. Now, users do not have to worry about closing and opening of the call while changing files and tabs. All these apps become easily accessible in between calls. To attend a meeting there is no need to leave the present app, through settings appearing in the side bar the meeting will be automatically received.Workspace members strategize the whole feature that include involvement of Gmail to make it accessible. With the latest update, users are now able to avoid interruptions while working as they do not have to switch the tabs and stay focused.With Smart canvas a lot of features have been updated to change the working game to a whole new level. Like the upgrade to add @-mentions displays a list of preferred individuals, files, and meetings along with the contact details, job descriptions, and location. This will help to access documents without leaving the current tab.Read next: Google finally figured out a solution for people who keep sending photos in emails The White House announced Friday it will impose sanctions on Belarus after it diverted a European flight and arrested a dissident on board. Press Secretary Jen Psaki, in a statement outlining the punitive measures, called the May 23 Ryanair flight diversion and arrest of Belarus opposition journalist and activist Roman Protasevich "a direct affront to international norms." In addition to measures already announced in recent weeks, Washington said it was working with the European Union on a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the regime of Belarus's strongman President Alexander Lukashenko. Economic sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises, re-imposed in April following a crackdown on pro-democracy protests, will come into effect June 3. Additionally, "The Treasury Department will develop for the President's review a new Executive Order that will provide the United States increased authorities to impose sanctions on elements" of the regime, and "those that support corruption, the abuse of human rights, and attacks on democracy," Psaki said. Western outcry over Belarus's move to divert the plane by scrambling a military jet has seen the European Union urging EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace. In addition to the sanctions, the White House also issued a "Do Not Travel" warning for Belarus to US citizens, and warned US passenger planes to "exercise extreme caution" if considering flying over Belarusian airspace. The White House confirmed that the US Department of Justice, including the FBI, was investigating the incident in cooperation with its European counterparts. Psaki called on Lukashenko to "allow a credible international investigation into the events of May 23, immediately release all political prisoners, and enter into a comprehensive and genuine political dialogue with the leaders of the democratic opposition and civil society groups" leading to a free and fair presidential election. (AFP) NEWS RELEASE Release Number: 2021-56 May 29, 2021 Cal/OSHA Reminds Employers to Protect Outdoor Workers from Heat Illness OaklandCal/OSHA is reminding all employers to be prepared to protect outdoor workers from heat illness as excessive heat is expected in Northern California and the Central Valley beginning tomorrow through Tuesday, June 1. Heat illness is more likely to occur when workers are not accustomed to working at full capacity in the hot weather, so preparation is an important part of staying safe. Californias heat illness prevention standard requires employers to closely observe outdoor workers when assigned to work in a high heat area for the first time. Water, rest, shade and training on the signs of heat illness and what to do in case of an emergency are other key prevention measures. Cal/OSHAs heat illness prevention requirements apply to all outdoor workers, which includes those that spend a significant amount of time working outdoors in agriculture, construction, landscaping, maintenance, transportation and delivery drivers in non-air conditioned vehicles and more. Employers with outdoor workers must take the following steps to prevent heat illness: Plan Develop and implement an effective written heat illness prevention plan that includes emergency response procedures. Training Train all employees and supervisors on heat illness prevention. Water Provide drinking water that is fresh, pure, suitably cool and free of charge so that each worker can drink at least 1 quart per hour, and encourage workers to do so. Rest Encourage workers to take a cool-down rest in the shade for at least five minutes when they feel the need to do so to protect themselves from overheating. Workers should not wait until they feel sick to cool down. Shade Provide proper shade when temperatures exceed 80 degrees. Workers have the right to request and be provided shade to cool off at any time. Cal/OSHAs Heat Illness Prevention special emphasis program includes enforcement of the heat regulation as well as multilingual outreach and training programs for Californias employers and workers. Details on heat illness prevention requirements and training materials are available online on Cal/OSHAs Heat Illness Prevention web page and the 99calor.org informational website. A Heat Illness Prevention online tool is also available on Cal/OSHAs website. Cal/OSHA helps protect workers from health and safety hazards on the job in almost every workplace in California. Employers and workers who have questions or need assistance with workplace health and safety programs can call Cal/OSHAs Consultation Services Branch at 800-963-9424. Complaints about workplace safety and health hazards can be filed confidentially with Cal/OSHA district offices. Contact: Erika Monterroza / Frank Polizzi, Communications@dir.ca.gov, (510) 286-1161. Jennifer Aniston almost lost her role on Friends because of another sitcom. The 52-year-old actress rose to fame playing Rachel Green in the hit sitcom which ran for 10 years between 1994 and 2004 but has now revealed she very nearly had to give up on the breakout role because of prior commitments. Jennifer was already appearing in Muddling Through when she auditioned for Rachel, and was told by Friends director James Burrows that the rival sitcom would likely be picked up for another season just to spite the launch of Friends. She said: "Sure enough, they [the show] actually did. They picked it up just for three episodes. And so that's when other girls and then Friends sort of had a moment of, Ooh, we should start just having a backup for Rachel.'" Not only did word get out that the hit show may be in need of a possible replacement for Jennifer, but the actress claims even her own friends wanted to snatch the part from her. She added: "I remember my friends calling me saying, I'm auditioning for Rachel. Will you help me with the ...' And I was like, what? What?" Jennifer then made a life-changing decision to ask a producer if she could step out of her role of playing Madeline Cooper on the short-lived series to star as Rachel Green instead. The producer shared a few choice words with her that turned out to be tremendously wrong, and Jennifer is thankful she never listened to his advice. She told Gayle King during an appearance on SiriusXMs Gayle King in the House: "That's when he said, I've seen that show Friends, I saw that show. I saw the pilot. That's not going to make you a star. This show will make you a star.' And then the rest is history. Jennifer recently reunited with her Friends co-stars for a reunion special for HBO Max. Councillor Emma Coffey has spoken of her disappointed at the rejection of the Louth County Hospital's request for lands to remain zoned for community facilities rather than residential. Following a meeting of the Louth County Council Special Development Plan committee held last week, Cllr Coffey voiced her disappointment at the result of a vote passed by a majority of councillors, which rejects the Chief Executive recommendation to maintain lands owned by the HSE adjacent to Louth County Hospital to remain to be zoned for Community Facilities and not residential. The lands zoning was changed from Residential to Community Facilities on foot of a Councillors submission by Cllr Coffey in October of 2020 upon contact by the HSE agents that they did not want their lands zoned residential. Speaking about these issues on foot of a Submission brought by Cllr. Marianne Butler, Cllr Maria Doyle and Cllr. Pio Smith to seek a rejection of the Chief Executive Recommendation and the HSE lands to revert back to residential zoning, Cllr Coffey said: The Community Facilities rezoning will ease any future plans the HSE may have to expand existing services or develop new facilities to bring the Louth County Hospital up to standard that is commensurate with the needs of the existing and future populations of Dundalk. "The suggestion the site should revert to residential on the off chance it may be residentially developed is ill conceived and justification for its reversion is poorly thought out. As many as 19 councillors, voted in favour of Cllr. Butlers, Cllr. Doyles and Cllr. Smith submission that the lands should revert back to the original zoning of Residential Lands. Councillor Coffey made a counter submission that in consideration of the comments by Cllr Doyle that the Planning Regulator notes an over zoning of residential lands in the town of Dundalk that the lands adjacent to the Louth Hospital remain zoned community facilities in order to allow the Louth Hospital to build and expand its services as a Primary Care Facility. This was rejected by 19 councillors with Cllr Coffey, Liam Reilly Sean Kelly, Andrea McKevitt, James Byrne and Eileen Tully voting in favour of the Counter Motion and four councillors abstaining. Speaking after the meeting, Cllr Coffey stated that she was very disappointed" that the Council missed an opportunity to ensure that the Louth Hospital had a real and viable opportunity to ensure that during the lifetime of the next development plan which expires in 2027 to expand its services or develop new facilities to meet the needs of the people of Dundalk and North Louth. She also highlighted that there is never a time when talking to the people of Dundalk that the Louth Hospital expansion of services is not discussed. She further stated: As Councillors we have limited opportunity to influence and make decisions in regard to the expansion of health services of the Louth Hospital. "We as a council had a real opportunity to support the HSE in their future plans of a site that is of strategic importance to them and they have indicated that they do not want their lands zoned residential. "But this fell on deaf ears of the 19 Councillors who voted against this and will result in the HSE either not developing the site or spending taxpayers money on reports and further applications to the council in trying to change the zoning of the site. "The vote passed that the site be reverted to residential zoning on the off chance the HSE will build houses, in my view is a vote against the expansion of services and facilities at the Louth Council Hospital which in my opinion, is a disservice to the people of north Louth The Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association (INHFA) are calling on the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine to stay at the table and ensure the best interests of Irish farmers are represented in the ongoing CAP negotiations. Speaking after a meeting between Minister Charlie McConalogue and the farming organisations, INHFA president Colm ODonnell outlined his dismay at the suggestion made by some farm organisations that the Minister should walk away from the talks. It is, stated Mr ODonnell, disappointing that most of our farming organisations continue to work against a deal that delivers for the majority of Irish farmers. The deal currently on the table as outlined to us is a convergence model of 85%, with the option of a front-loaded payment through the Complementary Redistributive Income Support Scheme (CRISS). While not ideal we do acknowledge that it is a move in the right direction added Mr ODonnell In assessing the 85% convergence option the INHFA leader stated how our analysis of DAFM figures indicate that almost 50,000 farmers will gain with 42,000 seeing no real impact. With a front-loaded option included, farmers with high value entitlements with small amounts of hectares would be insulated from the effects of convergence. On this basis Mr ODonnell stressed it is staggering to think that the other organisations which attended the meeting are working against the introduction of a front loaded option as allowed through the CRISS. Many of these organisations have for years championed the need to protect farmers on higher payments but with smaller farm sizes and what they do. First chance they get, they throw them under the bus. There is, he maintained the potential through the CRISS to help the sizeable number of farmers with 32ha or less (average farm size). A CRISS payment of 80/ha on the first 15ha is possible through a linear cut of 10% of the Pillar 1 budget and the capping of all Pillar 1 payments at 60,000. Even with 85% convergence these farmers would see a Pillar 1 payment of 300/ha. In stressing the need for a fair redistribution of Pillar 1 payments the INHFA president stated how this can be best done through 100% convergence and a front-loaded payment option which will benefit over 60% of farmers. In concluding he expressed the hope that the Minister (of Agriculture, Food and the marine) will stay at the table and negotiate a deal that delivers for the vast majority of farmers and their farm families and the rural communities they are part of. The Irish Wheelchair Association has launched a national campaign 'Think Ahead Think Housing' to tackle the shortage of social housing for people with disabilities across Ireland. The campaign is working directly with Louth County Council and local authorities nationwide, among others, to ensure people with disabilities across Ireland are included and represented in social housing planning and delivery. Service Coordinator with the Irish Wheelchair Association in Louth Sarah McKeown said: We know of disabled people waiting years on the housing list, with no idea of when a house will be available, and there are many more people living with parents and guardians or in nursing homes, as they cannot move out and move on. "People with disabilities have a right to live independently in the community, but to date their needs have not been catered for. "Most people with disabilities do not want to be dependent on relatives or elderly parents for accommodation as they grow older themselves, but they face barriers and discrimination that make getting a home of their own particularly difficult. "Think Ahead, Think Housing will advise people with disabilities about how to apply for a social house with their local authority by giving step-by-step advice. "Importantly, it will also support the Government to plan for the current and future housing gap that exists by encouraging people with disabilities to think ahead and register their future housing need now. Up until April 2021 requesting wheelchair liveable accommodation in a social housing application was not possible. "This is one reason why we believe people with disabilities have been chronically under-represented in social housing planning and delivery, but we are hopeful this is about to change." Over 5,000 people with disabilities are currently waiting for social housing across the country. Irish Wheelchair Association believes this figure is an under-representation of the actual need. A recent report has also revealed that 1,300 young and middle-aged people with physical disabilities have been forced to live in elderly nursing homes because of the lack of accessible social housing. Think Ahead, Think Housing is encouraging disabled people to state their current and future social housing needs now, by applying to their local authority through its newly revised housing application form which was published last month. Since last month, for the first time in Ireland, a person applying to their local authority for social housing will be able to request wheelchair accessible accommodation thanks to recent changes in the national social housing application form made by the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. Paddy Donnelly, Director of Services with Louth County Council and member of the Housing and Disability Steering Group: "I welcome the new and revised social housing application form, which now provides people with disabilities the opportunity to have their needs recognised within their social housing application form. "Louth County Council as a Housing Authority is committed to facilitating access, for people with disabilities to appropriate housing . "We hope this new application form will provide us and all local authorities nationwide with more accurate information about the needs of people with disabilities within our communities to allow us to plan and deliver appropriate housing for people with physical and mental disabilities. "We look forward to continuing to work with Irish Wheelchair Association and all the members of the Housing and Disability Steering Group to promote equality of opportunity, individual choice and independent living in the area." For more details about how to apply to your local authority for social housing log onto www.iwa.ie/thinkhousing or contact your local authority. Methuen - Michael V. Finn, a longtime resident of Lawrence, passed away unexpectedly and peacefully on May 25, 2021, at the age of 72 while doing something that he loved, playing golf. Known to many as "Mickey", he was born in Lawrence on April 20, 1949 to James L. and Margaret (Bateman) Fin On Saturday, May 29, the Korean Brand Research institute dropped their individual idol brand reputation rankings. Want to know who the most popular idols in South Korea are at the moment? Then keep on reading! What are the Brand Reputation Rankings? The brand reputation ranking is an index shaped through big data brand analysis. The index is used to recognize the consumers' online habits and determine what affects brand consumption. The brand reputation rankings also figure out the positive and negative influence of an individual idol, how interested the media in the said idol, how interested the consumer is in the idol and the communication volume of the idol. From Apr. 29 to May 29, The Korean Brand Research Institute analyzed 158,833,166 pieces of big data to determine an idol's participation index, media index, communication index, and community index. Compared to the 285,034,563 pieces of big data in Apr. 2021, the number decreased by 46.03%. BTS Jimin is the Most Popular Idol for May 2021 BTS member Jimin took the throne as the most popular idol in South Korea for May 2021 with a brand reputation index of 7,217,872. Jimin has a participation index of 695,470, a media index of 1,921,259, a community index of 2,216,223, and a communication index of 2,384,919. Kang Daniel is the Second Most Popular Idol for May 2021 Coming in second place is former Wanna One member and soloist Kang Daniel, with a brand reputation index of 6,899,670. Kang Daniel has a participation index of 1,286,327, a participation index of 1,344,409, a community index of 2,010,205, and a communication index of 2,258,630. ASTRO's Cha Eun Woo is the Third Most Popular Idol for May 2021 ASTRO's Cha Eun Woo ranked at third place with a brand reputation index of 6,330,046. Cha Eun Woo has a participation index of 84,861, a media index of 1,290,870, a community index of 2,116,290, and a communication index of 2,108,025. BTS V is the Fourth Most Popular Idol For May 2021 V is the second BTS member to make an appearance in the top 5, ranking at number four with a brand reputation index of 5,107,579. V has a participation index of 545,352, a media index of 1,157,382, a community index of 1,270,547, and a communication index of 1,800,665. BTS Jungkook is the Fifth Most Popular Idol for May 2021 The final BTS member to make the top 5 is Jungkook, with a brand reputation index of 4,585,186. Jungkook has a participation index of 355,593, a media index of 1,157,382, a community index of 1,270,547, and a communication index of 1,800,665. These are the TOP 50 Most Popular Idols for May 2021 1. BTS's Jimin 2. Kang Daniel 3. ASTRO's Cha Eun Woo 4. BTS's V 5. BTS's Jungkook 6. BTS's Jin 7. Brave Girls' Yujeong 8. BTS's Suga 9. Brave Girls' Yuna 10. Brave Girls' Eunji 11. BIGBANG's G-Dragon 12. BTS's J-Hope 13. Oh My Girl's Arin 14. Brave Girls' Minyoung 15. BLACKPINK's Jennie 16. HIGHLIGHT's Yoon Doojoon 17. BTS's RM 18. Oh My Girl's Jiho 19. ITZY's Yuna 20. aespa's Winter 21. aespa's Karina 22. Girls' Generation's Taeyeon 23. ITZY's Yeji 24. Girls' Generation's Yuri 25. NU'EST's JR 26. HIGHLIGHT's Yang Yoseob 27. ITZY's Ryujin 28. aespa's Giselle 29. ITZY's Lia 30. MAMAMOO's Hwasa 31. Kim Jaehwan 32. 2PM's Junho 33. Super Junior's Kim Heechul 34. HIGHLIGHT's Lee Gikwang 35. BLACKPINK's Rose 36. aespa's Ningning 37. BLACKPINK's Jisoo 38. LOONA's Chuu 39. ITZY's Chaeryeong 40. GOT7's Jay B 41. TVXQ's Yunho 42. Ha Sungwoon 43. Girls' Generation's Sooyoung 44. Girls' Generation's Yoona 45. BLACKPINK's Lisa 46. CNBLUE's Jung Yonghwa 47. Apink's Son Naeun 48. Oh My Girl's YooA 49. NCT's Jaehyun 50. Oh My Girl's Seunghee Did your favorite K-pop idol make the top 50? Tell us in the comments below! For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz. KpopStarz owns this article. Written by Alexa Lewis Dennis Burke is the former president and chief executive officer of Good Shepherd Health Care System. Burke now does consulting work with Eastern Oregon Coordinated Care Organization. Kelly Fitzpatrick is the director of the Oregon Department of Veterans Affairs and Gov. Kate Browns policy advisor on veterans issues. She is a retired Army officer. This image released by Disney Theatrical Productions shows promotional art for "Winnie the Pooh: The New Musical Adaptation," featuring songs by the Grammy-winning Sherman Brothers with additional music from A.A. Milne, and will be told using life-size puppetry. (Disney Theatrical Productions via AP) Kevin Strickland is pictured in an interview room at Western Missouri Correctional Center, in Cameron, Mo., on Nov. 5, 2019. Strickland is serving a life sentence for a 1978 triple murder that he claims he did not commit. (James Wooldridge/The Kansas City Star via AP) Mrs. Alberta Hamley Griffin, 97, of Athens, Alabama, died Wednesday, June 9, 2021, at Athens Health and Rehab. A Graveside Service will be 1:30 p.m. Sunday in Copeland Cemetery with Keith Griffin officiating. No visitation is planned. Spry Funeral Home in Athens is directing the services. Mr On Friday, May 28, Dispatch selected the top four female idols who flawlessly pulled off different shades of red hair. They shared who their choices were on their official Instagram account, @koreadispatch. Want to know who they chose? Then keep on reading! 1. aespa's Ningning aespa's Ningning dyed her hair a vibrant bright red for the group's "Next Level" comeback! Many people had commented that in the group's teaser, where the Chinese idol was seen wearing a green dress, she looked like the popular comic book character Poison Ivy! Can you see it? Ningning is currently still rocking the red hair as aespa continues on with "Next Level" promotions. Ningning is the only aespa member to have her dyed red, with Giselle and Karina keeping their hair black and Winter sporting two-toned black and white hair. 2. Oh My Girl's Seunghee Seunghee dyed her hair red (leading more to a red-purple) for Oh My Girl's "Dun Dun Dance" comeback. Currently, Seunghee's hair is cut short above her shoulders with full bangs. Despite the short hair-do, Seunghee has shown a variety of hairstyles for her "Dun Dun Dance" stages! ALSO READ: OH MY GIRL Members Chic in New Comeback Individual Teasers Often times it is down, but she has also worn her hair up. In some stages, she is seen with extensions that make her short hair long and flowy! She has been seen rocking her fun and summer-ready hair on her Instagram in different ways, and fans are living for it! 3. ITZY's Chaeryeong Chaeryeong dyed her hair red for ITZY's "Mafia in the Morning" comeback. She is one of two ITZY members who dyed her hair red for the comeback, with Yeji being the other. Chaeryeong's hair is a dark burgundy red. Though her hair started off vibrant at the start of the era, it has started to lighten. Perhaps it will evolve into a soft brown? Chaeryeong has her hair long and flowy, often slightly curled for the group's performances. Chaeryeong has her hair down more often than not as she performs, but she has had few performances where her hair was styled in a ponytail. With her lengthy hair, Chaeryeong is able to use that to attract more attention on stage. 4. IZ*ONE's Honda Hitomi Hitomi flaunted pink hair when she was seen at the airport returning to Japan after completing activities as an IZ*ONE member. While pink may seem different from red at first, pink is actually a light tint of red and is often characterized as a shade of red. This is not Hitomi's first time dyeing her hair pink. At the start of the year, she first did so for IZ*ONE's "FIESTA" era. Though she did not have the color for promotions, she was spotted with pink hair for the group's teasers. Hitomi's hair was also pink for the group's first photobook. However, her color at the airport was her most vibrant shade of pink hair yet. Was your favorite idol mentioned? Tell us in the comments below! For more K-Pop news and updates, always keep your tabs open here on KpopStarz. KpopStarz owns This Written by Alexa Lewis Google's approach to Android privacy is coming under fire following revelations from Arizona's antitrust lawsuit over phone tracking. As Insider reports, freshly unredacted documents in the case suggest Google made Android privacy settings harder to find. When Google tested OS releases that surfaced privacy features, the company reportedly saw greater use of those features as a "problem" and aimed to put them deeper into the menu system. The tech giant also "successfully pressured" phone brands like LG to bury location settings as they were popular, according to Arizona's attorneys. Google personnel further acknowledged that it was difficult to stop the company from determining your home and work locations, and complained that there was "no way" to give third-party apps your location without also handing them to Google. We've asked Google for comment. In the past, it said that Arizona's attorneys had "mischaracterized" its services and offered "robust" location privacy controls. Google has been improving privacy as of late. Android 12 will have an "approximate" location option in addition to a Privacy Dashboard and other controls. If the allegations hold up, though, the firm may have a difficult court battle ahead they suggest Google was determined to collect data despite Android users' preferences. Click for the latest, full-access Enid News & Eagle headlines | Text Alerts | app downloads Christy is news editor at the Enid News & Eagle. Visit his column blog at www.tinyurl.com/Column-Blog. Have a question about this story? Do you see something we missed? Do you have a story idea for David? Send an email to davidc@enidnews.com. Agency Texas A&M University Health Science Center Department Coastal Bend Health Education Center Proposed Minimum Salary $14.64 hourly Job Location Victoria, Texas Job Type Staff Job Description Qualifications What we believe Texas A&M University is committed to enriching the learning and working environment for all visitors, students, faculty, and staff by promoting a culture that embraces inclusion, diversity, equity, and accountability. Diverse perspectives, talents and identities are vital to accomplishing our mission and living our core values. Who we are As one of the fastest-growing academic health centers in the nation, the Texas A&M University Health Science Center encompasses five colleges and numerous centers and institutes working together to improve health through transformative education, innovative research and team-based health care delivery. What we want The Health Science Center (HSC) is looking for a Community Health Worker to serve as a member of the Coastal Bend Health Education Center team. We desire an individual who subscribes to and supports our commitment as stated above. The successful applicant will bring an expert level of public health, health outreach, and education experience to the position and understand the demands of supporting executives in a fast-paced environment. This person must be professional, enjoy working in a high-volume environment and be able to apply strong organizational skills while being flexible in their daily routine. If this is you, we invite you to apply to become a member of our team. Required Education: Associates or equivalent combination of education and experience. Required Experience: Two years of related experience in public health, health outreach, and education. Required Special Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Knowledge of word processing and spreadsheet applications. Ability to multitask and work cooperatively with others. Ability to perform all tasks and job responsibilities safely without injury to self and others in compliance with A&M System and HSC guidelines. Excellent written communication, analytical, interpersonal, and organizational skills. Required Licenses and Certifications: Department of State Health Services (DSHS) certification, certified Community Health Worker (CHW), or able to successfully complete the CHW certification within three months of employment. Other Requirements or Other Factors Ability to work evenings and weekends as needed. Verifiable good driving record and reliable transportation. Ability to travel as needed. Ability to lift up to 20 lbs. Preferred Education: Associates Degree Preferred Experience: Four (4) years medical office or health related field. Experience working with diverse individuals and communities. Preferred Licenses and Certifications: Certified Medical Assistant Preferred Special Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities: Ability to speak English and Spanish. Security-Sensitive position and finalist subject to a criminal history background check. Knowledge of Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). Preferred Other Factors Security-Sensitive position and finalist subject to a criminal history background check. Strong ability to work with diverse low-income population. Job Responsibilities Community Health Worker will primarily work in the community with specific target populations, working closely with medical providers, primary care teams, and other agencies to improve patient care and outcomes. Conducts personal interviews with local residents and assists with pharmaceutical applications for assistance programs. Maintains pharmaceutical company and client databases; keeps administrative, fiscal, and client records. Composes correspondence, reports, publications, presentations, including editing and proofreading. Attends meetings, seminars, and other special events. One-on-one education of targeted population. Assists patients in reviewing care plans and results in an effective manner while strictly adhering to the policies and procedures in place Motivates patients to be active and engaged participants in their health Builds and maintains positive working relationships with the patients, healthcare providers and community organizations. Confers as needed and on a timely basis with HST staff regarding patient care plans. Evening and weekend hours are required. Provides culturally appropriate support and information for the patient and their families in a series of structured visits and follow-up phone calls in a variety of settings, including the patient's home. Assists patients in overcoming barriers to obtaining needed medical care and social services Facilitates and coordinates services between health care providers Helps patients in utilizing resources, including scheduling appointments and assisting with completion of applications for programs for which they may be eligible Follows up on pending applications; encourages patients to set goals Identify barriers and challenges and monitor their own conditions. Continuously expands knowledge and understanding of community resources, services and programs provided. Identifies and applies appropriate role definition and skilled boundaries. Other duties as assigned. Instructions to Applicants: Applications received by Texas A&M University must have all job application entered. Failure to provide all job application data could result in an invalid submission and a rejected application. We encourage all applicants to upload a resume or use a LinkedIn profile to pre-populate the online application. All positions are security-sensitive. Applicants are subject to a criminal history investigation, and employment is contingent upon the institutions verification of credentials and/or other information required by the institutions procedures, including the completion of the criminal history check. Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action/Veterans/Disability Employer committed to diversity. recblid v92zphhoz3dyoiy2q3bp87gff6hvps Danny Masterson is accused of rape by three people and the trial for the case will start this summer. Just ahead of the trial, disturbing allegations about the Church of Scientology have come to light. According to the accusers' testimony, they claimed that Scientology officials prevented them from talking to the police. One woman that testified claimed that a Scientology official told her to write that she'll be "taking responsibility" after being allegedly assaulted by Masterson while unconscious in 2001. She reportedly wrote a letter to an "international justice chief" and revealed there were references to "Things That Shouldn't Be" kind of reports and "knowledge" reports. The second accuser, whose parents are also part of the controversial church, wanted to report Masterson when he allegedly rape her in 2003. However, a lawyer for the church allegedly told her she would be expelled from the church once she tattles to the police. After hearing the testimony, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Charlaine Olmedo, who is overlooking the Danny Masterson case, accused Scientology of having policies that not only "discourage" but also "prohibits" their church members from reporting another member to the police. Per the Los Angeles Times, the judge suggested this may possibly why the accusers waited years before they were able to report these allegations. What Is Scientology? What Are Their Rules? According to Scientology critics, the allegations from Danny Masterson's alleged rape victims match the other allegations against the controversial church, known for many celebrity church members. According to Mike Rinder, who was a former Scientologist, told the LA Times, "The activities of Scientology have been so much a part of the evidence that's being put forth as to why these women were not immediately going to law enforcement. "That it's sort of brought the dirty laundry out into public view, which is exactly what Scientology does not want to have happened." Rinder also revealed that the Church of Scientology doesn't trust the government institutions and that they direct and deal with their members' complaints internally. But for those who don't know what Scientology is, it is a set of "religious beliefs" created by fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Scientologists believe that people are immortal alien beings who have forgotten their true nature and that they are trapped in a human body. READ ALSO: Meghan McCain's Mom Speaks Out on 'The View' Host's On-Air Spats, 'It Bothers Me' The church has some rules that each member would have to follow. This included what seems to be normal rules such as being only allowed to washing the car every after use and washing the windows with water only, to slightly bizarre rules such as using only one brand of shoe polish, using only unscented deodorant, not being allowed to use perfume or freshener, and the most bizarre. These included being prohibited to read people's facial expressions, writing up which "condition" you're in every so often, stare at graphs every day to see how Scientology is doing, fill out a request form each time you'll be doing something outside your normal schedule. For the Danny Masterson case, one of the rules the three accusers followed was not calling the police. Because per their rule, you'll need to write up the issue then take it to the church for mediation. In a Reddit post, one user explained that the church would "always find that it's your own fault." Danny Masterson Trial The former "That 70s Show" star's accusers testified in a preliminary hearing with the Los Angeles Superior Court, with the judge deciding that there was a probable cause to charge him. Judge Charlaine F. Olmedo has ordered that the Hollywood star should stand trial. Masterson's arraignment is on Jun. 7. Masterson is currently out on $3.3 million bond. READ MORE: Jennifer Lopez, Ben Affleck Relationship 'Confirmed' After Planning to Go Instagram-Official Last Month See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles Simon Cowell spoke up the "what could have been" part of his dreaded electric bike accident. In August 2020, Cowell dealt with a disastrous event while riding his electric bike around his home's courtyard in Malibu, California. During that time, his spokesperson confirmed that he hurt his back and needed to undergo a six-hour surgery. He remained on bed rest for months, and he only came back to the "America's Got Talent" judging panel this year. After choosing to deal with the battle silently, Cowell finally spoke about the worrying accident while expressing his excitement over his return. Simon Cowell's Injury Could Have Been Worse Speaking with ET's Matt Cohen, the 61-year-old music mogul recalled his ups and downs in the past months. Per Cowell, viewers expected the contestants to be gloomy due to the crises people dealt with and still dealing with. However, they all came back with more energy and happiness. Meanwhile, his fellow judges Heidi Klum and Sofia Vergara acknowledge people's positivity amid the trying times. "They're happy to be out of the house," Klum said. "You can definitely see that everyone, in the last year, has been doing a lot of things at home trying to figure out new acts working on their acts." Furthermore, the "X-Factor" judge recalled how he recovered from a back injury that could have been worse. According to Cowell, he saw the scan of his back and thought how much more crippling it could have been. He described how he was only a millimeter away from cutting his back in half. But that millimeter saved him and helped him to go back to where he is now. Still, he noted that the accident may have been a blessing in disguise. READ MORE: Simon Cowell Braves Electric Bike Fears Again Following Horrific Accident "Weirdly it was a good thing that it happened. I didn't get COVID because I wasn't able to travel and I probably would've done my fair share last year," he went on. Throughout his recovery period, Cowell received different kinds of treatments. He also took physical therapy to exercise even more. Now that he's back, he was still asked what he missed the most while he was away. According to the head judge, he missed the laughing moments with his co-hosts. "Both Heidi and Sofia are actually very, very funny," Cowell said. "People always ask me, 'What are [they] like in real life?' And I always say that you're both very funny. You make me laugh." A first look of the "AGT" set conquered last month, hyping fans about Cowell's return. READ ALSO: 'X-Factor' Creator Simon Cowell Currently in Tricky Situation Because of Sharon Osbourne, Piers Morgan-- Here's Why See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles Disney's 'Descendants' actress Dove Cameron spoke about how she has been hinting about her sexuality for years and she was not sure if she would be accepted if she came out as queer. In a new interview with Gay Times, the former Disney Channel star shared that she was worried people would never believe her, but she is glad she can now serve as an inspiration for her fans. She has been keeping busy with her acting roles under HBO, the CW's live-action for The Powerpuff Girls, and even a musical comedy TV series with Apple TV+. Other than that, Cameron's music career will start once again. Dove Cameron Talks On Facing Accusations And Recalls Times She Hinted Of Coming Out In Public As the ex-Disney star stepped away from Hollywood glamour, the actress emphasized her need to find and understand herself more after going through a long-term breakup. However, upon facing a situation in which she was accused of "queerbaiting," she decided it was time to publicly acknowledge her sexuality for the world to be known. The TV star opened up about her sexuality on an Instagram Live last year. "I've hinted about my sexuality for years while being afraid to spell it out for everybody," she explained. "Maybe I haven't said it, but I'm super queer. This is something I want to represent through my music because it's who I am," she added after claiming that her lyric video released in 2020 called 'We Belong' where it had line drawings of people falling in love. With that concept in mind, the 25-Year old found that a man and a woman making out was "a weird moment" for her. Just as that, she asked the producers to add in couples of different orientations, resulting in the release of the lyric video. Dove added, "Ever since then, I've had such an unbelievable relationship with my fans and we have this very safe space that we've created." She said that there have been a lot of fans who have come out to her as well and how it was such a non-issue for her that she claimed: "it wasn't a big announcement," and this topic is something that she never really spoke about much. "It was like here I am and here I always have been," Dove concluded. READ ALSO: The CW Reworks Live Action Powerpuff Girls Pilot After Getting Backlash From Netizens Dove Cameron In The Process Of Coming Out And Loving Herself After Breakup With Thomas Doherty According to E! News, Dove, who beforehand dated the Gossip Girl reboot star Thomas Doherty, as well as her Liv and Maddie co-star Ryan McCartan, added that "I'm not a label person, but I would say that I am queer and that's probably my most accurate way to represent myself." After her break up with Doherty, she emphasized how she closed another big chapter of her life, "I found it hard. I was having a hard time stepping back into my power and focusing on where I was," she said. As the interview ends, having the chance to come out for the rest of the world to know, Dove Cameron, a queer, said, "I'm choosing to love myself, to be who I am every day and not edit myself depending on the room that I'm in." READ MORE: Star Wars Day: Disney Unveils First-Ever Real-Life Lightsaber [VIDEO] See Now: Famous Actors Who Turned Down Iconic Movie Roles 2021-05-29 Maeci On the occasion of the 19th International Day of the UN Peacekeepers, Italy, the first contributor of Blue Helmets among Western countries and one of the main contributors to the budget of peace operations, reaffirms its commitment to ensure international peace and security under the aegis of the United Nations. This year, the Day is dedicated to the young military and civilians involved in peacekeeping missions and to the role of youth in building a lasting peace. The International Peacekeepers Day, established in 2003 by a UN General Assembly Resolution, pays tribute to the dedication, bravery and spirit of sacrifice of the uniformed and civilian personnel involved in peacekeeping missions. Tens of thousands of UN peacekeepers aged between 18 and 29 are currently deployed in the UN peacekeeping missions, playing a crucial role in ensuring the implementation of the mission mandate and protecting the civilian population. In the last years, under the impetus of Resolution 2250/2015 of the Security Council, which established the Youth Peace and Security Agenda (YPS), the collaboration between the UN peacekeeping operations and youth associations has increased significantly with the aim of building a sustainable peace. Italy firmly believes that young people are a vital driver for peace, change and prosperity. Their specific sensitiveness and forward-looking approach, as well as their idealism, creativity and energy, contribute meaningfully to building and sustaining peace, providing long-term solutions and fostering conflict prevention and reconciliation. Sustainable peace and lasting conflict prevention can be achieved only if peace negotiations - and their implementation - are really inclusive and if all segments of the society starting from youth and women are able to get their voices heard and contribute to the future of the society they live in. Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have enhanced "super-resolution" machine learning techniques to study phase transitions. They identified key features of how large arrays of interacting "particles" behave at different temperatures by simulating tiny arrays before using a convolutional neural network to generate a good estimate of what a larger array would look like using "correlation" configurations. The massive saving in computational cost may realize unique ways of understanding how materials behave. We are surrounded by different states or "phases" of matter i.e. gases, liquids, and solids. The study of phase transitions, how one phase transforms into another, lies at the heart of our understanding of matter in the universe, and remains a hot topic for physicists. In particular, the idea of universality, where wildly different materials behave in similar ways thanks to a few shared features, is a powerful one. That's why physicists study model systems, often simple grids of "particles" on an array that interact via simple rules. These models distill the essence of the common physics shared by materials and, amazingly, still exhibit many of the properties of real materials, like phase transitions. Due to their elegant simplicity, these rules can be encoded into simulations that tell us what materials look like under different conditions. However, like all simulations, the trouble starts when we want to look at lots of particles at the same time. The computation time required becomes particularly prohibitive near phase transitions, where dynamics slows down, and the "correlation length," a measure of how the state of one atom relates to the state of another some distance away, grows larger and larger. This is a real dilemma if we want to apply these findings to the real world: real materials generally always contain many more orders of magnitude of atoms and molecules than simulated matter. That's why a team led by Professors Yutaka Okabe and Hiroyuki Mori of Tokyo Metropolitan University, in collaboration with researchers in Shibaura Institute of Technology and Bioinformatics Institute of Singapore, have been studying how to reliably extrapolate smaller simulations to larger ones using a concept known as an inverse renormalization group (RG). The renormalization group is a fundamental concept in the understanding of phase transitions and led Wilson to be awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics. Recently, the field met a powerful ally in convolutional neural networks (CNN), the same machine learning tool helping computer vision identify objects and decipher handwriting. The idea would be to give an algorithm the state of a small array of particles and get it to "estimate" what a larger array would look like. There is a strong analogy to the idea of super-resolution images, where blocky, pixelated images are used to generate smoother images at a higher resolution. The team has been looking at how this is applied to "spin" models of matter, where particles interact with other nearby particles via the direction of their "spins." Previous attempts have particularly struggled to apply this to systems at temperatures above a phase transition, where configurations tend to look more random. Now, instead of using spin configurations i.e. simple snapshots of which direction the particle spins are pointing, they considered correlation configurations, where each particle is characterized by how similar its own spin is to that of other particles, specifically those which are very far away. It turns out correlation configurations contain more subtle queues about how particles are arranged, particularly at higher temperatures. Like all machine learning techniques, the key is to be able to generate a reliable "training set". The team developed a new algorithm called the block-cluster transformation for correlation configurations to reduce these down to smaller patterns. Applying an improved estimator technique to both the original and reduced patterns, they had pairs of configurations of different size based on the same information. All that's left is to train the CNN to convert the small patterns to larger ones. The group considered two systems, the 2D Ising model and the three-state Potts model, both key benchmarks for studies of condensed matter. For both, they found that their CNN could use a simulation of a very small array of points to reproduce how a measure of the correlation g(T) changed across a phase transition point in much larger systems. Comparing with direct simulations of larger systems, the same trends were reproduced for both systems, combined with a simple temperature rescaling based on data at an arbitrary system size. A successful implementation of inverse RG transformations promises to give scientists a glimpse of previously inaccessible system sizes, and help physicists understand the larger scale features of materials. The team now hopes to apply their method to other models which can map more complex features such as a continuous range of spins, as well as the study of quantum systems. ### This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a Research Fellowship for Young Scientists from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) Research Attachment Programme of Singapore. Kamesh Subbarao, a professor in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering (MAE) Department at The University of Texas at Arlington, is the University's first faculty member to earn the honor of fellow of the American Astronautical Society (AAS). Subbarao, who has been at UTA since 2003, was honored for his "technical contributions in estimation and control, and for leadership in AAS technical activities." "I am honored and humbled to join this group of esteemed colleagues, many of whom have been my teachers and role models," Subbarao said. Subbarao is the director of the Aerospace Systems Laboratory at UTA. The lab conducts research in modeling, simulation, control and estimation of mechanical and aerospace systems from a systems perspective. Over the past few years, he has looked at diverse mechanical and aerospace systems, and his theoretical contributions, numerical simulations, algorithms and software span several applications. Subbarao's research interests include flight mechanics, simulation and control, astrodynamics, nonlinear and adaptive control, linear and nonlinear filtering/estimation approaches, cooperation and coordination for multiple unmanned vehicles subject to measurement uncertainties and distributed time delays. His research has been funded by DARPA, National Science Foundation, Air Force Research Lab, Office of Naval Research, NASA and several major companies. He received the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Excellence in Teaching Award at UTA in 2016 and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Foundation Award for "Model Reference Adaptive Control" in 2001. He is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, an associate fellow of AIAA and has authored and co-authored more than 175 journal and peer-reviewed conference publications. "Congratulations to Dr. Subbarao on this achievement. His record of research in the field of astronautics will have a lasting legacy at UTA and beyond, and he is well-deserving of being named a fellow," said Erian Armanios, chair of MAE. ### Founded in 1954, AAS is the premier network of current and future space professionals dedicated to advancing all space activities. Previous AAS fellows include NASA astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, Eileen Collins, Alan Shepard and several others. - Written by Jeremy Agor, College of Engineering Location: 6319-Virginia Hauling Job Title Assistant Controller Primary Location Manassas, Virginia Employee Type Employee Job Description Looking for a career not a job? Do you have an entrepreneurial spirit? Do you want to understand the ins-and-outs of a business? Do you have an accounting degree, but hate sitting in a cubical? As an Assistant Controller at American Disposal you will be involved with every piece of the accounting cycle. From processing invoices and reconciling payments to booking journal entries and presenting annual budgets, each day brings a new challenge. When not helping with the daily accounting functions you will be working with employees from all aspects of the business. You are not expected to sit at your desk all day, but instead to learn about Operations, Sales, Customer Service, and more. Your success within the role is all dependent on how hard you work, how well you communicate, and your ability to become a leader. The key to Waste Connections' continued growth and success is finding, developing, and promoting individuals who meet these expectations. Requirements: Bachelor's degree in Accounting Willingness to relocate for promotional opportunities Waste Connections is a publicly traded company that specializes in the removal and disposal of trash. We pride ourselves in being a team of driven employees who do the right thing, at the right time, for the right reason. Our decentralized business model empowers employees to make an immediate impact at the local level. And, most importantly, we work hard but play harder! We offer excellent benefits including: medical, dental, vision, flexible spending account, short term and long term disability, life insurance, 401K retirement and unlimited opportunities to 'Connect with Your Future'. Waste Connections is an Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity Employer (Minority/Female/Disabled/Veterans) The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children, a discovery Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday. Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Friday derailed a bipartisan inquiry into the deadly assault on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, despite a torrent of criticism that they were playing down the violence. Saturday, May 29, 2021 A previous blog post looked at Dr. Wayne Owens who conspiracy theorists maintain was a witness to Cherami's prediction . However, the evidence is clear that he did not directly speak to Cherami, but heard an account second or third-hand. Lt. Francis Fruge spoke to Cherami on the trip from Eunice to Jackson, but all she said was that she was going to Dallas to kill the President. And, that's if we believe Fruge who has his own credibility issues. For instance, Fruge, along with his investigative partner Anne Dischler, was involved in an expenses scandal: Opelousas Daily World, April 30, 1968 Did anybody at the Hospital in Jackson hear Rose Cherami predict the JFK assassination? E arlier this week, we included the statement of Mr. A. H. Magruder who told Garrison investigators that Dr. Victor Weiss had told him Cherami said that "the President and other Texas officials were going to be killed on their visit to Dallas." But, in another Garrison memo, Weiss was not sure if he talked to Cherami before or after the assassination: This is the only Garrison memo that reports on a conversation with Dr. Victor Weiss. He says he cannot remember if he spoke to Cherami before or after the assassination. Surely, had he talked to her before the assassination, he would not only remember it, but there would be some record of the discussion. No nurse or other personnel at the hospital has ever come forward a statement about what Cherami said before the assassination. What I find striking is that Dr. Weiss and Mr. Magruder both decided not to inform the FBI or the Warren Commission about Rose Cherami. That suggests to me that whatever she did say did not bother them too much. - probably because whatever she said was after the assassination. Dr. Victor Weiss was interviewed by the HSCA . He told them that he was asked by Dr. Bowers to see Rose Cherami on November 25, 2963 - after the assassination. He spoke to Cherami and she said she had worked for Jack Ruby. However, she did not have any specific details on an assassination plot and she said that "word in the underworld" was that Kennedy would be killed. The HSCA did not talk to Dr. Bowers. But Dr. Bowers did speak to researcher Robert Dorff. Here is a letter from Dr. Bowers: Dear Bob, This letter is intended to set the record straight regarding my alleged statements concerning Rose Cherami in conjunction with her November 1963 stay at East Louisiana State Hospital in Jackson, Louisiana. You and I discussed this quite extensively during a series of telephone calls in early 2002. At that time you read a section on page 200 and 201 of Appendix 10 to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which stated, quote: "The commission [sic] interviewed one of the doctors on staff at the East Louisiana State Hospital who had seen Cheramie during her stay there at the time of the Kennedy assassination. The doctor corroborated aspects of [the Cheramie allegations]. Dr. Victor Weiss verified that he was employed as a resident physician at the hospital in 1963. He recalled that on Monday, November 25, 1963, he was asked by another physician, Dr. Bowers, to see a patient who had been committed November 20 or 21. Dr. Bowers allegedly told Weiss that the patient, Rose Cheramie, had stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed." Dr. Weisss statement is untrue. I was not at the hospital on Monday, November the 25th. I spent that day working at my regular job at the Baptist Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. My regular tenure at East Louisiana State Hospital ended in July, 1963, when I moved to New Orleans and commenced work at the Baptist Hospital in that city. I worked weekdays Monday through Friday. On weekends I would drive to Jackson to earn extra money working in the medical division at the East Louisiana State Hospital. I never saw Rose Cherami and only found out about her allegations on Sunday, November the 24th, 1963, during a dove hunting engagement with Dr. Weiss. It was he who told me what she allegedly told Weiss and possibly others. I was never contacted by anyone from the House Select Committee on Assassinations. When I began getting telephone calls from assassination researchers informing me about the statements attributed to me, as memorialized [in Weiss's HSCA testimony], I called Dr. Weiss and asked him why he had said these things. Weiss rebuffed my inquiry and flatly refused to discuss it. I found that very odd as I had known and respected him for many years. I still cannot understand why he made those statements. On mature reflection I recalled that, during our dove hunting foray on Sunday, November the 24th, Dr. Weiss told me about Cheramis allegations. That was the first time I heard any of this. I remember that incident because, while driving back to New Orleans that day, I heard on the radio that Oswald had been shot in the basement of the Dallas Police Department. Years later I personally reviewed Rose Cheramis hospital records at the East Louisiana State Hospital and was unable to find any reference to her alleged remarks about an impending assassination of President Kennedy. Im sorry I was unable to attend the JFK Lancers [sic] forum in Dallas and hope this letter makes clear that I had no contact with Rose Cherami. Sincerely, Donn E. Bowers, MD While Dr. Bowers contradicts Dr. Weiss, there is still no evidence that either of them spoke to Rose Cherami before the assassination. Francis Fruge went back to the hospital in Jackson to speak to the nurses . There are no statements from any of the nurses amongst the Garrison papers - and no nurses have ever come forward with a statement about Cherami. We do know from the HSCA that hospital records "gave no reference as to alleged statements made by Cheramie." The whole Cherami story doesn't make much sense. The conspirators, driving from Florida to Dallas, stop in Eunice, Lousiana. With them is drug-addled prostitute. They then throw her out of the car, despite her foreknowledge of the assassination plot, and not only continue to Dallas to kill JFK, but then go on to Houston for a drug deal. That's a busy week, no? All five people charged in a fraud case that Bank of San Antonio says cost it $13.2 million have entered guilty pleas except for the lone insider. Ryan Glenn Martinez, who turns 57 Sunday, became the fourth defendant to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit bank fraud. He did so during a remote court hearing before U.S. District Judge Jason Pulliam on Friday. Martinez already is serving a prison sentence for other crimes. Martinezs plea means Ronald Wayne Schroeder, the former president of a Bank of San Antonio subsidiary, is the only remaining defendant who has not taken a plea. He has pleaded not guilty, but his lawyers have said he is cooperating. Schroeder had a May 13 deadline to enter a plea, but it was extended until August. One of his lawyers, Houstons Chip Lewis, had asked for a continuance because the attorney is defending multimillionaire and New York real estate heir Robert Durst in a California murder trial. On ExpressNews.com: Former office manager of San Antonio dermatology practice indicted on bank fraud, other charges In the San Antonio case, a grand jury indicted the five individuals in November, a few months after Bank of San Antonio disclosed that it had uncovered a $13.2 million Ponzi-style fraud scheme involving Schroeder. Schroeder had headed the banks factoring subsidiary, Texas Express Funding. Factoring involves advancing cash to companies in return for acquiring, at a discount, the debts owed to them. This allows the companies to get money quickly instead of waiting for customers to pay their bills. According to the charging papers, the four defendants who pleaded guilty assisted Schroeder in providing false and misleading invoices from their companies to financial institutions for factoring. Martinez and his mother, Phyllis Jo Martinez, 79, owned a San Antonio cleaning company called Nerd Factory. She pleaded guilty in February. Jill Martin Alvarado, who turns 59 today, and her husband, Rigo Alvarado, 55, of Irving, pleaded guilty in March and April, respectively. They are co-owners of a trucking company called Alvys Logistics. The Martinezes and Jill Martin Alvarado were each indicted on three offenses: conspiracy to commit bank fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to launder monetary instruments which relates to knowing that property involved in a financial transaction represents proceeds from unlawful activity. Schroeder was indicted on those three counts as well, along with three counts of bank fraud. Hes accused of using proceeds from the alleged scheme to buy automobiles, recreational vehicles, an airplane, a boat and a beach house. Conspiracy to commit bank fraud, which the four defendants pleaded guilty to, carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, up to three years of supervised release and a fine of up to $1 million. Prosecutors have said they will recommend a sentence at the low end of the sentencing guidelines for each of the four. The defendants will be required to make restitution. All of the defendants, save for Ryan Martinez, were released on a $50,000 unsecured bond. SA Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox Martinez has a criminal history that likely will factor into his sentencing, which is set for August. In 2019, a federal judge sentenced Martinez to more than six years in prison after he pleaded guilty to wire fraud and filing a false tax return. That followed a six-year prison term he received in state court in 2018 for embezzling hundreds of thousands of dollars from Southern Folger Detention Equipment Co., a San Antonio business that makes locks and equipment for jails and prisons. Martinez, who was the companys comptroller, spent some of the money on trips to Las Vegas, gambling and prostitutes. The two cases stem from the same conduct. Martinezs sentences were to be served consecutively, though his lawyer in 2019 argued that the sentences should run concurrently. The Bureau of Prisons website indicates that Martinezs release date is in November 2024. Jon Disrud, who is representing Martinez in the current case, didnt respond to a request for comment. pdanner@express-news.net We were doing some training at Camp Bullis today, and one of my active-duty co-workers had his re-enlistment ceremony at the top of Buck Hill. This bunker is at the top. In front of it is what looks to me like anchor chain from a naval ship, about 150 feet long. Each link is about 14-16 inches long. The chain is about 10-15 yards in front of the bunker, not in a perfectly straight line but in a sort of arc. From what I could tell, it was not connected to anything. If you stand in front of the bunker, the chain starts at about the 2 oclock position and extends to the 9:45 position. I would estimate it would take about two men on both sides of a link to lift one only link. Have you ever written about this or has this been brought to your attention? retired Air Force Senior Master Sgt. Richard Olivarez Camp Bullis with Camp Stanley, part of the Leon Spring Military Reservation in whats now far Northwest San Antonio was established in 1917 to support field and tactical training, a wartime mission that had outgrown Fort Sam Houston in scope and safety. The 2nd Division was one of the units for which permanent facilities were developed there. Primarily, the 2nd Division was at Camp Bullis, said Jacqueline Davis, director of the Fort Sam Houston Museum. It was their training area. The 2nd Field Artillery Brigade belonged to the division. In one of the current photographs you sent, theres a construction credit: Erected by the Second Field Artillery Brigade/November 1938. Another photo shows the large, worn-looking possible anchor chain. On ExpressNews.com: Pandemic easing, Fort Sam's medic trainees finally get to see San Antonio - but not its bars This bunker, on Buck Hill, was one of six within a mile of each other, with others on Light Hill, McCaskey Ridge and Neutze Hill. The bunkers were used in training exercises, says John Manguso, author of Camp Bullis, a history of the still active installation. Typically, the artillery units would put their forward observers in them so they could adjust to artillery fire up close, he said when asked about the purpose of the bunkers. This accustomed the observers to the sound and feel of close-in artillery fire in relative safety, (similar to) crawling under barbed wire with the sound of (simulated) machine-gun fire overhead. Richard Olivarez During the late 1930s. Camp Bullis was the site for large-scale maneuvers and weapons training by the 2nd Division and the National Guard, as the 2nd Division was conducting a series of tests to determine the future organization of the Armys infantry divisions, Manguso said. Usually held in August, because of low average rainfall, these mimic wars, as they were referred to in the newspapers, brought around 10,000 regular Army, Reserve and Guard soldiers from Texas and Oklahoma to Camp Bullis. Starting on a Friday at the stroke of midnight, they were divided into two armies, the Blues and the Browns, who engaged in a four-day battle to see what would happen if an enemy came up from the Texas coast with the objective of taking an ammunition dump in the vicinity of Boerne, says the San Antonio Light, Aug. 13, 1938. No victor was named at the end of the exercise; the high-level officers who critiqued the Battle of Boerne considered the effects of light vs. heavy packs, how the varying units cooperated and the use of trucks to transport troops for short distances. Meanwhile, the real soldiers of the mimic war were sent home on trains except for one. Capt. Josiah Andrews, serving with the 45th Division of the Oklahoma National Guard, was riding back from night maneuvers along Fredericksburg Road when he fell asleep about 4 miles north of the entrance to Camp Bullis and tumbled from the truck. He was caught under the wheels of a French 75 mm field gun, used during World War I, and killed instantly. Andrews, 33, who had served since 1926, left a wife and six children at home in Mesa, Ariz. On ExpressNews.com: Military installation in historic panoramic photograph isn't likely San Antonio's Camp Bullis Its probably a stretch to connect his death with the chain at the bunker, apparently built months after the mimic war and its single casualty, especially since Andrews wasnt a member of the 2nd Field Artillery. However, a broken chain in funerary art can mean a life cut short, especially prematurely. Davis points out that a similar chain marks the site of the Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey, where 36 passengers and crew died in the 1937 crash of a German airship. An anchor chain outlines the shape of the lighter-than-air craft where it fell to the ground. Anyone who knows the significance of the November 1938 date on the Buck Hill bunker or that of the heavy chain nearby may contact this column. historycolumn@yahoo.com | Twitter: @sahistorycolumn | Facebook: SanAntoniohistorycolumn A man is accused of showing no remorse as he recounted to investigators the slaying of a woman who had been missing since April. Andres Perez Tarnava III, 36, has been charged with murder in the death of Marisol Klingelhofer, according to court records. Klingelhofer, 49, was reported as a missing person on May 7 to the Bexar County Sheriffs Office. Klingelhofers daughter told investigators that the last contact she had with her mother was on April 26. She said it was unusual because the two of them spoke everyday. On May 20, a witness approached authorities and said he had heard a scream and had seen a man fire two gunshots into a vehicle on a property in the 1100 block of Fowler Road in Atascosa. On ExpressNews.com: Severed head found in Louisiana IDd as missing San Antonio woman A few days later, a Texas Ranger investigating the case spoke with a man who said Tarnava told him he wasnt going to see Klingelhofer anymore. The man said Tarnava also threatened to kill two other people like he did Klingelhofer, the affidavit states. Earlier this week, a Texas Ranger talked to witnesses who live in the Fowler Road home. One of them said he had been with Klingelhofer the night she was killed, which was April 26, according to the affidavit. The witness and Klingelhofer were sitting inside a green Ford Expedition at the home on Fowler when Tarnava walked up to them and fired two shots, killing her, according to the affidavit. The witness told police he ran away because he was afraid of Tarnava. Other witnesses said Tarnava then dragged Klingelhofers body to his GMC Yukon and put it in the cargo area. They told the investigators that he took her body to his home in the 1800 block of Luckey Road. They said Tarnava told them he chopped up and burned Klingelhofers body. The witnesses told investigators Tarnava then hired a man to clean up a burn pile behind the Luckey Road home and bring the remains back to the Fowler Road home. On ExpressNews.com: Car parts, witnesses lead police to suspect in deadly Northeast Side hit-and-run On Thursday, Tarnava was arrested on a charge of tampering with an ID number. No further details were provided about the charge. Deputies towed his maroon Yukon to the sheriffs office headquarters where they searched it, according to the affidavit. Investigators said they found blood on the carpet in the cargo area. That same day, a Texas Ranger and a Bexar County Sheriffs Office investigator interviewed Tarnava. He told them that on the night of Klingelhofers death, he received a call from someone that she was at the Fowler Road home, according to the affidavit. He would not identify who called him. Tarnava said he was angry with Klingelhofer because he believed she had stolen items belonging to his dead father. Investigators said Tarnava admitted to using a .25-caliber handgun to shoot Klingelhofer at the Fowler home. On ExpressNews.com: 4th defendant in San Antonio bank fraud case pleads guilty He told investigators that he took her body to his home on Luckey Road. There, he placed Klingelhofers body in a barrel and used motor oil to burn her remains, the affidavit states. Investigators said he showed no remorse. He said he would see her in hell, according to the affidavit. Tarnava is a convicted felon as well as a documented gang member, Texas Rangers said. He is being held at the Bexar County Jail in lieu of bail totaling $1,105,000. William Luther /Staff file photo More than a dozen people were stuck on a roller coaster for three hours Saturday at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. The Poltergeist roller coasters stopped in the middle of a ride cycle around 11:55 a.m., according to Jeff Filicko, the marketing and communications manager for Six Flags Fiesta Texas. A San Antonio pastor posted a Facebook comment this week stating homosexuality is a sin. On Friday, that same pastor, along with a group of other faith-based leaders, endorsed District 2s sitting councilwoman who is facing a gay man in the June runoff election. The group gathered in front of the Claude Black Center on the East Side, touting first-term Councilwoman Jada Andrews-Sullivans achievements in the past two years. Poll workers for her opponent, candidate Jalen McKee-Rodriguez, stood in the background. McKee-Rodriguez said Wednesday one of his poll workers heard from voters that pastors and church leaders were telling their congregants that a vote for me is a sin. He said the voters named Pastor Patrick Jones of the Greater Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church and Pastor Jonathan Ellis of The Conquerors Assembly Pentecostal Church. On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio City Council District 2 candidates duke it out in last debate before early voting Jones addressed McKee-Rodriguez in a Facebook Live video May 26, denying the allegations. Those are lies, Jones said. No one is telling anybody that. I know of no pastor that said voting for him would be a sin, Jones continued. The reason I cannot support you (McKee-Rodriguez) is not because of your lifestyle ... It had solely to do with this young man has done nothing in our community. Ellis also addressed the allegations in a Facebook Live post that same day. I didnt say that, and I dont believe that, Ellis said. That is bad theology. Jones, president of the Baptist Ministers Union, later commented on a now-deleted Facebook post that homosexuality is a sin. We as believers dont get upset when we read or are preached to about our various sins, lying, stealing, fornication, adultry, etc., Jones wrote. The Bible does declare homosexuality a sin. Regardless of what the law says. I think if we can accept our faults they should too. Rev. Jerry Dailey, the president of the Community of Churches for Social Action, as well as Rev. Jeffrey Garner of New Jerusalem Baptist Church, Jones, Ellis and other faith-based leaders expressed their individual support for Andrews-Sullivan in a press conference Friday morning. She is the most qualified to serve, Garner said. Andrews-Sullivan has shown flawless execution with unmatched results. On ExpressNews.com: 'A long history of harassment' - San Antonio council candidate says he faced discrimination while with District 2 office Andrews-Sullivan said she had no idea about the allegations. Im just doing the work of the district, she said. Thats the way were keeping our heads above the water. She said she does not think voting for a gay candidate is a sin. While in office, Andrews-Sullivan has held quarterly meetings with District 2s faith-based leaders. There, she gets feedback, advises them on resources available for her constituents and gives updates on projects for the district. Andrews-Sullivan has been a member of Tree Mount Temple Church for seven years, she said. McKee-Rodriguez said he hopes the allegations arent true. This does not represent the East Side, McKee-Rodriguez said. I dont believe it truly represents the churches either. Both candidates also said the whole debacle is a distraction. I do still hope to work with the pastors. Ill work with every constituent in the district, regardless of whether our ideals align, McKee-Rodriguez said. But Im never going to stop speaking out for whats right. Andrews-Sullivan and McKee-Rodriguez faced off against 10 other candidates in a crowded May election. McKee-Rodriguez garnered the most votes at 26 percent. Andrews-Sullivan took in almost 17 percent of the vote. Since then, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro and Julian Castro, former San Antonio mayor and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, endorsed McKee-Rodriguez. Early voting for the city runoff election goes until Tuesday, June 1. Election Day is Saturday, June 5. Districts 1, 2, 3, 5 and 9 are in runoff elections. To find a vote center or view more information, visit www.Bexar.org/Elections. liz.hardaway@hearst.com | Twitter: @liz_hardaway Since Monday, when a 28-year-old San Antonio woman was shot and killed in front of her three young children, her story has haunted our collective conscience. Police Chief William McManus described the shooting as an ambush. Samantha Lopez was found in the drivers seat of her vehicle. Her three children ages 2, 6 and 10 were in the backseat. Police say her estranged husband is a person of interest in the case. Police have not arrested him. He may prove innocent. According to police, he was seen near the crime scene and had been previously arrested multiple times for domestic violence. Experts say the rate of domestic violence rose during the pandemic. Everywhere. Whether or not Lopezs children are deemed children of a domestic violence fatality, theyre going to need all the resources government and nonprofit programs can afford them. Theyll need long-term attention and care. Those who approach domestic violence as a public health issue know such deaths are preventable. In San Antonio, the Metropolitan Health District handles domestic violence with a trauma-informed approach and with prevention at its core. Its new violence prevention division is one of the few of its kind. Its Stand UP SA program zeroes in on gun violence by putting trained responders at crime scenes and hospitals. They advise and talk to families in crisis and try to prevent retaliatory violence. Jasmin Williams, 36, a community service supervisor for Metro Health, leads a 10-member Stand UP team on the citys East Side, where she grew up. Shes uniquely qualified for such work. I was one of those little kids in the car, she said. In 1994, when she was 10 years old, her mother was killed in a similarly brutal attack. Sharon Walker Johnson, 34, was preparing a new home for her family. A man in the area hit on her. She rejected his advances. He beat her to death with a hammer, Williams said. Johnson was in an abusive relationship, so her family first suspected her husband. After her mothers horrific death, Williams tried to kill herself. She didnt receive counseling. She and her older sister were split up. She was molested by a relatives boyfriend. Williams tried to kill herself two more times in the ensuing years. She became a victim of violence as well as a perpetrator of it. She was angry, perpetually in fight or flight mode. She committed multiple assaults and spent five years in prison. It has been 27 years since her mothers death. Williams cried when she said she hopes what happened to her doesnt happen to Lopezs children. She hopes they receive all the support they need and are cared for by people who love them. She says she knows the man she accuses of killing her mother. He was tried and found not guilty. In the courtroom, she and her sister saw photos of her mother lying dead, a hammer still stuck in her head. In prison, I got with God, Williams said. I was willing to pay for (my actions). But I couldnt continue to live like this, adding, I wanted to be normal. A few months after her release in 2014, a friend encouraged her to apply for a city of San Antonio admin job, doing entry-level office work. I didnt know what an admin was, she said. They didnt even have a name for Stand UP. She expressed interest in working in the field instead of behind a desk. She says the events of her life have prepared her for the work. I was like the kids from Monday and the kids from all the other days. They need to know its not the end of the world, Williams said. That there is life after that, that its going to be hard because no one loves you like a mother does. Lopezs two older children may be trying to figure out, Why my mom? she said. Its going to make them angry. They wont show it. Theyll internalize it. Theyll need to hear that what happened was wrong, that it wasnt their fault. Williams said her sister blamed herself because their mother was arranging their clothes when she was killed. In Lopezs case, police said they had responded to several calls of domestic violence since October 2018. Lopez obtained a protective order against her husband, which he violated, police said. Her husband, who has not been identified, was out on bond for violating that order, according to police. Several violence prevention experts said he shouldnt have been let out on bond. A local domestic violence expert said science tells us children are incredibly resilient, even after a traumatic event, and can heal with lots of support and resources. Williams said some people will assume, incorrectly, that children will forget, especially if theyre particularly young. They may seem to forget, she said. They dont. eayala@express-news.net Legislation that would weaken the ability of progressive Texas cities to set their own police budgets is headed for Gov. Greg Abbotts desk, fulfilling a pledge from Republicans as they try to quell a year of uprisings over systemic racism and police brutality. The measure, part of a national conservative backlash to calls to defund the police, passed largely along party lines in both chambers, with a handful of rural Democrats joining in support. It would strip annexation powers from large cities that reduce their law enforcement funding from one year to the next, and give Abbott, a Republican, sole control over any exceptions. A vote for this bill is a vote for public safety, Rep. Craig Goldman, R-Fort Worth, said earlier this month in promoting the effort. He and other Republicans have warned that reallocating police funds to other agencies will lead to mayhem in the states most densely populated areas. Critics have argued that the measure unfairly singles out large, mostly Democrat-led areas while ignoring rural pockets of the state where violent crime rates are higher or increasing at faster rates. Josie Norris, The San Antonio Express-News / Staff Photographer TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox It particularly targets Austin, where city officials voted last year to cut 5 percent from the police budget after a local police killing and amid protests over the murder of George Floyd in Minnesota. They also pledged to shift tens of millions of dollars worth of traditional police functions to other city agencies. That move could be a violation under the new legislation, which is retroactive for up to two years. Republicans have insisted that the effort is neither politically motivated nor meant to specifically punish Austin. They declined to accept numerous amendments from Democrats, including many that sought to broaden the scope of municipalities that would be subject to the requirements. Abbott, who has vowed to sign the measure into law, is a regular critic of Democratic officials in Austin and helped spearhead the effort to crack down on defund supporters last fall in the runup to the November elections. Cities typically annex surrounding areas in order to keep their property tax revenue in line with population growth and sprawl. Its meant to ensure that people who live around cities pay for the urban services and infrastructure they use. In hours of public debate on the bill, several Black lawmakers said they are supportive of law enforcement, but want to see Republicans in power take steps to ensure that the police are serving all communities equally. Lawmakers on Friday approved measures that would ban most police chokeholds and mandate that officers keep their body cameras rolling as investigations unfold. You should let my elected officials decide what to do with my city, Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Dallas, said earlier this month. Because sadly enough, plenty of people havent been to South Dallas, where Black people are afraid most of the time because they dont know if theyre gonna get killed. The Legislature is also negotiating a separate measure that would force large counties to hold elections if they want to cut law enforcement funding. They have until Monday to send that to the governor. jeremy.blackman@chron.com Position Details Status: Full-time regular position Salary Range: $31.69 per hour to $38.48 per hour (2021 pay range) Benefits: Qualifies for full-time benefits date of hire Location: City Center Hours: Standard business hours (8am-4:30pm), may vary based on business need Reporting Relationship: Reports to City Assessor Community Development Department The Community Development Department is comprised of Planning, Assessing, Economic Development, and Housing and Community Services. This department supports the long-term vitality of the City through city-wide land use planning, development review activities, maintaining a positive environment for business, addressing housing and community service needs and responsible property valuations. Position Responsibilities The role of the Real Estate Appraiser I position is to appraise new and existing single family, town homes and condos and perform reviews for residential property. The primary position responsibilities and areas of impact are: Tracks and analyzes the real estate market by physically inspecting properties, developing and applying appraisal techniques, and maintaining accurate and consistent data on properties. Appraises new and existing properties; coordinates with assessing staff to review and value 20% of all properties in Eden Prairie; appraises new construction properties; calculates values on the properties; studies market trends to ensure accuracy with State, County, and City guidelines. Completes analysis for review of market values and classifications of properties during Board of Appeal and Equalization and for appeals during the assessment year; communicates with public, other departments, cities, and government agencies for a variety of reasons which include deadlines, property information, and state statute requirements. Assists in coordination of administrative and reporting requirements for the annual assessment; prepares property division/combinations by gathering information from various city departments, Hennepin County and property owners; completes a variety of administrative related duties. While these areas are the primary focus of the position, we believe strongly in teamwork and employees will be called upon to perform a variety of duties as a part of their role with the City. Position Requirements Education/Work Experience: Minimum qualifications include a bachelor's degree in real estate, finance, business, public administration, economics or closely related field, or three (3) years of progressively responsible work experience as a state-licensed appraiser or an appraiser in an assessing office. AMA or SAMA designation with the MN Department of Revenue or a state-license level of Licensed Residential Real Property Appraiser or greater with the MN Department of Commerce preferred. Education in real estate appraisal and/or technical experience in assessing preferred. Licenses: Ability to obtain the Certified Minnesota Assessor (CMA) license within two[JT1] years of employment, and ability to obtain AMA certification by July 1, 2022, or within four[JT2] years from the date initial Minnesota Assessor License was obtained, whichever is later. Technical Skills: MS Office (Word, Excel). Physical Requirements: Physical effort is light for the majority of work with lifting or carrying limited to 25 pounds intermittently. There are site and building inspections that involve prolonged standing, climbing, and walking. Periods of time with significant customer contact by phone and e-mail. Report preparation and writing at times requires extended use of a keyboard. Work interruptions are frequent. Working Conditions: Work is split between a normal office environment and on-site inspections of properties. Driving is required for on-site inspections and to attend meetings. City of Eden Prairie Values We are a service organization. We take pride in what we do. We cultivate a supportive, encouraging and productive culture with a strong customer focus. We promote wellness and plan work/life balance into our goals. We value differences and foster inclusion. We achieve success by exhibiting our core values: collaboration, innovation, integrity, performance and relationships. Position Specific Expectations Communication: Able to convey a message to get a point across; communicates in a clear and concise manner; able to write clearly and succinctly; tailors message to a variety of communication settings and styles. Attention to Detail: Able to find errors in work and solve problems; anticipates issues and performs at a high level of accuracy; sets up systems to ensure errors are not repeated. Accountability: Follows through on commitments; focuses on appropriate tasks throughout the shift; takes responsibilities for actions both as an individual and on behalf of the organization; actions and words are in sync; follows all policies and procedures; maintains confidentiality; is prepared and punctual to all scheduled shifts. Composure: Exhibits self-confidence and asserts self appropriately in several different situations; maintains professionalism while under pressure; can handle stress; energized by tough challenges. Organization: Ability to coordinate several activities, responsibilities, and tasks simultaneously in a polite and professional manner; prioritizes what needs to get done; keeps things neat and orderly; utilizes tools for efficiency; factors several considerations when planning; establishes methods to ensure routine tasks are completed. Creativity: Effective at generating ideas relative to the organizations goals; able to build off the ideas of others in new and different ways; uses innovative ways to complete tasks and responsibilities. City of Eden Prairie Pre-employment Process The City of Eden Prairie conducts the following pre-employment checks for the Appraiser position: Professional Reference & Work History Checks Background & Drivers Check (must have excellent driving record). Degree & License Verification All final candidates must successful complete and pass the pre-employment process before their first day of employment. City of Eden Prairie Application Timeline To apply, please visit the Citys website at www.edenprairie.org and click on the employment tab. Application Deadline: Monday June 14, 2021 at 4:00 PM Review Applicants: by June 18, 2021 First Round Interviews: Week of June 21, 2021 Final Round Interviews: Week of June 28, 2021 Anticipated Start Date: August, 2021 (negotiable) recblid 2agzfe8j5wkki4mx15c7rcqboknpvg (The Center Square) While the origins of COVID-19 have been a political hot button issue rife with controversy, new evidence has prompted a different question: did American taxpayers help fund the controversial Wuhan lab? A group of 209 House Republicans sent a letter Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., demanding she allow an investigation into whether the Wuhan lab released COVID-19. The same day, Republicans on the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees announced an investigation into the National Institutes of Healths grant funding for the scandal-ridden Wuhan Institute of Virology. There is mounting evidence the COVID-19 pandemic started in the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Chinese Communist Party covered it up," the Republican lawmakers wrote in a letter to NIH. "If U.S. taxpayer money was used to develop COVID-19, conduct gain of function research, or assist in any sort of cover-up, EcoHealth Alliance must be held accountable. It is incumbent upon grant recipients to ensure their work is performed within the scope of the grant, advances our national interest, and protects our national security. It is vital to understand if U.S. taxpayer funds were at all affiliated with a pandemic that has taken the lives of nearly 600,000 Americans so we can prevent similar future catastrophes. House Committee on Oversight and Reform ranking member James Comer, R-Ky., and House Committee on the Judiciary ranking member Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent a letter to Francis Collins, the director of the NIH, and Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The Republicans point to a grant from NIH given to EcoHealth, which they say has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology "to study bat coronaviruses." EcoHealth has awarded almost $600,000 to the WIV and another $200,000 to the Wuhan University School of Public Health," the letter reads. "On July 8, 2020, NIH Deputy Director for Extramural Research Dr. Michael Lauer sent a letter to EcoHealth expressing concern over its relationship with the WIV and suspended EcoHealths grant pending answers to several routine questions. The questions posed by Dr. Lauer raise serious concerns and suggest COVID-19 was spreading worldwide by October 2019. Despite U.S. intelligence concerns about the ability of the WIV to properly contain the deadly disease including the virus that causes COVID-19 they study, EcoHealth still awarded U.S. taxpayer grant funds to the WIV, the letter adds. Suspicions that COVID originated in the Wuhan lab were widely dismissed last year, but the theory recently gained new credence after the Wall Street Journal reported that three doctors working at the Wuhan Institute of Virology were hospitalized in November 2019 for COVID-like symptoms. Dems haven't held a hearing on it, said Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., after the letter was released. Big Tech censored posts about it. The media attacked people who talked about it. China can't get away with this. Americans deserve answers. Though Republicans have been critical of Democrats, some Democrats have backed an inquiry into Wuhan in light of the most recent evidence. President Joe Biden said this week he has asked U.S. intelligence agencies to probe COVID's origins with an eye toward China. The movement among Republicans to investigate the lab has steadily increased to the crescendo Friday. What has rankled lawmakers most, though, is evidence that Americans helped fund the very lab at the center of this controversy. "The cause of this pandemic is the most important question facing the world," said Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., who sent a letter to Fauci. "It's clear that we cannot ignore COVID-19's potential lab origins, and it's past time for Dr. Fauci to provide answers not only on the role of US funding for Chinese labs, but also his support for this reckless research. The Fauquier Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike. We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve. Take me to the FLP chapter. About The Feynman Lectures on Physics Audio Colletion These are the tape recordings of Richard Feynman's 1961-64 Caltech Introductory Physics lectures, which form the basis of the book The Feynman Lectures on Physics. The original recordings were made on 1/4" reel-to-reel tapes, now preserved in Caltech's Archive. In 2010 the entire collection was digitized by media preservationist George Blood, at a sampling rate of 96 kHz with 24-bit samples, PCM-encoded in WAV files about 2 GB each in size. For this online publication we are serving more compact versions, downsampled to 48 kHz with 16-bit samples, reencoded as AAC-HE (mp4) and Opus (ogg) at a data rate of 48 kbps. We present entire lecture tapes without any editing or enhancement, including the tape leader. Parts of some lectures edited out of the commercial versions of these recordings are preserved here intact. Recorded material outside the lectures, including discussions between Feynman and his students and/or colleagues, never previously published, can be found in this publication. Three entire lecture recordings never heard before outside Caltech, including two lectures on Quantum Mechanics Feynman gave in 1964, are also included in this publication. I am very excited to at long last be able to share these lecture recordings online, so that everyone can listen to them in their naked beauty. You will hear a lot you have not heard before, in particular, the many "after-lecture" discussions between Feynman and his students, many of which are entertaining and informative. Lecture #30 Interference, given on February 20, 1962, is of some historical interest: Feynman delays starting by 6 minutes because earlier that day John Glenn became the first American (and second man, after Yuri Gagarin) to orbit Earth, and he was due to splash down! So, there is a prolonged "before-lecture" discussion in the recording. In the background you can hear the excited hubbub of the students, concerned for Glenn's safe return. Feynman begins his lecture, "Mr. Glenn is in orbit and he'll probably come down during this lecture. We'll see if we get any news from it." TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 28, 2021 / GlobeX Data Ltd. (OTCQB:SWISF) (CSE:SWIS) (FRA:GDT) ("GlobeX" or the "Company"), the leader in Swiss hosted secure communications and secure data management, is pleased to announce that, as part of its US national rollout of its Sekur privacy and security communications platform, the Company will be featured on Newsmax TV on the New to the Street segment of Newsmax TV on Sunday May 31 2021 at 10:00 AM Eastern Standard Time and on Fox Business on Monday May 31 2021 and Tuesday June 1 2021. The segment can be seen on this weblink for all internet viewers: https://www.newsmaxtv.com/ The segment can also be found at: https://newtothestreet.com/new-to-the-street-tv Alain Ghiai, CEO of GlobeX Data said: "We are very happy to be featured again on Newxmaxtv.com and foxBusiness.com as part of our marketing and branding efforts in the US market. We are planning a lot more media awareness through TV, Radio, Podcasts and Email campaigns as we ramp up our marketing efforts in the United States. As we are not connected, and never have been connected, to AWS, Microsoft Azure or Google Cloud platforms, commonly referred to as "Big Tech", we can offer a truly independent, private and secure means of communications through secure messaging, secure voice record transfer and secure email and secure video conferencing, through our proprietary technology and our secure servers based in Switzerland. We have seen a surge in demand and inquiries for our secure and private communications solutions and have started to see some signups for Sekur coming from US consumers. The US market represents the largest consumer and business market in the world for us and we are happy to finally offer true privacy and no data mining to everyone in the US. Sekur, which includes SekurMessenger as part of a bundle of email, messaging and file transfer into one app solutions, includes the Company's latest SekurMail technology, which includes proprietary anti-phishing and privacy feature called SekurSend. SekurSend lets a user send an email to any other recipient, whether they have Sekur or not, in full privacy and security as the email never leaves Sekur's encrypted email servers based in Switzerland. The recipient can then click on the notification and reply in the same manner using SekurReply, without the recipient having to register for a Sekur account. The sender can also decide to protect any email sent by adding a password to open it, a read-limit and a self-destruct timer as well. Sending an email with the SekurSend feature allows the senders and recipients to add limitless size attachments to the emails without crowding the recipients' email box. This also eliminates BEC attacks for businesses and email phishing attacks. Additionally, SekurMail includes full control of email delivery, automatic data export for large Enterprises and an automatic Data Loss Prevention technology ("DLP") with real time continuous archiving. Recent data breaches in messaging applications and in particular in the WhatsApp application have created a certain urgency for businesses and data privacy advocates to protect their communications form cyber-attacks and identity theft via mobile and desktop devices. SekurMessenger eliminates many of the privacy and security risks by not only not requiring a phone number, which would divulge a user's phone device ID, but also by not social engineering a user's phone or computer contact list and infecting the contacts by default as well, eliminating a huge loophole in security and privacy. SekurMessenger issues each user a username and a SM number. The SM number is the contact ID a user would disclose in order for other SM users to be added. The service comes with a self-destruct timer and other features as well, including GlobeX's proprietary VirtualVaults and HeliX technologies with all data stored in Swiss hosted encrypted servers. Additionally, SekurMessenger now comes with a proprietary feature and technology called Chat by Invites. This feature allows a SekurMessenger user ("SM user") invite a non-SM user, or a group of non-SM users, to chat in a fully private and secure way, without the recipient ever having to register to SekurMessenger or download the app. At the end of the chat, the initiator of the conversation can remotely terminate the conversation and all traces of the conversation are deleted from all users, including the recipient. This unique feature is now fully deployed and functional on all iOS and Android devices and web platforms. The target sectors are numerous, including but not limited to real estate, legal, financial, government, energy, mining, manufacturing, trade and medical sectors. GlobeX's Data privacy solutions are all hosted in Switzerland, protecting users' data from any outside data intrusion requests. In Switzerland, the right to privacy is guaranteed in article 13 of the Swiss Federal Constitution. The Federal Act on Data Protection ("FADP") of 19 June 1992 (in force since 1993) has set up a strict protection of privacy by prohibiting virtually any processing of personal data which is not expressly authorized by the data subjects. The protection is subject to the authority of the Federal Data Protection and Information Commissioner. Under Swiss federal law, it is a crime to publish information based on leaked "secret official discussions." In 2010 the Federal Supreme Court of Switzerland found that IP addresses are personal information and that under Swiss privacy laws they may not be used to track Internet usage without the knowledge of the individuals involved. About GlobeX Data Ltd. GlobeX Data Ltd. is a Cybersecurity and Internet privacy provider of Swiss hosted solutions for secure data management and secure communications. The Company distributes a suite of secure cloud-based storage, disaster recovery, document management, encrypted e-mails, and secure communication tools. GlobeX Data Ltd. sells its products through its approved wholesalers and distributors, and telecommunications companies worldwide. GlobeX Data Ltd. serves consumers, businesses and governments worldwide. On behalf of Management GLOBEX DATA LTD. Alain Ghiai President and Chief Executive Officer +1.416.644.8690 corporate@globexdatagroup.com For more information, please contact GlobeX Data at corporate@globexdatagroup.com or visit us at https://globexdatagroup.com. For more information on Sekur visit us at: https://www.sekur.com. Forward-Looking Information This news release contains certain forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws ("forward-looking statements"). All statements other than statements of present or historical fact are forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "achieve", "could", "believe", "plan", "intend", "objective", "continuous", "ongoing", "estimate", "outlook", "expect", "project" and similar words, including negatives thereof, suggesting future outcomes or that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. These statements are only predictions. These statements reflect management's current estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations; they are not guaranteeing future performance. GlobeX cautions that all forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain and that actual performance may be affected by a number of material factors, many of which are beyond GlobeX's control. Such factors include, among other things: risks and uncertainties relating to the future of the Company's business; the success of marketing and sales efforts of the Company; the projections prepared in house and projections delivered by channel partners; the Company's ability to complete the necessary software updates; increases in sales as a result of investments software development technology; consumer interest in the Products; future sales plans and strategies; reliance on large channel partners and expectations of renewals to ongoing agreements with these partners; anticipated events and trends; the economy and other future conditions; and other risks and uncertainties, including those described in GlobeX's prospectus dated May 8, 2019 filed with the Canadian Securities Administrators and available on www.sedar.com. Accordingly, actual and future events, conditions and results may differ materially from the estimates, beliefs, intentions and expectations expressed or implied in the forward-looking information. Except as required under applicable securities legislation, GlobeX undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise forward-looking information. SOURCE: GlobeX Data Ltd. View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/649719/GlobeX-Data-to-Be-Featured-on-New-to-the-Street-on-NEWSMAX-TV-Sunday-May-30-2021-at-1000AM-EST-and-on-Fox-Business-Monday-May-31-2021-and-Tuesday-June-1-2021-at-1030PM-PST NINGDE, China, May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- This is a news report from chinadaily.com.cn: The "A Date with China" international media delegation toured a fishery village on Wednesday. The village is called Xipi and is located in Ningde of Southeast China'sFujian province. Like many other villages of its type in China, fishermen here catch, gather and process marine life. However, its story is not typical, at least not if you go back eight years. In 2013, 137 households moved from boat homes to resettlements ashore. This final migration meant all boat dwellers in the village had bid farewell to the floating life some of them had been living since birth. Xipi village is one of the biggest boat-dweller resettlement communities in eastern Fujian. There are eight sub-villages, with a total of 2716 residents in 632 households. People here mainly make a living by breeding oysters, octopus, yellow croakers and other seafood. But they don't just practice aquaculture; they process the products locally, attracting investments and creating jobs. In 2020, the villagers netted a per-capita income of more than 23,000 yuan, earning fame as the "Most Beautiful Fishery Village in the Nation," an outstanding transformation from their boat life in the old days. 68-year-old Lin Xiangmei is one of the last boat tribe members who moved ashore in 2013. She was shelling oysters with other workers when the media team came to talk to her. "My three daughters all have their own families. I occasionally work here to earn some pocket money, but it also helps remind me of the fishing time on the water. Compared to those days, life now is much better," Lin said. Boat habitants traditionally lived on small wooden boats and barely made ends meet by fishing in coastal waters. As Robert Nani said, "it's hard to believe five or six people lived on such a boat together." Nani is a Ghanaian internet celebrity who has been living in China for 12 years. He got to board a boat and experience what it was like to be a boat dweller. "It would be unimaginable if they ran into a weather disaster," he added. Since the 1950s, the first boat dwellers began to move to land under government programs and the first houses were built for them to live. From that point, a real fishery village took shape. "It's really impressive to come here and see the transformation that has happened they had little museums. With the pictures and stories in the exhibits, we can see a long-term process," China Daily reporter Anthony Perry said. "They definitely run through hard times. Now their lives are a lot better. That's really good to see," he said. Since 1997, higher-level Party committees and governments have attached great importance to help fishermen in Xipi village settle ashore. Many Party members were based in the village to provide assistance, especially to poor households. "The way China was able to announce absolute poverty had been eliminated at the end of last year - it's an amazing achievement. No country has been able to put together those numbers of people that had been helped in that way," Perry said. Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1520803/image.jpg Ada Health GmbH, a Berlin, Germany-based digital health company, raised USD90m in Series B funding. The round was led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG, with participation from Samsung Catalyst Fund, Vitruvian Partners, Inteligo Bank, F4 and Mutschler Ventures. The company intends to use the funds to advance its health assessment technology, as well as to further grow in the United States. Led by Daniel Nathrath, CEO, Ada Health has developed an AI-based health assessment and care navigation platform to understand their symptoms, to identify and differentiate conditions with medical accuracy, and to navigate safely to the right care, at the right time. The consumer app has completed over 23m assessments completed since its global launch. The companys core technology is also available in a suite of AI-driven enterprise solutions. Ada is collaborating with a range of leading health systems, insurers, life sciences companies, and global non-profit organizations to integrate its symptom assessment and care navigation solutions into a range of digital care journeys to improve outcomes for patients, consumers and healthcare providers. FinSMEs 29/05/2021 White Oak Transportation CDL Class A Regional Drivers Day Shift, Top Pay & Benefit Package At White Oak, our dedicated trucking services are designed to offer you a turn-key solution to improve your shipping efficiency. It's like owning your own personal truck without the worries of late deliveries, the liabilities, expense of maintenance and complex logistics problems. Our wide range of logistic solutions include brokerage, dedicated contract carriage, and truckload carriage throughout the Southeastern, Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic United States. The company provides a wide range of transportation solutions that includes brokerage, dedicated contract carriage, and truckload carriage in various lengths of haul throughout the Southeastern, Midwestern and Mid-Atlantic United States. Our core competencies are customer service, flexibility, and forming strategic partnerships. We have a strong team of experienced dispatchers trained to solve the problems that arise in managing truck load freight in "just in time" operations. When a problem arises we notify the customer and make them aware of the situation while also providing the solution we will employ to ensure the freight arrives on time as scheduled. recblid hhdexgbotloy8u4gpkc2rqxqowr88o Glovo, a Spanish on-demand delivery platform, will acquire multiple of Delivery Heros group companies in a series of separate acquisition deals, worth a total value of 170m. The deals, which follow a 450M ($530M) Series F funding round announced in April 2021*, enable the company to strengthen its presence in Central and Eastern Europe, further expanding its operations in Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Romania and Serbia. In derails, Glovo will acquire: the foodpanda brand in Romania and Bulgaria, the Donesi brand in Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Pauza in Croatia. The transactions in Bosnia Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia are expected to close within the next few weeks, subject to fulfilment of the conditions precedent and relevant regulatory approvals, while Romania will be completed following approval from the competition authority. In a separate deal, Glovo recently announced that it has also reached an agreement to acquire Ehrana, a local delivery company in Slovenia, for an undisclosed fee. The transaction is expected to close in the next few months and the company is now working closely with Ehrana to define the transition strategy for users, partners and couriers. Founded in Barcelona in 2015 by Oscar Pierre, CEO, Glovo provides a multi-category delivery app which operates in South West Europe, Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. The app connects users with restaurants, grocery chains, pharmacies and retail stores, and also includes an anything category that allows users to order whatever they want. * The Series F Funding Round April 1 2021, Glovo announced it raised 450M ($530M) in Series F funding round led by New York-based investment managers Lugard Road Capital and the Luxor Capital Group with participation from Delivery Hero, Drake Enterprises and GP Bullhound. The company is using the funds to expand its presence in the 20 markets in which it currently operates and focus on its newly-launched Q-Commerce division. Earlier this year, Glovo announced a 100M partnership with Swiss-based real estate firm Stoneweg to grow its network of dark stores and the hiring of new CTO, Narek Verdian, who recently served as vice-president of engineering at American Express. Verdian will oversee the expansion of the engineering team from 300 to 500 at Glovos Barcelona headquarters and its tech hubs in Madrid and Warsaw. FinSMEs 29/05/2021 Mike Cutillo is the Times executive editor. He can be reached at (315) 789-3333 Ext 264 or mcutillo@fltimes.com. MOBILE, Ala. (AP) Shell Oil Co. said Thursday it will sell an Alabama refinery designed to produce 90,000 barrels of crude oil and other products daily to Texas-based Vertex Energy for $75 million. Shell said the cash deal was part of its plan to shed refineries that aren't aligned with trading hubs, chemical plants and marketing businesses. The sale of the Mobile refinery shows that we are making good progress delivering on our manufacturing strategy, Robin Mooldijk, an executive vice president for manufacturing, said in a statement. Were becoming better positioned to deliver resilient returns and meet the increasingly diverse needs of our customers. Located on the northern end of Mobile Bay, the refinery will offer jobs to its current workforce as it changes hands. Aside from the refinery complex, Vertex will purchase its hydrocarbon inventory at the time the sale is complete, which could add from $65 million to $85 million to the deal. (CNN) -- One person has died and six others wounded after a shooting late Friday in Miami, police said. Officers responding to gunshot detection system alerts in Wynwood shortly before midnight found several people with what appeared to be gunshot wounds, Miami Police Department spokeswoman Kiara Delva said. Some shooting victims arrived at the hospital on their own, Delva said. One victim was taken to University of Miami Hospital, and six others were at Jackson Memorial Hospital, according to Delva. Delva said one person later died and six others were recovering. The shooting is being investigated, Delva said. Police released no information on a possible suspect or arrests. Detectives are searching for a silver Nissan Maxima that may have been involved in the shooting, according to police. GREENVILLE, SC (FOX Carolina)- South Carolina Highway Patrol announced on Thursday that they identified the suspect responsible for the deadly hit and run that killed an Upstate teacher in Greenville on Sunday. Position Objective: Contributes to the provision of high-quality, cost-effective healthcare as a provider of direct and indirect patient care and by effective of the health care team. Functions as a competent member of the health care team. Essential Job Duties: Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions. 1. Clinical Decision Making/Judgment Demonstrates clinical nursing knowledge and skill in the specialization of the unit. Demonstrates the ability to apply the nursing process effectively in the care of culturally diverse patients and families. Demonstrates the ability to utilize all applicable laws, policies, standards, guidelines and evidence-based practice in the provision of patient/family care. Organizes and reprioritizes patient care activities based on subtle and overt and/or environmental changes. Consistently and thoroughly assesses patients to collect data and identify learning needs according to established standards and policies. Utilizes a systematic, continuous and complete analysis of assessment data to develop individualized problem lists for assigned patients. Develops and individualizes a plan of care for each patient in accordance with established standards, appropriate prioritization of problems/needs, and mutually agreed upon goals. Efficiently implements the patient's plan of care in accordance with applicable standards, policies, procedures and guidelines. Demonstrates proficiency in medication administration, pain management and other unit or initiative specific skills. Continuously evaluates the effectiveness of the plan(s) of care, making revisions and recommendations based on analysis of patient responses to interventions. 2. Nurse-Patient Family Relationships Demonstrates the ability to assess the patient's/family's learning needs, readiness to learn, learning style, and presence of barriers to learning. Demonstrates the ability to develop, implement and evaluate teaching plans for patient populations in unit specialty in accordance with applicable standards. Demonstrates the ability to apply knowledge of growth and development across the life span to the care of patients. Provides direct patient care to patients and families in a culturally, developmentally and ethically appropriate manner. Plans of care address the physical, psychosocial, spiritual and learning needs of the patient/family. 3. Clinical Scholarship Participates in QI, CPI and risk management activities at the unit, department or organizational level. Demonstrates the ability to effectively perform and improve all processes in order to achieve excellence with regard to AAMC's quality standards and benchmarks. Supports the use of evidence based guidelines and organizational policies and procedures to promote safe patient care and a safe practice environment. 4. Clinical Leadership Participates in unit shared governance according to departmental standards. Participates in the education and orientation of new staff. Delegates patient care activities as appropriate; evaluates delegated activities for expected patient care outcomes. Employs real time computer documentation when completing patient record. Educational/Experience Requirements: Graduate of an accredited school of nursing Adherence to the credentialing requirements of AAMC as stated in the nursing bylaws. Required License/Certifications: Current licensure as a registered nurse by the Maryland Board of Nursing. BLS - American Heart Association Healthcare Provider certification Working Conditions, Equipment, Physical Demands: There is a reasonable expectation that employees in this position will be exposed to blood-borne pathogens. Physical Demands - Medium work. Exerting up to 50 pounds of force occasionally, and/or up to 30 pounds of force frequently, and/or up to 10 pounds constantly to move objects. The physical demands and work environment that have been described are representative of those an employee encounters while performing the essential functions of this position. Reasonable accommodations may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act. The above job description is an overview of the functions and requirements for this position. This document is not intended to be an exhaustive list encompassing every duty and requirement of this position; your supervisor may assign other duties as deemed necessary. Yes! I think the restaurants should keep as much outdoor seating as possible now and after the pandemic ends It depends on the setup. I like some outdoor options a lot more than others I always prefer to eat inside the restaurant I dont really care Vote View Results FILE - This is a March 7, 2019 file photo of former Denmark Prime Minister Poul Schlueter. Schlueter, Denmarks prime minister for over a decade who negotiated exemptions for his country to a key European Union treaty after Danes rejected the initial text in a referendum, has died. He was 92. Denmarks prime minister from 1982-1993 died Thursday, May 27, 2021 surrounded by his family, the leader of the party that Schlueter once headed said in a statement on Friday. (Soeren Bidstrup/Ritzau Scanpix via AP, File) Galveston, TX (77553) Today Mostly sunny. High around 90F. Winds S at 10 to 20 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear skies. Low 79F. Winds SW at 10 to 15 mph. "The investigations will happen with or without Republicans," declared Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the Republicans who voted to move forward. "To ensure the investigations are fair, impartial and focused on the facts, Republicans need to be involved." The vote was in part a GOP attempt to placate Trump, or avoid his reprisals, as he has kept a firm hold on the party since his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. The former president told his supporters to "fight like hell" to overturn his defeat before the siege and continues to falsely say he won the election claims shouted by his supporters as they stormed the building. Trump called the commission legislation a "Democrat trap." Friday's vote the first successful use of a Senate filibuster in the Biden presidency was emblematic of the profound mistrust between the two parties since the siege, especially among Republicans, with some in the party downplaying the violence and defending the rioters. The vote also is likely to galvanize Democratic pressure to do away with the filibuster, a time-honored procedure typically used to kill major legislation. It requires 60 votes to move ahead, rather than a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed support from 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} This is a community calendar. To accommodate demand for the print edition, we ask that items be brief and include time, date, place, address, admission cost and a contact number for publication. Inclusion of items is at the discretion of the newspaper. Further information is available at 541-812-6078 or jane.stoltz@lee.net. Assistance MONDAY Food distribution, by appointment, food pantry, North Corvallis Ministry Center, home of the Gathering Church, 5050 NE Elliott Circle. Call the church office at 541-220-1040 to make arrangements to pick up a box of food. Food pantry for veterans and active military members and their families, American Legion Post 10, 1215 Pacific Blvd. SE, Albany. Call 541-926-0127 between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. Mondays through Fridays for more information. Gettysburg, PA (17325) Today Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 64F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 64F. Winds light and variable. China rejects Japan-EU remarks on Taiwan Xinhua) 15:18, May 29, 2021 BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- A foreign ministry spokesperson Friday said that China deplores and rejects relevant Taiwan remarks in a joint statement of the Japan-EU summit. China vows to continue defending its national sovereignty, security, and development interests. "The relevant remarks by Japan and Europe have completely gone beyond the scope of normal development of bilateral relations and are harmful to international peace and stability, mutual understanding, and trust among regional countries, not to mention the interests of a third party," spokesperson Zhao Lijian said. Zhao made the remarks at a daily press briefing. China will never allow any country to interfere in Taiwan-related issues in any way, he said. He noted that Japan, for some time, has made an issue out of China on various occasions, portraying China as a threat. Japan gangs up with a few others to pursue geopolitical confrontation, throwing mud at China. Japan's slander is based on lies and false information and grossly interferes in China's internal affairs. "Japan's wrong approach goes against the trend of the times of peace and win-win results and brought adverse effects on bilateral relations and regional stability," he said. Zhao stressed that in dealing with China, megaphone diplomacy is not the right approach. Attacks and smears will backfire, ganging up won't help, and coercion and confrontation are a dead end. "We hope Japan will know better than to go further down the wrong path," he said. Enditem (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Optional Education Program Coordinator General Information & Responsibilities GENERAL RESPONSIBILITIES : The Optional Education Program Coordinator provides coordination of the Truants Alternative/Optional Education Program (TAOEP) and the Early School Leavers Transition Program (ESLTP) in compliance with Illinois Community College Board (ICCB) and Illinois State Board of Education requirements. Serves as a liaison with cooperating school districts. Responsible for grant applications and related data and fiscal reporting. Description of Duties DESCRIPTION OF ESSENTIAL DUTIES : Articulates program vision and goals to students, staff, parents, cooperating school districts, Black Hawk College personnel, and the community. Evaluates previous school records and leads a multi-disciplinary team comprised of instructors, advisors, and counselors to work with students and parents in the creation of each students individualized plan for secondary completion, career development, and transition to postsecondary training or employment. Maintains a safe and orderly climate that fosters student learning and personal development. Evaluates instructional curricula and works with instructors to modify or create new curricula to meet student needs. Hires instructional and support staff. Secures financial resources to operate through writing the annual TAOEP and ESLTP grants as well as other related grant applications when available. Submits required data and fiscal reports on a timely basis. DESCRIPTION OF OTHER JOB DUTIES: Works with assigned Adult Education staff to provide professional development opportunities for faculty and staff. Performs other job-related duties as assigned. OVERALL ACCOUNTABILITIES : Demonstrates BHC core values. Maintains accuracy and efficiency of work. Demonstrates dependability. Maintains up-to-date job knowledge of Adult Education programs and services. Maintains up-to-date job knowledge of job related computer software and applications. Works cooperatively with others. Communicates professionally and in a pleasant manner. Maintains student confidentiality, security and permanency of all student records/information. PRINCIPAL WORKING RELATIONSHIPS : Reports directly to the Director of Adult Education. Works directly with students and parents. Works directly with agency and school district personnel. Works cooperatively with Adult Education and other College employees. Education & Experience EDUCATION AND EXPERIENCE : (To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill, and/or ability required.) Bachelors degree with a focus on education or social services and two years of experience working with at-risk youth in an educational or social service setting required. Masters degree with a focus on education or social services strongly preferred. Professional Educator License with Endorsements in either Secondary Education, Learning Behavior Specialist, Principal, School Counselor, or Social Worker preferred. Management experience demonstrated through responsibilities such as employee supervision, grant administration, and/or budget management required. Experience working with diverse populations required. The above statements reflect the general details necessary to describe the principle functions of the described job; it is not an all-encompassing statement of all the work requirements that may be necessary to perform the job. Supplemental Information Work hours are Monday Friday, 8am 5pm, but candidate must be flexible to meet business needs. Official transcripts will be required of any candidate hired for this position. Salary range for this position is $37,893 - $40,880 per year. BHC provides an outstanding benefits package with comprehensive medical, dental, vision, and Rx insurance on first day of employment, free life and LDT insurance, pension thru SURS, paid holidays, paid vacation, paid sick, and paid personal days, and much more! Black Hawk College does not sponsor employment visas. BENEFITS While you contribute your talent and enthusiasm to BHC, as an eligible employee you will have access to outstanding health benefits, ample time off, a pension plan, educational opportunities, and much more. Core Benefits Medical Prescription Drug Plan Mail Order Pharmacy Dental Vision Basic Life Insurance Tuition Waiver Employee Assistance Program Long-Term Disability Flexible Spending Account (FSA)/Dependent Care Account (DCA) Paid Holidays Free use of fitness center Sick Leave Vacation Personal Days Retirement Pension Plans State University Retirement System of Illinois (SURS): Employees working in a regular and continuous position or one in which services are expected to be rendered on a continuous basis for at least four months or one academic term, whichever is less, may be eligible to enroll in SURS. To learn more about SURS, visit www.SURS.org. Optional 403b Tax-Deferred Investment Program: Employees may set up a 403b plan through Edward Jones Investments/Mass Mutual. recblid trnm45mutv1o8lgm4gvualu97rv3dz FROM WYOFILE: Wyoming just got $500M from Bidens rescue plan. Now what? You asked. We listened. Your daily crossword, Sudoku and dozens of other puzzles are now available online. Play them or print them here. Play now Gloucester and Rockport firefighters knock down a fire that had started in the basement at a home on Colonial Street in Gloucester and quickly spread to the attic May8, 2015. A state court has ruled that the homeowner's insurance policy did not cover losses of the relatives living in the home. Milwaukee, WI (53187) Today Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 87F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Low 58F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Illinois Senate President Don Harmon, D-Oak Park, center, answers questions during the Illinois Senate Redistricting Committee hearing at the Illinois State Capitol in Springfield, Ill., Friday, May 28, 2021. Goshen, IN (46526) Today Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms early, then partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 65F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Note: We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email circulation@skagitpublishing.com for help creating one. Many Grands Prix will still be held behind closed doors in 2021, but in Austria Red Bull Racing advisor Helmut Marko has come up with a clever trick. This allows no less than 39,000 fans to be present at the Red Bull Ring. Thirteen times more spectators "The grandstands will have their own entrances and exits," Marko explained at Formel1.de. "This means that each grandstand is a unit in itself and no one comes into contact with each other." This trick allows for far more people to attend the Red Bull Ring than first thought. In Austria, only 3,000 spectators are allowed per open-air event, but because the entrances and exits are distributed over thirteen grandstands, the Red Bull Ring can accommodate thirteen times 3,000 spectators. Two races in Austria With the cancellation of the Canadian and later the Turkish Grand Prix, Austria will host two races, just as it did in 2020. The Styrian Grand Prix is scheduled for June 27, while the Austrian Grand Prix will be held a week later on July 4. Lewis Hamilton is preparing for a fierce battle this season. Where the Englishman won the world titles relatively easy in the past, it is Max Verstappen who is on top of the rankings for the time being. Jacques Villeneuve gives Verstappen a good chance this season. The Dutchman has shown in the first five races that he doesn't give up easily. Although Mercedes is still the better driver on certain circuits, Red Bull has made up for lost time. Villeneuve likes to see Verstappen fight. "Lewis has done the same with Nico (Rosberg, ed.) in the past. He keeps it clean, but he does go to the limit. It looked like he was holding back, but he wasn't," he states in conversation with Motorsport-magazin.com. However, Villeneuve believes Hamilton is not to be underestimated either. "With Nico, it was obvious when he was being aggressive, but with Lewis, it's not the case. That's why I look at it like that, it's just normal for Verstappen to do it like that. How Lewis does, it's because of experience, he knows which battles to take on and which not. He has made the right choices." GP of Azerbaijan This coming weekend the next Grand Prix is on the programme. The drivers of Mercedes and Red Bull will then fight for pole position again on the street circuit of Azerbaijan. Evers & Company, CPAs, LLC is a Certified Public Accounting and Consulting Firm located in the Central Missouri Area. We currently have openings for this position at both our Jefferson City and Osage Beach locations. Candidates should be team players who are interested in providing high quality service to clients in an environment where integrity, quality and service are valued. Qualifications for this position require bookkeeping experience and knowledge of general ledger and payroll processing. Additional qualifications should include experience in the use of QuickBooks and/or other accounting software applications. A bachelors degree in business would be a plus for this position, however extensive bookkeeping experience will be a major consideration in filling this position. Evers & Company benefits include an excellent compensation program, medical coverage, life insurance, cafeteria plan, and a 401(k) retirement plan. Interested candidates can click "APPLY" for consideration today! Evers & Company is an equal opportunity employer. In accordance with anti-discrimination law, it is the purpose of this policy to effectuate these principles and mandates Evers & Company prohibits discrimination and harassment of any type and affords equal employment opportunities to employees and applicants without regard to race, color, religion, sex, age, national origin, disability status, protected veteran status, or any other characteristic protected by law. Evers & Company conforms to the spirit as well as to the letter of all applicable laws and regulations. recblid p1y4c1dc29vt0xwjn0lnd6lznm045f Germanys Federal Ministry of Economics (BMWi) and the Federal Ministry of Transport (BMVI) selected 62 large-scale hydrogen projects this week, which are to be state-funded as part of a joint European hydrogen project (Important Project of Common European Interest, IPCEI). We are making Germany a hydrogen country. In doing so, we are rethinking mobilityEuropean and holisticfrom the energy system to drive technologies to the fueling infrastructure. Traffic is currently more than 95 percent dependent on the use of fossil fuels. We therefore urgently need mobility that relies on renewable energies. Green hydrogen and fuel cells areacross all modes of transporta great addition to pure battery vehicles. The fact is: we must and want to promote the switch to climate-friendly mobility urgently. In order to cover all areas of mobility with zero-emission solutions, we need technology openness. That is why we also support fuel cell technology as well as vehicle and component manufacturers, so as not to miss the boat internationally. Today we are taking a giant step towards climate-friendly mobility. Federal Minister of Transport Andreas Scheuer We want to become number 1 in the world in hydrogen technologies. To do this, we are pooling our strengths in Europe and initiating massive investments in the future technology hydrogen with the first joint European hydrogen project. That secures competitiveness and jobsin Germany as well as Europe. We are providing more than 8 billion euros in federal and state funds for the 62 German projects selected today and, with the selected projects, cover the entire value chainfrom hydrogen generation and transport to industrial applications. We are taking a big step on the way to making our economy climate-neutral. A central area for this is the steel industry as well as the chemical industry. Federal Minister of Economics Peter Altmaier The 8 billion is made up of federal and state funds. Around 4.4 billion comes from the Federal Ministry of Economics and up to 1.4 billion from the Federal Ministry of Transport. The remaining funds are made available by the federal states. Investments totaling 33 billion are to be triggered, including more than 20 billion from private investors. The 62 major hydrogen projects were selected from more than 230 project outlines received and represent the entire value chain of the hydrogen market. In the BMWi department, 50 project outlines were selected. These include project sketches for generation plants that together comprise more than 2 gigawatts of electrolysis capacity for the production of green hydrogen. This corresponds to 40% of the target set in the National Hydrogen Strategy of 5 gigawatts by 2030. Hydrogen pipeline projects will advance with a total length of around 1,700 km (1,056 miles). A particularly large amount of emissions can be saved in the CO 2 -intensive steel industry. ArcelorMittal, Stahl Holding Saar, Salzgitter Stahl and Thyssenkrupp SteelAll have submitted investment projects. A number of innovative projects in the chemical industry use the CO 2 -free production of hydrogen for the production of ammonia or synthetic fuels for freight or air traffic. The Federal Ministry of Transport is funding 12 projects in the mobility sector. These concern the development and manufacture of fuel cell systems and vehiclesfrom cars to trucks to municipal vehicles. In addition, for example, the development of a nationwide and cross-border networked hydrogen refueling infrastructure is being promoted. Also, the aerospace and maritime sector is addressed. The German projects are funded as part of a European project (IPCEI Hydrogen) together with up to 22 European partner countries. The various national projects are to be networked with one another in such a way that all countries benefit from one another and a European hydrogen economy can be built up together. Federal Minister of Economics Altmaier kicked off this initiative in December 2020 during the German EU Council Presidency. The aim is for the projects to be approved by the European Commission under state aid law this year. BMWi and BMVIwork closely and trustingly with the European Commission for this purpose. Magnolia, AR (71754) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds W at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds light and variable. Support local journalism We are making critical coverage of the coronavirus available for free. Please consider subscribing so we can continue to bring you the latest news and information on this developing story. There was a scene in the filming of Gone Mom: The Disappearance of Jennifer Dulos that still haunts Warren Christie and Annabeth Gish, the actors portraying Fotis and Jennifer Dulos in the Lifetime movie set to air next weekend. The couple had just returned from her beloved fathers funeral. An argument over money ensued with the heated discussion ending when Fotis Dulos admitted he had a mistress Michelle Troconis and contended his wife would never divorce him because their family was her only accomplishment. It struck me as incredibly mean, said Christie, who continually had to seek a balance in his portrayal of a charming high-end real estate developer and a man, according to his wife, who was prone to fits of rage and thoughts of revenge. Warren lasered me to the core, during the scene, Gish said. In interviews with Hearst Connecticut Media, the actors and the movies executive producer said they aimed to raise awareness to domestic violence while honoring the New Canaan mothers memory and respecting her family and five children. The movie, which premieres at 8 p.m. June 5 on Lifetime, chronicles the relationship of Fotis and Jennifer Dulos through the eyes of a friend. It starts with the couples chance encounter in 2003 to Fotis Dulos suicide in January 2020 as he faced murder, kidnapping and other charges in his estranged wifes death and disappearance. The disappearance drew international attention after friends reported Jennifer Dulos missing on May 24, 2019, sparking a massive search of New Canaans Waveny Park before heading upstate and leading to the initial arrests of Fotis Dulos and Troconis. While Jennifer Dulos body has never been found, she is presumed dead by investigators and her family, who did not participate in the movie project for Lifetime. Troconis and Fotis Dulos friend and attorney, Kent Mawhinney, have each pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder and their cases are still pending. Gish and Christie, both veteran actors, came into the project with differing levels of exposure to the case. Gish had followed the disappearance in the news from the start. It was salacious, scandalous, but there was a kinship I felt with Jennifer, Gist said. Christie, meanwhile, had to bring himself up to speed through the script. Sadly, its an all too common story of domestic violence and how you dont know what happens between people when they are behind closed doors, Christie said. A lot of times someones life will look good on paper, but you dont actually know whats happening. My hope is that it will resonate with people and have people talking. In early scenes, Christie is consummately charming, playing off Fotis Dulos image as a driven competitor on water and later in the world of high-end real estate. During one exchange, Fotis Dulos tells Jennifer that she is impressive and doesnt give herself enough credit. How did you possibly get by me in college? he asked his former Brown University classmate as they shared a glass of wine during their chance meeting in Colorado in 2003. I know a rogue when I see one, Jennifer replies. It was one of several moments in the film when the writers used creative license to depict how the couple interacted to move the plot forward. The movie was shot over 18 days in the Vancouver area during the pandemic. Gish had to quarantine for 14 days before filming began, leaving her and Christie ample time to discuss their portrayal of the couple and the material over Zoom chats, she said. We tried really hard to create the world of New Canaan and Farmington, Executive Producer Ilene Kahn Power said. Fotis was always dressed impeccably. Warren Christie did a fantastic job. He is the sweetest guy youll ever meet, but he captured the abuse, which was pervasive but never physical. The writers took liberties with the relationship and some of the plot twists, but the crew, including Kahn Power, were dedicated to honoring the memory of Jennifer Dulos while producing a thought-provoking film about domestic violence, the actors said. There were people on the set who opened up during filming about their own stories of abusive relationships, Kahn Power said. This one got my heart and soul, the executive producer said. I cant tell you how deeply I was affected by this. It could have been any of us. She had it all, she was beautiful, sweet and funny. Kahn Power recently discussed the movie with Carrie Luft, the close friend of Jennifer Dulos who has served as the familys spokesperson since the disappearance. Kahn Power said she assured Luft that care was taken in telling Jennifers story. I feel we did justice to her, Kahn Power said. Luft did not participate in the movie and has declined to comment about it. The friend, Audrey, who describes to police the story of Fotis and Jennifer Dulos throughout the movie, is a composite of several people, the executive producer said. At various points in the film, police recite lines from the actual arrest warrant served on Fotis Dulos, alleging he was lying in wait at her New Canaan home the morning of May 24, 2019. The film includes harrowing portrayals both of the attack on Jennifer and Fotis Dulos suicide. Not every twist and turn, many of which played out in the media over the past two years, was documented in the film. But there were scenes depicting the ugly court battle over the custody of their five children and actual police footage of the search for her remains, which spanned several Connecticut counties and tons of trash at a Hartford garbage plant. We tried to take the high road as much as possible and be as truthful as possible with the story and touch other women who are victims of abuse, Kahn Power said. In the end, Gish said she wants people to understand that Jennifer Dulos was not a victim. Although she did die, she did remove herself from the marriage and had separated her children from an abuser, Gish said. Gish and Christie hope the film will raise awareness to domestic violence in a way that is mindful of the fact the couples five children and family are still grieving and living with the case. Any time you are dealing with real people, there are children, parents and other family members who are impacted, you have to handle the story with integrity and heart, Christie said. And at the end of the day, you hope it sparks discussion and opens peoples eyes. A+E Networks is a joint venture between Hearst and The Walt Disney Company. The Israel-Palestinian conflict is far away from the United States and southern Connecticut, some 5,000 miles, and the most recent outbreak that ended with a ceasefire last week was fought with a mix of missiles and air strikes, killing hundreds of non-combatants. Turn on a laptop or open an Instagram account, and the conflict was brought home with heart-pounding urgency. And as a means of shaping American public opinion, the images found easily on social media have become another digital sector of the Israel-Palestinian struggle. On almost any social media platform, a viewer can watch horrifying images of the pain and suffering of war, typically framed in such a way as to blame the Israeli military, or Hamas militants, for the carnage. In Connecticut, some on the pro-Palestinian side seems to applaud and appreciate social media, while others in the pro-Israel camp say it distorts the facts. Still, both sides have created internet infographics to re-shape the terms used to describe the conflict, or to provide a historical narrative favorable to one cause or the other, notes a professor of Middle East Studies at the University of Connecticut. As part of an effort to influence public opinion, Jeremy Pressman said, Palestinians and Israelis push out videos, photos, commentary, etc, as they have done since the rise of social media. To pro-Palestinian activists, such as a high-school student from Newtown and a graduate student at Yale University, social media is a crucial means to bring what they say is the true nature of the conflict and the longtime suffering of the Palestinian people to the attention of the world. Social media has such an impact, said Mariam Azeez, a Newtown teenager who took part in a recent pro-Palestinian rally in Stamford, and who shares feeds from Palestine on social media. Yale graduate student Dina Omar said she believes social media accounts and raw footage from Gaza have created a better picture of the conflict. The U.S. mainstream media, its discourse, its language, often acts like a shield that obscures and confuses who is the aggressor and who is the victim, she wrote in an email. But to pro-Israel activists, like Diane Sloyer of Stamford, the social-media campaign is deceptive and dangerous, spurring antisemitism and skewing the debate to minimize terrorism. Jewish advocacy groups say the surge of engagement around the recent Israel-Palestinian conflict has also led to a raft of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. and Europe, and that antisemitism is also growing online, with some 17,000 posts on Twitter promoting hatred against Jews in one week alone. As Sloyer sees it, young people who consume news and information about the conflict from social media are being fed misinformation and disinformation. The view that because Israel protects its citizens, and uses incredible technology to defend its skies the imbalance of death means that Israel is immoral is an obscene, perverse view that basically expects more Israelis to die so that the conflict will be more even-handed. This view is prevalent on television and social media, said Sloyer, CEO of the United Jewish Federation of Greater Stamford, New Canaan and Darien. She believes social media, as well as mainstream media, are spreading false and harmful attitudes and messages about the conflict. The chairman of the Anti-Defamation League, Jonathan Greenblatt, said: We are tracking acts of harassment, vandalism and violence as well as a torrent of online abuse. Its happening around the world from London to Los Angeles, from France to Florida, in big cities like New York and in small towns, and across every social media platform. At one the most visible sites for the pro-Palestinian cause, the @eye.on.palestine Instagram site, videos of the destruction caused by Israeli airstrikes received hundreds of thousands of views. Meanwhile, at the Israel Defense Forces Instagram site, a visitor can see images of a young Israeli father taking shelter on the side of the road with a small infant during a recent rocket attack by Hamas, the the Islamic political organization and militant group which has used bombings to target civilians. YouTube is another site where the conflict has become front and center: a monologue by television host and comedian John Oliver, comparing the Israeli treatment of Palestinians to the apartheid-era treatment of Black people in South Africa, went viral on social media this month and drew its own video responses on YouTube from an Israeli comedian. The conflict on social media has been termed hashtag activism, by media scholars, and it is a front line that is deepening divisions across the U.S. and the wider world. It is part of the battle for hearts and minds, a term that described the efforts to win support during the Vietnam era. Pressman, associate professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, said shaping public opinion has been a feature of Israeli foreign policy for decades. The term Hasbara was coined to describe Israels use of public diplomacy, typically with the assistance of volunteer activists, to shape popular attitudes and belief. The term means explanation in Hebrew, but it can carry a negative connotation as propaganda or spin, as well. It is the explanation Israeli officials offer for Israels conduct, said Pressman. Social media activism had changed the rules of explanation, for both sides. Pressman, author of The Sword is Not Enough on the Arab-Israeli conflict and director of Middle East Studies at UConn, said the goal on both sides was to influence decision-makers in Washington especially given the large audience which closely follows the news from the region, from conventional sources or social media. Israel-Palestine makes a good media story, which means it gets a lot of coverage. The average viewer or reader probably sees and reads more about it than many other conflicts, the professor said. The U.S. gives Israel almost $4 billion a year in military aid. The U.S. is right in the middle of this. All of those factors make public opinion in the U.S. an important factor, Pressman said. In many ways, efforts to massage public opinion and American policy-makers is an old story, as old as propaganda itself. The British intelligence services ran an extensive covert campaign across the American media in the days before the U.S. entered World War II on the side of the Allies in late 1941, aiming to plant pro-British and anti-Nazi stories in the American press, from an office in Rockefeller Center in midtown Manhattan. The Spanish Civil War from 1936 to 1939 also saw an extensive public-opinion campaign in the U.S. and Europe to provide support to the Loyalist forces in the conflict, featuring rallies, essays, films, public art with a strong political agenda and posters. The conflict in northern Ireland generated activism and militancy in the U.S. for decades. Now, in the 21st century, anyone with a Twitter account or a handful of Facebook followers can get into the propaganda game or provide moral support for one side of a conflict or another. And that carries inherent risks in how information or disinformation can get spread, notes an expert on the Middle East and counter-terrorism. The thing about social media everybody, me included, has a love-hate relationship with it, said Hagar Chemali, a commentator and analyst from Greenwich who was the spokesperson for the United States Mission to the United Nations. It can be an amazing place to be able to engage the broader public, or be published, or showcase work. The problem is, when you have a situation this complicated, technically the conflict has been going on since 1948, it is so complicated, so nuanced, and so many different chapters that have got us to today. Without knowing that history, its hard to make a judgment call based on the videos youre seeing. They evoke emotion theyre meant to evoke a quick reaction. Chemali said skepticism is a useful tool to navigate the internet. I look at every post that has a photo or video with skepticism and try to find a way to independently verify before trusting it. ... When you have a complicated situation, social media does not help in explaining, and this is too complicated a situation for quick hits on Tik-Tok or Instagram, Chemali said.And fueling the fury is not healthy or conducive to actually getting to a solution, at all. rmarchant@greenwichtime.com GREENWICH During the COVID-19 lockdown a year ago, leaders at the YWCA Greenwich saw a dip in requests for its domestic abuse services. The decrease may have been because some victims were unable to reach out for help while they were isolated at home with an abuser or because perpetrators of abuse were monitoring their victims phones, nonprofit leaders said. When COVID-19 restrictions began to ease last fall, leaders at the YWCA Greenwich spotted a new trend: a dramatic uptick in the number of individuals needing help, especially children, and a much higher need for crisis services among those individuals. The average number of services that we would provide per client basically doubled, said Meredith Gold, director of Domestic Abuse Services at the YWCA Greenwich, which provides a variety of supports for victims of domestic violence. Reports to DCF (the Department of Children and Families) have gone up during COVID because teachers and other people who are working with kids remotely are actually getting an actual view into the home, and have seen stuff, Gold said. So theres an escalation (in violence), but also this technology, and this new way of educating that weve been doing has given us a perspective to see what might really be going on. The uptick in the need for services has continued, she said. Domestic abuse was the number one violent crime reported in town before the COVID-19 pandemic struck last spring, and since then, reports have increased according to Greenwich police. In April 2019, police logged 18 reports of domestic incidents. That number increased to 23 in April 2020, and to 38 in April 2021, according to Sgt. Brent Reeves, domestic violence coordinator for the Greenwich Police Department. The YWCA Greenwich is helping adults as well as children, who are not untouched by domestic violence, Gold said. From September 2019 to September 2020, there was a 44.5 percent increase in the number of children receiving services such as counseling, support groups and advocacy from the YWCA Greenwich, she said. From February 2020 to February 2021, the number of child clients at the YWCA Greenwich had increased by 40 percent, Gold added. Considering the data, the YWCA Greenwich made its violence prevention courses for students are priority, pivoting from a classroom approach to a virtual one during the pandemic, including its YNET program to reach out to high school students. Elizabeth Casolo, a senior at Greenwich High School, has been a part of the YNET program since her freshman year. It teaches students how to identify useful resources and help a friend who may be experiencing teen dating violence, for example, she said. Through YNET, students critique their understanding of healthy relationships and learn how to identify unhealthy behaviors in their lives or in the lives of a loved one, Casolo said. The conversations are about problem-solving and often lead to the sharing of information and useful resources, she said. Several students have approached Casolo outside of YNET to ask whether their relationships reveal a pattern of abuse. She said she hasnt witnessed many examples of unhealthy relationships, but she said many people dont feel comfortable talking about the issue, so some signals may go undetected. To be able to start the conversation with people outside of our meetings is really, really critical, because this is an issue that everyone should be informed about, Casolo said. The YNET program teaches students about consent, boundaries, intimate partner violence, healthy and unhealthy relationships, and how to identify domestic or familial abuse, if they arise, Gold said. This is a time when everyone, especially youth, are more vulnerable and at risk, not just for family violence, but also their emotional and mental wellness, she said. We know that young people ages 16 to 24 are at highest risk for being in an abusive relationship, and we also know that young people are very unlikely to talk to an adult, specifically their parents, Gold added. If they are going to talk to somebody, its likely going to be a peer. After starting YNET, the YWCA Greenwich created Girls Circle, to help middle school girls build confidence and self-esteem. Nonprofit leaders also created the Second Step program, a curriculum recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for kindergarten through eighth grade students. The lessons help students identify their feelings, avoid impulses and solve problems by using calming techniques, said Rosie Enyart, youth engagement and community educator for the YWCA Greenwich who teaches some of the violence prevention courses. The Prevention Education Program for middle school students focuses on interpersonal relationships and introduces sixth-graders to terms such as intimate partner violence, consent, boundaries and dating violence. Leslie Coplin, one of three YWCA Greenwich staff members providing the violence prevention education to more than 1,865 students in town, said she knows the courses have an impact. One student recently reached out to Coplin and expressed concerns about a close friend whose demeanor had changed after starting a new romantic relationship. An eighth-grader said she felt gas-lighted by two individuals that she had met online. Another student realized that their own behavior had, at times, met the threshold for emotional and digital abuse Coplin said. YWCA Greenwich staff said their main goal is to act as mentors and educators so students in need will feel comfortable reaching out for help. tatiana.flowers@thehour.com @TATIANADFLOWERS The Snapdragon 888-powered Realme GT 5G unveiled in March in China will arrive in Europe soon. It was also supposed to debut in India in early May as a part of the company's 3rd-anniversary celebration, but that didn't happen. And while we don't have an exact date of the GT 5G's India debut yet, Realme's Indian branch has revealed the smartphone will be introduced in the country soon. This revelation comes via a page set up by Realme on its Indian site for the Making 5G Global virtual summit it is holding on June 3. The page includes the Realme 8 5G, Narzo 30 Pro 5G, and X7 5G that are already available for purchase in India. Alongside these, the company has listed the Realme GT 5G as "Coming Soon", without telling us anything about its pricing and availability. There were some speculations about the launch of the Realme GT 5G in India, and a few days back, when we spoke with Realme employees, we were told the company was yet to take any decision regarding the GT 5G's India launch. But now that Realme has confirmed the GT 5G's India launch, you can expect the phone maker to start teasing it on social media soon. Realme GT 5G image posted on Twitter by Realme India CMO Francis Wang In addition to confirming the GT 5G's India launch, the event page also tells us that Realme is holding a 5G session in India on June 10, but it's currently unclear if Realme will introduce the GT 5G in India that day or if it has some other plans. We'll hopefully have more clarity in the coming days. Realme GT 5G That said, before introducing the GT 5G in India, Realme will announce the X7 Max 5G in the country - on May 31. The Realme X7 Max 5G is likely a rebranded GT Neo, which isn't all that different from GT 5G, so it will be interesting to see how both phones are positioned by Realme. Compared to the GT 5G, the GT Neo is lighter, has a Dimensity 1200 SoC at the helm, comes with more memory options, and charges slower at 50W. Its back cover also has a different finish. You can head this way to check out the detailed specs of GT 5G and GT Neo. Source Haiti - News : Zapping... Electricity arrives in Carice after 126 years... For the first time since the appearance of electricity in Haiti in 1895, the public electricity service will arrive at the level of the commune of Carice (North East). The construction of the solar photovoltaic (PV) plant is progressing rapidly. Petion-ville : An infant abandoned on a sidewalk On Friday, a newborn baby was found alive in an abandoned bag on a sidewalk in Petion-Ville. Appearing safe and sound, the infant was taken into the care of the authorities and taken to hospital for a check-up. Important meeting between the BM and Public Works Nader Joiseus, the Minister of Public Works, had an important working meeting with Laurent Msellat the new Representative of the World Bank. The discussions focused on strengthening existing relationships, the performance of programs related to the Transport, Energy, Water and drainage sectors. Terrier Rouge : The asphalt plant soon in operation Late Friday, May 28, a delegation led by NaderJoiseus, the Minister of Public Works, visited the asphalt plant, built in Terrier Rouge, North-East, in order to assess the progress of the works. This plant has a production capacity of 140 tonnes/hour of materials, or 4 trucks of 16m3. The first test tests are scheduled for Thursday June 3. Minister Joiseus satisfied with the progress of the work announces that other similar factories will be established in other regions of the country. UN : End of mission for Miroslav Jenca Friday, May 28, concluding his 3-day mission in Haiti, Miroslav Jenca UN Under-Secretary General met President Jovenel Moise. During his stay he met representatives of the Government, civil society, the opposition and discussed the referendum, the elections and the need for political consensus. Jenca insisted that the electoral calendar take place in an inclusive, peaceful environment and that the voice of the Haitian people be heard in a free, fair, participatory process. Stressing that violence, incitement to violence and hate speech are unacceptable. The European Union supports Haitian youth The European Union supports the citizen engagement of Haitian youth in the fight against climate change. Farmer associations are mobilizing to sustainably manage climate risks through agro-ecological innovation in the North and North East of the country. HL/ HaitiLibre Login or sign up to follow actresses, movies & dramas and get specific updates and news Login Sign Up Email Password Password Username Your E-mail will only be used to retrieve a lost password. Stay logged in Help We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Submit A Senate panel voted Wednesday to give themselves and their colleagues a big increase in their allowance and do it as soon as possible. You voted: Detectives seize 2 pounds of pot in Willow Road bust Acting on complaints from neighbors of suspected drug activity, the Crime Suppression Unit and Drug Enforcement Team of the Henderson County Sheriffs Offices arrested two men and seized of drugs and stolen property on Thursday. Detectives executed a search warrant at 152 Walnut Heights Lane in the Willow Road area of Henderson County and recovered a motor vehicle stolen from Greenville, South Carolina. Detectives also seized 2 pounds of marijuana and numerous items of stolen property from Henderson County and surrounding jurisdictions. Andrew Clay Henderson, 30 of Hendersonville was arrested and charged with one count each of driving while license revoked, possession with intent to sell/deliver marijuana, possession of marijuana paraphernalia and possession of stolen motor vehicle. Hendersons bond was set at $20,300 secured. Also, arrested at the address on an active order for arrest was Michael Anthony Waycaster, 47, of Hendersonville. Waycasters bond was set at $3,000 secured. The investigation is on-going and additional charges are expected. Free access for current print subscribers As a home delivery subscriber, you get free unlimited digital access to premium content on HenryHerald.com, including local news, local sports, obituaries, legal notices, local features, and the e-edition. All you need is your print subscription account number and your last name. Don't know your subscription number? Email access@henryherald.com with your delivery address. Activate your account now. Huntington, WV (25701) Today Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Magnolia, AR (71754) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds light and variable. Note: We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email customercare@heraldandnews.com for help creating one. The students of BCC School, Pailles took part in PSAC examination this year for the second time. The school got 100 percent success rate this year as well just like its first batch in 2019. 75% of our students got aggregate 4. Others also got very good results. Our students got their expected colleges as well. It was not the work of one year only. The work started in 2013 as from pre-primary section. Many years of hard work of the students, teachers, management team, parents, prayers of the well wishers and by the grace of God the school has got this success today. BCC is an activity based English and French medium school which prepares the kids for the current world by organising many activities. It provides milk and fruits to every child, organizes monthly medical checkup, offers provision for accident at school, organises monthly educational outings, provides educational CD/DVD etc. The school charges lowest school fee of its grade so that even middle class can afford the school. Partager et informez vous aussi...... 0 shares Share Tweet LinkedIn St. Joseph, MI (49085) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 62F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 62F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Uniontown, PA (15401) Today A mix of clouds and sun. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 83F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Some clouds. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Were taking popular American food favorites, and were putting international spins on them, Rich said. For example, a fried chicken sandwich here is our Allentown hot chicken on a bao bun with Asian slaw. So, were twisting and blending popular American dishes with other cultural influences. Our cocktails are going in that same blended direction, with a variety of tiki drinks being infused with various tropical flavors. The remains of 215 children were discovered at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children. The discovery was regarded as heartbreaking by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The children were pupils at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that shut down in 1978. The remains were found with the aid of a ground-penetrating radar specialist. According to Rosanne Casimir, chief of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc, in a statement, "We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths," reported The Guardian. Casimir remarked that some of them were as young as three years old. She called it an "unthinkable loss" that was spoken about but was not documented by school administrators. She added the preliminary findings are slated to be issued in a report in August, reported Channel News Asia. Thousands of Indigenous Children Were Sent to the School According to Tk'emlups te Secwepemc, their language and culture department supervised the project of hiring a specialist in ground-penetrating radar to uncover the remains of 215 children to affirm it was executed in a respectful and culturally appropriate way. The statement did not determine the individual or company involved or how the work was completed. They sought a way to confirm the "knowing," as mentioned by Casimir, out of deepest respect and love for such lost children and their families. They also recognized that Tk'emlups te Secwepemc is the last resting place of such children, reported CBC. The Kamloops school was situated over 200 miles, or 350 kilometers, from Vancouver. It was the largest school in the Indian Affairs residential school system. It was where thousands of Indigenous children were sent in the 19th and 20th centuries. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, large numbers of indigenous children did not return from the schools. The project was initiated in response to a lawsuit to probe into the devastating history of the school system. Read Also: Canada's 2050 Net-Zero Climate Goal: Will It Meet Emission Reduction Targets? According to Casimir, they currently have more questions than answers. The causes and timing of the children's death have yet to be known. Established in 1890, the Kamloops Indian residential school was under the leadership of the Roman Catholic church. It was shut down in 1978. It was also part of a cross-Canada network of residential schools created to forcibly assimilate indigenous children by removing them from their houses and communities. They were forbidden to perform cultural practices and speak their native languages. The tribe is working with museums and the coroner to shed more light on the heartbreaking discovery and record the fatalities. The tribe is also reaching out to the home communities of the pupils throughout British Columbia and beyond. Casimir said the findings are "preliminary." On Friday, she said community members remain "grappling" with being stunned by the news as leadership seeks steps to set forth. Related Article: Most Canadians Still Await Vaccination, Envy US Vaccine Roll-Out @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. On Friday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) formally prohibited separating kids from parents who are caught illegally crossing the United States border. It is part of an effort by the Biden administration to upend the effects of former President Donald Trump's "zero tolerance" policy. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Acting Commissioner Troy Miller released a memo to Border Patrol and CBP's Office of Field Operations heads banning the separation of children from their parents or guardians for convictions on illegal entry to the country. It also included prohibiting the referral of parents for prosecution exclusively on the grounds of illegal entry to the United States. Attorneys working to reach the migrant families separated by the previous administration have discovered parents of 54 more children in April, as indicated in a court filing on Wednesday. The parents of 391 children could not be reached, down from 445 last month, reported NBC News. Local Scientists Seek to Use DNA to Reunite Families Separated at the Border Lurie Children's doctors have proposed to reunite migrant families separated at the border. Like how consumers use DNA kits to discover lost family members, the program looks to reunite parents with their lost children. Miller's memo included an exception on national security grounds. It enables CBP and Border Patrol agents to refer illegal entry for prosecution with the approval of local counsel and high-profile officials. The guidance in his memo is intended to clarify a court order in 2018 that necessitated the DHS to reunite such families and stop separating families based on illegal entry charges, reported The Hill. Read Also: Migrant Children Staying in Improvised Shelters With Poor Conditions, Limited Access to Showers, Clean Clothes, Case Managers Pro bono attorneys commissioned to find them by a federal judge stated the parents of 227 of those children had been deported, 100 are in some place in the United States, and 14 have no contact information that the government has proferred. President Joe Biden's administration set up a task force to reunite separated families. The task force is working with the attorneys to return deported parents who have been identified. Devastating photos have been displayed -- children weeping as their parents hope to provide them a bright future in the US but instead see darkness without them. According to Sara Katsanis, a research assistant professor at Northwestern Medicine and policy research on the application of genetics in society, "A whole lot of separations over several months in 2018, and many of those families have remained separated since then," she said. "And it has been very difficult to track down find and reunify. ... For many years when migrant families crossed the US - Mexico border, they might face separation if there is some suspicion of human trafficking or endangerment of the child. In 2017 and 2018 that policy shifted to broaden the scope of separations," reported Free Children. Related Article: Joe Biden Wants COVID-19 Origins Report in 3 Months, Tasks Intelligence Community To Conduct Probe @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Scientists at the Chinese lab in Wuhan projected as a possible source of the COVID-19 pandemic were earlier filmed getting bitten and spattered with blood while handling bats with no protection. The state-run TV footage displayed researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) disregarding masks, gloves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) while handling bats and collecting feces in the field. According to a virus expert, a bat's fangs once went right through his glove. 'Bat Woman' The bats allegedly carry fatal viruses, including SARS. On December 29, 2017, Chinese state-run TV released footage designed to showcase Shi Zhengli, (), also known as "Bat Woman," and her group of scientists at the WIV in their quest to discover the SARS' origin. Even though the scientists work in a biosafety level 4 laboratory, they show a stunning disregard for safety when handling potentially infectious bats in the laboratory and the wild, reported Taiwan News. Three researchers from China's WIV became sick enough in November 2019 and got hospitalized, according to a previously undisclosed US intelligence report that could add weight to increasing calls for a fuller probe of whether the novel coronavirus may have escaped the Wuhan lab. The details of the report go beyond a State Department fact sheet. It was issued during the last days of the Trump administration. It indicated that numerous researchers at the lab, a center for the study of coronaviruses and other pathogens, became sick in autumn 2019 with symptoms consistent with the coronavirus and common seasonal illness, reported The Wall Street Journal. Read Also: Joe Biden Wants COVID-19 Origins Report in 3 Months, Tasks Intelligence Community To Conduct Probe China Says COVID Came From the Exotic Food Market When first declaring the outbreak, China stated it emerged when one customer purchased and ate a wild bat at an exotic-food market. Former President Donald Trump and Arkansas GOP Sen. Tom Cotton have been among numerous leading Republican, and conservative voices since COVID-19 arrived in the United States in late-2019 to contend that the virus perhaps began at the laboratory. The video also cut to a researcher's limb badly swollen, seemingly from a bat bite. Scientists also disclosed getting spattered with blood amid the research. The WIV leader or "Bat Woman" also remarked the odds of directly infecting humans is minimal. This was before her laboratory became the focal point of interrogations regarding the origin of COVID-19 that has recorded more than 3.5 million fatalities globally. In the footage, from 4:45 to 4:56, one scientist appeared to be holding a bat with his bare hands. Team members from 7:44 to 7:50 appeared to be collecting potentially highly infectious bat feces while donning short sleeves and shorts and with no apparent PPE other than gloves, reported New York Post. The disclosure of the number of researchers, their hospital visits, and the timing of their illnesses arrive at the eve of a meeting of the World Health Organization's decision-making body. It is slated to discuss the next phase of investigation into COVID-19's origins. Related Article: H5N8 Bird Flu Strain Poses Possibility of Another Pandemic, But Researchers Say There Is Still Opportunity to Prevent Them @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Kim Kardashian had sought protection against a man she claimed is attempting to break into her home. A man who claimed to love her and is becoming dangerously frustrated. The reality star's lawyer, Shawn Holley, rushed to court on Friday and obtained a temporary restraining order to protect her from Charles Peter Zelenoff, a 32-year-old guy who she claimed has been harassing her for months. Kim Kardashian alleged the guy keeps writing about wanting to pursue a physical relationship with her, and he's had a lot of alarming posts about trying to enter her home, according to new legal documents obtained by TMZ. She claimed in the papers that the man has filmed videos outside the edge of her property and that he is becoming increasingly frustrated about not being able to get inside. According to Kim Kardashian, she is concerned that the man could locate her home because she has never disclosed her address. He has two previous battery convictions, making him dangerous, Kim Kardashian said. Kanye West's ex-wife is forthright in the records when asked about her relationship with the man; her response is one word: "stalker." Kim Kardashian's temporary restraining order was granted, and Zelenoff is required to stay 100 yards away from her at all times. Read Also: John Cena Causes Outrage After Apologizing to China for Calling Taiwan a Country Kim Kardashian denies catching COVID-19 on birthday bash Kim Kardashian has disclosed that she tested positive for COVID-19 but went on to study for her law exam despite the illness. Late last year, fans of the Keeping Up with the Kardashians star watched her admit that she contracted the disease from her five-year-old son, Saint, which caused filming for the reality show to be halted for two weeks. In its 20th and last season, the show followed the billionaire businesswoman as she prepared for a law exam, which she failed. "We're meant to complete 12-hour study sessions every day leading up to the test, and I've simply been feeling so sick and so dreadful with COVID-19 that I can hardly get out of bed and study," she explained, citing coughing, fatigue, and fever as symptoms, BuzzFeed reported. Despite her condition, the 40-year-old was determined to take the exam. And it looks like her most recent attempt to pass the exam failed, but she reassured supporters on social media that she's "not giving up" and that she'll retake it soon. In October, Kim Kardashian's island birthday vacation was sparked by a new episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, wherein it was revealed that she had COVID-19. During the pandemic, she went on a trip to celebrate her 40th birthday with a large party on a private island. She started having COVID-19 symptoms a week before her exam, which was scheduled for November 17. "Nobody caught COVID-19 from the trip," Kim Kardashian responded, quickly debunking the rumors, as per Mirror. Saint was the first in our family to contract the virus, and he acquired it at school from another student who was the first to test positive. After he coughed on me while I was caring for him, I experienced symptoms and was diagnosed with it a few days later." Related Article: Who Is Kim Kardashian's Rumored Boyfriend @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Hunter Biden seemingly confessed in an audio recording that recently surfaced that he "smoked crack" with the late former Washington DC Mayor Marion Barry. In a phone call that reportedly took place in January 2019, the son of President Joe Biden said to a friend that he ran into Barry at a local bar while he was in college at Georgetown University. During the 8-minute, 15-second audio clip, the son of the president and another man were arguing whether slain civil rights icons Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. used cocaine. "Although the mayor from DC did," the other man remarked. "Marion Barry," Biden replied. "You know what? I actually smoked crack with Marion Barry. I swear to f-king God," reported New York Post. Admission Saved on Hunter's Abandoned Laptop The confession in the call was saved on Biden's abandoned laptop. It contradicted the president's son's memoir claim that his indictment as a teenager scared him off drugs until after his college years. He also recorded many of his calls and saved them on his laptop, reported Daily Mail. Biden remarked that he would go to a place next to a currently closed bar near Georgetown University. The recording was acquired by the Daily Mail and was part of the hard drive contents from a damaged laptop left at a computer repair shop in Delaware in 2019 that is regarded to have belonged to Biden, reported Washington Examiner. In the call with Biden's unidentified friend, dated January 5, 2019, he berated the friend for being "racist" by suggesting King took cocaine. In his memoir Beautiful Things, released in April 2021, he wrote that he ended up doing a pretrial intervention with half a year of probation to have his arrest removed from his record. He divulged it voluntarily amid a 2006 Senate committee hearing as part of his nomination to the board of directors of Amtrak. Read Also: Joe Biden Wants COVID-19 Origins Report in 3 Months, Tasks Intelligence Community To Conduct Probe Barry's Drug Addiction Like the president's son, Barry had a history of drug addiction. He was caught in 1990 by federal authorities during a sting smoking crack on camera in a hotel room. He was taken into custody for six months. He then continued a successful career in politics and was elected as mayor of Washington DC again in 1994. Barry was also constantly associated with corruption during his long tenure as a Democratic powerhouse in DC. He passed away in 2014. Hunter Biden's Drug Addiction Biden graduated from Georgetown University in 1992. His bout with drug addiction and alcoholism was addressed to the public. Barry's affair with cocaine as well was something that was known publicly and covered broadly by the media, but it never stood in the way of his political career. Joe Biden's second son had attracted media attention since October 2020 when the New York Post published an expose on him claiming that the elder Biden was involved in his son's business negotiations abroad during his tenure as vice president. The newspaper stated this might constitute a conflict of interest. Related Article: Joe Biden Test Drives New F-150, Shares Speed Information He Was Not Supposed To @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Senate Republicans blocked a bipartisan panel to investigate the January 6 US Capitol riot. The Senate voted 54-35 on Friday to discuss the bill, falling short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster, which prevents the bill from being debated. With the support of 35 Republicans, the House passed legislation to establish the panel. The vote was called by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to put the attention on Republicans who were unwilling to investigate what prompted the attack that left five people dead and 140 police officers injured. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House's chief deputy press secretary, stated after the vote on Friday that "Senators aren't sent to Washington to rubber-stamp the positions of any political party. They take an oath to uphold and defend the United States Constitution. Unfortunately, they failed to do so today," USA Today reported. To accelerate vote on the commission, the Senate also postponed votes on research-and-development measures to fight China until June, which would strengthen the semiconductor industry and encourage attempts to compete better with China in science and technology, among other things. However, the measure, which has widespread bipartisan support, became heated after a handful of Republican senators requested revisions to address issues such as border security. McConnell was among the Republicans who opposed the Capitol riot probe The commission was opposed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky. He stated that the Justice Department has already charged 445 people with the attack, with additional arrests imminent. To avoid such an attack, he said, legislative committees are already holding hearings and developing recommendations. Democrats want to prosecute Trump, who was impeached in the House and charged with inciting the insurgency. The former President was found not guilty by the Senate. Senators Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Rob Portman of Ohio, Mitt Romney of Utah, and Ben Sasse of Nebraska were among the Republicans who favor the commission. Despite opposition from former President Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., the House enacted the legislation on May 19 to establish the independent commission with the support of 35 Republicans. However, the bill faced an uphill battle in the Senate, split 50-50, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also opposed to the commission. McConnell contended that the inquiry into the January 6 incident is already complete. The GOP filibuster on the January 6 panel means the bill is likely dead for the time being. However, its defeat will undoubtedly increase pressure on Democrats to repeal the legislative filibuster and replace it with a simple majority vote to pass future legislation. They assaulted police officers, vandalized Capitol property, and demanded the assassination of then-Vice President Mike Pence, Fox News reported on the January 6 Capitol riot. The election certification process in Congress was briefly halted when the mob forced lawmakers to flee the chambers and take refuge. After the attack, 140 police officers were hurt, and five individuals died, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who suffered a stroke resulting from the incident. Read Also: Fourth Stimulus Check: These Are the People Continuing To Call for It, Will It Ever Be Approved? Why do Republicans want a nonpartisan Capitol riot probe? The measure proposed a committee made up equally of Democrats and Republicans, similar to the one that investigated the terrorist acts of September 11. Per Reason.com, the objective was that its results would be more widely accepted than the charges that led to Trump's second impeachment or the findings of ongoing Democratic congressional probes. At the same time, the committee would have had greater scope than the Justice Department inquiry indicated by McConnell, taking into account security failures, presidential misconduct, and possible crimes. Both of those advantages, in McConnell's opinion, were reasons to oppose the commission. While McConnell appeared to be outraged by the riot and the presidential falsehoods that provoked it at first, he quickly abandoned any attempt to separate the Republican Party from Trump's personality cult. McConnell soon realized that Trump's dominance of the Republican Party was unavoidable, so there was no electoral benefit in focusing on the former President's wild conspiracy theories or the violence his supporters sparked. Based on that assumption, any additional interest in those topics can be quickly rejected as overtly political, which is better for the party. Related Article: Capitol Police Officers Express 'Disappointment' at GOP Opposition to January 6 Commission; Citing McConnell, Mccarthy's Lack of Leadership @YouTube @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. In a city as immensely walkable, densely populated, and tourist-friendly as San Francisco, outdoor advertising is easy to come by. What's not easy is making them distinctly memorable. And with the large number of creative software companies that call San Francisco home, they are commonly responsible for some of the best and most attention-grabbing outdoor campaigns. Let's take a look at some of the unforgettable outdoor software advertising of all time in the City by the Bay. 'Thinking about moving to Miami?' In February 2021, AdQuick was responsible for a series of unique (and enraging depending on who you ask) billboards for Francis Suarez, the major of Miami who was attempting to lure talented San Franciscans to his town. The ads were designed to resemble a tweet directly from the mayor: "Thinking about moving to Miami? DM me." The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the ad, large and loud sitting off the Ninth Street and Civic Center exit on U.S. Highway 101, was funded by Shervin Pishevar, an investor who, you guessed it, owns a home in Miami Beach. It was an inspired attempt to capitalize on the high cost of living in San Francisco, especially during the pandemic. Other cities in the United States also hoped to inspire tech-savvy workers to spread their wings. No word on how many DM-ed Suarez about a job. 'Ask Your Developer' Twilio's three-word advertisement shows that the best things can come in small practices. With three words - "Ask Your Developer" - as well as a small logo on stark red, the ad practically launched the technology start-up from nowhere to household-name recognition. Simple and simply effective. Brex Goes All In Going for the opposite approach compared to Twilio, Brex advertised its corporate card for start-up by basically blanketing San Francisco with ads through an integrated campaign in various - and seemingly all - places. It seemed to be very cost-effective, with about $300,000 used to cover the city for the campaign. Rippling vs. Gusto Billboard battle! In 2020, employee onboarding tech start-up Rippling debuted a billboard that directly challenged fellow human relations company Gusto: "Outgrowing Gusto? Presto change-o." Ouch. Gusto got its revenge by issuing a cease-and-desist order, forcing Rippling and Clear Channel Outdoor to take down the billboard. Adding to the drama: Rippling claims that the ad is technically true because several of its customers have left Gusto to work with them. Tickled Pink Ridesharing company Lyft takes pride in its distinctive, bright pink logo that helps separate it from the ridesharing pack. In 2016, it took its pink love to the next level. Lyft decided to celebrate (and uniquely advertise) leasing a historic building for its new hub for Lyft drivers in San Francisco by painting a giant car pink that's sitting on an even more giant pole atop the hub next to Highway 101. The van once read "Bell Plumbing." Now it just reads, really, really pink. At the hub, drivers can hang out and take breaks but also take classes from the company. Visit https://www.adquick.com/billboard-locations/california/san-francisco for some of the most popular billboard locations in San Francisco. @ 2021 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Politicizing COVID-19 origin tracing disrespectful to science, life Xinhua) 15:19, May 29, 2021 BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Lately, some people in the West have played the old trick of political hype on the origin tracing of COVID-19. Such smear campaigns and blame-shifting games are disrespectful to science, irresponsible to people's lives, and impede concerted global efforts to fight the virus. Origin tracing of the virus is a scientific issue. The purpose is to improve understanding of the virus and better guard against infectious diseases in the future. China takes the origin-tracing work seriously with a responsible attitude and has made positive contributions that are widely recognized. A research report of the joint WHO-China study presented authoritative, formal, and scientific conclusions, which stressed it is "extremely unlikely" that the virus was leaked from a Chinese laboratory. However, certain politicians in Washington have repeatedly called for a reinvestigation of China. They ignored the facts, science, and questions surrounding their own traceability and tragic failure in the COVID-19 fight. It shows that some politicians in the U.S. are not interested in scientific origin tracing. Instead, they want to use the pandemic to stigmatize and engage in political manipulation and cover their own incompetence. The pandemic is still causing massive damage in today's world. Politicizing origin tracing will complicate origin tracing itself, breed "political virus" and seriously hamper international cooperation in the battle against the pandemic. According to the clues, reports, and research, the COVID-19 pandemic occurred in various places worldwide early in the second half of 2019. To better cope with unexpected pandemics in the future, it is crucial to support a comprehensive study of all early cases of COVID-19 found worldwide and a thorough investigation into some secretive bases and biological laboratories all over the world. It is necessary to have a full, transparent, and evidence-based investigation into the origin of the virus. Meanwhile, certain western politicians should stop spreading their conspiracy theory to scapegoat China and stop breeding "political virus." (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Guys like me thrive in crisis situations. But the longer you are in combat, the more your nature begins to change. Our wires get crossed. You might be in a mall at home on leave, but hypervigilance mode is going through the roof. I feel as if I have to pay close attention to details and I cant turn it off in a normal situation. We dont have a switch. For so long and for so often, I needed to keep the team alive. Urgency becomes the norm. This lifestyle has completely eroded my nerves. You bet - Ill be there all weekend. I plan to be there at least part of the time. Im still a little leary because of the crowds. Vote View Results Thank you! You've reported this item as a violation of our terms of use. This content was contributed by a user of the site. If you believe this content may be in violation of the terms of use, you may report it. Pennsylvania state parks in March 2020 encouraged people to continue visiting and walk the trails while closing indoor facilities to help slow the spread of the coronavirus. In August, as now, visitors were urged to find less crowded parks to avoid overcrowding as the spread of the virus intensified. Clap Out ceremony celebrates grads Those in attendance at the ceremony listened as Kensean Hubbard pointed to one of the most important factors allowing him and his fellow graduates to succeed despite an unprecedentedly challenging year: hope. We have been through a lot this year, Hubbard said in a Klein ISD news announcement. Some of us have lost our family, our friends, and even our homes during the freeze. But one thing we didnt lose is hope. We pushed ourselves past the limit we never thought wed pass. Dont give up on the things you want in life, do it for yourselves and your loved ones. Klein ISD held a Clap Out ceremony honoring 76 graduates of the districts Vistas High School Program and Klein Success Academy, which are programs that provide students an opportunity to complete high school with extensive support and guidance from their educators and administration, states the announcement. It brings me great joy to be part of this ceremony to celebrate the graduating seniors from Vistas and Klein Success Academy, said Klein ISD Superintendent Jenny McGown. They have worked so hard to get to this moment, and it makes me so proud to see them exit with their purpose and go on to the next chapter of their life and achieve great things, not only for our community but for our world. Vistas Principal Debbie Pennington expressed pride in the students achievement. We look to you as young adults now to help guide us to a better future, Pennington said. Be kind to others and make a difference in this world. This is not the end of your goal-setting; this is just the beginning. Two graduates, Maya Chalico and Logan Jahnke, were also awarded scholarships from Lone Star College-University Park during the ceremony. -From the Klein ISD website Family members graduate from Parent University A total of 177 family members were celebrated during a commencement ceremony in May as graduates of Klein ISDs Parent University a program that empowers families to be engaged in their students education. According to a Klein ISD announcement, the program has expanded since it was launched in the 2013-2014 school year at Klein Intermediate School. This years graduates included family members of students from Benfer Elementary, Blackshear Elementary, Eiland Elementary, Epps Island Elementary, Grace England Early Childhood Center, Greenwood Forest Elementary, Kaiser Elementary, Klein Forest High School, Klein Intermediate, Klein Oak High School, Klenk Elementary, Mahaffey Elementary, McDougle Elementary, Mittelstadt Elementary, Nitsch Elementary, and Wunderlich Intermediate. On HoustonChronicle.com: Athletes ink letters of intent on final signing day Being able to participate in Parent University has helped me to make meaningful partnerships with the school, teachers, and community, Olga Suarez, Kaiser Elementary Parent University grad, said in the announcement. I do not have enough words to express my gratitude for the great support and help the program provided so I can be an agent of change for the wellness of my children. -From the Klein ISD website Signs promote seat belt safety People gathered in the Klein Collins High School parking lot this week to witness the reveal of a seat belt safety road sign one of several that were permanently installed at all Klein ISD middle and high schools. The initiative was being carried out in memory of Kailee Mills, who died in a car crash in 2017 after briefly removing her seat belt. Her loved ones launched the Kailee Mills Foundation to help promote seat belt safety awareness. Kailee was a student at Klein Collins and would have celebrated her 20th birthday on May 27, states a media announcement. On HoustonChronicle.com: Klein Collins senior overcomes barriers on and off the track -From the Kailee Mills Foundation Klein ISD offering free meals Klein ISD will start its Summer Meal Program Tuesday, June 1, where certain sites will be providing free meals for local children 18 and younger and enrolled students with disabilities up to 21 years of age via a partnership with the Texas Department of Agriculture, the district announced in a news release. The Seamless Summer Option Program is managed by TDA to provide no-cost meals for individuals during the non-academic year. Families throughout the state can also find a meal site by calling 2-1-1 to talk to a live operator, visiting SummerFood.org to see a site locator map and texting FOODTX or COMIDA to 877-877. For information regarding locations, dates and times in Klein ISD for the summer meal program, visit https://kisd.us/food. -From the Klein ISD website Spring student to represent congressional district Spring High senior Ruth Hardy was congratulated by U.S. Representative Kevin Brady Tuesday, May 25 after her painting Before Nightfalls was chosen by the congressmans office to represent Texas Eighth Congressional District as a winner of the annual nationwide Congressional Art Competition, Spring ISD announced in a news release. Im just honored that I won, Hardy said via Spring ISD. Theres a lot of good artists here in Houston, and the fact that I was chosen just gives me a big confidence boost. It just makes me want to get better and better and better. Hardys painting will be a part of a special gallery, along with others who were selected in their respective districts, to be on display in the halls of the U.S. Capital next year, the district announced. Brady told Spring ISD that Hardys painting was special. Ruths work just stood out in so many ways, both the subject matter and the complexity of how she painted it, and its just a great piece of artwork, Brady said. Were really thrilled to be able to honor her. Other notable achievements for Hardy include winning best award at the Spring ISD Rodeo Art Contest and having her painting The Chicken Wispeher be selected for the Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo School Art Auction where it got a winning bid of $13,000. She also won awards in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards national competition, the Texas Art Education Associations Visual Arts Scholastic Event, and the Pearl Fincher Museum of Fine Arts Student Art Contest. Brady also presented Spring High art teacher Lizbeth Ramagnoli with a congressional commendation for supporting and encouraging students during the competition. Hardy credits all past art teachers for helping and inspiring her through this journey and hopes to represent the underrepresented, promote greater equity in the professional art world, and to give African Americans and other people of color a chance to see themselves and their stories reflected in her work. Hardy will be presented with a chance to visit Washington D.C., tour the U.S. Capitol, and see the student gallery. As of May 26, she plans on attending the University of Houston to study art. I still have a long way to go and a lot more to learn, but Im happy for my growth so far, and my journey has just begun, Hardy said via Spring ISD. -From the Spring ISD website Spring ISD showcases new school Prospective families are invited to tour Spring ISDs new School for International Studies, located at Bammel Middle School and launching this August, Tuesday June 1 at 8 a.m. or at 6 p.m. showcasing what students will be offered in their dual language program, the district announced in a news release. Only students in pre-K thru second grade are being recruited right now by the program but a grade level is expected to be added annually until it reaches 8th grade. The school will come with its own wing of the campus, separate entrance, and outdoor play area for youngsters. The Asia Society is developing the two-way dual language immersion program, in partnership with Spring ISD, for middle school students to have the chance to learn other languages like French, German, Mandarin and American Sign Language. Hirsch Elementary and Clark Primary school students presently enrolled in dual languages programs are encouraged to enroll in the program. Spanish will be presented at the Elementary level with other languages accessible once in middle school. The goal is to develop scholars who are bilingual, biliterate, bicultural and ready to take on the challenges of our global society, Chief of Innovation and Equity Lupita Hinojosa said via the district. We are very excited to be able to offer this international focus at what will become our districts first pre-K through eighth grade campus. The benefits include a continuity of learning that will ensure success in high school and beyond. The district intends to screen newly enrolled students for the Gifted and Talented program to set up gifted student classes. We know that students who are able to learn two languages are high-ability kids, so this is an opportunity to identify, challenge and enrich these learners so they can really grow and be successful, said Bammel Middle School Principal Corey LeDay. As we eventually create one integrated pre-K through 8th grade campus, were going to see these very strong students make a seamless transition into middle school where they are going to get additional opportunities to explore world cultures and global competencies. -From the Spring ISD website alvaro.montano@chron.com Its been a long time. For 52 years, Bobbie Taylor had never experienced the thrill of a graduation. No cap. No gown. No family in the bleachers to cheer for her. No graduation photos. No graduation party. Nada. The pain of missing that graduation stung for years. On HoustonChronicle.com: College pairs new weather station with localized meteorology class this fall I had to drop out of high school to take care of myself and so I missed my graduation with my peers, she said. At 18, she became pregnant. Caring for two kids one after the other prevented her from being able to study for the GED. And even if she could prepare and take the test, she just didnt have the money. In early 2000, she finally achieved her dream of graduation when she passed her GED, but there was no graduation celebration. Four years ago, she felt like her obligation to her adult children had been fulfilled and she could focus on going back to school. When she walked through the doors of Lone Star College-North Harris, she could have never anticipated the challenges she would face, but she did it. On HoustonChronicle.com: Couple fulfills dream with Cafe ZunZun opening in Cypress She lived in Florida for 24 years and came to Texas in 1992. Her marriage dissolved shortly after and her ex returned to Florida, leaving her alone with the kids. It was easier for me to find a job and raise my kids in Texas than in Florida, she said. She got her start in electrical work as a helper in the refineries working for Brown & Root. At the time, there was a Level 1, 2, and 3. I was a third-class helper. I was the lowest of the lowest, she laughed. The income change was life changing. I went from waiting tables and making $2.01 plus tips to $17.75 an hour. I thought I was in high cotton, she said. She worked there for five years before going to the city of Houston in 2006. In 2017, she started her lifelong desire of going to college. When we grew up, we were poor and didnt have the opportunities to do some of the things others had the opportunity to do, she said. She will be the first in her generation to attend college and finish an associate degree. Her major was architectural design and she will return in the fall for the management aspect for the same major. Working for the city, I hope I can move up into management with my degree, she said. She accomplished all of her work while still holding down a job and working a rotating shift. I work seven days straight, then get two days off, and then six straight, and two days off again, then another seven straight and finish with four days off, she said. It took her four years to complete the two-year degree, but there was no way she was going to be able to complete the work required and stay employed too. She arrived first. Not another soul was there when she got in line. When Taylor arrived, they checked her in at one station, and from that one to the next where she would receive her hardware (diploma, goodies) the route was lined with people equipped with noisemakers and party favors blowing horns. Everyone was dressed in their cap and gown, she said. It was awe-inspiring for the mom who had given up everything for her family. It was worth it, she said. I dont even care if it was a drive-thru, I was just ecstatic to graduate and get a diploma, she said. The best news for her about her fall classes? No more math. She will be one of the first to take the architectural design as a bachelors degree at Lone Star. I wont have to worry about transferring anything, she said. Its all music to the ears of Archie L. Blanson, president of LSC-North Harris campus. Weve had two classes of students who missed out on the comradery in terms of walking the stage, people cheering for them, and so our Student Success department decided to host the drive-thru graduation, he said. There was concern on how many might turn out for the celebration, but they were surprised that 170 graduates attended with 400 family members, all accompanied by about 50 or more faculty and staff. There was a virtual graduation a couple of weeks earlier online for students and staff, but there was no handing out of the diplomas. Students drove the long way around the campus and drove under the overhang. When students drove up, we had a pre-made frame and we put that around them as they leaned out the car, took photos with the president, then we gave them a goodie bag and their diploma, and a LSC-North Harris mug, he said. Military members received a veterans pin and cord along with a challenge coin. When I saw some of our graduates come through with no one in the car with them, it warmed my heart to know we were doing the right thing in celebrating these graduates, he said. Blanson said the event went so well that they are planning on doing it again. It was the first in-person event theyve had since the fall of 2019. Students were ready to celebrate with their decorated cars, some standing up through their sunroof. They were excited to be there. All our protocols ended on Friday so they could be uninhibited as much as they wanted, Blanson said. The college president said it was good to see the students, many of them for the first time on campus in 19 months. To see them celebrate was great! he said. It lasted from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. in a dreary rain. Meanwhile, their colleagues at LSC-University Parks Class of 2021 will celebrate their drive-thru graduation on June 7 on the college campus. This has been an extraordinary journey and accomplishment for our graduates, especially amid an unprecedented global pandemic, said LSC-University Park President Shah Ardalan, Ed.D. dtaylor@hcnonline.com LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) Last weeks eighth grade graduation ceremony at the West End School in Louisville was special. Why? The nine-member group of graduating pupils who were honored May 20 included three students who were part of the very first kindergarten class at the school off Virginia Avenue near Interstate 264 in the Chickasaw neighborhood. Founded in 2005 by Robert and Deborah Blair as a tuition-free boarding school primarily for at-risk boys from low-income backgrounds in West End neighborhoods, the school expanded to the elementary levels in 2012. After starting with just three middle school students, the school has grown to serve 130 students in pre-kindergarten through eighth grade. The generosity of backers and donors has resulted in the school raising $3 million over the past three years in scholarships for students to go on to attend high schools and colleges, according to Andrew Gillette, the schools director of development. The nine boys who make up this years historic graduating class Jasiah, ALijiah, Trenton, Sincere, DJ, Nick, JaBari, Major and Justin will attend a mix of public and private high schools around the city and in Southern Indiana in the fall, Gillette said. (Another boy who attended the school since kindergarten is taking advantage of the do-over year and will graduate in 2022, Gillette added.) The schools include duPont Manual, Butler, Jeffersonville, Walden School and St. Xavier. Stacie Farris is the schools business manager and alumni dorm parent, which means she will continue to interact with graduates as they move on to high school. Dorms for alumni (which hold up to 10 students) and middle schoolers (which hold up to 38 students) are connected to the West End School, offering shelter to boys who, for example, have a home life that is not all awesome, Farris said. Farris was initially hired to serve as a middle school dorm parent, so shes gotten to know the recently graduated boys over the years. Its always bittersweet to see graduation because as their dorm parent, Im their mom during the week, Farris said, fondly describing being a family with the boys each evening as they all work on homework, eat dinner and play games with one another. But with this group, knowing they had been here for so long, as I told them at graduation, You guys set the standard for what elementary school is supposed to be like, and they did a really good job with that as they matriculated through the school. But Ill see them again. West End School alumni over the years have enjoyed strong high school graduation rates, which validates why its leaders expanded to a lower school in 2012 in order to have a more focused, catered curriculum in the West End for these families. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the past year has not been without its challenges for the West End School and countless other educational institutions. The West End School began the 2020-21 academic year with an all-virtual plan before allowing students earlier in 2021 to return to in-person classes if they felt comfortable doing so. Last weeks graduation ceremony was in person in the schools gym, with families, teachers, staff and board members on hand to honor the nine boys. We really celebrated them and their accomplishments, Farris said, adding it was really awesome following the challenges the coronavirus pandemic posed for last years ceremony. Moving forward, the West End School has plans to keep growing, with 10 students set to be a part of next years eighth grade class. A silver lining of the pandemic, Gillette said, was that it gave the school the time to upgrade the aesthetics of its building at 3628 Virginia Ave., which provided a morale boost to students and staff. Starting in the fall, the school will also offer two to three dozen retired educators as tutors for literacy and math, Gillette added, and at least 10 adult mentors from a yet-to-be-revealed company are signed on to a new partnership to help make sure all of the boys have positive male role models as theyre moving through the early stages of life. Farris said while she and her colleagues at the school work hard to support and give the students a brighter future, the boys enrich the lives of staff just as much. As someone who works with them and helps take care of them, Farris said, it just blesses me to be able to work with them. They also make a huge impact in our lives as well. WASHINGTON (AP) Senate Republicans blocked creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, displaying continuing party loyalty to former President Donald Trump and firm determination to shift the political focus away from the violent insurrection by his GOP supporters. The Senate vote on Friday was 54-35 six short of the 60 needed to take up a House-passed bill that would have formed an independent 10-member commission evenly split between the two parties. It came a day after emotional appeals for the commission from police who fought the mob, the family of an officer who died and lawmakers in both parties who fled Capitol chambers in the worst attack on the building in two centuries. The Republicans were mostly but not totally united: Six voted with Democrats to move forward. Eleven senators nine Republicans and two Democrats missed the vote, an unusually high number of absentees for one of the highest-profile votes of the year. At least one of the missing Republicans would have voted in favor of considering the commission, according to his office. The GOP opposition means that questions about who should bear responsibility for the attack could continue to be filtered through a partisan lens in congressional committees rather than addressed by an outside, independent panel modeled after the commission that investigated the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. The investigations will happen with or without Republicans," declared Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the Republicans who voted to move forward. "To ensure the investigations are fair, impartial and focused on the facts, Republicans need to be involved. The vote was in part a GOP attempt to placate Trump, or avoid his reprisals, as he has kept a firm hold on the party since his defeat by Democrat Joe Biden. The former president told his supporters to fight like hell to overturn his defeat before the siege and continues to falsely say he won the election claims shouted by his supporters as they stormed the building. Trump called the commission legislation a Democrat trap. Fridays vote the first successful use of a Senate filibuster in the Biden presidency was emblematic of the profound mistrust between the two parties since the siege, especially among Republicans, with some in the party downplaying the violence and defending the rioters. The vote also is likely to galvanize Democratic pressure to do away with the filibuster, a time-honored procedure typically used to kill major legislation. It requires 60 votes to move ahead, rather than a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed support from 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill. Speaking to his Republican colleagues, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote they were trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug out of fear or fealty to Trump. He left open the possibility of another vote in the future on establishing a bipartisan commission, declaring, The events of Jan. 6 will be investigated. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi echoed that commitment, saying Democrats will find the truth. Though the bill to form the commission passed the House earlier this month with the support of almost three dozen Republicans, most GOP senators said they believed the bipartisan panel would eventually be used against them politically. While initially saying he was open to the idea, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell turned firmly against it in recent days, arguing that the panels investigation would be partisan despite the even split among party members. McConnell, who once said Trump was responsible for provoking the mob attack on the Capitol, said dismissively of Democrats, Theyd like to continue to litigate the former president, into the future. Still, six in McConnell's caucus defied him, arguing that an independent look was needed, and Pennsylvania's Pat Toomey would have brought the total to seven but for a family commitment, his office said. In addition to Cassidy, the Republicans who voted to move forward were Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Rob Portman of Ohio and Mitt Romney of Utah. Murkowski said Thursday evening that she needed to know more about what happened before and on the day of the attack, and why. Truth is hard stuff, but weve got a responsibility to it, she said. We just cant pretend that nothing bad happened, or that people just got too excitable. Something bad happened. And its important to lay that out. Some Republican colleagues strongly disagree, defending the rioters who supported Trump and his false insistence that the election was stolen from him. A House Republican said this month that one video of the insurrection looked like a normal tourist visit. In reality, the attack was the worst on the Capitol in 200 years. The protesters interrupted the certification of Bidens win over Trump, constructed a mock gallows in front of the Capitol and called for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, who was overseeing the proceedings inside. Lawmakers hid on the floor of the House balcony as the rioters tried to break in, and senators evacuated their chamber mere minutes before it was ransacked. Four of the protesters died that day, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber. Dozens of police officers were injured, and two took their own lives in the days afterward. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the rioters, and video showed two men spraying Sicknick and another officer with a chemical. The Washington medical examiner said he suffered a stroke and died from natural causes. Senate Democrats angrily questioned how the Republicans could vote against an independent investigation. An insurrection without consequences without even a proper investigation is a dress rehearsal for another insurrection, said Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in Congress. When the Capitol police, who protect us with their lives, ask for this commission, we are ingrates to refuse. The Republicans' political arguments over the violent siege which is still raw for many in the Capitol, almost five months later have frustrated not only the Democrats and some of their Republican colleagues but also those who fought off the rioters. Sicknicks mother, girlfriend and two police officers who battled the rioters alongside him went office to office and asked Republicans to support the commission. Michael Fanone, a Metropolitan Police Department officer who responded to the attack, joined Sicknick's family on Capitol Hill Thursday. In between meetings with Republican senators, he said a commission is necessary for us to heal as a nation from the trauma that we all experienced that day. Fanone has described being dragged down the Capitol steps by rioters who shocked him with a stun gun and beat him. Sicknick's mother, Gladys Sicknick, suggested those who opposed the panel visit her son's grave. In interview on CNN after the vote, she asked of the Republicans: What kind of country do they want? ___ Associated Press writers Alan Fram, Colleen Long and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed more than a dozen measures Friday, including one aimed at creating greater transparency in emergency procurements like the one that made headlines when Hogan confidentially purchased 500,000 COVID-19 tests from South Korea that later stirred controversy. The bill would require the governor to provide a legislative panel notice within 72 hours after the execution of the contract or the expenditure of funds when authorizing a certain emergency procurement during a state of emergency. In his veto letter, Hogan said extraordinary measures were necessary to keep Marylanders safe from this deadly virus. The arbitrary notification and reporting requirements that this legislation requires does little for transparency yet creates administrative challenges when time is of the essence, wrote Hogan, a Republican. It is unreasonable and frankly, out of touch for the legislature to expect the Governor or an agency head to check boxes on a form rather than focus on the emergency at hand. But Del. Brooke Lierman, a Democrat who sponsored the legislation in the House, said it's incredibly disappointing and quite frustrating that our governor would be opposed to shining a light on how his administration is spending taxpayer dollars. I think the governor over the last year repeatedly spent taxpayer dollars without providing any transparency or information to the General Assembly or to the public about the terms of spending those dollars, said Lierman, of Baltimore. The bill passed 131-1 in the House and 47-0 in the Senate. Last month, a state audit found that the Hogan administration failed to follow state procurement regulations when it bought 500,000 COVID-19 tests from a South Korean company last year. The first batch of tests that later had to be replaced at an additional $2.5 million cost had not been authorized by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Marylands purchase had initially been met with great fanfare last spring when states across the country scrambled to secure tests, but state lawmakers started asking questions after time went by about the confidential deal and asked for an audit. About $12 million was ultimately paid for the LabGenomics tests and for a chartered flight to ship them, but those funds were not supported by formal written contracts or agreements containing any of the critical provisions required by state regulations, the audit said. Hogan has adamantly defended the purchase of the tests. Heres a look at some other bills Hogan vetoed Friday: EMERGENCY DEFINITION The measure would create a statutory definition of emergency for the purpose of deciding when to use an emergency procurement and expands reporting requirements. PANDEMIC PLANNING The bill would require the state Health Department and local health departments to adopt and implement a two-year plan to respond to COVID-19. TRANSIT FUNDING The measure would require the state to make investments to maintain the states public transit system to start addressing a $2 billion maintenance backlog. LOCAL TAXES The measure would give Maryland counties and the city of Baltimore more flexibility in setting local income taxes. The General Assembly is controlled by Democrats, who hold a supermajority in both houses. Lawmakers will have an opportunity to override the vetoes when they are next in session. MEXICO CITY (AP) The daughter-in-law of a politically influential British magnate was in custody in Belize on Saturday, under investigation in the shooting death of a police superintendent. Police Commissioner Chester C. Williams told local media that Jasmine Hartin initially balked at making a statement, preferring to wait for the presence of her attorney. She was found on a dock near where police Superintendent Henry Jemmott was found dead early Friday in the town of San Pedro. Williams said a single gunshot was heard and upon investigating, police found the female on a pier, and she had what appeared to be blood on her arms and on her clothing." A firearm was also seen on the pier that has been retrieved and we have learned that the firearm belonged to the police and was assigned to Mr. Jemmott, he told a news conference Friday, adding that Hartin is in custody and being investigated in the death. Hartin is the partner of Andrew Ashcroft, son of Michael Ashcroft, a former deputy chairman of Britain's Conservative Party and a major financial backer. He also holds Belizean citizenship and was once its representative before the United Nations. The Associated Press has not been able to speak to Hartin or a lawyer representing her. The incident seems rather personal and not an attack, Williams said. From what we know is that they are friends. From what we have been made to understand they were drinking. From investigation they were alone on the pier and yes they were both fully clothed. He said Hartin was somewhat in a emotional state walking herself on the pier. We believe that she is to some extent affected by it. LinkedIn accounts indicate that both the younger Ashcroft and Hartin were connected with a local resort in Belize. Jemmott's sister, Marie Jemmott Tzul, told told 7 News Belize television that her brother loved life and was the father of five children. The investigation can say something else but I think they killed him," she said, adding the only information the family had was that he was with a woman she did not know and his body was found in the water. There may be a labor shortage in Texas, but it has yet to reach Buc-ees, the gas station and convenience store chain that launched in 1982 in Lake Jackson. Buc-ees has been fortunate to maintain strong staffing levels at its stores, said Jeff Nadalo, the companys general counsel, in an email. We attribute this to Buc-ees paying above-market wages, providing 3 weeks of paid vacation, offering health and dental benefits, as well as offering a matching 401k plan. He added that employees also enjoy the prospect of promotions and the positive work environment at the chains stores--the latter being among the reasons Buc-ees is so popular with travelers, too. And its instructive that this iconic Texas-based chain has been able to keep its stores staffed simply by offering decent wages and benefits, isnt it? State leaders should take note. MORE FROM ERICA GRIEDER: George P. Bush's explanation on Harvey funds shutout doesn't hold water Gov. Greg Abbott on May 17th announced that he will reject supplemental federal unemployment aid authorized earlier this year by Congress, effective next month. The funds in question, which are set to expire in September regardless, would have extended an additional $300 a week for Texans receiving unemployment benefits. The Texas economy is booming and employers are hiring in communities throughout the state, Abbott said in a statement. According to the Texas Workforce Commission, the number of job openings in Texas is almost identical to the number of Texans who are receiving unemployment benefits. He was not the first governor to announce such a move, which came after the Texas Association of Business, joined by several dozen chambers of commerce and trade associations, called on him to make it. In fact, rejecting supplemental unemployment insurance is all the rage among red-state governors of late. Last week, Florida became the 23rd state to join the club. Its governor, Ron DeSantis, had previously announced that he would reinstate a requirement that people seeking unemployment benefits prove theyre actively looking for work--which he had suspended last year because, quite frankly, there werent jobs. And doing so is popular, polls suggest. It aligns with the presumption , widely shared by Republicans and Democrats alike, that people who seek to participate in the labor force should be encouraged to do so, in part because work has value that extends beyond the number printed on a paycheck. Americans want to work. Americans want to work, said President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in a May 10th address about the economy. And as my dad used to say, A job is about a lot more than a paycheck; its about your dignity, your place in the community, being able to look your kid in the eye and say, Everything is going to be okay.' But Biden rejected the suggestion that slashing unemployment benefits is the right move at this point, noting that 22 million people lost their jobs as a direct result of the pandemic, and that we still have eight million fewer jobs, nationwide, than before it began. I think the people who claim Americans wont work even if they find a good and fair opportunity underestimate the American people, Biden said. MORE FROM ERICA GRIEDER: Most Texans don't back permitless carry. Why do the state's Republican leaders? Indeed, the evidence suggests that Texans are returning to work, and seeking to do so now that the state has reopened and as the nationwide vaccine rollout continues apace. The states unemployment rate was 6.7 percent in April, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics--down from 6.9 percent in March, and down from 12.9 percent in April 2020, when the state was in lockdown. The labor-force participation rate, which plunged during the pandemic, stands at 62.2 percent--slightly higher than the national rate. But the labor shortage is real, according to employers. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, which regularly surveys hundreds of Texas business executives about conditions in their sectors, has started including supplemental questions about how COVID has affected hiring, among other aspects of their business. In their April survey fully two-thirds of respondents cited lack of available applicants/no applicants as an impediment to hiring workers, and 48 percent pointed to generous unemployment benefits as a particular culprit. It's difficult to find people who want to work when they're making $15 per hour to sit home on unemployment, commented one manufacturing executive. Government checks are keeping people from wanting to work, said another. They have money without having to work for it. There are a number of comments along these lines, as well as several which are thoughtful rather than sneering. One health care executive surveyed, for example, explained that there is a significant amount of hold-back approach from traditional health care workers in part because of the availability of federal unemployment benefits, but also because of lingering consequences of COVID itself: many health care workers, after months on the front lines of the pandemic, are understandably burned out from the experience. Others--the executive noted that a majority of workers in this sector are women--have had their own home environments upended and are still figuring out, for example, child care arrangements. That kind of nuance is entirely missing from Abbotts pronouncement on ending the supplemental benefits, which is unfortunate. The curtailing of additional unemployment benefits--which arent particularly lavish in Texas in the first place, shockingly enough--may help nudge some Texans back to the workforce. Of course; in making this move, Abbott is effectively infringing on the opportunity Texas workers rarely enjoy--the opportunity to use some leverage, as they re-enter the market. The labor shortage employers are reporting could also be addressed by following the Buc-ees example of higher wages and greater benefits. erica.grieder@chron.com Mark Winema / Getty Images/Mark Wineman / Getty Images Police are investigating a person found dead who suffered gunshot wounds in north Houston Friday afternoon. The body was reported to police around 4:25 p.m. in the 6700 block of the inbound side of Interstate 45, according to the Houston Police Department. Rice University will require all its students to be vaccinated come fall. Rice President David Leebron and other school officials said that aside from those who have a medical waiver or who cite religious reasons, all students must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 to attend courses this fall. A Friday email to the private universitys community said those who receive a waiver must be tested weekly and must wear a mask indoors at all times, as will university employees who choose not to be vaccinated. More details on vaccine requirements will come by June 15, the officials wrote. We know this will pose problems for some of our international students, but we will work with them to ensure that they get the vaccine upon arrival and to avoid delays in their academic program, the email said. The announcement comes as other Texas private universities, including Paul Quinn College, a historically Black school in Dallas, and St. Edwards University in Austin, also are requiring vaccines for the fall. Rice leadership will also require the entire university community students and employees to return in person in the fall. Those with special or approved circumstances, such as vacations or sabbaticals, will be exempt. On HoustonChronicle.com: David Leebron, Rices second-longest serving president, to step down Most employees will return by July 19, and officials said the community will continue to discuss changes or new policies for alternative work arrangements that could go into effect in the spring. Forums held throughout the fall will allow the community to discuss how to apply experiences and lessons learned during the pandemic moving forward. A recent university survey showed that around 80 percent of the Rice community is vaccinated. The schools goal, however, is to get at least 90 percent vaccinated in order to achieve a new normal that will allow the school to fully drop its mask requirements, remove size limits on gatherings, and use its campus facilities and buildings at full capacity. We plan to celebrate our collective return to campus in the fall and look forward to renewing our missions of education and research, the universitys email said. This has been a challenging year, but working together we have come through it well. brittany.britto@chron.com The San Antonio Zoo unveiled a memorial plaque in honor of the late Raymond Figueroa, known to generations as the Elephant Man. Figueroa died Dec. 26, 2020. He was 86. On HoustonChronicle.com: Houston Zoo's newest baby elephant brings its herd to 12 More than 70 of Figueroas family, friends, past co-workers and two former zoo directors attended a ceremony Thursday evening at the zoos Savannah Rhino Deck. They took turns recalling the lessons they learned from Figueroas depth of knowledge about animals. The crowd listened to the stories under blue umbrellas that blocked the fading rays of sunlight as rhinos stretched out below the deck. Tim Morrow, zoo president and CEO, learned about Figueroas passion for mammals on his first day at the zoo. His impact is still felt today, he said. We still talk about and tell stories about Raymond and appreciate all he gave to the zoo. William Luther /William Luther He told the story of how Figueroa visited Lucky the elephant in 2016 for a surprise reunion with former co-worker Keith Hodges. Figueroa and Hodges both worked with Lucky in the early 1970s. The elephant nudged both men with her head, as if acknowledging the saying that an elephant never forgets. In 1973, Dr. Mark Thornton was in college when he worked for Figueroa, who would exhort the zoo crowds to buy tickets for an elephant ride during an era when the activity was permitted. Raymond was his own university, Thornton said. He had a depth of knowledge about animal behavior that was unsurpassed. Raymond Figueroa Jr. said the zoo was his fathers life, but elephants were his passion. He recalled working with his dad when he was in charge of the elephant rides. Figueroa was fondly known as the Elephant Man because of his years of caring for pachyderms, especially Lucky, his longtime charge. I loved my dad, Raymond Jr. said. I was very proud of what he had become. On HoustonChronicle.com: Cold-stunned sea turtles return to the Gulf after historic freeze A winding path from the rhino deck now leads to a site preserved in Figueroas honor. The group crowded around a statue of a baby elephant in mid-stride beneath the bronze memorial plaque affixed to a large stone in memory of the zookeeper. Former zoo directors Louis DiSabato and Steve McCusker remembered Figueroa as a friend and a marvelous individual. DiSabato said on his first day at the zoo in 1968 that he and Figueroa would have great fun together. He had a keen sense of knowing exactly what an animal was thinking and would do, DiSabato said. McCusker said Figueroa was a laid-back and smart man. He was a great trainer of animals and people, McCusker said. And he was compassionate about both. Sheila Figueroa noted that her husband never went past the ninth grade and his gift for working with animals could not be found in books or lecture halls. She described how he talked to the animals, observed their mannerisms and learned from them. She was beyond grateful for the outpouring of support for her husband of 36 years. He was a real-life Dr. Dolittle, Sheila Figueroa said. All animals should be respected, and thats what Raymond firmly believed. vtdavis@express-news.net More and more people have been realizing how urgent the crisis is as they see the wildfires in California and Australia, he said. They see intense hurricanes and warmer summers I mean, look at the weather were having now people just see the signs more and more and its just becoming more evident that climate change is happening and its accelerating as we keep putting more [carbon dioxide] into the atmosphere. OnSceneTV A large tree toppled over Friday night at a house in Houston's Second Ward as thunder, lightning and heavy rain rumbled through the region. A long-time resident on the 6000 block of Brady Street was watching TV when she heard a loud crack as rain began falling hard outside, OnScene TV reported. An old tree split and fell into the woman's front yard, part of it on top of her roof and car. The extent of the damage was unclear and no one was injured. Fix the true problems Regarding Legislators sparring as clock ticks on session, (A1, May 28): I am very frustrated at the Texas Legislature for not seeming to be interested in fixing the problems with the power grid. Instead they seem more interested in legislation that doesnt help anyone but appeals only to a small right-wing base. I doubt someone who had a friend or relative die from carbon monoxide poisoning as they tried to keep warm in their car is excited about constitutional carry. I dont think someone sitting in a house that was ruined due to frozen pipes is worried about drive-thru voting and I dont think someone who had to pay a four-figure electricity bill has transgender high school athletes as a priority. I ask the Legislature to work on real issues and not act as surrogates for Donald Trump. Dale Gadbois, Houston Once again the Texas Legislature has done nothing for the true benefit of all Texans. Now the lieutenant governor wants to call a special session for red meat items that did not pass the House. How about taking care of the basics, like heat? Without mandatory weatherization of the entire state electric grid and all its working parts, we will yet again face freezing, killing temperatures during some future winter storm. We can no longer leave it to the utilities alone to take action. Helen Moss Thornton, Houston Russia investigation Regarding DOJ fights to keep memo on Trump a secret, (A4, May 26): President Joe Bidens Department of Justice appealed an order to publicly release a pivotal 2019 memo about whether then-President Donald Trump obstructed the Russia investigation. A highly redacted version of the memo was already available to the public. But the full version, if it is ever released, could shed new light on how Trump appointees at the DOJ justified why he shouldnt be charged, even though special counsel Robert Muellers investigation found strong evidence that he repeatedly obstructed the probe. While this appeal may come as a disappointment to those of us who opposed Trumps unethical and arguably illegal behavior, the good news is that it documents the veracity of Bidens promise that the DOJ under Attorney General Merrick Garland would function independently and autonomously; this, of course, is in stark contrast the DOJ under William Barr which often acted politically on behalf of Trump in violation of the intent of the framers of the Constitution. Richard Cherwitz, Austin In the summer of 1981, 14-year-old Tram Ho squeezed onto a small fishing boat with her father and four siblings. After six days of sailing and six months at a refugee camp in Hong Kong, Ho arrived in Houston thanks to a sponsorship by a nonprofit organization formed by Vietnamese refugees following the end of the Vietnam War. Four decades later on May 8, Ho, now a renowned doctor of internal medicine with a degree from Baylor College of Medicine, sat across from me in a courtyard near a vaccine clinic set up at the Vietnamese Martyrs Church in southeast Houston, a short walk away from the action of the day. I paused to compose myself, both to reflect on what it had taken for our paths to converge, and to fan away the Houston heat. That morning, I had come to volunteer at the drive-thru clinic coordinated by the Vietnamese Culture and Science Association (VCSA), and Vietnamese American Medical Association. Dressed in light blue jeans and a T-shirt from a ski resort in Colorado, I stood out from the rest of the volunteers clad in their periwinkle VCSA shirts. I felt old, too most of the volunteers were teenagers affiliated with the church. Most notably, I didnt speak a word of Vietnamese. INTERACTIVE: Meet 6 Asian American changemakers shaping Houstons future Adopted from Vietnam in 1999, I grew up outside of D.C. in a white family, and I only recently decided to get more in touch with my roots, starting by volunteering with VCSA. But without the necessary language skills to check on those waiting to get the vaccine, I instead wandered around to interview the large cast of characters at the event, with over 60 volunteers stationed across the church parking lot. Ho was one of several professionals donating their time. I also caught up with Dr. Stephen Au, a pharmacist at H-E-B and longtime Houston resident, who worked with pharmacy students to administer vaccines. Au wore a brace on his wrist, as long days of giving vaccines had taken a toll on his body. Officer Don Vo, sporting a black uniform, attended the clinic as part of his community outreach in his role as the Asian community liaison for the Houston Police Department. I expressed to Vo that I was surprised to see a Vietnamese officer on the force. Vo claimed that out of 5,300 officers, 7.5 percent are Asian, about representative of the greater population. Once it was time to speak with Ho, I couldnt help but think about how we had come to the United States she, as a refugee, and I, as an adoptee. A sense of kinship resonated through me as I pressed the record button on my phone. I did my best to follow along as she went through the impressive vaccine numbers from previous drive-thrus: 600 doses of Johnson & Johnson at Chua Lien Hoa (Lien Hoa Temple); 250 doses at Lang Thai Xuan (Thai Xuan Village). Like with prior vaccination drives, the target recipients were older Vietnamese Americans who, whether due to language barriers, lack of transportation or unfamiliarity with technology, were more comfortable receiving the vaccine through a culture-oriented approach, according to Ho. On HoustonChronicle.com: 'We're easily scapegoated': Houston's Asian Americans share stories from a year of fear Ho cited her acceptance into the United States and desire to support the Vietnamese community as reasons for her persistent efforts combating the COVID-19 pandemic. (These drives are) a way for the young generation like yours to be involved in the Vietnamese community, said Ho. (They) provide opportunities for my generation and your generation to work together. Her sense of responsibility to the Vietnamese and greater Houston community was evident in our interview. She stressed that because everyone is in the pandemic together, getting people vaccinated is the way to see the country thrive, especially economically. At the end of the four-hour vaccine drive, two women at the front of the church gestured at a cooler of banh mi, speaking to me in Vietnamese. A fellow volunteer told me they had prepared the food for us, so I took one for the road and waved goodbye to new friends, expressing my disappointment that I couldnt meet them later that day for an AAPI food market in the Heights. As I headed back to my apartment, the drowsiness I expected after an early morning was instead replaced with a sense of invigoration. Having previously shied away from the Vietnamese community, I now felt accepted and invested. This years Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month is headed to a close, but we need you all to remain engaged going forward. The Vietnamese community has come together during the pandemic; we know that intergenerational and neighborly solidarity works. Whether through volunteering, attending an AAPI event or donating to a local AAPI organization like VCSA, Houstons AAPI communities are eager for your support. Carlton is a freelance writer based out of Houston. Despite no evidence of substantial voter fraud in Texas, Republicans are preparing to pass sweeping voting legislation with new provisions that make it easier to overturn an election in which fraudulent votes are suspected and to lower the standard for proving fraud in civil court. The burden of proof for voter fraud charges in Texas is clear and convincing evidence. The bill would change that standard to preponderance of the evidence. A related measure would allow a judge to overturn an election if the total number of ballots found to be fraudulent exceeds the margin of victory. In such cases, a judge could declare the election void without attempting to determine how individual voters voted. UPDATE: The voting restrictions bill died in the Texas House about 11 p.m. Sunday If you dont have to show that they would have made a difference, then even illegal votes or fraudulent votes for your side get factored into that equation, said Tommy Buser-Clancy, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. This is just a perpetuation of the Big Lie, and as weve seen throughout the nation, this is a further weakening of the institutional strength of our democracy. The new provisions are last-minute additions to Senate Bill 7, legislation that has drawn the ire of Democratic and civil rights groups that have called it voter suppression since its first draft. The final version of the bill hadnt been posted online as of early Friday evening and was not made available to the public but the Houston Chronicle obtained a copy. WHATS IN SENATE BILL 7 No early voting after 9 p.m., eliminating 24-hour and late-night voting centers that Houston and Austin experimented with. Drive-thru voting banned. Early voting during Sunday limited to between 1 and 9 p.m. Requires driver's license or Social Security number to apply for an absentee ballot. Expressly prohibits using an absentee ballot because of an illness that doesn't prevent someone from being able to vote in person without assistance. Prohibits drop boxes. All absentee ballots returned have to be mailed or hand-delivered to an election worker. Bars any obstruction to partisan poll watchers to observe election activities. People who help three or more people who are not related to them get to polls to vote will be required to fill out papers and identify who they are. Bars people from helping one or more voters submit absentee ballot or absentee ballot applications to help a specific candidate or ballot measure. Lowers the standard in an election contest to make it easier for judges to overturn elections. WHAT'S OUT Provision to allow partisan poll watcher to video record in voting precincts. A plan to evenly distribute early voting sites that threatened to close some voting locations in Black and Hispanic communities. See More Collapse The compromise bill still contains a number of restrictions largely aimed at big cities, especially Houston, which came up with new voting expansions during the pandemic. It was also the major cities that heavily backed President Joe Biden and gave the Democrats their best showing in a presidential election in Texas in over 40 years. The bill includes limitation of early-voting hours and bans on drive-thru voting, mail ballot drop boxes and mass mailing of mail ballot applications. It also adds other new provisions, many of which will complicate voting by mail, such as a requirement that voters with disabilities disclose the type of impairment they have that renders them unable to vote in person. A few of the provisions most harshly criticized by opponents, meanwhile, have been removed. The bill no longer limits the number of polling places and voting machines in large Texas counties. Another provision that has been removed would have permitted poll watchers to make recordings of voters receiving assistance if they believed they were witnessing unlawful activity. The Republican authors of the legislation House Elections Committee Chair Rep. Briscoe Cain, R-Deer Park, and Sen. Bryan Hughes, R-Mineola have continually said their goal is to increase election integrity and assure that only legally eligible voters cast ballots. TEXAS TAKE: Get political headlines from across the state sent directly to your inbox SB 7 is one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills in Texas history, they said in a joint statement. There is nothing more foundational to this democracy and our state than the integrity of our elections. Even as the national media minimizes the importance of election integrity, the Texas Legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signaling. In a statement Saturday, Biden described the legislation as wrong and un-American and referred to it in the same light as measures approved in other states. As of May 14, 14 states had enacted 22 new laws with provisions that make it harder for Americans to vote, putting the country on track to pass the most voting rights restraints since 2011, according to the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Today, Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote, Biden said. Its part of an assault on democracy that weve seen far too often this year and often disproportionately targeting Black and brown Americans. Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo also denounced the bill as undemocratic. Its gut-wrenching. Worse than the original bills. This CAN and must be stopped, Hidalgo wrote on Twitter. Everyone who believes in our democracy & protecting the legacy of those who fought and died for it must speak up. Late-night push draws complaint In a surprise maneuver, the Texas Senate voted along party lines Saturday night to scrap its usual rules and force a debate and vote on the bill after 10 p.m., over the objections of Democrats. The 13 Democrats in the Senate expected the bill to be debated and voted on Sunday until Hughes made the motion to push the bill through late Saturday instead. State Sen. Jose Menendez, D-San Antonio, questioned why Republicans pushed to debate such a major bill in the dead of night on a holiday weekend when most Texans wouldnt be able to tune in. He noted major changes have been made to the bill, leaving lawmakers almost no time to communicate with elections experts in their home cities and counties. How did you decide 10 p.m. tonight was the right time? Menendez asked Hughes. If we are going to be getting into a 100-page bill that affects how everyone in this state is going to be voting, registering to vote, running elections, does that not seem like were really not doing it when the public can be watching? Though there are substantial changes that were made in closed-door private session with House members, Hughes said he will give Senate members a closed-door private briefing on all the changes one that neither the public nor the media would hear. Hughes said the public had a chance to weigh in on the bill back in March during a public hearing. The Texas House is expected to bring up the bill on Sunday. Although Texas had no reports of mass voter fraud in 2020, Gov. Greg Abbott and Republican leaders in the Legislature insist they have to make the states election systems more secure. For the GOP, its the fulfillment of a major priority after the 2020 presidential election, when former President Donald Trump falsely claimed that widespread election fraud cost him the White House. Even in Texas, Trump has said without proof that his margin of victory was probably bigger than what was reported. Texas Secretary of State Ruth Hughs resigned last week after the Republican-led Senate failed to confirm her appointment. A top deputy of Hughs had publicly described the states 2020 election as smooth and secure, as lawmakers were gearing up to push legislation such as SB 7. MORE ON THAT: Did a smooth and secure 2020 election cost the Texas secretary of state her job? Cain, who is an attorney, was named chairman of the Elections Committee after he traveled to Pennsylvania to help Trumps legal team in its efforts to overturn the presidential election results last year. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton also led an effort to reverse election results in four battleground states with a Supreme Court bid that was immediately rejected. This is the same person who was trying to participate in the overthrow of the 2020 election, who is now trying to make it easier to do the same in Texas, Buser-Clancy said. Its equally alarming. Correction: A previous version of this article incorrectly described the type of court where voter fraud cases would have been held to a lower standard of proof under Senate Bill 7, which did not pass. The provision would have affected cases in which a candidate contests election results in civil court. taylor.goldenstein@chron.com jeremy.wallace@chron.com Hours after it appeared dead, a bill to limit the way teachers talk to their classes about racism appears headed to the governors desk. The measure, House Bill 3979, targets critical race theory and forbids teachers from discussing certain viewpoints in the classroom, including the concept that some people are inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously. Supporters said it would keep politics out of schools, while opponents said the measure one of many sweeping GOP legislatures across the country seeks to whitewash lessons about slavery and discrimination in America. After procedural back-and-forth that at one point significantly dimmed the bills chances of becoming law, Republicans now say HB 3979 is headed to Gov. Greg Abbott for approval. The bill had already passed both chambers earlier this month after lengthy debate. But the versions didnt match, and as the House considered the measure for a second time on Friday afternoon, Democratic Rep. James Talarico of Round Rock derailed the bill on a procedural basis. The maneuver came after Talarico interrogated the bills sponsor, Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, on the removal of several House additions, including requirements that curricula include readings by people of color and that lessons clearly denounce white supremacy. NEWSLETTERS Join the conversation with HouWeAre We want to foster conversation and highlight the intersection of race, identity and culture in one of America's most diverse cities. Sign up for the HouWeAre newsletter here. Is it fair to say that any bill that strikes language condemning racism is a racist bill? Talarico asked. He went on to declare on Twitter: As of now, the bill is effectively dead, but my colleagues and I are remaining vigilant in case there are efforts to revive it. A few hours later, Republican Sen. Bryan Hughes of Mineola successfully revived the bill in the Senate, introducing a motion to strip the bill of its Senate amendments and approve the version that passed in the House. The motion passed along party lines, after Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick overruled another procedural objection from Democrats. IN-DEPTH: Texas Republicans target critical race theory with bill to muzzle teachers The same version of the measure has passed both chambers, which would usually send it straight to Abbotts desk but the roundabout way it was passed suggests it could head back to the House first. Republicans, including Hughes, asserted late Friday that the bill was headed to the governor. Its done, Toth said. Taylor Goldenstein contributed reporting. cayla.harris@express-news.net Chicago, IL (60637) Today Thunderstorms likely. High 84F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph. Chance of rain 90%. 1 to 2 inches of rain expected.. Tonight Some clouds this evening will give way to mainly clear skies overnight. Low near 65F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Amit Mukherjee, an engineer with Base Engineering, testified that compared with a development matching the density of the surrounding homes, the active adult residential community would generate fewer traffic trips, less water consumption, less sewage and fewer demands on municipal services, because there would likely be no children in the school system. He also said many of the concerns laid out by residents and conditions in the townships review letters would be addressed in the land development process. Subscribing to our services is a three step process. First you have to create an account and then you have to pick if you want to subscribe to digital and or print. Some people only want to be a digital subscriber to get access online and others want to also receive the print edition. If you are already a print subscriber and want online access, it is free, you simply have to create an online account and then attach your print subscription account number to the online account you create. Your support is needed now more than ever Help support your local news Local news sources need your help. Stay in the know on Coronavirus, local updates, and more. We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email circulation@idahopress.com for help creating one. Nelson said he doesnt want to ban private donations altogether as other Republican legislatures have done. Instead, he wants the funding distribution to be overseen by the Department of State, which under his proposal would be tasked with dispersing money to all 67 counties evenly based on their voting-age population. The department would also be prevented from accepting any funding unless it is free from any policy-oriented conditions or restrictions, according to a memo Nelson released seeking support from his colleagues. Note: We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email circulation2@journalnet.com for help creating one. But it is far from the first ever in Pennsylvania, which is about 300 miles north of the area in the southeastern U.S. where alligators are naturally occurring. Since the beginning of the 21st century, at least 21 previous pet alligators have been found roaming free in the Keystone State, according to a search of the PennLive.com archives and some Google searches. Paddington 2 no longer has a 100 per cent rating on Rotten Tomatoes after one negative review was added to the site. The live-action comedy based on the stories of Paddington bear quickly became a fan-favourite upon its release in 2017. The film which stars Hugh Grant, Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins earned three Bafta nominations, including Best British Film. Paddington 2 recently became the new best film after Orson Welles classic Citizen Kane lost its decades-long 100 per cent rating due to a newly discovered negative review from 1941. Now, however, the sequel has met a similar fate with a new review knocking the comedy down to a 99 per cent score. The review was written by critic Eddie Harrison for Film Authority and took to task the film adaptation for deviating from Michael Bonds original childrens books. He called the films bear over-confident, since and sullen, adding that considerations of race and identity, key to the Paddington character, are not addressed. I reviewed Paddington 2 negatively for BBC radio on release in 2017, and on multiple occasions after that, and I stand by every word of my criticism, writes Harrison, per The Hollywood Reporter. The beloved sequel follows the adventures of Paddington (voiced by Ben Wishaw) as he attempts to find the perfect birthday gift for Aunt Lucy. Fans of the film, however, can take solace in the knowledge that a third Paddington film is in the works. Its just a show, is the common response from someone seeing a person crying at the death of a fictional person on screen. But TV acolytes will know that it can be hard to rein in the emotions when your favourite character for the past seven years has just been killed off. In the battle of TV versus cinema, the former has always packed more of a punch when it comes to impactful deaths probably because weve come to know the character better over a longer period of time. And when someone who youve grown used to seeing day-in and day-out suddenly vanishes from your life forever, there are going to be some emotional ramifications. Sometimes, in the saddest of circumstances, the demise of a character even marks the demise of the show itself, with creators and writers failing to keep us interested beyond their death blow. There are many ingredients that go into making a TV death as traumatic as intended: the character's likability, the circumstances of death, the impact their absence will have on the remaining characters and shock value. Heres a selection of the 16 character deaths were still not over (Obviously, spoilers ahead you have been warned!) Marissa Cooper, The OC Fans of the series still tear up thinking about Ryan cradling Marissas lifeless body on the side of the road. Jeff Buckleys haunting cover of Hallelujah playing overhead certainly didnt help. The death of Mischa Bartons character at the end of season three also marked the end of The OC as we knew it anyway. The teen show ploughed on with one more season but without Marissa, it was a shadow of its former self. Ned Stark, Game of Thrones People across the world let out a collective gasp when Eddard Stark was beheaded at the behest of King Joffrey. The HBO drama shocked audiences when Sean Beans main character got the chop in the penultimate episode of the first season. Unaccustomed to seeing such ruthless writing, even after the axe had swung, audiences reeled trying to figure out whether this was all a dream or if some supernatural force would bring sweet Ned back to us. The TV event cemented Game of Thrones as a show that takes no prisoners even the ones we really, really like. Similar feelings were experienced when Catelyn Stark went out with a guttural scream in the notorious Red Wedding episode two seasons later. Shonda Rhimes broke the hearts of millions when she killed off McDreamy (ABC) Derek Shepherd, Greys Anatomy By Dereks death in season 11, fans of the medical drama had grown used to seeing our favourite characters brutally killed off. Lexie Gray, Mark Sloan, George OMalley and Denny Duquette had all met a harsh end at the hands of writer Shonda Rhimes but we thought surely McDreamy was safe. When Meredith Grey hears the police sirens and a knock at the door though, we all knew where it was heading. Fans got one final look at him when the late doctor appeared to Meredith in a dream sequence in season 17. Its not the same though, is it? Jen Lindley, Dawsons Creek Played by a superb Michelle Williams, Jens character never got the attention or the send-off that she deserved. The series finale of the hit teen soap flashed forward five years to reveal that party girl Jen had become a successful gallery manager and a mother, but also would soon die because of an undiagnosed heart condition. Pre-empting her own death, she records a heartbreaking video message for her daughter. Cue the tears were done. Fellow cast members were outraged to hear Poussey was being written off (Netflix) Poussey Washington, Orange is the New Black Both the shows fans and fellow cast members were outraged to see Poussey die in season four. From the outset, Samira Wileys character had established herself as one of the most entertaining and beloved inmates at Litchfield prison. Her death at the hands of a guard who wrongfully pinned her to the ground and left her unable to breathe recalled the real-life 2014 killing of Eric Garner. After the episode aired, Orange is the New Black set up The Poussey Washington Fund to raise money for non-profit advocacy groups with a focus on criminal justice reform. Adriana La Cerva, The Sopranos Over the course of HBOs mob drama, audiences had grown to love Adriana La Cerva, her great outfits and frank attitude. While her death was brutal to watch (who can forget her silently sobbing in the car with Silvio knowing whats to come?), the lead-up was equally excruciating. Seeing Adriana unravel as she unwillingly becomes an FBI informant and then make the mistake of admitting her disloyalty to Christopher who chooses his friends over her is almost as bad as watching her get shot. Drea de Matteo as Adriana and Steven Van Zandt as Silvio (HBO) Tara Maclay, Buffy the Vampire Slayer Taras death came as a massive blow to the Buffy fanbase. Played by Amber Benson, the character was introduced midway through the fourth season and quickly became a fan-favourite character before being written out at the end of season six by way of a stray bullet, kickstarting the Dark Willow storyline. Her relationship with Willow is often cited as the first recurring depiction of a lesbian couple on a prime time network, which made Taras sudden departure from our screens all the more heartbreaking. Ruth Evershed, Spooks Nicola Walker has had a rough time with seminal TV deaths, but the collecting outpouring of grief when one of her characters dies is a testament to the actors strengths. At the top of that list was her death as Ruth. Jaws dropped when her character became the last ever character to be killed in Spooks. After being stabbed by a shard of glass, Ruth is held in Harrys arms as they share one last emotional moment together. Viewers got one last glimpse of hope when Dimitri tried to revive her with an adrenaline shot but it was too late. The brutal end to Unforgottens season four wasnt Walkers first time at the rodeo (BBC/Kudos/Angus Muir) Matthew Crawley, Downton Abbey Matthews death was not the festive gift viewers expected when tuning into the Christmas Day special of Downton Abbey. Fans were devastated when the much-loved Matthew Crawley died after meeting his newborn son at the hospital. The cause of death a car crash felt like even more of a kick to the stomach considering Matthew had already survived World War I and the Spanish flu epidemic. Hadnt he suffered enough? Jane Margolis, Breaking Bad Breaking Bad had its fair share of emotional deaths (special shout out to Hank) but Janes hit especially hard. Krysten Ritters character a recovering heroin user and Jesses girlfriend eventually gives into her drug addiction and goes back to smoking crystal meth before she and Jesse begin to use heroin. In season two, Jane, lying in bed next to Jesse, chokes on her own vomit after overdosing on heroin. The real tearjerker, though, is that Walt stands by and lets her die. Bryan Cranston said the scene was the hardest for him to film. The actor recalled being a weeping mess after shooting it. Him and us both. Bryan Cranston said he was a weeping mess after shooting Janes death scene (Netflix) Tiffany Mitchell, EastEnders Before Martine McCutcheon stole hearts as Nadine in Love Actually, she had already won over the UK in her role as Tiffany Mitchell on Eastenders. The long-running soap shocked viewers on New Year 1998 when her character was mown down by Frank Butcher as she attempted to make a getaway from Walford with her daughter Courtney. Rita Morgan, Dexter Fans will remember the scene perfectly: Dexter comes home to find his wife Rita dead in the bathtub, murdered by Arthur (aka The Trinity Killer, played brilliantly by John Lithgow). While there were a few clues interspersed in the minutes leading up to the tragic reveal the baby crying, lingering shots Ritas death was one of the biggest shocks to rock Noughties TV. The show which is airing its reboot later year was never the same again. Dexter comes home to find his wife Rita dead in the bathtub (YouTube) Ben Sullivan, Scrubs Scrubs was known for its expert blend of laughs and emotional heft, an accomplishment thats nowhere more evident than in episode 14 of season three. My Screw Up featured Brendan Frasers final appearance as Jordans brother Ben Sullivan. The episode threw viewers for a loop when it turned out that the birthday party Dr Cox was planning for his son is, in fact, Bens funeral. Joshua Radins Winter, which plays while everyone gathers at the cemetery, will forever be associated with that shockingly sad moment. Sarah Lynn, BoJack Horseman Its not all the time that a cartoon can make you cry but BoJack Horseman is on par with the best dramas. Kristen Schaal played the former child actor and troubled pop star Sarah Lynn, whose death in season three from a heroin overdose had viewers sobbing. On the cusp of celebrating her ninth month of sobriety, she receives a call from BoJack asking her to party with him. She immediately says yes and their subsequent bender results in her death. The cover-up by BoJack only made it worse. The last episode saw its main characters finally going over the top (BBC) Everyone, Blackadder Although the comedy returned for a Millennium special, most fans consider the show to have ended with the aptly titled Goodbyeee. The sixth and final episode focuses on its main characters in the final hours before leaving their trenches and going over the top in slow motion. The instalment is darker than fans had come to expect of the historical comedy, with the main cast assumed to die in machine-gun fire. Juliet Burke, Lost Any other list ranking heartbreaking deaths would undoubtedly include Charlie's watery end in the season three finale. But Juliet's final moment deserves to be mentioned in the same breath. It's a tragic ending for a noble character who spends her time on the show putting other people's safety before her own. Arriving in the penultimate season finale, there's an air of inevitability to the moment, which is made all the more gut-wrenching due to the effect it has on reformed bad-boy Sawyer. For the death of a character introduced three seasons in to hit so hard is testament to Elizabeth Mitchell's razor sharp performance. A ferry carrying more than 200 people caught fire on Saturday in Indonesia, forcing passengers and crew to jump into the sea. No casualties were reported after fire broke out on the KM Karya Indah, which was heading to the remote Indonesian island of Limafatola. The blaze began at around 7am local time, said Wisnu Wardana, a spokesperson for the sea transportation directorate general. The ship had departed the port of Ternate, in North Maluku province, just 15 minutes before. Indonesia's National Search and Rescue Agency (NSRA) said officials were notified of the fire at around 8:30am. A rescue team was on the scene within ten minutes, the agency said. Local residents contributed to the rescue effort, using personal longboats to help carry passengers to land, according to officials. Video of the incident provided by the NSRA showed passengers and crew clinging to floating objects as they struggled in the choppy water, while the raging fire on the ferry sent up clouds of black smoke. Passengers are brought to safety after being forced overboard (NSRA) The NSRA said 257 people were onboard the ferry, 14 of whom were crew members. A smaller figure of 181 passengers was initially reported, but officials revised the number upwards after the evacuation effort. Mr Wardana said authorities were still investigating the cause of the incident, and that survivors said the fire apparently started in the engine room. Screengrab from footage shows passengers clambering on board lifeboat as fire rages (NSRA) Accidents at sea are common in Indonesia, the the world's largest archipelago nation where travel by boat is necessary to reach many of its 17,000 islands. Lax regulation of boat services is blamed for many of the accidents. In April, at least two people were killed after a collision between a cargo ship and a fishing boat off the coast of Indramayu, near capital Jakarta. One boating disaster in 2018, where a wooden ferry sank in Lake Toba on Sumatra, left more than 150 people missing, who authorities said are now presumed drowned after the search mission ended. Additional reporting by agencies In the months immediately before and after the US election of 2016, word was going round a small circle of people in Washington DC about extraordinary allegations being made about Donald Trump. Among the accusations being shared with a small group of reporters was that the former reality TV star had deep ties to the Russian state, which had been seeking to influence the election in his favour. It was alleged Russia had compromising material about Trump kompromat among it a video of the soon-to-be-sworn in president engaging in sex acts with prostitutes in a Moscow hotel room in 2013, and having them urinate on a bed where Barack Obama had once slept. After Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in the presidential race that November, Obama and Trump were briefed about the accusations by the intelligence services; Trump described the claims as phoney and said he was the victim of fake news. Since the Easter Sunday suicide bombings of 2019, which killed 269 people and injured over 500 in churches and hotels, Sri Lankan authorities have sought to combat the threat from violent Islamist groups. In March the country issued a new regulation, under the countrys hotly debated Prevention of Terrorism Act (PTA), that could send hundreds of the islands Muslims to rehabilitation centres controlled by the military. Individuals who are suspected of holding extremist beliefs can be referred to a government-designated rehabilitation centre for up to 12 months, with the possibility of extension. A Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen on Thursday acknowledged having equipment on an island in the Bab el-Mandeb Strait where a mysterious air base is now under construction. However, the coalition's statement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency did not name who was building the facility across the volcanic island of Mayun, the subject of recent reporting by The Associated Press. The statement said the equipment, which it did not identify, helps the coalition back Yemen's internationally recognized government against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who now hold the country's capital, Sanaa The statement said the United Arab Emirates, which remains a coalition member after largely withdrawing from the war in 2019, was providing air support in defense of the Yemeni city of Marib the target of an ongoing Houthi offensive. The statement called any claim of Emirati troops on Mayun baseless and unfounded. The AP reporting, based in part on satellite photos of the island, showed the construction of a 1.85 kilometer (6,070-foot) runway on the island. Shipping data links the Emirates to an earlier, abandoned effort to build a runway there. Military officials with Yemens internationally recognized government told the AP that Emirati ships transported military weapons, equipment and troops to Mayun Island in recent weeks for this latest construction. The AP reports did not mention any Emirati troop presence on the island. The Saudi statement comes after rising anger from Yemeni officials over the air base being built on Mayun. The UAE has not responded to repeated requests for comment. The Cyprus-flagged oil tanker Berlina was drifting near the Caribbean island of Dominica earlier this year when tracking technology showed it stopping in its tracks and in two minutes turning around 180 degrees. It was an amazingly quick pivot since the 274-meter (nearly 900-foot) ship needs roughly 10 times that amount of time to perform such a maneuver. Even more intriguing: Around the same time the Berlina was pinging its location at sea, it was physically spotted loading crude oil in nearby Venezuela despite U.S. sanctions against such trading. Meanwhile, nine other ships, some connected to the same Greece-based owner of the Berlina, were digitally monitored moving nearby at an identical speed and direction with sudden draft changes, indicating they had somehow been loaded full of crude though apparently out at sea. The Berlinas impossible journey could represent the next frontier of how rogue states and their enablers manipulate GPS-like tracking systems to hide their movements while circumventing sanctions, maritime experts say. In recent years, as the U.S. has expanded economic sanctions and tracking technology has become more widely used, companies have adopted a number of techniques to evade detection. Most involve a ship going dark, by turning off its mandatory automated identification system or by spoofing the identity and registration information of another ship, sometimes a sunken or scrapped vessel. Windward, a maritime intelligence agency whose data is used by the U.S. to investigate sanctions violations, carried out a detailed investigation into the Berlina. It considers the movements of the Berlina and the other ships to be one of the first instances of orchestrated manipulation in which vessels went dark for an extended period while off-ship agents used machines to hide their activities by making it appear they were transmitting their locations normally. Militaries around the world have been using the same electronic warfare technology for decades. But it is only now cropping up in commercial shipping, with serious national security, environmental and maritime safety implications. We believe this is going to spread really fast because its so efficient and easy, Matan Peled, co-founder of Windward, said in an interview. And its not just a maritime challenge. Imagine what would happen if small planes started adopting this tactic to hide their true locations? Under a United Nations maritime treaty, ships of over 300 tons have been required since 2004 to use the automated identification system to avoid collisions and assist rescues in the event of a spill or accident at sea. Tampering with its use is a major breach that can lead to consequences for a vessel and its owners. But the maritime safety mechanism has also become a powerful mechanism for tracking ships engaged in rogue activities like illegal fishing or transporting sanctioned crude oil to and from places under U.S. or international sanctions like Venezuela, Iran and North Korea. In the cat-and-mouse game that has ensued, the advent of digital ghosts leaving false tracks could give the bad actors the upper hand, said Russ Dallen, the Miami-based head of Caracas Capital Markets brokerage, who tracks maritime activity near Venezuela. Its pretty clear the bad guys will learn from these mistakes and next time will leave a digital trail that more closely resembles the real thing, Dallen said. The only way to verify its true movement will be to get a physical view of the ship, which is time consuming and expensive. The Berlina never reported a port call while floating in the Caribbean. Nonetheless, on March 5, the draft indicated by its identification system went from 9 meters to 17 meters (30 feet to 60 feet), suggesting it had been loaded with oil. Was it manipulation or a malfunction? While the Berlinas voyage remains something of a mystery, Vortexa, a London-based energy cargo tracker, determined the tanker had loaded at the Venezuelan port of Jose on March 2 and then headed toward Asia. Separately, Windward also confirmed the crude delivery through two sources. Two months later, on May 5, the Berlina discharged its crude in a ship-to-ship transfer to a floating storage vessel, the CS Innovation, according to Vortexa. The CS Innovation remains off the coast of Malaysia where the transfer took place and has undertaken a number of ship-to-ship transfers in the interim, making it nearly impossible to know where Venezuelas oil will end up. Adding to suspicions, the Berlina and at least four of the nine other vessels involved in the Caribbean voyage earlier this year are connected to the same Greek company, according to Windward. And all 10 vessels switched flags another common ploy used to make it harder to keep track of ships to Cyprus in the four months prior to the manipulation of the fleets tracking information. The AP was unable to locate any contact information for the Berlinas ship manager or owner, both of which are based in the port city of Pireaus, near Athens. Peled said the Berlinas activities may never have been detected if not for a tip it received from an external source that it wouldnt identify. But the know-how gained from the investigation has allowed it to identify other recent examples of location tampering, including one in January when a ship it did not identify was spotted loading Iranian crude at Kharg island while broadcasting its location out at sea somewhere else in the Persian Gulf. While the U.S. government has additional resources to ferret out such deceptive practices, doing so will require extra effort. "It suggests the length to which rogue actors are willing to go, to hide their activities, said Marshall Billingslea, an assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing during the Trump administration and former deputy undersecretary of the Navy. Its a worrisome trend and given the huge volume of maritime traffic will introduce a lot more noise into the system. ___ Joshua Goodman on Twitter: @APJoshGoodman Anti-vaccination protesters stormed Westfield shopping centre in west London on Saturday after hundreds joined a demonstration against coronavirus vaccine passports. Officers were forced to close roads around the centre when a number of demonstrators caused significant disruption to the local area, forcing shops to shut their doors for their staffs safety. Pictures and videos on social media showed some protesters clashing with officers as they tried to enter the building on Saturday afternoon. The Metropolitan Police said that three separate protests took place in London on Saturday, two of which concluded without incident. In a statement shared on Twitter at around 6.30pm, the force said: The 3rd demo is now at Westfield and is causing significant disruption to the local community and businesses, police are at the location. At 7.45pm, it added that the incident had finished and officers had withdrawn from the scene. The Met Police also said late on Saturday that four arrests had been made in relation to protests in London, although it was not initially clear at which protests the arrests had taken place. As of 21.45hrs on Saturday, 29 May, four arrests have been made during a number of protests in London, a spokesperson for the force said. Four men were arrested on suspicion of offences including assault on police, violent disorder and criminal damage. Earlier in the day, a large crowd of people gathered in Parliament Square to protest the governments response to the Covid-19 crisis, with some demonstrators claiming that the pandemic was a hoax. One man, who did not give his name, told the PA news agency that he had come because I want to be free and I want you to be free and the government are lying to us. Another protester said she had attended the event because the press are lying to us about the pandemic. By around 1.20pm, the crowd started to disperse and head towards Hyde Park before a group of demonstrators ended up at the shopping centre in west London. Additional reporting by PA Omissions and failures by the authorities charged with managing a released terrorist contributed to the deaths of two victims in the Fishmongers Hall attack, an inquest has found. Usman Khan murdered Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, at a prison rehabilitation event 11 months after he was freed following a jail sentence for preparing terrorist acts. Attendees including ex-offenders fought Khan with makeshift weapons and a narwhal tusk, and chased him onto London Bridge, where he was shot dead by armed police on 29 November 2019. Following joint inquests into the victims deaths, a jury found on Friday that they were unlawfully killed. Jurors found that the injuries suffered by Mr Merritt and Ms Jones were not survivable, but that omissions or failures in the lead-up to the attack had contributed to the deaths. They included serious deficiencies in the way Khan was managed following his release from prison, the training given to the staff dealing with him and missed opportunities by the security services to share their expertise and offer guidance. Jurors concluded that there had been a blind spot to the risk Khan posed to the public because he was held up as a poster boy for Cambridge Universitys Learning Together programme. They also found faults with the organisation of the event at Fishmongers Hall, including a lack of communication between different parties, the failure to complete a risk assessment and serious deficiencies in how agencies considered his attendance. In a joint statement read to Londons Guildhall by the head of the jury, members called Mr Merritt and Ms Jones wonderful young people and sent their condolences to their families. They clearly touched the lives of so many, ours included, jurors said. We also wanted to take this opportunity to thank the astonishing individuals who put themselves in real danger to help and our incredible emergency services for their response both that day and every day. Cambridge graduates Jack Merritt, 25, and Saskia Jones, 23, who were stabbed to death by terrorist Usman Khan (Metropolitan Police/PA) Once again to the families, we are so incredibly sorry. The world lost two bright stars that dreadful day. Mr Merritts father, Dave Merritt, said the arrangements for managing Khan following his release from prison were not fit for purpose. He also described MI5 and West Midlands Counter-Terrorism Police as complacent and passive in the face of Khan's extreme and continuing threat. Ms Joness uncle Philip Jones said the event organisers Learning Together, a prisoner education programme, appeared to have scant regard for safety, while state agencies also shared responsibility. On Learning Together, he said: It could be said that their single-minded view of the rehabilitation of offenders, using Usman Khan, in our view, as a 'poster boy' for their programme, significantly clouded their judgment. Despite being a high-risk category A prisoner who had been involved in prison violence and radicalising inmates - Khan had been permitted to join Learning Together in 2017, which saw him take part in courses alongside students. Shortly before Khan was automatically released from prison in December 2018, MI5 received intelligence that he wanted to commit an attack but did not share it with his probation officer. Fishmongers Hall attacker Usman Khan was an influential prison inmate who associated with Lee Rigbys killer (PA) After he was freed, Khan was monitored by MI5, counterterror police, probation staff, an electronic tag and a Mappa board of public protection agencies. The inquests heard that none of them detected any intelligence that he was planning the attack, and that surveillance missed Khan purchasing knives and equipment to make a fake suicide vest days before. Police and MI5 did not object to him attending a celebration to mark the fifth anniversary of Learning Together at Fishmongers Hall, or discuss it as a potential attack risk. The terrorist was permitted to travel to London from his home in Stafford without an escort, and there were no searches or scanners when he arrived at the venue. The inquests heard that Khan attended speeches and workshops before making his final preparations for the attack in the mens toilets shortly before 2pm. He taped two large knives to his hands and revealed a fake suicide vest previously hidden under his clothing, minutes after giving a speech saying how he had benefitted from the Learning Together programme. The terrorist stabbed Mr Merritt multiple times after he entered the toilets by chance, before walking into the neighbouring cloakroom and stabbing Ms Jones fatally in the neck. Terrorist Usman Khan talks to victim Saskia Jones before attack He also stabbed a Learning Together staff member and another former volunteer who had joined its programme at HMP Full Sutton while studying criminology. The inquests heard that Khan bypassed staff who worked at Fishmongers Hall, even when he had the chance to stab them or threatened them with his knives. An anonymous MI5 officer who gave evidence on behalf of the service said: We agree with the police assessment that it is likely that Khan was seeking to target members of the Learning Together team. She said MI5 did not have any previous intelligence that Khan harboured hostility towards the scheme, and believed it to be a very positive relationship. A separate inquest will start next week to examine the circumstances of Khans death. Priti Patel, the home secretary, said: It is important that the government and operational partners learn lessons to prevent further incidents like this, and we will also consider the inquest findings. Close Government open minded about extension of furlough scheme, says Michael Gove Boris Johnson faces a major rebellion over his plans to slash foreign aid as a growing number of Tory rebels back an amendement to force the government to make up the shortfall left from the multi-billion pound cut to the UKs official development assistance. Former prime minister Theresa May and six other former cabinet ministers added their names to the 30-strong list of Conservative MPs opposing the governments plan to abandon its commitment to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid for some of the poorest and most unstable areas of the globe. Meanwhile, Michael Gove said the government was open minded about continuing the furlough scheme beyond September, ahead of a meeting later where Nicola Sturgeon plans to push for an extension. As a current print subscriber, you receive 24/7 access to our website and online e-edition at no additional charge. All you have to do is activate your access. To activate digital access, you will need your account number. You can find your account number on any recent subscription notice or bill. Discontent in the southern Tory shires over the governments planning reforms and Boris Johnsons focus on the northern Red Wall could put a rock-solid Conservative seat at risk in an upcoming by-election, it has been claimed. Liberal Democrats are preparing to flood Chesham and Amersham with volunteers after internal polling showed Ed Daveys party making inroads into the Conservative vote in a leafy commuter-belt constituency in affluent Buckinghamshire which has been Tory since it was created in 1974. With a 16,223 majority to overturn from the 2019 general election, Lib Dem candidate Sarah Green has a mountain to climb to challenge for a shock victory in the 17 June vote, but internal party memos seen by The Independent have described the improbable target as a by-election we can win. Party polling of the seat has found Tory support down by nearly 10 percentage points since the general election on 45.5 per cent, with Lib Dems up almost nine points on 35.1 a swing to Daveys party of 9.35 per cent but still well short of what is needed to capture one of the Conservatives safest seats. UK news in pictures Show all 50 1 /50 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 9 June 2021 Adam Chamberlain, 45, general manager of Big Tree pub in Sheffield, has put up over 500 flags, taking 36 hours, in preparation for Euro 2020, which kicks off this weekend Tom Maddick / SWNS UK news in pictures 8 June 2021 REUTERS UK news in pictures 7 June 2021 A pedestrian wearing a face covering walks over Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 6 June 2021 Isobel Salamon, founder of the Edinburgh Cinema Club, poses alongside the Leith Trainspotting murals in Quality Yard, Leith, Edinburgh, for the programme launch of the Cinescapes Festival which starts on July 4 with a Trainspotting 1 and 2 double bill PA UK news in pictures 5 June 2021 A long exposure photograph captures the rotation of the earth as the stars blur into circles over Knowlton church ruins in Dorset Nick Lucas/SWNS UK news in pictures 4 June 2021 Balloonists take flight during the opening of the Midlands Air Festival in Alcester, Warwickshire PA UK news in pictures 3 June 2021 Members of the Household Cavalry during the Major General's annual inspection of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in Hyde Park, London PA UK news in pictures 2 June 2021 Hannah Vitos of the Blenheim Art Foundation, poses for a photograph next to artist Ai Weiwei's Gilded Cage (2017) sculpture in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 1 June 2021 People swim in the Sky Pool, a transparent swimming pool bridge across two exclusive residential blocks standing next to the US Embassy in Nine Elms, in London, Tuesday, June 1, 2021 AP UK news in pictures 31 May 2021 People enjoy the hot weather at Brighton beach Reuters UK news in pictures 30 May 2021 People venture into the sea as they enjoy themselves during a hot day on Brighton Beach AP UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 27 May 2021 White Pelicans in the sunshine in St James's Park, London PA UK news in pictures 26 May 2021 Boats are seen at Southsea Moorings in Portsmouth Reuters UK news in pictures 25 May 2021 York Glaziers Trust employees Kieran Muir (left) and Emily Price (right) remove a stained glass window panel at the start of a new five year, 5m project to conserve York Minsters South East Transept and its medieval St Cuthbert Window PA UK news in pictures 24 May 2021 Dark rain clouds above an oast house at Bewl Water reservoir near Lamberhurst in Kent during one of the rainiest Mays on record, with the UK seeing 131 per cent of the usual months rainfall already PA UK news in pictures 23 May 2021 The Premier League trophy with the Manchester City club colour ribbons on, at Etihad Stadium, prior to the last Premier League match of the season. City will finally pick up the trophy after they won the league on 11 May Getty UK news in pictures 22 May 2021 Gary Kenny lifts the Buildbase FA Vase Trophy after Warrington Rylands won the FA Vase Final against Binfield at Wembley Stadium Getty UK news in pictures 21 May 2021 A family buffeted by the wind whilst crossing the the Millennium Bridge in London, with wind and rain forecast to ravage the UK on the first Friday that people have been allowed to meet in large groups outside in England PA UK news in pictures 20 May 2021 Devon And Cornwall Police Demonstrate Their Skills For Policing The G7 Summit Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 May 2021 An employee stands before a costume for the Queen of Hearts by Bob Crowley on display at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London PA UK news in pictures 17 May 2021 Passengers prepare to board an easyJet flight to Faro, Portugal, at Gatwick Airport after the ban on international leisure travel for people in England was lifted following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 16 May 2021 Emergency workers at the scene of a suspected gas explosion, in which a young child was killed and two people were seriously injured, on Mallowdale Ave Heysham which caused 2 houses to collapse and badly damaged another PA UK news in pictures 15 May 2021 Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placards during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian cause as violence escalates in the ongoing conflict with Israel, in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 14 May 2021 Member of staffs tighten screws and paint a Marlin skeleton, before it goes on display at the Natural History Museum in London, as the museum prepares to reopen to the public on 17 May, following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 13 May 2021 A worshipper at the Baitul Futuh Mosque in Mordon, south London, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The celebration marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting, called Ramadan. PA UK news in pictures 12 May 2021 A couple have wedding photos taken in Westminster, London Getty UK news in pictures 11 May 2021 The sun rises on Coquet Island, off Amble on the Northumberland coast, where as many as 35000 seabirds cram onto this tiny island to breed PA UK news in pictures 10 May 2021 Newly elected for a second term Mayor of London Sadiq Khan during his signing in ceremony at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Londons Southbank PA UK news in pictures 9 May 2021 People mill around St. Michael's tower on top of Glastonbury Tor as it is seen through blooming yellow rapeseed on a day of mixed weather in Glastonbury, Somerset PA UK news in pictures 8 May 2021 Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford elbow bumps newly elected MS Labour candidates Elizabeth Buffy Williams, Rhondda, left, and Sarah Murphy, Bridgend & Porthcawl Labour, right, as they meet in Porthcawl, Wales PA UK news in pictures 6 May 2021 A group of five Sisters from Carmelite Monastery in Dysart cast their vote in the Scottish Parliamentary election at Dysart Community Hall, West Port, Dysart PA UK news in pictures 5 May 2021 Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer (centre) with West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Liam Byrne (far right) and Labour Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner (far left) during a visit to Birmingham, whilst on the election campaign trail PA UK news in pictures 4 May 2021 Artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey stand within 100 oak saplings which form part of a living art installation entitled Beuys' Acorns by the UK-based artist duo, outside the Tate Modern in London PA UK news in pictures 3 May 2021 Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie feeds the Gentoo penguins during a visit to Edinburgh Zoo on the campaign trail for the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary Election on May 6 PA UK news in pictures 2 May 2021 Chelsea players celebrate their fourth goal during the Womens Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich, at Kingsmeadow Stadium in south west London. The Blues won the game 4-1, (and the tie 5-3 on aggregate) sending them through to their first Champions League final AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 1 May 2020 Demonstrators during a march through London during a 'Kill the Bill' protest Angela Christofilou UK news in pictures 30 April 2021 Shoppers queue outside Primark in Belfast as shops reopen and hospitality is able to open outdoors in Northern Ireland where lockdown restrictions have begun to gradually ease PA UK news in pictures 29 April 2021 Specialist operators at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, near Telford, Shropshire, clean the Hawker Hunter aircraft displayed within the museum's National Cold War Exhibition, during annual high-level aircraft cleaning and maintenance PA UK news in pictures 28 April 2021 Millions of tulips in flower near Kings Lynn in Norfolk, as Belmont Nurseries, the UK's largest commercial grower of outdoor tulips, offers socially-distanced visits to its tulip fields at Hillington to raise funds for local charity The Norfolk Hospice Tapping House PA UK news in pictures 27 April 2021 Paula Laughton checks one of the newly installed Lego models in the new Lego Mythica land at Legoland Windsor Resort PA UK news in pictures 26 April 2021 A red panda rests on a tree at Manor Wildlife park, which reopened its doors as lockdown restrictions continue to ease, in Tenby, Wales Reuters UK news in pictures 25 April 2021 Sheep climb the hillside as flames from a moor fire are seen on Marsden moor, near Huddersfield AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 24 April 2021 Supporters protest against Manchester United's owners, outside English Premier League club Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium in Manchester AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 23 April 2021 People enjoy the warm weather at City Hall near Tower Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 22 April 2021 Uyghurs during a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, which is being held ahead of a House of Commons debate, bought by backbench MP Nus Ghani, on whether Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide PA UK news in pictures 21 April 2021 People walk at the Taihaku Cherry Orchard in Alnwick REUTERS UK news in pictures 20 April 2021 People stand in front of anti Super League banners outside Anfield as twelve of Europe's top football clubs, including Liverpool, launch a breakaway league Reuters UK news in pictures 19 April 2021 Women enjoy sunny weather in Greenwich, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain, Reuters But the same survey found more than 60 per cent of Labour and Green supporters are ready to consider voting tactically to oust the Conservatives, raising party hopes that a serious challenge may not be so fanciful. One party strategist wrote in a message to senior staff: It is clear we are picking up considerable numbers of former Conservatives who are actively considering switching to the Lib Dems this time, and many have already done so. Opposition to the Conservative governments planning white paper proposals, which put more Chilterns green space at risk, is the number one reason given by Conservative switchers, followed by a clear sense that traditional Conservative voters in this area who are quite liberal in their social outlook have been taken for granted by a party overtly looking to prioritise the Red Wall. With postal votes going out over the coming week, the Lib Dems are now expected to target significant resources on the constituency in the hope of pulling off what would be a turnaround to match Mr Johnsons capture of Hartlepool from Labour in May. The memo to Daveys chief of staff recommended: Deploy all available volunteer resources towards Chesham and Amersham over the next month as maximum priority. If this trend continues, and Labour and Green voters vote tactically, this seat can be won on 17 June. The Chesham and Amersham seat became vacant with the death in April of Cheryl Gillan, a former cabinet minister who had represented the seat since 1992. Dame Cheryl inherited the seat from Sir Ian Gilmour, who had held it since its creation in 1974. Between them, the pair achieved majorities of more than 10,000 in each of 13 successive elections, making it one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. Any serious dent in Tory fortunes would continue a trend observed in this years English local elections, in which Tory gains in the Midlands and North were partially offset by smaller losses in traditionally true-blue southern counties like Hertfordshire, Surrey, Kent and Oxfordshire, with council seats forfeited in places like Tunbridge Wells, Wokingham and Chipping Norton. Lib Dems gained three seats on the overwhelmingly Tory Buckinghamshire County Council and took control of Amersham Town Council on the same day. Defections of traditional Tories are believed to have been motivated by the damage done by Brexit to small businesses and distaste for the Johnson administrations culture war messaging as well as by proposed planning reforms which critics warn will put the green belt at risk from development and which have raised concern from organisations like the National Trust and Council for Protection of Rural England. In a letter to Tory by-election candidate Peter Fleet, Lib Dem MP Layla Moran urged him to condemn the governments approach, writing: Over the last two years the Conservative Party has received over 11m in donations from property developers. Local people are right to be angry at a Conservative Party that chooses to champion those who seek to build on the green belt rather than the views of local people in Chesham and Amersham. A majority of Britons frown on their neighbours planning to jet off to Spain, Greece or France this summer, with 60 per cent in a new poll saying it is not reasonable to holiday in such countries while they remain on the governments coronavirus amber list. Some 63 per cent polled for The Independent agreed with Boris Johnsons assessment that travel to such countries should be avoided except in extreme circumstances, such as a serious illness of a family member. Meanwhile one in five of those taking part in the Savanta ComRes survey thought the maximum 10,000 fine for breaching the rules was too lenient, with almost one in 20 saying that dodging quarantine should be punished with jail. Travel industry bosses are pushing the prime minister to move popular destinations in Europe onto the green section of Englands traffic light system to permit mass holidays abroad this summer. Travel agents have reported a surge in bookings, many made in the hope of restrictions being eased in the coming weeks. Mediterranean island sunspots like Malta, Mallorca, Ibiza and Rhodes are expected to be given the all-clear next week for holidays from 10 June. But todays poll suggests that the British public remain wary about trips abroad while coronavirus continues to circulate in countries around the world. Just 25 per cent said it was reasonable to go on holiday in the amber zone, which covers most of the UKs favourite getaway spots, with the exception of green-listed Portugal. More than a third (36 per cent) said that all UK citizens returning from a trip abroad should face 10 days mandatory quarantine in managed airport hotels something currently restricted only to those coming from the highest-risk red-list countries like India or Brazil. And a further 21 per cent said all Britons coming back to the country should self-isolate at home for 10 days, as is currently required for those coming from amber-list states. Only 20 per cent backed the governments traffic light system, which tailors quarantine requirements to the level of risk posed by different countries. And just 6 per cent said quarantine should be scrapped altogether for Britons returning to the UK. The legal ban on unnecessary overseas trips was lifted on 17 May, but the traffic light system threatens to make travel prohibitively onerous and expensive for all but a handful of destinations this summer. Travellers arriving in England from 43 red-list states must take a Covid test before travelling and then two more while under quarantine in an approved hotel at a cost of at least 1,750. Just 12 countries and territories including improbable destinations like the Falklands and South Georgia alongside Portugal, Iceland and Israel are on the green list, requiring only tests before and after travel. For the rest of the world, amber-list rules mandate a test before travel and two more during 10 days isolation at home. Labour has urged Mr Johnson to ditch the confusing system, which they branded as secure as a sieve, in favour of blanket quarantines. UK news in pictures Show all 51 1 /51 UK news in pictures UK news in pictures 8 June 2021 REUTERS UK news in pictures 7 June 2021 A pedestrian wearing a face covering walks over Westminster Bridge near the Houses of Parliament in central London AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 6 June 2021 Isobel Salamon, founder of the Edinburgh Cinema Club, poses alongside the Leith Trainspotting murals in Quality Yard, Leith, Edinburgh, for the programme launch of the Cinescapes Festival which starts on July 4 with a Trainspotting 1 and 2 double bill PA UK news in pictures 5 June 2021 A long exposure photograph captures the rotation of the earth as the stars blur into circles over Knowlton church ruins in Dorset Nick Lucas/SWNS UK news in pictures 4 June 2021 Balloonists take flight during the opening of the Midlands Air Festival in Alcester, Warwickshire PA UK news in pictures 3 June 2021 Members of the Household Cavalry during the Major General's annual inspection of the Household Cavalry Mounted Regiment in Hyde Park, London PA UK news in pictures 2 June 2021 Hannah Vitos of the Blenheim Art Foundation, poses for a photograph next to artist Ai Weiwei's Gilded Cage (2017) sculpture in the grounds of Blenheim Palace in Woodstock, Britain Reuters UK news in pictures 1 June 2021 People swim in the Sky Pool, a transparent swimming pool bridge across two exclusive residential blocks standing next to the US Embassy in Nine Elms, in London, Tuesday, June 1, 2021 AP UK news in pictures 31 May 2021 People enjoy the hot weather at Brighton beach Reuters UK news in pictures 30 May 2021 People venture into the sea as they enjoy themselves during a hot day on Brighton Beach AP UK news in pictures 29 May 2021 Swimmers at the Stonehaven Open Air Pool in Aberdeenshire, which reopens after lockdown restrictions were eased PA UK news in pictures 28 May 2021 Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson gestures as he meets Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban at Downing Street in London REUTERS UK news in pictures 27 May 2021 White Pelicans in the sunshine in St James's Park, London PA UK news in pictures 26 May 2021 Boats are seen at Southsea Moorings in Portsmouth Reuters UK news in pictures 25 May 2021 York Glaziers Trust employees Kieran Muir (left) and Emily Price (right) remove a stained glass window panel at the start of a new five year, 5m project to conserve York Minsters South East Transept and its medieval St Cuthbert Window PA UK news in pictures 24 May 2021 Dark rain clouds above an oast house at Bewl Water reservoir near Lamberhurst in Kent during one of the rainiest Mays on record, with the UK seeing 131 per cent of the usual months rainfall already PA UK news in pictures 23 May 2021 The Premier League trophy with the Manchester City club colour ribbons on, at Etihad Stadium, prior to the last Premier League match of the season. City will finally pick up the trophy after they won the league on 11 May Getty UK news in pictures 22 May 2021 Gary Kenny lifts the Buildbase FA Vase Trophy after Warrington Rylands won the FA Vase Final against Binfield at Wembley Stadium Getty UK news in pictures 21 May 2021 A family buffeted by the wind whilst crossing the the Millennium Bridge in London, with wind and rain forecast to ravage the UK on the first Friday that people have been allowed to meet in large groups outside in England PA UK news in pictures 20 May 2021 Devon And Cornwall Police Demonstrate Their Skills For Policing The G7 Summit Getty Images UK news in pictures 18 May 2021 An employee stands before a costume for the Queen of Hearts by Bob Crowley on display at the Alice: Curiouser and Curiouser exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London PA UK news in pictures 17 May 2021 Passengers prepare to board an easyJet flight to Faro, Portugal, at Gatwick Airport after the ban on international leisure travel for people in England was lifted following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 16 May 2021 Emergency workers at the scene of a suspected gas explosion, in which a young child was killed and two people were seriously injured, on Mallowdale Ave Heysham which caused 2 houses to collapse and badly damaged another PA UK news in pictures 15 May 2021 Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placards during a demonstration in support of the Palestinian cause as violence escalates in the ongoing conflict with Israel, in central London AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 14 May 2021 Member of staffs tighten screws and paint a Marlin skeleton, before it goes on display at the Natural History Museum in London, as the museum prepares to reopen to the public on 17 May, following the further easing of lockdown restrictions in England PA UK news in pictures 13 May 2021 A worshipper at the Baitul Futuh Mosque in Mordon, south London, ahead of Eid al-Fitr. The celebration marks the end of the Muslim month of fasting, called Ramadan. PA UK news in pictures 12 May 2021 A couple have wedding photos taken in Westminster, London Getty UK news in pictures 11 May 2021 The sun rises on Coquet Island, off Amble on the Northumberland coast, where as many as 35000 seabirds cram onto this tiny island to breed PA UK news in pictures 10 May 2021 Newly elected for a second term Mayor of London Sadiq Khan during his signing in ceremony at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre on Londons Southbank PA UK news in pictures 9 May 2021 People mill around St. Michael's tower on top of Glastonbury Tor as it is seen through blooming yellow rapeseed on a day of mixed weather in Glastonbury, Somerset PA UK news in pictures 8 May 2021 Wales First Minister Mark Drakeford elbow bumps newly elected MS Labour candidates Elizabeth Buffy Williams, Rhondda, left, and Sarah Murphy, Bridgend & Porthcawl Labour, right, as they meet in Porthcawl, Wales PA UK news in pictures 6 May 2021 A group of five Sisters from Carmelite Monastery in Dysart cast their vote in the Scottish Parliamentary election at Dysart Community Hall, West Port, Dysart PA UK news in pictures 5 May 2021 Leader of the Labour Party Sir Keir Starmer (centre) with West Midlands Metro Mayor candidate Liam Byrne (far right) and Labour Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner (far left) during a visit to Birmingham, whilst on the election campaign trail PA UK news in pictures 4 May 2021 Artists Heather Ackroyd and Dan Harvey stand within 100 oak saplings which form part of a living art installation entitled Beuys' Acorns by the UK-based artist duo, outside the Tate Modern in London PA UK news in pictures 3 May 2021 Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Willie Rennie feeds the Gentoo penguins during a visit to Edinburgh Zoo on the campaign trail for the forthcoming Scottish Parliamentary Election on May 6 PA UK news in pictures 2 May 2021 Chelsea players celebrate their fourth goal during the Womens Champions League semi-final second leg against Bayern Munich, at Kingsmeadow Stadium in south west London. The Blues won the game 4-1, (and the tie 5-3 on aggregate) sending them through to their first Champions League final AFP/Getty UK news in pictures 1 May 2020 Demonstrators during a march through London during a 'Kill the Bill' protest Angela Christofilou UK news in pictures 30 April 2021 Shoppers queue outside Primark in Belfast as shops reopen and hospitality is able to open outdoors in Northern Ireland where lockdown restrictions have begun to gradually ease PA UK news in pictures 29 April 2021 Specialist operators at the Royal Air Force Museum Cosford, near Telford, Shropshire, clean the Hawker Hunter aircraft displayed within the museum's National Cold War Exhibition, during annual high-level aircraft cleaning and maintenance PA UK news in pictures 28 April 2021 Millions of tulips in flower near Kings Lynn in Norfolk, as Belmont Nurseries, the UK's largest commercial grower of outdoor tulips, offers socially-distanced visits to its tulip fields at Hillington to raise funds for local charity The Norfolk Hospice Tapping House PA UK news in pictures 27 April 2021 Paula Laughton checks one of the newly installed Lego models in the new Lego Mythica land at Legoland Windsor Resort PA UK news in pictures 26 April 2021 A red panda rests on a tree at Manor Wildlife park, which reopened its doors as lockdown restrictions continue to ease, in Tenby, Wales Reuters UK news in pictures 25 April 2021 Sheep climb the hillside as flames from a moor fire are seen on Marsden moor, near Huddersfield AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 24 April 2021 Supporters protest against Manchester United's owners, outside English Premier League club Manchester United's Old Trafford stadium in Manchester AFP via Getty UK news in pictures 23 April 2021 People enjoy the warm weather at City Hall near Tower Bridge in central London PA UK news in pictures 22 April 2021 Uyghurs during a demonstration in Parliament Square, London, which is being held ahead of a House of Commons debate, bought by backbench MP Nus Ghani, on whether Uyghurs in China's Xinjiang province are suffering crimes against humanity and genocide PA UK news in pictures 21 April 2021 People walk at the Taihaku Cherry Orchard in Alnwick REUTERS UK news in pictures 20 April 2021 People stand in front of anti Super League banners outside Anfield as twelve of Europe's top football clubs, including Liverpool, launch a breakaway league Reuters UK news in pictures 19 April 2021 Women enjoy sunny weather in Greenwich, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in London, Britain, Reuters UK news in pictures 18 April 2021 Stephen Maguire (right) of Scotland interacts with Jamie Jones of Wales during day 2 of the Betfred World Snooker Championships 2021 at The Crucible, Sheffield PA UK news in pictures 17 April 2021 Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburghs coffin, covered with His Royal Highnesss Personal Standard arrives by Landrover Defender at St Georges Chapel carried by a bearer party found by the Royal Marines during the funeral of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh at Windsor Castle Getty Images Shadow home secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds highlighted official figures showing that 12 million people have flown into the UK since the start of the March 2020 lockdown and 1.59 million between January and April this year, when international travel was supposed to be tightly restricted. Time and time again, the UK government promised strong border measures, but the truth is now out millions of people have been flying into the UK with only a tiny percentage going into hotel quarantine, he said. And almost half (46 per cent) of those polled agreed that the governments current rules were unclear, equal to the 46 per cent who said they were clear. Majorities said it was unreasonable to expect to travel to amber-list countries for holidays (60 per cent), to visit a second home (57 per cent) or visit family and friends (51 per cent). Some 46 per cent disapproved of amber-list travel for business purposes, against just 36 per cent who said this was a reasonable thing to do. The young were keenest to travel, with 40 per cent of 18- to 24-year-olds saying holidays in the amber zone should be allowed, compared to just 13 per cent of over-65s. Some 49 per cent of the youngest age-group approved of visits to family and friends and 50 per cent of trips to second homes in the amber zone. People in the northeast and London were most likely to give the OK to travel for holiday breaks, while people in Northern Ireland were most likely to disapprove. Some 31 per cent said the maximum 10,000 fine for breaching quarantine after entering England from abroad is too harsh, but 20 per cent believe it is too lenient with the elderly wanting the toughest enforcement. Asked which of a range of penalties was most appropriate, the largest group picked a fine of less than 1,000 (backed by around 14 per cent of the total), while at the other end of the scale more than 3.5 per cent thought the fine should be over 25,000 and 4 per cent said breaches should be punished with jail. Savanta ComRes associate director Chris Hopkins said: Throughout the pandemic Brits have been willing to give up their freedoms, and it still seems from this polling at least that holidays are not top of peoples priorities heading towards the summer, with two-thirds saying trips to amber list countries should be restricted to emergencies only. Half of Brits would also endorse some form of mandatory quarantine at home or in a hotel for arrivals into England from all countries, so even more being added to the green list may not encourage holidaymakers en masse to spend their summer abroad. Savanta ComRes polled 2,215 British adults between 21-23 May. Priti Patel hosted a meeting with a Bahrain minister blamed for the recent torture of political prisoners, triggering claims that she is whitewashing abuse in the country. MPs are demanding an aid ban on the repressive Gulf state over the violence, condemned by the UN high commissioner for human rights as a violation of international law. It followed allegations of multiple other human rights breaches, including evidence that detained children as young as 13 are beaten and threatened with rape. Yet, despite the abhorrent alleged abuse, the home secretary invited General Shaikh Rashid bin Abdullah Al Khalifa, Bahrains interior minister, to talks this week to discuss security matters and topics of mutual interest. The meeting came after The Independent revealed that Ms Patel toured a notorious police department in Bahrain where activists including a man granted asylum in the UK were allegedly tortured and sexually assaulted. Andrew Gwynne, a senior Labour MP, said he had written to Boris Johnson to protest against Ms Patels 25 May meeting, describing it as incredibly insulting to the victims of these abuses. Sayed Ahmed Alwadaei, director of the human rights group Bahrain Institute for Rights and Democracy (Bird), said the encounter showed the UK was willing to tolerate human rights abuses, as long as they are committed by allied states. And Jeed Basyouni, from the organisation Reprieve, said: It is so disturbing to see the UK government advertising its partnership with Bahrain like this, when it knows full well that the regime systematically uses torture and death sentences to suppress dissent. Since violently crushing a pro-democracy protest movement in 2011, the islands monarchy has been condemned for cracking down on civil liberties and dismantling political opposition. But the UK government has continued to provide security advice, resisting calls to end the arrangement on the grounds that it needs support to head in a positive direction. Just last month, there was what a parliamentary motion tabled by MPs calls a violent attack against over 60 political prisoners by Bahraini police at Jau Prison. The motion notes: Minister Al Khalifa has overseen the systematic persecution of human rights defenders, journalists and activists in Bahrain and the terrorising of civil society since at least 2011. Campaigners are alarmed by Ms Patels close links with the Bahraini government, but are also fiercely critical of the UKs ambassador to the island nation, Roderick Drummond. After the prison attacks on 17 April involving egregious torture, say MPs families of inmates who were feared to have disappeared appealed to Mr Drummond for help finding their missing relatives. The UN condemned disproportionate force, noting witnesses had reported that special forces threw stun grenades and beat detainees on their heads. But the ambassador then visited the prison, describing it as a well-run facility, with good medical provision and praising Bahrain for being more transparent. Mr Drummond was accused of ignoring letters about the disappeared people and pleas to speak with their families. Mr Gwynne added: The human rights abuses being perpetrated in Bahrain are abhorrent. It is unacceptable that the government havent applied sanctions or even publicly condemned the abuse. However, the Home Office believes no purpose is served in criticising Bahrain publicly because it is seen as a vital security partner in the Middle East, but is unable to point to any reform achieved. Asked about the criticism of Ms Patels meeting with the interior minister, a Home Office spokesperson said: The government is committed to supporting Bahrain as it continues to make important security, police and justice reforms, and we will continue work closely together to promote security and stability in the Gulf region and across the world. Brazil is facing its worst drought in more than 90 years, sparking fears of energy shortages from its large hydroelectricity industry and an increased risk of fires in the Amazon rainforest. The countrys Electricity Sector Monitoring Committee (CMSE) said on Thursday that water regulator ANA should recognise a situation of water scarcity in the Parana River Basin following a prolonged drought in central and southern parts of Brazil. As highlighted by the National Electricity System Operator, in May 2021, significant values of precipitation were not observed, typical behaviour of the dry season, a condition that should continue in the coming months, especially in the southeast/midwest region, the CMSE said in a statement. A 64-year-old Sikh immigrant who was forced to shave his beard in an Arizona prison has called on the US Justice Department to investigate it as an infringement of religious freedoms. The complaint said that unless the Justice Department investigates the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) for this misconduct and takes immediate enforcement action, other ADCRR prisoners will suffer similar violations of their rights. Surjit Singh was sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter in a case from 2017. He was taken into custody on 21 August 2020 following his sentencing. Singh is currently incarcerated at the Whetstone Unit in Tucson operated by the ADCRR. The complaint was filed by attorneys with the Sikh Coalition, the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona, the ACLU Program on Freedom of Religion and Belief, the ACLU National Prison Project and WilmerHale LLP. It alleges that on 25 August 2020, the ADCRR officials forcibly shaved his religiously mandated beard without giving him the opportunity to object, even as they were long aware of Singhs limited English proficiency and the fact that his native language is Punjabi. According to the complaint, at one point during his ordeal, Singh said cut my throat, but dont cut my beard! But he was eventually handcuffed and his beard was cut. [ADCRR] has failed to provide adequate language assistance, thereby denying him meaningful access to prison programs and services, the complaint said. The 11-page complaint said the only language assistance Singh received while being forcibly shaved came from an ADCRR staff member who spoke Hindi, not Punjabi. The complaint said that the ADCRR never provided Singh with a Punjabi-speaking interpreter; nor has it provided translated versions of vital documents, such as the prisoner handbook, rules, and procedures he is required to follow, or prison forms he must fill out to make requests for religious accommodations and physician appointments. As a result, the complaint said, Singh struggled to communicate with prison staff and faced difficulty in obtaining a turban. The lawyers for Singh said that his treatment has been nothing short of egregious. Forcibly shaving his beard, which he had previously maintained unshorn his entire life, clearly violated his rights under RLUIPA (Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act), as did threatening to shave him again after his intake in accordance with the prisons one-inch beard limitation policy, it said. It alleges that the ADCRRs facial hair policies likely violate the rights of many other prisoners in the agencys custody whose faith requires them to maintain a beard. They asked the Justice Department to investigate these policies and their implementation. The DOJ should take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that the ADCRR adopts a clear, easy-to-follow religious accommodation process in connection with its facial hair policies and that these and other key policies and documents are translated for prisoners with limited English proficiency, it demanded. President Joe Biden blasted a bill in Texas state legislature that would severely limit voting rights in the state, calling the legislation wrong and un-American. Today, Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote, the president said in a statement on Saturday. Its wrong and un-American. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote. Texas Republicans on Saturday finalized the bill, which would impose a wide array of new voting restrictions and tighten existing ones. If passed, it would ban drive-through voting and 24-hour voting, set strict limits on mail-in ballots, prohibit using tents and other makeshift structures as voting sites, and require showing ID to vote in some cases, among other restrictions. By drafting the bill, Texas joins a growing number of Republican-dominated states that have moved to limit access to voting since the 2020 elections, in which the GOP lost the presidency and the Senate. In his statement, Mr Biden denounced that nation-wide movement. Its part of an assault on democracy that weve seen far too often this year and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans, the president said. Now that its finished, the Texas bill will go to the two houses of the states legislature, both of which have Republican majorities. It is expected to pass both chambers, and Republican governor Greg Abbott is expected to sign it. Texas lawmakers hailed the bill as comprehensive and sensible. Even as the national media minimizes the importance of election integrity, the Texas Legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signaling, state Senator Bryan Hughes and State Representative Briscoe Cain, both Republicans, said in a joint statement. Meanwhile, President Biden urged congressional Democrats to pass national legislation that could potentially override state laws like the one being formed in Texas. I call again on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, Mr Biden said. And I continue to call on all Americans, of every party and persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections. An Arizonacongressman has been mocked for quoting a U2 song about Martin Luther King in reference to a slain Capitol rioter. Republican Paul Gosar took to Twitter to show his support for Ashli Babbitt, a Donald Trump supporter who was shot and killed by police as she stormed the US Capitol on 6 January. And Mr Gosar used lyrics from U2s hit song Pride (In the Name of Love) in his tweet on the day that Republicans in the Senate blocked a commission to investigate the insurrection. They took her life. They could not take her pride, #onemoreinthenameoflove, tweeted the lawmaker. Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger an outspoken critic of Mr Trump took to Twitter to tell his colleague, Paul youve lost your mind. And he added: Side note to anyone watching, dont breach the house floor illegally, especially after warned. Last month a Capitol Police officer was cleared of criminal wrongdoing for fatally shooting the 35-year-old US Air Force veteran from California as she tried to breach a set of doors within the Capitol. (Getty Images) And social media users lined up to poke fun at Mr Gosar. You weasel. That mob could easily have attacked maimed or killed you imagining you were the wrong guy or thinking you were on the other side. You should kiss the feet of the capitol police. Snake, tweeted actor Patricia Arquette. "Ashli Babbitt attacked her own country's government at the Capitol, democracy's temple, in an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power, the crown jewel of American democracy, tweeted @MontyBoa99. The first violent attack on it since the British in 1812. That's treason. She's no patriot. And @mayatcontreras added: Bono wrote Early morning, April 4, shot rings out in the Memphis sky, Free at last, they took your life, they could not take your pride to commemorate MLK Jr's life so of course a GOP Gosar is trying to compare MLK to a person trying to murder Congressional members. Shameless. And @jimfusillibooks tweeted: With respect for her service to our country, at some point Ms Babbitt discarded her oath of enlistment and joined an insurrection whose purpose was to kill members of Congress and overturn a lawful election. Gosar, who encouraged the insurrection, is exploiting her memory. The governor of Idaho nixed an executive order a day after his lieutenant governor placed a ban on coronavirus mask mandates, describing her actions as a tyrannical abuse of power and a "self-serving political stunt." Governor Brad Little of Idaho reversed the order of Republican Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, who took action against mask mandates, even though Idaho never had a statewide one, while the governor was out of town attending the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville. Ms McGeachin has far-right views and has worked to undermine Mr Little's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, she issued an executive order ending local mask mandates in schools and public buildings. Though Mr Little never issued a state mask mandate, he has encouraged widespread mask usage. On the local level, counties, cities and schools have enacted their own mask mandates, and many have been lifted as the number of vaccinated people in Idaho increases. There are two counties and 10 cities that still have mask orders in place. Mr Little explained his reasons for reversing Ms McGeachin's order on Friday. I have opposed a statewide mask mandate all along because I dont think top-down mandates change behavior the way personal choice does, Mr Little said in a statement. He said he opposed the move because it stripped the agency of local officials to govern their counties and cities as they deemed necessary. But, as your Governor, when it came to masks, I also didnt undermine separately elected officials who, under Idaho law, are given authorities to take measures they believe will protect the health and safety of the people they serve, he said. Ms McGeachin did not notify the governor of her plans to rescind the mask orders. The governor condemned her order. Taking the earliest opportunity to act solitarily on a highly politicized, polarizing issue without conferring with local jurisdictions, legislators, and the sitting Governor is, simply put, an abuse of power, Mr Little said. This kind of over-the-top executive action amounts to tyranny something we all oppose. How ironic that the action comes from a person who has groused about tyranny, executive overreach, and balance of power for months. Ms McGeachin shot back in a Twitter post defending her actions. I understand that protecting individual liberty means fighting against tyranny at ALL levels of government federal, state, and local, she wrote. It is your God-given right to make your own health decisions, and no state, city, or school district ever has the authority to violate your unalienable rights. The governor pointed out that had her order remained in place, it could have put vulnerable people at risk of contracting the coronavirus. "This is why you do your homework, Lt. Governor," he said. Mr Little has been a target for far-right lawmakers criticising his handling of the coronavirus. The governor issued a temporary stay-at-home order in March 2020 when the state's hospitals were overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. The lockdown helped health care facilities get a handle on the influx of patients and bought them time to obtain necessary PPE to protect their staff. Despite this, conservative lawmakers in the state attempted to pass a mask mandate ban, but failed in their efforts. I am always reluctant to engage in political ploys, especially when I have been steadfast in meeting the simultaneous goals of protecting both lives and livelihoods, Mr Little said. I do not like petty politics. I do not like political stunts over the rule of law. However, the significant consequences of the Lt. Governors flimsy executive order require me to clean up a mess. Florida governor Ron DeSantis has framed himself as a champion of Floridas cruise industry, but on one key issue, theyre on a collision course. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that cruise ships can set sail again by July without bothersome test cruises as long as 98 per cent of their crew and 95 per cent of their passengers are vaccinated. Theres just one problem: governor DeSantis has already signed an executive order banning businesses from checking their customers vaccination status exactly what the cruise companies would need to do. Ive been saying its a game of chicken and the cruise lines are not going to blink for a second in this game, maritime lawyer Mike Winkleman told The Washington Post. Theyre going to reopen full steam ahead. Mr DeSantis has shown no sign of backing down. We are going to enforce Florida law, Mr DeSantis said at a press conference on Friday. And you don't pass laws and then not enforce it against giant corporations; it doesn't work that way. The conflict puts Mr DeSantis in an odd position, after a year in which he loudly fought for the cruise industry against federal Covid-19 regulations. After the pandemic began last year, the CDC quickly banned cruises with over 250 passengers. Mr DeSantis has sued the federal government to overturn that ban, arguing that it hurts too many Florida businesses. We have tens of thousands of Floridians not just in this county alone but throughout the state who depend on the viability of our cruise industry for their livelihoods, for their jobs, for their ability to feed their families, Mr DeSantis said in April. But the governors ban on vaccine passports may get in the way of that advocacy. The order bars Florida government agencies from issuing documents showing proof of vaccination, and bans businesses from requiring such proof from customers. Critics have argued the order was unnecessary, since no such vaccine passports yet existed. Political grandstanding 100 percent, Mr Winkleman told the Post. This is not driven from a motivation of safety. If the motivation were safety, you would say, Of course everyone has to be vaccinated. Its kowtowing to a small minority that are a really vocal base for him. The first shot in this new conflict came on Wednesday, when Celebrity Cruises announced it will be launching its first post-pandemic cruise on 26 June and the passengers must prove theyve had their Covid shots. All guests 16 years and older must be fully vaccinated with all COVID-19 vaccine doses administered at least 14 days prior to sailing, the company says on its website. A spokeswoman for Mr DeSantis grumbled over the contradiction. Were interested to see how the CDC plans to help the cruise lines comply with Florida law, Taryn Fenske, a spokesperson for Mr DeSantis, told the Post. Hopefully they dont unlawfully subject cruises to millions of dollars in fines. The daughter-in-law of a billionaire Tory peer has been detained for questioning in Belize after a senior police officer was fatally shot in the head, according to police. Jasmine Hartin, who is married to Lord Michael Ashcrofts son, Andrew, was taken into custody in San Pedro in connection with the death of Henry Jemmott on Friday. The superintendent was found dead in the waters close to a pier where the pair are thought to have been socialising in the early hours of Friday morning, when a coronavirus curfew was in effect, Commissioner Chester Williams said. After a single gunshot was reported, police found Ms Hartin on the pier with what appeared to be blood on her arms and clothes, Commissioner Williams was quoted as saying by local broadcaster Channel 5 news. Mr Jemmoths body was recovered from waters nearby with a gunshot wound behind his right ear, he said. It seems rather personal and not an attack on law enforcement, Commissioner Williams told a press conference. From what we know, they [Mr Jemmott and Ms Hartin] are friends. From what we have been made to understand, they were drinking. From [our] investigation, they were alone on the pier and fully clothed. The commissioner said that when Ms Hartin was detained she was not cooperating because she requested to have her attorney present in order for her to talk, which he claimed raises some red flags despite it being her right under the Belizean Constitution. The situation is such that it does require an explanation from her, Commissioner Williams said. The pier is adjacent to the newly opened Alaia Belize resort, where Ms Hartin is director of lifestyle and experience, according to her LinkedIn profile. An entry on the Marriott resorts website, which had been deleted as of Saturday morning, described its developer Andrew Ashcroft as a Belize citizen with links to the country going back generations. Along with her husband, Andrew Ashcroft, Jasmine has played an integral role in shaping the vision for Alaia Belize from the very beginning, it said. Her passion for Belize and her appreciation for the local nature and culture have been guiding forces as she has collaborated with the entire development team. Mr Jemmott had been transferred to Belize City in May to command a precinct and had recently requested time off to deal with personal issues, police said. My brother loved life, he loved life, his sister Marie Jemmott Tzul told local media. He had passion for his work. He did his work with integrity and thats the way he loved his family as well. World news in pictures Show all 51 1 /51 World news in pictures World news in pictures 8 June 2021 AFP via Getty Images World news in pictures 7 June 2021 Gondoliers help tourists to get on the gondolas, as the region of Veneto becomes a white zone, following a relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions with only masks and social distancing required, in Venice, Italy Reuters World news in pictures 6 June 2021 A military brass band plays during the international ceremony on the 77th anniversary of D-Day, at Omaha Beach in Vierville-sur-Mer, northwestern France AFP/Getty World news in pictures 5 June 2021 An explosives expert from Hamas lays out unexploded projectiles from the aftermath of the May 2021 conflict with Israel, at a local police precinct in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip AFP/Getty World news in pictures 4 June 2021 A couple take photos of each other on a rainbow flag-themed path during pride month at Samyan MRT station in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 3 June 2021 Sebastien Ogier steers his Toyota Yaris WRC with co-driver Julien Ingrassia during the shakedown at the Rally of Sardegna and fifth round of the FIA World Rally Championship AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 June 2021 Smoke rises from a fire onboard the MV X-Press Pearl vessel as it sinks while being towed into deep sea off the Colombo Harbour, in Sri Lanka June 2, 2021 Sri Lanka Airforce via Reuters World news in pictures 1 June 2021 A girl runs through a fountain outside a shopping mall on International Children's Day in Beijing on June 1, 2021, a day after China announced it would allow couples to have three children. AFP/Getty World news in pictures 31 May 2021 In this handout image courtesy of the US Coast Guard the Coast Guard Cutter Resolute small boat crew rescues 8 people from the water approximately 18 miles southwest of Key West, Florida AFP/Getty World news in pictures 30 May 2021 A fishing boat sails in the sea-snot covered Marmara sea near Istanbul, Turkey EPA World news in pictures 29 May 2021 Smoke billowing from the Singapore-registered container ship MV X-Press Pearl, which has been burning for the tenth consecutive day in the sea off Sri Lanka's Colombo Harbour, in Colombo Sri Lanka Air Force/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 May 2021 Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accompanied by his dog Peanut welcomes European Council President Charles Michel at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece Reuters World news in pictures 27 May 2021 A man waits to receive a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in the rooms of the Claudia Comte exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Castello di Rivoli near Turin AFP/Getty World news in pictures 26 May 2021 A girl, with her face painted with the colours of the opposition flag, looks on during a demonstration against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and presidential elections, in the opposition-held Idlib, Syria Reuters World news in pictures 25 May 2021 A Buddhist monk climbs atop a giant statue of Buddha, to wash and decorate on the eve of Buddha Purnima, a holiday traditionally celebrated for Buddha's birthday also known as Vesak celebrations, in Bhopal AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 May 2021 Lava from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo cuts through Buhene north of Goma, Congo AP World news in pictures 23 May 2021 Cyclists at the start of the 15th stage of the Giro dItalia, a 147km race between Grado and Gorizia AFP/Getty World news in pictures 22 May 2021 Swiss Guards take their position prior to the arrival of the European Commission President at San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican for a private audience with the Pope AFP/Getty World news in pictures 21 May 2021 A dog that has been trained to sniff out the coronavirus disease, screens a sweat sample at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 20 May 2021 Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr in action during a F1 practice session at the Circuit de Monaco in Monte Carlo Reuters World news in pictures 18 May 2021 Horse-drawn carriages drive through the mudflats near Cuxhaven, northern Germany dpa via AP World news in pictures 17 May 2021 Kanoya Onishi in action during the Cycling BMX Free Style of Tokyo 2020 Olympics test event at Ariake Urban Sports Park in Japan EPA World news in pictures 16 May 2021 Rescuers carry Suzy Eshkuntana, 6, as they pull her from the rubble of a building at the site of Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City Reuters World news in pictures 15 May 2021 A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza city AFP/Getty World news in pictures 14 May 2021 Muslims offer Eid al-Fitr prayers inside the Baitul Mukarram Mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh AP World news in pictures 13 May 2021 Muslim girls ride on a mini train after attending the Eid Al-Fitr prayer that marks the end of the Holy month of Ramadan at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, Kenya AFP/Getty World news in pictures 12 May 2021 Israeli artillery fire as the escalation continues between Israeli army and Hamas at the Gaza Border EPA World news in pictures 11 May 2021 Maya Nakanishi competes in the womens long jump - T64 category during a para-athletics test event for the 2020 Olympics at the National Stadium in Tokyo AFP/Getty World news in pictures 10 May 2021 A Palestinian man helps a wounded fellow protester amid clashes with Israeli security forces at Jerusalems Al-Aqsa mosque compound, ahead of a planned march to commemorate Israels takeover of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War AFP/Getty World news in pictures 9 May 2021 Falconer Giovanna Piccolo performs with her Eurasian eagle-owl at 'Roma World' theme park, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Rome Reuters World news in pictures 8 May 2021 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury (29) is introduced as a starter against the St. Louis Blues at T-Mobile Arena. USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 6 May 2021 Buddhist monks and believers attend a lantern parade in celebration of the upcoming birthday of Buddha at a temple in Seoul, South Korea Reuters World news in pictures 5 May 2021 Russian MiG-29 jet fighters of the Strizhi (Swifts) and Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic teams fly in formation over the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin in Moscow during a flypast rehearsal for the WWII Victory Parade AFP/Getty World news in pictures 4 May 2021 An elevated metro line collapsed in the Mexican capital on Monday, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens injured as a train came plunging down, authorities said AFP/Getty World news in pictures 3 May 2021 Lightning bolts strike buildings during a thunderstorm in Bangkok AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 May 2021 Samaritan worshippers arrive to take part in a Passover ceremony on top of Mount Gerizim, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty World news in pictures 1 May 2021 A Gilet Jaune, or yellow vest, protestor stands in front of a burning barricade holding his hand up with an inscription calling for President Macron to resign as May Day Protest turn violent near Place de la Republique in Paris, France Getty World news in pictures 30 April 2021 A demonstrator from the Rio de Paz human rights activist group digs a symbolic grave in front of rows of bags symbolising bodybags on Copacabana beach, during a protest against the Brazilian governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in Rio de Janeiro AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 April 2021 An aerial picture shows dead carp fish flushed to the shores of al-Qaraoun reservoir in Lebanons Western Beqaa District in the countrys east. Tonnes of fish have washed up dead on the shoreline of the highly polluted artificial reservoir in eastern Lebanon in recent days AFP/Getty World news in pictures 28 April 2021 Health workers wearing PPE attends to coronavirus patients inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a covid care centre in New Delhi AFP/Getty World news in pictures 27 April 2021 The full moon, known as the Super Pink Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Reuters World news in pictures 26 April 2021 Balinese people lay wreaths with names of the crew on board the sunk Indonesian Navy submarine KRI Nanggala during a prayer at the sea near Labuhan Lalang, Bali, Indonesia EPA World news in pictures 25 April 2021 An Ethiopian Orthodox Christian worshipper walks around the Edicule, the place believed to be where Jesus Christ was buried, during Palm Sunday celebrations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 April 2021 Fans of Wuhan Three Towns FC cheer for their team during the 1st round match Wuhan Three Towns FC and Beijing Institute of Technology FC during Chinese Football League One in Wuhan, China Getty World news in pictures 23 April 2021 A girl prays in front of the Dome of the Rock, in the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalems Old City, on the second Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, as coronavirus restrictions ease around the country, in Jerusalem Reuters World news in pictures 22 April 2021 People walk through the art work 'THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS' by Yayoi Kusama, during the press preview of a retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist at the Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin, Germany AP World news in pictures 21 April 2021 Hungary's Sara Peter competes in the Women's floor qualifications during European Artistic Gymnastics Championships at the St Jakobshalle, in Basel AFP/Getty World news in pictures 20 April 2021 South Korea university students gets their heads shaved during a protest against Japan's decision to release contaminated water from its Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, in front of the Japanese embassy, in Seoul Reuters World news in pictures 19 April 2021 A spectator wearing a football jersey of Argentina's forward Lionel Messi attends the ATP Barcelona Open tennis tournament singles match between Japan's Kei Nishikori and Argentina's Guido Pella at the Real Club de Tenis in Barcelona AFP/Getty World news in pictures 18 April 2021 People raise their fist during a demonstration near the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota AFP/Getty World news in pictures 17 April 2021 Security personnel stand guard outside a polling station during the 5th phase of West Bengal's state legislative assembly elections in Kolkata AFP/Getty According to a report by 7 News, Lord Ashcrofts dealings have largely shaped Belizes post-independence history. The Caribbean nation achieved independence from British in 1981. Lord Ashcroft a leading Tory donor was implicated in the Paradise Papers leak, which the BBC and others reported showed he received payments of around $200m (150m) from his offshore trust in Bermuda during the decade up to 2010. Lord Ashcroft infamously sparked allegations over David Camerons supposed participation in an initiation ritual involving a pig with his biography of the former prime minister, and has penned a new unofficial biography of Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer. Commissioner Williams was keen on Saturday to emphasise the independence of his investigation. I can emphatically state that I have not received any call or calls from anybody above me, directing that we deal with the matter in one way or the other, he said. As the commissioner it is my duty to brief the prime minister and to brief my minister. I briefed both of them this morning on the matter and both of them said that we must investigate the matter and the chips may fall where they may. A mass grave containing the remains of around 500 people has been found at the site of a former Nazi concentration camp in Russia. Investigators digging in the countryside near Voronezh, close to the border with Ukraine, found the remains of 156 people buried at the Dulag-191 site, which was built in 1942 when the area was under occupation by Nazi Germany. Mikhail Segodin, head of the search team, told Russias Tass news agency that he expected to unearth the remains of at least 500 people. A second camp for women and children was found nearby. Some 8,500 people are believed to have died there over the course of the Second World War. We found about 15 graves here in one row, in which 500 or more people are [buried]. We've already recovered the remains of 156 people, he said. Judging by the remains unearthed so far we see shot wounds, blunt traumas, in other words, broken bones. Two medallions of deceased Red Army soldiers were found: one medallion was half-opened, so it had gone rotten, and the other is in excellent condition. The information in it was written in pencil and ink, which has faded, so today we will transfer the medallion for examination. Those living at the camp were forced to help construct parts of the Berlinka railway, designed by the Nazis to link Berlin with Stalingrad and the Caucasus. In total, 17 prisoner of war camps were said to have been built to supply labourers for the railways construction. Together they housed 70,000 people, with at least 10,000 known to have died there. World news in pictures Show all 51 1 /51 World news in pictures World news in pictures 8 June 2021 AFP via Getty Images World news in pictures 7 June 2021 Gondoliers help tourists to get on the gondolas, as the region of Veneto becomes a white zone, following a relaxation of Covid-19 restrictions with only masks and social distancing required, in Venice, Italy Reuters World news in pictures 6 June 2021 A military brass band plays during the international ceremony on the 77th anniversary of D-Day, at Omaha Beach in Vierville-sur-Mer, northwestern France AFP/Getty World news in pictures 5 June 2021 An explosives expert from Hamas lays out unexploded projectiles from the aftermath of the May 2021 conflict with Israel, at a local police precinct in Khan Yunis in the southern Gaza Strip AFP/Getty World news in pictures 4 June 2021 A couple take photos of each other on a rainbow flag-themed path during pride month at Samyan MRT station in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 3 June 2021 Sebastien Ogier steers his Toyota Yaris WRC with co-driver Julien Ingrassia during the shakedown at the Rally of Sardegna and fifth round of the FIA World Rally Championship AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 June 2021 Smoke rises from a fire onboard the MV X-Press Pearl vessel as it sinks while being towed into deep sea off the Colombo Harbour, in Sri Lanka June 2, 2021 Sri Lanka Airforce via Reuters World news in pictures 1 June 2021 A girl runs through a fountain outside a shopping mall on International Children's Day in Beijing on June 1, 2021, a day after China announced it would allow couples to have three children. AFP/Getty World news in pictures 31 May 2021 In this handout image courtesy of the US Coast Guard the Coast Guard Cutter Resolute small boat crew rescues 8 people from the water approximately 18 miles southwest of Key West, Florida AFP/Getty World news in pictures 30 May 2021 A fishing boat sails in the sea-snot covered Marmara sea near Istanbul, Turkey EPA World news in pictures 29 May 2021 Smoke billowing from the Singapore-registered container ship MV X-Press Pearl, which has been burning for the tenth consecutive day in the sea off Sri Lanka's Colombo Harbour, in Colombo Sri Lanka Air Force/AFP via Getty World news in pictures 28 May 2021 Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis accompanied by his dog Peanut welcomes European Council President Charles Michel at the Maximos Mansion in Athens, Greece Reuters World news in pictures 27 May 2021 A man waits to receive a dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in the rooms of the Claudia Comte exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art Castello di Rivoli near Turin AFP/Getty World news in pictures 26 May 2021 A girl, with her face painted with the colours of the opposition flag, looks on during a demonstration against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and presidential elections, in the opposition-held Idlib, Syria Reuters World news in pictures 25 May 2021 A Buddhist monk climbs atop a giant statue of Buddha, to wash and decorate on the eve of Buddha Purnima, a holiday traditionally celebrated for Buddha's birthday also known as Vesak celebrations, in Bhopal AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 May 2021 Lava from the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo cuts through Buhene north of Goma, Congo AP World news in pictures 23 May 2021 Cyclists at the start of the 15th stage of the Giro dItalia, a 147km race between Grado and Gorizia AFP/Getty World news in pictures 22 May 2021 Swiss Guards take their position prior to the arrival of the European Commission President at San Damaso courtyard in The Vatican for a private audience with the Pope AFP/Getty World news in pictures 21 May 2021 A dog that has been trained to sniff out the coronavirus disease, screens a sweat sample at Chulalongkorn University, in Bangkok, Thailand Reuters World news in pictures 20 May 2021 Ferrari's Carlos Sainz Jr in action during a F1 practice session at the Circuit de Monaco in Monte Carlo Reuters World news in pictures 18 May 2021 Horse-drawn carriages drive through the mudflats near Cuxhaven, northern Germany dpa via AP World news in pictures 17 May 2021 Kanoya Onishi in action during the Cycling BMX Free Style of Tokyo 2020 Olympics test event at Ariake Urban Sports Park in Japan EPA World news in pictures 16 May 2021 Rescuers carry Suzy Eshkuntana, 6, as they pull her from the rubble of a building at the site of Israeli air strikes, in Gaza City Reuters World news in pictures 15 May 2021 A ball of fire erupts from the Jala Tower as it is destroyed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza city AFP/Getty World news in pictures 14 May 2021 Muslims offer Eid al-Fitr prayers inside the Baitul Mukarram Mosque in Dhaka, Bangladesh AP World news in pictures 13 May 2021 Muslim girls ride on a mini train after attending the Eid Al-Fitr prayer that marks the end of the Holy month of Ramadan at Uhuru Park in Nairobi, Kenya AFP/Getty World news in pictures 12 May 2021 Israeli artillery fire as the escalation continues between Israeli army and Hamas at the Gaza Border EPA World news in pictures 11 May 2021 Maya Nakanishi competes in the womens long jump - T64 category during a para-athletics test event for the 2020 Olympics at the National Stadium in Tokyo AFP/Getty World news in pictures 10 May 2021 A Palestinian man helps a wounded fellow protester amid clashes with Israeli security forces at Jerusalems Al-Aqsa mosque compound, ahead of a planned march to commemorate Israels takeover of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six-Day War AFP/Getty World news in pictures 9 May 2021 Falconer Giovanna Piccolo performs with her Eurasian eagle-owl at 'Roma World' theme park, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in Rome Reuters World news in pictures 8 May 2021 Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Vegas Golden Knights goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury (29) is introduced as a starter against the St. Louis Blues at T-Mobile Arena. USA Today Sports/Reuters World news in pictures 6 May 2021 Buddhist monks and believers attend a lantern parade in celebration of the upcoming birthday of Buddha at a temple in Seoul, South Korea Reuters World news in pictures 5 May 2021 Russian MiG-29 jet fighters of the Strizhi (Swifts) and Su-30SM jet fighters of the Russkiye Vityazi (Russian Knights) aerobatic teams fly in formation over the Cathedral Square of the Kremlin in Moscow during a flypast rehearsal for the WWII Victory Parade AFP/Getty World news in pictures 4 May 2021 An elevated metro line collapsed in the Mexican capital on Monday, leaving at least 23 people dead and dozens injured as a train came plunging down, authorities said AFP/Getty World news in pictures 3 May 2021 Lightning bolts strike buildings during a thunderstorm in Bangkok AFP/Getty World news in pictures 2 May 2021 Samaritan worshippers arrive to take part in a Passover ceremony on top of Mount Gerizim, near the northern West Bank city of Nablus AFP/Getty World news in pictures 1 May 2021 A Gilet Jaune, or yellow vest, protestor stands in front of a burning barricade holding his hand up with an inscription calling for President Macron to resign as May Day Protest turn violent near Place de la Republique in Paris, France Getty World news in pictures 30 April 2021 A demonstrator from the Rio de Paz human rights activist group digs a symbolic grave in front of rows of bags symbolising bodybags on Copacabana beach, during a protest against the Brazilian governments handling of the coronavirus pandemic, in Rio de Janeiro AFP via Getty World news in pictures 29 April 2021 An aerial picture shows dead carp fish flushed to the shores of al-Qaraoun reservoir in Lebanons Western Beqaa District in the countrys east. Tonnes of fish have washed up dead on the shoreline of the highly polluted artificial reservoir in eastern Lebanon in recent days AFP/Getty World news in pictures 28 April 2021 Health workers wearing PPE attends to coronavirus patients inside a banquet hall temporarily converted into a covid care centre in New Delhi AFP/Getty World news in pictures 27 April 2021 The full moon, known as the Super Pink Moon rises behind the Statue of Liberty in New York City, Reuters World news in pictures 26 April 2021 Balinese people lay wreaths with names of the crew on board the sunk Indonesian Navy submarine KRI Nanggala during a prayer at the sea near Labuhan Lalang, Bali, Indonesia EPA World news in pictures 25 April 2021 An Ethiopian Orthodox Christian worshipper walks around the Edicule, the place believed to be where Jesus Christ was buried, during Palm Sunday celebrations at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem AFP/Getty World news in pictures 24 April 2021 Fans of Wuhan Three Towns FC cheer for their team during the 1st round match Wuhan Three Towns FC and Beijing Institute of Technology FC during Chinese Football League One in Wuhan, China Getty World news in pictures 23 April 2021 A girl prays in front of the Dome of the Rock, in the compound known to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary and to Jews as Temple Mount, in Jerusalems Old City, on the second Friday of the holy month of Ramadan, as coronavirus restrictions ease around the country, in Jerusalem Reuters World news in pictures 22 April 2021 People walk through the art work 'THE SPIRITS OF THE PUMPKINS DESCENDED INTO THE HEAVENS' by Yayoi Kusama, during the press preview of a retrospective exhibition of the Japanese artist at the Martin Gropius Bau museum in Berlin, Germany AP World news in pictures 21 April 2021 Hungary's Sara Peter competes in the Women's floor qualifications during European Artistic Gymnastics Championships at the St Jakobshalle, in Basel AFP/Getty World news in pictures 20 April 2021 South Korea university students gets their heads shaved during a protest against Japan's decision to release contaminated water from its Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea, in front of the Japanese embassy, in Seoul Reuters World news in pictures 19 April 2021 A spectator wearing a football jersey of Argentina's forward Lionel Messi attends the ATP Barcelona Open tennis tournament singles match between Japan's Kei Nishikori and Argentina's Guido Pella at the Real Club de Tenis in Barcelona AFP/Getty World news in pictures 18 April 2021 People raise their fist during a demonstration near the George Floyd Memorial in Minneapolis, Minnesota AFP/Getty World news in pictures 17 April 2021 Security personnel stand guard outside a polling station during the 5th phase of West Bengal's state legislative assembly elections in Kolkata AFP/Getty A Soviet intelligence report produced in 1942 confirmed that a concentration camp for women and children was located at a brick factory in the suburban village of Lushnikovka. The report said prisoners were not fed, but children are allowed to gather alms, parcels are also allowed. The document stated: There are many ill people there, medical aid is not provided. There is a high mortality rate. Hundreds of Dulags the German term for a transit camp housing prisoners were built across Europe, with many situated in Russia and Ukraine. Trainee flight attendant Ghenwa, engineering student Ali and electronic music DJ Jawad are among a generation of young Syrians to have come of age during the war. They live in the capital Damascus, which was spared by the intense bombing raids that destroyed opposition bastions such as Aleppo. But life for the twenty-somethings is far from normal. A decade of conflict, Western sanctions, a financial collapse in next-door Lebanon, and now, the global pandemic, have battered Syrias economy and a currency crash has sparked shortages of essential goods like wheat and fuel in government territory. Economic hardships aside, their access to the rest of the world has also been severely curtailed, leaving them little chance of leaving the country for work or leisure. A picture of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad is reflected in a mirror, as a man cycles along a highway in Damascus (Reuters) Souna, 25, a business manager, arriving at a party in Damascus. "I want to travel, visit the world, and come back to Syria," said Souna. "Honestly, life in Syria is difficult and very tiring but... sometimes I enjoy the difficulties. Things move very slowly... The good feeling of seeing my loved ones compensates for the difficulties I currently face." (Reuters) The freedom to travel was the main reason Ghenwa decided to train as an air hostess, having dropped out of university where she was studying architecture. Im Syrian and I cant travel at the moment except through this opportunity, said Ghenwa, who like the others who spoke to Reuters for this story used only her first name for security reasons. Its the only opportunity that makes me feel I can move faster ... to feel the freedom of borders. Ghenwa, 20, a trainee flight attendant, poses for a photograph in her friend's shower room (Reuters) Ghenwa studies for exams in her room in Damascus (Reuters) Away from her hometown Sweida, in southern Syria, Ghenwa has had to work multiple jobs to support herself, doing everything from working with children with cancer to modelling. She finds a sense of release with her friends who share a passion for electronic music. We are hungry for happiness, said 24-year old Jawad, an electronic music DJ who returned in 2019 to a Syria he barely recognised, after spending the war years in Dubai for safety. Jawad, 23, an electronic music DJ, plays techno music as he hosts an after party at his home in Damascus (Reuters) Jawad, who studied business administration, says music is his escape from the harsh realities of the country he came back to. It was a big shock, everything without lights ... no electricity but despite all the exhaustion and sadness on peoples faces we have hope that everything will be fixed, he said. Like Ghenwa, his dream is also to travel and see the world but as a young Syrian man, any hope of getting a visa to Europe is dashed. Jawad works on his laptop as he sits with his friends at his home (Reuters) Unable to go on holiday to Spain, he watches documentaries about the country instead with his friends online, an escape from the less uplifting regular television news programmes. Its ironic, he said. Thirty-three-year-old Yara, a lawyer by day and a music DJ by night, lives alone with her parents after three of her siblings left to live abroad. Yara plays techno music at an after party at her friend's house in Damascus (Reuters) She used to have a busy life between her work, yoga, cooking and her passion for music but now she says she can only manage one task a day. Putting fuel in my car for example after hours of waiting in line, she said. Yara preferred to stay in Syria throughout the conflict despite the dangers involved. I didnt like the way other countries were treating Syrians, so I didnt want to lose the respect I have here, to get some pity from people who know nothing about us, even if that meant living my life in danger. Aya, 24, a chef, rests as she gets a tattoo on her neck at her friend's house (Reuters) Yara was near the Damascus courthouse when a suicide bombing took place in 2017. It was a horrible experience... to see your colleaguess dead bodies around you and at the same time needing to help the injured and rush them to hospital. Like Yara, 25-year old university student Ali says he could talk for days about the things that affected him during the war. Ali, an IT student, poses for a photograph with lights wrapped around his head, in Damascus (Reuters) There wasnt a day that passed by without taking something from us, he said. It was a bad experience to live in a warzone for what is supposed to be the best ten years of your life. Reuters An Egyptian court has postponed a hearing in a compensation case filed by the Suez Canal Authority (SCA) against the owners of the Ever Given container ship in order to allow more time for the sides to negotiate a deal over the canal crisis that disrupted global trade earlier this year. The vessel, which is one of the worlds largest container ships, blocked the canal for six days, halting traffic in both directions, after it became jammed on 23 March in high winds. The SCA had initially demanded $916m (647m) in compensation from the ships Japanese owner Shoei Kisen for disruption caused by the blockage. However, the authority said earlier this week that it would be willing to accept $550m, provided that $200m is paid in advance with the remaining amount payable through letters of credit. Osama Rabie, the SCAs chairman, said Shoei Kisen had so far offered to pay just $150m in compensation. The Ever Given has been detained by court order and held in a lake between two stretches of the canal while the compensation case takes place. On Saturday, a lawyer representing the Ever Givens owner said that the two sides had asked for the latest hearing to be postponed to allow for further negotiations, while the SCA said on Facebook that the hearing would now take place on 20 June. The two parties have requested the delay, and we have not yet determined any amount for compensation, and this will be done after holding several new negotiations sessions with the Suez Canal, the lawyer told Reuters, asking not to be identified. The postponement came after Mr Rabie said that the container ship had been struggling to steer in the canal in March due to its high speed and the size of its rudder, adding that it could have chosen not to enter the waterway in bad weather. [The captain] knows the capabilities of his ship ... so he can come and say, 'I don't want to enter, I feel the weather is not appropriate, the SCA chairman said on Thursday. He added that the vessel was travelling at about 25km per hour before it became grounded, far above the 8-9km per hour speed that is appropriate for the canal. However, Shoei Kisens legal team has argued that the SCA was at fault for allowing the vessel to enter and not providing tug boats. Additional reporting by Reuters In some good news from the conservation of India's national animal, foresters have spotted nearly 41 tiger cubs in the Bandhavgarh Tiger Reserve (BTR) in Madhya Pradesh. According to officials, they have spotted a total of 41 tiger cubs in the protected area, including actual sightings and those identified from camera traps. These tiger cubs, they said range from newborns to one-year-olds. Raja Bose/ Twitter "The forest staff after analysing the data has found over 41 tiger cubs, from newborns to one year olds, at BTR," principal chief conservator of forest (wildlife) Alok Kumar said. As per the data, four eight to 10-month-old cubs were spotted in Kallavah beat, while 12 in the same age group were seen in Pator. Similarly, five cubs of a tigress identified as T-17 were seen in Tala beat, four six-month-old cubs were spotted in Dhamakhor, while Panpatha core and buffer areas have two three-month-old big cats each, it was stated. Apart from these, Bhanpur has two newborns, five cubs aged 10 to 12 months old were seen in Maghdi beat and four in the age group of eight to 12 months old in Khitouli, the official said, adding that two cubs were spotted in a cave in Badkheda beat. BCCL The BTR is also known as a nursery of tigers in the state and once they grow, adult big cats are shifted to places in and out of the state, where their density is low, Kumar said. Bandhavgarh was declared a national park in 1968 and later as a tiger reserve in 1993. Spread across 716 sq km, the reserve is known for the highest density of tiger population. While the sighting of 41 tiger cubs in BTR is a positive sign, the increase in the number of big cat deaths in protected areas in MP, know as India's tiger state is also a concern. BCCL This month alone four tiger deaths were reported from Madhya Pradesh. Last week in a rare incident, authorities in Panna Tiger Reserve had come across a tiger taking care of its cubs after the tigress that gave birth to them died. The PTR authorities released a video showing the tiger, officially called P-243, taking care of four cubs after their mother, tigress P213(32), died in the last fortnight. In the video, the cubs can be seen playing on rocks and making themselves comfortable as the tiger moves among them. Satisfaction of the Forester is to see a mother tiger with four cubs, this is an epitome of Panna Tiger Revival program. The population in Panna has reached over it's carrying capacity and this future generation suggests robust source population in the Landscape.@minforestmp pic.twitter.com/abpRW2muRR Panna Tiger Reserve (@PannaTigerResrv) May 28, 2021 Tigress P213(32) was seen with a swelling on its left leg on May 12, and it was given medical treatment post tranquilization and released, but its carcass was found in PTR's Gahrighat range on May 15. Interesting to know that a male tiger is taking care of 4 orphaned cubs after the death of their mother tigress. This observations has been made by the team of Panna Tiger Reserve, MP while monitoring cubs and a male radio collared tiger. VC: PTR MP pic.twitter.com/soH9Nbw7tg Ramesh Pandey (@rameshpandeyifs) May 23, 2021 Before that the decomposed carcass of a tiger was found in a buffer zone of BTR on May 14 and On May 8, a tiger was found dead in the state's Kanha Tiger Reserve. Besides, a dead sub-adult tiger (aged between 18 and 24 months) was found floating in a canal of an inter-state water project in Balaghat's Waraseoni tehsil on May 7. Vast tracts of land in Australias New South Wales state are being threatened by a mouse plague that the state government describes as absolutely unprecedented. Just how many millions of rodents have infested the agricultural plains across the state is guesswork. Mice wreak havoc in Australia Several videos posted on social media showed carpets of mice scurrying across barn floors, crowded around machinery, and entering thick grain silos made of steel as farmers struggled to control the rodents. Were at a critical point now where if we dont significantly reduce the number of mice that are in plague proportions by spring, we are facing an absolute economic and social crisis in rural and regional New South Wales, Agriculture Minister Adam Marshall said this month. AP The mice have also entered homes, inside containers and finding their way into water tanks, footage posted by local media channels showed. According to the local reports, they also bit farmers and patients in the hospital while they were asleep. WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT Farmers are struggling as the biggest plague of mice in decades continues to sweep across Australias New South Wales https://t.co/LTDpEKnIoy pic.twitter.com/PFf2eqaLTP Reuters (@Reuters) May 26, 2021 Poison ordered from India Bruce Barnes said he is taking a gamble by planting crops on his family farm near the central New South Wales town of Bogan Gate. We just sow and hope, he said. The risk is that the mice will maintain their numbers through the Southern Hemisphere winter and devour the wheat, barley and canola before it can be harvested. The crisis has prompted the New South Wales government to order 5000 litres of the banned poison Bromadiolone from India. "Its actually the strongest mouse poison we can get anywhere on the face of the earth that actually will kill these things within 24 hours," said Adam Marshall, the states agriculture minister. AP The state government has also released $50 million ($39 million) in funding to tackle the infestation, which is gradually spreading to Queensland state. However, the order is yet to receive approval from the federal government over concerns that the potent pesticide may also kill other animals and family pets. WATCH: The plague of mice attacking parts of Australia is turning into a horror story, with the rodents threatening to invade Sydney https://t.co/pRxfPOuLVs pic.twitter.com/N2d1bYrqr8 Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) May 28, 2021 Farmers hit hard According to an AP report, the infestation is contaminating sorghum exports with animal droppings, causing quality downgrades and leading to cancelled shipments of the grain. The mice woes come as farmers in Australia's most populous state have already been hit by fires, floods and pandemic disruptions in recent years. AP Another local publication posted a video that showed how grave the crisis is at night. MICE EVERYWHERE: Parts of rural Australia are enduring what has so far been a months-long plague of mice. https://t.co/zD7O286Tvz pic.twitter.com/9q50WcAXrH ABC News (@ABC) May 28, 2021 Plagues seemingly appear from nowhere and often vanish just as fast. Disease and a shortage of food are thought to trigger a dramatic population crash as mice feed on themselves, devouring the sick, weak and their own offspring. Microsofts President, Brad Smith warns that life depicted in George Orwells 1984 could soon become a reality in 2024 if lawmakers around the world dont protect the public against the harmful effects of AI. Getty Images Also Read: Physicist's AI Algorithm Could Prove Our Reality Is Just A Simulation Smith referenced the popular book 1984 in a conversation with BBCs Panorama program while discussing how the governments around the world are slowly increasing their ability to monitor their citizens. Smith said, I'm constantly reminded of George Orwell's lessons in his book 1984. You know the fundamental story was about a government who could see everything that everyone did and hear everything that everyone said all the time. To the uninitiated, 1984 talks about a story where citizens are constantly under surveillance and censorship, eliminating the notion of privacy. The government in the story does this to take down forms of individualism. Smith added, that didn't come to pass in 1984, but if were not careful that could come to pass in 2024. Also Read: Chennai Has Highest CCTV Surveillance In The World, Followed By Hyderabad Today we see China taking a keen interest in the field of artificial intelligence and its vision of being a leader in the field of AI in the coming years. The government has also been very keen on using facial recognition technology for mass surveillance. In fact, it has 54 percent of the world's CCTV cameras, according to Comparitech (highlighted by the Daily Mail). Smith went on to say that he feared that technology, with what its capable of, could soon surpass the human ability to control it, while shedding light on an immense need to enact proper laws to to keep the public safe. Getty Images Smith added, If we dont enact the laws that will protect the public in the future, we are going to find the technology racing ahead, and its going to be very difficult to catch up. Also Read: World Economic Forum Wants To Define Guidelines For AI Research, And Why This Is Important Smith is also part of the lead chair at the World Economic Forums council that monitors AI research around the world and allows the nations to reach a compromise on how AI should be explored, along with the restrictions that are needed to be put in place. The council also has representatives from the UN and UNICEF, along with IBM and other tech companies that are involved in the business of AI research. Until last year, Surjit Singhs beard had never been cut, trimmed or shaved. A devout Sikh, Singh believes that hair is a divine gift and removing it from the body dishonours God. But in a shocking incident last August, Surjit Singh was reportedly forced to shave his beard in an Arizona prison despite his protests that it would violate his deeply held religious beliefs and despite the fact that US federal law protects incarcerated individuals ability to exercise their faith. Arizona Department of Corrections/AP The complaint filed by several advocacy groups allege that the 64-year-old Indian immigrant was stripped of his turban and had his beard forcibly shaved by corrections officers as they sought to take his photo for the intake process, CNN reported. It has urged the US Justice Department to investigate the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry (ADCRR) for its egregious infringement of Singhs religious freedom rights. Also read: Humanity Above All: Sikh Man Removes Turban, Ties It Around Wound Of Injured Rickshaw Driver Credit: Harmeet Singh/Sikh Coalition Surjit Singh was sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter in a case from 2017. He was taken into custody on 21 August 2020 following his sentencing. Singh is currently incarcerated at the Whetstone Unit in Tucson operated by the ADCRR. According to the complaint, at one point during his ordeal, Singh said cut my throat, but dont cut my beard! But he was eventually handcuffed and his beard was cut. Singh, who speaks Punjabi and has limited English proficiency, was denied proper access to interpreters and language assistance, the complaint said. Also read: Capt Simratpal Singh Becomes The First Sikh Officer In The US Army To Serve With A Turban And A Beard Representational Image/The Arizona Republic The complaint also alleges that the ADCRRs facial hair policies likely violate the rights of many other prisoners in the agencys custody whose faith requires them to maintain a beard. They asked the Justice Department to investigate these policies and their implementation. Also read: Sikh Doctors Treating Covid-19 Patients In UK Complain About Being Forced To Shave Their Beards Yuri Tolochko, a bodybuilder from Kazakhstan, who is married to two sex dolls has now said that he is planning to introduce a male doll in the relationship. If that information is too bizarre to process, here's a breakdown of what's happened in his life. He wed a sex doll, divorced her, cheated on a plastic partner while she was being repaired, and now he's in a throuple with two new dolls who have fallen in love. Now, he wants to add a male doll to the romantic partnership. Instagram/Yuri Tolochko Yuri identifies as a pansexual and can fall in love with "a character, an image, a soul, just a person." While appearing on 'The Dating Show' on FUBAR Radio, he said he was planning another wedding and a fourple could soon be on the cards. "I want to have a male doll in the future and I want to do a wedding of a male doll and Luna and at the same time I want to do the ceremony of life and freedom with me. It's similar to wedding, but not wedding," he revealed on the show. Instagram/Yuri Tolochko In March, Yuri introduced his new wife Lola to his Instagram followers, which has the body of a chicken. He wrote: "Let me introduce to you, my new wife. "This is Lola. Lola [is] queer, she has not yet decided on her sexual and gender identity [she is in search]." "Lola has a woman's head, a chicken's body, the navel has depth and can be used as a vagina and a penis inserted into it. I'll show you this one day. I identify her as a massive chicken," he had said. Instagram/Yuri Tolochko He had added, "We broke up with Margo. I'm not ready to talk about the reasons for the divorce yet." It appears another landmark moment in Yuri Tolochko's life is on the horizon. It will soon be fantastic four. Also read: Bodybuilder Who Is Married To A Sex Doll Is Cheating On Her With Another Object While She's Being Repaired Kathryn Andrews died at the age of 97 in December 2019, but a delicious part of her legacy lives on. Engraved in the headstone she shares with her husband Wade in Utah's Logan City Cemetery is the recipe for Kathryn's signature fudge. Images of her grave have gone viral on social media thanks to the engraving on the backside, which lists the recipe to Kays Fudge. Fox 13 News As per a report in Fox 13 News citing her daughter, Janice Johnson, it was a sweet treat that she whipped up "whenever people got together." Kay, who grew up in Salt Lake City, met Wade at a church function in New York City before a whirlwind engagement during World War II. They married on December 18, 1944. Also read: Woman Digs Herself Out Of Grave After 'Being Beaten And Buried Alive By Drunk Neighbours' Fox 13 News When Wade Andrews died in 2000, Kay selected the images that were included on his headstone. Her children reportedly wanted her to do the same for herself, prompting Kay to have the headstone engraved with her signature recipe. Images of the gravestone have circulated on the internet prior to this week, since it was erected when Wade died. However, her family told local news they were surprised to see the attention this week when images of the recipe went viral. Also read: StuDYING: This University Dug A Grave For Students To Lie Down In, To Deal With Exam Stress! "I knew that the headstone had been circulating on Pinterest for like a long time now. Since my grandpa passed away, when I was 8 years old, I knew it was kind of internet famous," her grandchild, Emily Andrews, told ABC4, adding that her grandmother's fudge was indeed "really good." In case anyone of you is hoping to try the famed dessert at home, here's how you can make it: Melt two squares of chocolate and two tablespoons of butter on low heat. Stir in one cup of milk to bring to a boil before adding three cups of sugar, one teaspoon vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Also read: 'People Think Im Dead': Man Discovers Grave In His Name, Blames His Ex-Wife George Washington Memorial Parkway Superintendent Charles Cuvelier and Ambassador Andre Haspels of the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and watch as a crane lifts the Marshall Bell, which measures 5 feet in diameter and weighs more than 7,500 pounds (three times heavier than the Liberty Bell), into place at the Netherlands Carillon. Today's Headlines Would you like to receive our daily news? Sign up today! Breaking news Sign up for breaking news alerts from morning-times.com!!! Week in Sports Get a weekly local sports round-up from www.morning-times.com every Saturday morning!!! Real-time social media posts from local businesses and organizations across Northern Virginia, powered by Friends2Follow. To add your business to the stream, email cfields@insidenova.com or click on the green button below. Faculty works to modify U.S. diversity requirements, but because of the bill passed by the Iowa Senate that does not allow divisive topics in the classroom, the changes have not been installed. Opinion Policies Editorials are longer opinion pieces that are written by a group of community members recruited across campus who address relevant issues on a local, national and international level. Editorials are research-based. The purpose of the Editorial Board is to promote discussion concerning relevant issues in the community while advising on possible solutions. Topics are chosen via relevancy and interests of the members, which are then discussed by the Editorial Board in order to reach a general consensus concerning the topic or issue. Feedback policy If you have a grievance concerning the content or argument of the Editorial Board, please contact either Opinion Editor Peyton Hamel (peyton.hamel@iowastatedaily.com) or the Editorial Board as a whole (editorialboard@iowastatedaily.com). Those wanting to respond to editorials can also submit a letter to the editor through the Iowa State Daily website or by emailing the letter to Opinion Editor Peyton Hamel (peyton.hamel@iowastatedaily.com) or Editor-in-Chief Sage Smith (sage.smith@iowastatedaily.com). Column Policy Columns are hyper-specific to opinion and are written by only columnists employed by the Iowa State Daily. Columnists are unique because they have a specific writing day and only publish on those writing days. Each column undergoes a thorough editing process ensuring the integrity of the writer, and their claim is maintained while remaining research-based and respectful. Columns may be submitted from community members. These are labelled as Guest Columns. These contain similar research-based content and need to be at least 400 words in length. The following requirements should be met: first and last name, email and relation or position to Iowa State. Emails must be tied to the submitted guest column or it will not be accepted or published. Pseudonyms are prohibited and the writer will be banned from submissions. Read our full Opinion Policies here. Updated on 10/7/2020 Burma Myanmar Daily Post-Coup Update: May 28 University students from Mandalays Yadanabon University call for a boycott of education under military rule. To keep you updated on what happened in Myanmar in the last 24 hours, here are the main events of the day more than three months after the putsch. In Yangon, unknown armed men attacked junta forces deployed inside a pagoda compound in Thaketa Township. Explosions were reported as the two sides exchanged fire. A military court-martial has jailed Daw Mi Nge, the 64-year-old mother of alleged activists, for three years for incitement under Article 505(a) of the Penal Code. She was beaten and detained earlier this month when junta forces unsuccessfully searched her home in North Okkalapa for her activist sons. An explosion took place at No. 5 ward administration office in Shwepyithar, where the military regime has imposed martial law. Local people staged a protest against the military regime in Hlaing Tharyar, which is under direct military control. Young people from Mingalardon and North Okkalapa teamed up and showed their opposition to the military regime. A bomb explosion near a pharmacy on the Union Highway in Muse in northern Shan State on Friday morning left a 15-year-old dead and injured two other people. Anti-regime protesters took to the streets on their motorbikes in Kyaukme. Following the assassination of Mon States Bilin Township Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) chairman on May 27, the militarys proxy party released a statement and said it had become inevitable to resort to self-defense if there is no legal protection. Young people from Paung Township staged a guerilla-style protest against the military regime. In Sagaing Region, a USDP party member was shot dead in Ai Gyi Pauk village in Khin-U Township. Locals from urban Monywa rallied on their motorbikes against the military regime. Rural villagers also staged a protest in the evening, praying for democracy and the demise of the dictatorship. Rural villagers from northern Salingyi and eastern Yinmarbin in Sagaing Region took to the streets against the military regime. Buddhist monks in the town of Sar Taung conducted prayers for the Myanmar people. People also took to the streets against the military regime in Kale. Three people were shot dead by junta forces in Gangaw, Magwe Region. Junta troops also set houses on fire. A number of school buildings burned down as five bombs exploded simultaneously at No. 2 Basic Education High School in Myaing Township. People in Kachin States Hpakant protested against the military regime on Friday. Hpakant residents have been staging street protests since Feb. 7. In Mandalay Region, junta forces violently dispersed Buddhist monks who have been staging peaceful protests daily against the military regime. Some monks were detained. Twelve people10 men and two women including a photojournalist for Myanmar Pressphoto Agencywere detained. More than 80 journalists have been arrested nationwide since the military coup and around 40 are still under detention. People from Mandalays Mya Taung staged an anti-regime protest on a Sagaing hill. Students from Mandalays Yadanabon University rallied against the military regime. Students and local residents from Aungmyethazan and Maha Aungmyay townships rallied against the military regime, calling for a boycott of education under military rule. In Tanintharyi Region, a candlelight vigil was held in Dawei, with protesters vowing to root out the military dictatorship. Locals from Kanpauk of Yebyu Township also took to the streets against the military regime. In Chin States Paletwa, a health worker was slightly injured when two bombs exploded almost simultaneously outside the Myanma Economic Bank and General Administration Department downtown. You may also like these stories: The Day Myanmars Junta Pushed Through 2008 Constitution Myanmar Regime Jails Mother After Troops Fail to Find Her Activist Sons Myanmar Peoples Defense Forces Warn of Increased Risk to Civilians Burma Myanmar Junta Forces Temporary Base Attacked in Yangon An anti-coup protester runs as troops charge in Yangon's Thaketa Township in March. / The Irrawaddy Unidentified attackers on Friday night launched an assault on a pagoda compound used as a temporary base by regime troops in Yangons Thaketa Township, in the latest in a series of attacks on junta forces in urban areas. Local residents said at least four soldiers and a civilian were injured during the attack. The Irrawaddy was unable to confirm the causalities by Saturday morning, however. The residents told The Irrawaddy the unknown armed men raided the pagoda compound at around 7:30 p.m., with the sounds of explosions followed by shooting in which dozens of rounds were exchanged until 8:30 p.m. We heard bomb blasts twice first, before the shooting began. The regimes troops were in chaos because of the sudden attack. They shouted very loudly and fired back at residential areas, a witness told The Irrawaddy. Many residents saw that four soldiers were injured during the shootout and a civilian passing by was also injured in the leg, he said. Regime troops have been using the pagoda compound in Thaketa as a base since launching a deadly crackdown on anti-coup protesters in Yangon in March, according to the residents. The Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defense Services had not made any announcement relating to the attack as of Saturday afternoon. The military regime has been facing a growing challenge from civilian resistance forces in several regions and states including Sagaing, Mandalay and Magwe regions and Chin and Kayah states. Moreover, there have been an increasing number of explosions and attacks targeting junta forces and their informants in urban areas. Among Yangon townships, Thaketa has witnessed some of the strongest civilian resistance to the military regime. It has seen a series of bomb blasts this week, with at least five occurring on Thursday alone, including one at the home of the administrator of Man Pyay No. 3 Ward. The junta-appointed ward administrator was shot dead by an unknown armed man. On May 3, the military-appointed administrator of No. 7 Ward in the township was stabbed to death by three men. A statement from civilian resistance forces in Yangon widely circulated on social media urged people to avoid popular public spaces such as fun fairs and not to take too long when dining at restaurants. People have also been warned to stay away from junta soldiers and their informants. You may also like these stories: Myanmar Daily Post-Coup Update: May 28 Myanmar Regime Jails Mother After Troops Fail to Find Her Activist Sons Myanmar Peoples Defense Forces Warn of Increased Risk to Civilians Burma Myanmar Junta Reports Huge Explosives Haul, Dozens of Arrests in Yangon Regime soldiers in Yangon in early March. / The Irrawaddy In a record-breaking seizure of improvised explosive devices, the Myanmar regime has confiscated more than 2,000 homemade bombs and firearms in Yangon and arrested nearly two dozen people accused of possessing the explosives. The seizures and arrests were made late last week and weekend, and come as the countrys business hub continues to be rocked by occasional blasts and deadly attacks on security forces. The regimes Myawaddy TV announced on Friday night that 23 people had been arrested at several locations in Yangon from May 21 through Sunday. They were arrested together with three pistols, three magazines, 2,080 homemade bombs and 44 time bombs among other items, according to the announcement. Effective action will be taken under the law against terrorists who threaten the lives, property and social security of the people who want to live in peace, the regime said. In a separate announcement on the same day, the regimes TV broadcaster said another 20 people had been arrested from May 13-17 in Yangon. They are accused of attending explosives training in areas controlled by ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), sharing what they learned with others, smuggling firearms into Yangon and arranging to send people for training in EAO-controlled areas. As the news was being broadcast on Friday night, regime troops stationed at a pagoda compound in Yangons Thaketa Township were targeted by unknown attackers. Residents reported hearing explosions and a volley of shots ringing out as the two sides exchanged gunfire for several minutes. On Wednesday morning, the area was rocked by at least five explosions, killing one of the regimes local administrators. Blasts were also reported in other areas of the city over this week, causing a number of casualties among security forces. The series of attacks on regime troops comes amid warnings on social media by anti-regime resistance forces that they plan to step up attacks in urban areas in the coming weeks. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Yangon. Outside the city, regime troops in other areas of the country have come under attack from local civilian resistance forces, with both sides sustaining casualties. Following the regimes deadly crackdowns on pro-democracy protests on streets across the country in March and April, a number of anti-regime protesters fled to areas controlled by ethnic armed groups on the borders. They have received military training from ethnic armed groups who oppose military rule, hoping to join the Peoples Defense Force (PDF), the armed wing of Myanmars parallel National Unity Government (NUG). As of this week, more than 800 people had been killed by the regime since the Feb. 1 coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners-Burma (AAPP), which has been monitoring civilian casualties caused by the junta. The exact number of trainees on the border is unknown. But according to some media estimates there may be at least several hundred, including doctors and other young professionals. Early this month, the regime arrested 39 people who according to military-owned media were suspected of orchestrating explosions and arson attacks, as well as seeking military training with an ethnic minority rebel group. Following the arrests, the junta sent a letter to the countrys oldest ethnic rebel group, the Karen National Union (KNU), objecting to its involvement in providing training to civilian resistance fighters, citing information obtained during its interrogation of the detainees. You may also like these stories: Myanmar Junta Forces Temporary Base Attacked in Yangon Cryptocurrencies like Ethereum remain a worthy option for investors in the long term, a Wall Street veteran said in an interview with CNBC Wednesday. Jim Bianco, founder and president of Bianco Research, forecasted that those who hold on to their investments amid the dizzying volatility of digital tokens should expect immense rewards and bearish sentiment. Ethereum Price Prediction: Value Higher 'Down the Road' Yet Bianco mentioned one particular coin as being the best option for investors: Ethereum. Coins like Ethereum, he said, "are going to be a lot higher way down the road." Accoridng to him, however, investors must endure more debacles similar to last week's cryptocurrency crash, wherein trillions in value were lost. Despite this, Bianco said, cryptocurrencies have "a lot of promise." Read Also: Ethereum Price Prediction: Mark Cuban Explains Value Crash, Forecasts Huge Rebound Bianco is one of the more independent voices on macro investing in the last three decades, and he is a regular guest on many business newscasts while writing a column for Bloomberg. Bianco said the cryptocurrencies are not the only ones suffering from a bear run, but sell-offs have been quite more prevalent in the crypto market. He emphasized, however, that the current situation in the cryptomarket should serve as a catalyst for growth, especially for those who tough out the current difficult times, Express.co.uk reported. Ethereum Value Rise Due to Decentralized Finance One important factor in cryptocurrency rebuilding, Bianco said, is decentralized finance (DeFi). This movement is leading a revolution in the financial industry, and Ethereum which carries DeFi apps could be the biggest gainers, Invezz.com posted. But, then again, intense volatility must be tolerated before the market reaches that level. While he said it may take months or years, he is sure cryptocurrencies will get there. Ethereum, Poster Currency of Crypto Comeback Bianco warned that cryptocurrencies remain vulnerable to declines of up to 70 percent from present levels, given that the technology is new. Ethereum experienced a total loss of above $2,000 since its high flying levels in early May. In the last five days, though, Ethereum had clawed back to around $2,700, making it a poster cryptocurrency of the expected comeback. The expert likewise warned that the traditional financial sector could be worst hit once DeFi progresses, as he made an analogy with how digital news sites and social media affected the traditional publishing industry. While there are still print newspapers and magazines in existence, digital and social made it redundant and less interesting. He said that once cryptocurrencies will have a more fundamental role in the general economy, prices will soar. Bianco said that in the future, investor gains would slowly decrease as cryptocurrencies go mainstream and volatility is checked since there "less risk and less reward." Bianco, the CNBC report further stated, owns a good number of digital tokens, mostly Ethereum, since 2017 and had since held on to them. He would trade occasionally, about once or twice a year. Related Article: Ethereum Price Prediction: $3000 Bounce-Back Still Possible Despite Crypto Crash Police release rules for protesters, officers | Board of Ed. clears up vax misinformation | IC professor, author talks about new book | BVC catches the latest at Regal | Enjoy your summer in the Finger Lakes Read Digital Edition 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. MiMi-Sandra of Fort Worth, born 7 September 1945 in Jacksonville to Joe Selman Gore and Jeffie Gwendolyn (Lazenby) Gore. Preceded by her parents and five siblings. Survived by her husband, daughters, four siblings, nieces and nephews. Donate Now As a public service during this pandemic, the Jewish News is providing free, unlimited access to all articles. Jewish News is a nonprofit publication that is owned by the community and relies on community support. Mike has reported on the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem's wildlife, wildlands and the agencies that manage them since 2012. A native Minnesotan, he arrived in the West to study environmental journalism at the University of Colorado. World's only captive brown panda meets public in China's Shaanxi Xinhua) 15:45, May 29, 2021 Photo taken on May 28, 2021 shows brown giant panda Qizai at a newly opened science park dedicated to the protection of wild animals in Zhouzhi County of Xi'an, northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Covering an area of 28 hectares, the science park started trial operation on Friday. The facility features four rare wild animal species living in the Qinling Mountains, namely the giant panda, the crested ibis, the golden monkey and the takin. Also available are over 20 other animal species native to the Qinling Mountains as well as Qizai, the world's only captive brown giant panda. (Xinhua/Li Yibo) XI'AN, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The world's only captive brown giant panda, nicknamed "Qi Zai," met the public for the first time on Friday, during the trial operation of a science park in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Covering an area of over 28 hectares, the science park is located in Zhouzhi County at the northern foot of the Qinling Mountains. It aims to protect and popularize four rare animal species of the mountains, namely giant panda, crested ibis, golden monkey and takin. The world's first brown panda was discovered in 1985 in the Qinling Mountains. All recorded photographs of wild brown pandas were taken in the area. The Qinling giant panda is a subspecies of giant panda first recognized in 2005. It has a smaller and rounder skull, shorter snout and less fur than the more familiar Sichuan subspecies. According to panda experts, brown pandas could be the result of genetic mutations or atavism and further study is needed on the topic. Enditem (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Book signing today with author of 'Hello: Everyone has A Story' at The Valley Book Store Tom Hallberg covers a little bit of everything, from skiing to long-form feature stories. A Teton Valley, Idaho, transplant by way of Portland and Bend, Oregon, he spends his time outside work writing fiction, splitboarding and climbing. Della A. (Kinkade) McGuire, 85, passed away at 12:15 a.m. on Thursday, June 10th, 2021 at the Presbyterian Manor in Parsons, KS, where she had lived for almost three years. On July 28, 1953, Della married Max E. McGuire. He preceded her in death on January 21, 1999. Della is survived by her International China, Philippines swap protests over Manila-occupied island The Pag-asa islands. Manila, May 29 (AP) | Publish Date: 5/29/2021 1:16:42 PM IST The Philippines has demanded that China withdraw its ships and fishing vessels from the vicinity of a Philippine-occupied island in the South China Sea, where the Chinese military has asserted its sovereignty and vowed to unswervingly safeguard the disputed territory. The exchange of protests by the Asian neighbours over the island, internationally called Thitu, is the latest flareup in a long simmering territorial feud in the strategic waterway that has escalated in the last two months. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said Saturday it has filed a diplomatic protest against the incessant deployment, prolonged presence and illegal activities of Chinese maritime assets and fishing vessels in the vicinity of the Pag-asa islands. It used the Philippine name for Thitu, which China calls Zhongye Dao. The department demanded that China withdraw its vessels from near the island, which it said is an integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction. The 37.2-hectare (92-acre) island is the largest of nine mostly islets, reefs and shoals occupied by Philippine forces in the disputed waters. The Manila government lists Thitu and outlying outcrops as part of a town in western Palawan province. Aside from Filipino troops and police, a small fishing community can be found on Thitu. The government has constructed a beach ramp to allow the docking of navy and cargo ships and unloading of construction materials and heavy equipment for new projects, including the repair and lengthening of a seawater-eroded airstrip, an ice plant for fishermen and more military barracks. Chinese officials have not protested as loudly as before the Philippine constructions amid cozier ties between Beijing and Manila under Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. But on Thursday, Chinese Defence Ministry spokesman Tang Kefei said China was resolutely opposed to any Philippine development on Thitu. Chinas military will unswervingly safeguard national territory, sovereignty and maritime rights, while resolutely maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, Tang said, without elaborating at a monthly briefing. The escalating feud between Manila and Beijing started after more than 200 Chinese vessels suspected by Philippine authorities to be operated by government militias were spotted in early March at Whitsun Reef. The Philippine defense chief and foreign secretary demanded the vessels leave, and Filipino officials later deployed navy and coast guard vessels to the area. China said it owns the reef and the Chinese vessels were sheltering there from rough seas. The Philippines has issued dozens of diplomatic protests to China since then over the disputes. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. apologised early this month after tweeting an obscene phrase demanding China get out of Philippine-claimed territory in the South China Sea in an outburst that annoyed Duterte. Just because we have a conflict with China does not mean to say that we have to be rude and disrespectful, Duterte said. We have many things to thank China for the help in the past and its assistance now. Business leaders and experts on Saturday stressed enhancing negotiation skills, competitiveness and necessary policy reforms to face the economic challenges after the graduation of the country from the least developed to a developing one. At a webinar on LDC Graduation of Bangladesh: Journey towards Economic Excellence organised by the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and industry, they said that emphasis should be on regional connectivity and signing preferential trade agreements and free trade agreements. Nihad Kabir, president of the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said that LDC graduation could be an opportunity for Bangladesh. Apparently we may think of losing a few benefits, but in the long run we will be benefited a lot. Many business scopes are still coming into Bangladesh, she said. The MCCI president urged to improve negotiation skills and suggested conducting research with the help of international experts and practitioners to identify the post-graduation challenges and opportunities for Bangladesh. Institutional capacity building and institutional governance are also important to address the post-graduation challenges, she said. Economist Muinul Islam urged the government to reduce corruption to attract foreign direct investment in the country. Most of the loan defaulters in the country are involved in the capital flight and we have to take stand against the people who send money abroad illegally, he said. Muinul said that a significant amount of business was shifting from China amid the Covid pandemic but Bangladesh was getting a very few while the large portion was going to Vietnam. Vietnam is a success story in the world. We should learn from the country, he added. Ahmad Kaikaus, principal secretary to the prime minister, said that being a developing nation, China was dominating the world trade, so there was no reason for Bangladesh to be afraid of graduation. LDC graduation for Bangladesh is a milestone. We have to mainly focus on how to become competitive and role of the government is to remove barriers, he said. Ahmad Kaikaus said that the entrepreneurial capacity of Bangladeshi people was the strength to overcome all hurdles. Md Jashim Uddin, president of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry, urged the government for a faster implementation of special economic zones saying that a huge amount of investment would be needed in the backward linkage industries to remain competitive on the export market after graduation. He said that the government should engage private sector in the process of formulating policies to make it implementable. DCCI president Rizwan Rahman said that it is the right time to increase trade and investment as well as adopt long-term strategic planning and their effective implementation to strengthen Bangladeshs position in the international arena after the graduation from LDC. He said that Bangladeshs identity as a developing nation in the international arena would uphold the competitiveness of the country and would contribute to enhance export and FDI. Developing negotiation skills, export diversification, skill development, institutional capacity, effective policy adoption and necessary policy reforms could play a pivotal role to be competitive after LDC graduation, he said. Town Reporter Adam joined the JI in November 2020. He graduated in 2019 from the University of Connecticut. He enjoys reading, playing soccer and basketball, as well as piano and drums. He is a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers, Penguins, and Pirates. Opinion Columnist Chris Powell has worked for the Journal Inquirer since 1967, first as a reporter, then as an editor, and now as a columnist. He was managing editor from 1974 until retiring from that position in 2018. Imarat Nirman Sramik Union Bangladesh holds a rally in front of the National Press Club in Dhaka on Saturday demanding more budgetary allocation for construction workers. New Age photo Leaders of Imarat Nirman Sramik Union Bangladesh on Saturday at a human chain in Dhaka demanded special allocation for construction workers in the upcoming 2021-22 budget citing job losses during the Covid crisis. The union formed the human chain in front of the National Press Club and its president Mijanur Rahman Babul chaired the event. Trade Union Centre president veteran labour leader Shahidullah Chowdhury said that most of the construction workers had lost their jobs during the pandemic. He demanded sufficient allocation for the construction workers in the coming budget to provide them with food and monitory assistance. The unions general secretary Mohammad Abdur Razzaque said that more than 40 thousands construction workers working in the informal sector of construction were going through rough time due to the Covid crisis. Students Unity of Bangladesh also formed a separate human chain in the same venue and demanded 25 per cent allocation for the education sector in the upcoming budget. The organisations president Kazi Abdul Motaleb chaired the event, also addressed by City Workers Party president Abul Hossain, Juba Moitri central leader Mohammad Touhidur Rahman, Chhatra Moirti general secretary Atulan Das Alo and others. Town Reporter Olivia covers East Hartford & South Windsor. She joined the JI in March 2019. She graduated from the University of Kansas, and she enjoys running & hanging out with her Manchester terrier, Sophie. Olivia loves journalism because it can change the world. The Nigerian authorities confirmed that at least 60 people were killed in a boat accident on the Niger River. They are also worried about the deaths of 83 missing passengers. The ship carrying more than 160 passengers, including many children and women, sank after hitting an object and breaking up on Wednesday while traveling along the Kebbi State River, Nigerias largest river in northwestern Nigeria. Emergency workers continued their recovery work on Friday. The body was transported from the teams boat near the river bank to the waiting ambulance. Sani Dododo, chairman of the Kebbi State Emergency Management Agency, said that workers recovered 55 bodies on Thursday, bringing the death toll to 60. He said: We hope that more bodies will be recovered on Friday. He added that he fears that the 83 passengers who are still missing may not be alive. On Thursday, an official from the National Emergency Management Agency was seen as people gathering around a truck carrying the bodies of ship crash victims. (National Emergency Management Agency/Reuters) Soon after the accident, 22 passengers were rescued, but no one else was rescued alive since then. Among the dead was a baby less than one year old. Duoduo said that due to the high water level and rapid movement of the river, the recovery work is slow, which poses dangers to divers and ship workers. It is not yet clear what caused the ship to rupture on its way from Niger State in Nigeria to Wara Town in Kebbi State. Ship accidents are common in Nigeria, especially on the Niger River. The causes include overloading, poor condition of many ships, and underwater debris that ships often hit. Warning: This story contains some details that bother some readers. Tkemlupste Secwepemc First Nation said on Thursday that preliminary findings of an investigation into the site of the former Kamloops Indian boarding school found the remains of 215 children buried in the site. The First Nations said the remains were identified last weekend near Kamloops in southern British Columbia. Tkemlupste Secwepemc said in a statement that they have hired ground penetrating radar experts to carry out this work, and their language and culture department is responsible for overseeing the project to ensure that the project is carried out in a culturally appropriate and respectful manner. This version does not specify the companies or individuals involved, nor does it specify how the work will be completed. The statement said: As far as we know, these missing children are undocumented deaths, said Tkemlupste Secwepemc Kukpi7 (chief) Rosanne Casimir. Some people are only three years old. We seek a way to confirm with the deepest respect and knowledge of the lost children and their families, and know that Tkemlupste Secwepemc is the final resting place of these children. Casimir told CBC that the findings of the investigation were preliminary and the experts will provide a report next month. In his speech on Friday, Casimir said that community members are still responding to the shock of the news because the leadership is considering the next steps. She told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC): One of them, we need to respect these children. Kamloops at dawn. Boarding school until 1969 Tkemlupste Secwepemc said that they are working with the BC Coroner Service to contact the students home communities, protect the remains, and work with the museum to find records of these deaths. Lisa Lapointe, the chief coroner of British Columbia, said in a statement to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that the coroners office had received an alert regarding the discovery on Thursday. Laporte said: We are in the early stages of collecting information. As this sensitive work progresses, we will continue to cooperate with Tkemlupste Secwepemc and other institutions. We recognize that the Canadian boarding school system has brought tragic, heartbreaking destruction to many people, and our thoughts are relevant to all those in mourning today. The Kamloops Indian Boarding School operated from 1890 to 1969, when the federal government took over the school from the Catholic Church as a residence for a day school until it closed in 1978. According to the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), the school will have up to 500 students enrolled. These children originally came from aboriginal communities in British Columbia and beyond. The main administrative building of the former school is shown in the picture. (Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration-Information Division / Canadian Library and Archives) Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the History and Dialogue Center of the Indian Boarding School of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, said that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was established in 2008, was told that it happened in the boarding school. And informed that 50 people died. Happened at the Kamloops agency. She said that historical records a large number of problems that are happening, including the ones that will be released by certain Catholic entities, make it difficult for people to understand exactly what happened. Turpel-Lafond said this discovery confirms what community survivors have done over the years-many children went to school and never returned. She also said that federal agents often take the children away, so some of the people they find may come from other aboriginal communities. Turpel-Lafond also questioned how the rampant sexual abuse and physical abuse recorded in the residential school caused the death of these children. There may be reasons why they cannot properly record deaths, and they are not treated with dignity and respect, because that is the whole purpose of boarding schoolsto completely control Indian children and eliminate their culture, identity and contact with their families, She was on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Friday Early version. UBCIC: Use nothing to say to describe sadness The First Nations Health Administration (FNHA) said Thursdays announcement will have a profound impact on the indigenous peoples of British Columbia and across the country. FNHA CEO Richard Jock wrote in a statement: It is regrettable that this situation exists and it illustrates that the boarding school system continues to cause destructive and lasting damage to the indigenous people, their families and communities. influences. Tkemlupste Secwepemc Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir said that community members are still coping with the shock of the news because the leadership is considering what to do next. (Andrew Snucins/Canada Press) On Friday, the Union of Indian Chiefs of British Columbia (UBCIC) stated that it mourned with Tkemlupste Secwepemc. UBCIC President Stewart Phillip (Stewart Phillip) wrote: When we hear such news, there is nothing to express our deep condolences as aborigines and survivors. Today, we respect the lives of these children and pray that they and their families can finally get along with each other in peace. It is estimated that more than 150,000 children in Canada are enrolled in boarding schools From the 1830s until the last school closed in 1996. Many children never go home from school Based on death records, NCTR estimates that about 4,100 children were killed in school, but said the true total may be much higher. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission stated that a large number of indigenous children who were sent to boarding schools have never returned home. Federal Minister of Indigenous Services Marc Miller Say in tweet He has been in contact with Casimir on Thursday to provide support. Crown Indigenous Relations Federal Minister Carolyn Bennett (Carolyn Bennett) said in a tweet that the Indian National Boarding School Crisis Line applies to former boarding school students and others seeking support. You can use it by calling 1-866-925-4419. A plaque can be seen outside the former Indian boarding school in Kamloops. (Andrew Snucins/Canada Press) In a radio interview on Friday, Casimir ended the conversation with a direct message to Ottawa. Casimir said: It is a good thing for the federal government to express goodwill and support for this tragedy. Tkemlupste Secwepemc and all affected communities and families have important ownership and responsibility. This needs to happen. And happen. On Friday, the Governor of British Columbia, John Horgan, issued a statement expressing shock and heartbreak at the discovery: Hogan said: This is an unimaginable tragedy. This is a stark example of the violence inflicted by the Canadian boarding school system against indigenous people and the consequences of these atrocities that continue to this day. FNHA stated that it has confirmed immediate support for the indigenous people of Tkemlupste Secwepemc through its internal health team, and its team is always on standby to support further needs. A crisis hotline for Indian National Boarding Schools has been established to provide support to former and affected students. Call the 24-hour national crisis hotline: 1-866 925-4419 to obtain emotional and crisis referral services. In British Columbia, the KUU-US Crisis Line Association provides Aboriginal and Aboriginal specific crisis lines that are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.It is a toll free number, you can call 1-800-588-8717 or visit online kuu-uscrisisline.com. Listen | Tkemlupste Secwepemc Kukpi7 Rosanne Casimir (Rosanne Casimir) speaks at CBC Dawn Kamloops: When West African leaders prepared to respond to the coup in Mali, the appointment of the coup leader increased the stakes. The Constitutional Court of Mali appointed the colonel who led the military coup this week as the countrys new interim leader. The ruling was issued late on Friday, stating that Asimi Goita will lead the transition process to completion and will be named transitional president, head of state. The court said the decision was made due to the vacancy of the presidency after the resignation of caretaker President Bah Ndaw. Goita, 38, was Ndaws deputy and ordered the arrest of the former leader after the cabinet was reorganized. The cabinet was reorganized on Monday and two soldiers were removed from their posts. Ndaw resigned during his detention on Wednesday and was later released. Fridays ruling increased the stakes, as West African leaders are preparing to meet on Sunday to decide how they will respond to the acquisition. This jeopardizes the transition to democracy and may undermine the relationship between Al Qaeda and ISIL Regional struggles of linked armed groups). Goitas seizure of power is his second time in less than a year. In August last year, the young colonel launched a coup and removed Malis president-elect Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, protesting demonstrations and the governments failure to quell protests by armed groups. Faced with the threat of regional sanctions, Goita and other coup leaders agreed to transfer power to the transitional government, which would return the country to civilian rule. The colonel was subsequently appointed as the vice president of the interim government, and his colleagues were awarded important cabinet positions. At that time, the mediator of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) insisted that the transition to Mali, which was scheduled to end in February, was still dominated by civilians. The EU stated in a declaration that the vice president of the transitional period can not replace the president under any circumstances. The heads of state of ECOWAS are scheduled to meet in Ghana on Sunday. Earlier Friday, Gotha delivered his first public speech since the military takeover and said that the military had no choice but to intervene. He said: We must choose between the chaos and cohesion of the defense and security forces, and we choose cohesion. He added that he will appoint a new prime minister from among the members of the M5-RFP coalition, which led the protests against Keita last year and broke away from Ndaw and Ouane during the transition period. Alliance member Jeamille Bitar (Jeamille Bitar) said that the selection for this position will be the former government minister Choguel Maiga (Choguel Maiga). This is a shocking moment, a worrying moment full of violent hate crime incidents, when an outrageous sucker slammed an old Asian woman in New York City. A disgusting attack on Wednesday left the 75-year-old woman with a broken nose, broken eye sockets and two black eyes. 5 Chin was on his way back from the supermarket when the man attacked her Image Credit: Facebook / NYPD Crimestoppers 5 No one was arrested, the New York Police Department is looking for the suspect in the picture Image source: NYPD Crimestoppers Surveillance video showed a man walking down the sidewalk in Queens, then punched Chinese-American Yonghua and walked away. The New York Police Department is now looking for the man who attacked the elderly woman. Chins son Tell CBS 2 His mother, who had lived nearby for 40 years, was treated in a nearby hospital for her injuries and may need surgery. Its obvious. He beat her because she is an Asian woman, he told the media. According to his son, Chin was returning from the supermarket before being attacked. 5 She had a broken nose and dark eyes and was taken to a nearby hospital Image Credit: Facebook / NYPD Crimestoppers She said that the people around are very nice and can help her call an ambulance. They come to pick her up, and so on, so I am very happy that people around at least support each other. He added. In the past year, hate crimes against Asian Americans have been on the rise, and the Covid pandemic that began in China is seen as a contributing factor behind the heinous attacks. Since the beginning of 2020, hate crimes against Asian Americans in New York City have increased by 1,300%. In April, a convicted mother killer assaulted an Asian woman in an alleged hate attack. Brandon ElliotThe 38-year-old was arrested for assaulting a Filipino woman on a busy street in Manhattan after he found a brutal assault in surveillance video. 5 Then, after onlookers attacked her woman, he walked away casually and did nothing. Image source: NYPD His victim, 65-year-old Vilma Kari, was walking in a church in Midtown Manhattan on Monday. Elliot allegedly threw anti-Asian slander and told her: You dont belong here. He was photographed kicking her in the stomach, knocking her to the ground and stepping on her face. 5 After the attacker fled, the security guards extended a helping hand to the woman Face justice Murder details revealed that the killer of the cheerleader will be tried as an adult Mute The plaintiff in the Masterson rape case was accused by scientists as vociferous Horror discovery Neighbors shed tears after discovering the body of the boy kidnapped and killed, 4 Cold discovery A mass grave with the remains of 215 children found in a former boarding school Panoramic play date The creepy footage shows the childs ball rolling by itself in the hotel room Test of horror The kidnapped teenager who was kidnapped two years later is still alive Then, he walked away casually, watched by onlookers, and did nothing to stop the horror scene. After the attacker escaped, the security guards approached the woman for help. A woman who accused Danny Masterson of sexual assault claimed that sect church officials told her not to go to the police. Three women accused of sexually assaulting actors on the 70s show At a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles last week, church officials told them not to go to the authorities. 5 Three accusers of Danny Masterson alleged that Scientology church officials tried to silence them Credit: BackGrid 5 The church denied all demands and said it was similar to money shake Credit: Getty One of the alleged victims claimed that a church official told her in writing that she would take responsibility for the alleged sexual assault that occurred in 2001. Los Angeles Times report. The woman claimed at the hearing that the actor was a member of the Scientism Church and raped her when she was in a coma. Another woman who accused Masterson of sexual assault said that a church lawyer showed up at her familys home. She accused the lawyer of threatening that if she told the police about Mastersons rape at her home in Hollywood in 2004, she would be expelled from the church. 5 One of the accusers claimed that a church official told her that reporting Masterson to the police in the eyes of the church was a serious crime. Credit: BackGrid 5 Another plaintiff claimed that the church lawyer went to her house and threatened to expel her from the church. Credit: BackGrid 5 Masterson will face trial for three crimes of rape dating back to the early 2000s Credit: Alami According to The Times, the lawyer allegedly told the womans father: We will work hard to solve the problem that you cannot lose your daughter. The church denied all claims and called these cases similar to money shakes. Church spokesperson Karin Pouw told the New York Times: Church policy clearly requires scientists to abide by all laws in the country, including crime reports. Puf went on to say: This is obvious in the documents we know about the courts and many other documents. Another Masterson plaintiff claimed that when she reported her alleged rape to church officials, she was told to read a passage from Introduction to Scientology Ethics. She claimed that an official told her to avoid using the R and said that reporting to Masterson would be a serious crime in the church. Face justice Murder details revealed that the killer of the cheerleader will be tried as an adult Horror discovery Neighbors shed tears after discovering the body of the boy kidnapped and killed, 4 Panoramic play date The creepy footage shows the childs ball rolling by itself in the hotel room Test of horror The kidnapped teenager who was kidnapped two years later is still alive Its really McLovin (IT) A 31-year-old fast food fan turned his home into a McDonalds shrine A little fish Children like petting dolphinsbut there is something wrong with this picture The actor will face trial for three crimes of rape dating back to the early 2000s. In the preliminary review last week, His accuser accused him of hitting them or holding guns in the head. He pleaded not guilty to the three charges. University staff were forced to apologize on Thursday for issuing a statement earlier this week condemning the surge in anti-Semitic attacks. Rutgers University President Christopher Molloy and Provost Francine Conway were forced to apologize because their initial statement failed to convey support to our Palestinian community members . 4 The two presidents of Rutgers University were forced to apologize to condemn the anti-Semitic attacks Credit: AP 4 Rutgers University President Christopher Molloy issued an apology after issuing a statement condemning growing anti-Semitism Image source: Rutgers University Molloy and Conway were called apologies and their initial statements were not fulfilled. We understand that intention and impact are two different things. Although our purpose of communicating the information is to confirm that Rutgers University-New Brunswick is a place where all identities can be verified and supported, the information communicated is far from achieving this intent, the spineless university owner Write. In hindsight, we are very clear that this message failed to convey support for our Palestinian community members. We apologize for the harm caused by this message. On Wednesday, Molloy and Conway wrote in a separate statement qualified We speak out against anti-Semitism and we are sad and extremely concerned about the sharp rise in hostility and anti-Semitic violence in the United States. 4 Provost Francine Conway co-authored the initial statement and subsequent apology Image source: Rutgers University 4 The two wrote that they neglected to clearly communicate their intentions Image source: Rutgers University They continued: The recent incident of hatred against the Jews in our community once again reminds us of what history must teach us. Sadly, in the last century alone, prejudice and hatred have not been resolved. This has become the basis for many atrocities against target groups around the world. After issuing a statement on Wednesday, the Rutgers Branch of the Palestinian Justice Student Union condemn Statement obviously ignored[ing] Use the word Palestine or Palestine in the statement. The organization wrote this statement: It is inseparable from extensive attempts to conflict with anti-Zionism. [sic] Anti-Semitism [sic] Destroyed Palestinian voice and activism. It isolates them and shows that the Rutgers do not support or support their struggle for freedom and freedom and have contributed to the racist efforts of the Zionists. [sic] Eliminate the identity of Palestinians. They also found that the ministers and the provost [to] Minimize the impact of settler colonialism on the Palestinians and try to portray violence as an equal conflict. We know that this will not have the slightest impact. When the vulnerable Molloy and Conway made their initial statements, they compared anti-Semitic attacks to attacks on Asians, blacks, and other races in the country, and this chapter also proposes this. question. The Prime Minister and the Provost minimized the impact of settler colonialism on the Palestinians and tried to portray violence as an equal conflict. We know that this will not have the slightest impact. Face justice Murder details revealed that the killer of the cheerleader will be tried as an adult Mute The plaintiff in the Masterson rape case was accused by scientists as vociferous Horror discovery Neighbors shed tears after discovering the body of the boy kidnapped and killed, 4 Panoramic play date The creepy footage shows the childs ball rolling by itself in the hotel room Test of horror The kidnapped teenager who was kidnapped two years later is still alive Its really McLovin (IT) A 31-year-old fast food fan turned his home into a McDonalds shrine After walking back and forth between this chapter and the head of the university, Molloy and Conway issued apologies. Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton is criticized online Tweet Under pressure, Prime Minister Rutgers *apologized* for condemning the surge in anti-Semitic violence. How can this weak man lead the university? A Rutgers spokesperson told New York Post The university has no further comment at this time. In less than a year, the Malian army regained power for the second time. Nine months after large-scale anti-government protests overthrew President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita (Ibrahim Boubacar Keita), on Monday, after announcing that the new cabinet announced the exclusion of the two main military leaders. Hours later, the army detained President Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane. Colonel Assimi Goita, who led the coup in August 2020, is the vice chairman of the transitional government formed by Ndaw in late September. His mission is to guide the country to achieve complete civilian rule. Including the general strike initiated by the main unions in Mali. The retired officer Ndaw was taken to the military base, and Wuane resigned on Wednesday. Later in the day, the UN Security Council condemned the use of force, including forced resignation to change the transitional leadership as unacceptable. But by Friday, Takata has already Appointment of interim president Ruling by the Constitutional Court of Mali. According to Nigerias Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, it coincided with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) inviting military leaders to hold talks with the current chairman of the region, President Nana Akufo Addo of Ghana. Negotiations are scheduled to take place on Sunday. France, which has thousands of troops fighting armed groups in Mali, also criticized the armys takeover as unacceptable. President Emmanuel Macron warned against those he called coups in progress. The coup detat implemented targeted sanctions. After last years coup, ECOWAS withdrew Mali from its institutions and announced a series of sanctions, including closing borders and halting capital flows. However, some analysts have expressed doubts about the effectiveness of such measures and whether they are the best way to restore civilian rule. The sanctions regime has not been very successful, Emmanuel Kwesi Anning, research director of the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Training Center, told Al Jazeera. People can trade; the boundaries are porous. However, the fact that ECOWAS is trying to impose sanctions without considering Malis political, economic and social realities means that the sanctions regime itself has become a fierce battle, making people very critical of ECOWAS. At present, I think any re-imposition of sanctions or decisions will be counterproductive. Regarding the real needs of the people of Mali, we need more nuanced dialogue. An Ning added. Washington said on Wednesday that it is suspending security assistance to Malis security and defense forces, which is working to contain armed groups in the northern and central regions of the country. State Department spokesperson Ned Price said in a statement: The United States will also consider targeted measures against political and military leaders that will hinder Malis civilian-dominated democratic governance. transition. Since the 2012 uprising prompted rebel soldiers to overthrow the president, Mali has been in turmoil. The power vacuum helped the Tuareg separatists ally with the fighters of the al-Qaeda branch, launched a rebellion, and took control of northern Mali. Combatants from the armed group quickly pushed towards the Tuareg rebels and occupied important northern cities until the French-led counteroffensive expelled them in early 2013. But combatants are still active. Since 2015, groups associated with Al-Qaida and ISIL have moved from the arid north to densely populated central Mali, attacking targets and sparking hostility and violence among the various ethnic groups in the area . What is worrying is that the latest developments in Bamako may make the fragile security situation more unstable. it [the coup] An Ning said: This will not only lead to violent activities in Mali and the resurrection of more armed groups, but also a symbol of the militarys ability to come back and hold power. Before the recent coup, Mali plans to hold presidential and legislative elections in February next year. Gotta promised last Friday that the polls will proceed as planned. He also said that he will elect a prime minister within a few days. This number will come from the oppositions June 5th Patriotic Movement Rally (M5-RFP), the powerful organization behind the street demonstrations against Keita last year. . The M5-RFP movement was eliminated in the coup last year when the organization established a transitional institution. Jean-Herve Jezequel of Crisis Group said in a speech Publication The next few days of this week will be decisive, and political deadlock is also possible. He added: But whatever the outcome, the new crisis highlights the lack of a strong alliance to support the transition, especially its announced ambitions to reform Malis political system. This aspect is perhaps the most worrying: in After all these crises, Mali still does not know what kind of political force can bring about the changes the country needs. For Moussa Kondo, a civil society activist and head of the Mali Accountability Laboratory, the election is the cause that will free Mali from this cycle. He told Al Jazeera: We Malians have been facing a challenging situation between the president and the military government. We need to find a peaceful and transparent solution that is acceptable to all Malians. Analysts say that Khalifa Haftar, the military commander of the Libyan rebellion, consolidated his political image before the election. He was defeated horribly on the battlefield before and gradually weakened domestic and foreign support. Haftars eastern forces fought for more than a year to capture Tripoli, the capital of the west, but their failure in June last year was a UN-supported peace talks, a unified government, and a nationwide plan to be held in December The general election laid the foundation. Miloud el-Hajj, a professor of international relations, said: He hopes that the election will ensure his political victory after his military defeat. During the decade of violence that overthrew dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, Haftar has become a key figure. The commander fought against armed groups and established a solid foundation of support between influential tribes in eastern Libya and neighboring Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Russia. However, two years after his Libyan National Army launched an offensive to overthrow the Turkish-backed Tripoli unified government, the situation has changed a lot. The formal truce in October last year initiated a UN-led process that led to the establishment of an interim government to unify the countrys divided institutions, carry out reconstruction efforts, and prepare for the December vote. Haftar has kept a low profile during the talks, but in recent weeks he has made a comeback after public meetings and promises to build three new towns and thousands of housing units for martyr families. El Haji said: His tone and language have changedhe gave up military speeches to support the promise of improving living conditions. Facing provocations Haftar established its own base of forces around Benghazi, the second largest city in Libya, which was the eastern birthplace of the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that overthrew and killed Gaddafi. He found allies among the powerful tribes in the area, and these alliances provided a large number of troops for the various military offensives of Haftar. But according to Libyan analyst Mahmoud Khalfallah (Mahmoud Khalfallah), today, Haftar lost the support base. Karafah said: He no longer enjoys the indisputable support of the tribe. They accuse him of getting their son into a war in which many people are useless. He knows that they will no longer trust him and will not give up their son to participate in another war. Libyan expert Jalel Harchaoui said that despite several meetings with tribal leaders to win their support, Haftar still faces serious resistance problems. Harchaoui added: His financial situation has dried up, and his hopes for the expansion of the western territories have been blocked. Kalfala said that even Haftars foreign allies have become vigilant and cast a heavy burden on the new interim government. He said: His foreign sponsorshave learned that the political process is the only possible solution to safeguard their interests in Libya. After a year-long siege, Haftars forces failed to capture the capital, Tripoli. [File: Amru Salahuddien/Anadolu] Haftar seeks political victory Haftar has played a controversial key role in Libya since Gaddafi was ousted in chaos. Prior to the movement to seize Tripoli, he launched a successful operation in May 2018 to expel the rebels in the eastern city of Dana, and then rebelled in the oil-rich desert in the south in 2019. El Haji said that the commander had served in the Gaddafi armed forces but fell from a grace period after Libya was defeated in Chad in 1987. His current goal is to achieve a political comeback. A European diplomat warned that if major players like Haftar are excluded from the political process, they could become destroyers and undermine efforts to stabilize the country. Verisk Maplecroft analyst Hamish Kinnear said Haftar may participate in the presidential election or support candidates. Kinnear said that if the presidential and legislative votes are postponed until after December, Haftar is likely to use this to accuse the transitional government of illegality and consider returning to armed conflict. However, he added that Haftar is no longer as strong as before. HAMMER and Tongues Auctioneers have appeared in court on allegations of theft of trust property worth over $1 million. Hammer and Tongues represented by the companys manager Mr Tendai Kuzviwanza appeared before Bulawayo magistrate Ms Marrygold Ndlovu on allegations of theft of property worth $1 015 000. The head of Sheriff Services at High Court of Zimbabwe is the complainant in the case. Prosecuting, Mr Dominic Moyo said the auction company sold the property and did not remit the money. Some time in 2014, the High Court of Zimbabwe attached the Cold Storage Commission property which includes trailers, motor vehicles and cattle hides to the auction company and some of the properties were sold and the auction company remitted the proceeds without problems. The property which was left, including two Nissan UD delivery trailers, Mazda B1600 were stored at the auction house, he said. In October, 2020, the properties mentioned were sold and the auction company did not remit the proceeds as per agreement which says that it must be remitted within three days. The High Court of Zimbabwe made phone calls but the money was not deposited into their account. They wrote a letter of claimant but there was no response until a report was made. On March 2, the auction company deposited the money in the High Court account. The value stolen is $1 015 000 and $994 700 was recovered, he said. The matter will next be heard on June 15. Chronicle Tianzhou 2 is the second of the 11 missions required to complete Chinas first permanent space station. In the second mission in a series of missions required to complete its first permanent space station, China has successfully launched an autonomous replenishment spacecraft and rendezvous with an orbital module. The China Manned Space Engineering Office said on Saturday that a Long March 7 Y3 rocket from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan Island, South Chinas South China Sea, launched the Tianzhou II, which means Skyship in Chinese. Tianzhou 2 is the second of the 11 missions required to complete Chinas first self-developed space station around 2022, and is after the launch of Tianzhou 2 Key Module Tianhe In late April. Tianhe (Tianhe) is the third and largest orbital station launched by Chinas increasingly ambitious space program. This three-module space station will compete with the other only space station in service, the International Space Station (ISS), which is supported by countries including the United States, Russia, and Japan. The United States prohibits China from participating in the International Space Station. Washington remains vigilant about the secrets surrounding Chinas plan and its military ties. Tianzhou-2 will automatically dock with Tianhe, and Tianhe will provide future astronauts and propellants to maintain its orbital altitude. The official media said that due to technical reasons, the launch of the rocket was postponed this month. As a test of the technology needed to support the construction of the space station, the first cargo spacecraft Tianzhou One was sent three times to refuel the Tiangong 2 space laboratory in 2017. In recent years, both the Tiangong-1 and the early space laboratory Tiangong-1 have been out of orbit. Next year, China will use its largest and most powerful space transportation vehicle, Long March 5B, to launch two other core modules-Wentian and Mengtian. The rocket was able to send 25 tons of payload into low Earth orbit, which was worrying at the beginning of May because it re-entered the atmosphere after sending Tianhe into orbit. Media reports warned that the core phase of the rocket will re-enter uncontrolled, so that people will remember the debris from the first Long March 5B flight in May 2020, which will be damaged when it lands on Ivory Coast. building. The remains of the rocket eventually fell harmlessly into the Indian Ocean, but China has been criticized for the lack of transparency in the timing and trajectory of debris entry. From June to 2022, the smaller Long March-7 and 2F rockets will also be used to launch four manned spacecraft and four cargo spacecraft, with their maximum low-Earth payloads of 14 tons and 8.8 tons, respectively. The Iranian ship was detained for suspected illegal transfer of oil in Indonesian waters. Tehran, Iran Iran says Indonesia has released the tanker it seized in late January after the court march. The Iranian National Tanker Company said in a statement that MT Horse and its crew were released on Friday after 125 days due to the results of the efforts of senior Iranian officials and the countrys Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The state-owned company said: Despite many hardships and being away from home, MT Horses professional and loyal personnel still insist on defending national interests and maintaining the flow of oil and its derivatives exports. It added that the ship has now resumed its mission in the area and will return to Iranian waters upon completion. Indonesia stated that in addition to being suspected of illegally transferring oil in Panamanian waters, the Coast Guard also seized the Iranian flag vessel and the Panamanian MT Freya vessel. The Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs downplayed the seizure at the time, saying it was a technical problem and such incidents were not uncommon in transportation. Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif traveled to Indonesia in April and met with senior officials including President Joko Widodo. But after the meeting, he and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not mention the ship, saying they talked about strengthening bilateral relations and opposing the unilateral US sanctions on Iran. The main target of the severe sanctions imposed by the United States is Irans oil exports. Iran uses a variety of methods to conceal its transfers, including disabling the tracking system on its tankers. Last year, MT Horse was used to deliver 2.1 million barrels of condensate to Venezuela, recognized by the United States. Federal lawmakers have passed legislation to establish a day for national truth and reconciliation. Members of Congress agreed to debate the C-5 bill on Friday to quickly pass the bill and send it to the Senate. The legislation will establish a new statutory holiday to commemorate the victims and survivors of indigenous schools. The move came the day after an aboriginal in British Columbia confirmed the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried in unmarked graves on the site of a former residents school in Kamloops. The bill follows a similar bill introduced by the NDP in 2017, which was introduced in the Senate two years later. The statutory holiday for workers supervised by the federal government is set for September 30. The Christian churches and the federal government established boarding schools in the 1880s and continued the boarding system for more than a century to seek to raise and assimilate indigenous children who suffered extensive physical and sexual abuse in these institutions. Thousands of people died in it. The last one closed in Punnichy, Saskatchewan in 1996. The Secretary of Heritage, Steven Guilbeault, who sponsored the bill, established a connection with the unmarked grave discovered by the Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nations. The burial without a name is far away from home. The family can never be cured. The story will never be told. The grief will never really begin. The tragedy of the boarding school must go beyond words. I thank my colleagues for their actions and adoption C-5 bill, he said in a Twitter post. Perry Bellegarde, head of state of the Aboriginal Congress, said earlier on Friday that today will be the perfect day for the passage of the C-5 bill, calling on federal leaders to do so, and thanking members of Congress thereafter . Green Party MP Jenica Atwin debate in tears during Fridays Third Reading debate as she portrayed the direct line between the legacy of colonialism and the myriad challenges facing indigenous peoples today. She said that the C-5 bill will help make people aware of the horrors of the past. Marc Miller, Minister of Indigenous Services, stated that this legislation marks a step towards correcting past mistakes related to the boarding school system, which he believes is contained in colonialism and promoted by systemic racism. National tragedy. Occupied East Jerusalem -The Jerusalem District Court this week postponed a ruling that was appealed by seven Palestinian families (including 44 people) who faced threats of being deported from their homes in the Batan al-Hawa area of ??Silwan. The Palestinians said, however, they believe that the Judaization of East Jerusalem and the deportation will continue-it is only a matter of time. The district court issued its verdict on Wednesday, and the court delayed Wednesdays trial. Earlier, the court ruled that these families were part of 19 families in Batan al-Hawa and were expelled from their residences to make way for Israeli settlers who claimed to have lived here before the State of Israel in 1948. Up. The court will postpone the ruling because the situation in East Palestine is very tense now because the Palestinian families are also Facing deportation at Sheikh Jarrah Fakhri Abu Diab (Fakhri Abu Diab), head of the Silvan Land and Real Estate Protection Committee and Jerusalem affairs researcher, told Al Jazeera. Since U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Brinken is currently in the area, it is not a good time to start making Palestinians homeless, Abu Diab said. However, the Israeli courts will eventually stand with the settlers in the future, and the deportation will continue. No longer afraid In recent weeks, clashes broke out in Shekih Jarrah. Palestinians protested the imminent deportation of several families from their homes and clashed with Israeli security forces, resulting in many injuries and arrests. Walid Husseini was the nephew of the late Faisal Husseini, he was the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) liaison representative for the peace negotiations at the Madrid Conference in 1991 this time telling the peninsula Television, this time the Palestinians will not give up when the deportation begins again. Husseini, a former journalist who participated in the first Palestinian uprising, said: The situation on the ground is similar to the situation during the first uprising, because more and more Palestinians are beginning to politicize and are no longer afraid. They have given up the powerless Palestinian Authority, just as they have given up the corrupt PLO Palestinian leader. They realize that the international community will not put pressure on Israel, so they must leave the matter in their own hands. Walid Husseini said the situation on the ground is similar to the first Palestinian uprising [Mel Frykberg/Al Jazeera] The Palestinians fear of Judaization in East Jerusalem seems to be supported by local facts, and Israels assertion that Jerusalem will remain unified and become the capital of Israel forever. Over the years, Israels expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem has been an ongoing process, and then with the increase in international criticism and pressure on Israel, there has been a period of calm and delay. The Israeli organization Peace Now stated that the planned deportation was part of a broader plan coordinated by the Israeli settler movement and the Israeli authorities, which deported about 100 families from Batan Hawa based on pre- 1948 ownership requirements. Many settlers who lived in the area before 1948 received financial compensation from the Israeli government. However, under Israeli law, Palestinians displaced from West Jerusalem and other areas within Israels internationally recognized Green Line are not eligible for compensation, nor do they have the legal right to reclaim their land. Stop all settlements The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) stated that the imminent deportation is part of Israeli legislation, which includes specific laws that promote the acquisition of property for the establishment of Israeli settlements. A follow-up investigation conducted by OCHA in 2020 revealed that at least 218 Palestinian families in East Jerusalem were deported, most of which were initiated by settler organizations, leaving 970 people (including 424 children) facing displacement Danger. Most of the new cases were found in the Batan al-Hawa area of ??Sylvan, which is still the most at risk of displacement due to ongoing eviction cases, Say OCHA. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a recent report that the Israeli authorities must immediately and completely stop all settlement activities in the area. [occupied Palestinian territories] Including East Jerusalem, the application of certain Israeli laws was reviewed. These laws are used as the basis for expelling Palestinians from their East Jerusalem property and stopping demolition and forced evictions. The Judaization of East Jerusalem transcends the expulsion that has already taken place and is planned to take place. According to the United Nations, although Palestinians make up 40% of the population, Palestinians are still struggling to obtain building permits and can only build houses within 15% of occupied East Jerusalem, while 30% of East Jerusalem is allocated for construction Illegal settlements in Israel. The Israeli human rights organization BTselem said that the Jerusalem municipality has consistently refused to develop detailed urban building plans for Palestinian neighborhoods (which is a prerequisite for obtaining building permits), thereby restricting Palestinian construction. Declaring parts of the East Jerusalem National Park further restricts the entry of Palestinians. So far, four national parks have been declared in the occupied part of the city. Revoke the right of abode Bessalem said that Israels policy in East Jerusalem is designed to force the Palestinians to leave, thereby shaping a geographical and demographic reality that will thwart any future attempts to challenge Israeli sovereignty there. The organization stated: Due to this policy or other reasons, Palestinians who leave East Jerusalem are at risk of losing their permanent residency rights and subsequent social benefits, the organization said. Since 1967, under such circumstances, Israel has revoked the permanent residency of approximately 14,500 Palestinians from East Jerusalem. OCHA said that Israeli measures increasingly cut off East Jerusalem, which was once the focal point of political, commercial, religious and cultural life in other parts of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, which is the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory. The focus of political, commercial, religious and cultural life. Muhammad is a teacher from Sylvan, and he does not wish to disclose his full name. He told Al Jazeera that because of mass arrests, indiscriminate night attacks and checkpoints throughout the city, Israelis are bringing an extremely difficult life for Palestinians in Occupied East Jerusalem. He said: I am scared for my family, and my children, especially my son, are not allowed to go too far, so I insist on driving everywhere. The rest of the time I will make sure that they stay in the house. To be honest, I am very afraid of the future of my child. Manila has filed a diplomatic protest against the continuous presence of Chinese ships near Thitu Island. The Philippines protested Chinas continued illegal presence and activities near its islands in the South China Sea. in a statement The Philippine Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on Saturday that it has conducted diplomatic protests against the continuous deployment of Chinese maritime assets and fishing boats, long-term stays and illegal activities, located near Tutu or Pagasa Island. It asked Beijing to withdraw ships from the area, and said: Pagasa Island is an integral part of the Philippines and has sovereignty and jurisdiction over the Philippines. Beijing did not immediately comment. The latest petition is at least the 84th diplomatic protest by the Philippines against China since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in 2016. it is at Escalation of tensions There are hundreds of Chinese ships in the 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Philippines. Manila said it believed that these ships were the work of militias, while Beijing said they were fishing boats that escaped bad weather. Thitu or Pag-asa is located about 451 kilometers (280 miles) from the coast of the Philippines. The island is the largest of the eight controlled reefs, shoals and islands in the Spratly Islands. China has established a mini city with runways, hangars and surface-to-air missiles just 25 kilometers (15 miles) away from Subi Reef. In 2016, an international court invalidated Chinas claims for expansion in the South China Sea, but Beijing ignored the decision. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have competitive ownership of the various islands and regions in the region. Minneapolis, Minnesota, U.S. Last month, the world watched the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former police officer in Minneapolis, is convicted murder George FloydMinnesota police officer Kim Potter is a black man in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, just a few miles from the courthouse Daunte Wright, Also black. Porter claimed that in the 26 years of using force, she mistakenly thought that Taser had come with a gun and that she was facing a second-class degree. Manslaughter. As the events after Wrights death developed, Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott began work. After listening to the meeting, he started a week-long community involvement activity, and finally proposed a resolution that will completely reform the way the city handles police affairs. Elliott is a Liberian American who immigrated to the United States when he was 11 years old. The scene introduced the resolution on May 8. Less than a month after Wright was shot and killed. Next Saturday, it was passed by the city council with a 4-1 vote. Brooklyn Center Mayor Mike Elliott speaks to the media at a press conference held at the Daunte Wright vigil in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, April 20, 2021. [Nicholas Pfosi/Reuters] The rapid adoption of police reforms in the suburbs of Minneapolis is in stark contrast with the situation a few miles to the south, where Minneapolis has been conducting public relations work to influence public opinion to support the police department and its budget. Contribute to the formation of Jacob Mayor Freys public order speech both in. Less than two weeks after George Floyd was murdered, most members of the Minneapolis City Council demanded a refund for the citys police department. Since then, the parliament has changed their position from reducing police funding to transferring departmental supervision from the mayor to the parliament. Mayor Frey criticized the proposals of the city council and other entities aimed at reforming policing. The surge in crime includes homicides, shooting victims and carjackings, with multiple dead or injured children on the north side of the city, and even shooting near the memorial that commemorates Freuds first anniversary on Tuesday. In response, Frey announced his offices plan for departmental reforms from within in a speech in upstate New York City last week. But some local activists are skeptical. I dont think the Minneapolis City Council really wants [police reform]. Frankly speaking, what they want is law and order, so this is a seizure of power. Gross said: On the other hand, the actions of the Mayor of Brooklyn Center and the City Council are indeed an example to be followed by other communities and a good example. Gross called it impressive. She said: In the end, they realized that public safety would not be ups and downs at the police station. Transfer duties from the police to other places Daunte Wright and Kobe Dimock-Heisler Security and Violence Prevention Resolution-named after Wright and another 21-year-old man who was shot and killed by Brooklyn Center police in 2019-established several new departments in the city to limit the intervention of armed law enforcement Police officers in situations where they are not needed. The resolution reads: In this case, relying on our armed law enforcement personnel as first responders has led to escalation, causing harm, and bringing tragic and possibly avoided loss of life to our residents, including Daunte Wright And the life of Kobe Drimock-Heisler, the resolution reads. Multiple methods will improve overall public safety, better address the root causes of many problems, promote racial justice, better protect the disadvantaged in our communities, and allocate public resources more effectively. The comprehensive resolution calls for the establishment of an unarmed community response department to address medical, mental health, or other social or behavioral incidents. Traffic violations involving immobile vehicles will also be resolved by a new unarmed civilian group traffic enforcement agency. These changes also include restricting police activities, requiring the police to exhaust other options before using lethal force, and prohibiting the use of lethal force in some cases. At the same time, with the establishment of the new department, the resolution also implemented a city-wide quotation and subpoena policy, requiring officials to publish only quotations, and prohibiting the arrest or search of people and vehicles under most non-feeling circumstances. Elected in 2018, Elliott was the citys first black mayor, combining the demands of Wrights mother and Dimock-Heislers parents to credit the citys police reforms To its residents. He told Al Jazeera: We heard our communities say very loudly and clearly that they want more mental health resources, and they want unarmed traffic enforcement. We have the ability to start making these changes immediately, so This is why we move forward and develop solutions. For Elliott, these changes have been a long time. He said: I have always known that we need to carry out public safety reforms to ensure the safety of all our community members. I believe that our communities are elected leaders in a diverse manner, and they have a wealth of experience in the sense of being affected by law enforcement, Elliott explained. He called the resolution a common-sense approach to public safety that everyone can fall behind. Jim Mortenson, executive director of the Labor Enforcement Bureau of the Minnesota Police Union, said the decision was hasty. Mortensen told the local news media CCX Media: The mayor seems to have gone out according to his own wishes and drafted this resolution, but he did not actually have a lot of discussions with the people who are engaged in this work. Elliott said that since Floyd was murdered last year, he has been working hard to pass some of the police reform elements proposed by this resolution, but Wrights death made the problem even more serious. It was near and made it past the finish line of the City Council. Elliott said of the protests that took place days after Wrights death: The key difference is that the community mobilizes and demands change. Elliott said: Statistically, a police officer is killed every 18 months in the Brooklyn Center. When he took office, he asked the police department to provide information. The time between Kobes killing and Dauntes killing was 19 months and a week. Of course we want to get these systems up and running so that we can prevent any deaths in the future. The White House also called for a reliable international investigation on the forced landing of the Ryanair plane in Minsk. U.S. announces punitive measures against Belarus as Russia provide President Alexander Lukashenko supported the forced transfer of European aircraft and the arrest of dissidents in the confrontation with the West. in a statement On Friday, the White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called the May 23 incident a direct insult to international norms and said that Washington, in cooperation with the European Union, is drafting proposals for key members of the Lukashenko government. A list of targeted sanctions. She also announced the suspension of the 2019 agreement, which allows U.S. and Belarusian airlines to use each others airspace, and called for a reliable international investigation of the forced landing of Ryanairs aircraft. The Belarusian authorities disrupted a fighter plane last week and flagged it as a false bomb warning, forcing the plane to land, and then arrested the journalist Roman Protasevich who was boarding. The 26-year-old boy is in custody and is accused of planning a riot. This is related to the historic protest against Lukashenko that broke out in August last year after the controversial election. Several people died during the unrest, thousands were arrested, and hundreds were reportedly tortured in prison. Protasevich works on the Nexta Live channel in Poland, which broadcasts protests. He could be sentenced to 15 years in prison. Many European countries have imposed flight bans on Belarusian airspace, and EU officials have stated that proposals for key sectors of the Belarusian economy, including its petroleum products and potash sectors, are under discussion. The White House also issued a Belarusian warning of no travel to American citizens and warned American airliners to be extremely cautious when considering flying over Belarusian airspace. Emotional Outburst At the same time, economic sanctions on nine Belarusian state-owned companies came into effect on June 3. The sanctions were implemented by Washington after the suppression of anti-democracy protests in April. Psaki said in the statement that further US actions against Belarus may also target those who support corruption, abuse of human rights, and attack democracy. Before the announcement by the United States, a completely different scene took place in the Black Sea resort of Sochi. Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over Lukashenkos talks. Putin said he was very happy to meet the Belarusian leader and agreed that the Western response was an emotional explosion. The Russian President said: Once they forced the Bolivian Presidents plane to land, took him from the plane, said nothing, remained silent, he was referring to an incident in 2013, when Evo Morales The plane was once forced to land in Austria when the United States tried Intercept the whistleblower Edward Snowden. At the same time, Lukashenko complained that Western countries were trying to cause turmoil in his country. He said: Efforts are being made to shake the ship to the level of last August. The Belarusian leader who arrived with a briefcase told Putin that he would show him some confidential documents about the Ryanair incident, which would help him understand the actual situation. There is always someone who will cause us trouble. You will know, and I will inform you. Lukashenko told Putin. I brought some documents so you can understand what happened. THE Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) has said it operates in a transparent and accountable manner guided by the law and is calling on both local and foreign Press to respect laws of the country while carrying out their duties. The clarity came after a local journalist Jeffery Moyo was fingered in allegedly facilitating to fraudulently get accreditation for two foreign journalists. The two journalists have since been deported. On May 10 2021, the Zimbabwe Media Commission (ZMC) learnt of the deportation from Zimbabwe of a man and a woman claiming to be New York Times reporters and carrying forged accreditation cards and receipts which they reportedly said had been obtained on their behalf by Mr Jeffrey Moyo, at the time a properly accredited local reporter for the same New York Times. The arrest and deportation of the two individuals arose from the fact that they lacked papers which in terms of the law they were supposed to obtain as a prerequisite for obtaining temporary local accreditation as journalists, ZMC said in a statement. Investigations by the media accrediting body revealed that the names of the two journalists did not appear in the ZMC register. The accreditation card numbers and receipts representing proof of payment for accreditation were forged. The two individuals had not visited the ZMC offices. The two individuals had written to the relevant authorities to seek the prior clearance papers required before one can work locally as a journalist on temporary assignment. The relevant authorities had denied the two individuals the prior clearance, read the statement. The two journalists that had initially been denied accreditation later presented forged accreditation cards. It was also alleged that after recognising the initial irregularity, Mr Jeffrey Moyo privately approached a ZMC staffer who also allegedly agreed to collude with Mr Moyo and his now deported guests. It was alleged therefore that the two individuals claiming to be New York Times reporters, their host and colleague Mr Jeffrey Moyo, and the ZMC staffer (now on forced leave) knew that they were breaking the law, ZMC said. The organisation said its day-to-day operations were guided by provisions of the law. The Commission does its work in a transparent and accountable manner. The fact that the fraudulent accreditation cards were quickly identified by immigration officers and confirmed as fraudulent by the ZMC is testimony of the professional and secure manner in which the ZMC conducts the accreditation, read the statement. Moyo is in police custody. Sunday News A Shawnee man is in the hospital following a boating accident that killed two of his children and their mother. JTBC continues to entice fans with a new teaser featuring Han So Hee and Song Kang's budding relationship in Kdrama "Nevertheless." In the new video, the upcoming romance drama displayed a fateful encounter between Yoo Na Bi and Park Jae Uhn. Moreover, the breathtaking scene also captivates the viewer's heart with stunning visuals of the "Nevertheless" main cast. The video starts with the 27-year-old actor teaching Han So Hee how to play darts. Interestingly, the teaser also showed an intriguing butterfly tattoo, which was also featured in previous teasers. Meanwhile, the comment section was filled with fans who expressed their excitement for the forthcoming drama. Netizens raved about the on-screen chemistry with the "Navillera" star and the up-and-coming actress and even lauded the actors by calling them the "visual couple of the year." "Nevertheless" Cast and Release: Slated to debut on June 19, the upcoming romance drama is directed by Kim Ga Ram, whose famous works include the 2018 drama "Devilish Joy" and "Vampire Detective" alongside screenwriter Jung Won. "Nevertheless " follows the story of Yoo Na Bi, played by Han So Hee, a young college student who doubts love after she encounters a bitter experience with her first relationship. Her failed relationship led her to hesitate in love and even in destiny. This changed when she met the handsome Park Jae Un, portrayed by Song Kang. He was described as an outgoing and friendly individual who is a master of "push-and-pull" relationships and thinks that dating is just a waste of time. Despite his cheerful persona, Park Jae Un built a wall around him to draw a firm line between himself and others. In addition, he is against the idea of being caught up in romantic relationships not until he crossed paths with Yoo Na Bi. Aside from the lead stars, "Nevertheless" cast also includes Chae Jong Hyeop, Yang Hye Ji, Han Eu Ddeum, Kim Min Gwi, and more. Song Kang and Han So Hee's Claim to Fame Dramas Kdrama "Nevertheless" will be Song Kang and Han So Hee's first project together. The 26-year-old actress' breakthrough performance is her impressive portrayal of Yeo Da Kyung who was in a secret relationship with a married man named Lee Tae Oh (Park Hae Joon) and the wife of doctor Ji Sun Woo (Kim Hee Ae.) Aside from "Nevertheless," she is also set to star in an upcoming action crime drama, "My Name" alongside Ahn Bo Hyun and Park Hee Soon. As for Song Kang, his first lead role was in the 2015 drama "Hello Spring," followed by the popular rom-com "Love Alarm," which is considered his breakthrough role. Apart from the drama, he also starred in another hit Netflix series, "Sweet Home," and recently wrapped up his tear-jerking drama "Navillera" with veteran actor Park In Hwan. On the other hand, Song Kang's fans will get to see the actor in another JTBC drama titled "Cruel Story of Office Romance" and will work opposite Hallyu star Park Min Young. KDramastars owns this article. Written by Geca Wills "Taxi Driver," starring Lee Je Hoon and Esom, soars as the most-watched evening Friday drama ahead of its much-awaited season finale. According to Nielsen Korea, the SBS series sustains its reign as the top rating weekend drama with an average nationwide rating of 13.2 percent and 14.4 percent in metropolitan areas. With the continued rise in viewership rating, the hit Kdrama "Taxi Driver" is bound to receive its last mission. "Taxi Driver" Episode 15: The End of Rainbow Taxi's Secret Service After a life-threatening face-off between Baek Sung Mi (Cha Ji Yeon) and his men, the Rainbow Taxi boss Jang Sung Chul (Kim Eui Sung) has decided to end their revenge mission. He realized that "revenge will only breed revenge" and explained to the group that "it's about time to get things straight." In addition, Mr. Jang mentioned that he would take full accountability for the situation; however, the group was eager to take responsibility for their own actions. On the other hand, Park Jin Eon (Bae Yoo Ram), who was in critical condition after being involved in a car accident, has regained consciousness and is now in a stable state. READ MORE: 'Taxi Driver' Episode 14 Highlights Lee Je Hoon's Bloody Encounter with Baek Sung Mi + Hailed as Most-Watched Saturday Night Drama A Confession of a Psychopath Serial Killer "Taxi Driver" episode 15 also showed unexpected twists and turns behind Mr. Jang and Do Ki's revenge. Shocking news surprised the Seoul Northern District Prosecutors' Office after Oh Chul Young (Yang Dong Tak) confessed his previous crimes. In a diary, he revealed that he was the one behind the murder of a teenage girl and might be the real culprit behind Mr. Jang's parents as well as Kim Do Ki's mother. Unfortunately, Kim Cheol Jin (Jeon Seok Chan) served his 20 years in prison after being falsely framed by Oh Cheol Young. Rainbow Taxi's Last Request "Taxi Driver" episode 15 also featured the last revenge request from Kim Cheol Jin. It came after Kim Do Ki received a call from the ex-convict pleading to help him avenge the serial killer. Initially, Mr. Jang refused to take the mission but was persuaded by Do Ki; however, the Rainbow Taxi CEO kept the information that Oh Cheol Young might be his mother's killer. In the deluxe taxi, Kim Cheol Jin recalled how he ended up being in prison. He tells Kim Do Ki that he was wrongly accused and wants to get back at the killer who framed him. However, Do Ki warned him that taking revenge would make him a criminal again since the real culprit is in prison. The ex-convict still wanted to continue with the plan, adding that he wanted to lose everything precious to Oh Cheol Young, just like what happened to him. While speaking to Mr. Jang, Kim Do Ki mentioned that he'd make Oh Cheol Young apologize to Kim Cheol Jin and his victims. Kim Do Ki Meets his Mother's Killer Together with Prosecutor Kang Ha Na (Esom), Kim Do Ki meets the psychopath serial killer. At this moment, he already knew that he was the one who killed her mother and not Nam Gyu-Gyu (Kim Kang-Il), who committed suicide. At the confession room, Kim Do Ki revealed that he has figured out his killing method; however, the serial killer tried to break Do Ki's emotion by saying his mother's last words to him. Kim Do Ki seems to be traumatized and loses consciousness in front of Kang Ha Na and Oh Cheol Young. "Taxi Driver" episode 15 also showed the flashback of how Kim Do Ki's mother was brutally murdered. IN CASE YOU MISSED: 'Taxi Driver' Behind-the-Scenes: Lee Je Hoon Hilariously Mocks Kim Eui Sung on Set KDramastars owns this article. Written by Geca Wills GRANTS PASS, Ore.-- Grants Pass Department of Public Safety said one of their police officers who was assaulted at the Boatnik festival on Friday, May 28, 2021 was released from the hospital the same day and is now recovering at home. On Friday, officers were called upon to investigate two juveniles under the influence of alcohol. When officers attempted to detain the juveniles, they immediately resisted. While one officer was struggling with a juvenile on the ground, 53-year-old Nathaniel Wytcherley approached the distracted officer. Police said at that moment Wytcherley intentionally kicked the police officer in the face, causing an immediate loss of consciousness. Nearby officers fought with Wytcherley and took him into custody. The injured officer did regain consciousness prior to being transported by American Medical Response to Three Rivers Community Hospital. The officer went through tests to determine the full extent of her injuries. It was learned that Wytcherley is on post-prison supervision out of Roseburg for a previous assault on a police officer. Wytcherley was lodged at the Josephine County Jail on the listed charges: Assault 2, assault on a police officer, resisting arrest, and probation violation. "We are so thankful for the continued community support and for keeping our officer in your thoughts and prayers!" Grants Pass Dept. of Public Safety said. Samara Haverko, 17, was a passenger in a Honda Civic that crashed early Wednesday in Kelowna near the corner of Gordon Drive and Cook Road. A fundraising appeal has been launched for her family. Stressing the importance of offering nutritious meals to children during the summer months, the Kenosha Unified School District has announced plans for its Summer Food Service Program. The program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and is administered by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, provides nutritious meals to children during the summer, when free and reduced-price school meals are typically unavailable. Free meals will be made available to children 18 years of age and under. Persons over 18 years of age who are determined by a state or local public educational agency to be mentally or physically disabled and who also participate in a public or private non-profit school program during the regular school year may receive free meals as well. The following locations will be serving the free meals from June 21 through July 29 this summer: Bullen Middle School, breakfast 8 to 8:35 a.m. Brass Elementary, breakfast 7:15 to 7:45 a.m., and lunch 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. EBSOLA Elementary, breakfast 7:15 to 7:45 a.m., and lunch 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. Jefferson Elementary, breakfast 7:15 to 7:45 a.m., and lunch 11:30 a.m. to 12:15 p.m. SOMERS Gabrielle Richardson, a University of Wisconsin-Parkside pre-med undergraduate majoring in Spanish and criminal justice, has won of the Wisconsin Big Idea Tournament. The tournament was sponsored by UW System and the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC) and part of the 2021 WiSys SPARK Symposium Virtual Series, which honors faculty, staff and student research, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the UW System. Richardson, the first Parkside winner of the tournament, competed against fellow university students from across the state. vLike her fellow competitors, she was tasked with developing and pitching an innovative idea to a panel of judges led by WEDC Secretary and CEO Missy Hughes, who was also the featured guest speaker at the event. Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundations Greg Keenan and the Center for Technology Commercializations Idella Yamben also served as judges. Richardson developed the idea for the app LinguaMD while volunteering at a free health care clinic where many of the patients could not speak, read, or write in English, causing challenges to their treatment. Dozens of children, most with scouting groups, others with family, volunteered Saturday morning to place American flags at the graves at the Southern Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Cemetery in the Town of Dover in preparation for Memorial Day. Were here for Grandpa Jack, said Lonnie Reid, as he helped his grandsons Reece, 10, and Rollin, 8, of Burlington, as they placed flags along rows of headstones. Reid grew emotional as he spoke of his father, Jack Ratliff, a Vietnam veteran who is interred at the cemetery. Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs Secretary Mary Kolar greeted the volunteers at the cemetery. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} I so appreciate your being here, your taking this time to place these flags that honor veterans who have served our country, and particularly those who have lost their lives defending our freedom, Kolar told the group before they began their work. Volunteers place the flags every year, according to a spokesman at the cemetery, with scouting groups, civic and veterans groups generally leading the way. Kolar said similar efforts are underway a the two other veterans cemeteries in the state. MEMBERS of the Political Actors Dialogue (POLAD) platform yesterday met in Nyanga to unpack the draft Electoral Amendment Bill submitted to Parliament by civic society groups. They also interrogated the recently gazetted Independent Mechanism Complaints Process Bill. All 18 political parties were represented at the meeting that was attended by technical partners from the Zimbabwe Electoral Support Network (Zesn). Zanu PF representative Cde Paul Mangwana said POLAD members were agreeable to most of the proposals. We are looking at the whole election management system, interrogating the proposal from Zesn, said Cde Mangwana. There are areas where we are agreeing; some areas need further consultations within our political parties and there are also areas where we do not agree. We are looking at areas where we can have consensus and then make a joint proposal to the Electoral Act. He said there was a need to improve transparency of the electoral process. When vote counting is taking place political party agents must be there so that they can all agree on the outcome. But there are areas which we think they have gone a bit too far. For example, Government should play a role when it comes to the invitation of foreign election observers. We have disagreed with the proposal in which they say ZEC should approve the foreign observers who come into the country. We said no, this is a security matter and the State must play a key role in admitting or denying them entry into the country, said Cde Mangwana. He said most of the proposals by the civil society were progressive. National Constitutional Assembly (NCA) president Professor Lovemore Madhuku said deliberations on electoral and political reforms were meant to ensure an improved environment by 2023. We are going through the whole Electoral Act and all other laws that are related to elections, proposing the reforms that we would want to see. For example, we have already agreed that blind voters can use braille and must no longer be called assisted voters. We should have braille ballots that are accessible by blind voters. Peoples Rainbow Coalition (PRC) president Lucia Matibenga said the proposed electoral and political reforms were meant to ensure that the 2023 elections outcome is undisputed. A disputed election has negative effects on the country. When noise is coming from inside our country, it gives a picture out there of a country that is in turmoil, a country in dispute with itself. Sunday Mail 12 Shares Share In evaluating delayed or missed health care that has occurred during the pandemic, it is tempting to speak of COVID care vs. non-COVID care. However, the pandemic has disrupted health care so thoroughly that in some sense, COVID-19 has affected all of health care. The effect on care has been stunning in magnitude. By mid-2020, more than 40 percent of U.S. adults had delayed medical care or avoided it entirely, including care for urgent and emergent complaints. Similarly, nearly a third of American children experienced missed or delayed care in 2020. The missed care encompassed everything from routine preventive screenings to cancer treatments to emergency department assessments for symptoms of heart attack or stroke. While many of these missed appointments will yield no adverse outcomes, modeling predicts more than 10,000 excess deaths over the next decade from breast and colorectal cancers alone, directly attributable to care delayed or missed during the pandemic. Estimates of the actual vs. expected total mortality rates suggest many hundreds of thousands of excess deaths beyond the documented toll of COVID-19 alone. As an oncologist, I am particularly alarmed over the missed opportunities for cancer detection and care. Preventive cancer screenings in the U.S. dropped 86 percent for colon cancer and 94 percent for breast and cervical cancer following the declaration of the COVID-19 national emergency. When the American Association for Cancer Research polled patientsboth women never diagnosed with cancer and women diagnosed with breast cancerthey found that around 30 percent of each group reported delays in care, whether of screenings or active treatment. And indeed, oncologists are now reporting diagnosing patients at more advanced stages of their disease than would have been expected pre-pandemic. As the nations largest physician-owned medical malpractice insurer, The Doctors Company has supported doctors through many situations, such as natural disasters and military deployments, where external events have disrupted care. Whenever care is deferred, delayed, or disrupted, gaps in care present risks to both patient safety and physician liability. We are committed to partnering with physicians and practices, and we are leveraging insights gained through our national scope and long history to help members deal with emerging risks at the local practice level. Risks of litigation Health care availability has returned to pre-pandemic levels, but mitigating risks from the pandemics delayed care would require additional catchup appointments that we arent seeing. Turning the lens to clinical professional liability, during the first quarter of 2021, The Doctors Company received about the same number of new claims as we did in the first quarter of 2020. We know that often patients file claims based on poor outcomes, rather than poor care, so now the unanswered question is: Will there be a surge in claims related to COVID-19? For delayed or missed COVID-19 diagnosis; for claims alleging delayed immunization, delayed testing, undetected medical contraindications to the vaccines, lack of proper infection control procedures, or improper rationing of resources and vaccines? Finally, what about potential allegations of delayed diagnosis of new, unrelated conditions or delayed treatment of existing conditions because of disruptions in health care caused by COVID-19? We ask these questions just as many of the medical liability protections passed by 30-plus states during the pandemic are expiring. New York has already allowed its protections to expire. Further, it is possible that many plaintiffs attorneys are waiting to file patients claims in hopes that medicines well-earned halothe positive light shining on the medical profession because of heroic actions during the pandemicwill fade. Mitigating risks from deferred, delayed, and disrupted care More Americans have died of COVID-19 than were killed in all of World War II. Comparing events by their staggering death tolls is problematicbut in this case, arguably also instructive. A pandemic, like a war, doesnt end when it ends, as disastrous spillover effects ripple through individual lives and society as a whole. We have a chance now to impede those spillover effects through strategic efforts to mitigate risks from deferred, delayed, or disrupted care. Situations most likely to lead to litigation are those in which patients themselves are acutely aware of delays. In such cases, liability risks exist even if care was available, but the patient felt too worried about COVID-19 to be seen by a health care provider. Therefore, health care providers should identify and attempt to contact such patients. Examples include patients who communicated with the practice about things like breast lumps, rectal bleeding, or chest pain, who would be acutely aware of time passing while not seeing their physician. We have observed that delays in screenings and intervention for patients with certain common chronic conditions can contribute to claims. Now, clinicians have the opportunity to identify patients whose conditions merit priority contact, such as those with cardiac conditions, those on blood pressure medication, or those with diabetes, and request they come in for delayed screenings or checkups. Explicitly recommending that those without medical contraindications get vaccinated not only helps slow the spread of COVID-19, but may also stop a patient from claiming that they remained unvaccinated for lack of counsel from their physician. Whether or not a practice or institution is distributing vaccines, it should communicate to patients that COVID-19 vaccines are extremely safe, remarkably effective, and vital to ending the pandemic. Invite patients who have questions about vaccines to communicate their concerns. Since risks exist even if patients did not present for care, documenting the practices efforts to reach patients who have delayed care will reduce litigation risks. If a patient is considering filing a claim, a review of the patients medical record will be among a plaintiffs attorneys first steps. Therefore, documenting patient communications is a defense against suits before they are filed. Its not yet clear whether there will be a surge in claims related to COVID-19, but clinicians will be well served by remaining mindful of the new liability risks created by deferred, delayed, or disrupted care. Richard E. Anderson is chairman and chief executive officer, The Doctors Company and leader, TDC Group of companies. Image credit: Shutterstock.com Offer a personal message of sympathy... By sharing a fond memory or writing a kind tribute, you will be providing a comforting keepsake to those in mourning. If you have an existing account with this site, you may log in with that below. Otherwise, you can create an account by clicking on the Log in button below, and then register to create your account. It was proof that the concert, as it has existed since the dawn of time, with people playing very loud music and everybody dancing together, we cant do without. This is a very important thing for balance, he said. Former Government Chief Whip, Ruth Nankabirwa has asked the former Speaker of Parliament Rebecca Kadaga to apologise to the National Resistance Movement (NRM) Central Executive Committee (CEC) for her indiscipline and going against the party policies. The summon comes after Kadaga decided to contest against her former deputy, Jacob Oulanyah, who had been endorsed by CEC to run as the speaker of parliament on the party ticket. It is not yet over. The former speaker must apologise to CEC where she is a member for her indiscipline and for contesting for the seat as an independent candidate, Nankabirwa said. Nankabirwa adds that Kadaga should be grateful to NRM because during the NRM elections for the Eastern region national vice-chairman seat, Kadaga lost to Capt Mike Mukula but to save face, they created a slot for the female national vice chairman of NRM. Nankabirwa said Kadaga should also apologise to the party chairman President Yoweri Museveni. Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account to continue reading. To subscribe, click here. Already a subscriber? Click here. A Kilkenny TD has called on the government to ensure the Short-Time Work Support (STWS) payment is extended for workers in industries still unable to reopen fully due to ongoing public health restrictions. Deputy Kathleen Funchion has urged the government not to abandon workers on pandemic income supports and to ensure that workers get the supports they should be entitled to, this particularly faces many in Carlow and Kilkenny. Short-Time Work Support is a form of Jobseekers Benefit specifically for workers who have had their working week reduced on a temporary basis. Many employees who have been placed on reduced hours due to the impact of Covid-19 have been placed on this benefit including many in the aviation industry and retail sector. However, employees can only receive the support for a maximum of 234 days and as a result, many of these workers are now seeing their eligibility for this payment coming to an end despite still unable to return to full time work due to ongoing restrictions. Sinn Fein have been very clear throughout the pandemic that workers in industries affected by public health restrictions must be treated fairly and receive the supports they are entitled to. I am very concerned that the government is now abandoning workers on the Short-Time Work Support payment, which will mean thousands of workers face their supports being drastically reduced despite them not being able to return to work as pandemic restrictions continue. Many workers receiving the STWS are now in a situation where their eligibility is coming to an end because they have reached the maximum days allowed for this benefit. Despite this, many are unable to return to full time work as their sectors remain shut or severely restricted under public health guidance. For example, many in the aviation sector have been placed on this payment and still have not received a date from the government for when their industry will fully reopen. This means that workers running out of time on the STWS will be left with means-tested Jobseekers Allowance as their only option. Some may not even qualify due to household income, others may qualify on reduced rates. In April, over 600 people exited the Short-Time Work Support payment, with just 60 of those moving to Jobseekers Allowance. In the same month, 4,180 people were still receiving the payment. This does not just affect a small number of people and we can see this issue is only going to grow unless action is taken now. Just last week when my colleague Sinn Fein spokesperson on Social Protection Claire Kerrane TD raised this issue with Minister Humphreys, the Minister said she has no plans to extend the payment or provide an alternative solution for workers in this position. I am extremely disappointed that the governments response to this appears to be to bury its head in the sand. Workers must not be abandoned by this government. Workers cannot be expected to pay the financial cost of this governments inaction. I am calling on Minister Humphreys to extend the time allowed on the Short-Time Work Support and Jobseekers Benefit to support workers on reduced hours through no fault of their own here in Carlow Kilkenny and across the state. Workers are already under huge financial pressure after an extremely difficult year. The government must do right by workers and ensure they get the supports they deserve. A drop like this will cause considerable financial pressure for thousands of workers and families who are already struggling to pay their bills. It cannot be allowed to happen. Sinn Fein will continue to stand up for workers and ensure those on income supports in industries affected by the pandemic get the fair treatment they deserve. ELBA, Minn - It's the unofficial start of Summer this Memorial Day Weekend. With the kids out of school how about taking a day trip to Elba, just two miles north of Whitewater State Park, you can climb the Elba Fire Tower. From the base of the parking lot you'll climb well over 500-some steps to the base of the 110-ft fire tower, before continuing your ascent. If you're curious, like I was, you might be wondering why a fire tower was built in a Southeastern Minnesota community. Whitewater State Park Naturalist Sara Holger, filled me in on the tower's history, which was originally constructed in the 1930's. "Landowners would go out and burn the hillside to clear the forest and then get the grass to grow and then they could graze livestock on the hillsides," said Holger. Holger said the fires led to erosion and what she described as tons of soil washing off the hillside. "So, the fire tower was built to kind of to detect those fires right away, put them out and discourage people from setting the hillsides on fire," explained Holger. Throughout the years the tower turned into an attraction, growing in popularity. "People would hike and go up and explore it but come early 1980's it was falling apart. So, they actually pulled the steps off the bottom to keep people from going up there so there wouldn't be any accidents," said Holger. Grant money, along with the Elba Booster club, eventually helped to restore the tower in the 1990's, along with the steps leading to the top of the bluff. To this day the Elba Booster Club still raises money to preserve the steps. "The club continues to raise money to help with the tower, so you can purchase steps and then they'll engrave the loved ones' names or somebody that passed away," explained Holger. If you're interested in learning more about the tower Holger suggests stopping into the Whitewater State Park office, where you'll also be able to use the facilities before heading to the fire tower to begin your climb. ROCHESTER, Minn. - The price of metered parking is going up in the Med City next week. The City of Rochester will begin increasing hourly rates for metered parking Tuesday, implementing a plan passed by the city council in 2019 delayed by the pandemic. The city says reprogramming all of its 1,203 parking meters will take four weeks. Here's a rundown of the changes: -30-minute meters: increase from $1.40 to $1.50 per hour -90-minute maters: $1.20 to $2 per hour -2-hour meters: $1.40 to $2.50 per hour -3-hour meter: $1.20 to $1.50 per hour -10-hour meters: $0.40 to $0.50 per hour Rochester residents expressed mixed reactions to the change when asked by KIMT. One downtown resident said because parking is not included in his lease, the increase is additionally frustrating. "Monthly rates, even if you live downtown, are anywhere from $100 to $200, on top of your $1,000 monthly rent payment," said Jason Everett. "There really is no good parking downtown at all. Even on the weekends, it's hard to get a parking spot during the day. So raising the rates seems like the opposite of what they should do, and it seems like they should lower the rates if anything," The city is also introducing new ways to feed your meter remotely. Drivers can pay for parking by texting PARK to 77223 or by scanning a QR code. You can also use the city's mobile payment app, ParkMobile. ROCHESTER, Minn. - The return of fairs and festivals this summer could provide a spark to Minnesota's economic comeback from coronavirus. Events nationwide are seeing attendance surge as pandemic restrictions ease. Here in Olmsted County, organizers are expecting turnout to top years past. "My best guess for the fair is that we'll probably see about 225,000 in attendance," said Brandon Helgeson, Director of the Olmsted County Fair. "We were just at 200,000, with a heavy rain day, in 2019." Helgeson tells KIMT the fair typically creates an important boost for our local economy, and an influx of fairgoers would add momentum for Med City workers and businesses. "We make a significant financial impact, because what people don't realize is now there's hotel rooms being booked. Those food vendors, most of them being local, they're bringing in additional revenue, they're employing additional people. It's all of those people that are involved, and when you start talking about a fair that has 200,000-plus people in attendance, there's a lot of people that we're putting to work by putting on a fair." Jason Giandalia of Minnesnowii Shaved Ice is one of those event industry entrepreneurs eager to get back to the bustle of business as usual. "Now that the fairs are coming back, it's very exciting," Giandalia said, "Not only for me, but all the other vendors, and the community in general." Giandalia describes 2020 as a rollercoaster year, demanding creativity to stay afloat amid a wave of coronavirus cancellations. "Once corona started taking off and going crazy, then everything started cancelling, a lot of us vendors were like, 'what are we going to do?' So it was one of those moments where you have to pivot and adapt and try new things." Now, Minnesnowii is ready to roll back to Rochester for this year's Olmsted County Fair. Giandalia says sales at recent events have been soaring, and trends appear to be moving in the right direction. "Turnout has been amazing. People are coming out, and sales are great. Some of my friends who are doing other fairs down in Iowa and South Dakota - they said numbers were more than double, so it's been nuts." The return of full fairgrounds could extend a lifeline to event organizations as they struggle to recover from months on end of scrapped plans and lost revenue. "It's probably our best chance for some of these agricultural fairs to survive. If they would have had to have gone another year without being able to put on fairs, Olmsted County and other ones included, they might just not have came back. And there will be some that still didn't make it through this." There are so many things that you can do in your home to make it more dementia friendly, from covering the flooring, to elevating the height of the sink to connecting fire extinguishers to the hoods of stoves and adding safety devices that shut things off automatically, he explained. ST. LOUIS (AP) A former St. Louis police officer was acquitted Friday of charges that he assaulted three people with pepper spray during a protest near Busch Stadium in 2017. Judge Thom C. Clark wrote in his ruling that he found William Oltsen's use of pepper spray justified because it followed verbal threats of violence, two physical attacks on other officers and several police orders for the crowd to disperse, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. Former St. Louis officer charged after allegedly pepper-spraying demonstrators during Stockley protests A former St. Louis Metropolitan Police Officer has been accused of pepper spraying demonstrators outside of Busch Stadium during the Stockley protests in 2017. Olsten was charged with three felony counts of third-degree assault for the incident on Sept. 29, 2017, during one of several protests that followed the acquittal of former officer Jason Stockley on a murder charge. Stockley, who is white, had been accused in the shooting death of a Black suspect. Assistant Circuit Attorney Jeff Estes said at trial that Olsten had no justification to use pepper spray on people participating in a peaceful protest and did so only to punish them in part for screaming obscenities at him. The three hit with pepper spray protest organizer Amir Brandy, live-streamer Heather DeMian and Democratic state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge testified that Olsten sprayed them without warning. A Missouri man will spend seven years in prison after pleading guilty to punching a 12-year-old street performer in the head in an attack that was captured on Facebook Live and has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times. This undated photo provided by Jim Clark/ Timber Lane Photography shows Champaign police Officer Chris Oberheim. A gunman killed Officer Oberheim and wounded another before he was fatally shot during a shootout at an apartment complex early Wednesday, May 19, 2021, in Champaign, Ill., authorities said. When first responders arrived, they realized the woman was suffering from a massive injury to the back of her head. EMS rushed her to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, where she died. The Twitter app icon on a mobile phone in Philadelphia is seen in this April 26, 2017, file photo. AP-Yonhap China's ruling Communist Party has opened a new front in its long, ambitious war to shape global public opinion: Western social media. Liu Xiaoming, who recently stepped down as China's ambassador to the United Kingdom, is one of the party's most successful foot soldiers on this evolving online battlefield. He joined Twitter in October 2019, as scores of Chinese diplomats surged onto Twitter and Facebook, which are both banned in China. Since then, Liu has deftly elevated his public profile, gaining a following of more than 119,000 as he transformed himself into an exemplar of China's new sharp-edged ''wolf warrior'' diplomacy, a term borrowed from the title of a top-grossing Chinese action movie. ''As I see it, there are so-called 'wolf warriors' because there are 'wolfs' in the world and you need warriors to fight them,'' Liu, who is now China's Special Representative on Korean Peninsula Affairs, tweeted in February. His stream of posts principled and gutsy ripostes to Western anti-Chinese bias to his fans, aggressive bombast to his detractors were retweeted more than 43,000 times from June through February alone. But much of the popular support Liu and many of his colleagues seem to enjoy on Twitter has, in fact, been manufactured. A seven-month investigation by the Associated Press and the Oxford Internet Institute, a department at Oxford University, found that China's rise on Twitter has been powered by an army of fake accounts that have retweeted Chinese diplomats and state media tens of thousands of times, covertly amplifying propaganda that can reach hundreds of millions of people often without disclosing the fact that the content is government-sponsored. This type of analysis is possible because Twitter makes more of its data available to researchers than other social media platforms routinely do. More than half the retweets Liu got from June through January came from accounts that Twitter has suspended for violating the platform's rules, which prohibit manipulation. Overall, more than one in ten of the retweets 189 Chinese diplomats got in that time frame came from accounts that Twitter had suspended by March 1. But Twitter's suspensions did not stop the pro-China amplification machine. An additional cluster of fake accounts, many of them impersonating U.K. citizens, continued to push Chinese government content, racking up over 16,000 retweets and replies before Twitter kicked them off late last month and early this month, in response to the AP and Oxford Internet Institute's investigation. This fiction of popularity can boost the status of China's messengers, creating a mirage of broad support. It can also distort platform algorithms, which are designed to boost the distribution of popular posts, potentially exposing more genuine users to Chinese government propaganda. While individual fake accounts may not seem impactful on their own, over time and at scale, such networks can distort the information environment, deepening the reach and authenticity of China's messaging. ''You have a seismic, slow but large continental shift in narratives,'' said Timothy Graham, a senior lecturer at Queensland University of Technology who studies social networks. ''Steer it just a little bit over time, it can have massive impact.'' Twitter, and others, have identified inauthentic pro-China networks before. But the AP and Oxford Internet Institute investigation shows for the first time that large-scale inauthentic amplification has broadly driven engagement across official government and state media accounts, adding to evidence that Beijing's appetite for guiding public opinion covertly, if necessary extends beyond its borders and beyond core strategic interests such as Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Twitter's takedowns often come only after weeks or months of activity. All told, AP and the Oxford Internet Institute identified 26,879 accounts that retweeted Chinese diplomats or state media nearly 200,000 times before getting suspended. They accounted for a significant share sometimes more than half of the total retweets many diplomatic accounts got on Twitter. It was not possible to determine whether the accounts were sponsored by the Chinese government. Twitter told AP that many of the accounts had been sanctioned for manipulation, but declined to offer details on what other platform violations may have been at play. Twitter said it was investigating whether the activity was a state-affiliated information operation. ''We will continue to investigate and action accounts that violate our platform manipulation policy, including accounts associated with these networks,'' a Twitter spokesperson said in a statement. ''If we have clear evidence of state-affiliated information operations, our first priority is to enforce our rules and remove accounts engaging in this behavior. When our investigations are complete, we disclose all accounts and content in our public archive.'' China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it does not employ trickery on social media. ''There is no so-called misleading propaganda, nor exporting a model of online public opinion guidance,'' the ministry said in a statement to AP. ''We hope that the relevant parties will abandon their discriminatory attitude, take off their tinted glasses, and take a peaceful, objective, and rational approach in the spirit of openness and inclusiveness.'' Ideological battlefield Twitter and Facebook function as formidable and one-sided global megaphones for China's ruling Communist Party, helping to amplify messaging broadly set by central authorities. Today, at least 270 Chinese diplomats in 126 countries are active on Twitter and Facebook. Together with Chinese state media, they control 449 accounts on Twitter and Facebook, which posted nearly 950,000 times between June last year and February. These messages were liked over 350 million times and replied to and shared more than 27 million times, according to the Oxford Internet Institute and AP's analysis. Three-quarters of Chinese diplomats on Twitter joined within the last two years. The move onto Western social media comes as China wages a war for influence both at home and abroad on the internet, which President Xi Jinping has called ''the main battlefield'' for public opinion. ''On the battlefield of the Internet, whether we can withstand and win is directly related to our country's ideological security and political security,'' he said in 2013, not long after taking power. In September 2019, as Chinese diplomats flocked to Twitter, Xi gave another speech, urging party cadres to strengthen their ''fighting spirit.'' Xi has reconfigured China's internet governance, tightening controls, and bound Chinese media ever more tightly to the party, to ensure, as he said in a 2016 speech, that the media loves, protects and serves the party. That intimacy was formalized in 2018, when the party consolidated administrative control of major print, radio, film and television outlets under an entity it manages, the Central Propaganda Department. Like other nations, China has recognized the value of social media for amplifying its messaging and reinforcing its hold on power. But unfettered access to Western social media has given Beijing a unilateral advantage in the global fight for influence. Twitter and Facebook are blocked within China, and Beijing controls the conversation on domestic alternatives including WeChat and Weibo, effectively cutting off unmediated access to the Chinese public. ''It's creating a significant challenge for Western democracies. We don't have the same capacity to influence international audiences given that China has walled off its internet,'' said Jacob Wallis, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute's International Cyber Policy Centre. ''That creates a significant asymmetric advantage.'' Despite the high levels of Chinese government activity, Twitter and Facebook have failed to label state content consistently. In an effort to provide users with more context, Twitter last year began labelling accounts belonging to ''key government officials'' and state-affiliated media. But Twitter had labeled just 14% of Chinese diplomatic accounts on the platform, as of March 1, failing even to flag dozens of verified profiles. T Twitter said that in keeping with its policy of labelling senior officials and institutions that speak for a country abroad, not all diplomatic accounts will be flagged. It offered no further details on how those decisions are made and declined to provide a list of Chinese accounts that have been labeled. Facebook also began putting transparency labels on state-controlled media accounts last year. But disclosure is especially weak in languages other than English, despite the fact that Chinese state content has strong distribution in Spanish, French, and Arabic, among other languages. Facebook had labeled two-thirds of a sample of 95 Chinese state media accounts in English, as of Mar. 1, but less than a quarter of accounts in other languages. Unlike Twitter, Facebook does not flag diplomatic accounts, the majority of which are official embassy and consulate accounts. Facebook labeled an additional 41 Chinese state media outlets AP and the Oxford Internet Institute brought to their attention, bringing the overall portion of labeled accounts from less than half to nearly 90%. The company said it was looking into the rest. ''We apply the label on a rolling basis and will continue to label more publishers and pages over time,'' a company spokesperson said in a statement to AP. The company declined to provide a full list of which Chinese state media accounts it has flagged. The China Media Project, a Hong Kong research group, found that transparency labels make a difference: Twitter users liked and shared fewer tweets by Chinese news outlets after August 2020, when the platform started flagging them as state-affiliated media and stopped amplifying and recommending their content. ''We need the labels,'' said China Media Project director David Bandurski, though he cautioned that they risk painting all Chinese media with the same broad brush, including outlets like Caixin that have managed to maintain a degree of independence. ''This is all about co-opting the narrative. Telling China's story means we the party get to tell China's story and no one else. That's happening in Portuguese and Spanish and French. It really is a global plan.'' The outspoken editor-in-chief of China's Global Times, Hu Xijin, noticed the impact immediately. On Aug. 14, he tweeted his dismay at the ''China state-affiliated media'' label that had been added to his profile, saying his follower growth had plummeted. ''It seems Twitter will eventually choke my account,'' he wrote. Counterfeiting consensus In early February, China's state news agency Xinhua published a ''fact check'' of 24 ''lies'' it said anti-China forces in the West had been spreading about Xinjiang, where China stands accused of genocide for its brutal, systematic repression of minority Uighur Muslims. According to Xinhua, the real problem in Xinjiang is not human rights, but Uighur terrorism. Beijing has brought stability and economic development to its restive western region, and information suggesting otherwise has been fabricated by U.S. intelligence agencies, a racist scholar, and lying witnesses, Xinhua said. The story was picked up by other Chinese state media outlets, amplified by China's foreign ministry at a press conference, and blasted across Twitter by the foreign ministry and Chinese diplomats in the United States, India, Djibouti, Canada, Hungary, Austria, Tanzania, Kazakhstan, Jordan, Liberia, Grenada, Nigeria, Lebanon, Trinidad and Tobago, Qatar and the United Kingdom. From there, it was further amplified by devoted but mysterious fans like gyagyagya10, whose account pushed out an identical quote-tweet and reply, within seconds, to a message about Xinjiang posted by China's Embassy in London, writing, ''Ethnic groups in China are well protected, no matter in economic aspect or in cultural aspect.'' This is the ruling Communist Party's global propaganda machine in action: Messages set by key state media outlets and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs get picked up by Chinese diplomats around the world, who repackage the content on Twitter, where it is amplified by networks of fake and suspicious accounts working covertly to shape public discourse for the benefit of China's ruling Communist Party. Gyagyagya10, who had a single follower, was part of a network of 62 accounts dedicated to amplifying Chinese diplomats in the U.K. that Marcel Schliebs, the Oxford Internet Institute's lead researcher on the project, found exhibited multiple patterns suggesting coordination and inauthenticity. Little can be gleaned about gyagyagya10 from the image of abstract art posted as a profile photo and the lack of any sort of personal description. Indeed, none of the accounts in the network had fleshed-out profiles with recognizable names and authentic profile photos. Gyagyagya10's account came to life in mid-August at the same time as more than a dozen other accounts that also devoted themselves exclusively to promoting tweets by the Chinese Embassy in London and Ambassador Liu. Then, after Liu left his post at the end of January, they went quiet. The 62 accounts in the network retweeted and replied to posts by Chinese diplomats in London nearly 30,000 times between June and the end of January, the Oxford Internet Institute found. They exhibited unique patterns in the ways they amplified content. Like gyagyagya10, they often simultaneously posted identical quote-tweets and replies, and they repeatedly used identical phrases like ''Xinjiang is beautiful'' and ''shared future for mankind'' in their comments. Other users who engaged with the two diplomatic accounts did neither. They were also slavish in their devotion, sometimes replying to more than three-quarters of all the ambassador's tweets. Most weeks, the fake accounts generated at least 30 percent to 50 percent of all retweets of Ambassador Liu and the Chinese Embassy in London. By March 1, Twitter had suspended 31 of the accounts in the pro-China U.K. network and two had been deleted. The remaining 29 including gyagyagya10 continued to operate, churning out more than 10,000 retweets and nearly 6,000 replies in support of China's U.K. diplomats before Twitter permanently suspended them for platform manipulation at the end of April and beginning of May in response to this investigation. ''We are also aware of concerns about some of the Twitter rules,'' China's Embassy in the U.K. said in a statement to AP. ''If it is against the rules of social media to retweet the Chinese Embassy's tweets, then shouldn't these rules be more applicable to retweets of malicious rumors, smears, and false information against China? We hope relevant companies will not adopt double standards.'' China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says Beijing uses social media the same way other nations do, with the goal of deepening friendly ties and facilitating fact-based communication. In practice, China's network on Twitter amplifies messaging set by central authorities, both for domestic and global consumption, as diplomats translate, repackage and amplify content from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and key state media outlets, network analysis and academic research show. Zhao Alexandre Huang, a visiting assistant professor at Gustave Eiffel University, in Paris, analyzed social media messaging at key points in the U.S.-China trade dispute and found that content first published on the Weibo account of China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs was repackaged and broadcast around the world by Chinese diplomats on Twitter. ''The Ministry of Foreign Affairs uses Weibo like a central kitchen of information,'' Huang said. ''It's an illusion of polyphony.'' Within China's state network on Twitter, the most referenced accounts belonged to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and its spokespeople, as well as the People's Daily, CGTN, China Daily, and Xinhua, and the most active amplifiers were diplomats, AP network analysis showed. The party's efforts on Twitter have been helped by a core of hyperactive super-fans. Some 151,000 users retweeted posts by Chinese diplomats from June through January. But nearly half of all retweets came from just 1 percent of those accounts, which together blasted out nearly 360,000 retweets, often in bursts of activity separated by just seconds. Among the biggest beneficiaries of this concentrated bulk engagement which is not necessarily inauthentic were Chinese diplomatic accounts in Poland, Pakistan, India, and South Africa, as well as the foreign ministry and its spokespeople. The pro-China accounts that Twitter later suspended were active in a host of languages, with profile descriptions in English, Mandarin, Spanish, Arabic, Hindi, Italian, French, Russian, Korean, Urdu, Portuguese, Thai, Swedish, Japanese, Turkish, German and Tamil. Some worked cross-network to amplify a range of government accounts, while others appeared to function as smaller cells, dedicated to amplifying diplomats in a specific location. This manufactured chorus accounted for a significant portion of all the engagement many Chinese diplomats got on Twitter. More than 60% of all retweets for the Chinese embassies in Angola and Greece from June 2020 through January 2021 came from accounts that have been suspended. China's hawkish foreign ministry spokespeople Hua Chunying and Zhao Lijian racked up more than 20,000 retweets from accounts that have been sanctioned by Twitter. Internet commenting systems Within China, manipulation of online discourse has been effectively institutionalized. It remains to be seen how aggressive and how successful China will be in implementing its model of public opinion guidance on Western social media, which was founded on very different civic values, like transparency, authenticity, and the free exchange of ideas. The party's systems for shaping public opinion online go far beyond censorship. Budget documents for Chinese propaganda and cyberspace departments include references to cyber armies teams of trained online commentators tasked with keeping conversation online aligned with the ruling party's interests. Universities in China openly post announcements about their teams of ''online commentators'' and ''youth internet civilization volunteers,'' composed exclusively of recruits who ''love the motherland'' and work to guide public opinion by eliminating negative influences and spreading "positive energy" online. The scale of the operation is immense. Ryan Fedasiuk, a research analyst at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, reviewed dozens of government budget documents, university announcements and media reports and found that last year, China's Communist Party had around 20 million part-time volunteers, many of them students, and 2 million paid commentators at its disposal to steer conversation online. For-profit companies also contract with government agencies to run coordinated networks of social media accounts, both human and automated, to help ''guide public opinion,'' according to Mareike Ohlberg, a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund's Asia Program, and Jessica Batke, a senior editor at ChinaFile, an online magazine published by the Asia Society. They poured through thousands of Chinese government procurement notices to identify tenders for such services. While the majority were for opinion management on domestic platforms, Ohlberg told AP that since 2017 a growing number have also targeted Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. One public security bureau in a relatively small city in northeastern China, for example, wanted to buy a ''smart Internet-commenting system,'' capable of commenting on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube from thousands of different accounts and IP addresses. ''This is just a natural extension of what the party has been doing at home for a very long time,'' Ohlberg said. ''Why would they change that model once they go abroad? China's advance on Western social media is one part of a much broader infrastructure of influence that has shaped how Hollywood makes movies, what Western publishers print and what overseas Chinese-language media outlets communicate to China's vast diaspora. Anne-Marie Brady, a professor at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and an expert in Chinese propaganda, said people may not even realize that information they receive has been, in part, framed by China's ruling Communist Party. ''The propaganda system is vast, and it has incorporated Western social media," she said. ''It has helped to reshape perceptions of China. It may not uniquely create a positive image of China, but it creates hopelessness that anything can be done about what China is doing to our democracies.'' (AP) Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, left, and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, right, have a meeting in Moscow, Russia, May 14, 2021. EPA-Yonhap Russia formally designated the United States and the Czech Republic as "unfriendly states," Friday, amid the biggest crisis in ties between Moscow and Washington in years. The government there released a decree signed by Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, accompanied by a list of "unfriendly states" that "have carried out unfriendly actions" against Russia, Russian nationals or Russian entities. The Czech Embassy will not be allowed to employ more than 19 Russian nationals, while the U.S. embassy cannot hire any, Moscow said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Moscow remained ready for dialogue, state news agency TASS reported, stressing the fact that Russia had now only two nations on its "unfriendly states" list. Prague said the step would only "escalate relations" between Moscow and the Czech Republic, the EU and its allies. "We are sorry that Russia has embarked on the confrontation road to its own detriment," the Czech foreign ministry said in a statement. "This measure will also indirectly affect the potential development of relations between ordinary citizens, tourism, and the development of business relations," it added. EU chief Charles Michel tweeted the bloc's "full solidarity" with Prague as he insisted the move "undermines diplomatic relations." "Efforts to divide the EU are in vain," Michel wrote. In recent months tensions have spiraled between Russia and the West over a litany of issues, including Russia's troop build-up on Ukraine's border, interference in the U.S. elections and other perceived hostile activities. Russia-U.S. relations have rapidly deteriorated after President Joe Biden increased pressure on the Kremlin since being inaugurated in January. In April, Washington announced sanctions and the expulsion of 10 Russian diplomats in retaliation for what it says was interference by the Kremlin in the elections, a massive cyberattack and other hostile activity. Russia, in response, expelled 10 U.S. diplomats, banned top American officials from entering the country and prohibited the U.S. Embassy from employing foreign nationals. After Biden likened Russian President Vladimir Putin to a "killer," Russia temporarily recalled its ambassador to the United States and later said the U.S. envoy to Moscow should also head to Washington for consultations. The U.S. Embassy was forced to suspend most consular services to its nationals and stopped issuing visas due to a drastic reduction in staff following the tit-for-tat sanctions. But on Friday it said it would temporarily resume consular services for its citizens "through July 16." Tensions have also spiraled with the Czech Republic after Prague accused Russian military intelligence of being behind a deadly explosion at an ammunition depot in the eastern part of the country in 2014. Moscow said last month it would cap the number of the Czech Embassy staff in a tit-for-tat move after the EU country announced it was expelling dozens of Russian diplomats. (AFP) RTHK: Putin hosts Lukashenko amid Western outcry over plane President Vladimir Putin praised Russia's close ties with Belarus on Friday as he hosted strongman Alexander Lukashenko amid a global outcry following the forced diversion of a European plane. Observers closely watched the talks to see how far the Kremlin would go to support Lukashenko's regime after Belarus scrambled a military jet to divert a Ryanair plane and arrest an opposition journalist onboard last Sunday. Following the Ryanair plane's forced diversion, the European Union urged EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace and promised fresh sanctions against Lukashenko and regime officials. During talks in Russia's Black Sea resort of Sochi, Putin warmly greeted Lukashenko and agreed with him that the Western outcry over the plane was an "outburst of emotion". Putin said he was "very glad" to see Lukashenko and the two should go for a swim. In carefully worded remarks in front of reporters, Putin also said that when then-Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane was grounded in 2013 there was little Western outcry. "The president was led out of the plane, and nothing, silence," Putin said at the start of the talks. A plane carrying Morales from Moscow was diverted and held up in Vienna for hours amid suspicions fugitive US whistleblower Edward Snowden was on board. Lukashenko complained the West was seeking to stir unrest in Belarus. "An attempt is under way to rock the boat to reach the level of last August," Lukashenko said, referring to the outbreak of protests against his regime following a disputed election. "It's clear what these Western friends want from us." The Belarus strongman, who arrived with a briefcase, said he wanted to show Putin "some documents" related to the Ryanair incident and thanked him for his support in the latest standoff with the West. The talks lasted for more than five hours but their results were not announced. The two leaders praised growing bilateral cooperation. "We've been building the Union State," Putin told Lukashenko. "We are confidently moving in that direction, that work is already bringing concrete results to our citizens." Russia and Belarus have formed a "union state" that links their economies and militaries but the Kremlin has been pushing for a closer integration. Over the past years Lukashenko has had a volatile relationship with Moscow, playing it off against the West and ruling out outright unification with Russia. But after the Ryanair plane incident Lukashenko's options appear to be limited. Putin and Lukashenko have met regularly since August, when historic protests broke out against Lukashenko's nearly three-decade rule following a disputed election. The 66-year-old Belarus strongman waged a ruthless crackdown on his opponents and has leaned increasingly on Putin amid condemnation from the West. Several people died during the unrest in Belarus, thousands were detained, and hundreds reported torture in prison. Sunday's flight diversion was a dramatic escalation, with EU leaders accusing Minsk of essentially hijacking a European flight to arrest 26-year-old opposition journalist and activist Roman Protasevich. The overflight ban has led to several cancellations of flights between Russia and Europe, after Russian authorities rejected flight plans that would have skipped Belarusian airspace. Russia insists the cancellations are purely "technical", but they have raised concerns that Russia could be systematically refusing to let European airlines land if they avoid Belarus. Moscow hit out at the flight ban as politically motivated and dangerous. "What the West has done... for political reasons is completely irresponsible and endangers the safety of passengers," said Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said the bloc was monitoring whether this was a broader policy from Russia, but the Kremlin insisted the disruptions were in no way political. Belarus authorities claimed to have received a bomb threat against the Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius carrying the dissident. Minsk said it demanded the flight land in Minsk based on the message it said was sent from a ProtonMail address by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas. The Montreal-based International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) Council announced on Thursday it was launching an investigation. Protasevich, who helped organise the demonstrations against Lukashenko's rule last year, was arrested along with Russian girlfriend Sofia Sapega, 23, after the plane landed in Minsk. Borrell has said proposals are "on the table" to target key sectors of the Belarusian economy including its oil products and potash sectors. Belarus opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya on Friday urged the EU to be "braver" and impose more sanctions against the Minsk regime. After meeting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte in The Hague, Tikhanovskaya said measures being discussed by EU countries to target Belarusian economic sectors did not go far enough. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen on Friday warned Lukashenko that "it is time to change course." "No amount of repression, brutality or coercion will bring any legitimacy to your authoritarian regime," she said. The European Commission president also wrote to the opposition offering a three-billion-euro package to support "a democratic Belarus" if Lukashenko steps down. Lukashenko has retained his grip on power in ex-Soviet Belarus since 1994 by hounding opponents, jailing and allegedly torturing dissidents, and muzzling independent media. (AFP) This story has been published on: 2021-05-29. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. The Horological Society of New York (HSNY) announced Timepieces for HSNY: 2021 Charity Auction, presented online by Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo from June 7-14, 2021. What once took place during HSNYs annual Gala a tradition that dates back to the Societys start in 1866 this years Charity Auction will take place online via Phillips' Gallery One, a next generation auction experience that allows collectors to bid virtually from anywhere in the world. Bidders worldwide can expect to see horological marvels from top Swiss and Japanese brands. With a No Reserve policy across all timepieces, HSNY invites auction-goers to bid enthusiastically. All proceeds will benefit HSNY in its ongoing mission to advance the art and science of horology, which includes offering financial aid to watchmaking institutions and full-time watchmaking students in the United States. Through Timepieces for HSNY: 2021 Charity Auction, HSNY will offer watch enthusiasts, collectors and aficionados alike the opportunity to bid on seven incredible timepieces, including a unique wristwatch created for HSNY, a coveted limited edition release and a first known model of its kind to be offered at auction. Highlights include HM HSNY (Lot 7), a one-of-one timepiece created specifically for HSNY by Arnold & Son. The HM HSNY depicts a vanishing-point projection of emblematic New York buildings, with the Manhattan Bridge sprawling across the East River in the background. The dial is a miniature painting just a few square centimeters in size. During the day, the bridge is displayed against a mother-of-pearl sky. At night, certain windows in the red-brick buildings, the street lights and Manhattan Bridge are illuminated by the addition of Super-LumiNova to the hand-painted scene, lighting up the nocturnal display. The HM HSNY is assembled on a hand-stitched brick-colored alligator leather strap, echoing the dials miniature painting. Further highlights from Timepieces for HSNY: 2021 Charity Auction include: Rolex Ref. 5500; inside caseback stamped 1002. An interesting and rare stainless steel wristwatch with bracelet, Pool-Intairdril logo, and presentation box, c. 1979. LOT #1 Estimate: $2,000 to $3,000; donated by Eric Ku, 10 Past Ten. Lot 1 Rolex Ref. 5500 Phillips Ulysse Nardin. A fine silver chronometer deck watch made for the British Hydrographic Service with brass case, wooden box, and extract from the archives, 1942. LOT #2 Estimate: $2,000 to $4,000; donated by Ulysse Nardin. Lot 2 Ulysse Nardin Case NO. 618986 Phillips Patek Philippe Ref. 3589. A very fine, rare, and unusual white gold cushion-shaped wristwatch with blue Roman-numeral dial, 1973. LOT #3 Estimate: $4,000 to $6,000; donated by John Reardon, Collectability. Lot 3 Patek Philippe Ref.3589 Phillips Rolex Ref. 1500. A beautiful and well-preserved yellow gold wristwatch with date, c. 1980. LOT #4 Estimate: $3,000 to $5,000; donated by Eric Wind, Wind Vintage. Lot 4 Rolex Ref. 1500 Phillips Greubel Forsey. A very rare and historically significant metal mechanical Double Tourbillon 30 model celebrating the brands 10th anniversary, with pamphlet and presentation box, 2014. LOT #5 Estimate: $1,000 to $2,000; donated by Greubel Forsey. Grand Seiko Ref. SBGM239. A brand new, very fine, attractive, and limited stainless steel dual time-zone wristwatch with date, bracelet, certificate, and presentation box, 2020. LOT #6 Estimate: $3,000 to $6,000; donated by Grand Seiko in partnership with HODINKEE. Lot 6 Grand Seiko Ref. SBGM239 Phillips Arnold & Son Ref. ALCAPD05A. An exceptional, brand new, and unique 18-karat rose gold wristwatch with miniature hand painted, luminous mother-of-pearl day and night Manhattan Bridge dial made for the Horological Society of New York, with certificate of guarantee, and presentation box, case, dial, movement, bracelet, and clasp signed. Case marked HSNY 2021. LOT #7 Estimate: $5,000 to $10,000; donated by Arnold & Son. The Horological Society of New York is grateful for the support of our friends who have donated exceptional items to our auction, Timepieces for HSNY: 2021 Charity Auction, said Nicholas Manousos, HSNYs Executive Director. We wish to thank Phillips in Association with Bacs & Russo for hosting our 2021 Charity Auction. I invite everyone to take advantage of the No Reserve lots and bid with confidence for a great cause. While HSNYs Charity Auction was canceled last year due to the pandemic, Americas first watchmaking guild raised more than $45,000 towards its mission of horological education at the 2019 Gala. Through the support of its sponsors, donors and members, HSNY awarded $70,000 in financial aid to U.S. watchmaking schools and students in April 2021. Thorpe was climbing the stairs in the back of the five-story building on E. 28th St. near Second Ave. in Kips Bay when she tumbled off the fire escape and fell to the pavement below, witnesses told cops. She became the second woman to die in a Manhattan fire escape fall in the last eight days, leaving her family to wonder why. Runaway teen JhaDarian Martin was last seen on May 8 in Shreveport. BILLINGS - AAA is expecting more than 37 million people to travel 50 miles or more away from home this Memorial Day Weekend, which would be a 60% increase from 2020. At the Billings Logan International Airport alone, more than 4,000 people are expected to board planes over the next four days. For travelers like Robert Pawley and his wife, they planned for the large crowds at the airports, but the effects of the busy travel weekend across the country delayed their arrival to Montana. "It was wild. We got there two hours to make sure we got there on time but it was three hours delayed which made our connecting trip from Dallas delayed as well," Pawley said. "We missed it actually so they put us in a hotel. So now we're super late. We're actually missing a lot of the wedding festivities for it but we'll see the actually ceremony, so we aren't missing out too much." Director of Aviation and Transit Kevin Ploehn says May screening numbers are about 80% of what they were in 2019. While the long weekend is just beginning, the heaviest day of travel in Billings is expected to be on Monday. Ploehn believes about 1,500 people will be boarding planes in the Magic City. MISSOULA, Mont. - New data released from the CDC shows drug, alcohol and suicide-related deaths are all on the rise in Montana. But the number that is most alarming is the alcohol-induced death rate which nearly tripled from 2018 to 2019. Over the course of a year, the state saw a nearly 40% increase in alcohol-induced deaths. ranking Montana as the fifth highest state across the country. You may not find this data surprising, but one mental health expert we spoke with, Dr. Benjamin Miller, says this is not something Montanans should brush off. "The problem that is not just happening overnight. This problem has been here for some time, but I think we are seeing the lack of attention to addressing these issues around mental health and addiction, Dr. Miller said. Many factors play a part in alcohol-induced deaths on an economic and social level. Even certain age groups and ethnicities show specific risks contributing to these numbers. According to this new data, the age group with the highest growth rate in alcohol-induced deaths were those ages 50 -74. But younger age groups are reporting an increasing trend as well. As these numbers may seem alarming, it doesn't mean an occasional or day drink is contributing to this increase in numbers across the state. "It is so normal in our culture to have a drink with a friend, but when you look at those who die from alcohol, this is prolonged exposure, increasing your usage and that can have a big impact on your overall health, " Dr. Miller said. And the time to act is now. "If you are serious about doing something about these deaths, to really begin, invest in strategies that allow us to be more proactive with how we address mental health and addiction," Miller said. Dr. Miller says he will be making his way around the Treasure State to spread more awareness, and hopefully bring more help to those who need it. A razor was found at the scene where a man was stabbed to death inside a skate park underneath the Manhattan Bridge on Monroe and Pike Ss.t in Manhattan on Friday May 28, 2021. (Theodore Parisienne/for New York Daily News) He is accused of shooting Skye Martinez, 4, who was hit in the leg; Marcela Aldana, 43, a New Jersey woman hit in the foot; and Wendy Magrinat, 23, a Rhode Island woman who was also hit in the leg. At least 31 Houthi rebels were killed in airstrikes launched by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen's oil-rich province of Marib, a military source said on Saturday. Vice President Kamala Harris made history once again on Friday, May 28, as the first female commencement speaker in the United States Naval Academy history. In her commencement address in front of the graduating class of the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Harris described a political moment, unlike any era that came before, NPR reported. Kamala Harris urged the graduating midshipmen to defend the U.S. against numerous threats around the world. In front of an outdoor audience at Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium, Harris cited climate change, cybersecurity attacks, and biological hazards like the COVID-19 as global threats. Kamala Harris Talks About COVID-19 Pandemic Kamala Harris compared the ongoing global health crisis brought by the COVID-19 to other "critical moments" of the country in the past that have shaped U.S. history, such as Pearl Harbor, the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and the 9/11 attacks. In her almost 20-minute speech, Kamala Harris told the Academy graduates that they are now walking into a rapidly changing world, NBC News reported. The Vice President also stated that the global pandemic accelerated what was happening before and the entire world into a new era. She noted that COVID-19 forever impacted the world and it has forever influenced the perspective of mankind. Kamala Harris emphasized that unlike before, it is now clear that the world is interconnected, interdependent, and it is fragile. READ NEXT: President Jair Bolsonaro Leads Motorcade Amid Brazil Surpassing 16M COVID Cases The address of Kamala Harris came while the administration of President Joe Biden navigates numerous challenges across the world. The Biden administration is currently probing the origin of COVID-19, a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and the cyberattacks done by Russia, ABC News reported. Also in March, Biden asked Harris to lead the administration's diplomatic efforts with the Northern Triangle countries and Mexico. Harris' main task is to address the migration at the U.S. border. But she did not mention issues related to immigration in her speech. Last month, the White House also announced that the U.S. would withdraw all of the remaining troops from Afghanistan by the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The remarks of Kamala Harris set a different tone compared to the address made by former President Donald Trump in 2018. Harris focused on the potential threats that the U.S. might face while Trump during his address said to the graduates that they are witnessing the great reawakening of the American spirit and might. Kamala Harris also expressed her confidence in the ability of the U.S. military in putting the country at a strategic advantage. She cited the role of the U.S. forces in the development of tactical technologies like walkie-talkies, the internet, and the usage of satellite navigation. The Vice President also mentioned the involvement of the military in the COVID-19 vaccine distribution. She then praised the graduates for getting vaccinated. Kamala Harris added that before the ceremony, she visited the grave of the Arizona Republican, late Senator John McCain, which is also located at the Naval Academy Cemetery. READ MORE: Kamala Harris Taps Microsoft, Mastercard and Other Private Firms to Promote Economic Opportunity in Central America WATCH: LIVE: Vice President Kamala Harris Delivers Commencement Address to US Naval Academy's Class of 2021 - From Yahoo Finance Mexican farmworker Cristhian Bahena Rivera was found guilty by an Iowa jury on Friday of killing college student Mollie Tibbetts three years ago. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole following the guilty verdict. Prosecutor said that the Mexican farmworker was enraged after Tibbetts rejected his advances, according to a Reuters report. The Mexican farmworker reportedly had entered the United States illegally and was arrested about a month after Tibbetts' disappearance. Police said they identified him from a security video taken outside a Brooklyn house near where the Iowa college student was last seen running. Police interrogated Rivera for about 11 hours. The Mexican farmworker then led them to Tibbetts' body in a cornfield. Authorities found that Mollie Tibbetts had been stabbed nine to 12 times. The case had gained traction in 2018 after former U.S. President Donald Trump cited Rivera's case as he rallied against illegal immigration. In a recorded speech posted on Twitter at the time, Trump said that Rivera came from Mexico illegally and killed the Iowa college student. Trump was building a border wall to curb the rising number of illegal migrants crossing the U.S. The former president had also blamed U.S. immigration laws for the death of Mollie Tibbetts. Tibbetts' family earlier asked politicians not to use the 20-year-old college student's death to advance a cause that she opposed. The victim's father, Rob Tibbetts, wrote in Des Moines Register, saying that it does not appropriate his daughter's soul in pushing for views she believed were racist. READ NEXT: Mexican Serial Killer Admits to Slaying 15 Women in Mexico City and Eating His Victims Mollie Tibbetts' Case Cristhian Bahena Rivera told investigators that he spotted Mollie Tibbetts jogging near Middle and Boundary streets. He then slowed down and started following her in his black Chevrolet Malibu, according to a Crime Online report. The Mexican farmworker had gotten out of the vehicle and started following the Iowa college student by foot. He then started jogging beside her. Tibbetts then told the 26-year-old suspect that she would call 911 and pulled out her phone. That was when Rivera said he became upset. He said that he blacked out at the threat, which he often did when becoming too angry, according to investigators involved in the case. The Mexican farmworker then said that he remembered waking up inside his car and parked at a rural intersection. He then drove into a driveway of a cornfield. Rivera noted that he realized he had placed the victim inside his truck when he noticed that Tibbetts' earpiece from her earbuds was lying on his lap. According to the affidavit, the Mexican farmworker checked the trunk and found Tibbetts inside, with one side of her head bloodied. The suspect then pulled the Iowa college student out of the truck and dragged her into a secluded area in the woods. Cristhian Bahena Rivera had changed his story when he took the stand, claiming that two armed men kidnapped him and forced Mollie Tibbetts into the trunk of his car. But prosecutors had dismissed the story and said it was inconsistent with the evidence, BBC News reported. It took seven hours over two days for jurors in Davenport, Iowa to deliberate before returning with a guilty verdict. READ MORE: Up to 40 Bodies Found Buried at Home of Ex-El Salvador Cop Who Confessed to Killing 2 Women WATCH: Missing Iowa Student Mollie Tibbetts Found Dead, Undocumented Immigrant Confesses - From TODAY Hunter Biden had revealed to a friend in a recorded call that he used to smoke crack with Marion Barry, the late former mayor of Washington D.C. According to a Daily Mail report, Hunter Biden bragged in the January 2019 phone call that he regularly smoked crack with the late mayor in the restroom of a Georgetown bar while he was an undergraduate there. The eight-minute phone call, obtained by Daily Mail, was saved on Hunter's abandoned laptop. It contradicts Hunter's claim in his memoir that his arrest as a teenager scared him off drugs until after college. In the recorded call, the president's son initially rebuked his friend for being "racist" after the guy suggested that Martin Luther King had taken cocaine. However, Hunter Biden later admitted that he smoked crack with civil rights hero and infamous addict Marion Barry. "You know what? I actually smoked crack with Marion Barry. I swear to f**king God. I was in Georgetown and he used to go to a place right next to The Guards," Hunter told his unnamed friend. "And I was a sophomore... But he used to come there and drink, like late-late. And I would be there. And he would go the bathroom," he added. The president's son was reportedly referring to a bar near the Georgetown University campus. The late mayor of Washington D.C., who died in 2014, was earlier caught on video with a woman in a hotel room smoking crack. Marion Barry claimed that he was set up by his enemies in D.C. who were unhappy with the number of city contracts he was giving to Black business owners. Barry said he first experimented with cocaine in the late 1980s when he found himself alone with a woman at a friend's house after hours-long of drinking. The former mayor was married at the time. His conviction did not affect much the support he had and did not prevent him from winning the mayoral election again in 1994. In addition, a leading D.C. paper had named him "Mayor for life." RELATED ARTICLE: Hunter Biden Says He Has 'No Recollection' of Meeting Ex-Stripper Who Gave Birth to His Child Hunter Biden's Laptop According to a New York Post report, the hard drive on Hunter's laptop also contains other recordings that point to his admitted drug use. It also included a 12-minute video that appears to show him smoking crack while engaged in a sex act with an unidentified woman. Hunter Biden had also earlier admitted the extend of his drug use in an interview with CBS This Morning, wherein he said that he spent more time on his hands and knees picking through rugs and smoking anything that resembled crack cocaine. Hunter also said that he once went on 13 days smoking crack and drinking vodka without sleeping throughout the entire time, according to The Sun report. Hunter Biden's water-damaged laptop was dropped off in 2019 at a repair shop in Wilmington, Delaware, but it was never retrieved. The FBI reportedly seized the laptop as part of what Hunter's described as "my tax affairs" probe. Reports had circulated claiming that forensic experts verified the authenticity of messages and images in Hunter's laptop, detailing his private life. The laptop's contents were controversial because it timed during his father, President Joe Biden's presidential election, Business Insider reported. Materials from the laptop had indicated that Joe Biden had been compromised by his son's business dealings in Ukraine. Hunter Biden was on the board of the energy firm Burisma. Critics claimed that other emails contained evidence of influence-peddling by Hunter Biden in China. However, neither claim was substantiated. The Daily Mail said it had obtained 103,000 text messages, 154,000 emails, and more than 2,000 photos from a copy of the hard drive of Hunter Biden's laptop. READ MORE: Leaked Emails from Hunter Biden's Ex-Wife Details Affair With Sister-in-Law WATCH: Hunter Biden on Relationship With His Dad, Addiction Battle - From ABC News Portland, TN (37148) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Whats more, the guards were meant to check the cell every on a regular basis, Justin Sterling, who is an attorney for Romeros mother, told the Times. He added that the crime would have taken hours to commit and that if the guards had been doing their required checks, then Romero would still be alive. Six Laois schools have been announced to get new special education classes next September. Four of them are at primary level and two and secondary school level. The schools have already been notified. The school are Barrowhouse National School, Raheen NS, Our Ladys Meadow NS Durrow, Castletown NS, Dunamase College and Heywood Community School, Ballinakill. Sean Fleming TD Minister of State at the Department of Finance has today said he is pleased to announce the approval for new special education classes for the coming new school year 2021/22 for six schools in Laois. "This is great news for these Laois schools and these classes are of great support to parents and students who require this additional assistance. "Supporting students with special needs and offering opportunities to attend mainstream schools is a priority for the Government, and these additional placements will benefit many students. "I also would like to acknowledge the teachers and support staff, their work in supporting these special classes and their efforts ensure that students have every opportunity to meet their learning needs and potential," Minister Fleming said. A teenager who used "extreme violence" in kicking a defenceless man to death has been sentenced to life detention with a review after eight years. The 17-year-old, who can't be named as he is a minor, will come before the Central Criminal Court again in June 2028 when a judge will use probation and education reports and psychological assessments to review his progress and decide whether he can safely return to society. The sentencing judge said a "significant effort" will be required from State agencies to give hope of rehabilitation, as reports before the court indicate that the boy is at a high risk of violent reoffending. The court previously heard that the boy had experienced "17 years of neglect", cannot articulate the loss, loneliness or rejections he has experienced and that "the only expressive language available to him appears to be anger." The accused pleaded guilty earlier this year to the murder of Romanian national Claudio Robu (39) on a laneway off Madison Road, South Circular Road, Dublin 8 on September 14, 2020. The accused was 16 at the time of the murder. Passing sentence this afternoon (THU) Mr Justice Paul McDermott said the youth had a "high degree of moral culpability" and knew what he was doing when he kicked Mr Robu to death. The judge said it is "disturbing" that he assaulted his victim and then returned some hours later to continue the fatal attack after he had time to withdraw and think about what he had done. He had used "extreme violence," the judge said, and although he did not use a weapon there was "ferocity and intent in his actions." Mr Justice McDermott said there were "very concerning elements" to the case, including that the accused is a "volatile young man who is prone to anger and capable of great violence." Justice McDermott noted mitigating factors including the offender's age, guilty plea and acceptance of moral responsibility. He has also shown, the judge said, "a degree of remorse", and while a lack of empathy has been noted in psychological assessments before the court, Mr Justice McDermott said that is due to the youth's "lack of emotional development". The judge also noted the teenager's difficult upbringing in which he witnessed and experienced violence and was abandoned as a child and left in the care of his step-father, with whom he had a difficult relationship. The accused is now "isolated" the judge said, with little family support. The judge also noted the accused had made significant efforts while in Oberstown Detention Centre and has achieved "some degree of progress in respect of his drug and alcohol abuse." The reports before the court, however, indicate that the boy is at a high risk of violent reoffending. "A significant effort will be required from the State agencies to give hope of rehabilitation," the judge said. Mr Justice McDermott went through the principles for sentencing child offenders. He said there is no guidance in the Children Act or the Parole Act on sentencing children convicted of murder but among the fundamental principles is to work rehabilitation into any sentence imposed on a juvenile and to use detention as a last resort. He said the mandatory term of life imprisonment does not apply and he had to consider the offender's level of development, state of mind at the time of the offence and his level of culpability in the context of his age and maturity. He also considered the offender's capacity for cognitive development, his prospects for rehabilitation and possible safe return to society. The Central Criminal Court judge who reviews the case in 2028 will have the benefit of psychological assessments and probation and education reports that will be submitted to the court registrar every two years. Those reports, Justice McDermott said, will be "relevant and important factors in determining if and when he should be released." Due to the offender's age, Justice McDermott said, it is not possible to assess his personality and character and "time will be required to assess them as he grows older to determine the appropriate release date in his and society's best interests." Addressing the family of the deceased, the judge said the murder had "caused enormous damage and hurt and loss and that is something that cannot be appreciated fully, except by those who suffer as a consequence of this offence." He said the sentence will be of little comfort to those who have suffered the loss of a loved one. A 15-year-old girl is missing from the Kilteel area of County Kildare. Gardai are seeking the public's help in tracing the whereabouts of Mackenzie Haverty-Dunne, who was last seen boarding a Luas Ttram at the Red Cow Luas stop, Dublin 22, on Thursday last, May 27. She is described as being approximately 5'5", with blonde hair, of slim build with blue eyes. She has a distinctive "J" tattoo on her right wrist. When last seen, Mackenzie was wearing a pink jacket, a grey/cream tracksuit and white runners. Anyone with information on her whereabouts are asked to contact Gardai in Naas on 045 884 300 or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666. Gardai have issued an appeal for witnesses and information on the third anniversary of the disappearance of a woman from the Dundalk area. Giedre Raguckaite, a 29-year-old Lithuanian national, arrived in Ireland in early March 2018 and took up residence in Drogheda. She moved to College Heights, Hoey's Lane, Dundalk at the end of April 2018. She moved out of that accommodation on Thursday, May 24, 2018. Between May 24 - 29, 2018, there were two sightings of her in Dundalk area. On Tuesday evening, May 29, 2018 she made contact with a friend and at approximately 6.30pm she called her father in Lithuania. She explained that she had been in a hotel/licensed premises that day for dinner and was socialising. The location of this premises is currently unknown. It is believed she was in the Dundalk area until approximately 8pm. She was last seen being assisted into a house in Laytown on the night of Tuesday, May 29, 2018 at 11pm by two men. It is understood she was intoxicated. It is believed she left that house with these men at approximately 1.45am on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. There have been no sightings or contact with Giedre since that time. Gardai are looking to speak to anyone who: 1) Observed Giedre out socialising on Tuesday night, May 29, 2018. 2) May have provided accommodation for Giedre between May 24 - 25, 2018, or is aware of where she stayed. 3) Is holding, or is aware of the whereabouts of, any personal items of Giedre's that was left behind during that period. 4) Observed Giedre in the company of the two men on the evening of Tuesday, May 29, 2018, or thereafter. 5) May have any information in relation to Giedre's activities during that period. We would ask that anyone in possession of information to contact the incident room in Dundalk Garda Station on 042 388 470, or the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111. All information will be treated in confidence. Gardai have native Lithuanian speakers available should a member of the public wish to converse in that language. A Dublin woman who stole two bottles of vodka from a supermarket in Carrick-on-Shannon was convicted of the offence at the local District Court last week. Amanda Dunne, 118 Castlecurragh Heath, Mullhuddart, Dublin 15 stole two 1 litre bottles of vodka valued 33 each from Glancys SuperValu on August 1, 2019. The court heard that at 11am on August 2, 2019, the owner of Glancy's SuperValu reviewed CCTV footage in the store and noted items being taken from the premises the previous day at 8.10pm. The defendant was identified and later arrested. Ms Dunne has previous convictions for theft offences from Greystones, Dublin and Naas District Courts where she received prison sentences. Addressing Judge Kevin Kilrane last week, Ms Dunne said she had come down to this part of the country with her partner to pick up a car. She said she didn't even know where she was exactly. I was on serious drugs at the time, she said. Kathleen Henry BL, representing, apologised to the court and to the owner of SuperValu on Ms Dunne's behalf. She said a lot of trouble stemmed from Ms Dunne being sexually abused between the ages of 6 and 13. She met her abuser in 2011 and went off the rails on drugs as a result. Ms Henry said the defendant is currently off drugs and is in a detox programme Judge Kilrane convicted and fined her 50. The owner of a Chinese restaurant in Carrick-on-Shannon had no idea who two of the people were who were working in the restaurant kitchen. Appearing before Carrick-on-Shannon District Court last week was Chin Siak Moi (known as Jo Jo) on a plea of guilty to being an employer who did, on October 30, 2019, employ Ng Zi Kang, a foreign national, at Phoenix Court restaurant, Bridge St, Carrick-on-Shannon not in accordance with an employment permit. The case was brought by the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment. Inspector Donnelly and Garda Gillen went into the restaurant on the above date for an on the spot investigation. They found three employees cooking food in the kitchen. Two could not give any reasons why they were there and one of these snuck out the door. The other man cooperated. The owner was called in and she told the investigators she had no idea that two of the people in her kitchen were working there. Michael Keane, solicitor, said his client runs a reputable restaurant and has all her VAT and PRSI up to date and in order. He said the man who fled is an employee of hers now and all his paperwork is in order. Mr Keane said he just panicked when he saw the Gardai and took off. He said the defendant was unaware he was in the kitchen working at the time. She has now regularised his paperwork. The other person, Ng Zi Kang, was never an employee but was the boyfriend of her sister-in-law. Mr Keane said she was unaware he was there working and he wasnt a regular attendee and was just helping out. He was living in an apartment in the town, he had no documentation and has now left the country. Mr Keane said voluminous correspondence on all the staff has now been submitted by the defendant. He asked Judge Kilrane not to convict as it wasnt a willful breach by his client. Judge Kilrane said that if the costs of 500 was paid to Coughlan White Solicitors, on behalf of the Minister, he would apply the Probation Act 1.1. THE new 1,000-student school in Mungret has taken a big leap forward after councillors agreed the 450,000 sale of the land. Permission was granted for the school back in January by the local authority. Now, Limerick City and County Council has proposed the disposal of its land at Dromdarrig to the Limerick-Clare Education and Training Board (LCETB) who will be the new patrons. Councillors formally rubber-stamped the sale at this months meeting. Council will earn 450,000 from the sale of the 10-acre site. LIMERICK City and County Council says it is not planning any safety measures for either the Bloodmill Road or Old Singland Road. In a written response to a question from Fianna Fail member Catherine Slattery, Aidan Finn, engineer wrote: Should an issue arise in the area, it will be assessed under the traffic management policy. Cllr Slattery had said that a new development of 140 homes on Bloodmill Road will increase the traffic in the area. It is hard enough as it is trying to get out on to the Childers Road in the mornings at present. What will it be like next year, she asked. The City East councillor warned both the Old Singland Road and the Bloodmill Road will be gridlocked with the extra traffic. I will be following up again on this matter as the current residents in the area are very worried about the extra traffic this new development will bring. The Old Singland Road will be gridlocked in the morning and already has eight housing estates branching off it. While housing is welcome across the city the council should be making sure that there are proper traffic management systems in place, Cllr Slattery added. While he could have received 20 years for each manslaughter charge and 10 years for each assault charge, a judge agreed to probation and ordered him to spend four years in prison without early release followed by 10 years on supervised release. The ex-astronaut could also be sent back to prison for 16 years if he violates probation following his release, said District Attorney Hays Webb, who opposed the lighter treatment. ***Reader discrection is advised*** A NEWCASTLE West man was fined 750 when he was convicted at the local court of four breaches of the Animal Health and Welfare Act. Four dogs, removed by the ISPCA, were also forfeited and left where they had been rehomed. Before the court was Dermot Quilligan, of The Archways, Newcastle West who pleaded to the four charges of failing to secure the safety and welfare of four individual dogs. An ISPCA inspector, an authorised officer under the Animal Welfare Act, went to Mr Quilligans home on June 25 last year and found seven dogs in a pen in his back yard. The pen looked as if all the faeces and urine were pushed to one side, she said, and she described the condition of each of the four dogs she removed. One, a Shitsu, had very sore eyes and skin, she said, and the ears were chronically infected. A King Charles spaniel had very sore eyes, an unhealthy coat and the teeth were very badly worn down. This indicated the dog was trying to bite its way out of an environment over some time, the court heard. A Labrador pup was very underweight and had very sore feet. A fourth dog had sore eyes, an ear infection and problems with its coat and nails. One of the dogs was pregnant and whelped soon after. The four dogs were removed, assessed by a vet and treated before being rehomed. Pleading for her client, solicitor Kate Cussen said he had no similar previous convictions. The veterinary report said the dogs were bright and alert. She put the condition of the dogs down to lack of cleanliness and lack of veterinary care, but said her client was very fond of his dogs and had made attempts to clean the pen. She pointed out that there was food and water in the pen. He apologises for the condition but he had no intention they would suffer in anyway. My client accepts he was at fault, she said. But she pointed out that just four of the seven dogs were seized and removed. There were no concerns about the other three, she said. The enclosure was too small and inappropriate for the number of dogs that were there. Her client now has just two dogs, she added. Judge John King fined Mr Quilligan 250 on each of three charges but took the fourth into consideration. He also ordered him to pay costs of 350. A LIMERICK based company has started a charity to fundraise for a two-year old Roscommon boy who suffers from the rare and incurable illness Metachromatic Leukodystrophy (MLD). VIOTAS is a smart grid technology company hoping to raise 150,000 for this boy and his family to give them the support they need. Metachromatic Leukodystrophy, that young Roscommon boy, Aidan, has, is an extremely rare illness. It is actually detectable at birth but as its so rare they dont test for it in Ireland. Aidans father, Sean Kenny, is working hard with another father whose child suffers from the same illness to have MLD added to the Newborn Screening Programme. Their proposal has gone through the Seanad and is awaiting a vote in the Dail. So far, the company has had a company wide 250,000 step challenge in which they raised 28,000 for Aidan. But as one employee of the company describes, we still have a long way to go. They urge people to donate to the cause and if you would like to support Aidan and his family you can do so through his GoFundMe page called All for Aidan. THE number of patients with Covid-19 who are being treated in hospital has dropped to 90 with 35 in ICU, the Department of Health has confirmed. It has also reported that as of midnight on Friday, it had been notified of an additional 464 confirmed cases of the disease across the country. The figures are subject to validation and may be amended following review once the HSE's IT system is restored following the recent cyber attack. There is no county-by-county breakdown and the daily figures for Limerick for Friday, Saturday and Sunday will not be known until early next week. According to figures collated by the Department of Public Health Mid West, there were 60 new cases across the city and county on Thursday, 61 on Wednesday and 59 on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the Mayor of the city and county of Limerick, Cllr Michael Collins has called on people to refocus their efforts ahead of the re-opening of the hospitality sector over the next ten days saying members of the public "owe it to them". Mumbai: State-owned Bank of Baroda (BoB) will rely on the strength of its corporate book to tide over the second wave, even as small businesses and retail loans could cause some discomfort. Sanjiv Chadha, chief executive of the bank said on Saturday that as far as the second wave is concerned, the bank is likely to see pretty much a repeat of what it witnessed last year. Last year, we were not confident what would happen to the corporate sector. This time, we can say with confidence that the second wave has largely left the large corporate businesses untouched," said Chadha. The lender has a corporate loan book of 2.92 trillion, almost unchanged from the last financial year. Its retail and micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) book stood at 1.2 trillion (14.4% higher than FY20) and 96,200 crore (10.2% growth), respectively. According to Chadha, even for corporate accounts which were relatively weaker and had got restructured last year, there would be no need to revisit in most cases. Given the fact that 50% our book is corporate, it is the performance of the corporate loans which will define the overall impact on the bank," he said, adding that as was the case with the first wave, the impact is going to be more as far as retail is concerned and significantly more for MSMEs. So, the areas of concern remain the MSME sector and to a lesser extent, the retail sector, he said. However, Chadha believes that some of the recent measures announced by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), like another round of debt recast, will aid borrowers. On 5 May, RBI stepped in to rescue and small business borrowers with loans of up to 25 crore, allowing lenders to restructure their debt and offer some respite from the stress induced by the second wave of the covid-19 pandemic. Eligible categories would include consumer credit, education loan, loans given for creation or enhancement of immovable assets like housing, and loans for investment in financial assets like shares and debentures. In a separate notification, the central bank also allowed MSMEs with loans of up to 25 crore to be eligible for recast under what it calls Resolution Framework 2.0. We have the tools to address the issues that would arise from the second wave. We believe that our overall credit quality continues to improve, largely driven by the fact that the corporate credit book will keep on moving," he said. On retail loans, while there will be some stress but since the bank underwrites solely on the basis of credit scores the quality of the book is very good and withstood the impact of the pandemic, he said. Post-moratorium, our borrowers came back and paid us, and we also have the additional possibility for again addressing any issue through restructuring. However, I feel that retail borrowers are very careful in opting for recasts. While there might be some delinquency in one or two instalments, but the overall book should come through," he added. The bank reported a loss of 1,047 crore in the three months to March 2021 as against a profit of 507 crore in the same period last year. The loss, it said, was primarily because it shifted to the new tax regime under Section 115BBA of Income Tax Act and faced was a one-time impact of 3,314 crore. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. Ministry of Home Affairs on Saturday invited non-Muslims like Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists belonging to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and residing in 13 districts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab to apply for Indian citizenship. The Union home ministry issued a notification in this effect for immediate implementation of the order under the Citizenship Act 1955 and Rules framed under the law in 2009. The fresh order is no way connected to the Citizenship Amendment Act enacted in 2019. The Rules under the CAA are yet to be framed by the government. When the CAA was enacted in 2019, there were widespread protests in different parts of the country and even riots took place in Delhi in early 2020 in the wake of these protests. According to the CAA, Indian citizenship will be given to non-Muslim persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian -- who had come to India till December 31, 2014. "In exercise of powers conferred under Section 16 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (57 of 1955), the central government hereby directs that powers exercisable by it for registration as citizen of India under Section 5, or for grant of certificate of naturalisation under section 6 of the Citizenship Act 1955 in respect of any person belonging to minority community in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, residing in the districts mentioned and the states mentioned below....," the notification said. People who are eligible to apply for Indian citizenship are those currently living in the districts of Morbi, Rajkot, Patan and Vadodara of Gujarat, Durg and Balodabazar in Chhattisgarh, Jalore, Udaipur, Pali, Barmer and Sirohi in Rajasthan, Faridabad in Haryana and Jalandhar in Punjab. Subscribe to Mint Newsletters * Enter a valid email * Thank you for subscribing to our newsletter. COVID-19 interrupted one of life's most familiar acts: the warm, enveloping comfort of a hug. The pandemic taught us many things, some more important than others but one of those is just how much many of us rely on these embraces for a sense of reassurance, consolation and calm. We've become profoundly aware of the significance of this simple act in our human lives but does hugging exist in the rest of the animal kingdom? Are there any other species that embrace in the way humans do? To answer that, first we have to define exactly what we mean by "hug." From a subjective human standpoint, of course, a hug happens when someone wraps their arms around someone else. Naturally, this restricts hugging to animals with arms and those are mainly primates, like us. This quickly reveals that, while we might see hugs as a uniquely human trait, hugging is actually just as prominent in the lives of nonhuman primates. Related: Do any animals know their grandparents? Comfort and consolation Take, for example, bonobos (Pan paniscus), which are often described as the peace-loving hippies of the primate world. These primates have been a lifelong subject of study for Zanna Clay, a comparative and developmental psychologist and primatologist at Durham University in the United Kingdom. Clay studies social interactions among bonobos, and much of her observational work takes place at a sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the Congo for bonobos whose lives have been disrupted by hunting. At this sanctuary, it's common to see troops of infants obsessively clinging to one another as they walk around in tandem. "You have quite a lot of young orphans who need quite a lot of reassurance, and they do what we call the 'hug walk': They hug together and walk along in a little train," Clay told Live Science. Clay says that this behavior is more common in the sanctuary than it would be in the wild possibly because bonobos are also exposed to embraces from their human caregivers but it still does occur in bonobos' natural lives. In fact, this behavior probably has roots in the maternal behavior of female bonobos, which cradle their infants when they are small. Researchers have observed that this hugging behavior is most common in young bonobos and typically occurs after a bonobo has experienced conflict or stress. Often, in these cases, a distressed bonobo will stretch out its arms in a beseeching gesture, and another bonobo will dramatically rush toward the squealing infant and encircle it in a tight embrace. "A bonobo might request [a hug], so they will seek someone out and sort of ask for help, or somebody might offer them one," Clay said. Two bonobo juveniles hug each other at Lola ya Bonobo Sanctuary. (Image credit: Anup Shah via Getty Images) It's difficult to judge animal emotions, but the evidence points to the likelihood that hugging reassures these primates, just as it does humans, Clay said. Intriguingly, in some of her previous research , Clay and her colleagues discovered that orphaned bonobos were less likely to offer sympathetic hugs to distressed peers, compared with young bonobos that had been reared by their mothers. This might indicate the importance of parental care in laying the foundation for this social gesture in primates, Clay said. Bonobos may be particularly fond of a good cuddle, but the maternal roots of this embrace make this behavior common across many other primate species. In many of these species, mothers hold their infants closely for extended periods of their infancy. For instance, chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) bonobos' close relatives are also known to embrace . This is especially notable in tense situations such as "border patrols," when chimps rove around to assert their presence and protect their territories, Clay said. "If they hear a predator, or another chimpanzee group, or something scary, that's when you'll see them touching each other and holding on to each other," Clay said. The hug seems to function as reassurance in the face of danger, Clay added another relatable feature for humans, who typically reach for one another when afraid. Related: Do animals ever get sunburned? In the case of crested black macaques (Macaca nigra), which live in Indonesia, hugging comes with an added flourish: These monkeys request hugs by audibly smacking their lips an invitation that's not reserved for family but extended generously to other members of the troop. In addition, young orangutans have been observed rushing to hug each other when confronted with the threat of a snake , thus emphasizing the hug's apparently reassuring role in times of stress or fear. And in another macaque species, the Tonkean macaque (Macaca tonkeana), researchers have discovered that consoling hugs are plentiful after a fight and may even be accompanied by a kiss. Proactive peacekeeping Most research on hugging in primates focuses on its assumed role in reassuring and consoling others which makes sense, because this mirrors what hugs mean to humans. But research on the lives of spider monkeys reveals a different reason primates engage in these seemingly affectionate displays. Filippo Aureli is an ethologist someone who studies animal behavior and is affiliated with both the Universidad Veracruzana in Mexico and Liverpool John Moores University in the United Kingdom; he studies how spider monkeys use hugging not to recover from conflict but rather to prevent it. In research based on weeks of observing spider monkeys in the tropical forests of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, he discovered that these primates approach each other and embrace more in scenarios in which tensions threaten to boil over into conflict for instance, when two monkey subgroups meet after a long time apart and fuse to form a larger troop. "The embrace is done by individuals that have a problematic relationship," said Aureli, who is an editor on a book about conflict resolution in animals . "They may need to be together, and they may need to cooperate but they are not best friends. And so, the embrace is a way to send a signal and really manage that conflicted relationship." He explained that because an embrace involves a high degree of vulnerability after all, one animal is fully exposing its body to another this "helps to clarify, 'Hey, I come with good intentions.'" Related: Do animals laugh? It's possible that hugging as a means of proactive damage control occurs in other primates, as well. But currently, spider monkeys are the best-studied example of this aspect of the behavior, Aureli said. He described their embraces as "preemptive peacemaking," and his study even suggests that humans could learn a thing or two from these careful creatures about how to manage conflict. "It's much better to prevent than to repair," Aureli said. Spider monkeys, including one cradling a baby, sit on a log. (Image credit: Michael Nunez / 500px) Speaking of humans, how do our own hugs compare to those of other primates? "At the end of the day, we are primates, and affiliative contact is a superimportant component of our social life," Clay said. "So, to me, there's obvious continuity in some of the functions of embracing and hugging with humans." As in nonhuman primates, being held and embraced by our parents in our infancy sets us up for the reassuring, consoling function that hugs play in our lives. According to Clay, the one notable difference between our hugs and those of our primate kin is that humans seem to have layered more social symbolism onto the embrace. "I think the difference is that with humans, it's become a kind of conventionalized greeting or parting gesture," Clay said. "Apes don't tend to do that." Beyond primates Of course, we have to be careful not to assume that hugging looks the same in other species as it does in humans. Hugs in primates are easy to identify because they look like ours, but other species may have hugs that appear different. "If we identify the function of a hugging embrace, then really, the form could be completely different maybe less fascinating for us as humans, because we don't recognize it," Aureli said. "But it could basically fulfill the same role." Primate studies indicate that embraces function to bond, reassure, console and make peace, but hugs could have myriad analogues in other animals. For example, horses groom one another, and studies reveal that this activity decreases their heart rates a hallmark of comfort and calm. Researchers have observed that if the prairie vole (Microtus ochrogaster) detects signs of distress in its mate, it will rush over and rapidly start grooming the mate's fur ; researchers have interpreted this behavior as a possible act of consolation. In birds, preening between pairs is thought to increase social bonds . Lions (Panthera leo) rub heads and nuzzle , which is believed to boost their social connections. Hundreds of other mammal species lean against, nestle and huddle with one another to provide comfort and warmth, or to form a united front against danger which might play a similar role to the steadying hug we see in primates. Meanwhile, dolphins seem to display a kind of consoling peacemaking behavior: Studies show that these cetaceans are more likely to engage in reconciliatory activities after a conflict for instance, giving each other a flipper rub, or gently towing each other through the water, like an apologetic piggyback. So, after the separation and stress brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we might take heart in knowing that what humans know as a hug could have many equivalents in our fellow animals. All around the world, there are animals carrying out small acts of comfort and consolation, and making difficult situations a bit easier for one another. That thought is almost as comforting as a big, cozy hug itself. Originally published on Live Science. Click here to read the full article. Gavin MacLeod, a sitcom veteran who played seaman Happy Haines on McHales Navy, Murray on Mary Tyler Moore and the very different, vaguely patrician Captain Stubing on The Love Boat, has died. He was 90. MacLeods nephew, Mark See, confirmed his death to Variety. MacLeod died in the early morning on May 29. No cause of death was given, but MacLeods health had declined in recent months. MacLeod played a relatively minor character on ABC hit McHales Navy, starring Ernest Borgnine, but as newswriter Murray Slaughter, he was certainly one of the stars of Mary Tyler Moore, appearing in every one of the classic comedys 168 episodes during its 1970-77 run on CBS. Murray was married to Marie (Joyce Bulifant) but was in love with Moores Mary Richards. His desk was right next to Marys in the WJM newsroom, so MacLeod was frequently in the shot during the sitcom, and Murray, like all the other characters, was richly developed a hallmark of MTM shows. MacLeod originally tried out for the part of Lou Grant, which went to Ed Asner, but claimed to be happy that he ended up playing Murray. He also auditioned for the role of Archie Bunker on All in the Family, but of reading the script for the first time, he wrote in his memoir, Immediately I thought, This is not the script for me. The character is too much of a bigot. I cant say these things. When Norman Lear called the actor to say that Carroll OConnor had gotten the part, MacLeod was relieved. The Moore cast MacLeod, Asner, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Georgia Engel (Ted Knight had died in 1986) reminisced with Moore in 2002 on CBS The Mary Tyler Moore Reunion. Asner paid tribute to MacLeod on Twitter, writing: My heart is broken. Gavin was my brother, my partner in crime (and food) and my comic conspirator. I will see you in a bit Gavin. Tell the gang I will see them in a bit. Betty! Its just you and me now. My heart is broken. Gavin was my brother, my partner in crime (and food) and my comic conspirator. I will see you in a bit Gavin. Tell the gang I will see them in a bit. Betty! Its just you and me now. pic.twitter.com/se4fwh7G1G Ed Asner (@TheOnlyEdAsner) May 29, 2021 MacLeod had the great fortune to roll right from one hit show to another in 1977, when Moore ended and ABCs The Love Boat began. The hourlong romantic comedy set on a cruise ship ran for 10 years. The actors Captain Stubing was known for his signature salute. Even after the end of the voyage in 1987, the actor returned for telepic The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage in 1990 and for the Reunion episode of rebooted series Love Boat: The Next Wave in 1998. MacLeod may, indeed, hold a record for consecutive long-running series: He went straight from The Mary Tyler Moore Show (168 episodes) to The Love Boat (249 episodes). The New York Times said in 2010: Perhaps no actor has embraced a signature role the way Mr. MacLeod has with Captain Stubing. Since The Love Boat went off the air, he has been a spokesman for Princess Cruises. In 1997, the actor joined the rest of The Love Boat cast on Oprah in what was the first full cast appearance since the show was cancelled. Another cast reunion occurred in 2013 on The Talk. MacLeod was born Allan George See in Mount Kisco, N.Y. His mother worked for Readers Digest, while his father was an electrician who was part Chippewa. He grew up in Pleasantville, N.Y., and went to Ithaca College, where he studied acting and graduated in 1952. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he moved to New York City and worked at Radio City Music Hall as an usher and elevator operator while seeking work as an actor. During this time he changed his name. After a few uncredited film roles, MacLeod made his credited bigscreen debut in the 1958 Susan Hayward vehicle I Want to Live, playing a police lieutenant, then played a G.I. in Gregory Peck starrer Pork Chop Hill the next year. His supporting role in Blake Edwards WWII comedy Operation Petticoat, starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and focusing on the chaotic goings on aboard a submarine, gave the young actor a flavor of what he would be doing a few years later on McHales Navy. In the meantime he appeared in the 1960 thriller Twelve Hours to Kill, which starred future I Dream of Jeannie star Barbara Eden; Blake Edwards musical comedy High Time, starring Bing Crosby and Fabian; and the critically hailed but now forgotten Korean War film War Hunt. He also did a boatload of guest appearances on TV before his stint on McHales Navy. MacLeod left McHales Navy in order to be able to appear in a supporting role in the excellent period adventure film The Sand Pebbles, starring Steve McQueen, and he appeared in a number of other films throughout the decade: A Man Called Gannon and Blake Edwards Peter Sellers comedy The Party in 1968; The Thousand Plane Raid, The Comic and The Intruders in 1969; and, in 1970, the World War II caper film Kellys Heroes, in which he played Moriarty, Oddballs machine-gunner and mechanic. In the meantime he was guesting on both dramas (Perry Mason, Ben Casey, Ironside, Hawaii Five-O, The Big Valley) and comedies (The Andy Griffith Show, My Favorite Martian, Hogans Heroes). In December 1961, he guested on The Dick Van Dyke Show in what was his first time working with Mary Tyler Moore. After his years on Mary Tyler Moore and The Love Boat, MacLeod did not work on a steady basis he did not have to. He made an impression, however, in a 2000 episode of HBO prison drama Oz in which he played the Roman Catholic Cardinal Frances Abgott, with whom Rita Morenos nun Sister Pete discusses leaving the order. The actor had assumed a certain gravitas as Captain Stubing, even amid the silliness of The Love Boat, that made this role possible in a way that it couldnt have been before. In the 2000s MacLeod also guested on series including The King of Queens, JAG, Touched by an Angel and That 70s Show. MacLeod, who had appeared on Broadway in 1962 in The Captains and the Kings, also returned to stage work after The Love Boat. He toured with Michael Learned of The Waltons in A.R. Gurneys Love Letters, and he appeared in musicals such as Gigi and Copacabana between 1997 and 2003. At a concert in 2008, he conducted the Colorado Symphony in Denver. MacLeod was first married, from 1955-1972, to Joan Rootvik, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. He married actress Patti Kendig in 1974. They divorced in 1982 but remarried in 1985. During the mid-1980s, MacLeod and his second wife became Evangelical Christians, and the pair credited the religion for reuniting them. He wrote about it in his 1987 book Back on Course, the Remarkable Story of a Divorce That Ended in Remarriage. He and Kendig appeared in the Christian big-screen time-travel epic Time Changer, along with Hal Linden, in 2002, and he played the title role in the 2008 Christian film The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry. His memoir This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life, was published in 2013. He is survived by Kendig and four children by Rootvik. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. Ricky Gervais has responded to misconduct allegations against After Life producer Charlie Hanson, a long-time collaborator on numerous projects by the British comedian. I am shocked and appalled to learn of the historical allegations made by a number of women against Charlie Hanson. The decision was made to immediately remove him from production and I am confident the matter is being handled thoroughly, said Gervais in a statement on Saturday. Hanson produced two seasons of Gervais and Stephen Merchants BBC and HBO comedy Extras as well as the pairs film Cemetery Junction. He was also behind Gervais and Merchants series Lifes Too Short and Derek, which starred Gervais. Hanson was revealed as the male producer removed from a Netflix production after the streaming giant received an anonymous email detailing historical allegations about the executive. News of the producers removal was first reported by industry outlet Broadcast, though a name was withheld. On Saturday, U.K. newspaper The Times revealed the producer was Hanson. Netflix later confirmed that the production in question was season 3 of After Life. According to the outlet, 11 women have complained about Hansons conduct. Charlie Hanson is a predator who uses his reputation, connections and standing in order to groom far younger, impressionable and sometimes vulnerable women into trusting him, the women alleged in an email addressed to Netflix and BAFTA, excerpted in The Times. At times he will promise them a starry career under his wing, and then exploits that trust in creepy and illegal ways, continued the letter. He then tries to diminish the seriousness of what hes done by telling these young women us that it wasnt as bad as it seemed, that it was somehow blameless. He does his best to convince himself and others that this method of operating is fine. But we know it is not fine. Variety understands that Hanson and his lawyers havent yet been sent a copy of this letter. Hanson has denied all allegations through his lawyer, who released a statement: Our client is shocked and appalled by these historical and false allegations of improper conduct towards women. He maintains that he has never acted inappropriately on any production, or at all, and has never had any complaints made about his conduct over the course of many decades in the media industry. Hanson said as part of the statement: I have been made aware of allegations made against me concerning improper conduct towards women dating back many years. Based on the summaries that have been provided to me, I understand that many of these accusations are made anonymously and are demonstrably false. I have not had one complaint in decades of work in the media industry. I categorically reject any wrongdoing on my part, and strongly refute the allegations that have been levelled at me. I have worked with and supported hundreds of men and women during my working life and will do what is necessary to protect and/or restore my reputation. I will also cooperate with any formal inquiries. The matter is now in the hands of my solicitors. Hanson is the latest British media figure to face misconduct allegations following bombshell revelations in late April about actor-producer Noel Clarke, who was accused by at least 20 women of an array of claims, including sexual harassment and bullying. Clarkes production company Unstoppable is still being investigated by super-indie All3Media. His show, Bulletproof, was canceled by Sky, as revealed by Variety. Naman Ramachandran contributed to this report. Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. The 20th century is likely unique in laying claim to three sociopathic dictators whose complete disregard for humanity in either the individual or the collective has justifiably earned them the label monsters. Hitler, Mao and Stalin shredded utopian notions of moral progress, their crimes exposing the inadequacy of language to convey the scale of their atrocities while sending psychologists tripping over themselves in an attempt to explain the nature of evil. True to form, Sergei Loznitsa (The Event, Maidan) doesnt attempt to explain the unfathomable, and he makes language subservient to the image because he knows that words lie. Of course, images lie too Stalin was an expert on that subject but when edited to reveal rather than disguise, they have a devastating power. Such is State Funeral, an awe-inspiring montage of Stalins orchestrated lying-in-state and obsequies, whose impact moves from merely impressive to staggering depending upon the viewers knowledge of Uncle Joe and his henchmen. On a purely cinematic level, its true that little background is needed. Thats a testament to Loznitsas brilliance as a filmmaker, guided by an uncanny understanding of editing and soundscape. Although a brief text at the very end summarizes Stalins murderous rule, its hard to imagine someone watching State Funeral without some foreknowledge. How else can we read into the thousands of faces of people burdened by decades of starvation, mass purges and the devastation of the war, ended just over seven years earlier? Do we see genuine grief or something even more frightening, an incomprehensibility spawned by suffering? Audiences unable to identify Stalins cronies will still feel the films power, yet that power is amplified when contemplating the crimes of Lavrentiy Beria or Lazar Kaganovich as they pay respects to the man who weaponized their amorality. The Soviet propaganda machine went into overdrive when Stalin died in March 1953, employing some 200 cameramen to capture events from the moment the coffin was brought inside Moscows House of the Unions to the interment alongside Lenin and the surprisingly short speeches that followed. Loznitsa pored over 40 hours of footage from those four days, not just of the events in the capital but scenes of mourners from across the Soviet Union, incorporating images of Siberian workers, Tajik villagers, Estonian city-dwellers and others all listening to announcers broadcasting tributes over omnipresent loudspeakers. As originally intended, the footage reinforced the party line spouted by Stalins protege and successor Georgy Malenkov at the funeral, about how Stalin eliminated ethnic conflict, yet if ethnic conflict had temporarily been quelled, it was through forced mass migration and terror. Loznitsa expects us to interrogate these images of a nation in mourning, demanding that we question the source of these expressions of grief. The answer, which he refuses to supply, is a complex one given how Stalin promoted a cult of personality that left the nation bereft when he died: After decades as the god-like father figure, his absence created an empty chasm. By that point, the vacuum of disinformation made it easier not to question things, while the horrors perpetrated by the regime ensured any dissent was crushed. As such, it can be hard to pinpoint differences between zombie-like numbness and genuine sadness at the death of a leader. Equally ambiguous though no less complex are the expressions on the faces of the privileged who stream past the coffin in Moscow. These scenes are the films centerpiece, alternating between wondrously restored crisp black-and-white and deep saturated color, their seamlessness a testament to the remarkable skill with which Danielus Kokanauskis spliced them together. Stalins waxy body lies atop a literal mountain of palms and flowers, the open casket tilted at an angle to allow the masses to see his face practically hovering above them. The scenography is as surreal as it is obscene, arranged so the man responsible for the deaths of millions could be venerated by crowds who climb the elaborate staircase and then file past with astonishing rapidity, the pace designed to allow the maximum number of people through. Theyre all there, the leaders of the Soviet state, the men who carried out murderous campaigns on behalf of the dictator, some accompanied by their wives. Delegations from different towns and societies compete for the lavishness of their floral wreaths. Loznitsa doesnt forget to show the foreign dignitaries who flew in from the communist bloc and non-aligned nations as well as iconic figures such as Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, defenders and apologists only some of whom later questioned their loyalty. Most incongruous are the ambassadors at the funeral itself, dressed in regulation top hats that feel decidedly out of place. As one expects with Loznitsa, theres no guiding narration and the only commentary comes from radio broadcasts of the time offering encomiums of stomach-churning disingenuousness. From the roof of the Lenin mausoleum with Stalins name freshly carved on the front, the leading party apparatchiks deliver brief words of hyperbole. The film finishes with a Fellini-esque shot of Stalins portrait dangling from a crane as it flies over an industrial site, accompanied by Sergei Lemeshevs 1951 recording of Matvey Blanters Lullaby, coaxing a child to fall asleep in the warmth of Stalins paternal love state-sponsored gaslighting has never been more terrifying. Reviewed online, Rome, May 18, 2021. (In Venice Film Festival.) Running time: 135 MIN. Running Time: Running time: 135 MIN. Production (Documentary The Netherlands-Lithuania) A Mubi release of an Atoms & Void, Studio Uljana Kim production. (World sales: Atoms & Void, The Hague.) Producers: Sergei Loznitsa, Maria Choustova. Crew Director, writer: Sergei Loznitsa. Editor: Danielus Kokanauskis. Sound: Vladimir Golovnitski. With (Russian dialogue) Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Click here to read the full article. When director David Leitch and Brad Pitt told Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group President Sanford Panitch that they were keen to cast Aaron Taylor-Johnson for the ensemble thriller Bullet Train, Panitch wasnt super-aware of the British actor. It was a I had to look him up kind of thing, Panitch tells Variety. I didnt have a lot of familiarity. And then we start watching these incredible dailies [from Bullet Train], and you really see the full-on action star. Hes charming and hes funny and hes holding his own against Brad Pitt. A lot of people cant do that. Taylor-Johnson who also headlined the R-rated comic book hero franchise Kick-Ass and played Quicksilver in Marvel Studios Avengers: Age of Ultron so impressed Panitch that he instantly shot to the top of the list for Kraven the Hunter, the long-gestating adaptation of the Marvel comics anti-hero and Spider-Man antagonist dubbed the greatest hunter in the world. After a conversation with director J.C. Chandor (Triple Frontier), Taylor-Johnson landed the role. Kraven is the latest project in Sonys renewed efforts to capitalize on its the trove of Marvel characters that came with the film rights to Spider-Man. Along with Venom starring Tom Hardy and its upcoming sequel Venom: Let There Be Carnage with Woody Harrelson as the title villain, Sony also has Jared Leto playing the vampiric Morbius, now set to premiere on Jan. 21. To date, none of these movies, however, explicitly involve Spider-Man or, at least, the Tom Holland version of the character, who is still part of Sonys unprecedented agreement to share the iconic web-slinger with Disneys Marvel Studios. The latest, and (on paper, at least) final, film in that partnership, Spider-Man: No Way Home, is set to premiere this December. But Panitch makes a point of separating Spidey from its other superhero titles. We dont really think of our 900 characters as the Spidey-verse, he says. We have a Marvel universe. The volume of characters we have you know, wait until you see this next Venom. You dont miss Spider-Man. He pauses. Itll be exciting if they do meet, right? Therein lies the rub. In the world of sprawling comic-book universes, the tangled web between Sonys Marvel-verse and Disneys Marvel Cinematic Universe is especially perplexing. Because Hollands Peter Parker is part of the MCU, any appearance he would make in Sonys other Marvel films would seem to retroactively rope in characters like Hardys Venom and Taylor-Johnsons Kraven in the MCU as well but Marvel Studios is only a producing partner with Sony on the Holland movies. Confusing things even further, the first trailer for Morbius teased an appearance by Michael Keaton, who played the Spider-Man villain Vulture in the Sony/Marvel Studios co-production Spider-Man: Homecoming. Panitch understands that the inherent tension in this convoluted nexus of intellectual property has engendered confusion and frustration among fans. While he remains circumspect about any details, Panitch is also candid that he expects that tension will soon be resolvedsomehow and that greenlighting Kraven, a character whos also tussled with Venom in the comics, fills in another piece of that puzzle. There actually is a plan, he says. I think now maybe its getting a little more clear for people where were headed and I think when No Way Home comes out, even more will be revealed. One of the worst kept secrets in Hollywood is that No Way Home will be diving headfirst into the multiverse, and incorporating characters from Sonys earlier Spider-Man movies that starred Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Alfred Molina, for example, told Variety in April that he will be digitally de-aged in No Way Home to look like he did as the villain Doc Ock at the end of 2004s Spider-Man 2. The implication is that whatever happens in No Way Home could allow for Holland to live in Sonys Marvel movies while also somehow being a part of the MCU. But beyond another appearance by Hollands Spidey in an as-yet-unannounced Marvel Studios film, No Way Home is the last film in Marvel and Sonys current deal to share the character. When asked what the future holds for Spidey and Marvel Studios, Panitch sounds an optimistic, if vague, note invoking Marvel Studios chief Kevin Feige. The great thing is we have this very excellent relationship with Kevin, he says. Theres an incredible sandbox there to play with. We want those MCU movies to be absolutely huge, because thats great for us and our Marvel characters, and I think thats the same thing on their side. But we have a great relationship. Theres lots of opportunities, I think, that are going to happen. One of those opportunities would seem to be finally making a movie about the Sinister Six the cabal of Spider-Man villains, including Doc Ock and Kraven. Sony tried once before, as a spin-off of 2014s The Amazing Spider-Man 2. So does making a Kraven movie mean the studio is close to bringing this heinous half-dozen together for real? Its tough, because I think these projects are the kind of things we have to work on in the dark, he says. Theyre not ready until theyre ready. Kraven is a great example because we just didnt rush it. We could have made that three plus years ago. Its just now the scripts awesome, J.C. was the right choice, and we found the movie star because it was just kismet, and watching this other movie and realizing that could be the perfect casting. As for the Sinister Six? After a long pause, Panitch chuckles. It would be very cool, wouldnt it? Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Though charges over Hahnes death have yet to be determined, nobody else is being looked at in connection to the shooting, though an investigation is underway, Rasheta told the paper. U.S. Border Patrol agents arrested four convicted sex offenders who tried to cross the border illegally in three separate incidents, authorities said. The first case occurred at about 6:30 a.m. Wednesday, when Laredo South Station agents apprehended 13 migrants near the river by Laredo College South Campus. One man was identified as Miguel Gonzalez-Cervantes, a 35-year-old Mexican citizen. A records check showed a prior deportation, and a felony conviction for sexual assault and indecency with a child. Gonzalez Cervantes was sentenced to two years in prison and eight years of probation. Gonzalez-Cervantes is a registered sex offender. A second apprehension occurred later that day, when agents detained nine migrants in the same area. One was identified as Wilmar Antonio Cardona-Rivera, a 37-year-old citizen of Guatemala. He had a felony conviction for sex with a minor in Santa Ana, California. Cardona-Rivera is also a registered sex offender, according to Border Patrol. He was sentenced to 16 months confinement and three years probation. On Thursday morning, Lardeo South Station agents along with U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air unit apprehended 22 migrants walking in the brush near Rio Bravo. Two migrants were later discovered to have prior arrests and felony convictions for sex offenses. One was identified as Victor Cordero-Rodriguez, a 45-year-old Mexican citizen, had extensive criminal history, including an arrest and conviction for aggravated criminal sexual abuse of a minor. He received a sentence of three years probation. The other suspect was identified as Jose Luis Monroy-Reyes, a 57-year-old Mexican citizen with a prior felony conviction for indecency with a child in Austin. Authorities said the sex offender will be prosecuted for their immigration violations and eventually deported. The hard work of our agents led to the arrest of these dangerous criminals, ensuring the safety of the citizens of our community and throughout the country. Our agents remain vigilant and alert, regardless of the area they are patrolling, Border Patrol said in a statement. The beginning of the school year when you got to show off your new duds, new cars, new looks! Sports! Playing, cheering, watching high school athletics. The arts: Dramatic arts, musical groups and shows, graphic arts groups, debate, etc. The prom! No dancing the night away or punch bowl antics. The daily interactions. Just being with the group, hanging with friends and classmates. Access to college recruiters and advisors its harder to line up higher education. Walking onstage to get a diploma while all the family is watching with everyone elses family. Vote View Results (Alliance News) - Irish people will be able to once again travel to other EU member states from July 19, the government has confirmed. Ireland will broadly implement the EU's digital Covid certificate from July 19, facilitating travel between EU member states, Norway, Switzerland, Liechtenstein and Iceland. The digital Covid certificate will facilitate free movement in the EU for people who have been vaccinated or can provide a negative PCR test taken 72 hours prior to arrival. However, restrictions will remain in place for Great Britain and the US. Transport Minister Eamon Ryan said: "By the 19th of July, we will remove the ban on non-essential travel. "We will also fully implement the digital Covid cert, which means that anyone coming from an EU country who has been vaccinated, or has recovered from Covid, or can show a negative PCR test, will be able to move here freely, come back home freely." Children who are not vaccinated or have not recovered from Covid will still need a PCR test to travel. Ryan said the return of international travel was not without risk, noting that variants of concerns could cause case numbers to rise. "We have to be careful as we make this transition" he said. Similar restrictions will be in place for non-EU countries or "third countries", which will include the US and the UK. Ryan said that while the UK is a "very close and important neighbour to us", concerns remain about the Indian variant, which has become the dominant strain there. He added: "We will require people arriving from Great Britain to self-quarantine at home unless they have been fully vaccinated. "We will keep this under review and I hope later this summer we will be able to open up further to the common travel area, that we have the privilege of sharing with the UK. "Mandatory auto quarantine will be retained for what we expect to be a very small number of countries and will only be used in relation to variants of concern." An "emergency brake" system will apply to non-EU/EEA countries, designed to allow a swift response to the emergence of a variant of concern or variant of interest. Government advice will be to avoid travel to a country where the emergency brake has been applied. A passenger arriving from a country where the emergency brake has been applied will have to undergo mandatory hotel quarantine, if they cannot provide valid proof that they have been vaccinated. The approach to travel outside the EU/EEA will also apply to travel to and from Great Britain and the US. Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald welcomed the return of international travel in mid-July but warned it has to be done safely. "I'm sure we are all breathing a huge sigh of relief that at last we are going to regain some of the freedom that we had lost for such a long time," McDonald told RTE. "Of course at some stage non-essential travel has to resume, the issue here is that it's done safely. "Over the last year and more we've had many long, hard debates around the use of quarantine, the very necessary use of quarantine, to keep the population safe. "It needs to be held on reserve, as a public health measure, to be deployed to keep people safe. "We need to follow the public health advice, of course travelling has to resume at some stage, we can't live in splendid isolation. "But just be clear, it always has to be in the context of keeping people safe and being aware that the virus is still out there, and there are some really, really nasty variants." Responding to the news, Aer Lingus welcomed the plan but was critical of the delay in the resumption of the common travel area with Great Britain and the failure to introduce rapid antigen testing for travel. A spokesperson said: "Flying schedules will be a fraction of normal levels for some time to come. "While Aer Lingus welcomes the easing of travel restrictions announced today, it will not facilitate a significant level of travel to and from Ireland during the critical summer months of 2021. "It is also disappointing that the reopening of the common travel area is delayed and that EU-approved rapid antigen testing has not been approved as a standard of pre-departure testing." The airline, part of International Consolidated Airlines Group SA, said it is facing significant restructuring to rebuild its network and financial strength following the pandemic. By James Ward, PA source: PA Copyright 2021 Alliance News Limited. All Rights Reserved. Exton, PA (19341) Today Mostly cloudy skies this evening. A few showers developing late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Mostly cloudy skies this evening. A few showers developing late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%. (TNS) The first warm days of spring in Michigan are always so exciting to celebrate. It is reminder that Memorial Day weekend is on the way as well as the kickoff for summer. For me and my family, those first few warm days are beautiful, but also a reminder that Memorial Day is a painful reminder of our loss. My family and I are what is known as a Gold Star Family. Gold Star Families are families who have tragically lost a U.S. service member while serving during a time of conflict. For Gold Star Families, Memorial Day is the day we honor and remember the ultimate sacrifice of our fallen service member. It is a very painful day. On Nov. 30, 2011, the lives of my mom, my dad, my sister and myself changed forever. My brother, Staff Sgt. Vincent J. Bell of the Marine Corps, had been in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, for only about 30 days when he was killed by an improvised explosive device while on a foot patrol; he was 28 years old. Vincent had been in the Marines for 10 years and had already completed four tours of duty in Iraq. He absolutely loved being a Marine and serving our beautiful country. This was his lifes work. He left an incredible legacy and is remembered by fellow Marines as being a dynamic and compassionate servant leader. These are some of the very skills Vincent learned while growing up in our neighborhood in Detroit. Vincent completely gave of himself to his work, his Marines, and those he loved; and it is still extremely hard for all of us to accept that he is not with us. We have beautiful memories of him, and sometimes I still like to close my eyes and remember his hearty laugh when he would tease me and our sister. On Memorial Day, my family and I dont celebrate a holiday with a backyard barbecue or time at the park or beach. For us, and for fellow Gold Star Families across the nation, Memorial Day is about honoring and remembering the beloved service member we have tragically lost. For many of us it is a reality once more of the empty seat at the dinner table, missed birthdays, missed hugs, and missed smiles and laughs. Memorial Day is the time many of us visit Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery, the final resting place for many of the men and women who died while serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are many meaningful ways to honor and remember our countrys fallen service members during Memorial Day. First, speak their names. This year speak aloud the names of and hold a moment of silence for those who have given their lives in service to our nation. Learn more about the history of Memorial Day to deepen your understanding and share these facts with family, friends and your community. If there are Memorial Day events in your community, plan to attend and speak the names of the fallen service members from your community. If there are no Memorial Day events in your community, take the lead and create one. You may be the very person needed in your community to start an important tradition of honoring our fallen service members. Also, learn more about Arlington National Cemetery or the national cemeteries in your state, and make plans to visit. Learn more about and support Gold Star Families. It is also especially important for everyone to understand the differences between Memorial Day and Veterans Day, and to understand that there will be people in your community in and out of uniform who have suffered the loss of a service member. Memorial Day is a particularly difficult time for many people, and grace and kindness throughout the weekend, whether at the grocery store or the park, will go a long way. Finally, instead of saying Happy Memorial Day let others know that you plan to have a meaningful Memorial Day weekend by honoring and remembering those who gave their lives in service to our nation AND resting, relaxing and spending time with loved ones at the family barbecue. It is very much OK to do both. London J. Bell is the Gold Star sister of Staff Sgt. Vincent J. Bell, a Marine who was killed in action in 2011 in Afghanistan. She wrote this for InsideSources.com. Because Daphne is legally an adult authorities were required to let her go, according to the Hamilton County District Attorneys Office. Police said she did not wish to speak to investigators and was not interested in calling her mother, with whom she had a falling out just prior to her disappearance. Brian Plakke,age 59 passed away May 23rd, 2021 at Hillcrest after a long battle with cancer. Brian was born to Donald and Marlene Plakke.( Howard True stepfather.) He graduated from Mankato West and journied to Alaska with friends,where he enjoyed fishing and traveling throughout the state. In this image released by the U.S. Coast Guard, a Coast Guard crew rescues eight people from the water approximately 16 miles south of Key West, Florida, on Thursday, May 27, 2021. A search for 10 Cubans missing from a boat capsize continued Friday, a day after the U.S. Coast Guard rescued other passengers and pulled two bodies from the water. FILE - In this Sept. 6, 2014 file photo, Chris Cline speaks with media as Marshall University dedicates the new indoor practice facility as the Chris Cline Athletic Complex in Huntington, W.Va. According to a report released Thursday, May 27, 2021, by the National Transportation Safety Board, pilot error caused the helicopter crash that killed coal billionaire Chris Cline and six others in the Bahamas in 2019. The child, believed to be a Hispanic male around 10 years old, was found early Friday not far from a Mountain Springs trail, located just off State Route 160. Something prompted one of the hikers to venture into the nearby wooded area, where he discovered the body around 7:30 a.m, according to a press release from the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Viola Caudill, 85, a resident of the Gowen Community passed away Thursday June 10, 2021 at home. A Graveside service will be held a 11:00 AM Monday June 14, 2021 in the Pavilion at Bache-Red Oak Cemetery. There will be a family and friends visitation on Sunday June 13, 2021 from 5:00pm to 7: Atlanta, GA (30303) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 10 to 15 mph. It appears to us at this point that he said to one of the people there: Im not going to shoot you, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith told the Associated Press. And then he shot other people. So I imagine there was some kind of thought on who he wanted to shoot. Roswell, GA (30075) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 88F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 67F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Note: We have changed our commenting system. If you do not have an mdjonline.com account, you will need to create one in order to comment. Southwest had reportedly planned to resume alcohol sales on limited flights in late June after banning booze during the pandemic. Those offerings would have been extended to a wider customer base in July. Chinese peacekeepers march during a medal ceremony in Hanniyah village, southern Lebanon, April 3, 2019. [Photo/Xinhua] On the evening of July 10, 2016, a mortar shell hit an armored vehicle amid a fierce exchange of fire between government and opposition forces in Juba, the capital city of South Sudan. Inside the vehicle were two Chinese peacekeepers on duty to protect some 9,000 civilians in downtown Juba and surrounding villages. Li Lei, a young soldier who had just celebrated his 22nd birthday, was killed alongside Sergeant Yang Shupeng, father of a 5-year-old 5,000 miles away from home. The two were awarded the United Nations' Dag Hammarskjold medal for their sacrifice. "United Nations peacekeeping is a concrete example of multilateralism at work. ... [It] has enabled the countries of the world to meet common threats to peace and security and share the burden under the UN flag," wrote Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. For more than three decades, China has shown great commitment to this endeavor. The second-largest contributor to the UN regular budget and peacekeeping budget, it has dispatched over 50,000 peacekeepers to nearly 30 operations, more than any other permanent member of the Security Council. Throughout the years, 24 Chinese peacekeepers have made the ultimate sacrifice. China's commitment to peacekeeping is rooted in its faith in multilateralism. Advocating multilateralism has been the top item on China's agenda during its current (May 2021) and previous (November 2018) rotating presidency of the Security Council. The clear message from China is to uphold "the UN-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law", not "the rules-based international order advocated by a small number of countries". That is the very theme of the first high-level Security Council meeting China chaired this month. What exactly is multilateralism about? State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi's remarks at this meeting hold vital clues. The first component is win-win cooperation, as opposed to zero-sum games. Complex global issues and common challenges call for collective response. In fighting COVID-19, no country should expect others to lose this battle, for no one truly wins until everyone wins. Second, equity and justice, not bullying or hegemony. The key is promoting democracy and the rule of law in international relations. Responsibilities of global governance are to be shared, and rules are to be written by and applicable to all, not just a few. Third, action rather than rhetoric. Multilateralism means taking action and finding solutions that work for the long run and the greater good. Major countries, in particular, must lead by example and provide concrete global public goods. Fourth, diversity instead of seeking one's own supremacy. The strength of multilateralism lies in the fact that while peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom are values shared by humanity, each country is unique in its history, culture and path of development. The world thrives on such diversity, and the last thing it needs is to be split up along ideological lines. Much like its record at the Security Council, China's contribution to UN causes over the years can be characterized by support for multilateralism. Member of nearly all major intergovernmental organizations and signatory to more than 500 international conventions, China has faithfully fulfilled its obligations and honored its commitments. China has remained ever engaged as humanity fights on against COVID-19. It has announced generous donations to the World Health Organization and the UN-initiated Global Humanitarian Response Plan as well as concrete steps to support the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX). It has provided vaccine assistance to more than 80 developing countries and exports to 43. It was gratifying to hear about a 300,000-dose donation to peacekeepers and 100,000 to Palestine earlier this year, knowing that the ones working for justice are not forgotten. When it comes to the number one goal laid out in the UN's 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, namely ending poverty, it is no overstatement that China has led by example. The eradication of extreme poverty in a country where one-fifth of humanity resides has contributed over 70 percent to global poverty reduction. In addition, China has done what it can to assist other members of the global South in fighting poverty and advancing development. Under the United Nations Peace and Development Trust Fund, the South-South Cooperation Assistance Fund and the China-FAO South-South Cooperation Trust Fund, China has pledged over $4 billion to bolster world development. China has been a prominent part of global action on climate change and ecological conservation. "Indeed, China played a key role in facilitating the Paris Agreement," wrote Laurent Fabius, former French foreign minister and president of COP21. China's goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions before 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality before 2060 marks a major step in implementing the agreement. The ambitious commitment to a 30-year transition to net zero speaks volumes about China's high sense of responsibility. As China hosts COP15 to the Convention on Biological Diversity this October, it is expected to play a more active role in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework. In recent years, multilateralism has won more hearts as the world goes through complexities rarely seen before. Multilateralism needs to be realized through the UN, through international law and through cooperation among all parties. China, in both words and deeds, has been its champion. Last month, China launched the first in a series of commemorative activities to mark the 50th anniversary of the restoration of the People's Republic of China's lawful seat at the UN. It initiated the Group of Friends on the Safety and Security of UN Peacekeepers in New York and held an online meeting with the UN to exchange peacekeeping experience. This month, as rotating president of the Security Council, China chaired an open debate dedicated to the safety and security of peacekeepers. While we grieve the loss of Li Lei and Yang Shupeng, it is encouraging to see their brothers and sisters across the country and beyond picking up the baton. The International Day of UN Peacekeepers this Saturday reminds us once again that for the peace and security of humanity, peacekeeping is a most worthy cause. My heart is broken, Asner tweeted, with a picture of himself and MacLeod. Gavin was my brother, my partner in crime (and food) and my comic conspirator. I will see you in a bit Gavin. Tell the gang I will see them in a bit. Betty! Its just you and me now. Campaign Diaries Newsletter Weekdays The Daily News political team supplies the essential news and analysis on the critical 2021 elections in New York City that will define the citys future after coronavirus. Sent to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. This would all be mere fodder for hilarity and schadenfreude if it werent being paid for in large part by the citys taxpayers. Morales and the antics of the Jacobins who are working, or at this point deliberately not working, for her, who marched through the streets of Manhattan in protest burning sage and incense, are being underwritten by New York Citys generous eight-to-one public matching funds program, which has so far given Morales $3.65 million in public funds. Genome-wide association studies relate specific genetic variants with the development of particular diseases. 178 loci-specific parts of the genome responsible for inducing depression are identified by genome analysis. A genome-wide association study (GWAS) refers to a scientific approach to relate specific genetic variants with the development of particular diseases. VA researchers performed this largest genome-wide association study to analyze the genomes of over 250,000 individuals of European ancestry and 60,000 Veterans of African ancestry.In addition to this, other biobanks contributed more than 1.2 million participants to the primary study.The outcomes of this large analysis were then combined with the findings of genome analyses submitted on repositories like the UK Biobank, FinnGen, and 23andMe.The investigations of genomes revealed 178 loci-specific parts of the genome which are responsible for the likelihood of depression in an individual.Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) refer to the variations occurring among humans due to single base pair differences in the genetic material. This GWAS also recognized 233 single-nucleotide polymorphisms at the above-mentioned 178 spots known to affect a person's depression risk.The study further unraveled the possibilities of developing concurrent psychiatric conditions along with depression as it shares genetic risk factors with anxiety disorders and PTSD, as well as with risky behavior and cannabis use disorder.Source: Medindia A new Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology is capable of assessing the COVID-19 severity with a promising degree of accuracy. The researchers from the University of Waterloo and Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor and co-founder of software company DarwinAI, said the technology could give doctors an important tool to help them manage cases. Artificial Intelligence has a strong potential to be an effective tool for supporting frontline healthcare workers in their decisions and improving clinical efficiency. Its scores were then compared to assessments of the same x-rays by expert radiologists, the team said. For both extent and opacity, important indicators of the severity of infections, predictions made by the AI software were in good alignment with scores provided by the human experts. Source: IANS For the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, deep-learning AI was trained to analyse the extent and opacity of infection in the lungs of Covid-19 patients based on chest x-rays.Its scores were then compared to assessments of the same x-rays by expert radiologists, the team said.For both extent and opacity, important indicators of the severity of infections, predictions made by the AI software were in good alignment with scores provided by the human experts.Source: IANS "Assessing the severity of a patient with Covid-19 is a critical step in the clinical workflow for determining the best course of action for treatment and care, be it admitting the patient to ICU, giving a patient oxygen therapy, or putting a patient on a mechanical ventilator," Wong said. We all remember the devastating Pulwama attack that happened in February 2019. A convoy of vehicles with Indian security personnel was attacked on the JammuSrinagar National Highway by a suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir, killing around 40 CPRF personnel. Among the martyrs was Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal, whose wife Nikita Kaul vowed to join the Indian Army. Today, after clearing her SSC and SSB exams, she donned the green uniform and wore the stars on her shoulder, as promised. Twitter After six months of her husbands death, Kaul started preparing for joining the Indian Armed Forces in order to pay tribute to him. They had been married for less than a year when Major VS Dhoundiyal sacrificed his life for the nation. Twitter She finally made it to the merit list and joined the forces as a cadet. Commander of the Indian Army's Northern Command Lt General YK Joshi put the stars on her shoulders today as he congratulated her. #MajVibhutiShankarDhoundiyal, made the Supreme Sacrifice at #Pulwama in 2019, was awarded SC (P). Today his wife @Nitikakaul dons #IndianArmy uniform; paying him a befitting tribute. A proud moment for her as Lt Gen Y K Joshi, #ArmyCdrNC himself pips the Stars on her shoulders! pic.twitter.com/ovoRDyybTs PRO Udhampur, Ministry of Defence (@proudhampur) May 29, 2021 Nikita has shown incredible patriotism and courage by joining the army and she feels that her journey has just started. WATCH: #NitikaKaul, wife of Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal who lost his life in 2019 Pulwama attack: I've experienced same journey he has been through. I believe he's always going to be part of my life.@adgpi @Def_PRO_Chennai pic.twitter.com/770K0Xgj7D Asianet Newsable (@AsianetNewsEN) May 29, 2021 Twitter congratulated her for on joining the Indian Army and saluted her commitment to the nation. They also gave her best wishes for her journey ahead. Proudly saluting Nitikaji, the wife of brave martyr of Pulwama 2019 , Major Vibhuti Dhaundiyal ji for joining as a @adgpi. what a befitting tribute to the late husband. truly inspirational story (@pinakin_dhodia) May 29, 2021 In a bidding speech at his funeral, she had said, "You said you loved me, but the fact is you loved the nation more. I am really proud. We all love you. The way you love everyone is entirely different because you sacrificed your life for the people who you may have never met, but still you decided to give your life for them. You are such a brave man. I am very honoured to have you as my husband. I'll love you till my last breath. I owe my life to you." Twitter She is a woman with great valour and courage. We salute her dedication to the nation. In recent years, Indian Spiritual Guru, Baba Ramdev has been in the news quite often and not for the right reasons. TOI In what seems to be becoming a regular trend now, the Yoda of Yoga embroiled himself in yet another controversy recently when he shared some shocking remarks regarding allopathy. Agitated doctors and health care authorities across the country are now calling for his head, with the Indian Medical Association (IMA) even serving him with a six-page defamation notice and demanding an apology within 15 days. Baba Ramdev, who has a major fan following with millions of supporters idolizing him, must now comply or risk paying Rs 1,000 crores as compensation unless he has a trick up his sleeve. The Economic Times Surprisingly, this is just the latest controversy around the 55-year-old Ayurvedic practitioner, who has been part of such similar instances in the past as well. Well, without further ado, here is a list of Baba Ramdev controversies that his loyal supporters would not want to remember. 1. CORONIL Financial Times Back when the cases were rising under the first wave of Coronavirus pandemic when the vaccines were nowhere to be seen, Ramdev shocked the world by claiming that his Patanjali had found a cure for Covid-19. Developed at the Haridwar-based Divya Prakashan Patanjali Research Institute, the Coronil tablets were even claimed to have been certified by WHO. TOI However, it did not take long for WHO to rubbish such reports, with lab tests even revealing that the drug did not contain any ingredients that could treat Covid-19 or protect one from it. Following nationwide criticism and the IMA calling it a "blatant lie," Patanjali later withdrew the claim of Coronil being a cure for Covid-19. 2. YOGA CAN CURE AIDS Reuters Though Baba Ramdev had been successful in popularising the significance of yoga around the world, in 2006, the spiritual guru sent shockwaves through the medical world when he claimed that yoga could also cure AIDS. According to him, the HIV infection, which in later stages leads to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), could be cured with yoga and the use of medicines provided by Divya Pharmacy and Patanjali Ayurveda. The claims were soon rejected by the National AIDS Control Organisation, with doctors calling Ramdev irresponsible for potentially "misleading patients who may refuse treatment on the basis of his statement and suffer." 3. PATANJALI INSTANT NOODLES Daily Mail Back in 2015, when India was experiencing the Maggi noodles fiasco, Baba Ramdev's Patanjali took the gamble of launching its own instant Atta noodles brand for general consumption. However, even before the product could hit the market, the Food Safety and Regulatory Authority of India (FSSAI) issued a restraining order against it, stating that the company had failed to take the product approval. Apparently, the noodles brand had displayed an FSSAI license number on its packets, however, as per FSSAIs then-chairperson Ashish Bahuguna, the product was rejected after the brand managed to get the license without anyone's knowledge. How can a license be given for a product that has not been approved? I do not know how the license was procured, said Bahugana, after which Patanjali received a notice from the government for violating food safety norms. 4. RAMDEV'S CLAIMS ON HAVING A CURE FOR HOMOSEXUALITY Reuters Just like in the case of Covid, AIDS, and other diseases that might have been mentioned in the past, Baba Ramdev seems to have the cure for everything in the world. Several years ago, the spiritual guru, while labeling homosexuality as "unnatural" and "a bad addiction" said that he had a cure for it - Yoga. Inviting the gay community to his yoga ashram, Ramdev said, "I guarantee to cure them of homosexuality. I invite the gay community to my yoga ashram and I guarantee to cure them of homosexuality." Unsurprisingly, Ramdev was bashed left, right, and center for the comments with many activists warning him to not comment on matters that he had no clue about. 5. POST-DATING OF PATANJALI PRODUCTS The Print While a whole lot of people across India are big fans of Ramdev's Patanjali products, the truth is that India's food regulator has serious doubts about the authenticity on a large number of occasions. In 2018, an inquiry was ordered by the FSSAI after viral images showed boxes of Patanjali's ayurvedic medicine, Giloy Ghan Vati on sale a month prior to the stated manufacturing date. Shopon.in It was suggested that the post dating of products was carried out to manipulate its shelf life in order to keep it in the market for longer than it should be. Citing the dangers to the health of consumers, the instance was also brought to the notice of WHO, following which the state food commissioners were asked to verify samples from the market. Meridian, MS (39302) Today Variable clouds with scattered thunderstorms. High 91F. Winds WNW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.. Tonight Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Click here to log in and see all of our other subscription options for the Mesabi Tribune, including online only & auto-renewal subscriptions. Symptoms of the autoimmune disease, including chronic red eyes, limb numbness and memory loss, forced him to take medical leave in 2014. While on leave, faculty members told Rop to stop being lazy and smoking marijuana and his program director asked him to go back to Kenya to finish his residency, the lawsuit alleged. When Rop brought up discrimination concerns to the deputy program director, he was told the hospital could fire him and he did not have the resources to combat it, he alleged. In summer 2020, The New York Times coordinated a nationwide project to document the lives of Americans out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved collaborating with 11 other local newsrooms around the U.S. The Messenger-Inquirer was the only newspaper from Kentucky in the collaboration. The resulting collection of stories was published Oct. 23, 2020, in the New York Times print edition and at nytimes.com/outofwork. The following list is the Messenger-Inquirer's local unemployment coverage from that time period; read more by clicking the "New York Times Project" header. Click on "Out Of Work In America" to go to the full Dear Savvy Senior, What can you tell me about lung cancer screenings? I was a big smoker but quit years ago, so Im wondering if I should be checked out. Former Smoker Dear Still, Lung cancer screening is used to detect the presence of lung cancer in otherwise healthy people with a high risk of lung cancer. Should you be screened? It depends on your age and your smoking history. Heres what you should know. Screening Recommendations The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force an independent panel of medical experts that advises the government on health policies recently expanded their recommendations for lung cancer screenings. They are now recommending annual screenings for high-risk adults between the ages of 50 and 80 who have at least a 20-pack year history who currently smoke or who have quit within the past 15 years. This is a change from the 2013 recommendation that referred to patients ages 55 to 80 with 30-year pack histories. A 20-pack year history is the equivalent of smoking one pack a day for 20 years or two packs a day for 10 years. In 2020, lung cancer killed more than 135,000 Americans making it the deadliest of all possible cancers. In fact, more people die of lung cancer than of colon, breast and prostate cancers combined. Lung cancer also occurs predominantly in older adults. About two out of every three people diagnosed with lung cancer are 65 or older. Youll also be happy to know that most health insurance plans cover lung cancer screenings to high-risk patients, as does Medicare up to age 77. Screening Pros and Cons Doctors use a low-dose computed tomography scan (also called a low-dose CT scan, or LDCT) of the lungs to look for lung cancer. If lung cancer is detected at an early stage, its more likely to be cured with treatment. But a LDCT isnt recommended for every high-risk patient. LDCT scans have a high rate of false positives, which means that many will undergo additional (and unnecessary) screening or medical procedures, such as another scan three, six, or even 12 months later to check for changes in the shape or size of the suspicious area (an indication of tumor growth). For some patients, the anxiety or worry that goes along with waiting can be a real issue. Or you may need a biopsy (removal of a small amount of lung tissue), which has risks, especially for those with underlying health conditions, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema. For example, in people with emphysema, theres a chance of a lung collapsing during the procedure. If you meet the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force criteria for high-risk lung cancer, the University of Michigan offers a free online tool (see ShouldIScreen.com) to help you decide if you should get an LDCT. Its also important to discuss the benefits and risks with your primary care doctor before making a decision. Tips for Testing If you and your doctor determine that you should be screened, look for an imaging facility whose staff follows American College of Radiology requirements when performing low-dose CT scans. You can find accredited facilities at ACRaccreditation.org. This can help to ensure an accurate read of your scans by a highly trained, board-certified or board-eligible radiologist. You may need a referral from your primary care provider. Most insurance companies, including Medicare require this before theyll cover the cost of screening. Send your senior questions to: Savvy Senior, P.O. Box 5443, Norman, OK 73070, or visit SavvySenior.org. Jim Miller is a contributor to the NBC Today show and author of The Savvy Senior book. KYIV, Ukraine (AP) As fear of repression rises among Belarusians following the arrest of a dissident journalist whose plane was forcibly diverted to Minsk, those who want to leave the country are feeling increasingly cornered. Its land borders already were under tight restrictions, and now the European Union has banned flights from Belarus after a jetliner was diverted to Minsk earlier this week and authorities arrested a dissident journalist who was aboard. That leaves opposition-minded Belarusians with few options to get out from under the authoritarian rule of President Alexander Lukashenko. Shutting the borders turns Belarus into a can of rotting preserves. We are being turned into hostages, said Tatsiana Hatsura-Yavorska, who leads a rights group that helps those released from prison adapt to life and also organizes documentary film festivals. The authorities have scaled up repressions in recent months to incite the atmosphere of fear, she told The Associated Press. Hatsura-Yavorska said most of her friends and associates have faced detention, searches and brutal beatings, and many have fled Belarus. She served 10 days in jail after organizing a photo exhibition about medical workers in the coronavirus pandemic that authorities decided leaned toward the opposition. She faces charges that could land her in prison for three years. Lukashenko, who has led the former Soviet nation of 9.3 million for more than a quarter century, has faced unprecedented protests after his reelection to a sixth term in an August 2020 vote that the opposition rejects as rigged. He has responded to the demonstrations with a fierce clampdown that has left more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands of them beaten. Hatsura-Yavorska said following her arrest last month, she was put in an ice cold cell for two days without a mattress and was forced to wake up every two hours at night. The authorities released her after 10 days on the condition she not leave the city pending a criminal investigation on charges of organizing actions that violate public order. Who would like to remain in such a country? she said by phone. The authorities have divided all citizens into loyalists and enemies, and treat us accordingly. Hatsura-Yavorska's Ukrainian husband was ordered to leave Belarus along with their 9-year-old son and was barred from returning for 10 years. They used my son to blackmail me. They beat me during interrogations and threatened to put me in jail and pushed me out of the country in the end, Volodymyr Yavorskyy told the AP in Kyiv. I couldn't imagine that I would find myself in hell in the middle of Europe. Belarus is being shut closed right before our eyes, and millions of Belarusians are finding themselves hostage." He communicates with his wife via the internet, but fears the Belarusian authorities will move to tighten controls over it. Public protest has continued, and so the authorities ... close everything they can reach borders, organizations and websites, he said. They are turning Belarus into a scorched land. Belarus tightened restrictions at its land border in December. Those willing to cross must explain their reason, such as work, medical care or education, and can only do it once every six months. On Sunday, a Ryanair plane traveling from Greece to Lithuania with dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich aboard was diverted to Minsk after Belarusian flight controllers told the jet's crew to land there because of a bomb threat. Authorities then arrested Pratasevich, who ran a channel on a messaging app that was used to organize demonstrations against Lukashenko. EU leaders denounced it as akin to air piracy and responded by barring Belarusian carriers from the blocs airspace and airports. The air boycott has hurt not only the regime but ricocheted against its opponents willing to leave the country, said Artyom Shraybman, a Minsk-based independent political analyst. While Belarusian carriers have been banned from EU airspace, they are allowed to fly to other destinations. Arriving in Tbilisi, Georgia, on a flight from Belarus, a man said people are trying to leave and those who can go to Europe are trying to do so. The traveler, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Anatoly, for fear of reprisal, said the Ryanair flights diversion has deepened his concerns about his country's course, noting that people cant guarantee their future, cant guarantee the future of their children. Alena, another Belarusian traveler who similarly asked for her last name to be withheld, said people who can afford to leave Belarus will try to do so amid what she described as a brutal government response to protests. Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, the main opposition challenger in the August vote, urged the EU to ramp up sanctions and banish Belarus from Interpol and the International Civil Aviation Organization to increase pressure on Lukashenko's regime. But she also demanded that the country's land borders be open. I understand the EU's decision to halt flights over Belarus as it's a matter of security for all Europeans, said Tsikhanouskaya, who fled to neighboring Lithuania under pressure from the government shortly after the election. But we demand to open the land borders for free travel of Belarusian citizens, because we can't allow the regime to turn our country into a prison for 9 million people. ___ Follow all AP stories on Belarus at https://apnews.com/hub/Belarus. JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) A large ferry with nearly 200 people on board caught fire Saturday while traveling to a remote island in northeastern Indonesia, forcing passengers and crew to jump into the sea but causing no casualties, officials said. The KM Karya Indah was in the Molucca Sea heading for Sanana, a port on the island of Limafatola, when the fire broke out at around 7 a.m. local time, said Wisnu Wardana, a spokesperson for the sea transportation directorate general. The blaze began 15 minutes after the vessel had departed Ternate, the provincial capital of North Maluku province. DeSantis said the state has met every regulation required to be able to import the drugs. This has been under review now for six months, he said during a news conference in Lakeland. We were told that if it wasnt denied last week that we could assume it was going to be approved. STAMFORD The shooting that killed 19-year-old Courtney Lewis was the culmination of a months-long beef between him and the alleged gunman, according to the warrant for his arrest. The warrant, which was unsealed on Friday, details a long-running feud between Lewis and 21-year-old Everett Brown, who is accused of fatally shooting Lewis during a car meet-up in a West Side parking lot on April 18. Investigator Louis Burdi wrote in the warrant that the feud may trace back to a confrontation the two had at a prior car meet in Norwalk around September 2020. Contributed Photo / Stamford Police Department During the gathering, Brown had come to the defense of his friend against Lewis which publicly embarrassed Lewis at the time, the warrant said. Though the details of where this incident occurred differ some told police it happened at the Home Depot on Connecticut Avenue, others claimed it happened in the Bowlmor parking lot just down the street police believe the incident marks the genesis of the grudge between the two. About a month after that argument, Lewis told friends he was robbed at gunpoint, according to the warrant. The incident, however, was never reported to police, and while Lewis didnt say who was behind the robbery, he told those close to him that he believed Brown was driving around the homes of his family and close friends in the wake of the robbery as a method of intimidation, the warrant said. In the lead-up to the shooting, Brown allegedly messaged Lewis on social media, sending him pictures of handguns and claiming he and his friends from New York were going to come after Lewis, according to the warrant. The threats and intimidation got so bad, the warrant said, that Lewis even told a loved one that he wanted to make sure they werent around in case Brown ever took his life, the warrant said. More for you News Killed in shooting, Stamford High grad remembered as 'a... Thats why when Lewis learned Brown was present at the April 18 meet-up at RPM Raceway, near the Greenwich border, he became incensed and confronted him, the warrant said. According to the warrant, Lewis sparked an argument with Brown, at one point spitting in his face. It was then, the warrant said, that Brown pulled a gun and fired multiple shots into Lewis chest. Two others a 33-year-old and a 17-year-old were also struck in the gunfire, police said at the time. Both suffered non-life-threatening injuries, according to police. Brown was arrested three days after the fatal shooting on charges of unlawful discharge of a firearm, first-degree reckless endangerment, carrying a pistol without a permit, risk of injury and carrying a dangerous weapon. Three weeks later, Brown was charged with murder and four counts of first-degree assault as well. Before his arrest, police learned that Brown and his family were making arrangements to try and move him out of the Stamford area, possibly to Jamaica where his father lives, the warrant said. Brown is still being held in lieu of $1,750,000 bond. His next court date is scheduled for June 21. PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) Just in time for Memorial Day weekend, more U.S. cities and states are shrugging off lingering COVID-19 restrictions as vaccination rates rise and the number of infections falls. Massachusetts lifted a mask requirement Saturday, a day after New Jersey dropped its mandate. In New York City and Chicago, officials reopened public beaches, though winds and cool temperatures kept crowds away. Welcome back, Chicago," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a video announcement. The lakefront is open." Chicago's Navy Pier also reopened retail stores and restaurants, carnival rides, and tour boats and cruises after the pandemic forced monthslong closures at the busy tourist destination. It's one more sign of progress that reflects increasingly positive health data. On Saturday, Illinois' Department of Public Health reported 802 new confirmed and probable infections, the second-lowest one-day total in the last six months. For businesses nationwide, the improving outlook and long holiday weekend offered a chance to welcome customers back to in-person shopping. Midtown Scholar Bookstore in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, opened its doors to customers for the first time in nearly 14 months Friday. Masks are still required. The business had switched to internet orders, sidewalk sales and virtual author events to survive the pandemic. We had to get creative, we had to pivot, store manager Alex Brubaker said. Our readers and our customers have been incredible. It's a rainy weekend, but the bookstore is full. Minnesota lifted all statewide coronavirus restrictions for bars and restaurants Friday, though local governments can maintain their own social distancing and mask rules. About 50% of the U.S. population has now received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, according to the latest numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. About 40% of the population is fully vaccinated. Vermont boasts the nation's highest vaccination rate, with nearly 70% of its residents having received at least one dose. The governor is expected to drop all pandemic-related restrictions once 80% of Vermont's eligible population has received at least one dose, a milestone the state expects to hit next week. In neighboring Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker lifted a mask mandate effective Saturday, though face coverings are still required in certain places, including on public transportation. The state also still encourages unvaccinated people to wear masks in indoor or public areas. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky threw out the ceremonial first pitch at Fenway Park before the Red Sox played the Miami Marlins on the first day that Massachusetts dropped limits on crowd sizes. Red Sox president Sam Kennedy said about 24,000 tickets were sold. Its such a bright moment right now," Walensky told reporters, encouraging people to get vaccinated. Its been a really long year, and weve seen some really, really dark times. ... Im thrilled were back where we are right now. According to Massachusetts officials, 78% of all adult residents have had at least one vaccine dose. New cases have dropped by 94% since they peaked in January," Baker said Friday as he announced the end of the restrictions. "Hospitalizations are down by about 90% since their peak. This progress has made it possible for us to lift all remaining COVID restrictions across the commonwealth. Virginia relaxed its distancing and capacity restrictions on Friday. President Joe Biden celebrated the progress with a visit to a rock climbing gym in northern Virginia. Millions of Americans planned to travel over the long weekend, and airports reported some of their highest traffic since the pandemic began. ___ Associated Press freelance writer Ken Powtak in Boston contributed to this report. Gov. Charlie Baker signed an order Friday officially lifting Massachusetts' pandemic state of emergency on June 15. The order has been in place for more than a year. Baker signed the measure at a Statehouse press conference as the state prepares to lift nearly all COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday. The lifting of restrictions is one more indication that the states battle against the coronavirus has turned a sharp corner. I would pretty much say its over, Gov. Charlie Baker said, cautioning that the pandemic has thrown a number of curves in the past year. I do believe its certainly on the run. While the state is also lifting the face covering mandate on Saturday, there are still locations where masks will still be required, including public transportation, Baker said. The mandate is being replaced with a mask advisory that echoes recommendations from federal health officials. Baker also said that businesses may still require customers and visitors to continue wearing masks inside. If someone has a business and they want you to wear a mask, you should wear a mask, Baker said. Baker said that more than 3.5 million residents have received both vaccine shots. He said he expects the state will reach the goal of 4.1 million residents fully vaccinated by mid-June. Massachusetts is also launching a new campaign to encourage diners to start eating out in their favorite restaurants. Restaurants are among those the businesses hardest hit during the pandemic and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito said Friday that the Baker administration wants to send the message that restaurants are open and if individuals are vaccinated they should go out and dine to help those eateries bounce back. ___ IN-PERSON LEARNING Massachusetts public schools will be required to offer full-time, in-person learning this fall, with most coronavirus-related restrictions lifted, state education officials said. Schools will not be allowed to offer remote learning as a standard learning model, according to the guidance from the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education released Thursday. Social distancing guidelines will be lifted, although some younger students may still be required to wear masks. DESE encourages schools to maintain ventilation upgrades from this past year as feasible, continue hand hygiene practices, and extend policies that encourage students and staff to continue to stay home when sick," the agency said. Virtual learning will remain available to some students in limited cases, such as for children with documented medical conditions. Its too soon to drop all COVID-19 precautions, Massachusetts Teachers Association President Merrie Najimy said Friday. The Baker administration must recognize that the pandemic is not over and that there are many variables to keep an eye on throughout the summer and into the fall, Najimy said in a written statement. More safeguards must be built into the Baker administrations school guidance and vaccination practices to ensure that in-person learning in the fall is as safe as it can be. Najimy said those safeguards include: improving vaccination rates in hard-hit communities; keeping young children and their families safe through masking and distancing; requiring adequate ventilation; and continuing COVID-19 testing. Officials have said that transmission rates of the disease in schools are low. ___ VIRUS BY THE NUMBERS There were about 250 new cases of COVID-19 reported Friday while the number of newly confirmed coronavirus deaths in Massachusetts rose by four. The new numbers pushed the states confirmed COVID-19 death toll to 17,495 since the start of the pandemic, while its confirmed caseload rose to more than 660,700. The true number of cases is likely higher because studies suggest some people can be infected and not feel sick. There were about 240 people reported hospitalized Friday because of confirmed cases of COVID-19, with about 70 in intensive care units. The average age of those hospitalized was 59. There were an estimated 7,000 people with current active cases of COVID-19 in the state. ___ IMMUNIZATIONS More than 7.7 million doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Massachusetts as of Friday. That includes more than 4.1 million first doses and more than 3.3 million second doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines. There have been more than 248,000 doses of the one-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered. Nearly 3.6 million people have been fully immunized. ___ HIGH RISK COMMUNITIES The number of Massachusetts cities and towns considered at high risk for coronavirus transmission has dropped to just one, down from a high of 229 in mid-January, according to the state Department of Public Health. The two cities on last week's list New Bedford and Lawrence are now considered moderate risk. A total of 19 communities are now in the moderate risk category. Tisbury, a town of about 4,000 residents on Martha's Vineyard, was added to the high-risk category. Communities with fewer than 10,000 residents are considered high risk if they have more than 25 cases. The state has 351 cities and towns. BANGKOK (AP) The mother of a journalist detained in Myanmar says she and the family just want him here in Michigan. It was a total visceral reaction, gut, visceral, numbing, nauseating, tearful, helpless feeling," Rose Fenster said, describing how she felt when learning about the detention of her son, Danny Fenster. The 37-year-old managing editor of Frontier Myanmar was detained at Yangon International Airport on Monday as he was preparing to board a flight to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, en route to the Detroit area to see his family. Its important we get this resolved as quickly as possible. Were on Day 5, so time is crucial. We want him out of there, Bryan Fenster, Dannys older brother, said during an interview Friday at their parents home in Huntington Woods, Michigan. Earlier in the day, the U.S. State Department said it was deeply concerned about the detention of Danny Fenster and another American citizen who also has been working as a journalist in Myanmar. The State Department is pressing that countrys military government for their immediate release. It said in a statement that it will keep seeking the release of Fenster and Nathan Maung until they are allowed to return home safely to their families. Frontier Myanmar is a news and business magazine that is published in English and Burmese and also online. Human rights organizations and groups promoting freedom of expression have been calling for the release of both men, as well as all other journalists being held by Myanmars military government. Michigan Rep. Andy Levin said he has been in close contact with the State Department and the Fenster family, whom he represents in Congress. This is about freeing an American citizen who has been unjustly detained, Levin said. And were all rowing in the same direction here. Bryan Fenster said his brother has been taken to Insein Prison in Yangon, which over decades has housed thousands of political prisoners, including many from the current movement protesting military rule. We've been hearing terrible things about the conditions there, Bryan Fenster said, Maung and Myanmar national Hanthar Nyein, co-founders of the Myanmar news website Kamayut Media, were arrested on March 9, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, citing accounts in Myanmar media. The group said it had reports that Maung, the website's editor-in-chief, and Hanthar, a news producer, had been physically mistreated by guards in their first few weeks at Insein Prison. The State Department statement said consular officers from the U.S. Embassy in Yangon had paid a virtual visit to Maung on Monday but so far have not been granted access to Fenster. It said it urged the authorities to grant consular access, as required by the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, without delay, and to ensure proper treatment of both Nathan and Daniel while they remain detained. Two other foreign journalists have been arrested by the military junta that took power in February after ousting the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi. Freelancers Robert Bociaga of Poland and Yuki Kitazumi of Japan have since been deported. The ongoing persecution, intimidation, harassment and violence faced by journalists in Myanmar constitutes a clear attempt by the military authorities to suppress peaceful dissent and obscure violations committed by security forces in the wake of the 1 February coup, the human rights group Amnesty International said in a statement. The nationwide crackdown has resulted in widespread denial of the rights to freedom of expression and access to information. It said that according to Myanmars Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, 88 journalists have been arrested since the armys takeover, with more than half still in detention, and 33 in hiding. According to the Assistance Association, which has kept a detailed tally of arrests and deaths since the military takeover, more than 4,300 people are in detention, including 104 who have already been sentenced. Reporters Without Borders and PEN International are among other groups calling for the release of the journalists. As a mom, I just want him here," Rose Fenster said. And just, I love him, love him, love him." ___ Householder reported from Huntington Woods, Michigan. After a few years working in advertising and broadcast production in New York, I decided to move back to my home state of Connecticut and live the American dream. I opened my own business in 2008, and now 13 years later I own a number of restaurants here in the state including multiple locations of Moes Southwest Grill and an Artichoke Basile Pizza. Before the pandemic, I was employing more than 100 people here in Connecticut and I want to get back to and even exceed that number now that our economy is finally starting to recover. I worked hard to get where I am. I did my research, found a franchise I wanted to be a part of, took a risk and dove in headfirst. I got a small-business loan to open my first restaurant. From there, I sacrificed and worked harder than I thought possible until I had three different brands under my belt. Id like to bring even more franchises into the state, but right now those plans are in jeopardy because of SB 668, a Connecticut state Senate bill that would establish a scheduling mandate for businesses. The scheduling mandate is exactly what it sounds like a law that would control how businesses and their employees work together to set and change schedules for employees. It would require employers to estimate work schedules, average number of hours and minimum shift lengths in advance. Then, if an employer has to cancel or reduces a shift within two weeks of a scheduled workday, they would still have to pay the employee a portion of their pay. Proponents of the bill say itll only affect giant corporations because only companies with more than 500 employees would be required to follow it. But in reality, it impacts many small businesses because it treats individual franchises as part of the overall organization. One Moes location may only have 15 employees, but because there are thousands of employees working at different Moes throughout the country, that franchise would be required to follow the mandate. All the while, the same-sized nonfranchise restaurant across the street would still be free to make any necessary scheduling changes, thereby allowing them to provide superior service. We are both locally owned, locally run businesses that are employing Connecticut residents it makes no sense for the state of Connecticut to treat us differently. No restaurant establishment whether they are a franchisee or a locally owned mom and pop should be targeted with a mandate like this. It discourages entrepreneurs like me from keeping my businesses here. The scheduling mandate couldnt come at a worse time. Connecticut restaurants are still reeling from the pandemic. Our industry lost more than 16,000 employees since February 2020. My own business saw a 35 percent to 85 percent drop in revenue depending on the location. Slowly, I am clawing my way back, but one of our biggest challenges is bringing employees back to work. One of the biggest selling points that restaurants have to offer employees is scheduling flexibility. Our workers love that they can pick their hours and make necessary last-minute changes when needed; whether its a student that needs to study for finals or a single mom with a sick child, our industry can accommodate those needs. SB 668 would change all of that. For example, in downtown Hartford, we know were going to have a busy night if theres a show at the XL Center, so we schedule a lot of workers for those nights. If my bartender cancels at the last minute, I have to call in another one. If the show is canceled, were not going to be nearly as busy, so I need to send some people home. Under the scheduling mandate, both of those logical actions would be penalized. Why is the state trying to get in the middle of that relationship between employer and employee, and why is it doing it just as Connecticut is fighting to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic? Restaurants are the springboard for many careers because of the flexibility that they offer, allowing them to set schedules that suit their life needs and teach them invaluable work skills along the way. Now, as we recover from the pandemic, is not the time to force restaurants and their employees to jump over new hurdles. On top of hurting employees by taking away that job flexibility, customers would suffer because short-staffed restaurants wouldnt be able to call anyone in. Service would slow down, the overall experience would diminish, and ultimately the restaurant would no longer be viewed the same way. At the end of every year, we decide if we can open a new location or bring a new brand into the state. But if the scheduling mandate passes, why would anyone open a new franchise in Connecticut? Matt Rusconi is a restaurant franchisee in Connecticut. An Iwo Jima memorial buried for decades and discovered by a Camp San Luis Obispo employee in 2010 has been fully restored by the San Luis Obispo County chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution. The five-sided, raised red star is about 10 to 12 feet wide and is surrounded by four cypress trees, representing the branches of the U.S. military. The memorial includes a rock formation noting "Iwo Jima Memorial" and a 1951 plaque inscription that reads: "Dedicated to the Men of the United States Navy, Marines, Army and Army Air Corp ... Men Who Served and Gave Their Lives for Our Freedom." A re-dedication was the highlight of a Memorial Day weekend ceremony held Friday at the camp. Employee discovered buried memorial in 2010 The memorial was buried at a former entrance station site on the base years ago. Former Camp SLO employee Ron Stanovich began working to preserve the monument in 2010, according to Carrie Lovell, a spokesperson for the La Cuesta Daughters of the American Revolution, a nonprofit, non-political, volunteer women's service organization with chapters and membership nationwide and around the world. Military humvees had been driving over the structure during practice jumps in a field, where Stanovich noticed a red corner piece sticking out of the ground. He unearthed it and from 2010 to 2017 worked to reassemble the red concrete structure. "I wanted to make sure it didn't get destroyed," Stanovich, a retired base plumber, told The Tribune in a phone interview. "I knew that the base was a communications training site back in World War II and that the star represents the badge symbol of a group of servicemen who were stationed here and served in Iwo Jima." Stanovich said that some of the men who were stationed at Camp SLO didn't survive the 1945 battle on the Japanese island. Volunteers help to complete project Seeking a service project in April, the Daughters of the American Revolution took on the effort and coordinated with the camp to fully restore the cracked and deteriorated monument, finishing the project this week. The group received donated materials of cement, paint, flags, rocks and more from Lowe's in Paso Robles. "This offered us a purpose to be together and accomplish an important restoration in a safe environment," said Leslie Lechner, the nonprofit's chapter regent. Major Deborah Claffey told The Tribune the memorial is one of many at the base, including Italian prison of war, plane and infantry memorials, now displayed in a mall on the base. But the Iwo Jima project was forgotten for years, in a different base location, before Stanovich began his work as a personal project to remember the history. At Friday's ceremony, Lt. Brian N. Wintzer, the garrison commander, urged attendees to "never, ever stop searching for the missing," saying that the whereabouts of 80,000 service members remain a mystery. "What can you do today to honor (service members) so we can live free?" Wintzer said in the re-dedication ceremony. This article is written by Nick Wilson from The Tribune (San Luis Obispo, Calif.) and was legally licensed via the Tribune Content Agency through the Industry Dive publisher network. Please direct all licensing questions to legal@industrydive.com. The leaders of two Air Force and Space Force groups -- one focused on issues related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer, or LGBTQ, troops; the other on indigenous service members -- want to see improvements begin at the top, they say. The push for change shouldn't have to start at the lower echelons, according to Maj. Gen. Leah Lauderback, head of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Queer/Questioning Initiative Team, or LIT; and Col. Terrence Adams, head of the Indigenous Nations Equality Tea, or INET. "If we want this to succeed, it requires that leadership ... first and foremost be part of the process," said Lauderback, the director of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance for the U.S. Space Force, during a roundtable interview Wednesday. Read Next: Senate Revokes Confirmation of First Female Army Secretary over Apparent Procedural Issue Last month, the service announced that LIT and INET had formed earlier this year to better analyze issues impacting diversity, career limitations and retention of these service members. The groups hope airmen will come forward to describe barriers they've encountered in the service. Lauderback, who has been openly gay since the repeal of the Dont Ask, Don't Tell policy, said she worries about young service members having doubts about their gender identity. "We need to be able to get support through our providers, through our medical professionals within the service, in order to work that," she said. A first step, she said, could be to encourage medical staff members to commend airmen for seeking care to protect themselves against HIV exposure. Airmen must fill out request forms to use pre-exposure prophylaxis treatment medication -- something that was once prohibited for pilots and aircrew. That policy was amended in 2018. One simple improvement would be to change the language on the forms, which categorizes these airmen as "high risk," Lauderback said. "This airman is looking for help, he's doing the right thing, he's being responsible, and so we want to make him feel good about that, as opposed to making him feel that he's doing something wrong." Another easy fix would be to look at family programs with LGBTQ personnel in mind. A two-dad family may dismiss a "mothers of preschoolers" program because it doesn't cater to their needs, she explained. "Those are, again, awareness and education," Lauderback said. INET is working to define the challenges indigenous airmen see in the ranks, Adams said. He is also the deputy director of strategy, posture, assessments and concepts for the Air Force. INET is partnering with organizations such as the Society of American Indian Government Employees and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society to identify and try to remove those barriers, and to recruit and retain individuals who traditionally have not seen military service as a career option, he said. "My goal ... is to begin to champion, to make those small voices [into] large voices as we begin our journey," said Adams, who is of Cherokee and Creek Indian descent. The teams are applying lessons learned from other groups, such as the Women's Initiative Team, which has been around for almost a decade and has been instrumental in encouraging change for outdated or restrictive policies. There is room for collaboration, the leaders added. Lauderback said she recently came across a transgender service member who reported a personal issue to the women's team, but the issue also applied to the LGBTQ team. "So that cross talk? That's happening," she said. "If nothing else, we've got a good community together that can offer support to folks that are still having challenges. I think at the grassroots level, those airmen and Guardians [are] always going to participate as long as we offer the venue for it," Lauderback said. -- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214. Related: New Air Force Survey Investigates Justice Disparities in Asian, Hispanic, Native Communities Dr. Richard A. Stone is the acting under secretary for health for the Veterans Health Administration, overseeing the delivery of care to more than 9 million enrolled veterans at over 1,200 health care facilities. He is a retired Army major general and veteran of the war in Afghanistan. Last year's Memorial Day was one of the most difficult in my lifetime. For the first time for as long as I can remember, I was unable to join my fellow veterans in person to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for our nation. COVID-19 has altered many parts of our lives, but enduring 2020 without gathering and connecting with fellow veterans was one of the most difficult for me. Like most Americans, I've always seen Memorial Day as a time to pause and reflect. We so often run from task to task, from challenge to challenge, not taking time to think and acknowledge how we are feeling. Being in battle is an extreme example, but this pandemic also had those moments. At the time we're acting, moving, assessing and reacting, time blurs and it's hard to see anything but your goal: saving lives. It is in the silence after that, when the battle is won and the dust is clearing, that you look around and see what it has cost. Memorial Day has been that moment for me for the past 40-plus years, when I look around at the achievements and blessings we all have and pause to remember those who gave everything they had to defend them. Like so many veterans, I remember vividly each service member I could not bring home safely to their families, and today I honor them and their survivors. This year's Memorial Day offers us some ability to return to those gatherings, but it still won't be the same. Vaccinations have brought us a new sense of hope and stabilized cases across the nation, but while we are almost through this terrible period in our lives, this Memorial Day will be difficult for a broader reason: This year, we have even more fallen veterans to honor. As we do each year, this weekend we will come together as communities to honor those who served and defended the nation in uniform and made the ultimate sacrifice. COVID-19 has taken the lives of too many loved ones, including many of our brothers and sisters in arms who survived their battles on foreign soil and then faced a very different enemy in the virus. The dedicated employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs treated thousands of veterans for COVID-19 over the last year, many with very advanced respiratory compromise and the myriad difficulties that endured beyond their inpatient care. It has been a long journey for those veterans, as well as those who cared for them, sometimes for weeks and months on end in very challenging conditions. Through it all, our teams have demonstrated the expertise and compassion that makes the VA not only the largest integrated health care system in the nation but, time and again, among the most trusted. As the head of the VA's health administration, I recently had the opportunity to visit a handful of our hospitals and, at each location, I was struck by the level of hope that is now resonating throughout the facilities. Our clinical staff is now well above 90% vaccinated, and it is close to the same among our inpatient residents, many of whom have not been able to receive visitors over the past 15 months. There is a new energy to our hospitals as people start rescheduling routine appointments, and our teams are excited to see the veterans they have been able to connect with only virtually in person once again. Veterans and their families are coming to us to get vaccinated ahead of the summer break and are looking forward to traveling to see a family member or someone they served with but couldn't see last year. Today, we honor those who cannot return to their families, but who will be remembered for their service and dedication within our halls and across the nation. Each of their stories is part of what makes the VA such an incredible place to receive and provide health care, and for me personally, a remarkable workforce to lead. Our facilities are doing everything they can to make this Memorial Day a special event for our veteran patients, as we have done every year since our founding 75 years ago, in honor of their service and the memory of those they fought alongside. The daily hustle and bustle of our 175 hospitals will slow for a moment for these somber occasions, but they are meaningful -- and important -- reminders of why we do what we do on behalf of a grateful nation. Just as importantly, we recognize that, while we may still be apart this year, we can come together in many different ways to honor and salute those who have defended our freedoms. This Memorial Day, we thank those who served, and we remember those who have been lost. -- 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. The Astros have placed outfielder Michael Brantley on the 10-day injured list with right hamstring tightness and recalled infielder Robel Garcia, Brian McTaggart of MLB.com tweets. Houston will temporarily lose one of its best hitters in Brantley, whos in his third year with the team. Brantley was a free agent in the offseason, but the Astros brought him back on a two-year, $32MM contract after he posted outstanding production in his first two seasons with the team. This season has been more of the same for Brantley, who has batted .305/.346/.455 (128 wRC+) with three home runs in 179 plate appearances. Brantley a former Indian who has dealt with various injuries throughout his career has already missed eight of Houstons 49 games this year, and hell add to that total now that hes on the IL. The 34-year-old has spent the vast majority of his season in left field, though he hasnt started there since May 22, and he hasnt been in the Astros lineup since the 23rd. When Brantley hasnt been available to man left, the Astros have used Aledmys Diaz and Chas McCormick. Indias battle with Covid 19 is ongoing. The daily case load had exceeded four lakh mark and many are fighting the infection at home. The second wave has hit us hard with people suffering from mild, moderate and severe symptoms. The panic about the increasing cases is making people rush to the hospitals even if they have mild or moderate symptoms leading to unavailability of beds for the more critical patients. People need to understand that most Covid positive cases are mild or asymptomatic and do not require hospitalisation. These mild cases can be treated at home following the necessary protocols and precautions. Standard guidelines include: Covid positive patient needs to be kept under observation and isolation for 14 days after he/she contracts the infection. While some patients may not show any symptoms at all, a few might show slight fever, body ache or breathing problem. The mild symptoms may take 3-5 days to progress to moderate. If the patient is vigilant about the symptoms, she/he can track the changes more carefully. With mild symptoms one can opt for home quarantine package from the hospitals availing regular teleconsultations with the doctors. This will help in understanding any changes in the symptoms or necessity to get admitted to the hospital. How to identify if you have mild COVID-19 symptoms? When a patient has mild COVID-19 symptoms, these symptoms may show in the upper respiratory tract, with or without fever and without shortness of breath. Another major factor is that they should not have hypoxia (shortage of adequate supply of oxygen at the tissue level). Individuals can check this by using an oximeter and noting down the SpO2 levels. If the SpO2 levels are between 94-98 percent, then there is no need to worry. But if the levels fall below 94 per cent, they need to reach out for medical assistance. What should you do if you know you have mild COVID-19? Isolate yourself at home. It is advised that you isolate in the room which has an attached toilet, as others at the home are not supposed to use the one which the infected person uses. Wear a mask at all times and change it after using it for 6-8 hours. Keep in regular contact with your physician through teleconsultation and update him about your symptoms. He will generally prescribe hydration, antipyretic, antitussive and multivitamin medicines to manage your mild symptoms. Keep a note of your body temperature and oxygen saturation levels. Along with the medications it is advised to inhale steam twice a day. Always consume warm water and hot food. Avoid food that can aggravate cold and cough. Keep your body warm. Check with your doctor before you can do any exercises and follow breathing practices. Pronal breathing To improve ventilation and keep your alveolar units open, proning is recommended. It makes your breathing easier and is required by patients when the oxygen saturation level falls below 94 per cent. For proning one pillow has to be placed below the neck, one or two pillows below the chest region through the upper thigh and two pillows should be placed below the shins. Check out some videos to know the exact positioning of proning. This method is effective in providing immediate relief and increasing the oxygen levels in the body. When to seek medical attention? When the cough lasts for more than five days. When there is high-grade fever. Difficulty in breathing. When the oxygen saturation level falls below 94 per cent. Keep calm and never panic while you follow all these measures. In a matter of two weeks, you can return to your normal life. By Dr Hirenappa Udnur, Consultant Pulmonologist, Columbia Asia Hospital, Hebbal (A unit of Manipal Hospitals) The organization was backlogged with requests and did not initially get back to him, and the couple had to find another place to live. When a representative from Building Homes for Heroes reached out last year and heard the Khans were evicted from a subsequent apartment, she offered to help them apply for a mortgage-free home through the organization. Listen to article Menstruation means Hope for mankind, when the last woman stops mensuration, the human race will become extinct. In 2016 an estimated 335 million girls went to primary and secondary schools without water and soap available for washing their hands, bodies, or clothes when changing sanitary pads, estimates for 92 countries show only 69% of schools had a basic drinking water service, estimates for 101 countries show 66% of schools had a basic sanitation water service and estimates for 81 countries showed 53% of schools had a basic hygiene service (UNICEF, 2018). Many of the 5.5 million adolescents in Ghana don't get urgently needed SRHR services/information they need (UNICEF, 2015). Girls in developing countries miss up to 5 days of school per month when they menstruate. Globally, 2.4 billion people have no access to improved sanitation facilities. They lack access to facilities, or inadequate facilities that do not ensure privacy and hygiene, particularly and women and girls. On the occasion of World Menstrual Hygiene Day, RISE-Ghana joins the global community, State and Non-State Duty Bearers and Service Providers to call for urgent steps to end the growing stigma, lack of support systems and period-shaming of women and girls face when they are experiencing and managing their menstrual cycles. Let us use the occasion to create awareness and increase understanding and support Menstruation. Menstruation or menses is the natural bodily process of releasing blood and associated matter from the uterus through the vagina as part of the menstrual cycle. Menarche is the onset of menstruation, the time when a girl has her first menstrual period. Menstrual hygiene management (MHM) refers to management of hygiene associated with the menstrual process. WHO and UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) for drinking water, sanitation, and hygiene has used the following definition of MHM: Women and adolescent girls are using a clean menstrual management material to absorb or collect menstrual blood, that can be changed in privacy as often as necessary for the duration of a menstrual period, using soap and water for washing the body as required, and having access to safe and convenient facilities to dispose of used menstrual management materials. They understand the basic facts linked to the menstrual cycle and how to manage it with dignity and without discomfort or fear Menstrual health and hygiene (MHH) encompass both MHM and the broader systemic factors that link menstruation with health, well-being, gender equality, education, equity, empowerment, and rights. A menstruator is a person who menstruates and therefore has menstrual health and hygiene needs including girls, women, transgender and non-binary persons. Menstrual hygiene materials are the products used to catch menstrual flow, such as pads, cloths, tampons or cups. Menstrual supplies are other supportive items needed for MHH, such as body and laundry soap, underwear and pain relief items. Menstrual facilities are those facilities most associated with a safe and dignified menstruation, such as toilets and water infrastructure. All women and girls should be able to manage their periods hygienically, safely, in privacy and with dignity, sadly for millions of girls across Ghana, especially those in rural settings, this is unacceptably not the case. Despite evidence that schools are one of the safest spaces for adolescent girls, many schools do not have appropriate WASH facilities and changing rooms to support the menstrual hygiene needs of girls. The Sustainable Development Goals cannot be achieved without paying attention to Menstruation matters. For instance, evidence from UNICEF indicates show that: Women and girls access to MHH is also central to achieving other SDGs. The lack of basic knowledge about puberty and menstruation may contribute to early and unwanted pregnancy; the stress and shame associated with menstruation can negatively affect mental health; and unhygienic sanitation products may make girls susceptible to reproductive tract infections all affecting SDG health outcomes (Goal 3). Girls may be absent or less attentive in school during menstruation due to a lack of WASH facilities or support from the school community, affecting education (Goal 4), or at work, affecting economic opportunities (Goal 8). Gender equality (Goal 5) cannot be achieved when taboos and myths prevent menstruating women and girls from full participation in society. Failure to develop markets for quality menstrual materials can impact on sustainable consumption and production patterns (Goal 12). Many women and girls lack access to affordable, hygienic menstrual products, forcing them to use old rags, cloths or other unhygienic materials. This can lead to reproductive tract infections (RTIs) and other health conditions. Moreover, taboos and myths related to menstruation often portray women and girls as inferior to men and boys, exacerbating already existing negative gender norms and forcing women and girls to suicidal tendencies. Good menstrual hygiene hinges on 1. Education 2. Toilets, & Water, Soap 3. Menstrual Products, 4. Disposal. At the systems level: 1. Informed Professionals 2. Positive Social Norms 3. Policies 4. Health Several hundred Malians rallied in the capital Bamako on Friday to support the army, as well as Russia, AFP journalists said, after the military reasserted control in the unstable Sahel state this week. Military officers detained transitional president Bah Ndaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane on Monday, before stripping them of their powers and freeing them on Thursday. The move triggered diplomatic uproar, and marks the second apparent coup within a year in Mali. Ndaw and Ouane led a transition government installed in the wake of a military coup in August, which deposed elected president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. On Friday, hundreds of people demonstrated in support of the military under a huge portrait of coup leader Assimi Goita in a central square in Bamako. Some also waved Russian flags and toted placards attacking France, Mali's former colonial master, which has deployed troops to the country to help it in its fight against jihadist insurgents. "We want the French to leave and Russia to come in," said Adama Dicko, a protester in his 30s. France intervened at the request of Mali's government in 2013 to help quell a jihadist rebellion that broke out the previous year. But the Islamist insurgency is still raging in the vast nation of 19 million people, and has spread to neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger. France has some 5,100 troops deployed across Africa's arid Sahel region as part of its anti-jihadist force Barkhane. The country's military involvement in Mali is nonetheless criticised on social media in Mali, and has led to frequent protests. "We came to support our men, to support the army and to ask Russia to come and help us," said protester Rokia Toure, who is married to a soldier. Not all protesters were critics of the French intervention, however. Fanta Diarra, a protester, told AFP that France is not a problem and "Russia will not be our solution". A resigned member of the opposition National Democratic Congress(NDC) and founder and leader of the National Liberation Congress Party, Stephen Atubiga has sworn that his former party will never win the 2024 elections. Speaking in an interview on political talk show,'HardBall' - hosted by Kwabena Owusu Agyemang on Accra-based Hot 93.9FM, Stephen Atubiga stated that, looking at the state of the NDC party and its leaders, the NDC can never win the 2024 elections. The founder and leader of the National Liberation Congress Party stated confidently that his newly formed party will determine the winner of the 2024 elections. "NDC will never win the 2024 elections...mark it...Looking at the state of the party and its leaders, they can never win the 2024 elections. My party will determine the winner of that election...so in as much as my party will be contesting, NDC will never win," Atubiga told Kwabena Owusu Agyemang Stressing on his relationship with former President John Dramani Mahama, Atubiga said: "John Mahama is like a brother to me. Mahama and his wife used to stay in my house whenever they visited the United States. In fact, Mahama and his first son Shafik also stayed with me when Shafik was 18 years old until he was 26 years old". ---Hotfmghana.com // Contributor on Modernghana.com Listen to article The Ghanaian youth are rising up to defend their motherland from the hands of rogues selling Ghana to foreign nationals, principally the Chinese. They will not sit down for greedy and short-sighted politicians and traditional chiefs to sell the country to the Chinese for the citizens to end up slaves in their own country. Our forefathers toiled a lot, wiping off beads of sweat from their foreheads and bodies, as well as sacrificing their lives or shedding their blood to obtain us our independence from the British white colonialists. Why should we sit down for our visionless politicians and chiefs to take us back into slavery under the hands of the heartless Chinese? No, we shall fight the native rogues! Why should we sit down with our palms squeezed in-between our thighs while our traditional leaders sell our lands to the Chinese who end up destroying our water bodies, fertile and arable lands and virgin forests? The Freedom Fighters made up of the youth, both boys and girls, will resist the chiefs by taking them on, treating them the way sense can be pumped into their obstinate heads. He who crosses the path of the irate freedom fighters led by Ohene David of Fire from Above and Twene Jonas will not be spared. They will come out bruised all over their integrity. When I started taking on Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II over ten years ago, when he cunningly waded into the ongoing Kumawu chieftaincy dispute, imposed a puppet on Kumawu as their paramount chief, and then criminally appropriated hundreds of thousands of hectares of Kumawu stool lands to himself, many a Ghanaian did not understand me. I had started a fight on behalf of my suffering and poverty-stricken Kumawuman compatriots. I had started the freedom fight of course. Was I not among the first Ghanaians to seriously take on Alfred Agbesi Woyome, the Ghanaian swindler of the 21st Century when he was first exposed by Kennedy Ohene Akompreko Agyapong (Hon), the Member of Parliament for Assin Central in the Central region? Did I spare colluder Betty Mould-Iddrisu? No! How I wish the now teeming youthful freedom fighters were around to give me a hand? I still count on them to rid Ghana of corrupt politicians and chiefs. I appreciate the fact they are not partisan and criminals like Kevin Ekow Taylor and his ilk in the NDC party who only criticise NPP policies, programmes and personalities only for their political gain but not the collective interest of Ghanaians. This lit fire by the freedom fighters will burn any obstructions littered in their way. I hope a strong warning is sent to all the rogue Ghanaian chiefs, including he who is criminally twisting the arms of Kumawuman citizens for his selfish gains and insatiable greed. He who steps on the foot of any of the freedom fighters has stepped on the feet of all the freedom fighters and they will come after him/her in their multitude, both men and women. As it was in Acts 16:9 That night Paul had a vision: A man from Macedonia in northern Greece was standing there, pleading with him, Come over to Macedonia and help us! so should it be with Kumawu. Freedom fighters, I plead with you to come to Kumawu to help us liberate ourselves from the roguish attitudes of Otumfuo and his cabal of Asanteman chiefs conspired against Kumawuman. Long live the discerning Ghanaian youth. Long live the freedom fighters and their dreams. Long live Ohene David and Twene Jonas. Aluta continua! Rockson Adofo Friday, 28 May 2021 French President Emmanuel Macron on Friday vowed to help push for the production of vaccines in Africa, a continent where less two percent of people have been immunised against Covid-19. He is in South Africa for a lightning trip to discuss Covid vaccine access for Africa. Macron arrived in South Africa from a historic visit to Rwanda where he acknowledged French responsibility in the 1994 genocide. "It is a matter of duty, of solidarity" to support the poorest countries to access vaccines, he said after talks with Cyril Ramaphosa at Union Buildings, the seat of government. "We will very much put in place an investment strategy for the industry to produce more, particularly the industry in Africa," he said. The two leaders discussed a temporary waiver of World Trade Organisation (WTO) property rights over coronavirus vaccines. The idea is being pushed by South Africa and India, which say the waiver will spur vaccine production in developing countries. "Patents should not be a brake," to vaccine access, said Macron. Speaking later at the University of Pretoria where the pair was launching a programme to support African vaccine production, a project backed by the European Union, United States and World Bank, Macron said Africa could count on France for support to make vaccines. Ramaphosa, said access was the "biggest and most dangerous challenge" for Africa while vaccines were flooding into the developed world yet "trickling" into Africa. "We cannot continue to wait in the queue for life saving vaccines. The longer we wait the more lives we put at risk," said Ramaphosa. Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world with vaccination -- less than two percent of its population has been immunised six months after the campaign started. Ramaphosa has sounded the alarm about what he called "vaccine apartheid" between rich countries and poor ones. Pharma companies oppose the waiver, saying it could sap incentives for future research and development. They also point out that manufacturing a vaccine requires know-how and technical resources -- something that cannot be acquired at the flip of a switch. Macron's approach is to push for a transfer of technology to enable production sites in poorer countries. "Africa has about 20 percent of vaccine needs, but one percent of the production," said Macron. Covid hit South Africa is the continent's most industrialised economy but also its worst-hit by Covid. The country has recorded more than 1.6 million cases of Africa's 4.7 million infections and accounts for more than 40 percent of its nearly 130,000 fatalities. Jab: South Africa has struggled to ramp up its Covid vaccination campaign. By Michele Spatari (AFP) But just about one percent of its population of 59 million have been vaccinated -- most of them health workers and people aged 60 or above. The immunisation effort got off to a stuttering start when South Africa purchased AstraZeneca vaccines earlier this year and then sold them to other African countries following fears that they would be less effective. Delayed trip Macron's trip was scheduled to have taken place more than a year ago but was postponed as the pandemic shifted into higher gear. His push for the visit stems from the fact that South Africa "is a major partner on the continent, a member of the G20, it's regularly invited to the G7 -- it's essential in the approach to multilateralism", one of his aides said before the trip. Macron will also make a pitch for French business in South Africa, especially in climate-friendly sectors. The two also discussed the security crisis in northern Mozambique, where a bloody jihadist insurgency is now in its fourth year. The French energy giant Total last month suspended work on a massive $20 billion gas project in Cabo Delgado province after jihadists attacked the nearby town of Palma. Macron pledged France would help in the fight against jihadist violence if requested, but any intervention should be channelled through southern Africa's regional bloc. Before flying home on Saturday, Macron will talk to members of the French community and, like many VIPs before him, visit the Nelson Mandela Foundation. jri-cld-mgu-sn/har Islamic Scholar and Northern Regional Chief Imam of Shia Muslims, Shehu Dalhu has admonished Ghanaians to rally behind the Vice President, Dr. Mahamadu Bawumia as the leader of the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and subsequently, the next president of Ghana. Shehu Dalhu was speaking during the final funeral rights of Alhaji Karim, former chief Imam of Linguinsi, a community in the North East Region. He said his call was not only base on the fact that Dr. Bawumia is the Vice President who hails from Manpurugu, but because he is competent, hardworking and humble. According to him, Bawumia remains the pride of the North and for that matter, he deserves to be supported to rise to that position where he can continue to bring development to the people of the North. He said he knows Bawumia very well and trusts he can send Mamprugu and Ghana to the dreamland. He also averred that Bawumia doesn't discriminate and has a good relationship with both Muslims and Christians sects. He said he would prefer a Southerner who is a devoted Christian and competent to work than a Northerner who is incompetent and not God fearing. He also averred that, as a Muslim leader he would prefer a leader who is passionate about towards humanity and Dr. Bawumi's charisma cuts accross all the accolades a true leader must possess. "He is God fearing, competent and has a passion for humanity. These are all evident in his, works as the Vice President of this great nation," he said. Shehu Dalhu called on Ghanaians to consider humanity more important than religion and politics. "Religion without humanity is like a body without a soul," he said. He called on the people to eschew violence and issue that have the tendency of destroying the society. He called on all citizens to be each other's keeper and reiterated the need for peaceful conscience especially among religious denominations and also on political parties. Listen to article In what one would consider as a very candid conversation with a cross-section of Expats living in Ghana today, it became obvious that the Ghanaian today is not only considered a coward but also a failure to the very existence we all refer to as life. The Youth in Ghana, are considered to be lazy cowards, who all want quick money yet never want to put in the work needed to make that money, instead they would rather cook up all sorts of stories to steal or defraud any expat they encounter, just as they do online to scam foreigners. The sad reality also displays the fact that some Ghanaian men are ready to sell their body online for anywhere between 10 -to- 50 US dollars to homosexual men abroad. Many of these boys would make videos of themselves sticking all sorts of things into their anus just to get some faggot to send them money. And that reality plays out also in hotels/guest houses across Ghana when homosexual expats arrive in Ghana. Note however that, these are not only restricted to the young men but also the young women/girls as well. The NGO, Diaspora Youth Empowerment 4 Ghana, (DYE4GHANA), was alarmed by the image Ghana currently has in the international community, and this in itself could also hamper or damage our tourism industry as well as investor relations with Ghana as a whole. Speaking at its first open forum in Accra, the head of DYE4GHANA, Roland Agyemang recounted discussions he had with a German expat living in Accra for the past 14years, who said, he has seen the good, the bad and the ugly in the several years he has been living full time in Ghana, and can say emphatically that Ghanaians are cowards who hide under the pretext of religion to destroy their own people. He also went on to say that the few good ones are usually silenced in the noise of the semi-literates that control the airwaves. (Media). It also came to light, that an American expat, who chose Ghana as an investment base, was robbed, threatened even by government officials whom she refused to pay bribe to, leading to this individual abandoning her initial plan to invest in the education sector. Mr Roland Agyemang, highlighted the fact that, due to the lack of direction and directives from Government, many of our youth today are delusional, desperate, lazy, without focus, and downright criminal as a result of the lack of focus by policy makers to the generic plight of young people. He charged that in any country with responsible leadership, social welfare interventions would be put in place to offer training and guidance to the country's young people so they can be responsible citizens who would in turn be equipped to cater for these policy makers when they become aged. The lack of foresight/vision, is driven by the fact that media houses across the country are only interested in useless gossips, 'he said/she said' gibberish, and radio/tv presenters as well as bloggers whose main interests are in the type clothings/shoes people wear or the cars they drive, instead of impacting the lives of the people they have following them. Finally, without being political, the leadership of DYE4GHANA encourages the youth in Ghana not to be intimidated by anyone, be bold in doing what is right for themselves and country, and above all aspire to become better citizens than what we all witness of the older generation. The Christian Council, Peace Councils, National House of Chiefs etc etc .. have all let the youth down miserably because they refuse to see the need to even dialogue with the young people, let alone create an environment where the growth/development of young people becomes paramount to nation building as should be for any responsible government. The group calls on all Political parties in Ghana to join hands with them to create a national agenda for the youth, because in its view, Ghanaians who have lived abroad and have now come back to settle in Ghana all have a thing or two to share with the youth, as well as learn a thing or two from the youth as well, making this social connection a win-win for all. It's time Ghana revives its social welfare ministry and the men/women intelligent enough to ensure its success are all around us." Let's help fix Ghana one youth at a time" is the group's slogan. Ghanaian politicians, he said, need to begin the process of building integrity, and stop the trending image they have created for themselves, which makes them all seem lazy and corrupt from the top down. Minority Leader, Haruna Iddrisu, has implored the Speaker of Parliament, Alban Bagbin, to summon the Attorney General (AG) to the House to explain the legality of the government's approach of burning excavators in the fight against galamsey. The Minority Leader is of the view that burning excavators is illegal and that the AG, Godfred Dame, must explain to the House, the rationale behind such an approach. Making the request in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu said the fact the President supports the approach does not make it right. According to him, no law permitting the burning of seized excavators currently exists in Ghanas constitution. As such, he wants the AG summoned to Parliament in accord with Article 88 of the constitution, as the principal advisor to government, [to explain] why the president must not be held in checkoff being in breach of the laws of Ghana and also provide some evidence to prove that burning of excavators is sanctioned, and I wait to see that. Haruna Iddrisu insists that he wants President Akufo-Addo to lead the country by the constitution We want him to lead the lawful Republic of Ghana in accordance with his oath to uphold the constitution and the laws of Ghana and to hold himself accountable to the laws of Ghana. No laws in Ghana today permit the burning of excavators, he added. The government recently renewed its commitment to ending the 'galamsey' menace with some enhanced measures, including the burning of excavators by the members of the Operation Halt taskforce. However, a lot of people have expressed their dissatisfaction with the approach. President Akufo-Addo, in response to the complaints, has asked those persons to go to court. I know there are some who believe that the ongoing exercise of ridding our water bodies and forest zones of harmful equipment and machinery is unlawful and, in some cases, harsh. I strongly disagree, and I will advise those who take a contrary view to go to court to vindicate their position if they so wish. That is what the rule of law is all about, Akufo-Addo said. ---citinewsroom Rwandan President Paul Kagame on Friday appealed for 'urgent global support' to manage a crisis on the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo, as civilians fled another feared eruption of Mount Nyiragongo. Africa's most active volcano blew at the weekend, spewing rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of around 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. But following warnings Nyiragongo could erupt again, authorities in the nearby city of Goma on Thursday issued a "preventative" evacuation order, sending nearly 400,000 people fleeing. Thousands have streamed over the border into Rwanda, seeking refuge in makeshift tents. "We are having big numbers of people crossing the border. So we are trying to work with the Congolese side to deal with the humanitarian crisis that is unfolding out of that," Kagame said in an interview late Friday with AFP and France Inter. "We already need urgent, global support to keep on monitoring, knowing what is going on." Around 3,000 people are estimated to have arrived in the Rugerero camp 10 kilometres (six miles) from the border with DR Congo, where just on the other side, Nyiragongo looms over Goma. Camps have sprung up in other border districts, with trucks bringing refugees from the border and temporary clinics tending to the sick. Kagame said earthquakes in the aftermath of the eruption had also damaged houses, roads and other infrastructure on his country's side of the border, and displaced Rwandans too. "We are anticipating to deal with this," he said. "There are things we are planning that are immediate, urgent, there are others we respond to as they happen," he said, but addded there were limitations to what could be done. The influx has prompted concerns by UNHCR and the Rwandan government about an outbreak of the coronavirus. An official from the Rwandan ministry of emergency management told AFP there were currently sufficient supplies of food, water and medicine in the camps but this could change as more people fled the volcano. Six hundred Russian soldiers requested by the Central African Republic this month are "unarmed instructors," Moscow's deputy ambassador to the United Nations said Friday. "They are not armed because they are not supposed to be armed. They are instructors," Dmitry Polyanskiy told reporters, adding that he did not know if the soldiers had already arrived. Moscow has since 2018 maintained a contingent of soldiers to train the Central African army. Prior to the latest contingent, Moscow had only acknowledged the presence of 535 Russian instructors in CAR, under contract with the Central African defense ministry. CAR notified the UN Security Council on May 4 that it intended to welcome 600 new instructors. It is obliged to give 20 days' notice under the latest arms embargo on the country. Diplomats say that France, Estonia, Ireland, Britain and the United States have put the sanctions committee's response on hold indefinitely in order to obtain more information. But that does not prevent Russia from deploying the soldiers after the notice period expired on Monday, according to the diplomats. "They might deal with some armaments when they instruct people but they are not supposed to fight," said Polyanskiy. Numerous witnesses and NGOs say the instructors are in fact paramilitaries from the Wagner Group, a shadowy private military company that is actively participating in the fight against CAR rebels, alongside Rwandan special forces and UN peacekeepers. French daily Le Monde claimed this week that Russia and CAR had stopped all military coordination with the peacekeepers since February. Jean-Pierre Lacroix, the UN's under-secretary for peace operations, said UN peacekeepers had encountered difficulties with CAR's military and its partners, without giving further information. "It is essential to have a certain consultation, a coordination," he said, adding that he would visit CAR next week. The nation of 4.7 million has been gripped by civil war since a coalition of armed groups overthrew the government in 2013. The review board also raised concerns about officers who forgot to turn on their body-worn cameras or said that the battery died. The policy, which was updated in March, now has stricter language governing when officers must activate them, Rivers said. OPD spokesperson Autumn Jones added that the agency plans to roll out new cameras this summer that begin recording automatically when a gun or taser is removed from its holster and also activate cameras on nearby officers. The residents of Zebilla in the Bawku West District of the Upper East Region are wondering how a suspected leader of an alleged armed robbery gang was released by a court of law few hours after his arrest. The suspect, Iddrisu Abugri, who was nabbed after an informant's tipoff on Wednesday morning, is alleged to have masterminded an armed robbery attack on a registered gold dealer at Zebilla. He was however granted bail by a Bawku Magistrate Court. The Ghana News Agency (GNA) at Zebilla gathered that on Sunday, May 23, 2021, at about 2000 hours, masked armed robbers numbering about six on motorbikes invaded the residence of the gold dealer (name withheld) in his absence, and ordered his wife and children to show them where the dealer kept his money. They ransacked the house, broke the money safe of the dealer, but found no money, and went on to shoot at the windscreen of his Toyota Hilux pick-up vehicle. The robbers also inflicted deep wound on the head of the dealer's son as well. The GNA learnt that a Close Circuit-Television (CCTV) footages of the robbery was presented to the Police Criminal Investigations Department (CID) in charge of the case to aid investigations. When the GNA contacted the victim, who suspected foul play, he corroborated the robbery incident and expressed shock at the turn of events. How on earth can a suspect be released while investigation is ongoing in a serious case like this. I was deeply shocked that the suspect was granted bail. I definitely suspect foul play. I was the target, but fortunately I was not home at the time of the incident. I could have been killed if I was home at the time of the incident. Now that the suspect is left off the hook on bail, what is the guarantee that my life and that of members of my family are safe, he said. He disclosed that out of fear, some tenants in his house have packed out when they heard the suspect have been released as they envisaged possible attack on the house. The dealer appealed to the powers be, to intervene in the matter and ensure that due diligence and proper justice delivery is done to allay the fears of the community members. The Upper East Public Relations Office of the Ghana Police Service, Assistant Superintendent of Police (ASP) David Fianko Okyere, confirmed the alleged robbery attack to the GNA, but could not immediately give more details. GNA Hundreds of commuters traveling from Kumasi to Accra have been stuck in heavy traffic between Bunso and Anyinam, on the main Accra-Kumasi Highway in the Eastern Region. Citi News understands that the traffic, which started around 5:00 pm on Friday, May 28, 2021, is not getting any better as some travelers had spent between two to three hours in it at the time of filing this report. It is, however, unclear what has caused the gridlock, although commuters on the Kumasi bound side are moving steadily. The situation has been worsened by the fact that more people usually travel on that highway during weekends for various reasons such as attending funerals and other social events. Citi News can also report that the situation has left many travelers at the VIP Bus terminal at the Kwame Circle in Accra stranded, as there are no night buses available for them to board to Kumasi, Sunyani, and other parts of the country since the vehicles are stuck in the gridlock. Some frustrated travelers who spoke to Citi News called on the Police Motor Traffic and Transport Department to intervene. Some have taken to social media to express their frustration. citinewsroom Mali's constitutional court on Friday named Colonel Assimi Goita, leader of the post-coup junta, as the country's transitional president. The judgement stipulated that Goita would "exercise the functions of transitional president to lead the transition process to its conclusion", following his seizure of power this week. The constitutional court said it had made the decision due to the "vacancy in the presidency" following the resignation of caretaker president Bah Ndaw. Soldiers detained Ndaw and prime minister Moctar Ouane on Monday, before releasing them Thursday after they resigned. But the twin arrests triggered a diplomatic uproar -- and marked the second apparent coup within a year in the unstable country. Ndaw and Ouane had led a transitional government tasked with steering the return to civilian rule after a coup last August that toppled Mali's elected president, Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. Keita was forced out by young army officers, led by Goita, following mass protests over perceived corruption and his failure to quell a bloody jihadist insurgency. Goita had originally been named vice president with other key posts given to fellow army officers. 'We chose cohesion' Earlier Friday, Goita explained that the army had had little choice but to intervene. "We had to choose between disorder and cohesion within the defence and security forces and we chose cohesion," he said. He added that a new prime minister will be appointed within days, in his first remarks since seizing power this week. The army officer made the announcement during a meeting with political and civil society figures in Bamako, according to an AFP journalist, as international pressure rises on the country's ruling military administration. "In the coming days, the prime minister who will be appointed will carry out a broad consultation between the different factions," Goita said. He asked those attending the meeting to support his preference of a prime minister from the opposition M5 movement, a once-powerful group which the military sidelined after the August coup. "Either we accept joining hands to save our country, or we wage clandestine wars and we will all fail," Goita said. Crisis summit The transition government -- installed under the threat of regional sanctions -- had the declared aim of restoring full civilian rule within 18 months. Colonel Assimi Goita wants to name an opposition M5 member as prime minister, which some say could relieve pressure on the military. By MALIK KONATE (AFP/File) Ndaw and Ouane's detention came hours after a government reshuffle that would have replaced the defence and security ministers, both of whom were army officers who had taken part in the August putsch. Political turmoil in Mali has worried the country's neighbours, which have led efforts to defuse the crisis. Diplomats told AFP Friday that the Economic Community of West African States would discuss the situation in Ghana's capital Accra on Sunday. The 15-nation bloc has also warned of reimposing sanctions on the country; as has the United States and former colonial master France. There are nonetheless fears that sanctions will further destabilise the poverty-stricken nation of 19 million people, which has been battling a brutal jihadist insurgency since 2012. Several hundred Malians rallied in Bamako during the day to voice their support for the colonels, with many of them voicing hostility to France and calling for stronger ties with Russia. Russia's foreign ministry, for its part, on Friday hailed the release of Ndaw and Ouane but pressed Mali to eventually hold "democratic elections". 'Come together' Goita wants to name an M5 member as prime minister, in a move some say could relieve pressure on the military. M5 spearheaded protests against Keita in 2020 but was excluded from key posts in the army-dominated post-coup administration. A rapprochement with the group might serve to soften domestic and foreign criticism of the military. The International Crisis Group has said that an M5 prime minister could allay international concerns. Several hundred people rallied to support the army in a central Bamako square, with Russian flags and portraits of Goita. By Michele Cattani (AFP) The M5 itself appears willing to work with the army. The group's spokesman, Jeamille Bittar, told a news conference Friday that M5 would put forward one of its cadres, Choguel Maiga, as prime minister. "We must all come together around the new government," he said. In Bamako, there has been almost no opposition to the military's latest power play. Most have wearily accepted its role in politics. Some have even welcomed it. Several hundred people rallied in support of the army in a central square of the city on Friday, for example, with many toting portraits of Goita. I could not believe my ears listening to a tempestuous verbal exchanges between the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Jean Mensah and the General Secretary of NDC, Mr Johnson Asiedu Nketia in a leaked audio tape a couple of years ago. You may believe it or not, in recent times, there have been countless attacks on the Chairperson of the Electoral Commissioner, Mrs Jean Mensah, whose managerial decisions are being opposed by the operatives of the opposition NDC. It would thus appear that some political party elements have made up their mind not to accept an Electoral Commissioner appointed by the president of the day. The excerpts of the squeamishly lurid leaked audio tape alleged to have emanated from the opposition NDCs meeting a few years ago give credence to the critics claim that the NDC faithful arent ready to accept President Akufo-Addos appointed Electoral Commissioner. In the said leaked tape, observers can hear vividly how the culprit is detailing his fiendish scheme to kidnap the perceived opponents and telling the audience, believed to be executives of the party to attack the Chairperson of the Electoral Commission, Mrs Jean Mensa and insult the then Peace Council Chairman, Professor Emmanuel Asante. In any case, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana gives the sitting president an absolute authority to appoint the chairperson of the Electoral Commission. The President shall, acting on the advice of the Council of State, appoint the Chairman, Deputy Chairmen, and the other members of the Commission (Constitution of the Republic of Ghana, Article 43 (2). The truth must however be told, It is somewhat oxymoronic for the sitting President to have a leading role in the appointment of the chairperson of the Electoral Commission to oversee the elections in which the appointing President would be partaking. In fact, the said constitutional provision puts unnecessary pressure on the shoulders of the appointing president. How can the president please the unrepentant naysayers? Of course, there are a few countries where the heads of state play active role in the selection of the members of the Electoral Commission. However, unlike Ghanas mode of selection, in other jurisdictions, the legislature would have to confirm the head of states nomination for the appointment to take effect. That being said, the 1992 Constitution has vested the powers in the sitting presidents to appoint the Members of the Electoral Commission. And, until such constitutional provision is reviewed, there is not much we can do as concerned citizens. On a lighter note, as a dire hard supporter of Mighty Chelsea F/C, I will definitely welcome an opportunity for our chairman, Abramovich, to have a greater say in selecting the referees for our crunch and decisive matches. How wonderful that would be. And, if that was to be the case, I will never fault our opponents for having a gleam of suspicion on their minds over the referee. Would you? Whatever the case, the onus will be on the appointed referee to exhibit maturity and fairness, for all eyes will be on him/her. And, by the way, who said that the appointed referee does not have a preference? Suffice it to stress that it only takes a principled and honest individual to resist temptations. I mean an individual who thinks reflectively over the consequences of dubious officiating, for in the event of a pitch invasion, the referee might not walk out safely from the ensuing confusion. In the grand scheme of things, if we have chosen the path of democracy, we might as well be prepared to ingest the insipid pellets associated with it. So going forward, we may well consider taking a cue from a number of jurisdictions whose methods of selecting their Electoral Commissioners appear more rational and democratic in my opinion. In some democratic jurisdictions like Burkina Faso, for instance, 5 members are selected by the political party that has the majority in the National Assembly, 5 members are selected by the opposition parties and 5 members represent civil society organisations (3 members represent religious communities, 1 traditional authorities and the remaining 1 member represents human rights associations). Source: Electoral Code as amended in 2015, Article 5). In Togo, 5 members are selected by the president, 10 by the opposition, 2 by the civil society and the remaining 2 members are selected by the government. Source: Electoral Code No. 2000-07 as amended by law No 2005-001). In Guinea, ten members are appointed by the ruling political party, ten are nominated by the political parties of the opposition, three by the organizations of civil society, and the remaining two members are appointed by the administration. Source: Organic Law L/2012/016/CNT of 19 September 2012 on the composition, organization and functions of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENI), art. 6). In Benin, 1 member is nominated by the President of the Republic, 9 members are nominated by the National Assembly, taking into account its political configuration and 1 member is nominated by and from civil society organisations with at least five years of engagement in the field of governance and democracy. Source: Law n 2010-33 of 7 January 2011 setting general rules for the elections in the Republic of Benin, Article 13 (2). In Ethiopia, the members of the Board are appointed by the House of Peoples Representatives upon the Prime Ministers recommendations. Before nominating the Board members who fulfil the criteria, the Prime Minister shall ensure that there has been sufficient consultation forum for political organizations that have seats in the House of Peoples Representatives to ascertain that the nominees are independent and impartial. The Chairman and Deputy Chairman of the Board are appointed by the House of Peoples Representatives from among the members, upon the Prime Ministers recommendations. Source: Electoral Law as amended by Proclamation No. 532/2007, Articles 6 (1, 2, 7). On the other hand, in the advanced democracies such as the U.S, the Federal Election Commission is composed of the Secretary of the Senate and the Clerk of the House of Representatives or their designees, ex officio and without the right to vote, and 6 members appointed by the President, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate. No more than 3 members of the Commission appointed under this paragraph may be affiliated with the same political party. Source: Federal Election Campaign Laws, Article 437(c). Finally, in Australia, the Chairperson and the non-judicial appointee are appointed by the GovernorGeneral and shall hold office on a parttime basis. The person appointed as Chairperson shall be a person whose name is included in a list of the names of 3 eligible Judges submitted to the GovernorGeneral by the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of Australia. Source: The Commonwealth Electoral Act 1918 as amended, Article 6 (3, 4). I must confess that I am extremely impressed with Ethiopia and the francophone countries respective methods of selecting the members of their Electoral Management Bodies. Indeed, their methods of selection appear more judicious and democratic, and, therefore, I will urge our parliament to take a critical look and act accordingly. K. Badu, UK. [email protected] Listen to article The Managing Convener of Ecocare Ghana, Mr. Obed Owusu-Addai has reiterated his organizations convictions that, all the problems affecting the cocoa sector have to do with poor governance standards. Mr. Owusu-Addai, who was speaking at the launch of the Cocoa Governance and Advocacy Project in Accra, said, when you address the governance issues in the cocoa sector, you solve most, if not all the problems bedeviling the sector. He recounted that, some of the major organizations in the sector hitherto werent amenable to governance reforms, thus creating serious problems along the supply chain, which eventually affect the farmers on the ground, adding that, They have over the years shown no appetite for reforms. However, he expressed optimism over the turn of events following some consultations that have led to institutions like the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD) giving room for discussions on reforms aimed at changing the living standards of the cocoa farmer. He mentioned land tenure as one of the areas requiring reforms to boost cocoa production and improve on the livelihood of farmers. Land tenure is one of the biggest challenges governance reforms should encompass. He said, many youth are discouraged from going into cocoa farming because they are not sure of the fate of the farms as land ownership issues arent clear. He noted that, some of the nagging problems affecting the sector such as child labor, land tenure, farmer livelihood, pricing, are governance-related, adding that, When you solve the governance issues, the chips would fall in place He revealed that, the Cocoa Governance and Advocacy Project was born out of a realization that, effective governance reforms, coupled with multi-stakeholder involvement and advocacy could resolve the problems facing farmers and others who depend on cocoa for their livelihood. He lamented that, though Ghana and Ivory Coast accounted for about 65% of the global cocoa production in 2019/2020, the two countries earned only 6% of the global cocoa/chocolate industry which is estimated at about $100 billion. He disclosed that the sturdy decline in the global price of cocoa has compounded the problem, leaving most cocoa farmers in poverty. As a result, child labour and deforestation are on the rise and there are not enough young people interested in cocoa farming to replace the aging farmers population. Mr. Owusu-Addai attributed these problems to poor standards of governance, weak law enforcement and the non-inclusion of farmers voices in decision making. He, therefore, called for governance reforms to strengthen the role and voices of civil society and farmers to engage in both national and international deliberations on cocoa. He said the Cocoa Governance and Advocacy Project, supported by UKaid, Fern and Gower St., seeks to improve cocoa governance in Ghana through targeted advocacy and stakeholder mobilization. It would seek, within its 24-36 months duration, to facilitate and consolidate civil society actions in cocoa sector reform in Ghana by leveraging ongoing due diligence reforms in EU and UK. The recent strike action by the Medical Laboratory Scientist of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital raises fundamental issues of misunderstanding about what happens in the laboratory space. There is no Medical Laboratory Scientist trained in Ghana or elsewhere who since time immemorial did not appreciate the plurality of persons working and teaching in the laboratory space. There were different categories of Medical Laboratory Technologist, Technicians, Biomedical Scientists and Doctors including categories of trainees at different stages of their respective programmmes. All worked amicably to provide results and reports for good patient outcome. Lest we all forget, we are in that space to provide the best for the patients. So what has led to this strike action. The Management of Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital posts two Haematologists, both with Membership of the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons and there is an outcry; when their role is to strengthen the link between the laboratory and the clinicians, offering confidence to the clinicians about quality of results and offering advice to the clinician on what further investigations may be necessary to unravel the clinical conundrum. Interestingly these Haematologists, after full medical training and two year house jobs in all the four major disciplines of Internal Medicine, Surgery, Obstetrics and Gynaecology and Paediatrics, would have spent a minimum of three years training in Laboratory Medicine doing six months rotation in all the four major disciplines in Pathology or Laboratory Medicine: Anatomical or Cellular Pathology, Chemical Pathology, Microbiology and Haematology, before settling on the choice of discipline. During my rotations in all the laboratories in Korke Bu Teaching Hospital in 1981 and 1982, I formed some of the my best enduring relationships with Medical Laboratory Scientists and Biomedical Scientists from whom I learnt a lot. You will have to know how the tests are done, know what the possible challenges that are likely and how to rectify them, and if you get abnormal results what else can be done to provide better incite into the diagnostic challenge. This is how we were trained in the medical laboratory space and I do not believe things would have changed for my two colleague Haematologists. It would appear that the formation of the Ghana Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS) and the edging out the Biomedical Scientists, some of whom have been at the helm of training the members of the GAMLS was the first ominous sign. A letter to the Ministry of Health and its agencies not to appoint any Biomedical Scientist was a real shot in the dark. It would appear this was the beginning of their endeavor to be the only professional group within the laboratory space and then came the Allied Health Professional Council (APHC). The APHC is a professional regulatory body that accredits Professionals within the body of Professions Allied to Medicine or Allied Health Science and has the twelve Allied Heath Professions listed in Act 857 page 70. Under Medical Laboratory Science, it has Medical Laboratory Technician, Medical Laboratory Technologist and Medical Laboratory Scientist. APHC only accredits and regulates the underlisted professional groups and not the laboratory space. It is therefore wrong for any member of GAMLS to indicate that only APHC accredited members can work in the laboratory space. In Ghana, the premesis is regulated by the Health Facilities Regulatory Agency (HEFRA). GAMLS must first of all accept that they have no control of who works in the laboratory and that it has always been a team of different professionals working ultimately to improve health outcomes. The issue of the Headship of the laboratory can only be the most experienced and competent professional with all the requisite qualifications. For many years it has tended to be the Laboratory Physicians (Doctors) who would have had second and third degrees but we all recognize that some specialist laboratories have Biomedical Scientists and Medical Laboratory Scientists, distinction not mine, who have earned advanced qualifications and management experience who can compete for Headship. It cannot be guaranteed for any profession necessarily. From the forgoing, there is really no need for this messy strike action that unjustly target the ill and the poor. In advanced countries with best practices, many professionals work in the laboratory space just as many other professionals work in the imaging and radiation space. The APHC superintends six different professionals in that space, and there are Radiologists, who are doctors, who also operate in that space as well. There appears to be better team work than there is in the medical laboratory space and the same can be said for the dental space and ophthalmology space. There must be an immediate truce. The Ministry of Health must resolve this once and for all. The author is Prof. Agyeman Badu Akosa, a Pathologist. The Member of Parliament for the Salaga South Constituency in the Savannah Region, Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah has donated 150 packs of sanitary towels to female students in Salaga. The donation was made on Friday, 28th May 2021, in commemoration of world menstrual hygiene day. In a speech read on behalf of the Hon Member Parliament by Madam Nadia Alidu, she mentioned that Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah was passionate about the welfare of her constituents and as a woman, herself identifies with the challenges that women and girls face during their menstrual cycle. World menstrual hygiene day was initiated by The German-based NGO, WASH United to highlight the importance of menstrual hygiene, break taboos and create awareness. Each year, on the 28th of May, NGOs, Government agencies, and development partners commemorate the day through events, fora, public information campaigns, and community-based activities to advocate for the integration of menstrual hygiene management into global, national, and local policies. This year's global event is celebrated under the theme "Action and Investment in menstrual hygiene and health." It is in line with this agenda that the MP for the Salaga-South constituency, Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah, has resolved to actively participate in the campaign to advocate for menstrual hygiene for schoolgirls and female apprentices in the Salaga-South constituency. Overall, about 150 girls have benefitted from menstrual hygiene products including sanitary pads and toiletries. The Honourable member of parliament in the speech read on her behalf said she has seen the effects of poor menstrual hygiene on the girl child first-hand and has undertaken to vigorously advocate for improved menstrual hygiene at both the national and constituency levels. The challenges faced by the girl child during their menstrual cycle, often sees her ambitions of getting education and empowerment being periodically curtailed. Female students and apprentices in many parts of the world often skip school during their menstrual cycle due to the unavailability of menstrual hygiene products. Some are made to drop out of school completely due to the same reason. In the short address read on her behalf, Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah said that globally more than 800 million women and girls menstruate every day, yet they faced barriers to properly manage their menstrual periods. Often the social stigma and taboos that surrounded menstruation, prevented women and girls from attending work and school. Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah affirmed her commitment to working with stakeholders to end such stigma and to ensure that women and girls in her constituency would be encouraged to continue attending school during their menstrual cycle, and that she would also work closely with other relevant authorities to break the stigmas and taboos associated with the menstrual cycle, especially in a largely rural constituency. Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah concluded that she hopes to reach a lot more girls in subsequent years and create a mechanism of regular engagements in line with menstrual education campaigns and support all year round. This she believes would go a long way to liberate the girl child from menstrual mysticism and set them on the path of growth and progress, especially during these challenging times of the COVID-19 pandemic. She used the occasion to encourage the government to make good it's promise to scrap import duties on sanitary pads in order to make if affordable to less financially endowed. Receiving the items on behalf of the students, Hajia Jawula Sadiatu, SHEP Coordinator at GES thanked the Honourable Member of Parliament for her kind gesture and was hopeful that the Honourable Member of Parliament would continue to support the needs of the students. The East Gonja Municipal Director of Education Madam Christiana Maabo Donzun was full of praises and appreciation for the Member of Parliment, Hon. Hajia Zuwera Ibrahimah for her benevolence. Other participants present at the program include; Madam Sanni Amatu Mugis a staff from Salaga SHS, Madam Regina Amon Asare a staff of T. I. Amass, Madam Bonzali Sarah, Headmistress of Yagbonwura Timu Girls JHS and other staffs from various schools within the Municipality. New York, May 28, 2021 Zimbabwean authorities should immediately release New York Times freelancer Jeffrey Moyo and drop baseless charges against him, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today. Moyo, who also freelances for Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper and Norway's Bistandsaktuelt, was arrested on May 26 in the capital, Harare, and charged with violating Section 36 of the Immigration Act for alleged misrepresentations to immigration officials about the accreditation status of two journalists from the New York Times, according to his lawyer Doug Coltart, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app, and news reports. According to Coltart, the two Times colleaguesChristina Goldbaum and Joao Silvawho arrived from South Africa on May 5, were deported on May 8 because they allegedly did not have proper accreditation from the Zimbabwe Media Commission. CPJ reached out to The New York Times via email and phone for comment but did not receive a statement by the time of publication. Zimbabwean authorities must immediately release journalist Jeffrey Moyo, who should never have been detained, let alone charged, said Angela Quintal, CPJ's Africa program coordinator. The fact that he was arrested, and his New York Times colleagues forced to leave the country, shows that Zimbabwe continues to violate the right to press freedom and the public's right to know. Yesterday, Moyo was transferred from Harare and today appeared in the magistrate's court in the southern city of Bulawayo, along with his co-accused, Zimbabwe Media Commission official Thabang Manhika, where his lawyers applied for bail, Coltart said. Coltart told CPJ that Moyo denied the allegations. Moyo will spend the weekend in Bulawayo prison pending the magistrate's bail ruling on Monday, he said. Coltart told local news website Grazers News that police were alleging that the two New York Times journalists' accreditation records were not appearing in the Zimbabwe Media Commission records. That's a purely internal matter for the commission to deal with and has nothing to do with our client, Coltart told Grazers News. In the state's request for remand presented to the court and viewed by CPJ, prosecutors allege that the accreditation was fake. The Zimbabwe Media Commission did not reply to a request for comment sent via email and messaging app yesterday and again today. Contacted by phone yesterday, Zimbabwe police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi asked CPJ to forward an email so that a statement could be sent. CPJ did not receive a statement by the time of publication. Professor Albert Einstein's Three Stages of Religious Experiences WHO WAS ALBERT EINSTEIN? Albert Einstein was born to Jewish parents in Ulm, Wurttemberg, Germany on March 14, 1879. He was educated in Catholic Elementary schools. Einstein therefore received instructions in the Bible and the Talmud as a child. Einstein was very religious in his childhood; he frequently, read the Bible; he often sang church songs on his way to school. Einsteins attitude towards religion began to change after he had read the physical science books. Albert Einstein graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (FIT), Zurich, in 1900 with a degree in physics. He met his first wife, Mileva Maric (of Serbian descent) at the Zurich FIT. Mileva was a Greek orthodox I dislike very much that my children should be taught something that is contrary to all scientific thinking Albert answered when asked about the type of religious instructions his kids should have in their elementary schools. Albert Einstein left Germany (without going back) in December 1932, to escape from threats by the German Nazi organization. He came to settle in the Institute for advanced study Princeton, New Jersey. Einstein became a U.S citizen in 1940 Einsteins work on the Theories of Relativity earned him the Nobel prize for physics in 1921, for his explanation of the photoelectric effect Among his numerous pioneering-works were Gravitational waves, Black holes (both of which later received Nobel prizes), and Quantum mechanics. In his 1934 writing The World as I see it Einstein described the Three different Stages of religious Experiences among men. THE THREE STAGES OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Stage one: The Fear-Based Religion (aka Tribal-religion of fear). Humans have two main wishes: (1) the wish to satisfy their felt-needs, and (2) the wish to avoid pain and life-threatening situations. Primitive societies had no clue to the etiology of diseases and natural disasters. They blamed imaginary beings for sanctioning the diseases and the natural catastrophes. Any unexpected deaths including being mauled by wild animal, drowning in rivers, falling-off tall tree, etc. were attributed to these illusory beings. (Just like how Ghanaian societies blame witchcraft, and Juju men for causing calamities) The illusory beings/deities were capable of protecting primitive men/tribes from accidental deaths once they have been appeased. Chief priests were delegated to mediate between the tribes and the deities. Rituals and sacrifices were performed under the instructions of chief priests. An example of tribal religion can be found in Gold-Coast history of the Asantes during the 17th Century. The Ashantis wanted to free themselves from Ntim Gyakari and the harsh-Denkyira rule Ashanti-Chief-priest, Okomfo Anokye demanded that Barima Tweneboah Kodua I the paramount chief of Kumawu and a couple of other Ashanti-citizens offered themselves as sacrificial lambs, to ensure an Ashanti-victory, over Ntim Gyakari. Stage -Two: Social and Moral-based Religion. Civilization brought knowledge and understanding about the causes of diseases and natural disasters. The fear factor is not a major concern. Humans have now realized that they are mortal beings, and that their parents, society-leaders, and everyone else are fallible. Their new wish is to adopt high-moral values. The desire to abide by high-moral values led to the creation of a God in their own understanding and images The imagined God provides protection and guidance; rewards those who do good, and punishes the bad guys. The God cherishes the life of the tribe, and the human race, and preserves the souls of the dead. Quite often, the imaginary Gods have incarnated as humans through immaculate conception (virgin births). Modern Christianity is one example. In the Christian religion, Jesus Christ was a God that became human through a virgin-Mary-birth. He came to die for our sins, and saved the souls of Christians from going to Hell, in the afterlife. Other examples include, Krishna, the Savior of India. Devaki, a chaste virgin, she led a pure life and was chosen to become the mother of the god Krishna. Gautama Buddha. A Virgin Maya, gave birth to Buddha, who chose to leave paradise to come and mend the ways of his people, take away their sufferings, and mitigate the punishment they were to undergo. Maya Devi, foreseeing her destiny, retires to seclusion. Bodhisattva enters her womb in a semi-conscious dream, and when she awakens, she is filled with joy, truly blessed of women. Quetzalcoatl, savior of Mexico, was the product of a Virgin, Sochi quetzal's immaculate conception. The overwhelming majority of present-day humans are in the second stage of the society and moral-based religions. Stage three Religion: Cosmic Religion. In cosmic religion, devotees are humans with advanced knowledge and understanding of the laws of nature. Such persons do not have major felt-needs; they have no fear, and are not preoccupied with moral religion. They do not pursue any religious dogmas. They do not subscribe to saviors and personalized Gods (gods conceived in the images of humans). They are rather inspired by the Arts and Sciences. They feel fulfilled internally, as they pursue the mysteries of the Universe and make breakthrough discoveries. Studying the Universe and mastering the laws of nature, have kept them going. They tend to devote much longer periods of their time to work in isolation and pursue their dreams. Such men are often considered as Atheists, others are considered Saints. Einstein was inspired by a 17th Century Dutch-born philosopher with Jewish background, Baruch Spinoza who had come to this world nearly, two Centuries and-a-half earlier than Einstein. The Catholic church doubted Einsteins belief in the church-God when he proposed the theory of relativity. A New York rabbi, Herbert Goldstein asked Einstein, if he believed in God. Einstein answered, I believe in Spinoza's god, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of the world, not in a god who concerns himself with the fate and the doings of mankind. THE LESSONS FROM ALBERT EINSTEINS THEORY ON RELIGION. Alber Einstein did not believe in a personal God that intervened in human activities. Einstein wrote, I am not an atheist and I don't think I can call myself a pantheist. We are in a position of little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn't know what it is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent human being toward God. Albert Einstein died on April 18, 1955. He wanted his body to be cremated. However, his pathologist kept Einstein's brain for further research. Einsteins brain was small in size. Einsteins brain however, had more convolutions/gyri than the average brain; it also had a thicker layer of the internal capsule, the deeper part of the brain that facilitate intra-brain communications. Albert Einstein labeled the first two stages of religious encounters, including the belief in the church-God as primitive and childish. A belief in the church-God cannot save humanity and the planet earth. The only religion that could save our planet is the Cosmic religion. This is because cosmic religion encourages scientists to explore the mysteries of the Universe and to learn the laws of nature. By understanding the laws of nature, and exploring the whole Universe, humans shall learn to cooperate with nature. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events--that is, if he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it goes through. Hence science has been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear and punishment and hope of reward after death. - Einstein: The world as I see it, (Science and Religion) Perhaps, the modern generation can learn more from such past philosophers as Baruch Spinoza, Francis of Assisi, Democritus and Albert Einstein and stop being preoccupied with moral religion. Alex Sarkodie, MD Listen to article A former Chief Fire Officer of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), Dr. Albert Brown Gaisie, has stressed the need for government to retool the Ghana National Fire Service. Dr. Brown Gaise on Eyewitness News said the countrys fire response does not meet international standards. Unfortunately, in our case, when the fire firefighters get to the scene of the fire, all they can do after they run out of water is to call for assistance. In other countries, there are water tanks available. The fire tenders in these developed countries go along with water tankers. That way, when the tenders run out of water, they can pump in more. As far as I know, we do not have these water tankers in the system. I wonder if the service has been retooled in recent times. We need more sophisticated equipment based on emerging technology. It is very important to improve on the fire response in this country. We cant predict when there will be emergencies. He added that there is the need for every district, municipality and metropolitan assembly to at least have a fire tender. Personnel from the Eastern Regional Fire Command on Thursday, May 27, 2021, responded to a distress call at Begoro in the Fanteakwa North District in a hired taxi instead of a fire tender. The nature of the fire service's response angered some residents in the community and has prompted condemnation of the Eastern Regional Fire Command. Explaining what accounted for this development, the Public Relations Officer for the Eastern Regional Division of the Ghana National Fire Service, Assistant Divisional Officer Grade 1 (AD01) Ignatius Baidoo, said the only fire tender at their disposal was undergoing maintenance when the distress call came in at around 10:25 am. Unfortunately, that day, our fire tender was out of commission due to a fault it had developed. It must also be stated that on that same day, our regional maintenance officer and his team were working on the vehicle, ADO1 Baidoo explained. But he added that his men could not sit aloof, which was why they opted to respond to the distress call in a taxi. Upon arrival on the scene, it had turned out that the situation was beyond salvaging as the structure had almost totally burned [down]. So what was left for us to do was to douse the rest of the flames, ADO1 Baidoo recalled. It wasn't until 11:19 am that the fire, which gutted a single-room apartment, was totally extinguished. Upon preliminary investigations, it was realized that the occupants of the house had left the gas on and left the building to purchase some items at the market, ADO1 Baidoo disclosed. ---citinewsroom Gov. Ron DeSantis hasnt signed any of the bills yet, and well make the case in a moment for him to veto all three. Meanwhile, should our readers agree with the arguments were about to make, we urge you to contact the governor and urge him to strike a blow for better growth. Well tell you how to let him know at the end of this editorial. Listen to article The Paramount Chief of Fodome Traditional Area, Togbega Gbedegbleme Akpatsa II, swears in a 39-year old banking magnate as the new Asafofiaga of Fodome. The swearing-in ceremony which was graced with eye-catching customs and royal parades typical to the culture of the Ewe took place - amid strict compliance with Covid-19 prevention protocols - on Thursday, 27th May 2021 at Fodome Helu in the Hohoe Municipality. Scores of people who live outside the area and could not turn up due to distance and covid-19 restrictions watched the outdooring via live-streaming. The new occupant of the Asafo Stool with the stool name Togbe Agbefle I succeeds Togbe Ayisah II after the latter's passing in 2020. The timely installation came at the back of the Paramount Chiefs determination to fill all vacant and disputed titled offices in his domain to put the traditional area on a new path of development. Born into a royal family from the Totinyigbe clan in Fodome Helu, the new Asafofiaga is known as Richard Kafui Agala in private life. Richard is a banking professional and at present plies his trade as an Assistant General Manager at Guaranty Trust Bank, Ghana, where he provides leadership at the institution's Wholesale Banking Division. He joined GTBank which is a pan-African bank presently headquartered in Lagos, Nigeria, in 2011 as the Head of Financial Institution and Custody Services. Previously, he worked with IC Securities - a renowned broker firm licensed under Ghana Securities and Exchange Commission - as a financial analyst and rose through the ranks to become the companys Institutional and Retail Sales Manager in 2010. Earlier in time, between January 2006 and August 2006, hed also played the role of a Community Affair Analyst for Golden Star Resources Ltd. As an old boy of St. Augustine College, Richard obtained his secondary school certificate in 2000 before proceeding to study for his BA (Hons) degree in Economics at the University of Ghana where he graduated with distinction in 2005. Adjudged as one of Ghanas Best Emerging Millennium Leaders in 2010, he was presented with a prestigious British Chevening scholarship by the British High Commission and he moved to the United Kingdom to study his Masters in Finance at the Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge and completed in 2011. Relating to Fodome chiefship, the Asafofiaga oversees youth affairs in the traditional area on behalf of Gbedegbleme. He is duty-bound to mobilize subject youths for all communal assignments. Symbolically, he enforces discipline when his jurisdiction comes under any form of disturbances and aggressions. Essentially, during subsidiary parades or council meetings of the paramountcy, he assumes a position at the immediate left of Gbedegbleme. Delivering his inaugural speech, Togbe Agbefle I thanked the Paramount Chief, Queenmothers and elders for the honour done him and pledged to serve the people with diligence. He acknowledged all and sundry for their contributions to his colourful outdooring. The Asafofiaga assured that he is battle-ready to work with the youth and other stakeholders to keep his realm clean and developed. With opened arms, he welcomed colleagues, friends, business associates and investors to come to Fodome and explore its immense agricultural lands, tourism and business potentials. Togbe Agbefle I also gave a hint that the siting of the University of Health and Allied Science (UHAS)s campus in the Hohoe Municipality, precisely, on Fodome land, makes utilization of the surrounding lands for hostel, banking, insurance and pharmaceutical development activities a possible venture. He encouraged individuals, business associates and the investor community to engage his outfit to explore these possibilities together. Togbega Gbedegbleme Akpatsa II, on behalf of Fodome Traditional Council, reminded Togbe Agbefle I of what was expected of him as the occupant of the Asafo stool. In keeping with Contemporary Societal Management Principles, Togbega disclosed that the Asafofiaga is now the Mayor of Helu - the administrative capital - and would act as Gbedegblemes key coordinator for Fodome. He, therefore, counselled him to discharge his role with diligence. Togbega told the gathering that there is a bright future for Fodome if the Traditional Council is willing to modernize its roles. He cautioned against self-seeking and clandestine schemes that may create division and stall progress in Fodome, and called on chiefs and elders to remain truthful, progressive and selfless in their dealings. Before he bade all guests a goodbye, Togbega reminded the kingmakers of Dugba Clan in Fodome Helu, and other kingmakers of Fodome Tormegbe, Fodome Agbetsido and Fodome Agbesia to seek counsel and commence preparations to fill their vacant titled offices. Attending the ceremony were distinguished clergymen, corporate executives, investors, politicians as well as traditional rulers from distant and neighbouring communities. Komla Lokoe [email protected] The most notable thing I absorbed from watching the traditional court at Asiakwa, where I grew up, was that the elders never said, I think this should be this or that. They always resorted to a proverb hundreds, maybe thousands, of years old, to buttress their decisions on cases brought before them. So, for instance, if someone was brought before them for damaging the property of the entire town, they would dwell on the fact that the damage would also affect the person who caused it. Because, as the ancient proverb says, Although the sheep might think that it's dirtying the street by defecating on it, it would also be fouling its own tail in the process! [Odwan se se abnten, nso onnim s ne dua ho na se no!] A favourite of the chief's, which I can hear in my ears even now, was this: It's the shape of the gourd's neck that invites people to attach a string to it![Toa n'pna homa sane kn mu!] This last proverb applied to people brought before the court as second-time or three-time offenders. They were told that had the court not been lenient to them before in the past, but had dealt with them severely the first time they appeared before the court, they would not have had the chance to go and reoffend again! These proverbs came to my mind when I read the numerous comments our educated classes have been making about the unintentionally sarcastic invitation, extended by our President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, to galamseyers who claim that their excavators and other equipment had been burnt illegally to go to court. To begin with, isn't it an oxymoron to claim that being asked to go to court is itself an illegality? Can some court processes be legal and others not? If the Government seizes the excavators and then goes to court to have them confiscated, that's legal. But if the Government asks those whose excavators have been burnt to go to court to ask the court to get the Government to compensate them, that's illegal? Isn't that like eating one's cake and having it? Quite honestly, some lawyers and other educated people in this country appear not to recognise any nexus between the letter of the law and the social circumstances that led to laws being promulgated in the first place. Why is it so difficult for educated to grasp the simple fact that if a person uses equipment to cause damage to other people, or the environment, the state is entitled to seize the equipment to ensure that it's prevented from being used again to cause further damage? In an earlier article, I mildly poked fun at Occupy Ghanaby asking it to advise galamseyers whose equipment had been burnt, to institute proceedings against the Government, and thereby voluntarily admit that they had offended against the Mines and Minerals Act 2019, which prescribes terms of imprisonment of between 15 and 20 years, for those who carry out galamsey. But Occupy Ghana did not take the hint and has now written an Open Letter to the President, challenging the propriety of his endorsing the illegality being perpetrated by armed forces personnel, in burning equipment found at galamsey sites. I wonder whether the members of the organisation who are lawyers have seriously pondered the issues which could be contested in court, if the galamseyers were to go to court to seek reliefs? First of all, whatwere the excavators, bulldozersand chanfansdoing at the sites where they were seized and burnt? The excavators were being used to build roads, maybe? Oh when did the Government of Ghana delegate the building of roads to the galamseyers? Or they were being used to build houses, schools and clinics? Do me a favour! And the chanfans? They were carrying out research into the prevalence of harmful molluscs in the riverbeds, were they? I don't think even those among our judges who are most insulated from our realities would buy that? Or would they? Ah, maybe Occupy Ghana knows something! The whole concept of challenging the armed forces is ridiculous beyond measure. If it had any validity, it would mean that when the police seize a murder weapon (say a live grenade!) from a murder scene, the police must wait until a court had authorised them to do so before they could disarm and destroy the grenade, wouldn't it? Has it occurred to the learned fellows of Occupy Ghana that most of the excavators and bulldozers left at galamsey sites, are immobilised by their owners each night before the workers retire from their dirty work for the rime being? Even if the armed forces wanted to seize them and present them in court as exhibits(!) in presenting evidence, how would they convey the immobilised machines to the courts? Are the Occupy Ghana brigade not taking the rule of law for granted, as far as practicality is concerned?? But having said that, I have to quote for the the Government, the proverb which proclaims that it's the shape of its neck that invites people to attach a string to the neck of the gourd! Yes, the Government has enacted a severe law on galamsey, and promulgated detailed regulations about what can happen to equipment used for illegal mining. Yet the Government has, inexplicably, locked these laws up in a drawer, and lost the key! Why do I say that? It's because not a single person appears to have been successfully prosecuted under the anti-galamsey laws, despite their tough provisions. So why should anyone take the Government seriously? That's not all. Many people including several Chinese nationals have been arrested for carrying out galamsey. Yet no bigwig Ghanaian has ever been named by the prosecuting authorities as the sponsoror employerof these galamseyers. And no so-called gold-mining entrepreneur has been charged to court for facilitating galamsey behind the scenes. Yet we have the CID and other investigative agencies which are so skilled they can intercept political agitators before they can do any harm! No we don't know whobrings the Chinese in; under whatconditions they are recruited; or howthey got their visas to come here, in the first place. All we know is that they are helping to destroy our rivers, streams and water-bodies, and rendering our farmlands permanently unusable. I am quite sure the Chinese Government, for one, is sitting in Beijing laughing at us and our bourgeois susceptibilities, as regards law enforcement. Why doesn't the Ghana Government ask its embassy in Beijing to send it a list of the criminal cases taken to court in China in the past three months alone, and the punishments meted to the individuals? Whowere the individuals and what positions did they hold in the Chinese political arena, especially those charged with corruption? In other words, if Jack Ma were a Ghanaian, would he be facing the type of scrutiny that the Chinese Government appears to be putting him under? Sorry to be saying these things, but we are jokers dangerously toying with the capability of our unfortunate future generations to survive in the land of their birth. By CAMERON DUODU Dean of University of Ghana School of Nursing and Midwifery, Prof. Lydia Aziato has been honoured at the Maiden Edition of National Nursing And Midwifery Excellence And Hall of Fame Award ceremony held in Accra at the La Palm Royal Beach Hotel on 27th May, 2021. Prof. Aziato received the recognition for her numerous roles and contributions towards Nursing & Midwifery Education and Research both Nationally and Internationally. The ceremony was organised under the auspices of the Ministry of Health to give a special recognition to individuals who have contributed immensely to Nursing & Midwifery in many areas including practice, regulation, leadership, education and research both in Ghana and at the international stage. Prof. Aziato has really contributed to Nursing and Midwifery Education and Research both locally and internationally so it is no surprise that she was nominated for this novel Award. In interacting with Prof Lydia Aziato, she thanked the organisers and the Ministry of Health for recognising her efforts over the years and admonished all to give their best in all circumstances. She stressed on the need to stay focused and work hard wherever one finds his or herself at all times. Quoting her directly, she said: "It is important that we give our best in all circumstances. One must stay focused and brighten the corner where he/she finds himself/herself. I am happy and humbled that my efforts in the area of Nursing and Midwifery Education and Research have been recognised. I dedicate this award to my family, mentors, colleagues, students, collaborators, mentees, friends and all who have supported to come this far. To God be the Glory always." By : Ivan Kyei Innocent Listen to article Do you pray? Do you pray in the midnight? One of the most powerful spiritual tools that God has given, but grossly neglected by Christians is the midnight prayer. Midnight prayer (or vigil) is the prayer done through the night. From the bible times and through the ages, the prayers done around midnight have always brought tremendous and unprecedented results. As a Christian, it is imperative that you live a life of vigil. There are levels you can never attain in the spirit without mastering the act of praying in the midnight. There are levels of revelations that you cannot get without prolonged midnight prayers. And there are also satanic strongholds, entities, thrones and chains that you may never be able to dismantle unless through prolonged midnight battles. The aim of this article is to awaken the church (Christians) once again to this great spiritual weapon made available to us by God. I believe and by experience too, that any Christian that masters the act of praying in the midnight will ultimately control what happens in the day. Why pray in the midnight? Midnight (or hours between 11.00pm and 3.00am) is known to be the most spiritual active period of the day. You will notice that dreams, revelations, attacks, visitations from the spirit world (both by angels and demonic powers) often come by this period, especially when you are sleeping. And the reason is simple. Human beings are easily overwhelmed, influenced or controlled while asleep. Naturally, the body is always weak at this time, and this makes it susceptible to any spiritual manipulation. But, for one to be protected and powerful in the spirit world, the person's human spirit must be guided and lead by a higher Spirit; which in the case of a Christian is the Holy Spirit. Let's not go farther with this explanation. All I want to say here is that midnight is always a period of intense spiritual activities both by the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan. If you must control the activities around you and dismantle satanic ordinances against you, your family and the church, then you must learn to wake up in the midnight to fight against the powers of darkness. For example, look at the activities of the witches and wizards. These are agents of darkness possessed by terrible, merciless and destructive spirit of witchcraft. This spirit is known to be a very wicked spirit in the kingdom of darkness. It revels in causing harm and sometimes total destruction of human beings. The witches don't have the word mercy in their dictionary. That is why a person; even a relation that is possessed with this wicked spirit can go ahead and destroy the closest persons to them. And these agents of darkness mostly operates in the midnight. Their mode of operation is usually to shoot their evil arrows (attacks) while their victims are sleep. And by the time they wake up, they will see everything going wrong. They can attack businesses, ministries, churches, marriages and relationships, health, etc. Sometimes, destinies of the victims are taken to their covens (where they meet) and tied up. Or the victim is killed out rightly. God knew how terrible these wicked agents of Satan are when he was commanding Israel not to allow them to stay alive. We will comment more on this in a later. Now, our interest here is that for you to battle and win these agents of darkness that mostly operate in the midnight, you must also be awake at the same period to pray. You must wake up to render their evil arrows, enchantments, curses and incantations against you ineffective. And not just that, you can also at the same time cause serious and perpetual havoc to them and their covens. All these can only be possible through powerful and sustained midnight prayers. Get my book Power of Midnight Prayer to learn more about this. The church must today arise to the great power that God has divinely, graciously placed in our hands. Please, share this message with others. Bless you! Rev Gabriel Agbo is the author of the books / audiobooks: Power of Midnight Prayer, Receive Your Healing, Breaking Generational Curses: Claiming Your Freedom, Never Again!, I Shall Not Die, Move Forward, Power of Sacrifice, Prepare for that battle and many others. Tel: 08037113283 E-mail: [email protected] Website www.authorsden.com/pastorgabrielnagbo Listen to article Finance Minister, Ken Ofori-Atta has disclosed that the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) will cost Ghana GHS 521 million. Out of this amount, government has raised and disbursed GHS 467 million for the start of the exercise. Speaking at a forum in Accra, Ken Ofori-Atta said the government will provide the needed funds to make the exercise a successful one. Of the budget of GHS 521.3 million, the government has already disbursed GHS 467.2 million for the conduct of the 2021 Population and Housing Census. We will continue to ensure that the needed funds are provided to ensure a successful implementation. The Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) says the 2021 census will begin across the country from Sunday, June 27. The exercise, which will run till July 11, 2021, is meant to generate data that will be used in decision-making and planning for the development of the country and its citizens. The census was initially set to begin on March 15, 2020, with the first two weeks expected to be used for listing, a process that comprises the zoning and coding of the number of houses and structures to be covered in the census. However, it was rescheduled to June 28 , 2020, before being finally postponed to 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The slogan for the 2021 PHC is you count, get counted, with the GSS aiming for comprehensive coverage to ensure that no one is left behind. ---citinewsroom Minister of Finance, Ken Ofori-Atta says the outcome of the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) would aid the nation to review her 2020 per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) from GH13,000.79 to a much higher figure. Per capita income is a measure of the amount of money earned per person in a country, while per capita income of a nation is calculated by dividing the country's national income by its population. Mr Ofori-Atta, who is Chairman of the National Census Steering Committee, speaking at the launch of the 30-day countdown to the Census Night, in Accra, said having accurate and reliable data would aid government, businesses and Civil Society Organisations, to effectively plan, monitor and evaluate policies and programmes for developmental growth. Additionally, he said, quality and accurate data would guide the country's path towards achieving the 2063 African Agenda, United Nations Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and debt sustainability for national and global development efforts. The Minister emphasised that the 2021 NPHC was critical as it would create an industrialised society, social justice and equal opportunity for all. Government, he said, recognised the important role accurate and reliable data played in the country's development efforts as it would guide the Ghana Poverty Reduction Strategy. Mr Ofori-Atta noted that, over the years, successive governments had been implementing poverty alleviation strategies, including the Livelihoods Empowerment Programme Against Poverty, which saw the number of beneficiaries increased from 230,000 to 334,000 households, while the School Feeding Programme benefitted more than five million pupils across the country. Accurate data will, therefore, help to improve the well-being of deserving vulnerable persons. The PHC was postponed in 2020 to this year because of the COVID-19 pandemic and thus, Mr Ofori-Atta observed had affected the government's budget by creating a budget gap of 54.5 million. This, he explained, was because of the procurement of personal protective equipment for census field officers and training of 76,500 census field officers and supervisors towards ensuring a strict compliance to the COVID-19 safety protocols. So far, the Minister stated that, government had disbursed GH467 million to the Ghana Statistical Service out of GH521.3 million budgeted for the exercise. Mr Dan Kweku Botwe, Minister of Local Government, Rural Development and Decentralisation, emphasing the importance of Census, said it had formed the basis for the creation of districts and regions through the years. He said the data collected on housing would help to assess the availability, quality, access and tenancy arrangements at household level. This would lead to better planning and improvement interventions at the districts, metropolitan, municipal, districts, regional and national levels. The critical data collected would also help in the resolution of boundary disputes as well as improvement in waste management for better sanitation and a healthier environment. Information Minister Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, who is Chairman of Publicity, Education and Advocacy Committee, in his remarks, said the success of the Census hinged on effective publicity and education campaigns towards the creation of awareness. He, therefore, urged all stakeholders, including the media, religious leaders and CSOs to intensify their sensitisation drive. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo launched the 30-day countdown to the Census, as part of measures to whip up national consciousness towards the exercise. The Population and Housing Census will commence with a Census Night on Sunday, June 27, while proper enumeration would begin from Monday, June 28. The slogan for the 2021 Census is, 'You Count, Get Counted', and Ghana Statistical Service is the lead agency for organizing the PHC. It has earmarked 131,000 enumeration areas across the country and trained 85,000 census field officers and supervisors for the exercise. The 30-day countdown was also witnessed by Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia, who launched the 100-day countdown on Friday, March 19, 2021 at the Alisa Hotel, in Accra. ---GNA A former Deputy Minister of Communications, Felix Kwakye Ofosu, has condemned what he calls wasteful expenditure on President Akufo-Addos foreign trips. According to him, it is inconsiderate of the President to allow such profilgacy at the expense of the suffering masses. We are a country of limited resources; because of that, significant sections of our population wallow in abject poverty. Indeed, in the last few weeks, the discussions have been about the economic hardship that has come about because he has had to impose some more taxes. Even as citizens brace themselves for more taxes, they expect to see some level of responsibility on the part of leadership. You cant ask them to bear with you whilst you seem to not feel the brunt of what they are going through. Speaking on Metro TVs Good Morning Ghana on Friday, May 28, 2021, Mr. Kwakye Ofosu questioned the rationale behind such spending on foreign trips when the President moves around begging for financial aid. Besides, our presidential jet is not bad for a country like ours. Yes, every now and then the jet breaks down. But when it does, there are alternative ways to transport the President. The President has decided not to go by the presidential jet, but rather rent very expensive and lavish ones, fit for Arabian kings. When the Presidents nine-day trip was announced, the reason given to it was that he going to find means to kickstart our economy, which is in tatters. He went to lead advocacy for debt relief. He went to beg for aid, contrary to his position on a Ghana beyond aid. So when you [Akufo-Addo] are going to beg for money and you travel in such splendor, what message are you communicating? In fact, the leaders of the countries he went to beg from, live modest lifestyles. We see some of these leaders ride bicycles to work. Nana Akomea disagrees A member of the governing New Patriotic Partys Communications team, Nana Akomea, who spoke on the show, disagreed with Mr. Kwakye Ofosus position. He said, The Minister of Defence is the best person to explain why those costs are worth it, Mr Akomea indicated. Its either we decide that the President is not going to travel again or will travel via commercial transport or we go for trips that will offer him some safety and comfort. The conversation about the Presidents foreign trips came up following allegations by the National Democratic Congress Member of Parliament for North Tongu, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa , that President Akufo-Addo has spent an amount of GHS 2.8 million on his recent travels to only South Africa and France using the services of a private jet. According to the lawmaker, The Airbus ACJ320neo owned by Acropolis Aviation based in Farnborough, UK and registered as G-KELT, is the most luxurious and the most expensive in the Acropolis fleet. The manufacturers describe it as the most outstanding ambassador for Airbus Corporate Jets. It costs the Ghanaian taxpayer approximately 15,000 an hour when President Akufo-Addo rents it, he alleged in a post on Facebook. Let's further analyze President Akufo-Addo's latest trip to Europe: per Flightradar24, the G-KELT aircraft left Accra with the President to Paris on the 16th of May a 6 and half hour duration. Airlifted the President from Paris to Johannesburg for 11 hours on the 23rd of May. Then Johannesburg to Accra on the 25th of May was a five and half hour flight. This gives us accumulated flight travel of 23 hours; so at 15,000 an hour, it thus cost us a colossal 345,000. At the current exchange rate, that is a staggering GHS2,828,432.80, he posted. The MP says he has filed an urgent question in Parliament over what he considers to be wasteful expenditure on President Akufo-Addo's foreign travels. Evidence In an interview on Eyewitness News, Mr. Ablakwa, who is also a Ranking Member on the Foreign Affairs Committee in Parliament, was asked if he could prove beyond reasonable doubt that the President indeed abandoned the state's Falcon Jet and chartered a private flight for the trips. I can confirm on authority, the MP insisted. He was pushed further to comment on what he knows about the current state of the Falcon aircraft. That is why we are summoning the Defence Minister, who has oversight of the Air Force to tell us if the Falcon has developed a fault in these few days because we do know that the Falcon has been in pristine condition and that the other ministers have been using it. So we want to hear from the government on why the President chose that option, he told host, Umaru Sanda Amadu. ---citinewsroom Kronum Abuohia in the Suame Municipality in Kumasi has been thrown into a state of shock after a 23-year-old man was shot and killed at his rented apartment. The deceased, identified as Akwasi Boakye, was reportedly shot at a close range after which his assailants fled the scene. His attackers reportedly did not steal anything from him after the gruesome act. According to eyewitnesses report, the unfortunate incident happened on Wednesday, May 26, and so far no arrests have been made by the security agencies. Akwasi Boakye is alleged to be a kingpin of the internet fraud business known in the local parlance as 'Sakawa' and has reportedly made a lot of fortune from the business. Residents of Kronum Abuohia have described Akwasi Boakye as fabulously rich and a kind-hearted person who was always willing to help the less privileged and those in need of financial assistance. According to the residents, Akwasi Boakye was always seen sharply dressed and lived an affluent lifestyle so they suspected that some of his close friends might have carried out the attack possibly out of jealousy or as a result of a business deal gone wrong. The residents said Akwasi Boakye recently bought an expensive new Range Rover and was killed just few days after buying the car. According to them, the fact that the killers did not take away any valuable item or cash from the room could be attributed to contract killing. Meanwhile, the body of the deceased has since been deposited at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) morgue in Kumasi as police hunt for the killers. ---DGN online President Akufo-Addo is convening an extraordinary summit of ECOWAS on the renewed political crisis in Mali. Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, announced this to the media at a press briefing held at the Information Ministry on Saturday morning, May 29, 2021. According to her, 10 heads of state and Governments will be attending the summit in Accra tomorrow, Sunday, May 30, 2021. The President of Senegal, Macky Sall, will be represented by his Foreign Affairs Minister, she revealed. The republic of Benin, she said, has confirmed participation. She said in line with the ECOWAS protocol on democracy and good governance, President Nana Akufo-Addo is convening the summit. The purpose of the summit is to enable the authorities deliberate and take consequential decision on the evolving security situation in Mali, according to her. She added that one of the mediators of the Malis political crisis, former President Goodluck Jonathan, will report to the summit tomorrow on the outcome of his fact-finding mission to Mali. She expressed hope that all political actors in Mali will accept the outcome of the Summit to ensure. Mr Akufo-Addo will be chairing the summit in his capacity as Chairman of ECOWAS. It will be the second time Mr Akufo-Addo is hosting an extraordinary summit on Mali. The summit took place in 2020 at the Peduase Presidential Lodge in Aburi, Eastern Region of Ghana. 'Release President, Prime Minister' Already, the Mediators of ECOWAS in the Malian crisis, including former President Goodluck Jonathan of Nigeria, have demanded the immediate release of the transitional president and Prime Minister of Mali. The Mediators made the call in a communique. In the Communique directly made available to the media outlets by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration of Ghana, the mediators requested that President Bah N'Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, should be released. Mali's transitional leaders were on Monday, May 24, 2021, stripped off their powers by the army. Since then, the President and Prime Minister have been in detention. According to the foreign Minister, at the end of the summit tomorrow, a Communique will be issued. At the behest of the President of the Republic, an ECOWAS Mediation team, led by H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, ECOWAS Special Envoy and Mediator for Mali, embarked on a fact-finding mission to Mali from 25th to 26th May, 2021 to assess the situation and explore opportunities for the resolution of the crisis. H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will, therefore, report to the Summit on the outcome of the mission. May I indicate that the convening of the Extraordinary Session demonstrates the unwavering commitment of the President of the Republic towards addressing the political situation in Mali. It would be recalled that barely a week after his assumption of office as Chair of the ECOWAS Authority, H.E. the President, convened an emergency Summit, held at Peduase, in response to the military intervention, which saw the ousting of the then President H.E. Ibrahim Boubacar Keita on 18th August, 2020. That meeting took important decisions, including a demand on the Malian authorities to ensure that the Transition Government was Civilian-led and should last for a period of eighteen (18) months, with effect from 15th September, 2020. The Summit also affirmed that once a civilian-led transition government had assumed office, ECOWAS within the context of its protocols will assist Mali to return to democratic governance. It is important to note that H.E. the President has since been at the centre of efforts, including mediation initiatives, to bring lasting peace and stability to Mali, the Foreign Minister said. It is hoped that all the political actors in Mali will support the outcome of the Extraordinary Summit to be held tomorrow in order to restore constitutional order in our sister country as soon as practicable. The outcome of the Summit will be critical to sustaining the momentum for the return of democracy and stability in Mali, she stressed. ---DGN online The driver of the Karaga District Chief Executive Ziblim Issah has been killed by some unknown assailants at Yamo-Karaga near the capital. The incident is believed to have occurred in the late hours of Friday, May 28. The driver is believed to have been returning from Tamale, where he went to service the Nissan Patrol. The matter was reported to the Karaga District police by some residents, who found the car parked and suspected something was wrong. The police on reaching the scene realized the driver was shot. His body has since been transported to the Tamale Teaching Hospital morgue for autopsy. Police in Karaga have also commenced investigation into the matter. ---3news.com Abidjan, Cote d'Ivoire (PANA) - The African Development Fund (ADF) has been ranked second among 49 international agencies for the quality of its development assistance, underscoring its relevance to the continents most vulnerable countries DR Congo's government said Saturday that the eruption of a second volcano it had announced hours earlier was a "false alarm," the scare coming a week after Mount Nyiragongo roared back into life, causing devastation and sparking a mass exodus. The government had said that Murara volcano had a "low intensity" eruption on Saturday morning, sending lava flowing into an uninhabited area of Virunga Park, a wildlife reserve home to a quarter of the world's critically endangered mountain gorillas. Murara is a small volcano considered to be a crater of Mount Nyamuragira, which along with Nyiragongo is known for strong volcanic activity. However the communications ministry then issued another statement saying "false alarm on Nyamuragira". "A plane has just flown over the entire area on the sides of this volcano. No eruption was observed," it added. A Congolese family living in Goma crosses the Rwandan border at the Gisenyi border post after an evacuation order. By ALEXIS HUGUET (AFP) "It was instead intense activities of carbonising wood into charcoal, the smoke of which was perceived as volcanic activity." Aerial images of Nyamuragira taken Saturday morning and viewed by AFP showed just a few wisps of white smoke in the volcano's crater. Murara rises 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Goma, capital of North Kivu province. 400,000 evacuated Located on the shores of Lake Kivu in the shadow of Nyiragongo, Africa's most active volcano, the city has lived in fear since it erupted last Saturday. Mount Nyiragongo spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people. By Handout (Satellite image 2021 Maxar Technologies/AFP/File) The strato-volcano spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. Hundreds of aftershocks have rocked the region since and around 400,000 people have been evacuated from Goma. Scientists have warned of a potentially catastrophic scenario -- a "limnic eruption" which occurs when lava combines with a deep lake and spews out lethal, suffocating gas across a potentially large area. The Goma Volcano Observatory (OVG) said in its latest report on Saturday that 61 earthquakes had shaken the area in the previous 24 hours. The quakes were "consistent with the continued movement of magma in the Nyiragongo fissure system towards Lake Kivu", it said. "Several information sources still confirm the presence of magma under the ground in Goma and under the northern end of the lake." However the OVG report said that a "landslide or large earthquake destabilising the deep waters of the lake causing the emergence of dissolved gases" was now much less likely, while it still "cannot be excluded". A map of DR Congo locating the Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira volcanos. By Patricio ARANA (AFP) A report on an emergency meeting Friday said 80,000 households -- around 400,000 inhabitants -- had moved out on Thursday following a "preventative" evacuation order. Goma was quiet on Saturday, a handful of vehicles on the streets which were semi-deserted and only some small shops were open, an AFP journalist said. 'Urgent, global support' Most people have headed for Sake, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Goma where tens of thousands are now gathered, or the Rwandan border in the northeast, while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Late Friday, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said those fleeing needed "urgent, global support". Limnic eruptions are a rare type of natural disaster in which carbon dioxide trapped from deep waters of a lake suddenly erupts, leading to violent bursts of toxic gas. By Gal ROMA (AFP/File) Aid efforts are being organised to provide drinking water, food and other supplies, and workers are helping to reunite children who became separated from their families. Nearly 10,000 people are taking refuge in Bukavu on the southern bank of Lake Kivu, according to governor Theo Ngwabidje, many of them in host families. Nearly 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed around 100 lives and the deadliest eruption on record killed more than 600 people in 1977. Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is an eruption under the lake. This could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are currently dissolved in the water's depths. The gas would rise to the surface of the lake, forming an invisible cloud that would linger at ground level and displace oxygen, asphyxiating life. In 1986, one of these limnic eruptions killed more than 1,700 people and thousands of cattle at Lake Nyos in western Cameroon. On a visit to South Africa, French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to invest in the production of more vaccines in Africa, a continent where less than two percent of people have been immunised against Covid-19. "It is a matter of duty," to support the poorest countries to access vaccines, the French leader said after talks with his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, in Pretoria on Friday afternoon. "We will put in place an investment strategy for the industry to produce more," particularly in Africa, he said. The two leaders discussed a temporary waiver of World Trade Organisation property rights over coronavirus vaccines. The idea is being pushed by South Africa and India, which say the waiver will spur vaccine production in developing countries. There should be "no barrier to access to vaccines. Let's lift all these barriers and deliver concrete and efficient tech transfer," Macron said. "Covid vaccines must be global public goods," he said. 'A race to save lives' At the University of Pretoria, Macron and the German health minister Jens Spahn announced investment deals to produce more vaccines in Africa, a project backed by the European Union, the United States and the World Bank. Ramaphosa said access to treatment was the "biggest and most dangerous challenge" for the continent, with vaccines flooding into the developed world yet "trickling" into Africa. "We are in a race to save lives," said Ramaphosa. "We cannot continue to wait in the queue for life-saving vaccines. The longer we wait the more lives we put at risk," said Ramaphosa. Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world with vaccination -- less than two percent of its population has been immunised six months after the campaign started. Ramaphosa has sounded the alarm about what he called "vaccine apartheid" between rich countries and poor ones. Pharmaceutical companies have opposed the intellectual rights waiver, saying it could sap incentives for future research and development. They also point out that manufacturing a vaccine requires know-how and technical resources -- something that cannot be acquired at the flip of a switch. Macron's approach is to push for a transfer of technology to enable the creation of production sites in poorer countries. He pointed out that France already had a partnership with South Africa's Biovac Institute and would soon launch a project with South African pharmaceutical company Aspen. While Africa has about 20 percent of vaccine needs, it produced only one percent. Very low vaccination rate South Africa is the continent's most industrialised economy but also its worst-hit by Covid. The country has recorded more than 1.6 million cases of Africa's 4.7 million infections and accounts for more than 40 percent of its nearly 130,000 fatalities. Only one percent of its population of 59 million have been vaccinated -- most of them health workers and people aged 60 or more. The immunisation effort got off to a stuttering start when South Africa purchased AstraZeneca vaccines earlier this year and then sold them to other African countries following fears that they would be less effective against a local variant. Listen to article The immediate past New Patriotic Party Member of Parliament for Jomoro Constituency of the Western Region, Paul Essien has been accused of hoarding some 2020 campaign items. According to the group, this caused him to lose the Parliamentary seat he won in 2016. The Truth Patriots of NPP in Jomoro stated that Paul Essien can't blame Ernest Kofie, the current Jomoro MCE for his defeat. The group also claimed Paul Essien awarded contracts to himself without thinking about the party members. They added that Paul Essien sidelined most of the NPP guys who campaigned tirelessly for him in 2016. Read below the full statement: Jomoro MCE Race: TRUE PATRIOTS EXPOSES CONCERNED MEMBERS OF NPP Ordinarily, we decided not to respond to this erroneous embedded "reasons why Hon Ernest Kofie must not be renominated" from the none existence Concerned NPP Members However, we want to state categorically that, we know the source of all this falsehood and hatred. This is not the first and wouldn't be the last when you have people who for the sake of personal gains will go to every limit to destroy the very party that has given them shape. Firstly, The so-called Concerned Members stated that, the Hon. MCE does not respect the party because he does not attend to invitations extended to him by coordinators and polling station executives. This statement is a pure misrepresentation of facts from a desperate unrecognized group of persons. We want to state that, the current state of the NPP in Jomoro is one, that no meetings are organized to even think of calling the Hon. MCE to attend. The current crop of Executives has belittled the powers of our polling station Executives to the extent that they cannot organize meetings. Woe onto any executive that organizes a meeting at the polling station level. Some executives that tried it were seriously sidelined from all party activities creating lots of apathy. Again, they also echoed that, the MCE, did not print a single T-shirt to support the just-ended election. Respectfully, we still do not understand why the above-mentioned persons are limiting party support to the printing of T-shirts. Are these individuals purporting that everybody who has benefited from the party printed T-shirts? Notwithstanding the limitations, the Honorable MCE printed thousands of T-shirts for the party which was delivered to the party Chairman. All these efforts would not be mentioned because there have been earlier attempts to discredit everything that the MCE does. Not satisfied with the above, they claimed that Hon MCE neglected the party people for NDC members and went ahead to do their biddings. What a fallacy? These are all attempts to soil his hard-earned reputation. How would a former Chairman who brought the party to power for the first time in a constituency be accused of such an evil act? In fact, what will compel him to do this great disservice to the very party that gave him the power he holds. Seriously, we want to put on record that, the Hon. MCE would never for any prevailing issues sell out the NPP party. Under his watch as the constituency Chairman, he fought the oppositions with all physical and intellectual battles and there could be no way to turn around to play the ostriches. Factually the President, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo Addo had 25,699 votes in the just ended 2020 elections as against 19,889 NPP Parliamentary votes. This happened because of how well the MCE related with the party membership and the other general public and sold the good works of the NPP government to the populace. The huge difference between the Presidential and Parliamentary votes confirms the arrogance portrayed by the Member of Parliament and the Constituency Chairman who would go every limit to sideline any party person that points out uncertainties in the party and their attitudes which were, directly and indirectly, affecting party work and participation of the grassroots. Few weeks before the general elections, a section of the youth who were working directly with the youth wing of the party to canvas for votes was cautioned to cease their campaign. How would you win power when young abled men are warned not to campaign with no justifiable reasons? This act continued to the extent that the constituency youth organizer was sidelined in most party meetings and activities. Furthermore, they emphasized that The Hon. MCE has a poor working relationship with Chiefs and Security personnel in the Municipality, etc. Frankly, Hon Ernest Kofie is one among most respected as far as our Chiefs and Security personnel are concerned. He offers needed supports and assistance to all stakeholders and does not meddle in their activities. His opinions are always applauded in all higher places because of his in-depth analysis and knowledge of issues and his work. He hasn't encountered any qualms with any person since he assumed the highest political office of the Municipality. He happens to be Awulae's darling boy because of the respect he gives to the Paramountcy and continuous support to the Chiefs of Jomoro. How would a person who has not locked horns with any stakeholder be termed as not working on good terms with them? That is another laughable fallacy. In addition to the above, they said that the MCE undermined the former member of Parliament. This political jaundice reason is simply cloth with hatred. Simply put, the MCE never worked to undermined the MP instead he undermined the MCE for not even attending a single assembly meeting throughout his four years as MP. This MP demonstrated through all seen actions that, he wouldn't support the MCE to succeed because, during the appointments in 2017, his favorite was not endorsed by the Hon. Assembly Members. He has since that time hold a cold war against the MCE who tried to prove that he stands for the party and not his gains. On several occasions, he has tried to counter-cross the MCE in the execution of Assembly projects. He paints a picture of competition between himself and the Hon. MCE. Notwithstanding the above sidelining and competition, the Hon. MCE campaigned assiduously for the MP only that the populace had already taken their decision on the lots of dubious acts that were going on. The Concerned NPP Members also opined that the MCE awarded contracts to himself and his cronies. This indication is a figment of their imagination and it shows clearly that they are not privy to a lot of information. Back in 2016, some party persons supported the party in various forms. Just after that election in 2016, all these people were neglected and one who was given a project to undertake by the MP till today has not been paid after four years. A whopping amount of GHC250,000 has now been a debt on that person to bear. The Hon MCE knowing all this took the opportunity to give these Party persons some contracts so they could offset their debt. The MCE has not awarded any contract to himself or any person who is not a known party person and for that matter someone who did not support our course. We, therefore, challenge the so call concerned NPP Members to produce any evidence to these unfounded allegations. However, not less than 40 different projects have been awarded under the One Million per Constituency (in our case CODA) and all have been in the chest of the MP. We dare you to tell us who those contractors are? On record, the Constituency Chairman and the MP awarded to themselves all these projects without a single party contractor given the least of it. How would these people turn around to instigate such an action? The Concerned NPP Members also claimed that, throughout the period, the MCE has only supported the 2020 election with only GhC35000. Once again, they have exposed themselves. How do you tell us that, the MCE does not support party activities at one point and turn round to admit that he supported the party with GhC35000 on the day before the election? Why are they silent on how much the Chairman contributed during the election. We need to know because he is also the Municipal NADMO coordinator and that position is also a political appointment like that of the MCE. The Chairman had the position after we had won the 2016 election. Is it not a fact that the MCE helped the party to secure GhC64000 that was used to purchase the head pans and the smoking nets that until recently, were never shared? Are we all not aware that the MCE also helped to secure an amount of GhC22,000 that was used during the registration? During the registration to the general elections, the MCE visited a lot of the registration centers to access the grounds and to greet, our party agents just to boost their enthusiasm for the work. We want to state categorically that, there were streams of funds from various sources and individuals to support the just-ended election and much of this money was kept the same way party items were hoard. Not satisfied with their greed at the expense of polling station executives, funds that were released by the National Executives to the Constituency Executives for the payment of polling agents, who sacrificed their time and energy in December 7 2020 also ended up in the pockets of some few executives. It is an undeniable fact that an amount of [email protected] was released for each polling station but only [email protected] got to the polling station. Party Coordinators were not resourced and complaints were coming from all angles. Some funds were also given to the wrong hands and that created apathy for key position bearers in the party. Also, past party executives who are known to be influential in their localities were sidelined in all party activities. Seriously, with this attitude, how can an election be won? We want to put on record that, the reasons for our failure to retain our seat in Jomoro are not far-fetched and no amount of blames on innocent individuals will wash. It will serve the party well if we stop the further disintegrations and focus on party reorganization so to recapture political power. Any attempts to fuel issues and course the appointment of any other person as MCE will further dent our fortunes as far as elections in Jomoro are concerned! Finally, we entreat the good people of Jomoro not to be surprised about these happenings as they are part of the series of events underlined to be carried out just to discredit the MCE. We, want to assure the NPP that, maintaining Hon. Ernest Kofie as MCE will help us to recapture political power come 2024 and the reverse will become another sad song to be sung. God bless Ghana God bless Jomoro God bless NPP #Maintain Hon Ernest Kofie Signed! True Patriots Of Jomoro- NPP 0242382418- Convener 0204864614 - Convener Listen to article Your Excellency President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Today May 29, 2021 marks an important day in the history of Ghana. It is a day that the University of Cape Coast popularly known as the University of Choice has taken the burden of appreciation owed you by Ghanaians to confer on you a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Educational Leadership (Honoris Causa) in recognition of your leadership and support for the educational sector in Ghana. This indeed is an occasion worthy of celebration and as a young man in the field of academia, I join the grateful Ghanaian youth to congratulate you on this achievement. I congratulate the University of Cape Coast for honoring you on behalf of the Ghanaian youth and elderly who are joint beneficiaries of your visionary investments in the educational sector. Mr. President, even in times of joy like these when no two horns should lock over, I believe it will come to you as no surprise that someone of your acquaintance who has over the years proven to be motivated by bitterness against you is out there propagating unsubstantiated claims. In his article titled A surfeit of dodgy honorary doctorates which I will prefer to call A surfeit of bitterness, Mr. Haruna Atta regurgitates his long-held disapproval of anything Akufo-Addo but this time in a dangerous fashion where he visibly attacked the prestigious University Council of the University of Cape Coast for awarding what he calls a scandalous doctorate to someone (you) he claims is directly responsible for a so called mess in Ghanas educational sector. Knowing his affinity to launch baseless attacks at you, I least expected him to provide proof for his claims. But for the sanctity of the Presidency, revered University Council and the importance of the topic of education to the youth of Ghana, I kept on reading hoping to find a single evidence of the so called mess in Ghanas educational sector but to no avail. Your Excellency, thanks to the massive investments your Government has made in the educational sector, a good number of the Ghanaian youth are very discerning. They are able to decipher between an empty surfeit of bitterness from the massive development that the educational sector has received since you became President. Mr. President, for the avoidance of doubt, you deserve much greater awards, if any exists, for your unmatched role in developing and promoting the educational sector of Ghana. I have no doubt that even if this generation of ours fails to acknowledge you in this regard, future generations of Ghanaian youth will sing your name in praise for the legacy you have left for them. Your Excellency, I am not sure if Mr. Haruna Atta returned from Namibia after serving as High Commissioner because if he did, he would have been brought up to speed with the implementation of the free senior high school education which is the biggest social intervention program since independence. The success of this program has not only brought smiles to faces of parents and children in Ghana but also brought pride to our dear Nation when the first batch of students under the program performed creditably well at the WASSCE exams to the admiration of our neighboring countries. Today, no child will be left at home because of parents/guardians inability to pay school fees. Sir, the successful implementation of this single policy should be enough reason to make even a reasonable bitter opponent shy away from describing the educational sector as a mess. But there is much more to your investments in education which cannot be enumerated here for the sake of brevity. For instance, the restoration of teachers training allowance coupled with the introduction of the 4-year basic education degree is something that will significantly make the educational system strong. Also, the requirement of teachers to pass a professional licensing exam before being approved to teach is a policy that will ultimately improve the standards in the educational sector. All these projects/policies are key determinants of quality and were implemented by your Government. Furthermore, the implementation of the Basic, Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (BSTEM) at all basic education with the establishment of key STEM centres across the country is an investment that will positively impact the quality of education of our children. Your Government has also focused massively on improving Technical and Vocational Education Training which was hitherto not given much attention by the previous Government. These achievements and many more in a space of 4 years of your Government call for commendation and support from the citizenry and not dispraise. At this rate, I strongly believe the educational sector in Ghana at the end of your tenure and a much anticipated breaking of the 8 by the NPP will compete with top educational systems across the globe. It is only then that the cynics and pessimists will appreciate the full extent of investments that your Government has done for the country. Mr. President, please accept my congratulations once again and remain blessed! Written by: Dr. Issah Imoro ( [email protected] ) In this edition, topical aviation trends relevant to Ghanas aviation space between May 23 - 29, 2021 are analyzed as follows: RwandAir Becomes First African Airline to Receive Diamond Status in Health Safety RwandAir has become the first African Airline to attain the highest level of hygiene and health standards in terms of COVID-19 prevention measures by Apex Health Safety ratings. This comes after the airline successfully completed a 58-point checklist that accesses the measures put in place to ensure the safety of passengers across every stage of their travels. Emirates and Ethiopian Grab African Awards Emirates has been awarded the Most Outstanding Airline Company of the Year at the Ghana-West Africa Business Excellence Award. The award took into consideration Emirates commitment to passengers safety and health during this COVID-19 pandemic. Also, Ethiopian Airlines has received a Gold Award for its outstanding contribution towards intra-Africa Development by the Ghana-Africa Business Awards. COVID-19 Tests at KIA Capable of Determining COVID-19 Variants Managers of the COVID-19 testing facility at the Kotoka International Airport (KIA), Frontiers Health Services says its equipment have so far proven effective in determining all new variants of COVID-19. This was made known during a tour of the Terminal 3 of KIA by members of the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health to gather first-hand information at the airport. United Affording Passengers Opportunity to Travel for Free United Airlines says it is giving its customers who have vaccinated against COVID-19 and also enrolled on its loyalty program an opportunity to travel for free. For passengers to qualify for this offer, they have to submit their vaccinated cards into their account by June 22, 2021. After that period, five people will be elected to travel free for one year. Also, 30 people will win a return trip. For both categories of prices, the winners get to travel to any United operational destination and the opportunity to travel with one person. British Airways Increases Capacity of Reward Seats Per Flight British Airways has increased the number of seats rewards that can be booked with Avios. Avios which is a reward currency used by the airline allows passengers to book a seat with the airline on a flight provided their accumulated reward matches the value of the available seat. With this new initiative, an additional 250,000 guaranteed seats across all classes have been made available on all flights of the airline across various destinations. Prodigy Aviation Training Centre to be operational in Q4 of 2021 Aviation Consultants, Prodigy Avia Solutions are set to make operational a Simulator Training Centre in Accra in the last quarter of 2021. The facility will operate a Boeing 737 Classic Flight Simulator and will help in the training of pilots in West and Central Africa. The new facility according to reports will be named as Prodigy Aviation Training Centre. Ethiopian Recognized as 6th Most Admired African Brand Amongst a list of 100 brands, Ethiopian Airlines has been ranked as the 6th Most admired African Brand for the year 2021 by Brand Africa. The award seeks to create a positive image of Africa, celebrate its diversity and drive its competitiveness. Mark Ofosu || Twitter: M__ofosu The District Chief Executive for the Obuasi East District Hon. Faustina Amissah has appealed to Nananom, the media and Assembly Members to collaborate and fully support census officials during the upcoming Population and Housing Census. Speaking during the launch of 30 days countdown to the Population and Housing Census on Friday 28th May 2021, the DCE indicated that the next 30 days are very important to the conduct of this years Population and Housing Census, which goes beyond the mere counting of people. In the spirit of leaving no one behind, the census shall cover all members of our society, such as persons living with disabilities (PLWDs), orphanhood and vulnerable children, the elderly and even street families. She added that the government continues to be committed to evidence-based decision making and planning in all facets of decision making in our development agenda. The census will provide us with adequate data to help us measure, monitor and estimate the extent to which we have made progress on our national development agenda and also the data collected will guide us to measure the socio-economic status of our people. Hon. Faustina Amissah therefore urged all persons in the district, both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians who may be resident or non-resident, but may be in the district on the Census Night (27th June 2021) to be ready to welcome Census officials and provide the necessary information for their enumeration. On his part, the District Coordinating Director for Obuasi East District Assembly Mr. Eric Aboagye-Mensah said, Ghana has been fairly consistent in conducting census every 10 years since 1960 to count and understand its population size, structure and dynamics. Again, population and housing census provide data on sex, age, births and deaths, migration, where we live, what we do for a living, access to public services, health and education. The creation of district, constituencies and regions by successive government is based mainly on census data. As the chairman of the District Census Implementation Committee, he therefore assured his full support to ensure the conduct of a successful census in the district through the Committee. Mr. Bernard Kusi the District Census Officer (DCO) for Obuasi East District disclosed that the 2021 Population and Housing Census, which begins on the night of Sunday June 27, will be the first fully digital census, with the use of tablets for data capture instead of traditional paper questionnaires. It will also use Geographic Positioning System (GPS) to capture the location of all structures and employ interactive area maps for accurate identification of enumeration and supervision areas. Field data collection will commence with the listing of all structures from 13th June 2021. The Census Night is set for 27th June 2021, persons on transit and in short stay institutions such as hotels, guest houses and hospital in-patients will all be counted on the Census Night. However, the enumeration of all persons in residential household facilities as well as institutions and all other persons will be enumerated from 28th June to 11th July 2021 with the slogan 2021 Population and Housing Census! You Count, Get Counted. DR Congo's government said Saturday that the eruption of a second volcano it had announced hours earlier was a "false alarm," the scare coming a week after Mount Nyiragongo roared back into life, causing devastation and sparking a mass exodus. The eastern city of Goma has lived in fear since Nyiragongo's eruption, with rolling aftershocks and the evacuation of around 400,000 residents turning attention towards a looming humanitarian crisis. More suffering briefly seemed imminent when the government said that Murara volcano, considered a crater of Mount Nyamuragira just 25 kilometres (15 miles) north of Goma, had erupted on Saturday morning. The communications ministry said the "low intensity" eruption sent lava flowing into an uninhabited area, before issuing another statement saying "false alarm on Nyamuragira". "A plane has just flown over the entire area on the sides of this volcano. No eruption was observed," it added. A Congolese family living in Goma crosses the Rwandan border at the Gisenyi border post after an evacuation order. By ALEXIS HUGUET (AFP) "It was instead intense activities of carbonising wood into charcoal, the smoke of which was perceived as volcanic activity." Aerial images of Nyamuragira taken Saturday morning and viewed by AFP showed just a few wisps of white smoke in the volcano's crater. 'Limnic eruption' fears Goma, the capital of North Kivu province, stands on the shores of Lake Kivu in the shadow of Nyiragongo, Africa's most active volcano. Last Saturday the strato-volcano spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. Hundreds of aftershocks have rocked the region since, but the Goma Volcano Observatory (OVG) said Saturday they had significantly decreased in both number and intensity over the past 48 hours. Mount Nyiragongo spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people. By Handout (Satellite image 2021 Maxar Technologies/AFP/File) The OVG's latest report said that 61 earthquakes had shaken the area in the previous 24 hours. It said the quakes were "consistent with the continued movement of magma in the Nyiragongo fissure system towards Lake Kivu". Scientists have warned of a potentially catastrophic scenario -- a "limnic eruption" which occurs when lava combines with a deep lake and spews out lethal gas across a potentially large area. However the OVG report said a "landslide or large earthquake destabilising the deep waters of the lake causing the emergence of dissolved gases" was now much less likely, while it still "cannot be excluded". The OVG did list three likely scenarios for the coming days, in two of which the magma stays underground -- whether the tremors continue or not. In the third, the earthquakes cause the lava to come to the surface, potentially in fissures that fracture the streets of Goma. A map of DR Congo locating the Nyiragongo and Nyamuragira volcanos. By Patricio ARANA (AFP) Around 80,000 households -- 400,000 inhabitants -- have moved out of the city since Thursday, when a "preventative" evacuation order was given. Goma was quiet on Saturday, with a handful of vehicles on the semi-deserted streets and only some small shops open, an AFP journalist said. 'Urgent, global support' Most people have headed for Sake, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Goma where tens of thousands are now gathered, or the Rwandan border in the northeast, while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Rwandan President Paul Kagame has said those fleeing needed "urgent, global support". Congolese President Felix Tshisekedi held a cabinet meeting late Friday in which he called on the government to "redouble its efforts to better deal with the humanitarian situation". Criticism has been growing over the government response after Thursday's evacuation order was met with fear and traffic jams, with many feeling abandoned, not knowing where to go or what to do. "The state has decided to evacuate the population of Goma and Nyiragongo without giving any help," citizen movement Lucha tweeted. Prime Minister Jean-Michel Sama Lukonde defended the government's response at the cabinet meeting, saying the eruption had "no similarity to previous eruptions in that it occurred without warning signs". He also stressed the evacuation took place "in record time". Limnic eruptions are a rare type of natural disaster in which carbon dioxide trapped from deep waters of a lake suddenly erupts, leading to violent bursts of toxic gas. By Gal ROMA (AFP/File) The mounting humanitarian crisis comes in a region ravaged by violence between different armed groups over three decades. Access to drinkable water is particularly urgent, according to aid organisations in the area. Nearly 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Its last major eruption in 2002 claimed around 100 lives and the deadliest eruption on record killed more than 600 people in 1977. Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is an eruption under the lake, which could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide currently dissolved in the water's depths. The gas would rise to the surface of the lake, forming an invisible cloud that would linger at ground level and displace oxygen, asphyxiating life. In 1986, one of these limnic eruptions killed more than 1,700 people and thousands of cattle at Lake Nyos in western Cameroon. Mali's junta leader Colonel Assimi Goita left the capital Bamako Saturday, his first full day as president, headed for Ghana where West African leaders will decide on a response to the country's second coup in nine months. The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) invited Goita to come to Ghana's capital Accra for "consultations" ahead of an extraordinary summit on Sunday devoted to Mali, according to letter from the 15-nation bloc seen by AFP. He flew to Accra on Saturday, military and airport sources said. Goita had served as vice president since leading a coup last August that ousted the democratically elected president, with the roles of president and prime minister held by civilians after pressure from ECOWAS, which has served as a mediator. However on Monday soldiers detained transitional president Bah Ndaw and prime minister Moctar Ouane, releasing them on Thursday while saying that they had resigned. The twin arrests triggered a diplomatic uproar and marked the second apparent coup within a year in the Sahel country. Mali's constitutional court completed Goita's rise to full power on Friday by naming him transitional president. With the junta going back on its previous commitment to civilian political leaders, doubts have been raised about its other pledges, including holding elections in early 2020. The junta said this week it will would continue to respect that timetable, but added that it could be subject to change. The constitutional court said Goita would "exercise the functions of transitional president to lead the transition process to its conclusion". Sanctions threat ECOWAS, which issued sanctions against Mali after the August coup before lifting them when the transitional government was put in place, will meet from 2:00 pm (1400 GMT) in Accra on Sunday. The 15-nation bloc has warned of reimposing sanctions on the country, as has the United States and former colonial power France. Ndaw and Ouane's detention came hours after a government reshuffle that would have replaced the defence and security ministers, both of whom were army officers involved in the August putsch. On Friday, Goita said the army had had little choice but to intervene. "We had to choose between disorder and cohesion within the defence and security forces and we chose cohesion," he said. Goita added that he wants to name a prime minister from the opposition M5 movement within days. M5 spearheaded protests against former president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in 2020 that built up pressure ahead of his ouster, but it was excluded from key posts in the army-dominated post-coup administration. A rapprochement with the group might serve to soften domestic and foreign criticism of the military. In Mali, regularly ranked among the world's poorest countries, the previous ECOWAS sanctions were felt hard by a country reeling from numerous crises, including a grinding jihadist insurgency. The Management of University of Education, Winneba (UEW) has expressed gratitude to President Nana Akufo-Addo for the unflinching support to the University in building a globally renowned centre of excellence for teacher education. Rev. Prof. Anthony Afful-Broni, Vice-Chancellor (VC) of UEW, commended the President and the government on behalf of the Governing Council and Management of the University at a special congregation at Winneba. He said as an academic community, they conscientiously reminded themselves of the power of education to profoundly change the world. Madam Akosua Frema Osei-Opare, Chief of Staff, who represented President Nana Akufo-Addo, delivered his speech and also commissioned recently completed projects. Five of the projects were named after former President John Agyekum Kufuor, former Finance Minister late Kodwo Baah Wiredu, Prof. Akwesi Asabere-Ameyaw, Prof. Emmanuel Kwesi Ampene and Dr Joseph Ebo Bannerman for their distinguished roles in the Country. The congregation was to recognize and celebrate Right Reverend Prof. Aaron Michael Oquaye and Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh and to also conferred Honorary Doctorate on them for their outstanding contributions towards shaping the quality of life of Ghanaians and the image of the country. Rev. Prof. Afful-Broni assured that the Management of the institution was determined and would continue to dedicate their lives to the nation to achieve total holistic education. The VC said the two awardees would join the list of distinguished persons, who have received the prestigious award, bringing the number of honorary degree holders of the UEW since 2004 to 23. He further thanked predecessors of the university for their respective roles and goodwill in driving the university from its humble beginnings to a formidable institution since its establishment some 29 years ago. Highlighting some of the achievements the university under his regime had chalked, he said through its internally generated fund (IGF), it had initiated the construction of 14 new ultra-modern 500-seater lecture theatres across the various campuses of the University. He said 10 of them were on Winneba campus and two each at the then Kumasi and Asante Mampong satellite campuses while an additional two would be built at the Kumasi campus. The university constructed student-centeredness, an ultra-modern student's Centre, Food court, School of Creative Arts Block, five-storey technology block, which has seven lecture halls, 4,000-seater auditorium, 20 audio-visual rooms, and library. On-going projects included a six-storey lecture block with 200 offices, 30 lecture theatres and offices at Winneba and a three-storey facility block at the Ajumako campus. Also, an ultra-modern 100-bed university hospital with several consulting rooms, Outpatient Department, emergency centre, pharmacy, two operation theatres, radiography centre, among others are being built to serve the health needs of the university community and the neighbouring communities, among many other projects. "I recall vividly the solemn pledge I made to you (President Nana Akuffo Addo), on the occasion of my investiture as the Fourth Vice-Chancellor of the UEW, to lay a solid foundation for the intake of the anticipated large numbers of the first batch of the Free SHS product, hence the huge investment on infrastructures made," he stated. "I aligned my vision to the corporate strategic plan that directs the shaping of our university into one of the best tertiary institutions in the world,"Rev Prof Afful-Broni added. GNA Ninah Uwumbornyi, a 23-year-old woman at Kpassa has been struck dead by lightning, following a brief downpour at Kpassa in the Nkwanta North District of the Oti Region. The incident occurred at the Kpassa JHS B school park on Friday. Mr Kadil Obrenya, Kpassa West Electoral Area government appointee, narrated the sad incident to the Ghana News Agency (GNA). The Assemblyman said the deceased, who was walking across the park at the time of the rainstorm, was struck by thunder and died on the spot. He said the incident was a shock to the residents of the Kpassa community. The GNA gathered that the deceased came from Blajai in the Kpandai District and was currently going through her apprenticeship at Kpassa in the Nkwanta North District. Kpassa District Police Commander, Assistant Superintendent of Police, Mr Thomas Hodanu confirmed the incident to the GNA and said the body of the deceased was released to the family for burial. GNA Kinshasa, DR Congo (PANA) Authorities in Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and an International Monetary Fund (IMF) team have reached a staff-level agreement on a three-year, US$1 Attorney General and Minister of Justice, Godred Dame, has responded to the criticism that the government is not doing enough to prosecute persons engaged in illegal mining. Speaking on Joy FMs Newsfile, he said the perception that we are interested in the equipment and not the prosecution of the people is wrong. His comments come amid the debate over the burning of illegal mining equipment like excavators which has been heavily criticised. But Mr. Dame said, amid the furore over the burning of excavators, arrests are being made by security agencies partaking in the Operation Halt anti-illegal mining task force. A many as about 45 people are on trial as a result of operations taken in the past two weeks. Most importantly, it involves about 10 Chinese nationals, he stated. Mr. Dame further defended the Presidents backing of the burning of excavators by members of Operation Halt. President Akufo-Addo has asked persons who are dissatisfied with the seizure and burning of their excavators and other mining equipment to seek legal redress. In his defence of President Akufo-Addo, Mr. Dame referenced the 2018 decision of the Kumasi High Court not to award compensation to Exton Cubic Group, a mining company with links to businessman, Ibrahim Mahama, over the seizure of its mining equipment. The principles that the President set out in his speech on Wednesday were actually the foundations for the decision of the High Court in Kumasi. The High Court endorsed the principle that no right can accrue from the illegality, the Attorney General argued. Forewarning to illegal miners Also on the matter of the governments commitment to making arrests as part of the fight against illegal mining, Mr. Dame was questioned on the governments announcement of the movements of the Operation Halt team. Operation Halt is in its fourth phase, and every stage of its work has been preceded by a warning to people to vacate illegal mining sites. Most recently, the team was being deployed to the River Ankobra in the Western Region to remove all persons and logistics involved in mining from water bodies. Mr. Dame shied away from passing judgement on the strategy of telegraphing the deployments of Operation Halt, adding that he was not even aware of the most recent announcement. I do not know where this alleged announcement was made so I am not in a position to answer. When he was told that the announcement was from the Information Ministry, Mr. Dame added that I dont know the circumstances under which the Information Minister made that statement. In Mr. Dames view, despite the announcements of Operation Halts movements, the most important point is that intelligence always leads to the arrest of the culprits [engaged in illegal mining]. citinewsroom President Nana Akufo-Addo has refuted the perception that his government is overseeing a culture of silence. The President also challenged claims that press freedom has suffered under his presidency. When it comes to the press, I am certain I have nothing to apologise for with reference to anything I have ever done or said, he said during a special congregation in his honour at the University of Cape Coast. President Akufo-Addo again touted the role he played under the Kufuor administration in repealing the criminal libel law. I have been a part of and sometimes led the struggle for individual rights and freedom of the press in this country. I believe in it. it is part of my makeup. President Akufo-Addo however said his government would be in its right to challenge the assertions made by some media houses. A radio station is currently running a campaign against Free SHS. Would a spirited defence of the Free SHS policy constitute an attack on press freedom? I wonder. It cannot be that everyone has a right of a reply except members of the government and officialdom, nor can it be that challenging an opinion expressed by a journalist constitutes an attack on press freedom, the President argued. Moving forward, he said both the media and government need to be open to dialogue on issues Knowledge has never been a gift granted exclusively to one group. We must listen and hear each other more, he implored. Ultimately, President Akufo-Addo said the amount of criticism he has received, which would have not been tolerated under certain regimes in Ghanas political history, was evidence of the healthy state of the press. I find it ironic that the presidency of a man who has been and continues to be daily the most vilified political figure of his generation can be accused of presiding over a culture of silence. There is no midnight knock on the door in Ghana or authors of dissenting views nor will there be during my presidency, President Akufo-Addo assured. Scrutiny of Akufo-Addos press freedom record Though Ghana ranks 30 out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index, Reporters Without Borders has expressed concern with the fact many cases of police aggression against journalists have gone unpunished. The 2020 World Press Freedom Index report also noted that some journalists covering the effectiveness of the government's measures against COVID-19 were attacked by police in 2020. Over the course of the Akufo-Addo administration, it has been criticized on these points, as well as the closure of some prominent pro-opposition radio stations. The conduct of National Security Personnel towards Citi FM journalists on May 13 was the most high-profile incident of state action so far against journalists in 2021. One of the Citi FM journalists, Caleb Kudah, was tortured whilst in National Security custody. Before this, in July 2018, the National Security personnel, in another notable incident, arrested and tortured two journalists after the publication of an article that criticized the National Security Minister, Albert Kan Dapaah. The governments response so far to these incidents has been largely condemned, with many suggesting that it gives the impression that the state is either complicit or tacitly supports such actions against journalists. citinewsroom Lansdale, PA (19446) Today Cloudy skies this evening. A few showers developing late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Cloudy skies this evening. A few showers developing late. Low 59F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%. May 29, 2021 How ProtonMail Lost The Public Trust It Needs To Do Business ProtonMail is a Swiss provider of an end-to-end encrypted email application. The service is free to use for consumers but sold to businesses and other organizations. ProtonMail claims to have "Swiss Privacy Data Security and Neutrality". But how far can one trust ProtonMail's claims of a secure service when it is openly breaking, as we show below, its pledge of neutrality? During the aftermath of the emergency landing in Minsk of a Ryanair flight between Greece and Lithuania ProtonMail provided fractional information about emails which delivered a bomb threat against the plane to several airports. The partial and seemingly willfully incomplete response by ProtonMail has led to false claims by various media against the government of Belarus. The 'west' is currently waging an information war against Belarus. It wants to change the government of Belarus by whatever means. By only providing fractional information about the case ProtonMail has taken a side in this war. The 'west' is now imposing sanctions against Belarus which will inevitable have negative consequences for ALL people in that country. If ProtonMail does not clean up its slate on this issue it must take responsibility for these. This, from today's New York Times, includes several false claims: The plane, a Ryanair Boeing 737 headed from Greece to Lithuania, was traveling through Belarusian airspace on Sunday when it was diverted and forced to land in Minsk, the capital, with an escort from a fighter jet. Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian opposition journalist who had been living in exile abroad, was detained along with his girlfriend after the plane landed. Belaruss president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and eccentric strongman, has claimed that he rerouted the plane because of an emailed bomb threat, not to seize Mr. Protasevich. But a Swiss email provider has said that the email cited by the Belarusian authorities was sent after the plane had already been diverted. As we have show previously the Ryanair plane was not "diverted and forced to land in Minsk". When the plane entered Belorussian airspace at about 12:30 local time (9:30 utc) it was informed by the Air Traffic Control (ATC) of Belarus that an email had been received by several airports that threatened to explode the plane over its destination in Vilnius. The ATC recommended to the pilot to land in Minsk. The pilot decided to do so by himself. The radio traffic between the pilot and the ATC has been published (scroll down) by the aviation authorities of Belarus. It is undisputed. The NYT claims, relying of partial information by ProtonMail, that "the email cited by the Belorussian authorities was sent after the plane had already been diverted." The claim is false. There were two emails with bomb threats. One was received before the Ryanair plane entered the airspace of Belarus, the other was received after the pilot had already made his decision to land in Minsk. ProtonMail has so far only confirmed that the second email was send to Minsk. It has rejected to make comments about the first bomb threat email sent through its service to Minsk. Here is how we know about the two emails. The narrative of the incident (scroll down for the English version) by the Belorussian authorities starts with this: On May 23, 2021, a written message with the following content in English was sent to the e-mail of the National Airport Minsk from the e-mail address protonmail.com: A translation of the Russian language version of that paragraph is a bit more specific: On May 23, 2021, a written message with the following content was sent to the e-mail of the National Airport Minsk info@airport.by from the e-mail address protonmail.com in English: The radio talk between ATC and the pilot of flight RYR 1TZ has additional information about the email: ATC: RYR 1TZ Pilot: The bomb....direct message, where did it come from? Where did you have information about it from? ATC: RYR 1TZ standby please. ATC: 09:33:42: RYR 1TZ Pilot: Go ahead. ATC: RYR 1TZ airport security stuff informed they received e-mail. Pilot: Roger, Vilnius airport security stuff or from Greece? ATC: RYR 1TZ this e-mail was shared to several airports. At 9:33 utc the Belorussian ATC knew that the email had been received by several airports in the region. This must have been the first email in question and the recipient field must have show several airport related email addresses. We know that one of the other recipients of the email received by Minsk airport was an airport organization in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Dossier Center, a rather shady anti-Russian outfit in London financed by the exiled billionaire and company raider Mikhail Khodorkovsky, has published this misleading narrative about the Ryanair incident (machine translation, emph. added): Swiss Hamas - Inconsistencies in the "terrorist" version of the Belarusian authorities On May 26, during a speech in parliament, Alexander Lukashenko commented on the emergency landing in Minsk of a Ryanair airline, on board which was the former editor-in-chief of the Nexta Telegram channel Roman Protasevich. Lukashenka said that the message about the mining of the side was received by Athens, Minsk and Vilnius at the same time. After the Belarusian air traffic controllers passed the information about the bomb allegedly received from the special services to the Ryanair pilots, it was decided to land the plane in Minsk. To escort the board, a MiG-29 fighter of the Belarusian Air Force was raised. The Dossier Center, together with The Daily Beast and Der Spiegel, managed to obtain and analyze a copy of an email sent by a Hamas representative to the Minsk airport. It follows from it that the Belarusian air traffic controllers informed the Ryanair pilots about the mining of the plane 27 minutes earlier than they themselves received the message about the bomb. On May 23, at 12:25 pm Belarusian time, the administration of Lithuanian Airports received a letter with a threat of a bomb explosion on board the flight FR4978, sent from the address [email protected]. The highlighted sentence says that a threat email arrived in Lithuania at 12:25 pm (9:25 utc). This must have been the same email which the Belorussian ATC mentioned at 9:33 utc: ATC: RYR 1TZ this e-mail was shared to several airports. Then however the Dossier Center claim in the second paragraph above, that "the Belarusian air traffic controllers informed the Ryanair pilots about the mining of the plane 27 minutes earlier than they themselves received the message about the bomb", makes no sense. But the Dossier Center does show an email with a bomb threat that was received at 12:56 (9:56 utc) after the pilot had already made the decision to land in Minsk. The explanation that resolves the seemingly contradicting evidence is simple. There were two emails sent to the airports. In fact on May 28 the Investigative Committee of Belarus, the country's prosecution service, published a note about the case (machine translation, emph. added): It has already been established, to which we draw special attention, that there were several messages about the "mining" of the aircraft received through the Swiss anonymous mail service ProtonMail - at 12:25 and at 12:56. At the moment, the records of conversations with the pilots of the aircraft are being studied and analyzed in detail, and numerous other investigative actions are being carried out. The Dossier Center however claims, without providing any evidence, that Minsk did not receive the first email (machine translation, emph. added): At 12:30 the plane entered the airspace of Belarus. As follows from the transcript of the dispatchers' negotiations with the Ryanair pilots, at the same moment the Belarusian side informed the crew about the alleged explosion threat. At 12:33 pm, the controller informed the pilot that a letter with a message about the bomb had been sent to several airports at once. However, as the Dossier Center found out, at that time only Lithuanian Airports received a letter from the terrorists. The Greek Civil Aviation Authority said it had not received a bomb threat letter at the Athens airport. At 12:47 the plane changed course and flew towards Minsk. The official statement of the Aviation Directorate of the Ministry of Transport of Belarus did not disclose details about the time of receipt of the email, but Dossier found out that a copy of the letter from user Ahmed Yurlanov came to the email of the National Airport of Minsk ([email protected]) at 12:57 pm Belarusian time - that is, almost half an hour after the transmission of the message about the possible mining of the side. How the anti-Russian Dossier Center in London would even know when and what emails arrived or didn't arrive at Minsk airport is inexplicable. The Daily Beast has cooperated with the Dossier Center in reporting the issue. Its piece, authored by Michael Weiss, a former research director of the neo-conservative Henry Jackson Society in London, does not resolve the issue: The email was sent to Minsks National Airports general information account at 12:57 p.m. on May 23, 27 minutes after the plane first entered Belarusian airspace and 24 minutes after air traffic control in Minsk first informed the Ryanair pilot that an emailed bomb threat was shared with several airports. But the Greek Civil Aviation Authority, which is responsible for the plane that took off from Athens, has publicly stated that it received no such warning at any point during FR4978s journey. Lithuania did receive the email, but not Vilnius Airport, the intended destination; rather, the recipient was State Enterprise Lithuanian Airports, the state-run company that handles three different Lithuanian airports (Vilnius, Kaunas, and Palanga). That someone in Greece did not receive the bomb threat email and who in Lithuania received the email or not does not tell us anything about the reception of the first email in Minsk. The whole writeup is a diversion from that critical point. Here is where ProtonMail comes in. ProtonMail was asked about the second email published by the Daily Beast and the Dossier Center. It responded with a statement to Reuters which then misleading headlined: Bomb threat cited by Belarus was sent after plane was diverted - Swiss email provider A bomb threat cited by Belarusian authorities as the reason for forcing a Ryanair jetliner carrying a dissident journalist to land in Minsk was sent after the plane was diverted, privacy-focused email provider Proton Technologies AG said on Thursday. ... Proton declined to comment on specifics of the message but confirmed it was sent after the plane was diverted. "We haven't seen credible evidence that the Belarusian claims are true," the Swiss company said in a statement. "We will support European authorities in their investigations upon receiving a legal request." ProtonMail seems to have confirmed to Reuters that the second email, received in Minsk at 12:56 (9:56 utc), had been sent through its service. ProtonMail however seems to not have been asked about the first email received in Minsk and Lithuania on May 23 at 12:25 (9:25 utc). Still Reuters attributes the false claim, that the bomb threat cited by Belarus was sent after the plane was diverted, directly to ProtonMail. Belarus cited the first email sent. ProtonMail only confirmed that the second email was sent. It should be in the interest of ProtonMail to clear up that issue. Yesterday evening I asked ProtonMail to explicitly confirm that the first email was also sent to and received in Minsk. As it confirmed that the second email was sent it should have no problem with confirming the first one too. This unless it has left its claimed neutrality and is an active participant in the information war against Belarus. Here is the full exchange: Chahuapa @Chahuapa - 22:22 utc May 26, 2021 Email can be easily spoofed (appear to come from some adres when it's not). I suggest anyone to stop using protonmail. It has been compromised. ProtonMail @ProtonMail - 18:10 utc May 27, 2021 Replying to @Chahuapa The email leaked to the press was not obtained from us. Due to our encryption, we can't access/verify the message contents. However, we can see the sent time and can confirm it was after the plane was redirected. Moon of Alabama @MoonofA - 19:12 utc May 28, 2021 Replying to @ProtonMail and @Chahuapa The Belarus prosecutor states that it received two ProtonMails - at 12:25 and at 12:56 (UTC+3). sk.gov.by/ru/news-usk-gm... Dossier Center claims that Lithuanian airports received threat email at 12:25. Can you please confirm that the first email at 12:25 was also sent to Minsk. ProtonMail @ProtonMail - 19:54 utc May 28, 2021 Replying to @MoonofA and @Chahuapa Unfortunately we can't comment on this as the first email is not public information yet. Only the Swiss authorities can make additional disclosures at this time. Moon of Alabama @MoonofA - 20:07 utc May 28, 2021 Replying to @ProtonMail and @Chahuapa I contacted you because I learned of the first email from: a. Dossier Center b. General Prosecutor of Belarus Their claims of reception of the 9:25 utc email in Vilnius and Minsk are already public information. You are only asked to confirm that both were sent at that time. There was no further response from ProtonMail. While ProtonMail seems to confirm the existence of the first email it is not willing to confirm that the first email was also received in Minsk. This is not helpful. ProtonMail's confirmation to Reuters that the second email was received in Minsk has led to widely misleading headlines and numerous reports which, attributed to ProtonMail, falsely claim that Belarus recommended the plane to land in Minsk without having received a bomb threat to that plane. ProtonMail could easily clean up the false reports by confirming in a public statement that there were two emails and that the first email at at 12:25 (9:25 utc) was also sent to and received in Minsk. That ProtonMail rejects to do so demonstrates that it is a party in the information war against Belarus. Swiss Neutrality this is not. But ProtonMail claims neutrality. It also claims that its encrypted email service is secure. In light of the above ProtonMail's neutrality seems to be quite questionable. That lets me doubt that its service and products are as secure as it claims. There have been other Swiss providers of encryption technology and services who had made false claims about their neutrality. Their claims about the security of the encryption services they provided turned out to be false. Last year this led to headlines like these: It is easy for ProtonMail to reclaim Neutrality by publicly providing information that an email from the account shown in the above screenshot or any other ProtonMail account was sent to the info@airport.by address in Minsk on May 23 at 9:25 utc. As ProtonMail confirmed that the second email was sent and received it must have the metadata that allows it to issue a similar confirmation about the first mail. An additional public explanation of the fact that there were two emails in question and that its previous statement to Reuters was only with regard to the second email would be very helpful. We should also keep in mind that this is not a question of good versus bad but true or false. One may dislike the leadership of Belarus. But one also has to acknowledge, as even The Atlantic does, that the government of Belarus acted in full accordance with the relevant laws: Ryanairs CEO called the incident state-sponsored hijacking. It was not. Technically, you have to be on a plane to hijack it. But the Ryanair incident was nevertheless diabolicaland what makes it particularly diabolical is that Belarus may have managed to pull it off without violating its agreements under international law. One should also consider that the only casualty in this incident is an openly neo-nazi regime change activist who is financed by 'western' governments. If ProtonMail wants to take that side it is free to do so. But it can not claim neutrality, and a secure service, while doing so. Should ProtonMail change its mind and issue a clarifying statement on the issue I will update this post accordingly. --- Previous Moon of Alabama post on the Ryanair incident in Belarus: Posted by b on May 29, 2021 at 14:46 UTC | Permalink Comments Who will be around to tell the stories of how Lorainites weathered the novel coronavirus pandemic and the lasting impact on The International City? Half of our jail population suffers from mental illness or co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders, and often they should not be locked up. Instead, they could be in a treatment facility receiving the help and care they need, and the Diversion Center will help meet this need. ..." Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish Pull Quote featured Lorain DeLuca's Place in the Park could become halfway house The officials said that the review had been completed and that Sherman had informed Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov of the U.S. decision not to return to the 1992 Open Skies Treaty. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. The State Department later announced the move. "The United States regrets that the Treaty on Open Skies has been undermined by Russia's violations," the department said. "In concluding its review of the treaty, the United States therefore does not intend to seek to rejoin it, given Russia's failure to take any actions to return to compliance. Further, Russia's behavior, including its recent actions with respect to Ukraine, is not that of a partner committed to confidence-building." Thursday's decision means only one major arms control treaty between the nuclear powers -- the New START treaty -- will remain in place. Trump had done nothing to extend New START, which would have expired earlier this year, but after taking office, the Biden administration moved quickly to extend it for five years and opened a review into Trump's Open Skies Treaty withdrawal. U.S. officials said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman told the Russians that the administration had decided not to reenter the Open Skies Treaty, which had allowed surveillance flights over military facilities in both countries before President Donald Trump withdrew from the pact. As a presidential candidate, Biden had criticized Trump's withdrawal as "short-sighted." The Biden administration informed Russia on Thursday that it will not rejoin a key arms control pact, even as the two sides prepare for a summit next month between their leaders, the State Department said. June Meeting in Geneva The announcement comes ahead of a meeting between President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin on June 16 in Geneva, Switzerland. They will try to find common ground amid a sharp deterioration in ties that have sunk relations to their lowest point in decades. Yet, Biden, who had supported the treaty as a senator, had been highly critical of Trump's pullout. "In announcing the intent to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, President Trump has doubled down on his short-sighted policy of going it alone and abandoning American leadership," then-candidate Biden said in May 2020. The Open Skies Treaty was intended to build trust between Russia and the West by allowing the accord's more than three dozen signatories to conduct reconnaissance flights over each other's territories to collect information about military forces and activities. More than 1,500 flights have been conducted under the treaty since it took effect in 2002, aimed at fostering transparency and allowing for the monitoring of arms control and other agreements. The Trump administration announced the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty last year, and the lower house of Russia's parliament voted last week to follow suit. But until Thursday, the two sides had said the treaty could still be salvaged. Russian officials said they were willing to reconsider their withdrawal if the U.S. did the same. The upper house of Russia's parliament, the Federation Council, was expected to approve the withdrawal bill on June 2, and once Putin signed the measure, it would take six months for the Russian exit to take effect. A Trust-Building Measure Thursday's notification, however, appears to mark the end of the treaty, which was broadly supported by U.S. allies in Europe and Democrats in Congress as a trust-building measure between the former Cold War adversaries. In pulling out of the pact, Trump argued that Russian violations made it untenable for Washington to remain a party to the agreement. Washington completed its withdrawal from the treaty in November, but the Biden administration had said it was not opposed to rejoining it. The officials stressed the Biden administration's willingness to cooperate with Russia on issues of mutual concern and noted the extension of New START, which was initially signed in 2010 by President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The pact limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspections to verify compliance. However, the officials said that despite appeals for Russia to abide by the Open Skies Treaty, there was no practical way for the U.S. to reverse the Trump administration's decision to withdraw. One official said that since Biden had taken office, Russia had demonstrated a "complete absence of progress" in taking steps to return to compliance. The officials said Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan and other senior American officials had warned their Russian counterparts in the past week that a decision on Open Skies was imminent. Blinken met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Iceland last week, and Sullivan spoke with Putin's national security adviser, Nikolay Patrushev, on Monday. Moscow had deplored the U.S. pullout, warning that it would erode global security by making it more difficult for governments to interpret the intentions of other nations, particularly amid heightened Russia-West tensions over myriad issues, including Ukraine, cyber malfeasance and the treatment of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny and his supporters. Leading congressional Democrats and members of the European Union had urged the U.S. to reconsider its exit and called on Russia to stay in the pact and lift flight restrictions, notably over its westernmost Kaliningrad region, which lies between NATO allies Lithuania and Poland. Russia had insisted the restrictions on observation flights it imposed in the past were permissible under the treaty and noted that the U.S. imposed more sweeping restrictions on observation flights over Alaska. As a condition for staying in the pact after the U.S. pullout, Moscow had unsuccessfully pushed for guarantees from NATO allies that they wouldn't hand over the data collected during their observation flights over Russia to the U.S. Abuja, Nigeria (PANA) - The Nigerian Army says its troops, under Sector 2, Operation HADIN KAI, on Saturday raided another Boko Haram logistics base in Gujba, Yobe State "Were working to develop a project that provides the greatest benefit to the Great Lakes aquatic ecosystem while also meeting the needs of the stakeholders and the local community. Ashley Binion-Zuccaro, Toledo project manager for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Pull Quote Two Ohio lawmakers want state to call for convention of states This map, prepared by consulting firm Naylor Wellman, shows the proposed Broadway Historic District for downtown Lorain. On May 24, 2021, advisers Wendy Hoge Naylor and Diana Wellman held an online meeting to explain how downtown Lorain could achieve recognition on the National Register of Historic Places. Eminent domain reform, an issue pursued by state Rep. Tom Craddick of Midland is headed for Gov. Greg Abbotts desk after passing the Texas House and Senate this week. For several years, Craddick has tried to bring together landowners, industry and government to reform eminent domain in a way that respects property rights while also allowing industry to move forward with projects like pipeline expansion or construction or transmission line construction. Still, though House Bill 2730 is headed to the governor, the Republican expressed disappointment in the legislation. House Bill 2730 does not resolve the issues raised regarding the eminent domain process in Texas, he told the Reporter-Telegram by email. My constituents resoundingly asked me to oppose the legislation. The concern is the parties will continue to push for additional changes which will make it harder for oil and gas infrastructure to be built. The oil and gas industry is the economic driver of the state of Texas and I look forward to continuing to help them maintain their position in the marketplace. Reform efforts have drawn support from and participation from industry associations. Reliable infrastructure and a dependable regulatory structure are vital to the success of the Permian Basin. Eminent domain reform that strikes a balance between infrastructure development and property rights would help ensure a market for Permian Basin produced oil and gas, Ben Shepperd, president of the Permian Basin Petroleum Association, told the Reporter-Telegram by email. While Craddick expressed disappointment in the bill, it drew applause from the Texas Oil and Gas Association following its passage in the Texas Senate. After many years and multiple legislative sessions working with stakeholders to craft an agreement, we applaud the Texas Legislature for passing an eminent domain reform bill that guarantees private property rights are respected and preserved throughout the eminent domain process while ensuring that essential infrastructure, such as energy pipelines, roads, electric lines, and high-speed internet lines, can be built, Todd Staples, president of the association, said in a statement. Texas is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, and essential infrastructure is needed to meet the demands of our booming population. Every Texan relies on electric transmission lines, roads, drainage and flood control, and pipelines for water, oil, natural gas and transportation fuels. The expansion of this infrastructure while also protecting private property rights is essential to the states continued growth and success. We hope Gov. Abbott will sign this important bill into law. MANILA, Philippines (AP) The Philippines has demanded that China withdraw its ships and fishing vessels from the vicinity of a Philippine-occupied island in the South China Sea, where the Chinese military has asserted its sovereignty and vowed to unswervingly safeguard the disputed territory. The exchange of protests by the Asian neighbors over the island, internationally called Thitu, is the latest flareup in a long simmering territorial feud in the strategic waterway that has escalated in the last two months. The Department of Foreign Affairs in Manila said Saturday it has filed a diplomatic protest against the incessant deployment, prolonged presence and illegal activities of Chinese maritime assets and fishing vessels in the vicinity of the Pag-asa islands. It used the Philippine name for Thitu, which China calls Zhongye Dao. The department demanded that China withdraw its vessels from near the island, which it said is an integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction. The 37.2-hectare (92-acre) island is the largest of nine mostly islets, reefs and shoals occupied by Philippine forces in the disputed waters. The Manila government lists Thitu and outlying outcrops as part of a town in western Palawan province. Aside from Filipino troops and police, a small fishing community can be found on Thitu. The government has constructed a beach ramp to allow the docking of navy and cargo ships and unloading of construction materials and heavy equipment for new projects, including the repair and lengthening of a seawater-eroded airstrip, an ice plant for fishermen and more military barracks. Chinese officials have not protested as loudly as before the Philippine constructions amid cozier ties between Beijing and Manila under Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. But on Thursday, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Tang Kefei said China was resolutely opposed to any Philippine development on Thitu. Chinas military will unswervingly safeguard national territory, sovereignty and maritime rights, while resolutely maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, Tang said, without elaborating at a monthly briefing. The escalating feud between Manila and Beijing started after more than 200 Chinese vessels suspected by Philippine authorities to be operated by government militias were spotted in early March at Whitsun Reef. The Philippine defense chief and foreign secretary demanded the vessels leave, and Filipino officials later deployed navy and coast guard vessels to the area. China said it owns the reef and the Chinese vessels were sheltering there from rough seas. The Philippines has issued dozens of diplomatic protests to China since then over the disputes. Foreign Secretary Teodoro Locsin Jr. apologized early this month after tweeting an obscene phrase demanding China get out of Philippine-claimed territory in the South China Sea in an outburst that annoyed Duterte. Just because we have a conflict with China does not mean to say that we have to be rude and disrespectful, Duterte said. We have many things to thank China for the help in the past and its assistance now. KAMLOOPS, British Columbia (AP) The remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, have been found buried on the site of what was once Canada's largest Indigenous residential school one of the institutions that held children taken from families across the nation. Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nation said in a news release that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of ground-penetrating radar. More bodies may be found because there are more areas to search on the school grounds, Casimir said Friday. In an earlier release, she called the discovery an unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died. The Canadian government apologized in Parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages; they also lost touch with their parents and customs. Indigenous leaders have cited that legacy of abuse and isolation as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations. A report more than five years ago by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission said at least 3,200 children had died amid abuse and neglect, and it said it had reports of at least 51 deaths at the Kamloops school alone between 1915 and 1963. This really resurfaces the issue of residential schools and the wounds from this legacy of genocide towards Indigenous people, Terry Teegee, Assembly of First Nations regional chief for British Colombia, said Friday. The remains were detected and not exhumed. Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner in British Columbia, said it was advised by the Tkemlups te Secwepemc on Thursday about the discovery of a burial site located adjacent to the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. We are early in the process of gathering information and will continue to work collaboratively with the Tkemlups te Secwepemc and others as this sensitive work progresses, Lapointe said We recognize the tragic, heartbreaking devastation that the Canadian residential school system has inflicted upon so many, and our thoughts are with all of those who are in mourning today. The band is still working with a radar specialist to complete a survey of the ground. They anticipate having a full report ready by mid-June one Casimir said will be shared publicly, but not until it has been disclosed to its membership and other local First Nations chiefs. She said the band will also be looking into what it can do to repatriate the remains and honor the children and the families impacted. British Columbia Premier John Horgan said he was horrified and heartbroken to learn of the discovery, calling it a tragedy of unimaginable proportions that highlights the violence and consequences of the residential school system. The Kamloops school operated between 1890 and 1969, when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978. Casimir said its believed the deaths are undocumented, although a local museum archivist is working with the Royal British Columbia Museum to see if any records of the deaths can be found. Given the size of the school, with up to 500 students registered and attending at any one time, we understand that this confirmed loss affects First Nations communities across British Columbia and beyond, Casimir said in the initial release issued late Thursday. The leadership of the Tkemlups community acknowledges their responsibility to caretake for these lost children, Casimir said. Access to the latest technology allows for a true accounting of the missing children and will hopefully bring some peace and closure to those lives lost, she said in the release. Casimir said band officials are informing community members and surrounding communities that had children who attended the school. The First Nations Health Authority called the discovery of the remains extremely painful and said in a website posting that it will have a significant impact on the Tkemlups community and in the communities served by this residential school. The authority's CEO, Richard Jock, said the discovery illustrates the damaging and lasting impacts that the residential school system continues to have on First Nations people, their families and communities,. Nicole Schabus, a law professor at Thompson Rivers University, said each of her first-year law students at the Kamloops university spends at least one day at the former residential school speaking with survivors about conditions they had endured. She said she did not hear survivors talk about an unmarked grave area, but they all talk about the kids who didnt make it. CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) NASA has released a stunning new picture of our galaxys violent, super-energized downtown. It's a composite of 370 observations over the past two decades by the orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory, depicting billions of stars and countless black holes in the center, or heart, of the Milky Way. A radio telescope in South Africa also contributed to the image, for contrast. Astronomer Daniel Wang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst said Friday he spent a year working on this while stuck at home during the pandemic. READ MORE: 5 THINGS TEXAS BEACHGOERS SHOULD KNOW BEFORE THE 2021 ATLANTIC HURRICANE SEASON What we see in the picture is a violent or energetic ecosystem in our galaxys downtown, Wang said in an email. There are a lot of supernova remnants, black holes, and neutron stars there. Each X-ray dot or feature represents an energetic source, most of which are in the center. This busy, high-energy galactic center is 26,000 light years away. His work appears in the June issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Launched in 1999, Chandra is in an extreme oval orbit around Earth. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. WASHINGTON U.S. Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz joined with their Republican colleagues on Thursday to block a commission tasked with investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol in a 54-35 vote. While the bill establishing the commission passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. House last week, Senate Republicans effectively killed the proposal by way of the filibuster. In the Senate, 60 members are needed to move a bill to an up-or-down vote, breaking the filibuster, and Republicans successfully stopped that from happening. Cornyn advocated in February for the same kind of commission he voted against Thursday. MORE POLITICAL NEWS: A RUNNING LIST OF EVERYONE MAD AT TED CRUZ IN 2021 The 1/6 attack on the Capitol was horrific & appalling, he tweeted earlier this year. Those who planned & participated in the violence that day should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I agree w/Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi a 911-type investigation is called for to help prevent this from happening again. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell a close ally of Cornyns reportedly pushed Republican members hard against moving the bill forward. Cruz released a statement after the commission was defeated, saying that he opposed it because it was "politically motivated." "The January 6 terrorist attack on the Capitol was a dark moment in our nation's history, and I fully support the ongoing law enforcement investigations into anyone involved. Everyone who attacked the Capitol must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and brought to justice," Cruz said. "I also support the Senate committees of jurisdiction who are exercising their proper oversight roles to provide an in-depth and complete account of the attack. With multiple investigations already underway, I do not support the politically motivated January 6 Commission led by Sen. [Chuck] Schumer and Speaker Pelosi." The bill was modeled on the 9/11 Commission, which led to sweeping government reforms in order to prevent terrorist attacks. The commission was to be equally divided between five Republicans and five Democrats. To qualify, each commissioner could not be currently serving in government and was to have a background in two of the following areas: government service, law enforcement, civil rights and civil liberties, the armed forces, intelligence, counterterrorism, cybersecurity, technology or the law. While there are concurrent criminal investigations, the point of a commission was to evaluate the governments failures that led to the event and examine how to better respond in the future. Initially, House Democrats pushed for the membership of the commission to have more Democrats than Republicans. But House Republican members were deeply involved in negotiating the bill with the blessing of party leaders and Democrats made a number of concessions, leading to the proposal with evenly bipartisan split. Last week, though, House leaders turned against the bill. The House version of the bill passed with some bipartisan support. While most House Republicans voted against the proposal, 35 Republicans crossed party lines to back the bill, including two Texans, U.S. Reps. Tony Gonzales of San Antonio and Van Taylor of Plano. Only six Senate Republicans broke ranks with former President Donald Trump and the majority of Republicans on opposing the creation of a commission. Moderate Democratic U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, D-West Virginia, also indicated his support for the commission leading up to the vote. "Republicans in both chambers are trying to rewrite history and claim that Jan. 6 was a peaceful protest that got a little out of hand. And now this," Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said on the Senate floor after the commission was blocked by Republicans. "We all know what's going on here... Republicans chose to defend the big lie because they believe anything that upsets Donald Trump might hurt them politically." Bryan Mena contributed to this report. The Texas Tribune is a nonpartisan, nonprofit media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. SpaceX and several Texas energy companies are tangled in a legal battle over a barren strip of land near the commercial space companys Starship production facility outside Brownsville, with multiple parties tussling over who owns what rights to the property, threats of criminal trespass charges, and allegations of theft and attempted extortion. Set against the backdrop of property values skyrocketing with SpaceXs rapid development in the area, the matter stretches back to 2017. It moved into court in October, when Dallas Petroleum Group LLC filed a lawsuit in district court in Cameron County and a complaint with the Texas Railroad Commission. It alleges Sanchez Midstream Partners of Houston broke the terms of a 2017 purchase agreement, worth $6.25 million, for various oil and gas leases that included two wells on a 24-acre tract adjacent to the SpaceX facility. The case has ensnared a web of affiliated companies, including Sanchez Midstream Partners Limited and General Partnerships, Sanchez Oil and Gas Corp., SpaceX real estate acquisition firm Dogleg Park LLC, and the space companys oil and gas exploration company, Lone Star Mineral Mineral Development LLC. The two inactive wells are called La Pita 2R and 3. As part of the larger transaction, Sanchez asked Dallas Petroleum to assume plugging and abandonment liability for two wells on the 24.21-acre tract, Jordan Farrar, a Dallas petroleum attorney, said in an e-mail response to questions. In exchange for assuming the liability, he said, Sanchez offered to include the 24.21 acre surface for consideration. On ExpressNews.com: This was no accident: Family sues SpaceX for negligence Sanchez Oil and Gas Corp., an affiliate of Sanchez Midstream, owned the 24 acres. During negotiations an employee of (Sanchez Oil and Gas) represented to (Dallas Petroleum) that the 24 Acres was included as part of the property in the sale in order to offset the plugging and abandoning costs for the wells, according to the complaint. Dallas Petroleums principal testified the Sanchez representative said, One day, (Dallas Petroleum) could sell the 24.21 acres to SpaceX, according to Farrar. Sanchez Midstream Partners LP, including its related entities and affiliates are listed as the seller on the purchase and sale agreement. And the conveyance, assignment and bill of sale lists both Sanchez Midstream and SEP Holdings IV, another Sanchez entity. However, Dallas Petroleum learned that the 24 acres in question were not included in the conveyance, assignment and bill of sale because the title holder is Sanchez Oil and Gas, and it wasnt listed in the sale document. Cameron County land records show a bill of sale for the leases, wells, equipment, permits, easements, contracts and records associated with the land between SEP Holdings and Dallas Petroleum, while the countys tax records list Sanchez Oil and Gas as the landowner. On ExpressNews.com: This is not SpaceX property this is my property: SpaceX looks to recast South Texas town as Starbase In mid-February, Sanchez Midstream changed its name to Evolve Transition Infrastructure. The company declined to comment. In May 2020, SpaceX leased the acreage, which is adjacent to its rocket-building facility, from Sanchez Oil and Gas. According to Dallas Petroleums complaint, SpaceX and/or (Sanchez Oil and Gas) have created an entity entitled Lone Star Mineral Development, LLC to lease the mineral estate under the land. Texas Railroad Commission records show Lone Star acquired the 806-acre La Pita lease. Dallas Petroleum says it owns the land Sanchez is trying to sell to the SpaceX entity. Its seeking clear title to the 24 acres or its value as damages, Farrar said. Sanchez denies the allegations and argues the Dallas Petroleum deal never included the lands surface rights. Attorneys for Dogleg Park, the SpaceX company, argue the lawsuit is attempting to interfere with the lease and purchase agreement between (Sanchez Oil and Gas) and Dogleg Park LLC. Dogleg Park has been gobbling up property around Boca Chica and Brownsville since the space firm landed in South Texas. It named itself a third party to the case in November. Dogleg Park has argued Dallas Petroleum has no right, title, or interest in the 24 acres, yet it has trespassed and attempted to unlawfully exercise control over the property by installing locks on the access gate. The filing continues that the SpaceX entity decided to purchase the land in September. It said the 2017 agreement between Dallas Petroleum and SEP Holdings IV has nothing to do with the 24-acre surface estate. Dallas Petroleum, it said, has claimed ownership for the sole purpose of extorting money from SpaceX and its affiliate Dogleg Park. On ExpressNews.com: SpaceXs Boca Chica venture has all the versus categories covered Both Sanchez and SpaceX have threatened Dallas Petroleum President Matt Williams and company employees with trespassing charges. In a July 9 letter to Williams, an attorney for the space firm, David Asmus, wrote, SpaceX will not accept any interference with its surface rights. Farrar said aerial photos show others are using the land and Dallas Petroleum property was removed without permission. Williams believes someone, possibly SpaceX employees, unlawfully tested the two wells and removed $50,000 worth of Dallas Petroleum equipment, including tanks, stairs, catwalks and separators. He filed a theft report with the Cameron County sheriff. The sheriffs investigator reported SpaceX Security Manager Gunnar Milburn said Sanchez Oil and Gas removed the equipment. Frank Guerra, Sanchezs executive vice president, told the investigator that Dallas Petroleums lease on the land had expired. He said his company considered the property abandoned and removed it to facilitate the lease to SpaceX. The case remains open, Sheriff Eric Garza said. The Texas Railroad Commission conducted a hearing Jan. 22 to consider the change of operator request on the La Pita gas leases from Dallas Petroleum to Lone Star Mineral Development, according to an agency spokesperson. The record closed March 22, and the judge has 90 days to render a verdict. As of Thursday, there was no future hearing on the 445th District Court docket for the case. 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 Abuja, Nigeria (PANA) The Nigerian Army says its troops, under Operation Hadin Kai, have eliminated 10 Boko Haram terrorists during an attempted attack on troops location in Rann, Headquarters of Kala Balge Local Government Area of Borno, Northeast Nigeria We'll keep you connected to all the updated local news and information about what's happening in Murfreesboro and Rutherford County! Click Here to Subscribe! Found at last: WWII signalman laid to rest after going unidentified for 80 years Discuss this article with your neighbors or join the community conversation. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Provided Jim Crosier, senior vice commandant of West Central Leathernecks Marine Corps League and its Toys For Tots coordinator, is wrapped May 15 in a Quilt of Valor during the Springfield Area Highland Games at the Sangamon County Fairgrounds. Crosier, who also serves as president of the St. Andrews Society of Central Illinois, which hosted the Highland Games, was awarded the quilt during the event in recognition of his U.S. military service. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. I learned a valuable lesson this week. I traveled to the University of Iowa Hospital for my monthly meeting with my oncologist and digestive health medical team. For those of you unaware, Im fighting Stage 4 stomach cancer. It was to be a quick in-and-out meeting and I would be on my way home by 3. Instead, my digestive health professional looked at me for 30 seconds and said, Im admitting you. I didnt know what to say. Wait, was the only thing I could force out. For what? She paused. Until its too late. So I was admitted and began being fed nutrients through a hose placed in my nose truly a dismal experience. As I looked at the bag pumping into my stomach, it looked like its contents had already been eaten then spit back out. No, none of it was a pleasant experience. Early the next morning, my team of oncologists arrived in my room and asked, How are you feeling? My typical reflex answer popped out. Fantastic! They glanced at each other. Really. Im feeling great! I assured them. Im a believer that optimism and positive intentions drive good health and positive results. They asked a few basic questions, told me they ordered a couple of scans and a round of blood tests, then left the room. The next day, my daughter arrived and was sitting with me when the group of oncologists came again. So, how are you feeling today, Mr. Moore? Fantastic! Im feeling great! once again popped out of my mouth. My daughter quickly blurted out, Dad! You are not feeling great! These are your doctors, and they arent looking for a motivational speech from you. Tell them how you really feel! She then looked at the leader of the group and said, Please understand that my dad is a motivational speaker, writer of a column titled Positively Speaking and an author of four positivity books. Its not his nature to say anything else. The question then hit me like an Acme anvil dropped on my head as if I were in a Roadrunner cartoon. Is it OK not to be OK? It doesnt mean Im being negative. Maybe it only means Im giving my medical team accurate information to help them make sound decisions and to help me get better. They needed straight talk from me and not a motivational pep talk. People who are feeling fantastic are not admitted into the hospital. I took a breath and gave them an accurate depiction of what I was feeling, which was far from fantastic. They seemed relieved and said what I was describing better reflected the results of my tests. I realized at that moment that being optimistic does not mean everything is perfect. Its not. It does mean Ive decided to focus on the good outcomes rather than bad and to allow my mind and body to conspire together to help create a better reality. I believe optimism and a positive mindset are essential components to my healing process, but so is accuracy in describing my symptoms, positive or not. Admitting I didnt feel well wasnt a failure to be positive. In fact, not accurately deciding the current condition of my health could create an extremely negative outcome. Im learning that the smart thing to do is adjust myself to the reality and truth of my health instead of trying to make the truth of my condition something that its not. As minor as it is and as simple as it sounds, I was unable to admit I wasnt OK. It also doesnt mean Im giving into a negative diagnosis. Im still fighting with the attitude and belief Im going to beat this cancer, and I am. It just means my doctors need accurate information so they can help me win this battle. This column began while I was lying in a hospital bed, but is ending with me at home and back to my normal routine. Im feeling much better and looking positively forward to my day. Everything about life is a challenge and ongoing opportunity to learn. From the mouth of babes, my daughter taught me a valuable lesson about creating positive outcomes from less than positive situations when you arent feeling positive at all. Like you, Im still a work in progress. Im still learning. Its OK not to be OK. Gary W. Moore is a columnist, speaker and author of three books, including the award-winning Playing with the Enemy. Tuolumne County Tuolumne County Public Health reports two new Covid-19 cases since yesterday, a man age 40 to 49 and a woman age 50 to 59 who were not vaccinated. A total of 8 cases are isolating. Tuolumne County has a total of 4,173 cases split between 2,756 community cases and 1,417 Sierra Conservation Center (SCC) inmate cases, the California Department of Corrections reports no active cases. Total community cases released from isolation is 2,679 and the total number of tests administered is 98,937. The county reports 19,693 fully vaccinated residents and 3,725 individuals partially vaccinated. Calaveras County The Calaveras public health reports one new case since yesterday with the countys total COVID cases at 2,193. Active cases decreased seven to ten total and recoveries increased eight to 2,127 total. No Calaveras residents are hospitalized with COVID. The total number of people over 65 years old identified with COVID is 453 since the pandemic began. Calaveras reports 35,001 vaccinations given and 43,741 COVID tests conducted. Vaccines In Tuolumne, Calaveras, and Mariposa schedule for a Covid vaccine by going to myturn.ca.gov. You can also call 833-422-4255 if you dont have an email (Mon to Fri 8 AM to 8 PM, Sat and Sun 8 AM-5 PM) for assistance. Vaccine eligibility is open to everyone 12+ (Pfizer) and 18+ (Moderna and Johnson & Johnson) More information about the vaccines is here. Public health encourages everyone to get vaccinated to help keep you and those around you protected from Covid-19, as well as reduce the spread of disease in the community, and help get the county to a less restrictive tier. Employers and event organizers may ask if a person is vaccinated, individuals may decline to answer. Updated mask guidelines are expected when the tier level system changes which is expected June 15. Tier Status- Calaveras and Tuolumne remain in the Orange Tier of the States Blueprint for a safer economy. Mariposa shifted into the Yellow Tier last week on May 25th. The State released this weeks Blueprint update today with data for the week ending May 22nd. Tuolumne Countys Case Rate decreased slightly from 3.0 to 2.7, and the Test Positivity Rate is 1.4 from 1.6 last week. Calaveras is at a 3.9 Case Rate from 4.2 and has a Test Positivity Rate of 3.0 from a 4.2 percent, Mariposa remains at a 1.6 Case Rate and a Test Positivity Rate of 1.0 from 1.6 percent. More details on tiers are on our COVID page here. Testing Sonoras COVID testing is now at the Tuolumne Memorial Hall. The hours are Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays from 7 AM to 7 PM. The Groveland testing site remains open at the Youth Center, 18950 Hwy 120 on Thursdays from 7 AM to 7 PM. Due to low utilization and reopening of the youth center, this location will likely be relocated soon. Individuals can select the site location when making their appointment at www.lhi.care/covidtesting or by calling 888-634-1123. More details, including Calaveras testing information, are in our events calendar here. County/Date Tier Color Active Cases New Cases Total Cases COVID Deaths Amador 6/1 10 4 1,801 38 Calaveras 6/4 10 1 2,193 56 Mariposa 6/4 2 0 461 7 Mono 6/4 5 0 1,034 4 Stanislaus 6/4 186 47 56,315 1,068 Tuolumne 6/4 8 2 4,173 69 For other county-level statistics view our page here. ioga Pass gate at Yosemite National Park View Photo Yosemite, CA More visitors will be allowed into Yosemite National Park now that Mariposa County has moved to the lowest tier in Californias Blueprint for a Safer Economy during the COVID pandemic. The county dropped to the yellow tier on Tuesday, as reported here. The move allowed the park to release an additional 400 to 500 day-use reservations per day. Passes are currently available for additional reservations for visitors arrivals from May 28 through June 2. After that, they will become available at 8 a.m. (PDT) seven days in advance of a visitors planned arrival through September 30th, click here for reservation. Park officials note that a reservation is required to enter the gates and drive into Yosemite through the end of September. Expecting a relatively busy Memorial Day weekend, Park officials offer this tip for visitors, avoid delays by arriving by mid-morning. They also ask all those who come to enjoy the majestic beauty of the park to please recreate responsibly. LONG BEACH, Calif. (AP) Ship crews arriving at the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach are being offered COVID-19 vaccinations. More than 450 crewmembers from 27 ships have received the one-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine, the Port of Long Beach said in a statement Friday. Nearly 480 more sailors on 29 ships are booked for vaccinations. The vaccinations are administered without charge to international crews aboard ships visiting San Pedro Bay. Its great to see our city helping these sailors who serve on the ships that carry the worlds cargo across the oceans and keep this industry moving, said Port of Long Beach Executive Director Mario Cordero. These men and women are an important part of the supply chain, and they travel all over the world. The vaccinations are a joint effort of the Port of Long Beach, the Long Beach Department of Health and Human Services and the National Guard. HOUSTON (AP) Eleven employees with a Texas sheriffs office have been fired and six others suspended following the February death of an inmate who was hit multiple times in the head by detention officers, authorities announced Friday. Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez said he was very upset and heartbroken about what a three-month investigation into the death of 23-year-old Jaquaree Simmons found. Medical examiners had ruled Simmons death a homicide from injuries to his head. We have a duty to protect those in our care and that didnt happen, Gonzalez said. A sheriffs office internal affairs investigation concluded Simmons had three fights with detention officers on Feb. 16 when the jail had lost power and water pressure during the states deadly winter storm. The first use of force against Simmons took place that morning after he had clogged the toilet of his jail cell and officers responded to clean it. Later that night, a detention officer hit Simmons in the face after he had thrown his meal tray at the officer and charged at him, according to authorities. When more officers were called in to take him for a medical evaluation, they hit him multiple times in the head, said Major Thomas Diaz, who led the internal affairs investigation. Simmons was evaluated by a doctor at a jail clinic and had a cut to his left eyebrow and upper lip but reported no pain. He was taken back to his cell, but officers failed to bring him back to the clinic for follow-up X-rays, according to Diaz. Simmons was found unresponsive in his cell at 12:10 p.m. on Feb. 17 and was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The investigation found that detention officers had failed to do visual checks of the inmates in the cell pod where Simmons was being held from Feb. 15 until the moments before he was found in his cell on Feb. 17, Diaz said. Usually these checks are done electronically, but the system was down due to the winter storm, according to authorities. The officers who were fired or suspended were found to have violated various policies, including using excessive force, failing to document the use of force, not intervening when a fellow officer used force and making false statements to investigators, Diaz said. These 11 people betrayed my trust and the trust of our community. They abused their authority, Gonzalez said. Their conduct toward Mr. Simmons was reprehensible. The 11 employees who were fired included nine detention officers, one detention sergeant and one deputy. The six who were suspended included four detention officers, one detention sergeant and one sheriffs office sergeant. Their suspensions ranged from three to 10 days. Houston police are still conducting a separate criminal investigation into Simmons death. The results of that probe will be presented to the Harris County District Attorney's Office, which will determine if charges are filed. While Gonzalez declined to comment on the criminal investigation, he said he believes crimes were committed in connection with Simmons death. On Feb. 10, Simmons has been booked into the county jail on a charge of a felon in possession of a firearm. Diaz said Simmons had no health issues when he came to the jail. ___ Follow Juan A. Lozano on Twitter: https://twitter.com/juanlozano70 COLUMBIA, S.C. (AP) It's been more than a decade since Randy Gardner's brother was the last U.S. inmate executed by firing squad, years the Utah man says have been filled with nightmares about what he describes as his brother's gruesome death. Now, Gardner is among advocates spending time in South Carolina, speaking out about why he feels the method shouldn't be used here. Gardner didn't witness the 2010 execution of his brother, Ronnie Lee Gardner, condemned to die for shooting a man to death during a failed courthouse escape attempt. But Gardner said that Ronnie had chosen to die by firing squad restrained in a chair as five gunmen carried out the sentence, a hood covering his face in part because of how he had taken another person's life. He knew how gruesome the firing squad would be, Randy Gardner told The Associated Press on Friday. But he thought, well, he killed someone with a gun, and he thought he deserved the same treatment. Gardner has been part of recent conversations arranged by Death Penalty Action, a national anti-death penalty group that helps local ones organize against capital punishment. A small gathering was planned for Columbia on Friday, with a larger rally scheduled for Saturday in Greenville. Also included in the events are speakers like the Rev. Sharon Risher, whose mother was among the nine Bible study participants slain in a 2015 racist attack at a Black Charleston church. Risher planned to discuss the wounds she feels are reopened each time the man sentenced to die in that case resurfaces, such as with his recent appeal. For me and many people like me, appeals are the worst torture imaginable, Risher, who wants Dylann Roof's death sentence overturned, said in a release. Every time this case is in the news ... I am brought right back to that terrible day and the searing pain of the weeks, months and years that have followed. The tour comes as a newly scheduled execution looms under South Carolinas revamped capital punishment law which now includes a firing squad option, making the state one of four in the nation to do so. This month, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed into law a bill forcing condemned inmates to choose between the electric chair or firing squad, in hopes the state can resume executions after an involuntary 10-year pause due to lack of lethal injection drugs. The law officially retains injection as the primary method but requires prison officials to use the electric chair or firing squad if the state doesn't have the drugs. Two inmates who've exhausted their appeals immediately sued, saying they cant be electrocuted or shot since they were sentenced under a prior law making lethal injection the default method. One of those inmates was Brad Sigmon, convicted in 2002 for a double murder. On Thursday, the South Carolina Supreme Court set June 18 as Sigmon's execution date, which his attorneys are seeking to block while the lawsuit proceeds. There are 37 men on South Carolinas death row. The state's last execution took place in 2011, and its batch of lethal injection drugs expired two years later. Its actually a bit of surprise to me that it has taken states this long, Abe Bonowitz, Death Penalty Action's executive director, told the AP, of jurisdictions' addition of execution methods, due to drug unavailability. Our point is that, for 10 years, weve not had an execution, and it hasnt made a difference about whether murderers are caught or held accountable, so whats the point?" Even though he didn't see his brother's execution, Randy Gardner said he still suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder due to the way that Ronnie died, haunted for years by nightmares related to firing squads. I think it is cruel and unusual punishment, to someone like Ronnie, but also to his family and the people who loved him, Gardner said. You're becoming no better than the killer. And an eye for an eye makes the whole world go blind. During South Carolina's lengthy debate, Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian a prosecutor-turned-criminal defense lawyer introduced the firing squad option, arguing it presented the least painful execution method available. The death penalty is going to stay the law here for a while, Harpootlian said. If were going to have it, it ought to be humane. ___ Meg Kinnard can be reached at http://twitter.com/MegKinnardAP BEIJING (AP) A rocket carrying supplies for Chinas new space station blasted off Saturday from an island in the South China Sea. A Long March 7 rocket carrying the automated Tianzhou-2 spacecraft took off at 8:55 p.m. (1255 GMT) from the Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, the Chinese space agency announced. The agency said the craft entered orbit 10 minutes later and the launch was deemed a perfect success. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a California rail yard had stockpiled weapons and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at his house before setting it on fire to coincide with the bloodshed at the workplace he seethed about for years, authorities said Friday. Investigators found 12 guns, multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails at Samuel James Cassidy's house in San Jose, the Santa Clara County sheriffs office said in a news release. He also rigged an unusual time-delay method to ensure the house caught fire while he was out, putting ammunition in a cooking pot on a stove in his home, Deputy Russell Davis told The Associated Press. The liquid in the pot investigators don't yet know what was inside reached a boiling point, igniting an accelerant and potentially the gunpowder in the bullets nearby. The cache at the home the 57-year-old torched was on top of the three 9 mm handguns he brought Wednesday to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, authorities said. He also had 32 high-capacity magazines and fired 39 shots. The handguns found at the site were legally registered to Cassidy, Davis said, without elaborating on how he obtained them. Davis did not specify what type of guns officers found at his home, nor if they were legally owned. Authorities described a home filled with clutter, with items piled up to the point where it appeared Cassidy might be a hoarder, and weapons stored near the home's doorways and in other spots. Sgt. Joe Piazza told reporters the variety of spots where Cassidy stashed the guns might be so he could access them in a time of emergency, such as if law enforcement came to his house. Cassidy killed himself as sheriffs deputies rushed into the rail yard complex in the heart of Silicon Valley, where he fatally shot nine men ranging in age from 29 to 63. He had worked there for more than 20 years. What prompted the bloodshed remains under investigation, officials said. While witnesses and Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith have said Cassidy appeared to target certain people, the sheriffs office said Friday that it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could." Casssidys elderly father, James, told the Mercury News in San Jose that his son was bipolar. He said that was no excuse for the shooting and apologized to the victims' families. I dont think anything I could say could ease their grief. Im really, really very sorry about that. Neighbors and former lovers described him as moody, unfriendly and prone to angry outbursts at times. But they expressed shock he would kill. Cassidys ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago, describing him as resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments. U.S. customs officers even caught him in 2016 with books about terrorism and fear as well as a memo book filled with notes about how much he hated the Valley Transportation Authority. But he was let go, and a resulting Department of Homeland Security memo on the encounter was not shared with local authorities. Its not clear why customs officers detained Cassidy on his return from the Philippines. The contents of the memo, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, were described to The Associated Press by a Biden administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The memo notes that Cassidy was asked whether he had issues with people at work, and he said no. It refers to a minor criminal history, citing a 1983 arrest in San Jose and charges of misdemeanor obstruction/resisting a peace officer. San Jose police said they sought an FBI history on Cassidy and found no record of federal arrests or convictions. Mayor Sam Liccardo, a former prosecutor, said that while he has not seen the Homeland Security memo, its not a crime to hate your job. The question is, how specific was that information? he said. Particularly, were there statements made suggesting a desire to commit violence against individuals? The president of the union that represents transit workers at the rail yard sought Friday to refute a report that Cassidy was scheduled to attend a workplace disciplinary hearing with a union representative Wednesday over racist comments. John Courtney, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, said in a statement that he was at the facility simply to check on working conditions and the continual safety of the dedicated men and women who work there. The attack comes amid an uptick in mass shootings following coronavirus shutdowns in much of the country last year. Since 2006, there have been at least 14 workplace massacres in the United States that killed at least four people and stemmed from employment grievances, according to a database on mass killings maintained by the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University. Patrick Gorman, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he was not aware of any information about Cassidy, such as tips from the public, being shared with his division before the shooting. He said the entire San Jose field office responded to the crime scenes, along with other regional special agents. Kirk Bertolet, 64, was just starting his shift when shots rang out, and he saw some of his co-workers take their last breaths. Bertolet, a signal maintenance worker who worked in a separate unit from Cassidy, said he is convinced Cassidy targeted his victims because he didn't hurt some people he encountered. He was pissed off at certain people. He was angry, and he took his vengeance out on very specific people. He shot people. He let others live, he said. Video footage showed Cassidy calmly walking from one building to another with a duffel bag filled with guns and ammunition to complete the slaughter, authorities said. Bertolet said Cassidy worked regularly with the victims, but he always seemed to be an outsider. He was never in the group. He was never accepted by anybody there. He was always that guy that was never partaking in anything that the people were doing," Bertolet said. ___ Dazio reported from Los Angeles. (Editors note: This project is a collaboration between the Plainview Herald and Saint Francis Ministries to showcase kids who are cleared for adoption.) Caylynn is an energetic, talkative, and loving child who is looking for her forever home. She is incredibly outgoing and quite the conversationalist. The 7-year-old is intelligent and does well in school. She enjoys getting some sun while she rides her bike outside, as well as playing dress up and finding the perfect heels to match her outfit. Caylynn would love to turn your house into her runway! In her downtime, she enjoys coloring and playing with her dolls. --- Caylynn is one of the children listed on the Texas Adoption Resource Exchange (TARE) website. Visit https://www.dfps.state.tx.us/Application/TARE/Home.aspx/Default for more details. Saint Francis Ministries is a nonprofit organization and a community-based care provider for the Texas Department of Family Protective Services Region 1. This region includes 41 counties across the Panhandle and South Plains. To learn more about fostering or adopting, those interested are encouraged to attend one of the monthly virtual meetings hosted by Saint Francis Ministries and other child placing agencies. The meetings provide information about how to get started, the basic qualifications and more, in addition to providing opportunity for attendees to ask questions. Those interested can visit Saint Francis Texas on Facebook @SFMtexas to register for the online meetings, which can also be found below: The meetings are scheduled for the second Thursday of the month (Lubbock area https://lubbock-area-foster-care-adoption.eventbrite.com) and the third Thursday of the month (Amarillo area https://amarillo-area-foster-care-adoption.eventbrite.com). For more information, please contact Erin Baxter at (806) 317-5631 or email texasinfo@st-francis.org. Visit Saint Francis Ministries online at https://saintfrancisministries.org. Demand for COVID-19 vaccinations is low. Jeffrey Snyder told the City Council on Tuesday that the city is working to on marketing efforts to make sure the public knows there are doses of each vaccine available locally. Snyder, who is Plainviews city manager, said Plainview is not an anomaly. This is a trend were seeing statewide. Mayor Charles Starnes said COVID vaccine reluctance in Texas is greater than the national average, though not by much. As of Monday afternoon, 32.91% of Hale County residents (or 9,178 individuals) had received at least one dose of an available COVID-19 vaccination and 27.84% (or 7,643 individuals) had been fully vaccinated. The percentages are smaller but, it was noted, the latest available data factors in the inclusion of kids between 12 and 17 years of age who can now receive the Pfizer immunization. COVID-19 vaccinations are available at Amigos United Pharmacy (806-293-2820), Walmart Pharmacy, CVS Pharmacy, Home Town Pharmacy (806-296-9000) and Plainview-Hale County Health Department (806-293-1359). Walk-ins are welcome at Amigos, Walmart and CVS. Appointments are encouraged at all pharmacy locations and for the Health Department. Appointments can be made by phone or online. The City of Plainviews website has a list of vaccination sites with details on which vaccine is available where. Visit https://www.plainviewtx.org/480/Plainview-Hale-county-COVID-19-Vaccinati to find that information. According to the latest available data from the Health Department, eight new cases and 15 new recoveries were reported around the county between May 18 and May 24. Those are reflected in Plainview's numbers. There were 10 active cases within the county all in Plainview as of Monday. Of those cases, nine individuals are recovering at home and one is in a medical facility. There have been 6,148 total cases of COVID-19 and 5,999 recoveries reported in Hale County since March 2020. It was another active week in the small-cap oil and gas sector. ( ) highlighted that preparations for the well re-entry programme at the Oza field in Nigeria is advancing apace with the major drill rig components due on site this week. Re-entry work is then expected to start at the site within two weeks. Oza-1s re-entry programme will also include the testing of three oil zones, each independently, and a combined production test. s ( ) 40%-owned Wressle field in Lincolnshire, is clear to hit its production target as the project has now has been approved for crude oil storage. A newly awarded planning approval gives consent for the full use of a 2,000 barrel storage facility. It allows the Wressle operation to run up to full production which is expected at around 500 barrels of oil per day (bopd) gross, which will be around 200 bopd net to Union Jack. Earlier in the week, told investors that equipment to complete and test the West Newton B-1Z well, in Yorkshire, had now been mobilised. ( ) provided an update on the Cascadura Deep-1 well, in the Ortoire block in Trinidad, which has been boosted by new well pressure data. The company, in a statement, noted that pressure gauges were recovered from the well on May 17 and analysis of the data confirms Cascadura Deep as a significant liquids rich discovery. Touchstones findings indicate a pool of significant size and reserves potential. ( ) raised 11.7mln of new capital to fund an appraisal well at the Anchois Gas Development offshore Morocco. Funds will also support work in the acreage surrounding the Anchois discovery, to set up the additional resources for development in the future. Significantly, the capital injection will also support its transitional power unit which is focussing on renewable energy opportunities in Africa. Here, the financing helps with the integration of the team along with cash to fund near term projects. ( ) commissioned consultant Xodus Group Ltd for an updated competent person's report (CPR) to assess the Barracuda field, in Nigerias Niger Delta. Completion of a new CPR is the next step in the agreed scope of the Barracuda risk sharing agreement and the independent report is expected to provide a full technical and economic review of the field. Included will be new estimates of the fields gross in-place and recoverable oil and gas volumes. ( ) noted the receipt of payments from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) covering oil sales in March 2021. The company, in a statement, said it had received a total of US$19.8mln from the KRG. It comprises US$14.3mln for sales from the Tawke asset, US$2.1mln and US$3.4mln from the Taq Taq and Sarta fields respectively. ( ) noted that Fugro GB North Marine Ltd has been hired to conduct a geophysical and geotechnical site survey ahead of the planned drilling of the Pensacola exploration well. The survey programme is slated for July, before drilling which is anticipated in 2022. It comes after exploration partner and operator earlier this year committed to drill the high impact Pensacola prospect. ( ) highlighted encouraging evidence of oil as it provided an update on its projects in Alaska. The companys comments, in a stock market statement, related to down hole samples gathered from the Merlin well that were then sent for more detailed lab analysis. ( ) struck a deal to divest its legacy Italian gas assets for 300,000 in cash. The deal marks a material milestone in the companys energy transition strategy which is focused on South East Asia. Coro, in a statement, highlighted that incremental capital spending on its renewable energy assets and the Duyung gas project is a more value accretive use of the company's resources. These projects have a greater possibility of generating higher returns for shareholders, it added. People tend to forget that a boat is a vehicle. Cruising around a lake is a popular summer pastime but, Hollis Gregory says, there are some safety precautions boaters should take before hitting the water. Boating is inherently dangerous, he said. Youre on the water and driving a machine thats capable of going very fast typically a good ways away from dry land. In Texas, those who operate a boat on public water are required to have: life jackets, a tight-throw device, a Coast Guard-approved buoy, a fire extinguisher and a horn or whistle. Anybody out on the water has to have those safety items, Gregory said. If you dont, its a citation. All of those items in Texas will help in the event of an accident. Its also important to note that anyone 12 years old and younger is required to wear a lifejacket while the boat is moving, he said. Those out on a boat should also have registration information on-hand. Youve got to be able to prove the registration of that vessel by having the certificate and numbers on-hand, Gregory said. The information tells law enforcement officials (Game Wardens) whether the boat is stolen. While these tips are important to safety, its probably even more so to stay hydrated, according to Gregory. Make sure youre not overheating and drink plenty of water, he said. More than half a century after Neil Armstrong took mankind's giant leap on the moon, another space race is heating up. This time, the promising new frontier for Earthlings is Mars, the planet next door. A spate of robotic missions to the red planet, including NASA's Perseverance rover this year and China's Zhurong this month, have led to the inevitable question: When can humans follow? Unmanned missions over the decades have beamed a trove of information, including the presence of water ice on Mars, fueling expectations a human landing is possible. But how soon? And, are we ready? NASA wants to send astronauts to Mars, perhaps at some point in the 2030s. The United Arab Emirates -- which now has a spacecraft orbiting the planet -- is promoting a 100-year plan to create a colony there. While China has said sending humans to Mars is its long-term goal, those eager for a taste of Martian life can visit a simulation site in the Gobi desert for now. The most ambitious of them all is billionaire Elon Musk. The founder of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. wants to send humans this decade, saying in an interview last year that he was confident a crewed mission could take place in 2026. Many scientists, however, warn of too many unanswered questions confronting deep-space travel. Musk has also acknowledged the risks, saying "it's tough sledding over there." "Honestly, a bunch of people probably will die at the beginning," the tycoon said in an interview with X Prize Foundation founder Peter Diamandis. Here are some of the biggest challenges, from surviving cosmic radiation and dust storms to producing oxygen and water: - So far away. The Apollo astronauts could fly to the moon in just a few days, but a trip to Mars would take anywhere between six to nine months. With the distance between Mars and Earth varying between 35 million miles and 249 million miles due to their elliptical orbits, there's only a small window available when the two are ideally aligned for space travel. That makes logistics much trickier. With lunar exploration, "there's always the prospect of rescue or provisioning or supply from Earth or from a midway space station," said Alice Gorman, an associate professor at Flinders University in Adelaide and a member of the advisory council of the Space Industry Association of Australia. "That's not going to be the case for Mars." - Solar killers. A long flight would expose humans to one of space travel's biggest terrors: solar flares. The most powerful type of explosion in the solar system, a flare is the equivalent of 100 million hydrogen bombs. The Earth's magnetic field can shield astronauts in orbit, but a deep-space traveler hit by such radiation would not be able to survive more than a few days. "It's a very gruesome way to die," said Lewis Dartnell, a professor and specialist in astrobiology in the Department of Life Sciences at the University of Westminster in London. He does research linked to life on Mars. The Apollo program didn't address this issue, choosing instead to take the chance that the few days of a lunar mission wouldn't coincide with a solar event. It would be a different story for multi-month trips to Mars. Water tanks onboard the spacecraft could act as shields if positioned properly, said Dartnell, so in the event of a flare, travelers could retreat to the spacecraft's version of a panic room surrounded by water tanks. The problem is detecting activity on the Sun, especially on the side not facing the Earth. "How can we make our space weather prediction good enough that we can give the crew notice?" he said. "We don't have established capacity to observe the Sun from different angles for tracking solar storms." - Dust storms. Radiation isn't just a problem en route. Mars has a much thinner atmosphere than Earth and doesn't have a global magnetic shield, so humans on the planet's surface would be at risk of exposure to solar and cosmic radiation. Moreover, the surface itself is largely dust, and massive storms can create dust clouds that block out the Sun, said Nilton Renno, a professor at the University of Michigan whose research interests include astrobiology. During such a storm, "it's almost like midnight on the surface of Mars for two months," Renno said. "If you are there with solar panels for power, you very likely don't survive. You don't have enough energy to keep things warm enough." One solution would be for humans to use that dust to protect themselves, lining shelters with sandbags filled with Martian soil that could block out radiation, said Joseph Michalski, an associate professor who explores the habitability of Mars at the University of Hong Kong. Humans could also return to their cave-dwelling roots by finding temporary shelter in some of the planet's many lava tubes, large caverns from ancient times when Mars had volcanic activity. - Food, water and oxygen. In "The Martian" -- the 2015 Hollywood blockbuster -- Matt Damon's stranded astronaut grew potatoes by fertilizing the planet's soil with his own feces. Elisabeth Hausrath, an associate professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, has more modest farming ambitions. For the past year and a half, NASA has been supporting her research into growing snow algae, a type that's common in the Nevada desert and other high-altitude, low-nutrient environments on Earth, in conditions mimicking those of Mars. "They've been growing great," she said. The idea is that the algae could grow in greenhouses made of flexible material similar to that of a space suit. Growing algae in such conditions could not only create a source of food but also produce oxygen. The research is still in its early stages. Scientists also still need to resolve how humans could get enough water to survive on Mars. The planet does have some sub-surface ice that could be water sources and a future Mars mission will need to use radar to map its distribution, said Victoria Hamilton, a planetary geologist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "Once you know where the ice is, those are locations where you might send humans," she said. - Getting back home. Unless everyone signs up for a one-way trip, humans traveling to Mars will need to take a rocket back to Earth. Figuring out how to get fuel to power that spacecraft back into space is the biggest technological hurdle would-be Mars explorers face, said Michalski. "It's not the case that we would bring the rocket fuel with us," he said. "It's just too heavy." One solution might be to use the resources on the planet to make fuel by first electrically separating water from sub-surface ice and hydrated rocks, then combining the hydrogen and oxygen to make rocket fuel, said Michalski. Sooner or later, optimists believe, scientists will solve these problems. "Today it's definitely a place where we can't live," said Adnan AlRais, Mars 2117 program manager for the UAE's Mohammed Bin Rashid Space Center. "But as we develop science and technologies, the answer might be different in 50 to 100 years from now." Nestled in the Texas Hill Country lies the small town of Fredericksburg, which has earned a top spot on a Forbes roundup of the the most idyllic small towns in the U.S. to visit in 2021. Founded in 1846, the Texas small town gem has lured visitors to its rolling hills dotted with bluebonnets and cool bungalow rentals called "Sunday Houses." Featured on the Forbes list for small town charm include Deadwood, South Dakota; Rockport Massachusetts, Captiva Island, Florida; Elizabeth City, North Carolinaand our own Texas destination, Fredericksburg. These small town jewels provide travelers with a way to get off the grid and enjoy the small town pace. TEXAS TRAVEL DESTINATIONS: These are the top 5 Texas travel destinations for 2021 "Equipped with spectacular natural beauty and fascinating historic backgrounds, these five towns are the perfect fit for experiencing the quieter side of the United States," Forbes' Jared Ranahan writes. Fredericksburg, Texas Named after Prince Frederick of Prussia, Fredericksburg has been affectionately deemed "The Aspen of Texas," according to Fodor's Travel Publication. Tucked in the heart of the Texas Hill Country, the German-influenced town offers attractions that include a wildflower farm, wine tastings and a historic downtown strip filled with eclectic boutiques. Outdoor enthusiasts might want to spend a day hiking Enchanted Rock or hitting the Texas Wine Trail. "The truth is that its hard not to love the town where you can shop a day on Main Street and still not see everything...Or spend a day touring the Texas Wine Trail in townor afternoon hiking Enchanted Rock, according to Fodors Hill Country editor Debbie Harmsen. Elizabeth City, North Carolina Located in the northeastern corner of North Carolina, Elizabeth City has been named one of the "100 Best Small Towns in America." This waterfront small town gem was founded in 1794. Visitors can head out to the beaches of the Outer Banks, Ghost Harbor or Hampton Roads. If you love the outdoors, travelers can explore the 20,000 acres of nearby state parks or head out hiking on the Fenwick-Hollowell Wetlands Trail. UniversalImagesGroup/Universal Images Group via Getty Deadwood, South Dakota If you want a taste of the Old West, Deadwood is a step back in time. The small town destination is nestled among the Black Hills of South Dakota, and the historic downtown area is a perfect spot to stroll through. Travelers can head out to the Black Hills underground mine, Broken Boot Gold Mine or go on one of the historic tours offered by a Wild West tour guide. John Greim/LightRocket via Getty Images Rockport, Massachusetts If lobsters and lighthouses are more of your thing, consider heading to the small coastal town of Rockport. Venture over to the creative district of Bearskin Neck or the cool waters of Halibut Point State Park. Travelers can also head to Gloucester, Manchester-by-the Sea or the historic Salem for their East Coast journey. Jeff Greenberg/Jeff Greenberg/Universal Images Captiva Island, Florida Just off of Florida's Gulf Coast, the idyllic small town gem of Captiva Island boasts miles of sandy beaches and activities including biking, sailing and birding. If you need a peaceful, off-the-grid getaway, consider some of the other barrier islands, like Sanibel Island and Cayo Costa. Hundreds of immigrants in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers tested positive for the coronavirus this week, compared with just 60 inside the much-larger Bureau of Prisons, a stark discrepancy that comes as lawyers and lawmakers are urging the Biden administration to swiftly vaccinate all detainees. Infections in ICE detention have risen from 370 in mid-March to nearly 1,500 this week because more migrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and many are arriving infected, federal officials said. But the American Civil Liberties Union says ICE has failed to create the type of robust vaccination program that helped the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) drive down infections, and it told the Department of Homeland Security in a letter Thursday that detention centers have been "among the most dangerous" places during the pandemic. "This is ICE's clear failure to provide for the health and safety of people in their custody," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, said in an interview, calling the disparity between the agencies' figures "stunning." "There should be no one in detention who wants a vaccine and is unable to get it." Individual immigration detention centers in Texas, Georgia and Louisiana each had more positive cases this week than the entire BOP, which holds nearly 130,000 people for criminal offenses and initially was hit hard by the pandemic. ICE is detaining 22,000 immigrants for civil deportation proceedings. The disparity is emerging as the Biden administration is pushing to vaccinate everyone in the United States - including unauthorized immigrants - and the Department of Homeland Security has said it would not reduce ICE's funding request in the Biden administration's fiscal 2022 budget proposal, which was released Friday. ICE spokeswoman Paige Hughes said DHS's chief medical officer is "rapidly working on scaling our own internal capability to vaccinate detainees in our care across the country." DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told members of Congress at a hearing this week that he spoke with the medical officer about the issue. "That is something that we are looking at very carefully, congresswoman," he said in response to questions from Rep. Lauren Underwood, D-Ill., about vaccinating as many detainees as possible. "Vaccination for both DHS staff and detainees is essential not only for the health of both groups but also for preventing community spread and protecting all Americans," Underwood said at the hearing. The BOP has tallied far more positive cases than ICE because the agency detains more people. But advocates for immigrants say the prisons' current caseload demonstrates the power of vaccines. The Trump administration gave the BOP access to the federal vaccine supply, which has allowed the agency to increase doses from 14,700 in March to more than 184,000 this week. "The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) has taken swift and effective action ... and has emerged as a correctional leader in the pandemic," spokesman Donald Murphy said in a statement. ICE officials have said they asked the Department of Homeland Security for similar access to vaccines under the last administration - which held record numbers of immigrants in detention - but did not get any. Instead, ICE has had to rely on state and local health officials for vaccines, and officials acknowledged this month that most did not provide vaccines quickly. Multiple lawsuits have been filed to improve care and release detainees. Acting ICE director Tae Johnson testified earlier this month that 2,707 immigration detainees had received at least one dose of the vaccine by May 5 - and 1,229 were fully vaccinated. ICE's access to vaccines "varies significantly by state," he said at a May 13 budget hearing. He said ICE hoped to get "our own batch of vaccines so we can just deploy them across the country to the ICE detainee population." Nearly 16,000 ICE detainees have tested positive for the coronavirus since the pandemic began - and the virus spread as the agency continued to transfer migrants from one facility to another under the Trump administration. Nine detainees have died. More than 45,000 BOP inmates have caught the virus and more than 230 have died. ICE officials said infections have risen in recent months along with apprehensions along the southwest border. Officials could not say precisely how many migrants caught the virus before arriving in federal custody. But they noted that referrals to ICE detention from the border tripled from February to April, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection referred nearly 14,800 people to immigration custody. "We are noticing at intake that more individuals are positive as our numbers increase in our facilities," Hughes said. "It appears to be where the majority of our cases of covid are coming from." ICE has cut detention capacity to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and sharply reduced arrests of longtime immigrants who are living in the interior of the United States. But officials continue to prioritize the arrests of recent border crossers, along with people who pose a threat to public safety and national security. And in recent weeks, as officials have allowed more migrants to enter the United States instead of expelling them to Mexico, the number of detained immigrants has risen to more than 20,000 from a low of around 14,000 early in the Biden administration. Mayorkas ordered the closure of two detention facilities last week, but he has said that he did not expect to cut ICE's budget this year, disappointing advocates for immigrants who had hoped for a significant reduction. Mayorkas signaled this week that he would use detention more sparingly than the Trump administration, which at its peak was detaining more than 50,000 immigrants a day. "I am concerned about the overuse of detention," Mayorkas said at the congressional hearing this week, adding that he is looking at expanding "alternatives to detention," such as monitoring systems that allow immigrants to be out on bail as they await an immigration court hearing. "Texas bill to ban the teaching of "critical race theory" spiked at the last minute on a technicality" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans and engages with them about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues. Sign up for The Brief, our daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news. A bill that would prescribe how Texas teachers can talk about current events and Americas history of racism in the classroom appeared dead Friday afternoon on a procedural technicality as House Democrats made a successful last effort to stop the legislation from heading to the governor's desk. House Bill 3979, which faced fierce opposition from teachers, education advocacy groups, and business organizations, said teachers cannot be compelled to discuss current events and if they do, they must give deference to both sides. The Senate version, which was substituted into the Houses version of the bill, included a new civics education training program for teachers, which must be created by the State Board of Education and was estimated to cost $15 million annually starting in 2023. It also prohibited students from getting credit or extra credit for participating in civic activities that include political activism or lobbying elected officials on a particular issue. It also banned the teaching of the New York Times 1619 Project, a reporting endeavor that examines U.S. history from the date when enslaved people first arrived on American soil, marking that as the countrys foundational date. Rep. James Talarico, D-Round Rock, issued a point of order raising a procedural violation on Friday in the House, arguing the new language from the Senate was not relevant. His point of order was sustained, appearing to block the bill in the final days of the Legislature. Talarico and Rep. Steve Toth, R-The Woodlands, sparred on the floor over amendments the Senate stripped from the bill that would require students to learn about and read historical writings of women and people of color throughout history. Talarico was especially angry his amendment that required schools to teach white supremacy is morally wrong was also removed. "Is it fair to say that any bill that strikes language condemning racism is a racist bill?" Talarico asked Toth. Education advocates said they're pleased the bill was stalled, but aren't celebrating yet. "While the likelihood of this bill passing is now very low, it is important to make sure that harmful provisions in HB 3979 are not added to other bills that may pass," said the Texas Legislative Education Equity Coalition in a statement. "We urge everyone to remain vigilant and continue to let legislators know how detrimental the provisions in HB 3979 would be to Texas students and teachers." Advocates said they are watching Senate Bill 1776 in particular, which creates an elective course that studies the United States' founding documents. That bill has passed both chambers and has been assigned to conference committee where lawmakers are negotiating the final version. Supporters of the bill, which mirrors legislation making its way through state legislatures across the country, argue they are trying to combat personal biases bleeding into public education, pointing to a few individual instances in school districts across the state where parents have raised concerns. But teachers say those issues are few and far between and should be addressed on the local level rather than by state lawmakers. Educators lambasted the bill, saying it would create a chilling effect on classroom discussions about difficult, but necessary topics of race and injustice. They criticized GOP lawmakers for interfering in the classroom to gain political points. We know full well at this time in our history that this bill is politically motivated, said Round Rock High School teacher Sheila Mehta, who views this bill as a pushback against efforts among history teachers like herself to include more perspectives and historical accounts in history lessons. If I look at the words of the bill, I feel like it's almost like I don't have to change anything. I just can't be compelled to do this. Whereas the spirit of the bill, I know that there's a lot of legislators who want me to stop doing what I'm doing. Teachers said they dont feel trusted as professionals to have these nuanced conversations with students, which they often have and are able to keep their personal opinions to themselves. Throughout legislative debates over the bill, GOP lawmakers have expressed concerns that teachers are unfairly blaming white people for historical wrongs and distorting the founding fathers accomplishments. In recent years, there have been calls for more transparency about historical figures racist beliefs or connections to slavery. Disclosure: New York Times has been a financial supporter 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. This article originally appeared in The Texas Tribune. The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org. WASHINGTON - Former House speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., offered a veiled criticism of former President Donald Trump in a speech Thursday night in which he urged the Republican Party not to rely on the "appeal of one personality." But Ryan, according to his prepared remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., did not explicitly name Trump in his critique. When Ryan did name Trump, it was to praise him for advancing "practical conservative policy." The comments drew a rebuke from Trump. "Paul Ryan has been a curse to the Republican Party," the former president said in a statement Friday morning. "He has no clue as to what needs to be done for our country, was a weak and ineffective leader, and spends all of his time fighting Republicans as opposed to Democrats who are destroying our country." Trump also dismissed Ryan as a Republican-in-name-only and said he does "nothing for our forward-surging Republican Party!" Ryan left politics after three years as speaker during which Trump ascended as the de facto leader of the GOP. He attacked Trump the candidate but backed off when Trump became president. His criticisms became more cautious, and he often told reporters he had not seen Trump's latest questionable or incendiary tweet. "Once again, we conservatives find ourselves at a crossroads. And here's one reality we have to face: If the conservative cause depends on the populist appeal of one personality, or on second-rate imitations, then we're not going anywhere," Ryan said Thursday. But Ryan came short of denouncing Trump. Instead, he credited "the populism of President Trump in action, tethered to conservative principles" for a robust economy in early 2020 before the coronavirus pandemic. Discussing the current struggles of the GOP, Ryan also nodded at Trump's refusal to accept the 2020 election results. "Even worse, it was horrifying to see a presidency come to such a dishonorable and disgraceful end," the former speaker said. He also seemed to swipe at his successor, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., when he said voters won't be "impressed by the sight of yes-men and flatterers flocking to Mar-a-Lago." Ryan, who sits on the board of Fox Corp., which includes Fox News, also urged his party not to get "caught up in every little cultural battle." "Sometimes these skirmishes are just creations of outrage peddlers, detached from reality and not worth anybody's time," he said. Fox News dedicates considerable airtime to the culture wars. A Ryan spokesman did not respond when asked if the former speaker has concerns about Fox's coverage. Ryan, the 2012 vice-presidential nominee on the GOP ticket with Mitt Romney, was once seen as a rising star in the party. He was a young, polished, policy wonk who some Republicans believed would usher in the next generation of conservatives. Instead, like other up-and-comers, he was sidelined by Trump's swift takeover of the Republican Party and its base. Unlike others who left politics - and even some still in, like Romney, a senator from Utah - who feel freer to say what they really think about their party's new leader, Ryan has kept a relatively low profile. That has not spared him from Trump's ire though. Ryan gave interviews to Tim Alberta of Politico for a book about the GOP under Trump, where he unleashed on the president. When the book came out in 2019, Trump counterpunched Ryan. "He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing," Trump tweeted. "Couldn't get him out of Congress fast enough!" In his speech Thursday, Ryan also criticized President Biden as a "nice guy" with too-liberal policies. "In 2020, the country wanted a nice guy who would move to the center and depolarize our politics," Ryan said. "Instead, we got a nice guy pursuing an agenda more leftist than any president in my lifetime." The Talking Dog of TikTok New York Times Designers Create Spiky Pet Body Armor to Protect Tiny Dogs From Animal Attacks MyModernMet (David L) Over one hundred smuggled wild monkeys confiscated in Thailand before reportedly being delivered to neighboring countries as a food delicacy Pattya News (furzy) Forever chemicals found in home fertilizer made from sewage sludge Guardian (resilc) Worlds First Invisible Sculpture Sells for a Whopping $18,000 Oddity Central (David L). So people are now loud and proud about being a mark? Improvised Design from a Prison Cell: Illustrated Prisoners Inventions Book Core77 (resilc) Sunlight-activated spray could protect crops and mitigate food shortages Academic Times (Chuck L) Radioactivity May Fuel Life Deep Underground and Inside Other Worlds Quanta (Dr. Kevin). Godzilla! The guitar industrys hidden environmental problem and the people trying to fix it Cosmos Magazine (David L) Scientific image sleuth faces legal action for criticizing research papers Nature (Dr. Kevin) How peculiar it is London Review of Books (Anthony L). Edward Gorey. #COVID-19 China? Brexit No great surprise the EU doesnt see the UK government showing any flexibility over NI protocol implementation. UK government is stuck between hardline rhetoric and a US trade deal, hoping the EU somehow improve things despite insults. https://t.co/W8WbsD0FMT David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) May 29, 2021 Top Swiss MP tells EU Were not your milk cow as Bern ditches framework agreement talks with Brussels after seven long years RT. Kevin W: Lousy title but some interesting details on this failed deal. How France is testing free public transport BBC (Dr. Kevin) Swiss reject framework agreement deal with EU SwissInfo (Micael T) Colombia deploys military in Cali after protests leave several dead DW New Cold War Syraqistan Big Brother is Watching You Watch We long said this had to be true: Most damning in newly unsealed evidence (1) Googles employees admitting theres almost no way NOT to provide your location to Google (2) Google designs its ecosystem for location data collection. This doesnt sound like something we would want on the front page of the NYT. /4 pic.twitter.com/Ke7d8IDDoQ Jason Kint (@jason_kint) May 28, 2021 Tesla Cars Will Now Spy on You to Make Sure You Dont Autopilot Yourself Into a PR Disaster Gizmodo (Kevin W) Imperial Collapse Watch Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix Caitlin Johnstone (Kevin W). Not fair! It also has phenomenal beaches, great and inexpensive theater (which is why it punches above its weight in producing actors), nice weather save the 2-4 weeks when it is stinking hot (in Sydney, Melbourne is cooler and Brisbane hotter), lovely wine and many many nice restaurants. But many good snippets on Israel-Palestine. A Peoples Guide to the War Industry -2: Profits & Deception Consortiumnews (furzy) Trump Report: Prosecutors May Use a Mafia Law Against Donald Trump that Comes With Up To 25 Years in Prison Vanity Fair. Resilc: Show me a charge and conviction first. Biden Senate meltdown reveals deepening partisan divide The Hill Arizona refurbishes its gas chamber to prepare for executions, documents reveal Guardian NRA Wins Permitless Carry for Handguns in Texas Rolling Stone (furzy) Dianne Morales and the Implosion of the Left in NYCs Mayoral Race New York Magazine Black Injustice Tipping Point The truth is Larry Summers has not been cancelled, but should be. Same applies to Ken Rogoff. In economic terms, if people dont get punished for catastrophically wrong analysis, then you create a moral hazard. https://t.co/FXPo2q6jqc Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) May 28, 2021 What is sovereignty? A conversation about American colonialism Guardian (resilc) Canada: remains of 215 children found at Indigenous residential school site Guardian (Kevin W) Black Wednesday for big oil as courtrooms and boardrooms turn on industry Guardian (David L) If Youre Reading This, Youre Not Welcome on the Elizabeth Holmes Jury Gizmodo (Kevin W) Rebel AI group raises record cash after machine learning schism Financial Times (David L). Title not obvious. Subhead: Researchers split from Musk-funded outfit aiming to stop superintelligent computers from running amok. Why Apple and Googles Virus Alert Apps Had Limited Success New York Times Cops Raid Cannabis Farm, Find Bitcoin Mine Instead Vice (resilc) Superman Forced to Surrender Crypto in ATM Laundering Bust Bloomberg Class Warfare In a Post-Covid World, Lets Pay Teachers Six Figures New York Times (David L). We have long advocated for higher teacher compensation. Studies have found that the relative pay of teachers is strongly correlated with academic performance of students, as measured in international tests. But this is going to be an impossible sell if unions continue to defend really sub-par teachers. At a minimum, they would need to go on a much lower pay track. The general problem with unions today (this is glaringly true of cops) is that the member solidarity is taken so far that it is impossible to remove members who are so unsuited for the job that they discredit their fellow members. Amazon Wants to Eat Health Care Next New Republic Obama Labor Secretary Joins Anti-Union Law Firm Daily Poster. Wonderfully clarifying, as Lambert is wont to say. Antidote du jour. Bob H maintains this dog is herding the chickens, rather than planning his next lunch. And a bonus. mgl: Our friends Maine Coon, Millicent (Mills). Moi: Um, that cat knows its big enough to intimidate. See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. (Natural News) Have you noticed how many people are scared to death to remove their masks even though nearly all mask rules have been lifted in America? Thats because they are ALL brainwashed by the media and an elaborate plan to slow-walk 200 million Americans (or more if they can pull it off) right into their own early graves. Everyone else left will either be poor and starving or locked up in concentration camps, scheduled for execution via sudden blood clots (booster vaccines). From fake news to false flags, and from a fake pandemic to fake election ballots, the playbook for turning America into a communist hell-hole is not complicated; in fact, its pretty obvious, and its happening now. Keep in mind this can all be accomplished inside of 20 years, or one generation. Its called Psychological Warfare Subversion, and a former Soviet-era deception expert, named Yuri Bezmenov, explained the communist blueprint plan to a T nearly 4 decades ago. The Democrats and Globalists running Washington DC and all the Blue states right now are devaluing all things holy and sacred to our Republic, and we are currently knee-deep in the highest art of warfare, which involves no fighting at all just brainwashing through subversion using television, movies, videos, websites and social media. Communism is being installed in America right now through psychological warfare subversion in 4 easy playbook stages As Yuri Bezmenov, the KGB propaganda expert once stated: The highest art of warfare is not to fight at all but to subvert anything of value in the country of your enemy until such time that the perception of reality of your enemy is screwed up to such an extent that he does not perceive you as an enemy, and that your system, your civilization and your ambitions look to your enemy as an alternative, if not desirable then at least feasible. Thats the ultimate purpose, the final stage of subversion, after which you can simply take your enemy without a single shot being fired. STAGE 1: Destruction of Religion, Human Value, and School Curriculum (2008 2016) Obama hypnotizes everyone into believing theres rampant racism gone wild in America, even though hes the first Black President. He also gets everyone focused on sex and gay everything. Also, many mass shootings were staged to initiate a government gun grab of all automatic weapons, especially machine guns, but the plan fails miserably. Opiate business in Afghanistan skyrockets to support American prescription pandemic of opioids (heroin pills). Obama was a sleeper cell terrorist working from within against, and from the top. Meanwhile, Obama puts 45 million Americans on welfare. Step one complete, right out of the commie playbook. STAGE 2: Warping of Social Life and Laws (2016 2020) Ever since the Obama reign of terror, the Left always accuses the Right of what the Left is guilty of. The biggest example is the Trump-Russia collusion hoax. That was all propagated while the Left WAS involved in communist collusion of their own, working deep cover with the Communist Chinese Party (CCP). As American institutions were being destabilized and prepped for Marxist-communist infiltration, everyone was distracted with the Russia-collusion hoax, the Ukrainian quid pro quo hoax, and the staged impeachment of DJT. Also, in stage 2, comes the demeaning of self-respect and self-worth. This is rather easy to install. The Millenials all got brainwashed with gender fluidity, PC pronouns and the right for cross-dresssers to wear high heels into combat. Then came the George Floyd suicide by drug overdose and staged police beat down. Maybe Floyd was even an MK-ultra experiment, if you really think about it, like the lone mass shooter Batman Theatre stooge. STAGE 3: The Great Crisis a fake pandemic (2019 the end) The crisis begins with a non-elected body of power (Bidens CCP Regime) taking control of the government and telling all citizens how to run (ruin) their lives. The lab-concocted, purposely released Covid-19 virus was a three-pronged plan for this. Tens of millions of fake ballots for Biden were used to steal the election. Nearly every small-to-mid-sized business was shut down and bankrupted (many forever). Then masks and social distancing dehumanized everyone. Finally, distance learning is the ultimate way to ruin all credible learning, from elementary school through college. STAGE 4: Government Dependence The populace begs for Big Government to rescue them (2021 the end) At this point, society thinks this is all normal behavior, and accepts losing all rights, religion and even their own businesses in order to quell the risk of dying from the CCP virus. The theory is that if you want to be saved from the China virus, you have to give up all of your constitutional freedoms and be injected with prion-creating inoculations (until you die in a few years from the vaccines themselves). Thats why they want so badly for vaccine passports to be required. Get it? Sucker in as many fearful and desperate fools as possible. Then America becomes Venezuela over night. The populace needs a savior, and thats hand delivered to the brainwashed masses, the sheeple, in the most toxic, insidious and destructive Trojan Horse ever delivered dirty vaccines. You see, the trick to subversion is simple. You dont shoot people or blow them up. You just slow walk them right into the quicksand. Yuri Bezmenov explains the four stages of psychological warfare subversion for installing communism in any country: Right now we are in the PRETEND-the-vaccines-are-working phase. Thats to try to con all of us intelligent, informed consumers into getting jabbed with prion-creating kill-switch inoculations. Tune your internet frequency to Pandemic.news for updates on how to prepare for the upcoming communist apocalypse. Sources for this article include: Pandemic.news NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Archaeologists unearthed what might be an embassy hidden in the ancient Maya city of Tikal in what is now Guatemala. Built around A.D. 300, the embassy was a sprawling courtyard that featured a pyramid, a burial site and sundry items, all of which appeared to have been informed by the artistic sensibilities of Teotihuacan, a rival city hundreds of miles away in Mexico which conquered Tikal in the late fourth century. The tantalizing find suggested that Tikal was once on good terms with Teotihuacan. But for some reason, their relationship soured in the latter half of the fourth century, culminating in the Maya citys defeat at the hands of its former ally. Exploring the ancient Mayan city of Tikal The discovery of the courtyard came thanks to a land survey in 2018. Researchers scanned the region around Tikal through light detection and ranging , or LiDAR, which uses laser that is beamed from an airplane to precisely map structures obscured by forest and other ground covers. The survey showed that the ancient city covered a wider area than previously thought. Images of the southern part of the city depicted a large, enclosed courtyard flanked by a pyramid to its east. The courtyard was lined with smaller structures and was buried under mounds that were originally thought to be just hills. After examining the images more closely, the researchers noticed that the courtyards layout looked like a small replica of the Citadel, a 38-acre Teotihuacan courtyard where the Feathered Serpent Pyramid is found. Archaeologists were uncertain when construction for the Citadel started, but the pyramid was built around A.D. 200. The similarity of the details was stunning, said Stephen Houston, a professor of anthropology at Brown University who contributed to the land survey. Edwin Roman-Ramirez, an archaeologist at Guatemalas Foundation for Maya Cultural and Natural Heritage, excavated at the site last summer to investigate whether Tikals newfound courtyard had any connection to Teotihuacans Citadel. Roman-Ramirez and his team discovered structures made of earth and stucco, both of which the Maya did not use for construction. They also unearthed Teotihuacan-style weapons carved from green obsidian (a glasslike volcanic rock) that was imported from central Mexico. There were also fragments of Teotihuacan incense burners, carvings of the citys rain god and evidence of a funeral conducted in a Teotihuacan manner. (Related: Archaeologists unearth 2 trophy SKULLS in Belize jungles: Macabre artifacts will be used to study the collapse of the Maya civilization.) Ancient cities were friends turned bitter rivals While Roman-Ramirez and his colleagues had yet to date the structures, ceramics found around the courtyard suggested that construction for Tikals citadel began around A.D. 300. That was nearly 80 years before Teotihuacanos supposedly invaded, hinting at a diplomatic relationship that turned sour. Tikal likely warmly welcomed its rival-to-be and housed Teotihuacan guests in the citadel. According to Roman-Ramirez, the discovery proved that people who were from Teotihuacan or people closely associated with the Teotihuacan culture also lived in Tikal. We knew that the Teotihuacanos had at least some presence and influence in Tikal and nearby Maya areas prior to the year 378, he said in a press conference last week. 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. If this were indeed the case, foreign relations between the two cities eventually became hostile. In A.D. 378, foreigners presumed to be Teotihuacanos stormed Tikal. The citys ruler was killed on the same day and was replaced by the son of Spearthrower Owl, the then-king of Teotihuacan. By the next century, Tikals art and architecture had borne Teotihuacan influences. The previous discovery of what appeared to be an ancient Maya compound in the center of Teotihuacan teased this narrative before. The structures walls were adorned with colorful Maya-style murals, sparking speculation that Maya nobles and ambassadors lived there. The murals were then smashed to pieces and buried at around Tikals takeover. (Related: For the Mayans, war and violence were all in a days work.) How the cities became sworn enemies remains to be solved. In the meantime, Roman-Ramirez and his team plan to study the human remains at Tikals burial site to learn more about the courtyard and the people that lived there. Artifacts.news has more stories about ancient civilizations and their way of life. Sources include: DailyMail.co.uk SHESC.ASU.edu ScienceMag.org Empower Clinics (CSE: CBDT OTCQB: EPWCF) CEO Steven McAuley joined Steve Darling from Proactive to share details the company has put another two locations for clinics in the signed leases category. That includes one in Waterloo, Ontario and one in Hamilton Ontario. McAuley telling Proactive the rollout of 22 clinics is ahead of schedule and they are also adding some services to clinics as well. (Natural News) Not even a day after CNN criticized him for canceling a State Department effort launched under Donald Trump to investigate the origin of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), Sleepy Joe Biden suddenly switched course by reinstating a 90-day intelligence community probe. In an official statement, the White House explained that officials in the regime have been pursuing various possibilities as to where the Chinese Virus originated. The two options, they say, are that it either emerged from human contact with an infected animal or from a laboratory accident. Media outlets are suggesting that the White House is in full damage control mode as it desperately tries to keep up with the shifting narrative surrounding the Wuhan Flu. I have now asked the Intelligence Community to redouble their efforts to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion, and to report back to me in 90 days, China Joe announced in a statement. Previously, Biden was opposed to the idea that the Chinese Virus originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which had been receiving funding from Anthony Fauci to conduct illegal gain of function research on bat coronaviruses. Then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had sought to determine Chinas role in the unleashing of the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19), only to be obstructed at every turn by political opposition that claimed he was engaged in a witch hunt against the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After late-winter briefing, Biden canceled investigation into Chinese Virus origins Three unnamed sources say that Hunters dad was briefed on the investigations findings back in February in March, and whatever was revealed caused him to pull the plug on any further inquiry. It was at this time that Beijing Biden steered everyone back to the World Health Organizations (WHO) official declaration that the Wuhan Flu originated in bats at a Wuhan wet market. The way they did their work was suspicious as hell, a former State Department official is quoted as saying. Pompeo, meanwhile, had been warning back in May 2020 that there was enormous evidence and a significant amount of evidence to support the lab-escape theory. People in the US government were working on the question of where Covid-19 came from but there was no other effort that we knew of that took the lab leak possibility seriously enough to focus on digging into certain aspects, questions and uncertainties, said David Feith, a former State Department official. The revelation about Bidens flip-flop was described as awkward at best by Zero Hedge, especially following a report on Sunday from The Wall Street Journal revealing that three researchers at WIV got sick back in November 2019, right before the Chinese Virus was released. Even Fauci is having to capitulate to the notion that the Wuhan Flu did not occur naturally, or in nature, and that he may be responsible for its release via the EcoHealth Alliance and other shady operations that were conducting illegal research with American taxpayer dollars. I said it right at the beginning, and thats where it came from, Trump told Newsmax the other night. I think it was obvious to smart people. Thats where it came from. I have no doubt about it. I had no doubt about it. I was criticized by the press. People didnt want to say China. Usually they blame it on Russia, Trump added. I said right at the beginning it came out of Wuhan. And thats where all the deaths were also, by the way, when we first heard about this, there were body bags, dead people laying all over Wuhan province, and thats where it happened to be located. More of the latest news about the Chinese Virus can be found at Pandemic.news. Sources for this article include: ZeroHedge.com NaturalNews.com (Natural News) Black Lives Matter Activist John Sullivan admitted to bringing a megaphone inside the Capitol building on January 6 to instigate Trump supporters and incite violence, documents show. (Article by Andrew White republished from NationalFile.com) Sullivan allegedly posted on Twitter support for armed revolution and has also said he attended a number of Black Lives Matter protests last year, posted numerous anti-police and anti-Trump statements. Sullivan says he portrayed himself as a journalist who was just documenting the incident but he was also actively participating even broke a window, reported Red Voice Media. I brought my megaphone to instigate shit. I was like, guys were going inside, were fucking shit up. Im gonna make these Trump supporters fall this shit up. But I mean youll see, Sullivan said on speakerphone, according to newly released documents. I have it all, I have everything, everything on camera, everything I just told you, and I mean everything. Trust me when I say my footage is worth like a million of dollars, millions of dollars. Im holding on to that shit. According to the court documents, Sullivan admitted to law enforcement that he had no press credentials despite his previous claims of being a journalist, and that the investigation has not revealed any connection between the defendant and any journalistic organizations prior to the events of January 6, 2021. I mean, didnt I kind of make up a background though, on the fly a little bit. I think I made up, uhwhat did I say I was? Oh, yeah, I was just a journalist, but I use that all the time. Yeah, Im just a journalist. Im here recording. I got my camera on my shoulder. Literally, I have my big-ass camera on my shoulder right here and I have my gimbal, so it kind of looks like it. Yeah, Im just here recording the situation. Yeah. Livestreaming. Look, I haveI have people on my live stream. Thats why I pulled it back out, said Sullivan in a video posted on January 6. In a livestream posted in December, Sullivan admitted that he doesnt consider himself a journalist. But as far as like reporting stuff like I am now, Im an activist too, so like it kinda plays hand in hand. But as far as like being a journalist, it would be cool to be one, I dont have anything against it, said Sullivan. This comes after National File reported that Sullivan, who stormed the Capitol on January 6 disguised in pro-Trump gear and captured video of the Capitol Police shooting of Ashli Babbitt, had $90,000 seized by the federal government. At the time of Sullivans arrest, National File reported, Despite claiming he only entered the building in a journalistic capacity, the indictment against Sullivan declares otherwise. The 18-page affidavit claims Sullivan allegedly incited violence by exclaiming we gotta get this shit burned and its our house motherfuckers.' Sullivan was previously recorded during an anti-Trump riot in Washington, D.C. In the video, Sullivan pointed at the White House, and said,We about to burn this s down We gotta rip Trump right out of that office right there. Sullivan added, We aint aboutwaiting until the next election. Its time for revolution. Read more at: NationalFile.com and BlackLiesMatter.news. Sign up to get breaking news, weather forecasts, and more in your email inbox. Sign Up Now STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga. (AP) The board overseeing a mountain park near Atlanta with a giant carving of Confederate leaders voted Monday to relocate Confederate flags from a busy walking trail and create a museum exhibit that acknowledges the site's connection to the Ku Klux Klan. The moves were part of an effort by the Stone Mountain Memorial Association to address criticism of the park's Confederate legacy and shore up its finances. The chairman of the association's board promised more changes. We've just taken our first step today to where we need to go, the Rev. Abraham Mosley said at a news conference after the vote. Mosley, appointed by Gov. Brian Kemp last month, is the board's first African American chairman. The board did not address the carving at Monday's meeting, but Mosley did not rule out changes to it in the future. Critics have called on the board to remove the colossal sculpture of Gen. Robert E. Lee, Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Gen. Thomas J. Stonewall Jackson from the mountain's northern face. Completed in 1972, it measures 190 feet (58 meters) across and 90 feet (27 meters) tall. It is the largest Confederate monument ever crafted and has special protection enshrined in Georgia law. The changes approved Monday come amid a national reckoning on race that brought down dozens of Confederate monuments last year. Many of the Confederate monuments that are now controversial were erected in the early 1900s by groups composed of women and veterans. Some honor generals or soldiers; others bear inscriptions that critics say wrongly gloss over slavery as a reason for the Civil War or portray the Confederate cause as noble. Work on the Stone Mountain sculpture languished until the state bought the mountain and surrounding land in 1958 for a public park. Finishing the monument gained renewed urgency amid resistance from Georgia and other Southern states to the civil rights movement and efforts to end segregation. Today, the park 15 miles (25 kilometers) northeast of downtown Atlanta markets itself as a family theme park rather than a monument to the Confederacy. It attracts large numbers of tourists and other visitors interested in hiking to the top of the mountain or walking the grounds. Still, it is replete with Confederate imagery. Former DeKalb County NAACP President John Evans told the Stone Mountain board before the vote that they needed to do more. We need to take down the flags. We need to change all the street names and do what we said we were going to do: eliminate the Confederacy from Stone Mountain Park, he said. A member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans who spoke at Mondays meeting said maintaining the carving at Stone Mountain is not racist but a way to honor the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy. Eric Cleveland said he did not have a big problem with the changes the board approved, calling them a compromise," but he said they would embolden critics. These people will not stop until our history is completely erased, he said. The museum exhibit approved by the board will relate the history of the carving, including its roots in efforts to maintain segregation, said Bill Stephens, Stone Mountain Memorial Association's CEO. It will also reflect the site's role in the rebirth of the Ku Klux Klan. The group marked its comeback with a cross burning atop the mountain on Thanksgiving night 1915. The board also voted to change the park's logo, which currently features the Confederate carving, and seek federal recognition of a bridge built by a prominent African American. Selectman Kathleen Corbet announced on May 27 at New Canaan Town Hall that she will be running for selectman in the fall. Corbet is a familiar face in town, where she has lived with her family for 25 years and has served the town once as an interim CFO, on various town governing bodies and also as moderator when controversial topics are broached. She is currently serving on the towns Board of Selectmen after being appointed when Kit Devereaux stepped down in August 2020, when Devereaux moved to Annapolis, MD. The longtime New Canaan resident has served on the Board of Finance from 2006 to 2010 and Town Council from 2013 to 2017. She held the interim CFO role in town for six months under First Selectman Rob Malozzi, on the Charter Revision Commission and Town Building Committee that oversaw the renovation of Town Hall and the building the Town Hall Annex. The town has benefited from years of her service in many other capacities with grace, balance, knowledge, and transparency, Democratic Town Committee chairman Lisa Hannich said. We are enthusiastic to see her continue in this role and we believe New Canaan is very well-served by Kathleen. Corbet has been in the news lately as facilitator for a working committee on the New Canaan Library project, between people who wish to preserve the 1913 library and library officials who believe the property where the antique library sits would best be used as a green. A working committee was formed after Planning and Zoning Commission Chairman John Goodwin said at a meeting in April that he would like to see library officials and preservationists be flexible and discuss the future of the 1913 library amiably. I am a collaborator, I like to bring people together on various topics, Corbet told Hearst Connecticut Media. Corbet also moderated the budget workshops where nearly all members of several town boards and the Board of Education met together. She also led best practices in municipal budgeting, when Jeb Walker was first selectman, which was bringing people of all aspects of town together, Corbet said. Corbet has 35 year career in finance, investment and technology. Most of her career was with Alliance Capital, before serving for three years as president of Standard & Poors and eventually starteing her own company, Cross Ridge Capital LLC, in 2008. The New Canaan Democratic Town Committee is thrilled that Kathleen Corbet will run this November for her current seat as town selectman, DTC chairman Lisa Hannich told Hearst. Corbet also acts as a consultant and advisor on the board of Mass Mutual Insurance Company, Clearwater Analytics and, closer to home, she is chairman of the board of directors for Waveny LifeCare Network. Kathleen has been serving our town adeptly and steadfastly with a close eye on the budget as selectman for the past ten months while steering Waveny LifeCare through the public health crisis, Hannich said. Hearst asked Corbet why she will not be running for the first selectman position. She said there has been inquiry as to if she would run for the top executive spot in town, but she has not felt pressured to run. This is just not the right time, she said, because of my business and the roles that I serve on other boards, including business and nonprofit. We are so lucky to have her, Hannich said. Hampton - Douglas M. LaPorte, 63, of Hampton, passed away on Sunday, June 6, 2021 at his home. He was born in Albany, NY on October 6, 1957 a son of Earl LaPorte and Rosemary (Pomakoy) Snyder. Doug was a volunteer firefighter in NY in his younger years and went on to work for various Walmart US Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas): I understand from whats been testified to the Forest Service and the BLM [Bureau of Land Management], you want very much to work on the issue of climate change. We know theres been significant solar flare activity, and so is there anything that the National Forest Service or BLM can do to change the course of the moons orbit, or the Earths orbit around the sun? Obviously that would have profound effects on our climate. Jennifer Eberlein, associate deputy chief for the National Forest System, responded that she would have to follow up with you on that one, after a brief pause. Gohmert: Well, if you figure out a way that you in the Forest Service can make that change, Id like to know. By PTI NEW DELHI: Petrol price on Saturday crossed the Rs 100-a-litre mark in Mumbai after the 15th increase in fuel prices this month. Petrol price was increased by 26 paise per litre and diesel by 28 paise a litre, according to a price notification of state-owned fuel retailers. The increase - 15th this month - took petrol and diesel prices to a fresh all-time high across the country. The price of petrol, which had already crossed the Rs 100-mark in several cities in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra, breached the psychological barrier in Mumbai on Saturday. Petrol now costs Rs 100.19 a litre in Mumbai and diesel comes for Rs 92.17 per litre. Fuel prices differ from state to state depending on the incidence of local taxes such as VAT and freight charges. Rajasthan levies the highest value-added tax (VAT) on petrol in the country, followed by Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. In Delhi, the petrol price rose to Rs 93.94 a litre and diesel to Rs 84.89. This is the 15th increase in prices since May 4, when state-owned oil firms ended an 18-day hiatus in rate revision they observed during assembly elections in states like West Bengal. Oil companies revise rates of petrol and diesel daily based on the average price of benchmark fuel in the international market in the preceding 15-days, and foreign exchange rates. Sri Ganganagar district of Rajasthan had the costliest petrol and diesel in the country at Rs 104.94 per litre and Rs 97.79 a litre, respectively. In 15 increases, petrol price has risen by Rs 3.54 per litre and diesel by Rs 4.16. By PTI NEW DELHI: Saudi Arabia is shipping to India more medical oxygen and tankers for ferrying them as it increases aid for the nation fighting the world's worst outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, Saudi Arabia shipped 80 tonnes of liquid oxygen to India and now three more containers with 60 tonnes of oxygen and another 100 containers to ferry them. "Deeply appreciate the gesture of HRH Prince Abdulaziz, Minister of Energy, KSA for the offer to send 3 ISO Containers with 60 tons of LMO, which are expected to arrive in Mumbai on 6 June 2021, and also to provide 100 ISO containers in the coming months to support #IndiaFightsCorona," Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan tweeted. India has turned to OPEC nations, particularly Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait for sourcing medical oxygen in its battle against the pandemic. Earlier this month, Pradhan discussed with Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz, UAE Minister of Industry Sultan Al Jaber and Qatar's Energy Minister Saad Sherida al- Kaabi for the supply of medical oxygen and containers. "The 3 containers and the additional containers that will come in the weeks ahead will remain with @IndianOilcl for 6 months as a goodwill gesture from the Saudi Government, and IOCL will source LMO from Linde Dammam on commercial terms for import into the country," Pradhan tweeted Saturday. Coronavirus infections have dropped from over 4 lakh to 1.73 lakh, but officially recorded daily deaths at 3,617 continue to be high. "My discussions with HRH Prince Abdulaziz during this month, and his consistent support for India's efforts against the COVID-19 pandemic, is indeed a manifestation of our deep friendship and familial relations which ultimately forms the core of all our interactions," he said. Pradhan turned to OPEC nations weeks after a spat with OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia over rising oil prices. In March, OPEC and its allies left oil output unchanged despite a near doubling of oil prices since the start of November, sparking a spat. Pradhan expressed disappointment at the decision and said the government has asked oil companies to look for diversification of supplies. In response, Saudi Arabia's energy minister said India should first use the stocks of crude it bought cheaply during the price slump in 2020. India buys 85 per cent of its oil needs, two-third of which come from OPEC countries. Iraq is its largest supplier, followed by Saudi Arabia and UAE. Oil refiners in India cut imports from Saudi Arabia in April, a move that was seen as a retaliatory move, but the purchase has since been restored to the original levels. By Express News Service BENGALURU: In a shocking incident, an ambulance driver abandoned the body of a man, who died of Covid, on a footpath near Hebbal after demanding more money to shift it to the crematorium.Based on a complaint, Amruthalli police on Friday arrested 26-year-old Sharath V of Tumakuru, an employee with a private ambulance service. A senior police officer said that the 52-year-old man, who hails from North India, died at Jayadeva Hospital on Monday night. Sarath had agreed to shift the body to the crematorium for Rs 3,000, but on the way, he demanded Rs 18,000 more from the mans wife. When the woman refused to pay and alerted her brothers, Sarath dumped the body on the footpath and fled. During interrogation, the accused confessed that he had also fleeced four other families while shifting bodies for cremation. Omjasvin MD By Express News Service CHENNAI: The Chennai Corporations move to vaccinate People with Disabilities (PwDs) at their houses for Covid-19 has received a great response. Many disabled residents said that they are thankful to the civic body for vaccinating them at their houses as they were unable to get to a vaccination centre. Sankar Babu (44) from Ambattur said that he registered with the Corporations helpline and officials immediately reached his house. It was hard for me to visit a vaccination centre due to my physical disability. I thank December 3 Movement president Deepak Nathan and Chief Minister MK Stalin for making this happen, said Babu. Similarly, Sivabalan Elangovan, another city resident, said his disabled sister-in-law got her vaccination at her doorstep. The Corporation has done a tremendous job and should be appreciated. I booked through the helpline and received the jab the next day, he said. Another resident told Express that he was vaccinated in his three-wheeler scooter itself, as he was waiting at a vaccination centre. I did not have to go inside, he said. The civic body has been vaccinating people with different types of disability such as cerebral palsy and other conditions. PwDs can call the helpline number 18004250111 or 97007 99993. How did this happen? The idea to vaccinate PwDs at their houses was floated by several rights activists including the State president of the December 3 Movement Deepak. On April 25, I wrote a Facebook post on this idea and received huge support from people. Later, Virudhunagar MP Manickam Tagore took up the subject. He even asked me for suggestions before drafting his letter to the PM, Deepak told Express. Later, Deepak said that he had an opportunity to meet Stalin during an event for PwDs, and he put forth this idea to the CM itself. His proposal was quickly implemented after that. It took the support of many people to achieve this but this needs to be implemented everywhere in Tamil Nadu and not just in Chennai, he says. By Express News Service NEW DELHI: The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) continued its attack on the BJP-led central government over the shortage of Covid-19 vaccine in Delhi saying the Centre is involved a vaccination scam. The AAP said that while the vaccine doses are not reaching the state government centers, the private hospitals are having no such issue. There appears to be a scam being perpetrated under the garb of the vaccination program by the BJP-ruled central government. While government- run vaccination centres have become non-functional, the private-run vaccination centres are running at full capacity and have lakhs and lakhs of vials at their disposal, said AAP spokesperson Raghav Chadha. For past many days, the Centre and Delhi governments have been playing a blame game on the issue of the weak supply of vaccine doses. The issue cropped up as soon as the vaccination process for the 18- 44 age category started. The programme had to be suspended on May 22 due to the lack of stocks for the category. AAP government which had plans to vaccinate the entire population of Delhi in three months, has been attacking the Centre daily for not supplying enough vaccines. BJP has accused the AAP government of doing politics on the issue and making baseless allegations. Delhi is the biggest example wherein the vaccination centres set up by the Delhi government are all closed because the central government refuses to give us vaccines. However, the same government is allocating vaccines to private hospitals. Why is the central government creating an artificial scarcity in the government sector? alleged Chadha. AAP MLA Atishi said that people in the 18-44 age are being forced to spend money to get vaccinated, On one side, states are not able to vaccinate their youth, on the other private hospitals are not short of it and are charging Rs 900-1,350 for a jab. JAB CENTRE FOR DIVYAANGS A Covid-19 vaccination centre dedicated for persons with disabilities (PwD) was opened on Friday at a school in Chhatarpur. As per a notice issued by the South Delhi district magistrate, the centre will cater to persons with disabilities aged 45 or older for now. The vaccination centre at at the Sarvodaya Kanya Vidyalaya in Chhatarpur will remain open from 9 am to 5 pm every day of the week, except on Sunday. The visitors will be required to carry a proof of disability in the form of PwD identity card, or proof of residency in a PwD shelter/hostel/ centre, or any other relevant PwD certificate, the notice said. DU COLLEGE OPENS VAX CAMP Delhi Universitys Lakshmibai College began a walk-in vaccination drive on Friday for its staff and their family members aged 45 and above. The college had started a Covid-19 isolation centre last month as a tribute to one of its professors, Sangita Sharma, who succumbed to the virus, principal Pratyush Vatsala said. A post-Covid care clinic was started on Wednesday. We are a public-funded institution and its our responsibility to serve the society. The vaccination centre is currently only for DU staffers and their families, but if we do not get much crowd then we plan to open it for the common people too, Vatsala said. By PTI NEW DELHI: Businessman Navneet Kalra, accused in a oxygen concentrator black marketing case, committed a white-collar crime and earned profits by selling medical devices at exorbitant prices to those on death beds, the Delhi Police told a court on Saturday. During a recent raid, 524 oxygen concentrators, which are crucial medical equipment used for COVID-19 patients, were recovered from Khan Chacha, Town Hall, and Nege & Ju restaurants owned by Kalra. The restaurateur is in judicial custody till June 3. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Arun Kumar Garg heard the bail application filed by the businessman who was arrested on May 17 for allegedly hoarding oxygen concentrators and selling them at inflated prices. "His intention was to cheat people and make profit. This is a white-collar crime. He sold oxygen concentrators to needy people lying on death beds," additional public prosecutor Atul Shrivastava, representing the Delhi Police, told the court and sought rejection of Kalra's bail plea. The remarks by the Delhi Police come a day after Kalra, through senior advocate Vikas Pahwa, told the court that he had no criminal intent to cheat people and cannot be kept in pre-trial detention. During the course of the proceedings on Saturday, the prosecutor showed Kalra's oxygen concentrator brochures to the court, and said they were not premium or from Germany as claimed by the accused." Its flow was also below 35 per cent, and he sold it for more than Rs 70,000 as against the MRP of Rs 27,999," he added. On Kalra's contentions that he was merely helping those in need, the prosecutor said, "He was not doing any charity. If he had sold them at the cost price, it would have been a charity but he took a margin." The police further relied on a report by the Sriram Institute for Industrial Research on the oxygen concentrators' efficacy and submissions of doctors from the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS). Shrivastava said the doctors opined that the oxygen concentrators were not suitable for treatment of COVID-19 patients due to their low efficacy. "It is useless and as good as a box. Using them for even mild and moderate patients would cause harm. It will accelerate death," the additional public prosecutor said. He further apprised the court about the gravity of the offence and sought rejection of bail on the grounds that the businessman tampered with evidence, deleted material from the device and gave a bad name to the society. The police have claimed that the concentrators were imported from China and were being sold at an exorbitant price of Rs 50,000 to 70,000 a piece against its cost of Rs 16,000 to Rs 22,000. On May 5, a case was registered against Kalra under sections 420 (cheating), 188 (disobedience to order promulgated by public servant), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of the Indian Penal Code, the Essential Commodities Act and the Epidemic Diseases Act. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has also registered a money laundering case against him. By PTI NEW DELHI: An 83-year-old man was killed while four other members of his family were rescued after a fire broke out at a house inside a residential complex in south Delhi's Saket Court on Saturday, officials said. The fire department received a call around 5.23 pm about the blaze at the house on the fourth floor of block -C inside the residential complex, they said. Seven fire tenders were rushed to the spot and the blaze was later doused, fire officials said. A book shelf, cupboard, inverter and other materials kept inside a store room of the house caught fire, they said. Four people trapped inside the house were safely rescued by the firemen. The elderly man was found unconscious at the spot and was immediately evacuated and rushed to the Max Hospital where he was declared brought dead, a senior police officer said. He died after allegedly inhaling smoke, police said, adding that further investigation is underway. An electrical default is suspected to be the cause of fire, they added. Shibu B S By Express News Service KOCHI: The policy address delivered by Governor Arif Mohammed Khan at the inaugural session of the 15th Kerala Legislative Assembly on Friday had a special focus on various infrastructure projects for Kochi, indicating measures to transform it as a metro city. The Pinarayi Vijayan-led government has listed some key projects for Kochi which are at various stages of implementation, expressing a commitment to complete all of them in a time-bound manner. The government is also planning to restructure the Indian Institute of Information Technology and Management Kerala (IIITMK) into the Kerala University of Digital Sciences, Innovation and Technology. The University would focus mainly on research, education, outreach programmes and thereby develop itself as a Centre of Excellence in digital technology and allied areas. This will further strengthen the Maker Village, Kochi, which is the countrys largest hardware deep tech incubator. The university will be encouraged to reach out to support government in the skilling of youth to tap the new age digital jobs, the governor said. The government is going ahead with a development project at Marine Drive, which is being implemented by the Kerala State Housing Board. The agency had also invited an expression of interest to select a consultant/developer to implement the International Exhibition Nagar Project through the public-private-partnership mode on 17.9 acres it owns near Marine Drive. The government is also committed to developing the Kochi-Palakkad Industrial Corridor to overcome the logistic cost and hurdles of bringing goods from outside the state.The fast-track development of Kochi-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor by developing Palakkad as a node and the GIFT (Global Industrial Finance and Trade) City as the hub in Kochi. This initiative is likely to generate investments of `20,000 crore and has an employment potential of 15,000, he added. The Cochin Smart Mission Limited has completed projects such as the Integrated Command Control and Communication Centre, Roof Top Solar Project of 1,000 KW at public buildings and the E-health solutions at the Ernakulam General Hospital. The remaining work undertaken by the Smart Mission including smart roads too are expected to be completed soon. METRO EXTENSION: CENTRES NOD AWAITED The state has approved Phase II of Kochi Metro from JLN Stadium to Infopark via Kakkanad at a cost of Rs 1,957.05 crore. It will have 11 stations Palarivattom Junction, Palarivattom Signal, Chembumukku, Vazhakkala, Kunnumpuram, Kakkanad Junction, Kochi Special Economic Zone, Chittethukara, Rajagiri, Infopark I and Infopark II. The Centre is expected to approve the project in this financial year. ON PETTA-SN JUNCTION STRETCH The first phase of the Kochi Metro project from Aluva to Petta over 25km, with 22 stations was completed on September 7, 2020. Work on Phase 1A the two-km stretch between Petta and SN Junction, with two stations is progressing and is expected to be commissioned by March 2022. As of now, 47% has been completed, said the governor. ON SN JUNCTION - TRIPUNITHURA STRETCH The work on Phase 1B from SN junction to Tripunithura over 1.2km, with one Metro station is also progressing. The stretch is intended to be commissioned by June 2022. The government is also planning to initiate Artificial Intelligence projects in the police department in 2021-22. Aathira Haridas By Express News Service THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: With the private sector all set to restart Covid-19 vaccination, the vaccination drive in Kerala is set to get an impetus. The private hospitals are procuring vaccines directly from the Serum Institute of India. KIMSHEALTH in Thiruvananthapuram has bought Covishield vaccines and the booking for the slots has already begun. Apart from KIMSHEALTH, the other hospital that has received vaccine is Baby Memorial Hospital, Kozhikode. More than a hundred hospitals in the state have already placed requests at the Serum Institute of India for procuring vaccine. A wait period of two months is expected for the vaccines to arrive at these hospitals. Almost all the private hospitals are asking for the vaccine and their requests are forwarded from here. The preference is first for state government hospitals and then a portion of the vaccine is given to private hospitals, said an official at the Serum Institute of India. KIMSHEALTH has said that the vaccines are procured and stored following Cold Chain Storage protocols. Those over the age of 18 can register online on the portals Cowin or Arogya Setu and get appointments for the vaccine. There will be no spot registrations, it said in a statement. KIMSHEALTH has also entered into arrangements with more than 30 private and public sector undertakings and banks for administering vaccine to their employees. The private hospitals were part of the vaccination drive for a brief time until the vaccine shortage stopped it. Dr Jothydev Kesavadev of Jothydevs Diabetes and Research Centre said that they get over 100 calls daily asking if the vaccine is available. The hospital was one of the vaccination centres when private hospitals were providing Covid-19 vaccination. The hospital figures among those that have placed a request at the Serum Institute of India. We placed the request a m0nth ago and have been asked to wait. The issue is the unavailability of the vaccine. If private hospitals also start the vaccination drive, then more people can be covered in a short period, said Dr Jothydev Kesavadev. By making vaccines available in private sector, people who can afford it can pay and get the vaccine and neednt wait, he says. The hospital has requested 3000 doses, which is available at a cost of `18 lakh. People arent bothered about the price, rather they just need to get the vaccine in a safe environment. The rush at hospitals can be avoided. This rush to get the vaccine is considered as one of the reasons for the second wave of Covid-19, he added. Dr R C Sreekumar, chairman, IMA Research Cell, also reiterates the need to make the vaccine available at private hospitals. With private hospitals entering the fray, the burden on government hospitals is reduced. The rush at hospitals for vaccination can be avoided, which itself is a source for the disease, said Dr Sreekumar. TPURAM RECORDS 2,545 POSITIVE CASES TPURAM: The district recorded 2,545 Covid-19 positive cases on Friday. The test positivity rate is 18.9 percent. 3,276 persons have recovered. In all 16,750 persons are currently being treated for Covid-19 in the district. Seven health workers were among those diagnosed with the disease on Friday. As many as 4,832 people have been placed in quarantine for showing symptoms of Covid-19. In all, 79,127 persons are in quarantine. As many as 6,741 people who were in quarantine till Thursday completed the quarantine period successfully. A Sharadhaa By Express News Service Deepak Gangadhars directorial debut starring Krishna and Rachita Ram has been titled Love Me or Hate Me. It was launched on Friday. Interestingly, this is the first line from the classic and evergreen song of Dr Rajkumars film Shankar Guru, which has been considered as a name for this romantic drama. A love story, first-time director Deepak says the idea of using this popular line was because it suited the plot. The story moves between two timelines the present and a flashback against a college backdrop placed in 2015. Deepak, who has previously worked in Thoogudeepa Productions as an associate director and a film distributor, is now foraying into direction and will be bringing together Krishna and Rachita for the first time on the silver screen. Jointly produced by Madan Gangadhar and Nandish, the initial plan was to begin the project in April. We are ready with the script and will roll out the project as soon as the government unlocks the city, and we are given permission to shoot, says Deepak. Apart from the leads, the director is finalising the star cast, and is in talks with actors, Sadhu Kokila and Chikkanna for prominent roles. However, they are yet to sign on the dotted line. We are also scouting for the second lead heroine for which we are scouting a fresh face, says Deepak, adding, The film will have Sridhar V Sambhram scoring the music, while the rest of the technicians are yet to come on board. Krishna is currently committed to Love Mocktail 2, Nagashekars Shrikrishna@ gmail.com, Deepak Arass Sugar Factory, and Nagendra Prasads project in Kannada. Prior to the lockdown, Rachita was juggling shooting for Khadar Kumars Veeram and Love You Rachchu with Ajai Rao. Welcome Guest! You Are Here: Avinash Ramachandran By Express News Service Spousal politics can take complex forms in this country. At a grassroots level, theres the practice of proxy pradhans, husbands snatching away power from their elected wives. But the tables can also turn once in a while. This happened in Bihar, when, in 1997, a disgraced chief minister was unexpectedly replaced by his wife. A bit like widows successionexcept the husband was alive and well. Taking off from that event, showrunner Subhash Kapoor and director Karan Sharma have created Maharani, a 10-part political drama series on SonyLIV. Huma Qureshi stars as Rani Bharti, a woman pulled from her household and cattle-rearing chores to become the Chief Minister of Bihar. Addressing her first assembly session, Rani Bharti falters, then admits she cannot read and write. But shes got her wits about her, which is perhaps all that counts. Subhashs last feature film, Madam Chief Minister, was a messy and high-speed take on a female politicians rise. Almost as a corrective, he slows things down in Maharani. Rani is barely a presence in the opening episodes. ALSO READ | Actor Sohum Shah gets candid about his role of a 'layered' Bihari politician in 'Maharani' Her husband, Bheema Bharti (Sohum Shah), seems to be the boss, beloved of a state hinged on caste loyalties. Their first scene is memorable, a spiky exchange that ends with Bheema hawking milk on his wifes command. When she meets him for the second time, Rani is delighted, but finds herself adrift when Bheema is shot. Bheema survives the attack and, in extremis, names her his successor. Only we dont see him make that announcement. In a clever bit of editing, the scene cuts away directly to Rani being decked with garlands. She assumes office reluctantly, her mind fixed on her home and kids. I cant even sign my name, she tells her secretary (Kani Kusruti). But you can learn it now, the secretary replies. This realisation is crucial but severely dumbed down. When Rani finds her voice at last and transfers a minister who crosses her, the tone is coolly heroic, accompanied by a rousing score. It gets broader later on, as she attends a Ram Leela performance and has a change of heart. WATCH TRAILER HERE: Huma tries endowing her character with humour and wit. She comes into her own near the end, her furrowed brow and nervous manner giving way to an icy calm. Mostly, though, she remains oddly aloof, lost in a wave of intrigue. Predictably, its the supporting characters who run the show. Amit Sial is brilliant as the churlish opposition leader. Pramod Pathak plays a sharp, loyal wingman. Inaamulhaq perks things up as a Bengali official probing the fodder scam. There is something phisy about this phellow! he comments on a suspect. The fraud itself is explained so painstakingly it becomes a companion piece to Scam 1992. Where the complexities thrill, the visuals dont. This is a Bihar show that wasnt shot in the state. There may be practical reasons for thiseven a film like Gangs of Wasseypur was filmed all over the northbut the effect here is deeply off. Anup Singhs cinematography has the stiff look of an OTT production. We get the sights and soundspreparations for chhath puja, a folk tune here and therebut nothing genuinely observant. The accents, meanwhile, are neither imprecise nor too exaggerated, which seems like the way to go (stand up, Jabariya Jodi, Super 30 and Half Girlfriend). Sohums compelling performance drives the show. Time and again, Rani orbits too far a clear threat to Bheema, who begins to doubt his moves. Sohum plays this with coolness and charm and a reluctance to hype up his act. Their standoffs are strange, subliminal thingsnot the big outbursts we are trained to see. Series: Maharani Director: Karan Sharma Cast: Huma Qureshi, Sohum Shah, Amit Sial, Pramod Pathak, Inaamulhaq, Vineet Kumar Streaming on: SonyLIV Vineet Upadhyay By Express News Service DEHRADUN: "I love you Vibhu!" said Lieutenant Nitika Kaul, wife of martyr Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhaundiyal, after a ceremony at the Officers Training Academy in Chennai. Chief of the Army's Northern Command Lt Gen YK Joshi placed stars on Kauls shoulders Saturday. "He will always be a part of my life. I feel he is around looking at me, wishing me luck for having made it to the Army," says Lt Kaul. The couple was married in April 2018 and Maj Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal was due to return home in April 2019 to celebrate his first marriage anniversary. On February 14, 2019, Major Dhoundiyal was among four soldiers who laid their life fighting terrorists in Pulwama. He was awarded Shaurya Chakra (posthumously) for his sacrifice for the nation. #MajVibhutiShankarDhoundiyal, made the Supreme Sacrifice at #Pulwama in 2019, was awarded SC (P). Today his wife @Nitikakaul dons #IndianArmy uniform; paying him a befitting tribute. A proud moment for her as Lt Gen Y K Joshi, #ArmyCdrNC himself pips the Stars on her shoulders! pic.twitter.com/ovoRDyybTs PRO Udhampur, Ministry of Defence (@proudhampur) May 29, 2021 Lt Kaul has worked as a business analyst for nearly three years but left the job to join the Indian Army. She cleared the Services Selection Board in February 2020 and received her letter in March 2020. "The day I stepped inside the academy, I imagined he too must have traversed the same path. My journey has just started I would like to thank everyone who has kept their faith in me -- my mother-in-law, my mother, family and others," said Kaul. Tears rolled down the face of Saroj Dhuandiyal, mother of Major Dhaundiyal, as her daughter-in-law told her about the ceremony. Vaishnavi, Nitikas sister-in-law, said, "Nitika picked herself quickly and decided to follow in Vibhutis footsteps. We are more than happy today." The families of the officers were not allowed to attend the ceremony due to the Covid pandemic. 'Dont give up' To women who aspire to achieve their goals in life, Kaul said: "Keep faith in yourself. There is absolutely nothing that can stop you from achieving what you have aimed at... Dont give up. Stand up again." By PTI NEW DELHI: Former NSG director general J K Dutt, who headed the commando force during the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks, died on Wednesday due to complications arising out of COVID-19, officials said here. He was 72. Family sources told PTI that the retired IPS officer was admitted to the Medanta Hospital in Gurgaon on April 14 after his oxygen saturation started declining. "He passed away today at 3:30 pm after suffering a massive cardiac arrest," one of them said. Dutt is survived by his wife, a son, who works in Noida, and a daughter, who is based in the US. J K or Jyoti Krishan Dutt was a 1971-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the West Bengal cadre. He served as the DG of the National Security Guard (NSG) from August 2006 to February 2009, after which he retired from service. He also worked in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and was once appointed as its officiating chief or director in 2005. Dutt also had a stint with the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). The NSG condoled his death through a message on Twitter. "NSG condoles the sad and untimely demise of (our) former DG and remembers his distinguished service to the Nation. "He will always be remembered for his leadership during Op Black Tornado (Mumbai 2008). May Almighty rest his noble soul in eternal peace and give strength to his family to bear the loss," the NSG said. Dutt, along with about 200 'black cats' commandos, had boarded an IL-76 aircraft of the Aviation Research Centre (ARC) to fly the first batch of the counter-terrorist strike force to Mumbai soon after the western metropolis reported multiple shootouts and public killings in the night of November 26, 2008. The elite force launched 'Operation Black Tornado' to kill the 10 Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists who had sneaked into Mumbai through sea route and laid an over 60-hour seige killing 166 people and injuring 300 more, including foreigners. The NSG commandos had operated at two luxury hotels, Taj and Oberoi Trident, and the Jewish Chabad House to flush out and finally neutralise eight LeT terrorists. While Ajmal Kasab was caught alive by Mumbai Police personnel at a check post erected in Girgaum Chowpatty that night, another terrorist accompanying him was killed on the spot. The delay in securing an aircraft to rush the NSG commandos from Delhi to Mumbai that night in 2008 led to the creation of multiple hubs of the force later, and it was subsequently given powers to haul any aircraft in case of an exigency. The then Union home minister Shivraj Patil had also boarded this flight, and it was widely reported that after the time lag in getting the plane, the commando unit faced further delays due to VIP protocols. Dutt had told PTI in an interview conducted in 2009 that the force was under pressure to use tear gas during the 26/11 terror attacks but the idea was shot down for fear of a repeat of another Russian theatre disaster. "But inside a hotel (Taj), when people are inside a room, if gas is let, how does one know that there are no heart patients, asthma patients and children inside." "I may be causing more casualties than the terrorists. In fact, if you surf the internet and look at one of the incidents that occurred in Russia. It had disastrous effects," he had told the news agency at its office on Parliament Street in the national capital. The IPS officer was referring to the 2002 Moscow theatre hostage crisis, during which Russian forces had used an unknown chemical agent inside the crowded theatre, where about 40-50 armed Chechens were holding over 850 hostages. While the forces killed about 40 attackers, the toxic substance aimed at subduing the rebels led to the death of around 130 hostages. By Express News Service JAIPUR: Rajasthan CM Ashok Gehlot has appealed to PM Narendra Modi through his tweets to get everyone vaccinated in the country as soon as possible. Gehlot warned that the third wave might be even more severe than the second one and deadly for children. Gehlot urged the Union Health Ministry to keep aside the statistics and ensure more vaccines to the states because if children start dying, the country will never forgive the government. He tweeted thrice on Tuesday. In his first tweet Gehlot said, "The Union Health Ministry should leave the data and ensure more vaccines are available to the states. If the third wave affects children, the country would never forgive you." Gehlot, in his second twee, urged that PM Modi and Union Health Minister Dr. Harshvadhan to give priority to speedy vaccination. "Narendra Modi ji and Dr. Harshvardhan ji should have put vaccine production on top priority and if necessary , other companies should also be allowed and encouraged to produce vaccines by changing the law. India is famous worldwide for its vaccine production." In his third tweet, Gehlot warned the centre saying that the third wave could have devastating affect on children. "In our country of 130 crore population, if soon there is no vaccine for everyone and the third wave affects children, then the situation of lack of oxygen and medicines like in the second wave will be many times worse in the third wave. We will not be able to save the children." The state government has placed an order with the Serum Institute for one crore vaccine doses for those aged between 18 and 44, but only 15 lakh doses have been received. Around 3.25 crore youths need around seven crore doses for full vaccination. The state government has also made a global tender for vaccine, but till now there are no responses. By ANI NEW DELHI: Nearly 10,000 villages in Chhattisgarh are completely free from COVID-19 infection as the virus has either not been able to reach these villages or those infected have already recovered, the Chief Minister's Office (CMO) informed on Thursday. Due to the micro-level arrangements made by the state government, today, out of the total 20,092 villages in Chhattisgarh, about 9,462 villages are free from Corona infection, read the release by the CMO. "At present, there is not a single COVID-19 case in these villages, this was possible due to the prompt measures initiated by the Chhattisgarh government to prevent infection from reaching these villages," it said. With the outbreak of the second wave of Corona in the urban areas of the state, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel had directed that all necessary steps should be taken to prevent infection from reaching rural areas. "Following this directive, quarantine centers set up in villages during the first wave were again made operational with stronger arrangements than before. Check-up, stay and treatment arrangements were made in these centers for persons and families returning to villages from other states or urban areas. Mitaanins, health staff, as well as Anganwadi workers and teachers, were given the responsibility to conduct a door-to-door survey to locate the infected person," the CMO said. "Anganwadi workers and field officer-employees also contributed to identifying and treating the patients with cold and fever. They also played an important role in creating awareness regarding the prevention and treatment of Coronavirus," it said. The Chief Minister's Office said that supply and distribution of essential medicines kits were ensured to every village in time and new labs were continuously established to increase testing facilities in the state. "With this, the number of daily testing of samples has increased from 22,000 to more than 70,000 per day. Along with the increase in the number of beds already available in hospitals, new Covid centers were set up and treatment facilities were extended to rural areas. The number of ambulances and other vehicles has been increased so that serious patients of rural areas can be shifted to hospitals as quickly as possible," the release said. According to the Union Health Ministry, Chhattisgarh has 53,480 active COVID-19 cases. The total number of recoveries has reached 8,93,285 and fatalities have mounted to 12,779. By PTI PATIALA: Bharatiya Kisan Union (Ekta Ugrahan) on Saturday alleged the Congress government in Punjab "failed" to make necessary arrangements to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic and demanded that it takes control of all private hospitals accused of overcharging patients. One of the largest farmers' unions in Punjab, BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) on Friday began a three-day protest in Patiala, Chief Minister Amarinder Singh's home constituency, over the state government's alleged failure to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic. On the second day of the protest, BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) leaders also alleged that there was a lack of health staff, ventilators, beds and oxygen in hospitals. "The Punjab government has miserably failed in making necessary arrangements to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic," said BKU (Ekta Ugrahan) general secretary Sukhdev Singh Kokrikalan while addressing the farmers here. He demanded the state government takes control of all private hospitals which are being accused of overcharging patients. "New staff should also be recruited in the health department which is facing acute shortage of manpower," Kokrikalan said. He asked the state government to hire more people in the health department, besides making necessary arrangements for beds, ventilators and oxygen in hospitals. The farmer leader also wanted the government to provide vaccines to villagers free of charge and that proper arrangements should be made for free testing in every village and city. A comprehensive awareness programme should also be conducted about vaccines in rural areas, he said, adding the farmers were following Covid-appropriate behaviour during the protest. Kokrikalan accused the Central and the state governments of not taking adequate steps despite knowing in advance about the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh had earlier rejected the allegation of the state government's failure in tackling the pandemic effectively. By Express News Service KOLKATA: The Prime Minister should not play a 'dirty game' and instead withdraw the letter directing to Bengals top bureaucrat to report to Delhi, West Bengal Chief minister Mamata Banerjee asserted on Saturday. Not one to cower under attack, the CM added that the BJP failed to digest its defeat in the recent elections and the saffron camp is now pursuing 'vendetta politics'. Mamata claimed that PM Narendra Modi and Union home minister Amit Shah were trying to create problems for her government at every step ever since her party came to power for the straight third term. Chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay was served the transfer notice after Mamata, whom he had accompanied, skipped a review meeting with the PM to assess Cyclone Yaas damages. "You (Modi and Shah) are not only disturbing me, but also my secretariat. You issued the letter without consulting the state government. Earlier, I wrote seeking Bandopadhyay's three-month extension as he is assigned to oversee the fight against COVID and the government's relief operation for cyclone victims. He was scheduled to retire on May 31 and the request was approved. Now you are asking him to report to the DoPT on the same day. Why? Is it because he is a Bengali bureaucrat?" asked Mamata. Many saw her statement as an extension of her poll ploy of appealing to the Bengali sentiment of the masses. Continuing the same narrative, Mamata said she was ready touch Modis feet if told to do for the sake of Bengals growth and development. "You are doing all these because you cannot digest BJPs defeat in Bengal. What is the fault of the chief secretary?...Recalling him reflects how the Centre is indulging in political vendetta," she added. Responding to the BJPs attack for not attending the review meeting, Mamata said, "I decided to attend the meet as I thought it would be between us. But later, I got to know about the revised event in which BJP leaders was invited. Then I decided to skip it." By ANI HARDOI: Alleging foul play in his son's death, a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) legislator in Uttar Pradesh's Hardoi district said he had been struggling for over a month to lodge a complaint against a private hospital's negligence, but the police is not filing an FIR. Rajkumar Aggarwal, BJP MLA from Sandila in the Hardoi district, told ANI that his son Ashish (35) died on April 26 at a hospital in Kakori where he was admitted after testing positive for COVID-19. "On April 26 morning, the oxygen level of the son was 94. He was eating and was having regular conversations with us. Suddenly in the evening, doctors told him that his oxygen level was decreasing. We arranged an oxygen cylinder from outside, but the doctors did not allow this oxygen to reach the patient, and he died," the BJP MLA said. Aggarwal alleged that his son died due to negligence of the hospital administration and doctors and added that he is trying to file an FIR to get justice for his son. "That day seven people died in that hospital. I had complained about this to the chief minister, District Magistrate, Police commissioner, and Director-General of Police, and still, my complaint was not registered. My demand is that police should analyse the CCTV footage of the hospital and see who is responsible for the death of my son. I want the responsible doctors should be punished," he further said. Uttar Pradesh is one of the worst affected states by the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. The COVID-19 death toll in Uttar Pradesh crossed 20,000 on Friday with 159 more people succumbing to the disease. A total of 2,402 new cases of COVID infection were also reported in the state. There were 52,244 active COVID cases in Uttar Pradesh till Friday. By PTI NAGPUR: An employee of an app-based food delivery firm was arrested by Nagpur city police on Saturday for allegedly molesting a woman. The 20-year-old woman had lodged a complaint that a man wearing the T-shirt of a well-known food delivery firm molested her after approaching her to ask for directions on May 22. A case under IPC section 354 (molestation) was registered at the Jaripatka Police Station here. The police contacted the company's headquarters and obtained information about its delivery personnel in the city, said Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone V) Neelotpal. After examining the mobile phone GPS data -- which can indicate a person's location during a given period -- of all personnel, the investigators zeroed in on Sooraj Malode (27), he said. Malode, a final year engineering student, had been working for the company for the last two weeks, the DCP said. He was arrested and has confessed to the crime, the officer said, adding that further probe was on. By PTI RAIPUR: Former Chhattisgarh minister and senior Congress leader Dr Shakrajit Nayak died at a private hospital here on Saturday due to post-COVID complications, his family member said. He was 78. Nayak was admitted to Raipur-based Balaji Hospital after testing positive for COVID-19. He had later tested negative for the infection. But his condition deteriorated on Saturday morning and he died of a cardiac arrest, his son and Raigarh MLA Prakash Nayak said. He is survived by his wife, two sons and three daughters. Nayak's last rites will be performed at his native village Nawapali in Raigarh district. He was twice elected as a BJP MLA in 1990 and 1998. He was among the twelve BJP MLAs, who had switched to Congress during the erstwhile Ajit Jogi government in 2002. He was a state irrigation minister in the Jogi government. He was elected as a Congress legislator from Saria constituency in 2003 and from Raigarh constituency in 2008. Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel expressed grief over Dr Nayak's death. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. By PTI NEW DELHI: Farmers will observe June 5 as 'Sampoorna Kranti Divas' by burning copies of the Central farm laws in front of the offices of BJP MPs and MLAs to mark the day when these legislations were initially promulgated as ordinances last year, the Samyukta Kisan Morcha said on Saturday. After being promulgated as ordinances, Parliament in September last year passed the proposed legislations and were later made law following presidential assent. Scores of farmers have been camping at Delhi's borders since November last year demanding the Farmers' Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020; Farmers' (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act, 2020; and the Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act, 2020 be rolled back and a new law made to guarantee minimum support price for their crops. The Samyukta Kisan Morcha, an umbrella body of protesting farmers unions spearheading the agitation, said, "On June 5, 1974, Jayaprakash Narayan had declared 'Sampoorna Kranti' and launched a mass movement against the then central government. Last year on June 5 the government had presented these anti-farmer laws as ordinances." Jayprakash Narayan had at a public meeting in Patna's Gandhi Maidan on June 5, 1974, asked the people of Bihar to observe the day as 'Sampoorna Kranti Divas' (Total Revolution) and then form a 'janata sarkar' in every village to usher in a new social order. "The SKM has decided that on June 5, 'Sampoorna Kranti Divas' will be observed all over the country. We appeal to citizens to burn the copies of three agricultural laws in front of offices of BJP MPs, MLAs and representatives...make it a mass movement and force the government to repeal the farm laws," the umbrella body of protesting farmers unions added. The protesting farmers on Saturday also paid tribute to former prime minister Chaudhary Charan Singh on his death anniversary and remembered his contribution for the development of agriculture, farmers and villages. "Chaudhary Charan Singh wanted to make the country 'aatmanirbhar' (self-reliant) in which the farmers, labourers and the people of the villages could live happily. "The distrust of farmers in this government reminds them of Chaudhary Charan Singh, who faithfully put every problem and pain of the farmers before the society and the government and resolved it," they said. According to the SKM, a large batch of farmers from Punjab's Doaba have joined the protesters at the Singhu border on Saturday and many more are expected to join in the coming days to strengthen the ongoing movement. The Centre has been maintaining that the new farm laws will free farmers from middlemen, giving them more options to sell their crops. The protesting farmers, however, say the laws would pave the way for eliminating the safety cushion of minimum support price and do away with the 'mandi' (wholesale market) system, leaving them at the mercy of big corporates. Sumi Sukanya Dutta By Express News Service NEW DELHi: The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has started a crucial project to measure the real-world effectiveness of Covishield and Covaxin, authorities told The New Indian Express. The exercise, which started earlier this week, assumes significance amid concerns that the vaccines may not be offering complete protection from hospitalisations, severe disease, and deaths, contrary to the results claimed in the clinical trials. Many people with both doses of Covishield and Covaxin have landed up in hospitals after contracting the virus, and few have even died as per anecdotal reports but there is no concrete official data on such people so far. There have also been concerns that these vaccines may be less effective against the B1617 variant of SARS CoV 2, the strain that has been driving the second wave of the pandemic in India. The exercise being led by the Chennai based National Institute of Epidemiology under the ICMR is using a case control protocol of tracking about 4,000 people at 11 sites across 10 cities in India. ALSO READ | 9,462 villages in Chhattisgarh completely 'corona-free' Tarun Bhatnagar, scientist with the NIE who is the principal investigator for the study, told TNIE that while clinical trials give the efficacy data on whether vaccines will work, effectiveness study will gauge whether vaccines are working in real world settings in preventing serious Covid. This study is also crucial to determine whether the effect of vaccines is influenced by other factors such as age, prior Covid, number of doses and variants among others, he said. The sites where the study will be carried out include AIIMS hospitals in Delhi, Jodhpur, Rishikesh and Bhubaneswar, Hamdard in Delhi, SMIMER, Surat, Government medical college, Nagpur, JSS medical college in Mysore, JIPMER, Puducherry and SRM medical college, Chennai. As part of the study, the vaccination status of nearly 1,300 severe Covid-19 patients admitted in hospitals will be compared with the vaccination status of around 2,600 persons who are found Covid-19 negative in tests. If the vaccines are effective, the proportion of the unvaccinated should be much higher among the 1,300 than among the 2,600, said an ICMR official The study is expected to yield an actual number for effectiveness in percentage terms and the results are expected within the next 2-3 months. Incidentally, West Bengal too has planned an independent project to track vaccination status and the disease outcome of every severe Covid patient admitted in 4 hospitals in Kolkata over a 7-day period. The plan is to analyse 428 patients, 107 each in 4 hospitals and assess whether vaccination status has any association with the worst clinical outcome or death. ALSO WATCH | Is B.1.617 variant spreading at a frightening speed? By PTI PUNE: Naval Chief Admiral Karambir Singh on Saturday said the nature of war is changing where there is a need to engage adversaries in all domains like land, sea, air, space and cyber, and stressed on the increased importance of "jointness" among the country's three services. Admiral Singh was speaking at the National Defence Academy (NDA) at Khadakwasla here after reviewing the Passing Out Parade of the 140th course of the academy. "The nature of war is changing and it is important to engage adversaries in all domains, like land, sea, air, space and cyber. It is for this reason that the jointness among the three services is far more important than in the past," he said. The armed forces are seeing landmark defence reforms with the establishment of the Department of Military Affairs, institution of Chief of Defence Staff(CDS) and soon to be formed theatre commands, the Navy chief said. "Traditions, identity, uniforms and customs of each service matter as do the requirements generated by the distinctive role of the three services. But jointness in the armed forces is paramount for more synergised and effective application of force in today's complex battlefield." ALSO READ| Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh performs push-ups with National Defence Academy cadets The NDA has been a symbol of jointness for 72 years and its existence enforces the core values of jointmanship, which are the founding principles of the academy, Admiral Singh said. "All of you must remember that no matter how future warfare evolves, few personal abilities and attributes remain the key for effective leadership. Leadership, as you know is the essence of an officer," he said in his address to the cadets. Admiral Singh, an alumnus of the NDA's 56th course, arrived at his alma mater on Friday, after which he visited his parent squadron "H" (Hunter Squadron) and interacted with the cadets. He presented a memento for the squadron to the cadets, an official statement said. During his visit, the Navy chief got down on his hands and did push-ups with the cadets, as is the tradition followed in the squadron, it said. The entire staff of the Admiral, NDA Commandant and other officers present there also joined him, the statement added. By PTI MUMBAI: Nashik Police Commissioner Deepak Pandey has ordered an inquiry into allegations of corruption in transfers and postings against Maharashtra Transport Minister Anil Parab and six officers on the complaint of a suspended motor vehicle inspector of the Nashik Regional Transport Office (RTO), an official said on Saturday. In his complaint, the suspended officer Gajendra Patil has mentioned the corruption to the tune of multiple crores in transfers and postings in the RTO department, he said. Meanwhile, Parab, a senior leader of the Shiv Sena, said the complaint filed against him, the state transport commissioner and five other officers is baseless, politically motivated, and aimed at defaming the Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA) government. The complaint was filed by Patil, who is posted at the Nashik RTO, via an email, sent to Panchvati police station in Nashik on May 16. He had also visited the police station on May 17, the official said. In his complaint, Patil also alleged corruption at border checkposts; settlement of cases against some private operators and illegal registration of BS-4 vehicles, he said. Patil has named state transport minister Anil Parab and six senior officers of the RTO for their alleged role in transfers and postings of RTO officials, he said. Panchvati Police had called the complainant to record his statement and submit documents, but he was not cooperating in the probe, the official said. "Considering the seriousness of the complaint, it was not justifiable to neglect it. Accordingly, Nashik Commissioner of Police Deepak Pandey issued orders for a probe by the Deputy Commissioner of Police (crime) on the the complaint," he said. Pandey has directed the DCP to submit the investigation report in the next five days, he said. DCP Zone 1 and DCP Zone 2 will assist the DCP (crime) with the required manpower and other requirements, the official said quoting the CP's orders. He said, if needed, the investigation team can take a few more days to complete the inquiry. Last month, controversial Mumbai police officer Sachin Waze, now sacked from service, had alleged in a letter he sought to submit before a court that in January 2021, Anil Parab asked him to look into an inquiry against "fraudulent" contractors listed in the Mumbai civic body and collect at least Rs 2 crore from about 50 such contractors. Parab had rejected Waze's claims and said he was ready to face any probe into the allegations. The Shiv Sena heads the Maha Vikas Aghadi government of which the NCP and the Congress are the two other constituents. The state Home department is headed by the Nationalist Congress Party's (NCP's) Dilip Walse Patil. In a tweet, Parab said suspended officer Gajendra Patil has acted out of a grudge to malign the image of him (the minister) and the MVA government as he was suspended following many complaints received from the state Transport department. The minister also alleged a "conspiracy" behind the complaint. He tweeted that the complaint filed against him, the transport commissioner and five other officers, at Panchvati police station was baseless, false, and politically motivated. "The complaint is filed with a political motive as part of which (the complainant is) trying to project that the state government cannot do anything against such ministers and then demand an inquiry by the CBI through the high court," he tweeted. "Nashik police is investigating the complaint and the truth will come out before the public," the minister said in another tweet. Notably, senior NCP leader Anil Deshmukh had resigned in April, days after former Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh wrote a letter to Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray claiming that the then state home minister had set a monthly target to collect Rs 100 crore from bars and hotels in Mumbai to some police officers and moved the high court. The HC then ordered a probe by the CBI which registered a case against Deshmukh and conducted searches at various places. By PTI NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday decried the recall of the West Bengal Chief Secretary by the Centre, alleging it was an "unpardonable" attack on the Constitution and federalism that will create anarchy in the country. Congress general secretary and chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the "abrupt, malicious and unilateral" recall of the West Bengal's chief secretary by the Modi Government has shocked the conscience of the entire nation. This is a double whammy when viewed in light of the fact that the chief secretary was granted an extension for three months by the Modi Government itself as recently as four days ago, he said, and called it a death knell for federalism. "This is a lethal blow to the Constitution of India, as also Federalism. If the Union Government is permitted to recall the All India Service Officers i.e. IAS and IPS from the states for partisan political considerations and at its whims and fancies, the entire architecture of the rule of law and the Constitution will crumble," Surjewala said in a statement. He said if the head of bureaucracy in a state is summarily removed by the Union Government, why would any IAS or IPS officer, whether a district magistrate or a secretary or a police officer, listen to and follow the orders of state government or implement any policy or programme devised by the state government. "This would lead to complete and total anarchy in the country," he alleged. "Will the prime minister, the DPOT and the BJP Government disclose the reason for the U-turn in recalling the chief secretary within four days of granting him a three months extension," he demanded. The Congress leader also said the ongoing saga in the Calcutta High Court is grossly disturbing and bodes ill for an independent judiciary. Surjewala said equally shocking for every individual having faith in the Constitution is the recent letter written by Justice Arindam Sinha, a sitting Judge of the Calcutta High Court. "Pursuant to the ongoing open differences in the Calcutta High Court in hearing and listing of cases against TMC ministers, the obviously coloured and revengeful recall of the chief secretary by Modi Government has given an unmistakable impression that Union Government is trying to dislodge a just elected government," he alleged in a statement. "The Congress calls upon every jurist, constitutional expert, elected representative and every countryman to rise in unison to condemn this unpardonable attack on India's constitutional ethos and the federal structure," Surjewala said in his statement. Congress leader Jairam Ramesh too took a swipe at the prime minister and the Union home minister, saying "this move in the middle of a pandemic and the aftermath of a devastating cyclone, shows how they are still licking their Bengal wounds post-elections". Barely four days after he was granted an extension, the Centre on Friday night sought services of West Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay and asked the state government to relieve the officer immediately, a move termed by the ruling Trinamool Congress as "forced deputation". Bandyopadhyay, a 1987-batch IAS officer of the West Bengal cadre, was scheduled to retire on May 31 after completion of 60 years of age. However, he was granted a three-month extension following a nod from the Centre. By PTI NEW DELHI: Upset over Yoga guru Ramdev's remarks on allopathy, the federation of resident doctors associations on Saturday said they will hold a nationwide protest on June 1 and observe it as a 'black day'. In a statement, the federation has also sought an "unconditional open public apology" from him for his remarks. In a tweet, the Federation of Resident Doctors Associations, India (FORDA) said, even after raising objections to statements by Ramdev, "no action has been taken yet. We hereby declaring Nationwide #BlackDayProtest on 1st June,2021 at workplace, without hampering healthcare services". "We demand unconditional open public apology from him or action against him under the relevant sections of the Epidemic Diseases Act, 1897," the statement said. It alleged that Ramdev's remarks have added to the "vaccine hesitancy" among the people. Vaccination against COVID-19 is currently underway in the country starting January 16. A row had erupted over the yoga guru's alleged remark in a viral video clip in which he was heard questioning some of the medicines being used to treat the coronavirus infection and saying that "lakhs have died from taking allopathic medicines for COVID-19". The remarks were met with vociferous protests. Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan asked him to withdraw the "extremely unfortunate" statement following which Ramdev withdrew the statement on Sunday. However, the yoga guru posed 25 questions to the Indian Medical Association (IMA) in an 'open letter' on his Twitter handle, asking if allopathy offered permanent relief for ailments. His remarks had irked the medical fraternity, upsetting both the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and Delhi Medical Association (DMA). The IMA had also lodged a police complaint against Ramdev, seeking an FIR over his "dishonest and wrongful representations" on allopathy. The IMA had earlier written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi demanding that yoga guru Ramdev be booked immediately under sedition charges for alleged misinformation campaign on vaccination and challenging government protocols for treatment of COVID-19. The apex medical body of modern doctors has also served a defamation notice on Ramdev for his alleged disparaging remarks against allopathy and allopathic practitioners, demanding an apology from him within 15 days, failing which it said it will demand a compensation of Rs 1,000 crore from the yoga guru. By PTI GUWAHATI: Three senior leaders of a banned insurgent outfit of Manipur, People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK), were allegedly killed in an intra-group rivalry in their hideouts in neighbouring Myanmar, officials said on Saturday. The PREPAK's 'acting chairman' Khumujam Ratan, 'organisation secretary' Mayengbam Joychand and another leader Rajkumar Ramananda were allegedly killed in Chin province of Myanmar and buried in a forested area there last week, security officials said. The three leaders were allegedly killed at the behest of another top leader, Aheiba Angom, who had "embezzled" more than Rs 5 crore of the outfit's funds, they said. The slain leaders had reportedly ordered an inquiry into this financial irregularities leading to their killings, the officials said. To hide the crime, Angom allegedly floated a rumour that the three leaders died in a road accident on May 23 and that their bodies were retrieved from a deep gorge and the last rites were performed in a camp of the outfit, officials said. But now, it has been established that the three PREPAK leaders were killed in an intra-group rivalry, the officials said. By PTI SRINAGAR: Two civilians were killed in firing by militants on Saturday in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. A police official said the two sustained injuries and were rushed to a hospital. The militants opened fire at the two civilians at Jablipora in Bijbehara area of the district, he said. The injured were identified as Sanjeed Ah Parray (19) and Shan Bhat (35), the official said, adding that they succumbed to injuries later. Rajesh Asnani By Express News Service JAIPUR : Political tussle in Rajasthan over vaccine wastage is intensifying. Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has refuted allegations made by the BJP of wastage of 11 lakh doses and questioned the data released on the government's CoWin app. The chief minister of the Congress government claimed that the state's vaccine wastage rate was only two per cent, which is much less than the national average of six per cent. He said the BJP was trying to mislead people. Gehlot said in the initial days of the vaccination drive, the entry of 2.95 lakh doses was made twice at many vaccination centres on CoWin, software for tracking the vaccines, due to technical problems. ALSO READ | Rajasthan woman wins Covid battle after 28 days on ventilator Due to this, the number of vaccines shown on the software was stated to be 17001220, which is not correct. Gehlot stated that earlier in the CoWIN software, the name of the beneficiary was automatically entered. If people did not get the vaccine in the coefficient of 10, then the other beneficiary could not have an offline entry, which caused the vaccine to deteriorate. "For this reason, we wrote to the Centre seeking offline registration so that the vaccine is not wasted," he said. Gehlot was apparently responding to the allegations of Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, who said that the 'Rajasthan model' of combating the pandemic was nothing but Congress mismanagement of the health service. He accused the state government of hiding the fatality and case data and doing politics to blame the Modi government. This has been said by other leaders of the opposition also, particularly from the saffron party. Chief Minister Gehlot hit back by saying that the BJP was trying to lower the morale of corona warriors. "In the virtual conference held on May 21, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan had said that there was a technical problem in the Central government portal which showed an increase in the percentage of vaccine wastage," he said. By PTI AHMEDABAD: The Gujarat government on Saturday announced a host of relief measures including monthly financial assistance for the children who have lost both their parents to COVID-19. Announcing 'Mukhyamantri Bal Seva Yojana', Chief Minister Vijay Rupani said such children will get Rs 4,000 per month till they turn 18. If they continue studies, they will get assistance of Rs 6,000 per month till they turn 21. This stipend will continue during higher studies too, Rupani said in a live webcast. All types of undergraduate and postgraduate courses will be considered valid for availing benefit under this scheme, the chief minister said. Such orphaned children will also get priority in various government schemes offering scholarships within India and abroad irrespective of income criteria, he added. The Mukhyamantri Bal Seva Yojana scheme was being launched by the state government on the eve of the completion of seven years of the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, he said. The children orphaned by COVID-19 from the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, NT-DNT and Economically Backward Classes will get the benefit of scholarships of the state Social Justice and Empowerment and Tribal Development Department irrespective of income limits. Orphaned children will also be eligible for educational loans for study in India and abroad on a priority basis irrespective of income limits under the existing 'Mukhyamantri Yuva Swavalamban Yojana'. Children above 14 can get vocational training and those above 18 can get skill development training on a priority basis at the government's expense under the Mukhyamantri Bal Seva Yojana, Rupani said. Girls orphaned by COVID-19 will get priority in admission to Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, a chain of residential schools run by the government. Their hostel expenses will also be borne by the state government. Orphaned girls will also get the benefit of the state's Kunwarbai's Mameru Scheme when they get married. Orphaned children will get medical treatment on priority under the Mukhyamantri Amrutam Maa card scheme. The guardians of such children will be covered on priority basis under the National Food Security Act so that such families can get wheat, rice, sugar and other staples at concessional rates, the chief minister said. Makarand R Paranjape By More than 20 years ago, two officers of Chinas Peoples Liberation Army published a book that subsequently acquired the status of a cult classic. In Unrestricted Warfare: Assumptions on War and Tactics in the Age of Globalization (Beijing: PLA Literature and Arts Publishing House, 1999), Col Qiao Liang and Col Wang Xiangsui outlined the essential ingredients of political warfare in plain language. Unrestricted warfare means that any methods can be prepared for use, information is everywhere, the battlefield is everywhere any technology might be combined with any other technology, and that the boundaries between war and non-war and between military and non-military affairs [are] systematically broken down. Unfortunately, such unrestricted warfare, at least when it comes to narrative rivalry, is no longer the exclusive preserve of conflicts between competing nations. During the raging pandemic, it seems as if an unrestricted information war has broken out between opposing political factions, with the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led National Democratic Alliance on one side and the opposition parties, backed by a vast array of interested civil society actors, on the other. The controversy over social media platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter has also flared up at the same time. While posting promoted content that is paid for, such media companies not only influence opinion but also make large amounts of money doing so, without fully divulging which trends are paid for and which are organic. Now, it seems, they want to take to task the very government of the land, supposedly in the name of freedom of expression, while themselves controlling, muzzling, or endorsing content without full transparency. The Delhi Police, in its investigation of the Toolkit case, hit back, calling Twitters allegations mendacious and designed to impede a lawful inquiry. For us in India, the danger is that our very freedoms and constitutional guarantees can be used to subvert and sabotage our core values and social solidarity. Our naivete, ignorance, avarice and lack of patriotism can easily be exploited to create unrest and discontent. Everywhere you look, there is out-and-out propaganda on the one hand, or soft deception and fabrication on the other. A great deal of critical acumen is required to sift the true from the false, the authentic from the motivated and the trustworthy from the malign. Long before the so-called Congress Toolkit surfaced, I began to notice the orchestrated smear campaign especially against Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and more generally, against India in the global and domestic media. Till this date we dont know conclusively whether the said toolkit is fake or has basis in fact. However, a certain coordinated campaign with a deliberate attack-Modi slant was evident. How do disaster narratives attack their chosen targets? They mitigate and deflect responsibility where they want to protect or shield, exaggerate and redirect blame where they want to assault. Such orchestration may be considered a massive exercise in media mischief. It consists not just of massaging the message but ravaging the narrative. How soon the spin turns into a witch hunt, ignoring or glossing over everything that is not grist to its misinformation mill. Since the second surge of the coronavirus began to spiral out of control in India, a worldwide campaignfrom the United States to Australia, with other notable centres in the rest of the free world including the United Kingdom, Europe and Japanbegan to unfold. Its main target was the Modi administration, including the prime minister himself, with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath following in order of invective and hatred. In the process, the underlying objective also seemed to have been to undermine Indias standing in the eyes of the world and of its own citizens. The sad fact was that most of these pieces were not written by foreigners, but by Indians themselves, whether stationed in those countries or in India. Most of these members of the erstwhile establishment, derisively called the Khan Market gang of Lutyens Delhi, had strong links of family, reciprocity and patronage with previous regimes or opposition parties. The nexus extended from coast to coast in North America and all over the English-speaking world. It was not the manner of their marshalling of facts that bothered me, albeit these were obviously slanted. Nor, indeed, their stance, which each writer was entitled to. Yes, let us admit it. We were collectively mistaken, participating in a nationwide delusion that, somehow, we might be spared the worst effects of the pandemic. Perhaps, we suffered from our own unique form of blindness, call it Indian exceptionalism for want of better terminology. For many in India, the writers of such anti-India tirades were what might be termed repeat offenders when it comes to India-bashing. Their sharply acerbic and negative portrayals of our current issues and crises have made them much more of bete noires rather than causes celebre in Indias public discourse. That they are of Indian descent but only denigrate India makes their criticism all the more galling. But I, for one, do not wish to excessively excoriate or dismiss them out of hand. Our critics can actually be our best friends. They can teach us more and hurt us less if we are willing to set our egos aside. And national egos tend to be even more inflated than individual ones, often much more in need of puncturing. India-detractors ably serve this purpose. But when the script is unvarying and unwavering from start to finish, the writers lose their credibility and ability to intervene effectively. If all they have tried to do is demonise Modi, blame him for every pitfall and misstep in Indias handling of the Covid-19 crisis, crucify him, dump the entire blame of the catastrophe on one individual from start to finish, then they have failed. More than the bad press that such writers give Modi, they also show their own disdain and derision for India. No wonder many regard them as acting in bad faith, if not betraying their motherland. (Views are personal) Makarand R Paranjape (Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla) (Tweets @MakrandParanspe) By PTI NEW DELHI: The Congress on Saturday accused BJP MP Tejasvi Surya and his uncle Ravi Subramanya of making money through vaccines and demanded that an FIR be registered against them and they be removed as MP and MLA respectively. The BJP leaders have, however, denied the charge. Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera alleged that according to an audio tape leaked through social media, Subramanya purportedly took a bribe of Rs 700 per vaccine at a private hospital in Karnataka. Surya is seen promoting the hospital in ads, he alleged. "The membership of Tejasvi Surya from the parliament should be ended immediately, we owe the people of Karnataka. The membership of Ravi Subramanya, third-time MLA from Basavanagudi, should be ended right now," he told reporters. Khera alleged that a supervisor of a private hospital clearly tells a public member that per vaccination he will have to pay Rs 900 as Rs 700 of this have to be given to Ravi Subramanya, a BJP MLA from Basavanagudi in Karnataka, who is Surya's uncle. "These are shocking, startling revelations. It is like getting caught red handed. This is a private hospital. Earlier this week, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, who is also the national president of the Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, had advertised his own picture along with this hospital, exhorting people to get vaccinated from this hospital," he alleged. "We want to ask Mr Prime Minister, this Tejasvi Surya is his blue-eyed boy. We demand answers, how on earth were vaccines being diverted from government hospitals to a private hospital," he asked. "There should be an FIR lodged against Surya and Subramanya, Mr Prime Minister," the Congress leader said. Citing the case of cash for questions in which members were expelled from Parliament, he said this is a case of cash for vaccines. "Tejasvi Surya's Parliament membership should be ended with immediately," he demanded, adding, "If you want to save the lives of people of Karnataka, this is hardly any sacrifice for you Mr Prime Minister. This is the least you can do." MG Chetan By Express News Service BENGALURU: The Special Investigation Team (SIT), probing the sleaze tape case involving former minister Ramesh Jarkiholi, is most likely to give a clean chit to him. Sources said the SIT will soon submit a B report, which means there is no evidence against him, to the court, putting an end to the case. Jarkiholi, who was Minister for Water Resources, was made to step down on March 4, after the sleaze tape was released to the media. The issue had created a political storm in the State and an SIT was formed to probe the case. Police sources said the investigation is over in the case, filed by the woman at the Cubbon Park police station on March 26, accusing Jarkiholi of using her on the pretext of allowing her to shoot a documentary related to his department. The police had registered an FIR against Jarkiholi under Sections 376C (sexual intercourse by a person in authority), 354A (sexual harassment), 504 (provoke breach of the peace), 506 (criminal intimidation), 417 (punishment for cheating) of the IPC, and 67A (transmitting material containing a sexually explicit act, etc., in electronic form) of the Information Technology Act. No evidence is found against the accused (Jarkiholi) in the case. Investigations revealed that it was the woman who contacted him, made several phone calls and spoke to him provocatively. A detailed analysis of the raw footage has shown that there was no force or harassment as alleged by the woman and its a consensual act, an officer said. Besides the sleaze tape, phone call records between Jarkiholi and the woman, and other technical aspects, the SIT also recorded statements of several persons connected to the case. The woman was subjected to several rounds of questioning, while Jarkiholi, who had claimed its a doctored video and was evasive initially, had recently appeared for enquiry, admitting that he is the man seen in the tape and it was a consensual act. Based on the findings of the probe, it is clear that Jarkiholi was honey trapped by the woman and her accomplices. A closure report (B report) will be submitted to the court soon, the officer added. While dropping the charges against Jarkiholi, the SIT will intensify the probe into his complaint filed at the Sadashivanagar police station that the entire episode was a conspiracy against him. Mahesh M Goudar By Express News Service VIJAYAPURA: A 33-year-old techie from Vijayapura has set up a 24X7 helpline to assist Covid-19 patients in finding beds, oxygen cylinders and medicines. Zahoor Kazi, who works as a software engineer at a private firm in Bengaluru, started Mercy Helpline Vijayapura (MHV) on May 14 in collaboration with doctors, activists and other software engineers. As many as 10 doctors, settled abroad (the USA, the UK and the Middle East) and in the state, have agreed to provide free tele-consultation to the patients, mainly for those in home isolation.As many as six graduates have volunteered to work with the MHV, attending calls and assisting the needy. The team has set up a helpline number 7848025025. The MHV works round-the-clock and, on an average, receives 30 calls each day from Vijayapura, Bagalkot and Belagavi. It also collaborates with at least five NGOs that help people by supporting them financially in paying hospital bills, supplying grocery kits, cremating unclaimed bodies of Covid victims and other help related to Covid and black fungus. Speaking to TNIE, Zahroor Kazi, said, Our main objective is to help the needy in such tough times. We are working in coordination with district officials. We are also creating awareness on Covid-19. The MHV has so far helped at least 15 patients in getting oxygen beds and about 10 people in getting ventilators. Also, 10 patients have availed the free tele-consultation services. Most people who call us are from urban areas. We want to reach out to those in villages too as they have limited knowledge of the disease. Now, frequency of calls to MHV has reduced owing to a dip in cases, Kazi added. Amiya Meethal By Express News Service KOZHIKODE: Since the COVID-19 outbreak, 1,798 of the 26,700-plus Accredited Social Health Activist (ASHA) workers - the foot soldiers in the states battle against COVID-19 - have so far tested positive for the virus in the state. Two of them succumbed to the disease, in Malappuram and Alappuzha. This is the figure estimated, as on May 27, by the women workforce's biggest union - the ASHA Workers' Union (CITU). Malappuram registered the maximum cases of COVID among us, at 336, and Palakkad the least, at 40," said Prema PP, state president of the union. A majority of the cases were reported during the second wave, she said. Malappuram tops in number of ASHA workers in the state, at over 3,000. Though everyone agrees that ASHA workers are right in the forefront of the fight against the pandemic, they tend to figure last while being provided with protective items like facemask, hand sanitiser and gloves. "We have to buy facemask and sanitiser on our own. There won't be enough for us after doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers get them," lamented N Lakshmi, an ASHA worker in Kumbadaje panchayat in Kasaragod. Shajimol, an ASHA worker at Thirunelly in Wayanad, said they received 500ml of sanitiser in January and the next supply happened only after three months, and that was cut short to 250ml. The life-saving equipment provided to each health centre is short of requirement, she added. This when these women have to visit Covid positive people at their houses on a daily basis. An ASHA worker gets Rs 9,000 per month now, comprising an honorarium of Rs 6,000, incentive of Rs 2,000 and a COVID risk allowance of Rs 1,000. While the state government bears the honorarium, 60 per cent of the balance amount is borne by the centre. "Our honorarium was raised from Rs 1,000 to Rs 6,000 by the previous LDF government in five years," explained Prema. Though there is a huge change in the distribution of honorarium and incentives for the past four to five months, it is not given on time even now. In Malappuram, the incentive for March has not been distributed, as is the case with the honorarium and the incentive for April. In Kozhikode too, the incentive and honorarium for April is yet to be credited. But in Kasaragod, the same has been cleared till April. By PTI THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Saturday came out in support of Malayalam film actor Prithviraj Sukumaran who is facing cyber attack allegedly from rightwing outfits over his statement opposing reforms in Lakshadweep by the islands administration. Vijayan alleged that the Sangh Parivar generally adopts an intolerant attitude towards everything and they showed the same intolerance against the actor. The sentiments expressed by the actor on Lakshadweep is that of the Kerala society and this comes naturally to anyone living in the state, he said. "Prithviraj expressed it in the right way. Like Prithviraj, everyone should be ready to come forward in such matters," the chief minister told reporters in response to a question. Opposing the reform measures adopted by the island administrator, the actor had said he was receiving "desperate messages" from people he knew in Lakshadweep, pleading with him to draw the attention of the public to the issues there. "How does disrupting the way of life of a centuries old peaceful settlement become an acceptable means of progress? How will threatening the balance of a very delicate island ecosystem with no regard for the potential consequences pave the way for sustainable development?" he had asked in a tweet. Prithviraj Sukumaran, whose film "Anarkali" was shot in the islands in 2015, had appealed to the authorities to listen to the voice of the people of Lakshadweep and trust them to know what is better for their land. "It's one of the most beautiful places on Earth, with even more beautiful people living there," he said. C Shivakumar By Express News Service CHENNAI: Should the State introduce a Credit Guarantee Corporation with significant capital to rescue the small-scale industries in the State that have been hit by the second wave of pandemic and lockdown? With hardly any income, the industrial units, which are struggling to pay electricity bills, could become non performing assets soon. While the MSME sector in the State has sought help from the Centre, Small Industries Management Association president VS Narasimhan has urged the State government to float a Credit Guarantee Corporation (CGC) to rescue struggling small industries. The CGC could guarantee loans that are offered by financial institutions, and thus encourage the institutions to offer loans to MSMEs. They could charge a premium to be paid by the borrower and the financing institution. In the event of the borrower becoming unable to repay the amount, the CGC would reimburse it. Thus it provides insurance not only to the lender, but the borrower also, Narasimhan said. The vital aspect of the scheme would be that CGC revenue comes from premiums paid by borrowers and banks, and further it could invest its large capital appropriately and earn income. As the CGC would re-insure with internationally recognised institutions, the scheme is viable and could meet the needs of banks or financial institutions, he added. The Centre has a similar institution, notes Narasimhan. It is, however, not patronised by the banks, maybe because the corpus of the organisation is not large enough and that it has no re-insurance or other income, thus forcing it to take limited risks in offering guarantee and reimbursing banks, he said. Japan and East Asian countries like South Korea and Taiwan have a similar scheme. Japan has a GCC in every region and they operate successfully. It is considered a single important step to encourage entrepreneurs. By creating a CGC, Tamil Nadu could be a model for other States to follow. The State could then offer support to small scale industrial units by offering interest free or low interest loans through the Tamil Nadu Industrial Investment Corporation and banks repayable over three or five years, guaranteeing the repayment through the State CGC. Initially, the guarantee could be offered to micro units with a capital of less than Rs 5 crore. The premium charge could be a risk perception of the lender. It is learnt that the Rangarajan Committee appointed by the government had recommended a similar scheme, he further said. Chennai District Small Scale Industries Association president TV Hariharan says that it is not easy for a State to float its own CGC. The CGC is run by the Centre and it wont allow the State to begin their own CGCs. Also, the State would not like to take up additional financial burden, if the loans are not repaid, he said. Binita Jaiswal By Express News Service CHENNAI: The sharp spike in cases in Tiruppur has wreaked havoc for the textile industry. With no drop in cases, the administration has imposed a strict lockdown in the city, where one of the biggest textile manufacturing clusters in the country is located. This has resulted in units closing down, with traders and exporters worried about completion of their export orders on time. For the past three weeks, our factories have remained shut. We dont have any idea when we can resume operations as there is no decrease in daily caseload in the region, said Raja M Shanmugam, president of Tirupur Exporters Association. The industry had recovered well from the first jolt of Covid and orderbooks of the units were full with export orders in the months that followed. Infact, export orders this year have increased by at least 15 to 20 per cent from pre- Covid levels as casual wear is in very much demand nowadays ,said Shanmugam. The exporters and manufacturers were busy working on their orders when the second wave hit them. With lockdown imminent, many migrant workers left for their native. However, the manufacturers ran the show with local labourers, but the shut down has left them all in a lurch. Increasing cases put textile industry in limbo The uncertainty prevailing over reopening of factories will cost manufacturers and exporters dearly. If we are unable to fulfil export orders on time, it will get cancelled or we will have to give them a heavy discount. Either ways, it is our loss, said Shankaran V, another exporter. Last year, the entire world was affected by the pandemic and so getting back on its feet was easier for the Tiruppur industry. But this time, what worries them is that India is only one badly affected by the second wave. So this time, customers can buy products from countries like China, Bangladesh and Pakistan, where factories are still functional and we will loose our export orders forever, said Shanmugam. Dr Venkatachalam, advisor at the Tamil Nadu Spinning Mills Association (TASMA), said, Several crores worth of yarn orders from abroad are pending for the past few weeks at spinning mills. If we cancel orders immediately, we have to pay a penalty according to the contract. Even if we bear that brunt, it will be tough to renegotiate the order from the same buyer next time. There is a sense of uncertainty among the mills, whether to receive orders or give importance to pending orders. Since all the mills are closed as the government refused to run the facility even with in-house labourers, many large mills are forced to pay holding charges for bulk containers. The view was echoed by P Mohan, treasurer of the Tiruppur Exporters Association. He said, European markets have opened for the past few weeks and almost all western countries have relaxed restrictions. They have started issuing orders for summer wear and buyers have started asking for price quotes, and samples from the units here. Many companies got the orders and some are awaiting confirmation. Garment units, who have had consistent orders, are shocked by the second wave and the resultant lockdown. Many companies have completed only half of their order and with buyers getting apprehensive and questioning exporters about the lockdown, these units fear losing out on orders. With Rs 2,000 crore business order currently in export units, I believe, we completed just half of them. There are over 10,000 garment manufacturing industries in Tiruppur, employing over six lakh people. The cluster, on an average, exports textiles worth Rs 2,500 crore a month. (With inputs from Tiruppur) By Express News Service CHENNAI: India lags behind almost all countries when it comes to devolution of fiscal powers, said Finance Minister Palanivel Thiagarajan in his maiden speech at the 43rd GST Council meeting on Friday. From resolutely Communist China to avowedly Capitalist USA India lags almost all countries, he said. The Council is becoming, in some, ways a mere ceremonial seal, a rubber-stamp authority, with the real power to create policy abrogated to (Constitutionally) ad-hoc agencies such as the TRU of the CBIC, a feeble GST Secretariat, and the quasi-Governmental GST Network. Making a strong pitch for fiscal federalism, he pointed out that with the advent of GST, there has been an increasing concentration of powers with the Centre at levels never envisioned in our Constitution. Quoting the report of the 15th Finance Commission, Thiagarajan said the promises made during the introduction of the new tax system gains in tax buoyancy, boost to GDP and formalization of the economy have failed to materialize. The gap between large organisations and MSMEs has widened due to unequal access to technology and dispute-resolution mechanisms, he said, adding that States had agreed to it only as an act of faith. The great problem, he said, was the deterioration of trust between States and the Centre, driven by a sizeable reduction in share of taxes, perceived lack of Good Faith and compassion in Centres approach to conciliation of differences, especially during Covid-19. By Express News Service CHENNAI: Chief Minister MK Stalin on Saturday announced a package of relief measures for children who have lost their parents to COVID-19 in Tamil Nadu. A decision in this regard was taken at a high-level meeting chaired by the Chief Minister at the secretariat. Children who have lost their parents due to this infection will get the following relief assistance from the state government: 1. Rs 5 lakh will be deposited in banks in the names of children who have lost their parents due to COVID-19 and the amount with interest will be given to them when they complete the age of 18; 2. Admission will be given to these children in government homes and hostels on priority basis; ALSO READ: Chennai couple on mission to dole out dishes to those in despair 3. State government will bear all educational expenses of these children upto graduation including hostel fees etc; 4. Rs 3 lakh will be given as immediate relief assistance to women who have lost her husbands due to this infection and have children; similar assistance will be given to men who have lost their wives and have children; 5. Rs 3,000 per month will be given to these children who are being taken care of by a relative or a guardian, till they attain the age of 18; 6. A special committee at the district level will monitor the educational and other well being of these children; 7. All government welfare schemes will be extended to these children on priority basis; a man or woman who have lost their life partner and have children too will get this concession; 8. A steering committee headed by the Finance Secretary and composed of NGOs and other officials will be constituted to form guidelines for implementing the above relief assistance to children who have lost their parents to COVID-19. By PTI BEIJING: China on Saturday successfully launched an automated cargo spacecraft carrying supplies, equipment and propellant for the country's new space station Tianhe. The Long March-7 Y3 rocket, carrying Tianzhou-2, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan, the China Manned Space Agency announced. Spacecraft Tianzhou-2 is scheduled to dock with core the module of the space station Tianhe to deliver supplies, equipment and propellant. It was launched after over a week's delay due to "technical reasons". Tianzhou-2 was launched for the first space station supply mission despite the initial delay, state-run Global Times reported. The Tianhe module will act as the management and control hub of the space station Tiangong, meaning Heavenly Palace, with a node that could dock with up to three spacecraft at a time for short stays. China successfully launched the core module of its space station on April 29 as part of its aim to complete the construction of the facility by the end of next year. It was launched using China's biggest rocket the Long March-5B Y2 which after placing the core module caused a global stir as it fell back to Earth. Its remnants safely crashed into the Indian Ocean near the Maldives on May 9 with no reports of damage. The hurtling debris of the rocket evoked sharp criticism from the US, NASA and international astrophysicists that Beijing has won a reckless gamble the uncontrolled fall of the rocket stroked fears that it may fall into inhabited areas. NASA Administrator Senator, Bill Nelson, criticized China for leaving the rocket to make an uncontrolled re-entry. "Spacefaring nations must minimize the risks to people and property on Earth of re-entries of space objects and maximize transparency regarding those operations," Nelson said in a statement. "It is clear that China is failing to meet responsible standards regarding their space debris. It is critical that China and all spacefaring nations and commercial entities act responsibly and transparently in space to ensure the safety, stability, security, and long-term sustainability of outer space activities," Nelson said. A major space power, China launched its first Mars mission 'Tianwen-1' on July 23 this year. The Mars spacecraft which included an orbiter, lander and rover is currently exploring the Red planet. The Chinese space station was expected to be a competitor to the aging International Space Station (ISS) which is a modular space station in low Earth orbit. It is a multinational collaborative project involving five participating space agencies which included NASA (US), Roscomos (Russia), JAXA (Japan), ESA (Europe), and CSA (Canada). China's Tiangong is expected to be the sole space station once the ISS retires. Saturday's launch was the first time that the space station cargo transportation system, composed of the Tianzhou spacecraft and Long March-7 rockets, was put into use, state-run Xinhua news agency reported. More than 160 large and small packages, including supplies for astronauts and space science equipment, and two tonnes of propellant have been loaded into the cargo freighter, according to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). By PTI WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that he had a productive meeting with visiting External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar during which they discussed the bilateral ties, COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation and Afghanistan and vowed to work together to address areas of shared concern. Jaishankar, the first Indian Cabinet minister to visit the US since Joe Biden became president on January 20, met Blinken on Friday. "Blinken welcomed Jaishankar to the Department of State, where he reaffirmed the US administration's commitment to deepening the US-India Comprehensive Global Strategic Partnership," State Department spokesperson Ned Price said after the meeting. "Productive discussion today with Dr S Jaishankar on regional security and economic priorities to include US COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation, and our support for Afghanistan," Blinken said. "As friends, we will work together to address these areas of shared concern," Blinken said in a tweet, hours after the meeting with Jaishankar at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department. Productive discussion today with @DrSJaishankar on regional security and economic priorities to include U.S. COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation, and our support for Afghanistan. As friends, we will work together to address these areas of shared concern. pic.twitter.com/BtoGJTUGEr Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 28, 2021 It has been more than a year since the military standoff between India and China erupted in eastern Ladakh on May 5, 2020 during which there were fatalities on both sides for the first time in 45 years. They have made limited progress in achieving disengagement at the Pangong lake area while negotiations for similar steps at other friction points remained deadlocked. In his tweet, Jaishankar said that he had a "productive discussion" with Blinken on various aspects of bilateral cooperation as well as regional and global issues. "Covered the Indo-Pacific and the Quad, Afghanistan, Myanmar, UNSC matters and other international organisations," he said. "Also focused on Indo-US vaccine partnership aimed at expanding access and ensuring supply. Appreciated the strong solidarity expressed by the US at this time. Today's talks have further solidified our strategic partnership and enlarged our agenda of cooperation," Jaishankar said. In an interaction with a group of Indian reporters, responding to a question, Jaishankar did not mention if China was discussed in particular. "Our discussion was on the entire Indo-Pacific region. The discussion was on security issues in the Indo-Pacific region," he said. India, the US and several other world powers have been talking about the need to ensure a free, open and thriving Indo-Pacific in the backdrop of China's growing military manoeuvring and aggression in the region. The Chinese military is also actively eying the strategic Indian Ocean region to step up Beijing's influence. China claims nearly all of the disputed South China Sea, though Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam all claim parts of it. Beijing has built artificial islands and military installations in the South China Sea. In 2017, India, Australia, Japan and the US gave shape to the long-pending proposal of setting up the 'Quad' or the Quadrilateral coalition to counter China's aggressive behaviour in the Indo-Pacific region. Observing that the US is India's strategic partner and has a strong relationship with it, Jaishankar said that it is but natural that the two countries discuss their challenges. The talks at the ministerial level are basically at an assessment level, he said. The issue of S-400, a multi-billion-dollar missile system that Indian plans to buy from Russia, was not raised in any of the meetings, he said. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia Dean Thompson said that there were just discussions of developments on the India-China border. "I'm not going to characterise the discussions beyond that other than to say we continue to watch the situation very closely and hope that everything can be resolved peaceably as things go forward," he said. According to the State Department, the leaders discussed a broad range of issues, including COVID-19 relief, efforts to strengthen Indo-Pacific cooperation through the Quad, and a shared commitment to combating the climate crisis and enhancing multilateral cooperation, including at the UN Security Council. "Blinken and Jaishankar also discussed regional developments, the coup in Burma (Myanmar) and continuing support for Afghanistan," Price said, adding that the two leaders pledged to continue their cooperation on shared economic and regional security priorities. Thompson earlier told reporters that the meeting demonstrated "our deep commitment to the partnership and to strengthening it in the years to come". "Today's meeting between Blinken and Jaishankar, one of the first in-person visits that we have had in Washington since the beginning of the pandemic, showcased the breadth and depth of our relationship with India, which we view as one of the most important partnerships in the region and the world," he said. By PTI LAHORE: Pakistani security forces on Saturday arrested three terrorists belonging to different proscribed organisations and recovered 400 kg of explosives from them in the country's Punjab province. The explosive material recovered from them was to be used to target law enforcers and government buildings, the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) said in a statement on Saturday. The three terrorists, arrested from different parts of Punjab province, belong to banned separatist group Balochistan Republican Army (BRA), Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and Sipah-e-Sihaba Pakistan (SSP). "Keeping in view the recent potent threat of terrorism across Pakistan particularly target killing of police officials, the CTD Punjab conducted extensive intelligence based operations all across the province to avert any untoward incident. During the last seven days, CTD conducted 46 operations in different districts of the province, in which 47 suspects have been interrogated. During these operations, three terrorists have been arrested," the CTD said. The terrorists are identified as Ibrahim Deen (BRA), Shabar Raza (TTP) and Mihammad Qasim (SSP). The terrorists were planning to attack government installations, main transmission lines and gas pipelines. SSP terrorist Qasim was running sectarian websites and involved in propaganda and sharing hate material on social media against Shia sect. Help support your local hometown newspaper/website. Independent local news reporting matters. Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription, for as little as $3, so we can continue to provide independent local reporting on our communities. CANBERRA, Australia (AP) Australia considers the incarceration of a Chinese Australian writer who has been tried in Beijing for alleged espionage a case of arbitrary detention, the foreign minister said. Yang Hengjun faced a closed trial on Thursday. The court deferred its verdict to a later date. Given our enduring concerns about this case, including the lack of detail as to the charges and the investigation made available to Dr. Yang and to Australia, we consider this to be an instance of arbitrary detention of an Australian citizen, Foreign Minister Marise Payne said in a statement Friday. Australia first warned its citizens of the risk of arbitrary detention if they visited China in a travel advisory in July last year. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade advised that Chinese authorities have detained foreigners because theyre endangering national security, adding that Australians may also be at risk. The Chinese Embassy in Australia dismissed the warning as ridiculous and disinformation. Australian Embassy officials visited Yang in detention on Friday and gave assurances that Australia stood by him and his family at this very difficult time, Payne said. It was the 20th consular visit since Yang was taken into custody on arrival in China in January 2019. Ambassador Graham Fletcher was denied entry to the court on Thursday. Payne said Australian officials presence at the court entrance reinforced her governments support for Yang and our deep concerns with what continues to be a closed and opaque process. Chinese authorities have not released any details of the charges against Yang, a novelist who reportedly formerly worked for Chinas Ministry of State Security as an intelligence agent. Yang has denied the accusation against him, and while a conviction is virtually certain, it isnt clear when the verdict will be handed down. The espionage charge carries penalties ranging from three years in prison to the death penalty. China's Foreign Ministry said China was following international practice in barring observers from attending a case involving state secrets. The trial comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two countries, brought on by Chinese retaliation against Australian legislation against covert foreign interference in its domestic politics, the exclusion of telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia's 5G phone network, and calls for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak that was first detected in China in late 2019. Beijing has essentially suspended all but the most routine contacts between the sides, while state media and the Foreign Ministry routinely attack Australia as adopting anti-Chinese policies at the behest of the United States, Chinas main geopolitical rival. Australian journalists Michael Smith of the Australian Financial Review and Bill Birtles of the Australian Broadcasting Corp. fled China in September after sheltering in Australian diplomatic compounds following demands for questioning by Chinese authorities. They were allowed to depart China under a deal brokered between the two governments, leaving Australian media without a physical presence in the country. Before their departure, Chinese police questioned both journalists about Australian citizen Cheng Lei, a business news anchor for CGNT, Chinas English-language state media channel, who had been detained a month earlier. China says Cheng has been lawfully detained on suspicion of violating Chinese national security laws. China has blocked Australian exports, including beef, wine, coal, lobsters, wood and barley. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) California workforce regulators recommended Friday that the state stick with a July 31 deadline for updating certain employer pandemic safety rules instead of adopting Gov. Gavin Newsom's mid-June lifting of mask and physical distancing requirements in most social settings. Revised rules to be considered Thursday by the California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board have relatively few changes from an earlier proposal that drew extensive criticism from business and agricultural groups. Cal/OSHA's staff withdrew their initial proposal last week so they could take into account new U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance that fully vaccinated people can now skip face coverings and distancing in virtually all situations. California is delaying that recommendation until June 15 in social settings, and business groups hoped the workplace regulators would adopt the same date. The timing of the standard board's emergency hearing next week means the new regulations could take effect in mid-June, but several of the proposed revised rules affecting masking and physical distancing still include a date six weeks later. We are disappointed to see that this new revised draft does not correspond to the governors June 15th opening, and that vaccinated individuals will have to continue to wear masks in the workplace," California Chamber of Commerce policy advocate Rob Moutrie said in an email. That broad mask requirement could mean a shortage of the most effective N95 masks for healthcare workers and agricultural workers as the state enters what is expected to be another drought-driven wildfire season, Moutrie and other critics said. One exception to universal mask-wearing would be employees in a room where everyone is fully vaccinated. The masking requirement will require employers to track vaccination status, stockpile N95 respirators and create policies and procedures for two classes of people: vaccinated and non-vaccinated, said Helen Cleary, director of the Phylmar Regulatory Roundtable, a coalition of large businesses. California Occupational Safety and Health Standards Board regulations apply in almost every workplace in the state, and its pandemic standards apply to all employees except those working from home or where there is a single employee who does not have contact with other people. The rules would remain in effect into early next year, even as coronavirus cases plummet after a devastating winter spike and more people are vaccinated. The states infection rate remains less than 1% and more than 17 million of the states 40 million residents are fully vaccinated, health officials said Friday. It still says nothing about vaccines even though a substantial fraction of the population is now vaccinated, said California Farm Bureau director of employment policy Bryan Little. Were going to have a regulation that doesnt really reflect the reality that were dealing with. Worker advocates have said having half the population not fully vaccinated means precautions are still needed. Board members said last week that they are inclined to keep revised workplace safety rules in place even after July 31 for fear of a new surge or breakthrough by virus mutations. Little argued for lifting some of the safety restrictions when 80% of an employer's workers are vaccinated instead of the 100% required under the proposed regulations. That plus the natural resistance acquired by those who contracted the virus and recovered means "youre at herd immunity at that point, he said. Under the proposed revision, until July 31 all employees working indoors or at outdoor events with more than 10,000 people would have to be separated by at least six feet unless they are wearing the most effective N95 masks, which must be provided by their employer. Some restrictions for mask-wearing during transit would also lift July 31. Starting July 31, employers would be required to provide N95 masks for voluntary use by employees working indoors or at outdoor mega events who are not fully vaccinated. The staff made some proposed revisions, including requiring that employees in some situations be tested for the virus once a week instead of twice weekly. They also made clear that retailers, restaurateurs and others would be responsible only for their own employees, not members of the public who enter their place of business. Free access for current print subscribers As a home delivery subscriber, you get free unlimited digital access to news-daily.com including stories, photos, obituaries, e-edition and more on your computer, tablet or phone. All you need is your print subscription account number and your last name. Don't know your subscription number? Email access@news-daily.com with your delivery address. Activate your account now. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Scattered showers and thunderstorms. High around 95F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 50%.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Champaign, IL (61820) Today Mixed clouds and sun with scattered thunderstorms. High around 95F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Reporter Mary Schenk is a reporter covering police, courts and breaking news at The News-Gazette. Her email is mschenk@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@schenk). Willoughby Hills Be wary of the caller ID spoofing scam, mayor says Longview, TX (75601) Today Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 92F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 76F. Winds light and variable. Artificial intelligence (AI) technology developed by researchers at the University of Waterloo is capable of assessing the severity of COVID-19 cases with a promising degree of accuracy. A study, which is part of the COVID-Net open-source initiative launched more than a year ago, involved researchers from Waterloo and spin-off start-up company DarwinAI, as well as radiologists at the Stony Brook School of Medicine and the Montefiore Medical Center in New York. Deep-learning AI was trained to analyze the extent and opacity of infection in the lungs of COVID-19 patients based on chest x-rays. Its scores were then compared to assessments of the same x-rays by expert radiologists. For both extent and opacity, important indicators of the severity of infections, predictions made by the AI software were in good alignment with scores provided by the human experts. Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor and co-founder of DarwinAI, said the technology could give doctors an important tool to help them manage cases. Assessing the severity of a patient with COVID-19 is a critical step in the clinical workflow for determining the best course of action for treatment and care, be it admitting the patient to ICU, giving a patient oxygen therapy, or putting a patient on a mechanical ventilator." Alexander Wong, Systems Design Engineering Professor and Co-Founder, DarwinAI "The promising results in this study show that artificial intelligence has a strong potential to be an effective tool for supporting frontline healthcare workers in their decisions and improving clinical efficiency, which is especially important given how much stress the ongoing pandemic has placed on healthcare systems around the world." VK6WIA NewsWest NewsWest for Sunday 30th May 2021 is the Club Focus edition, where weve given space to Amateur Radio clubs to strut their stuff. Weve got the regular Club Focus series discussing what Not for Profit means, Roys Amateur Radio Helpline, and a discussion on why we need the Wireless Institute of Australia, or something like it. Theres another update on PerthTech. Youll be hearing more of these as we go because we start the PerthTech plan with a blank slate and build it up as we go. Steve tells us about his trip to Christmas Island, where hes activating VK9XX - notice the use of the present tense? Hes there now. Weve got more to tell you in this bulletin, and its all about Amateur Radio, and its all relevant to Western Australia. Find out more about NewsWest and Amateur Radio in Western Australia by visiting our website, vk6.net NewsWest invites contributions to the news programme. You can send contributions by email to newswest@vk6.net You'll find links to resources on the vk6.net website where you'll also find information on where to hear the news, where to download it, how to rebroadcast this news and how to register your callbacks. If you want to join in, you can. Send an email to newswest@vk6.net and we'll be happy to respond. Send your stories, tall or true, audio production, scripts, events, updates, membership information, meeting announcements, AGM alerts, contests, swap-meets and more to us and we'll happily present your contribution on-air. Please register your callback, either on-air, or on-line. Visit vk6.net and click on the callback button. Originating in Perth Western Australia NewsWest is produced by WA Amateur Radio News for listeners on-air, on-line and on-demand. NewsWest audio (mp3) is available for download from our website, vk6.net. Click on the LISTEN tab. For Podcast simply search for "Newswest" on any of the major Podcatcher sites. Thanks to Ed DD5LP Whichever way you're listening, whether you're a licensed radio amateur or not, experienced or just a beginner, old or young, thanks for being here and thanks for joining us. Get your copy: http://vk6.net/news/ NewsWest is broadcast and relayed across VK6 and far beyond by many transmitters and operators. Details can be found on vk6.net. The main VK6 NewsWest broadcast occurs at 09:30 WST (01:30 UTC). If you'd like to broadcast this news in your local area, you can. There are no restrictions on broadcasting NewsWest, other than that you must broadcast it as supplied without any modification. We ask that broadcasters advise us that they're transmitting the news. Our address is newswest@vk6.net The American Medical Association (AMA) today announced a new effort aimed at ensuring future physicians and health care professionals in the U.S. are uniformly trained on how to consistently take accurate blood pressure (BP) measurements. We know that inaccurate blood pressure measurements are linked to errors in diagnosing and treating high blood pressure, and may lead to more adverse outcomes, yet medical and health profession students are not currently receiving consistent training in BP measurement, said AMA President Susan R. Bailey, M.D. The AMAs new series of online education modules addresses the current lack of a standardized curriculum on evidence-based blood pressure measurement techniques offered at health care schools nationwide, including medical, nursing, physician assistant, medical assistant, and pharmacy. We believe this step is critical given that the percentage of American adults who have their blood pressure under control is significantly declining. Experts point to accurate BP measurement as an important step to improve hypertension control for the more than 120 million U.S. adults with high BP. While measuring BP is a common procedure and BP guidelines recommend periodic re-training, research shows that student training in BP measurement is often brief, with varying training models among health care schools. Additionally, some health care schools do not provide any training on self-measured blood pressure (SMBP), which is an important component of care for patients with hypertension. And, despite research highlighting a decline in students BP measurement skills in the months following initial training, many health care schools do not currently offer a BP measurement refresher course. The AMAs new Student BP Measurement Essentials seriesavailable for free on the AMA Ed HubTMoffers three modules to help address these gaps in training, including: BP Measurement Essentials: Student Edition Taken during initial clinical skills (e.g., vital signs) training, this module will help students understand the importance of accurate BP measurement, how to properly prepare and position a patient for BP measurements, perform BP measurements using a variety of devices, and learn about SMBP. Taken during initial clinical skills (e.g., vital signs) training, this module will help students understand the importance of accurate BP measurement, how to properly prepare and position a patient for BP measurements, perform BP measurements using a variety of devices, and learn about SMBP. SMBP Essentials: Student Edition Taken later in school once students become more familiar with foundational BP care, this module provides students with a deeper understanding of SMBPincluding how to choose the proper equipment and perform SMBP measurements accurately and identify resources to help patients measure their own BP correctly. Taken later in school once students become more familiar with foundational BP care, this module provides students with a deeper understanding of SMBPincluding how to choose the proper equipment and perform SMBP measurements accurately and identify resources to help patients measure their own BP correctly. BP Measurement Refresher: Student Edition This module, which is designed to be taken before students begin clinical experiences and repeated as needed during clinical experiences, provides students with a refresher on preparing and positioning a patient for BP measurement and performing BP measurements using different devices. To expedite adoption of the new BP measurement training series, the AMA is collaborating with five medical schoolsthe majority of which serve a student body where one or more groups of students have been historically under-represented in medicine, including Alabama College of Osteopathic Medicine, Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California, Morehouse School of Medicine, UC Davis School of Medicine, and UNC School of Medicine. Each school plans to incorporate the modules into their fall 2021 curriculum. The AMA will quickly adapt learnings from the fall rollout to expand adoption of the modules across all U.S. health care schools in 2022. This effort is part of AMAs ongoing commitment to drive the future of medicine by reimagining medical education, training and lifelong learningensuring medical students are equipped to provide care in the rapidly-evolving health care environment given the increased use of telehealth and home blood pressure monitoring. Susan R. Bailey, M.D, AMA President In 2019, the AMA and the American Heart Association (AHA) co-developed an e-learning module, Achieving Accuracy: BP Measurement, to provide health care professionals with guideline-recommended training on proper BP measurement. Improving the health of the nation is a top priority for the AMA. The AMA has been working over the past eight years to help improve health outcomes associated with cardiovascular disease, and will continue to further these efforts to address the growing burden of high blood pressure in the United States. To mark World Vape Day, BAT has today published a comprehensive review of the scientific evidence for vaping products (e-cigarettes), their potential health effects and their role in Tobacco Harm Reduction. This review shows that, over the past decade, the number of people who incorrectly believe vaping is as harmful or more harmful than smoking conventional cigarettes has risen in the UK, Europe, and the U.S. This is despite several scientific reviews , , published in the same period showing that vaping products manufactured in accordance with quality standards present less risk to health than cigarettes. According to population modeling studies cited in the review, a significant reduction in premature deaths could be achieved if current smokers switched exclusively to vaping rather than continuing to smoke. These modeling studies use population data and simulations to project the health-related outcomes associated with the long-term risks of smoking versus vapour use over time. This paper is a comprehensive summary of more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers and other evidence published by an estimated 50 institutions over the past decade." Dr David O'Reilly, Director of Scientific Research, Research and Development-British American Tobacco "The scientific evidence is clear - but consumer misperceptions remain. In England and the United States, only one in three adults is aware that there is scientific evidence available, including from leading public health authorities, that supports the conclusion that vaping is less harmful than smoking. "The reality is that many leading public health authorities have reported that vaping is less harmful than smoking, and that this harm reduction potential can be maximised if those smokers who would otherwise continue to smoke switch exclusively to using vapour products. "We hope this paper will be used as a resource by public health authorities, and support adult smokers seeking to understand the breadth of scientific evidence that exists to inform their choices." "Reducing the health impact of our business is at the heart of our purpose - to create A Better Tomorrow by offering the widest range of reduced-risk alternatives to cigarettes," David O'Reilly continued. "This is why we aim to have 50 million consumers of our New Category products, which include our vapour product range, Vuse, by 2030." This review highlights that vaping products can effectively compete with combustible cigarettes by providing nicotine and the sensorial enjoyment sought by smokers. Therefore, access to high-quality, extensively tested and well-regulated vapour products is crucial. However, vaping will only be considered a compelling alternative to smoking if public health institutions unambiguously and accurately inform smokers that switching completely to vaping can reduce their health risks. The paper also reviews current vapour product regulations, and notes that these regulations largely relate only to labelling, ingredients and taxation - but not manufacturing standards. This has resulted in highly variable product quality standards globally. The review stresses the need for consistent product manufacturing regulations and the universal adoption of robust product stewardship standards by manufacturers with the aim of increasing public confidence in vaping. The Biden administration said Friday that it has no timeline on whether it will allow states to import drugs from Canada, an effort that was approved under President Donald Trump as a key strategy to control costs. Six states have passed laws to start such programs, and Florida and Colorado are the furthest along in plans to get federal approval. The Biden administration said states still have several hurdles to get through, including a review by the Food and Drug Administration, and such efforts may face pressures from the Canadian government, which has warned its drug industry not to do anything that could cause drug shortages in that country. "The period for FDA to review a SIP [ importation program] Proposal is indeterminate," the Biden administration wrote in a court filing late Friday seeking to dismiss a lawsuit from the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group. Drugmakers are asking the court to overturn the rule set by the Health and Human Services Department in October that for the first time approved allowing states to import drugs from Canada. The Biden administration said the lawsuit was moot because it's unclear when or if any states would get an importation plan approved. Drug importation has been hotly debated for decades, with many states and advocates believing it will help lower the prices Americans pay while the drug industry contends it would undercut the safety of the U.S. drug supply. Critics note most brand-name drugs sold in the United States are manufactured abroad. Friday's court filing had been eagerly anticipated, as it was the first time the Biden administration weighed in on the issue. Promises to curb high drug prices have been a standard sound bite of political campaigns, and importation enjoys broad public support. Supporters of drug importation range the political spectrum from progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to Florida's conservative Republican governor, Ron DeSantis. They argue Americans should not pay more for drugs than consumers in other countries. Rachel Sachs, a health law expert at Washington University in St. Louis, said the rhetoric in the court filing is probably "disheartening" to DeSantis and other supporters hoping states' importation programs would be approved soon. "They are laying out that there is no time limit on the FDA and there are many steps that states have to undergo before approval," she said. Supporters of drug importation say they still have hope, especially if the court agrees to the administration's effort to throw out the suit. "While articulating possible hurdles that may prevent state drug importation programs from moving forward, the Biden administration's motion to dismiss PhRMA's lawsuit keeps alive opportunities for more Americans to benefit from drug importation," said Gabriel Levitt, president of Pharmacychecker.com, which verifies online foreign pharmacies for customers. Importing drugs from Canada, where government controls keep prices lower, has been debated for decades in the U.S. A 2003 federal law gave the executive branch permission to do it, but only if certified as safe and cost effective by the HHS secretary. Then-HHS Secretary Alex Azar announced in September that he would become the first to do that, and the department issued its rule in October. Florida, Colorado, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico and Vermont are pursuing efforts to import drugs. PhRMA filed its suit in November in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. In the court filing late Friday, the Biden administration said the FDA could reject state importation plans for many reasons, including safety concerns and lack of significant savings for consumers. In an emailed statement, PhRMa spokesperson Nicole Longo said: "We continue to believe the Trump Administration violated federal law when it finalized its rule permitting state-sponsored drug importation from Canada without proper certification and, in doing so, putting the health and safety of Americans in jeopardy." Canada has opposed efforts to send its drugs to the United States, fearing it could exacerbate shortages there. Last year, Canadian health regulators warned companies against exporting any drugs that could lead to shortages. During the presidential campaign, Joe Biden supported drug importation. His HHS secretary, Xavier Becerra, voted for the 2003 Canadian drug importation law as a member of Congress. In most circumstances, the FDA says it's illegal for individuals to import drugs for personal use. Yet, for nearly 20 years, storefronts in Florida have helped people buy drugs online from pharmacies in Canada and other nations at typically half the U.S. price. The FDA has periodically cracked down on the operators but has allowed the stores to stay open. The Florida legislature in 2019 approved the state drug importation program, and the state submitted its proposal to the federal government last year. While DeSantis has boasted of the strategy at news conferences in the retiree-heavy community of The Villages, the state program would have little direct effect on most Floridians. That's because the state effort is geared to getting lower-cost drugs to state agencies for prison health programs and other needs and for Medicaid, the state-federal health program for the poor. Medicaid enrollees already pay little or nothing for medications. Florida has identified about 150 drugs many of them expensive HIV/AIDS, diabetes and mental health medicines that it plans to import. Insulin, one of the most expensive widely used drugs, is not included in the program. DeSantis said the importation plan would save the state between $80 million and $150 million. The state has a $96 billion budget, he said. "Its been under review enough, DeSantis said Friday, hours before the Biden administration's court filing. We have followed every regulation. Weve met every requirement that we were asked to meet, and we want now to be able to get this final approval so that we can finally move forward. Christina Pushaw, a spokesperson for DeSantis, said the governor was disappointed with the Biden court filing. "Governor DeSantis calls on the Biden Administration to step out of the way of innovation and act immediately to approve Florida's plan that provides safe and effective drugs to drive down prescription costs," she said in an email to KHN. The governor appeared at LifeScience Logistics in Lakeland, Florida, where state regulators worked with the company to construct an FDA-compliant warehouse to process pharmaceuticals from Canada. We're ready, willing and able, and I think that this could be really, really significant," DeSantis said. He said the warehouse could begin receiving drugs from Canada within 90 days if the state were to get approval from Washington. LifeScience Logistics officials said they are working with Methapharm Specialty Pharmaceuticals, which has offices near Toronto and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to act as its Canadian wholesaler. Quality checks would be done on the drugs in Canada and again in Florida, said Richard Beeny, CEO of LifeScience Logistics. LifeScience has begun early talks on negotiating prices with drug manufacturers that would deliver medications to Methapharm, which in turn would send drugs to the Lakeland warehouse. "There is broad interest in the program," Beeny said about drug companies wanting to participate. "But the pending suit is a bit of a roadblock, so we have to wait and see how that pans out." Unlike Florida's plan, Colorado's Canadian importation program would help individuals buy the medicines at their local pharmacy. Colorado also would give health insurance plans the option to include imported drugs in their benefit designs. Mara Baer, a health consultant who has worked with Colorado on its proposal, said the Biden decision leaves open the question of whether state importation plans might eventually be approved. "HHS could have let the rule fall and they did not, which is important given the challenges facing Congress in moving major drug pricing reform in the short term," she said. Varying immune response to vaccinations could be countered with microbiota-targeted interventions helping infants, older people and others to take full advantage of the benefits of effective vaccines, Australian and US experts say. Image Credit: Flinders University A comprehensive review in Nature Reviews Immunology concludes that evidence is mounting in clinical trials and other studies that the composition and function of individuals' gut microbiota are "crucial factors" in affecting immune responses to vaccinations. Never before has the need been greater for robust and long-lasting immunity from our vaccination programs, particularly in low and middle-income countries, and for populations at increased risk of infectious diseases such as infants or the elderly." David Lynn, Lead Researcher and Professor, Flinders University Lynn is also the EMBL Australia Group Leader based at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). Vaccine protection is induced by B cells that produce antigen-specific antibodies but T cells also help mediate the protection induced by some vaccines. "Our study found increasing evidence that gut microbiota - which is highly variable between individuals, over the course of life and between various populations around the world - as a crucial factor modulating B and T cell immune responses to vaccinations," says co-author, Flinders University PhD candidate Saoirse Benson. "A better understanding of how the microbiota regulates these vaccine responses may also inform the use of more tailored population-specific adjuvants to enhance responses to vaccinations," she says. "There is more we can do to optimize existing vaccine effectiveness by understanding more about gut microbiota and interventions such as prebiotics and probiotics." The research group uses germ-free mice, or mice with no microbiome, to assess which bacteria are best at supporting immune responses to vaccination. Professor Lynn's research group is also currently analyzing the results of a clinical study of how the impact of antibiotics on the gut microbiome of infants may affect immune responses to routine childhood vaccinations. In separate studies, the lab is also assessing COVID-19 vaccine immune responses and coordinating the Australian BRACE trial funded by the Gates Foundation to test whether the BCG vaccine can protect healthcare workers who contract COVID-19 from developing severe symptoms. An analysis led by North Carolina State University researchers found counties with more socially vulnerable populations had a higher density of natural gas pipelines overall. The findings suggest counties that are more socially vulnerable are also at greater risk of facing water and air pollution, public health and safety issues, and other negative impacts associated with the pipelines. We know that the network, as it stands today, is already distributed in such a way that any negative impacts fall disproportionately on vulnerable communities. Right now, when regulators evaluate the social impacts of these projects, they are treated in isolation, and not as part of a massive network that affects more than 70 percent of all the counties in the U.S." Ryan Emanuel, Study Lead Author and Professor, Forestry and Environmental Resources, NC State University In the analysis, researchers used a measure of social vulnerability created in 2018 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to assess 3,142 U.S. counties. The index combines information on household composition, age, disability status, race or ethnicity, language, and other factors to quantify a county's ability to bounce back from a disaster. Then, using data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration, researchers evaluated how the approximately 229,000 miles of pipeline network in the United States mapped on top of counties, stratified by their social vulnerability scores. "We studied the gas gathering and transmission pipelines, which are the really large and high-pressure pipelines that are meant to transport natural gas across regions or the country," Emanuel said. "We know that every year, there are explosions on transmission pipelines, and we have records for those accidents above a certain size. There are also air quality impacts at compressor stations that power them, and environmental damages that occur during construction." For the 2,261 counties with pipelines in them - about 72 percent of U.S. counties - researchers found a correlation between counties with higher scores of social vulnerability, and the density of pipeline infrastructure. "In general, the denser the pipeline network, the higher the social vulnerability score," said study co-author Louie Rivers III, associate professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. "The indication is the most vulnerable populations are also vulnerable to exploitation in terms of what people do with the land near them." For planning the path of future projects, researchers say more nuance is needed in the regulatory process to evaluate communities. While population density is used as a factor used by regulators in assessing the severity of negative impacts of pipelines, density alone could overlook ways in which rural communities may be more vulnerable. "When you evaluate the pipeline project for a rural area, you can't just assume that the concerns of a rural community are just going to be low-density versions of urban concerns," Emanuel said. "Rural issues are not less intense versions of urban issues. We also know from past research that these projects can have a destabilizing influence on rural communities." Researchers also highlighted impacts of pipeline infrastructure on Indigenous communities in the U.S. They noted the Dakota Access, Keystone XL, Trans Mountain expansion and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines cross, or are proposed to cross, Indigenous territories in the U.S. and Canada. This raises concerns for communities about not only pollution or risks for health, but also for cultural harm to places with religious, historical or cultural significance. The researchers pointed to the need to improve environmental assessments of potential pipeline infrastructure on vulnerable populations to prevent these networks from disproportionately impacting socially vulnerable people. They also called for better inclusion of community perspectives into decision-making. "We need the same level of rigor applied to the issue of environmental justice in environmental impact statements as we see for other sections, such as water and air quality," Rivers said. And while the existing infrastructure may have been built before federal policies were enacted to address environmental justice and antidiscrimination, researchers said federal regulators specifically need to assess the location of infrastructure networks as a whole in future planning to avoid reinforcing historic oppressive practices. They also suggested assessing the cumulative impacts of all nearby infrastructure on factors such as air quality, noise and explosion risks. "We need a comprehensive approach to environmental justice analyses that considers the larger network of infrastructure in which individual projects exist," Emanuel said. Accessible and affordable healthcare is one of the topics of Healthcare Automation and Digitalization Congress. It will take place in Zurich, Switzerland on the 22nd - 23rd of March, 2021. At the Congress, top-management from healthcare providers and pharmaceutical companies, healthcare professionals, IT managers, and heads from technology companies will discuss the developing ways of the remote access to medical services. Image Credit: Healthcare Automation and Digitalization Congress Access to medical care is widely discussed in the healthcare industry. There is no need to place every person to a hospital because most of the patients are able to take care of themselves with the help of the distance consultation and wearable devices. People use mobile soft, watches, trackers, and other wearables to measure vitals, and these technologies help lots of people to analyze their lifestyle in order to prevent health problems. But these technologies are only the tip of the iceberg: there is always a high need in more qualitative devices that can track the vitals and supply the drugs if the patients are not able to visit a hospital at the moment. The global healthcare market needs to evolve its mechanisms to provide end-users with better solutions. Remote medical technologies will increase the availability of instant help by connecting the outlying regions, facilitating access to the narrow specialists, and reducing the consultation and treatment price. Healthcare digitalization can also affect the mental health level, that is an important matter to every country's public health policy. The Congress session dedicated to accessible and affordable healthcare will raise the topics of Telehealth and mHealth, home-based care, micro-hospitals, and digital devices for personal usage. These and many other questions will gather worldwide experts of the health digitalization at the AUTOMA+ Healthcare Edition. Request the full business program: https://bit.ly/3frMLq1 Knowledge in medicine is a very dynamic process due to the continuing progress in this field. New developments influence research, but also the clinical practice. Hence the continuous need for improvement in the field in which we work is required. Gastroenterology and hepatology, as part of internal medicine, are very dynamic fields of medicine, with numerous innovations, in the last 20-30 years at least. Starting with clinical medicine and continuing with endoscopy, interventional endoscopy or ultrasound and ending with precision medicine, with proteomics or metabolomics, the future of medicine seems to be here. The book 'What is New in Gastroenterology and Hepatology' aims to bring to the readers' attention the latest advances in gastroenterology and hepatology. The book offers a variety of topics in the field of gastroenterology and hepatology, approached in a structured, clear and comprehensive fashion, but also with practical applications. The invited authors are the best in this field, all members of a Society older than 60 years (Romanian Society of Gastroenterology and Hepatology). Topics such as eosinophilic esophagitis, bariatric surgery, Barrett esophagus, neuroendocrine tumors, inflammatory bowel diseases, intestinal microbiota, videocapsule endoscopy, endoscopic ultrasound, etc., in the field of gastroenterology, as well as liver elastography, alcoholic liver diseases and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, HBV and HCV chronic liver diseases, contrast enhanced ultrasound (CEUS), etc. in the field of hepatology. The hot topics of precision medicine, artificial intelligence, the "omics" cascade, telemedicine are also included in this book. 'What is New in Gastroenterology and Hepatology' is an informative reference for all medical researchers and healthcare professionals (gastroenterologists, hepatologists, internal medicine physicians, surgeons, oncologists) who wish to keep themselves up to speed on new advances in these medical subspecialties. Since the onset of the CRISPR genetic editing revolution, scientists have been working to leverage the technology in the development of gene drives that target pathogen-spreading mosquitoes such as Anopheles and Aedes species, which spread malaria, dengue and other life-threatening diseases. Much less genetic engineering has been devoted to Culex genus mosquitoes, which spread devastating afflictions stemming from West Nile virus-;the leading cause of mosquito-borne disease in the continental United States-;as well as other viruses such as the Japanese encephalitis virus (JEV) and the pathogen causing avian malaria, a threat to Hawaiian birds. University of California San Diego scientists have now developed several genetic editing tools that help pave the way to an eventual gene drive designed to stop Culex mosquitoes from spreading disease. Gene drives are designed to spread modified genes, in this case those that disable the ability to transmit pathogens, throughout the targeted wild population. As detailed in the journal Nature Communications, Xuechun Feng, Valentino Gantz and their colleagues at Harvard Medical School and National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories developed a Cas9/guide-RNA expression "toolkit" designed for Culex mosquitoes. Since such little attention in genetic engineering has been devoted to Culex mosquitoes, the researchers were required to develop their toolkit from scratch, starting with a careful examination of the Culex genome. My coauthors and I believe that our work will be impactful for scientists working on the biology of the Culex disease vector since new genetic tools are deeply needed in this field. We also believe the scientific community beyond the gene drive field will welcome these findings since they could be of broad interest." Valentino Gantz, Assistant Research Scientist, Division of Biological Sciences, University of California San Diego While Culex mosquitoes are less problematic in the United States, they are much more of a health risk in Africa and Asia, where they transmit the worm causing filariasis, a disease that can lead to a chronic debilitating condition known as elephantiasis. The researchers also demonstrated that their tools could work in other insects. "These modified gRNAs can increase gene drive performance in the fruit fly and could potentially offer better alternatives for future gene drive and gene-editing products in other species," said Gantz. Gantz and his colleagues have now tested their new tools to ensure proper genetic expression of the CRISPR components and are now poised to apply them to a gene drive in Culex mosquitoes. Such a gene drive construct could be used to halt pathogen transmission by Culex mosquitoes, or alternatively employed to suppress the mosquito population to prevent biting. International research led by Monash University and the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity has achieved a proof of concept for a new, fast, portable saliva screening test that uses an infrared light technology to confirm infection with SARS-CoV-2. The research is published today in Angewandte Chemie. Professor Bayden Wood from the Monash University School of Chemistry, Dr Phil Heraud formerly from the Monash Biomedicine Discovery Institute, and collaborators, Professors Dale Godfrey and Damian Purcell from the Doherty Institute, report on a new diagnostic approach which involves the use of a portable infrared instrument to detect the SARS-CoV-2 virus in saliva. The team identified a signature of the infectious agent in the infrared spectra of saliva from 27 out of the 29 SARS-CoV-2-infected human subjects who presented at The Royal Melbourne Hospital with COVID-19-like symptoms. The most significant advantages of using this infrared-based technology on saliva samples, include the speed and ease with which the test can be performed, its affordability and the reduced risk to both patients and healthcare workers. Bayden Wood, Professor, Monash University School of Chemistry The scientists say this is very encouraging preliminary research and are keen to see further testing with a larger patient cohort to better understand the specificity of this approach. A portable infrared spectrometer was modified to enable high throughput screening enabling the samples to be rapidly scanned in a contactless mode without having to clean the instrument between measurements. Professor Wood estimates that this technique could be capable of screening 5000 samples per day per instrument, with results for each sample being ready in five minutes. Dr Heraud said because the infrared light interacted with the vibrations of molecules, it could be used to generate a spectrum that represented a unique chemical fingerprint of the sample that was then processed using machine learning algorithms. The approach has significant advantages over the standard Real Time Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) that is the current gold standard for detection, Professor Godfrey said. As we know, this requires that samples are sent to a dedicated laboratory and results take a day or more. According to Professor Purcell the proposed new test also avoids the discomfort associated with nasopharyngeal swabs, an advantage that could improve community participation in testing. A person can contribute the sample by simply dribbling into a sterile container. The result can be derived in less than five minutes and a rapid result minimizes the delay in determining if quarantine is required, therefore minimizing the risk of further spread of infection. Damian Purcell, Professor, Doherty Institute A similar infrared technique known as Attenuated Total Reflectance (ATR) spectroscopy has previously been used by the Monash researchers to detect malaria and hepatitis. The new transflection infrared based approach offers triple the absorbance and hence interrogates more saliva to detect pathogens compared to the traditional ATR technology. The speed and versatility of the technique potentiates its use for point-of-care screening at airports, sporting venues, universities or schools, to triage patients for RT-PCR testing. Although multiple techniques were used in validating the approach, Professor Bayden Wood carried out much of the initial work using the infrared microspectroscopy beamline at the Australian Synchrotron (AS), with support from the beamline team. The measurements performed at the AS were recorded from highly purified clusters of virus, provided by the team at the Doherty Institute. The unique infrared RNA signature from the SARS-CoV-2 virus was then detected in the infrared spectra of the saliva samples recorded using the portable instrument. Other contributors to the research included the University of Melbourne, The Royal Melbourne Hospital, the Dublin Institute of Technology (Ireland), the University of Strathclyde (Scotland), Elettra-Sincrotone Trieste (Italy), and the Area Science Park Trieste (Italy). New insights into the ability of DNA to overcome harmful genetic changes have been discovered by scientists at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, the University of Lausanne and their collaborators. The team found that 26 per cent of harmful mutations were suppressed by naturally occurring variants in at least one wild yeast strain. In each instance examined in detail, a single rescue mutation was responsible for cancelling out another mutation that would have threatened the organisms survival. The study, published today (27 May 2021) in Molecular Systems Biology, provides important information about how DNA variants can suppress undesirable genetic changes. If confirmed in humans, this biological phenomenon could have an important role in genetic diseases such as cancer or rare developmental disorders, and explain why certain patients suffer from more severe disease than others. Mutations are changes to the letters of DNA that form the genetic code of multi-cellular organisms. They can be a result of errors when DNA replicates during cell division, or the influence of environmental exposures such as ultraviolet light. While most mutations will have no significant effect on how the cell functions, some can be harmful and lead to genetic diseases such as cancer. Other mutations can be beneficial and contribute to genetic diversity in a species through the natural process of evolution. With six billion letters of DNA in the human genome, the implications of natural genetic variation are vast. As a result, the precise effect of mutations on the function of genes and cells is not fully understood. Mutations that are harmful in one individual may have no negative effect on another. In some cases, this is because the healthy or resilient individuals carry additional mutations, called suppressors, which counteract harmful DNA changes. In this study, researchers at the University of Toronto screened 1,106 temperature-sensitive alleles from 580 essential genes in 10 wild yeast strains to see if natural genetic variation would allow the yeast to grow when exposed to an unfavorably high temperature. They found that 26 per cent of the 580 essential genes could be circumvented by natural variants in at least one wild yeast strain. Yeast colonies that continued to grow were then sequenced at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, in order to search for specific mutations that could be suppressing the temperature-sensitive allele. Professor Jolanda van Leeuwen, a senior author of the paper from the University of Lausanne, said: The proportion of harmful mutations in essential genes that could be supressed was unexpected, and because we only sampled a small fraction of wild yeast strains the percentage of mutations that can be suppressed by natural variants is likely to be much higher. The frequency of suppression suggests it could make an important contribution in other contexts as well including, potentially, for human disease. Researchers at the University of Lausanne examined 10 instances of suppression in detail to better understand the suppression effect and how it protected cells. To their surprise, in each case a single mutation was responsible for suppressing the temperature-sensitive allele and enabling cells to live and reproduce. In biology, explanations tend to be complex, so its unusual to find a single smoking gun. We might have expected a number of genes to combine to overcome a serious genetic defect like the temperature-sensitive allele, so for this to be the result of a single mutation is very surprising. Dr Leopold Parts, Senior author of paper, Wellcome Sanger Institute Work is already underway at the Sanger Institute to conduct a similar study in human cells to see how relevant these findings are to the human genome, using commercially available human cell lines from healthy donors. If the same biological phenomenon is at play, it could provide valuable information about how genetic diseases arise and whether rescue mutations might one day help clinicians to treat these diseases. Africa has the highest death rates in the world among critically ill COVID-19 patients, with limited intensive care resources a major factor, a study says. Africa's 2.86 million cases of COVID-19 represent about two per cent of the global total of 166.35 million cases, according to a situational report on the pandemic published by the World Health Organization last week (25 May). Researchers, who conducted the study published in The Lancet this month (22 May), say that Africa lacks data on critically ill patients with COVID-19, and factors associated with death or survival in resource-limited settings. In an attempt to fill this gap, they conducted an observational study of patients who were referred to intensive care or high-care units from May to December 2020 in a total of 64 hospitals in ten African countries Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Malawi, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria and South Africa to identify death or survival rates and associated factors. Researchers also compared their findings with regional and global death rates. Of the 3,077 critically ill adults who participated in the study and were followed up for at least 30 days unless they died or were discharged, 1,483 (48.2 per cent), died, the study says. We expected the outcomes associated with COVID-19 to be worse in Africa because we have a limited workforce, and we have limited intensive care facilities and critical care resources across Africa to provide sufficient care." Bruce Biccard, Study Co-Author and Professor, Groote Schuur Hospital, University of Cape Town, South Africa "It is unacceptable that people should have a higher [chance of] mortality, just because of where they live. We need to advocate for quality healthcare in Africa, and other under-resourced environments. The burden of poorly managed COVID-19 has a long-term impact [on] quality of life, productivity and economics," he adds. According to the study, Africa's death rate of 48.2 per cent is higher than the global average of 31.5 per cent and that of other regions including Asia (29.6 per cent), Europe (31.5 per cent), and North America (33.8 per cent). In terms of gender, Biccard says that early studies showed that men have worse outcomes than women but this was not the case in the new study. He explains that there is a bias in accessing care, with men being more likely to do so. Men are affording more care than women, when resources are limited. "There is no sex association with mortality in severely ill COVID-19 patients [in Africa], and the early data showing higher mortality in men is actually incorrect," he explains. African health policymakers should be concerned about the study's findings and the failure to meet minimum standards of critical care, Biccard adds. "Only once we have regulation for minimum standards, can we demand for these resources, and thereby improve quality of care," he tells SciDev.Net. "There is a real need for vaccination across Africa as soon as possible. We do not have enough critical care beds to care for severely ill patients, and vaccination prevents severe infection. Importantly, we cannot afford to have a scenario similar to what is happening in India, happen in Africa." Several factors, he says, account for Africa's high death rate among critically ill COVID-19 patients. For example, a modelling study at the beginning of COVID-19 revealed that Africa runs at about one bed per 100,000 population. Also, not every patient receives adequate monitoring because of limited resources, and even some available resources are poorly maintained, non-functional or redundant. Bruce Struminger, associate director of Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes), an initiative for improving access to specialty care for rural and underserved populations, says that essential medical services have been interrupted and medical supplies and expertise have sometime been unable to reach the patients who need them most. "Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we've seen that many low- and middle-income countries around the world, but especially in Africa, are under-resourced and often lack clinical expertise in remote settings," Struminger, who is also an associate professor of medicine at the US-based University of New Mexico, tells SciDev.Net. Many African nations face higher disease burdens and many serious and life-threatening conditions that are often not found or are less common in wealthier nations. Africa needs low-cost, scalable, and effective interventions for improving healthcare outcomes, both in the current context of COVID-19 and in the future, Struminger says. Donna M. Seifried, 78, passed away on Friday, June 11, 2021, at her home surrounded by family. She was a receptionist at Price Waterhouse Coopers, a member of Sacred Heart Catholic Church, and a native of Salina, KS. She is survived by her husband William "Bill" Seifried of Jeffersonville, I (Newser) It's the time of year when "Dr. Beach"aka geoscientist and coastal ecologist Stephen P. Leathermanmakes his picks for America's best beaches, and 2021's list marks an important milestone: It's the ranking's 30th anniversary, per Forbes. Leatherman notes that, due to the pandemic, he wasn't able to visit as many of the nation's shorelines as usual, but he recruited a team of "beach managers" to help him make his picks. "They keep me informed and are experts themselves," he says. The good doctor made this year's selections using dozens of criteria, including everything from the local weather and beach conditions (e.g., sand softness, water temperature, algae levels) to wildlife, noise, and amenities. Celebrate the unofficial kickoff of summer this weekend with a look at the beaches that made Leatherman's top 10: story continues below Hapuna Beach State Park (Big Island, Hawaii) Coopers Beach (Southampton, NY) Ocracoke Lifeguarded Beach (Outer Banks, NC) St. George Island State Park (St. George Island, Fla.) Old Lighthouse Beach (Buxton/Outer Banks, NC) Duke Kahanamoku Beach (Oahu, Hawaii) Caladesi Island State Park (Caladesi Island, Fla.) Coronado Beach (San Diego) Beachwalker Park (Kiawah Island, SC) Coast Guard Beach (Cape Cod, Mass.) Read more about Dr. Beach's 30 years in the biz here . (This year's list didn't differ much from last year's .) (Newser) A Montreal woman has been arrested on charges of trying to cross the US border into Canada with "numerous undeclared wildlife items," including a three-toed sloth, 18 crocodile skulls and heads, and seven crocodile feet, per documents filed in federal court in Vermont, reports the AP. Vanessa Rondeau, the owner of the Old Cavern Boutique in Montreal, also was alleged to be in possession of two horseshoe crabs, 30 sea stars, 23 raccoon feet, eight African antelope horns, one human skull "with mounted butterflies," four puffer fish, and six shark jaws on Wednesday when she attempted to cross the border at Highgate Springs, Vt., according to the criminal complaint. Both sloth and crocodile are protected under the US Endangered Species Act and the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, the Bennington Banner reported Friday. All wildlife must be declared to the FWS upon import into the US and prior to its export, per the ESA. story continues below Rondeau entered the US 18 times between November 2018 and September 2019, mostly at the Champlain Port of Entry in New York, including a dozen times between midnight and 2am, Ryan Bessey, a special agent with the FWS, wrote in an affidavit. Working undercover, Bessey asked Rondeau in a private message in January 2020 if she had any polar bear skulls for sale, the affidavit states. Rondeau offered to sell a skull for $780 and Bessey received it in the mail, he said. Bessey bought another polar bear skull from Rondeau for $711, he said. The FWS had also intercepted packages she sent containing skulls from a bird, a weasel, and a bat, as well as the skin from a Hartmann's zebra, another protected species, the affidavit states. The Old Cavern Boutique "offers for sale a variety of unique curiosity and oddity items, many composed in whole or in part from wildlife," Bessey wrote. The Lacey Act prohibits the trafficking of items that come from endangered species. (Read more weird crimes stories.) (Newser) The site of a residential school that was once the largest in Canada has been hiding a gruesome secret for more than 40 yearsone that serves as "a horrifying reminder of the abuses against Indigenous people in Canada," per CTV News. On Friday, Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation told the outlet that the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3, had been found using ground-piercing radar on the grounds of where the Kamloops Indian Residential School, shut down in 1978, once operated in Kamloops, British Columbia. A Tk'emlups te Secwepemc release calls it "an unthinkable loss," though one the Indigenous community had long suspectedespecially as it's not the only school that saw children die of neglect, abuse, and sicknesses like tuberculosis, while leaving many survivors disabled and chronically ill. story continues below The New York Times explains that, starting in the 1800s, Indigenous children were forced to attend such residential schools scattered around the country, and in many cases, the children were never returned home, with only vague explanations offered to their families, if they got an explanation at all. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up as part of the Canadian government's apology and settlement for such abuses, found at least 4,100 children had died while at these institutions, calling residential schools a program of "cultural genocide." The Kamloops school, established in 1890, was run by the Catholic Church until the federal government took over in 1969. The last such residential school in Canada closed in 1996. Tk'emlups te Secwepemc leadership is assuming responsibility for IDing the children and notifying their families. "We do not want this to be hidden," Casimir tells CTV. "We want people to know that this history is real, the loss of the children is real." Much more here. (Read more Canada stories.) (Newser) Authorities still haven't pinned down a motive for why Samuel Cassidy shot up a rail yard in San Jose, Calif., on Wednesday, killing nine, but after a search of his residence, they say it's evident the 57-year-old suspect, who also took his own life during the shooting, had made preparations. Per a Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office release, a search warrant was obtained for Cassidy's home, which officials believe he'd set on fire before the shooting, and local police, the FBI, and ATF officials made quite a find. Among the items they say they discovered in Cassidy's residence: 22,000 rounds of "various types of ammunition," multiple cans filled with gas, a dozen guns, and what they believe were Molotov cocktails. "Based on current evidence ... it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could had Sheriff's Deputies not made entry to stop his rampage," the statement notes, adding that the investigation is ongoing. story continues below Per Deputy Cian Jackson, authorities believe Cassidy tried to destroy his home by cramming ammo into a pot on the stove, placing accelerants around the pot, then turning on the stove, reports CNN. The residence sustained heavy damage, but it has been deemed safe and doesn't pose a threat to neighbors, a San Jose Fire Department spokesperson notes. The sheriff's office says it's thought that Cassidy, whom co-workers have described as being a "disgruntled" colleague, worked alone. Although rumors were flying that Cassidy had been set to have a disciplinary meeting the morning of the shooting, Valley Transportation Authority officials and a transit union leader say that wasn't the case, per CBS San Francisco. Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday that Cassidy had been found to have books on terrorism and writings saying he hated the VTA when he was stopped by US Customs agents in 2016, per the Wall Street Journal. (Read more San Jose stories.) (Newser) It might be a good time to stock up on Forever Stamps. Rates are going up at the US Postal Service this summera first-class stamp will go up from 55 cents to 58 cents. Some postal service employees will be laid off, too, the Washington Post reports. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy announced a 10-year plan in March designed to get the USPS out of debt that includes stretching out delivery of a letter from three days to six and closing some post offices, Newsweek reports. Some product prices are steeper than others, but overall the rate increase works out to about 7%, CBS News reports. People arent sending letters (or mailing in bills) as much, which has hurt the USPS bottom line, but they are shopping online. The volume of packages during the pandemic has left the service with dismal on-time scores. Shipping experts worry the bump in rates will drive away businesses. And some wonder if the increase is even necessary. The USPS predicted losing $10 billion this fiscal year, but so far is only down $448 million, per the Post. And marketing mail, which died off during the pandemic, is coming roaring back as business start advertising by mail again. (Consolidation of mail-processing facilities already is underway .) (Newser) Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant that's a hybrid of strains first found in India and the UK, the Vietnamese health minister said Saturday. Nguyen Thanh Long said scientists examined the genetic makeup of the virus that had infected some recent patients, and found the new version of the virus, the AP reports. He said lab tests suggested it might spread more easily than other versions. Viruses often develop small genetic changes as they reproduce, and new variants of the coronavirus have been seen almost since it was first detected in China in late 2019. The World Health Organization has listed four global "variants of concern"the two first found in the UK and India, plus ones identified in South Africa and Brazil. Long says the new variant could be responsible for a recent surge in Vietnam, which has spread to 30 of the country's 63 municipalities and provinces. story continues below Vietnam was initially a standout success in battling the virusin early May, it had recorded a total of just over 3,100 confirmed cases and 35 deaths. But in the past few weeks, more than 3,500 new cases and 12 deaths have been confirmed, increasing the country's total death toll to 47. Most of the new transmissions were found in Bac Ninh and Bac Giang, provinces dense with industrial zones where hundreds of thousands of people work for major companies including Samsung and Canon. Despite strict regulations, a company in Bac Giang discovered that one-fifth of its 4,800 workers had tested positive for the virus. In Ho Chi Minh City, where 9 million people live, at least 85 people have tested positive as part of a cluster at a Protestant church, the Health Ministry said. Worshippers sang and chanted while sitting close together without wearing proper masks. Vietnam has since prohibited all religious events. In major cities, authorities have banned large gatherings, closed public parks and nonessential business, including in-person restaurants, bars, clubs, and spas. (Read more COVID variants stories.) These agreements move us one step closer to sailing with our loyal guests, said Lars Ljoen, executive vice president and chief maritime officer for Carnival Cruise Line in a press release. We appreciate the support from not just these three homeport partners, but all of our homeports, that are eager to have us back as soon as possible. (Newser) After years of fighting and litigation over who can include Orlando in the name of their central Florida airport, Orlando International Airport officials and Orlando Melbourne International Airport officials have tentatively agreed that the latter will tweak its name to Melbourne Orlando International Airport, per the AP. The Melbourne Airport Authority announced the Space Coast airport's new name Friday. The newly renamed Melbourne Orlando International Airport is about 70 miles southeast of Orlando International Airport, which is the busiest airport in Florida. story continues below The Melbourne International Airport began operations in 1928 and changed its name in 2015 to Orlando Melbourne International Airport in an effort to attract more travelers. Officials with the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, which operates the Orlando International Airport, took issue with the new name of the Orlando Melbourne International Airport and eventually filed a federal lawsuit in 2019. The lawsuit claimed the Orlando Melbourne International Airport was misleading passengers into believing they were going to the theme park mecca in the middle of the state instead of Florida's Atlantic coast. (Read more Orlando stories.) (Newser) Demonstrations around the world opposed the Belarus government on Saturdaysparked by the hijacking of an airliner last weeka day after the Biden administration said it's imposing economic sanctions. A White House spokeswoman said the US will restore sanctions next week against nine state-owned operations in Belarus that had been lifted by the Treasury Department, the New York Times reports. The US also is putting a halt to the nations' agreement letting the other travel through its airspace, per NBC. And government officials also will face sanctions, Jen Psaki said. She didn't identify the officials but said they're "associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election and the events of May 23," when the plane forced to land in Minsk. The sanctions "will hold the regime accountable," Psaki said. story continues below Protests in neighboring Poland and Lithuania demanded the release of Roman Pratasevich, a dissident who was taken into custody at the airport, and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. In Warsaw, his mother asked the US and EU to help get her son freed. "We want to live in a free country, in a country where everyone has the right to express his beliefs," his father said. Demonstrations against the actions of President Alexander Lukashenko, who claimed to have been reelected in a landslide last fall, also were held in the US, Australia, and dozens of other countries, per the BBC. "I believe that there will be changes very soon, there will be new elections, because there can be no other way," opposition leader Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said at a rally in Lithuania, where she's living in exile. "Belarus will not give up." (Read more Belarus stories.) The event, which costs $249 to attend, had been rescheduled to June 5 after previously being postponed due to COVID-19. Cachia posted an Instagram story revealing she had checked into her room at Ritz Carlton on Thursday. "Thank you SO much to the @sociallyem team & the incredibly accommodating staff at @ritzcarltonperth for making the last few VERY CHAOTIC days easier for myself and the kids," she wrote on her Instagram story. "Nothing like spontaneously packing at 2am right. We were all tested at the airport yesterday, [and] are all NEGATIVE." The Greens are urging the Government to stick to its commitment to ban new mines on conservation land as it looks to accelerate the reclassification of stewardship areas. Stewardship areas are parcels of land with conservation value given to the Department of Conservation in 1987 but yet to be afforded additional protections. DoC has a role to reclassify the land - which makes up 30 percent of the estate - but it's complex and time-consuming, involving surveys, an analysis of species and ecosystems present, and consultation with Treaty partners and the public. Dr Ayesha Verrall, the minister currently in charge of the conservation portfolio while Kiri Allan is on leave, announced on Friday night that the Government is looking to accelerate that process. "The Government intends to progress legislation to streamline, speed up and simplify the process so land with conservation value is identified and managed appropriately, while land with low or no conservation value can be considered for other uses," she said. A Bill isn't expected to be introduced until 2022, but in the meantime, the Government is establishing two independent panels to assess some of the areas and provide recommendations to the minister. "There is considerable confusion over stewardship land status and ongoing debate over whether it is appropriate to allow economic activity in these areas," Dr Verrall said. "These new measures will remove ambiguity and provide clarity as to what conservation values are present and how much protection the land has." An upcoming 60 Minutes Australia investigation looks to dive into the relationship between New Zealand and China, and whether we're ditching our trans-Tasman friend for a "fast Chinese buck". It comes amid intense debate about whether New Zealand is doing enough to express concern about human rights abuses within the Asian nation. While Aotearoa has condemned breaches independently and with Australia, it hasn't signed up to some Five Eyes statements on the issue. That's led some to accuse New Zealand of being too cosy with China and more interested in protecting its massive trade relationship than standing up for human rights. But the Government has rejected that. Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta says the Five Eyes isn't always the best forum to express condemnation as it is primarily for intelligence-sharing purposes. Mahuta and her ministry have also pointed to numerous statements from New Zealand on ongoing issues in Hong Kong and Xinjiang as evidence of it not being scared to speak up. Do you think New Zealand is too cosy with China? New Zealand will be a party to a trade dispute between Canberra and Beijing over significant tariffs China imposed on imports of barley from Australia last year. Australian barley imports were hit by 80 percent tariffs from China in May last year, largely seen as a political move in the wake of calls from Australia for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19. China said Australia was dumping the product there below cost, hurting domestic producers. In December, Australia took the row to the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which on Friday agreed to establish a dispute settlement panel. New Zealand Trade Minister Damien O'Connor on Saturday night confirmed to Newshub that Aotearoa is "participating in this dispute as a third party because it raises systemic issues of importance to the effective functioning of the multilateral rules-based trading system". "New Zealand upholds international rules and norms, so ensuring international trade rules are fairly applied by others is important to us and our exporters," the minister said. A third-party can make submissions to the panel and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade says New Zealand participates as one "when we want to influence the interpretation and application of WTO agreements on matters that are also of direct interest to us". O'Connor said New Zealand wasn't asked to join as a third party. "However, we have been a third party in over 60 WTO cases since 1995 and it's not unusual for us to join actions disputes when we see challenges to international trade rules," he told Newshub. "We rely on the rules-based trading system to provide a secure and predictable global trading environment for everyone so we will act to uphold it." Britain's High Commissioner to New Zealand says the two countries will continue to have shared values and important connections regardless of Aotearoa's constitutional arrangements. The appointment this week of Dame Cynthia Kiro as New Zealand's next Governor-General again raised the question of whether Aotearoa will one day transition into a republic. Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern believes New Zealand will become a republic in her lifetime but has "never sensed an urgency" from Kiwis about it. "I'm not of the view that in the here and now, in my term of office, that this is something that New Zealanders feel particularly strongly about. I don't know that I've had one person actually raise with me, generally, day to day, the issue of becoming a republic." In an interview with Newshub Nation this week, British High Commissioner to New Zealand Laura Clarke said local constitutional arrangements "are not any of my business" and are instead something Kiwis will need to decide on. "I think what New Zealand does in terms of its head of state is going to be up to the New Zealand Government and the people of New Zealand," she said. "It is really for them to decide what fits best with what they want in modern New Zealand." But if it was to happen, she doesn't believe it would take away from New Zealand and the United Kingdom's shared values and connections. "I think the relationship with Britain is so deep and broad. It is based on those historical ties, it is based on all the family and the people-to-people connections, the sporting rivalry. It is based also on shared values and a shared view of the world and a shared vision for the future, I would say," Clarke told Newshub Nation. "None of those things are changed if New Zealand changes its constitutional arrangements. Those connections remain really important." Trade Minister Damien O'Connor has said in hindsight, he probably shouldn't have told Australia to "show respect" to China. The relationship between our two biggest trading partners has deteriorated lately, and O'Connor's comments - made in January - were met with disbelief across the ditch. This week Australian current affairs show 60 Minutes released a promo for an upcoming story which asks "just what are the Kiwis up to now?" and questions if New Zealand is turning into "New Xi-Land", a play on Chinese President Xi Jinping's name. "We thought they were our best friends, but it looks like they've ditched us for a fast Chinese buck," a voiceover booms. Appearing on Newshub Nation on Saturday, O'Connor was reminded exactly what it was he said in January: "I can't speak for Australia and the way it runs its diplomatic relationships, but clearly if they were to follow us and show respect, I guess a little more diplomacy from time to time and be cautious with wording, then they too could hopefully be in a similar situation." O'Connor admitted to host Ryan Bridge he "could have kept my comments to myself". "It was a bit of probably 'West Coast diplomacy'. In hindsight, maybe I shouldn't have said it... From time to time, you make mistakes." An astronomer has released a stunning new image of the centre of our galaxy, the Milky Way, revealing a never-seen-before phenomenon he's not sure how to explain. University of Massachusetts Amherst astronomer Daniel Wang's image was shot using NASA's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, which can see things even the mighty Hubble Space Telescope can't. "We know the centers of galaxies are where the action is and play an enormous role in their evolution," he said. But it's obscured by gas, fog and dust. The new image - which looks like it could have come right out of the 'stargate' sequence in classic sci-fi film 2001: A Space Odyssey, shows an enormous thread of X-rays dubbed G0.17-0.41 near the massive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. Please purchase a subscription read this premium content. If you have a subscription, please sign up for a digital website account or log in. Ian Tyson of Native Village Rescue Florida, a non-profit in Hollywood which rescues and finds homes for reptiles and birds, was also active for the second time in 18 months. Tyson, who usually does between 30 and 40 shows a year, and his co-workers had numerous animals available to be touched including an alligator (with its mouth taped shut), a ball python and a Colombian red tail boa constrictor. Many people took pictures near the reptiles. Fairbanks, AK (99707) Today A mix of clouds and sun. High 73F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Mostly cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com An ex-employee of a private company is on trial at the High Criminal Court for forging salary records on General Organisation for Social Insurance (GOSI) to take undue advantage of retirement benefits. The crime came to light when GOSI officials grew suspicious of the unusual salary hikes the suspect was receiving. Officials who contacted the company for verification found that the hikes were not authorised. According to court files, the suspect updated his salary packages on the GOSI website on three occasions, raising it from BD1950 to BD3,300 by misusing the companys access to the GOSI portal. The suspect had the authorisation of the company to access the GOSI portal on their behalf. GOSI officials found that the suspect updated his salary on their account as BD2,100 at first. He then kept it like that for a year before reporting another hike. The next hike was to BD2,774. Afterwards, the company sacked him for undisclosed reasons. However, the company did not rescind his access to the portal. Spotting the flaw, the suspect made good use of this opportunity by logging in again to upgrade his salary details, this time to BD3,300, before applying for retirement benefits. Investigators found that the suspect was aiming for a hefty retirement package through the wrongdoings. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com Bahrains Everest expedition team has announced donating their surplus food supplies to those in need in Nepal as part of their humanitarian efforts. The team said the supplies are going to a local childrens home in Kathmandu. The team is extending their helping hand along with Aloft Hotel in Thamel and Seven Summits trek. Social media users received the announcement on the teams Instagram account with a generous round of applause, with many of them coming out to express their support. Thank u Bahrains Everest team, that means a lot to Nepalese at this time of Pandemic, wrote kham_mag on an Instagram post welcoming the decision. Bahrain Everest 8848.86 and Seven Summit Treks, you are together a super-strong unbeatable team. I followed your successful expedition together with great enthusiasm. You are just great, and Your donation for the childrens home is again an excellent idea. These peaceful and cheerful people of Nepal really deserve it. Please keep it up, wrote martinbriselat. Nepal and China in December last year jointly announced that the revised height of the worlds highest peak was 8,848.86 metres, about 86 centimetres more than the previous measurement by India in 1954. The team earlier successfully climbed Lobuche peak (6,119 metres) and Mt Manaslu (8,156 metres) -- both in Nepal -- in October 2020. The Bahrain team arrived in Kathmandu on March 15 to begin its Everest expedition. TDT | Manama The Daily Tribune www.newsofbahrain.com The Ministry of Housing urged all to use its eService available round the clock through bahrain.bh. Services at identity card centres in Isa Town and Mina Salman are limited to those who had completed 14 days after the second dose, those who recovered and individuals aged 18 and above. Entry is granted only on presenting the green shield via the BeAware Bahrain app. The ministry said the services available online allows citizens to make a new housing request, apply for the Mazaya programme, loans, update contact details, and enquire about the status of requests. For services that require personal presence, the ministry said it is necessary to book an appointment in advance through National Call centre 80008001. With unemployment already relatively low in Missouri, its unclear how much of an impact a recent decision by Gov. Mike Parson to stop accepting federal unemployment benefit dollars in June will have on the job market. Supporters of the move believe those extra federal dollars have kept people from searching for a new job. But with statewide unemployment sitting at just over 4%, Missouri is tied at 13th for one of the lowest rates in the country. States striking down federal dollars for unemployment claims could see a decrease in their rate as it forces people back to work, but a professor at Missouri Western State University said Missouri officials might not see the results they are looking for. The federal dollars no longer apply to unemployment benefits beginning on June 12. I dont think it will do a lot. Part of the problem with the labor shortage is not charging a high enough wage rather than if there is a job, Dr. Kara Grant, assistant professor of economics, said. People are re-evaluating what job they want now and being more selective. Last year at this time, as the state was coming off pandemic shutdowns, Missouri had about a 10% unemployment rate. Before the coronavirus hit, the state enjoyed just over 3% unemployment. Even though Missouris rate is higher than pre-pandemic levels, people might be a little slower to get back into the workforce as they look to find their best option. That might be beneficial to people finding a job that is a better fit. It might hurt the economy right away but be better in the long term, Grant said. It depends on a lot of factors. Jobs are available in manufacturing and infrastructure, which can be considered high-intensive manual labor. Grant said these types of jobs need to offer competitive wages to make people eager to fill those positions. A lot of times, people want a higher wage for the type of job they are doing. That is why garbage men have higher wages because people dont want to get those jobs, she said. So raising wages might help people get back to the workforce. It is not ideal for businesses though, for sure. Emily Kirchhoff grew up in an average home with a close family. She always did great in school and rarely got in trouble until they moved to a new city. Kirchhoff remembers her dad wanting a better place for her and her sister, but it was in this new town that she met a friend and did everything she could to fit in. I would say she kind of influenced me a lot. ... She was my best friend, so anything she wanted to do, I was down to do it, Kirchhoff said. (We) tried drinking and smoking weed, probably cigarettes as well, around the age of 12 or 13. Troublesome behavior progressed as they got older, like taking their parents cars for joy rides, and the two started to get in trouble for their drug and alcohol use. Despite these issues, Kirchhoff still graduated high school a semester early and was accepted into college. However, she decided to get a job and not go straight into college. That was probably not the wisest choice, Kirchhoff said. Kirchhoff got caught up in a robbery-turned-murder that changed her life as she knew it. A family friend convinced Kirchhoff to drive him to her co-workers apartment where they knew there was a stash of marijuana. Kirchhoff waited in the car the night of the incident, oblivious to the events happening in the apartment. She thought it would all be over soon, not knowing it was just the beginning of the worst time in her life. The next thing you know, hes running out, he hops in the car and hes screaming at me to go, Kirchhoff said. The sound of sirens caught Kirchhoffs attention. Ive never robbed anybody except at this one point in time. But I figure if nothing bad happened, you wouldnt be panicked as well because you were robbing teenage drug dealers, she said. So its not like they would have called the cops. So now Im starting to compute in my mind, OK, something terrible has happened. Kirchhoff learned the family friend had shot her co-worker, who died the next day. Not long after, Kirchhoff was arrested, confessed to her involvement and was sentenced to 12 years in prison, the majority of which she served. Sentence not served According to the Missouri Department of Corrections, there were 89,584 people incarcerated and on parole and probation at the end of the 2019 fiscal year, a decrease of 596 individuals from 2018. As numerous individuals shuffle around in the prison system, some continue to re-offend while others work with resources provided and break the cycle. A man currently charged with second-degree murder in Buchanan County is an example of someone who has continued to be on the radar of law enforcement and the court system after previous stints in prison. Michael Haddens record has escalated from more minor offenses, and he now stands charged in the shooting death of Minda Miller in February, according to court documents. Hadden was on probation for another charge at the time of Millers death. According to court documents, in the past Hadden has faced charges ranging from stealing to driving while intoxicated, domestic violence and other crimes in Kansas and New York. Hadden was released early from some of the sentences for these crimes, which raises concerns for some. Michelle Davidson, an assistant prosecuting attorney in Buchanan County, said she has to remind victims that sentences are not always served to completion. A lot of our victims will come to court in here, the judge sentenced someone to a term of years, they may hear the judge say, OK, Im going to sentence you to five years, and theyre going to think, OK, Im not going to see that person for five years. Im safe for five years. Thats not the case, Davidson said. Davidson said a five-year sentence could turn into as little as six months, and then the offender is released on parole. Were seeing that more and more just because of overcrowding, prison costs. Theres very few sentences that youre going to do more than 15% of the years anymore, Davidson said. So we just have to make sure our victims know that. Lots of times general public doesnt realize that. Hadden, who is currently in jail awaiting his next hearing date in the murder case, declined to be interviewed for this article. Factors of sentencing Several factors go into an attorney recommending a sentence and a judge deciding on one. We often find that if you send someone to prison for drugs, the first time youre going to actually see someone coming out of prison maybe in a worse situation than if you would attempt to put them into a drug treatment program, get them help, Davidson said. Davidson said each case is different and doesnt always mean that an offender is automatically sent to prison. We do seek input from the victims, she said. We will automatically try to reach out to the victim, will send a victim impact statement, ask them to make contact with us so that we can let them know their rights. They have a right to come to court, they have a right to let the judge know how the crime has affected them because their voice needs to be heard. Keith Marquart, an associate circuit court judge in Buchanan County, said he looks at a number of factors when sentencing an offender. Does the offender have a record for this type of offense? Secondly, did the offender resist arrest? Has the offender cooperated or made amends before coming before the court? Is the offender remorseful? Marquart said. Those types of things are always important, not unlike disciplining a child. Seeking treatment According to Missouri Department of Corrections data, more than 19,000 offenders return to Missouri communities every year. According to the departments website, in 2002 eight states, including Missouri, were selected by the National Institute of Corrections to host a transition site from prison back to the community. Corrections officials note that returning to a life outside of prison can be challenging, such as finding a job, house or transportation, re-establishing relationships and getting treatment for substance abuse or mental health conditions. According to statistics from the department of corrections, 50% of all those admitted to prison have convictions for drug and alcohol offenses, and 93% of those returning to prison required substance abuse treatment. In Buchanan County, the courts offer treatment programs for both drug abuse and domestic violence. Rita Miller, founder of the Foundation Recovery Center LLC, works with domestic violence offenders in her treatment program. Miller was in and out of prison herself as a drug addict and can relate with her clients on multiple levels. We lived in an alcoholic home My father was an alcoholic. We also lived in domestic violence, screaming, yelling, Miller said. We never actually seen him hit, or smack or push my mother, but the verbal abuse was over the top. Miller said she started smoking marijuana at a young age and that quickly progressed to other drugs. Once, she stole $20,000 worth of electronics to feed her habit. As I continued to spiral down, for 10 years I used powder cocaine. (For) the next 10 years, I used crack cocaine. And thats when my life completely went downhill, Miller said. ... I put myself in a situation where somebody robbed me at gunpoint. I knew then my life flashed before me. Even at gunpoint, Miller said she still did not realize that she needed to change her life. It wasnt until she received the news that she would be a grandmother that the switch finally flipped. The recovery programs started to click for Miller as they did for Kirchhoff. Both had mentors in prison who encouraged them to participate in programs while incarcerated. Miller recalled the initial stages of recovery were hardest. I remember telling myself, This will pass Rita, because recovery is for the rest of your life, Miller said. When were in our everyday lives, we have to remember, we have to practice those coping skills and thats exactly what I did and I did not use. Kirchhoff was one of the first inmates in Missouri to take part in the Aspire re-entry unit. As part of Aspire, women went through a 20-week program to work on entrepreneurial goals while still in prison. Kirchhoff now is enjoying a new chapter of her life with her family and baby boy. She is continuing her education while also working from home. While sitting in her living room recounting her journey, Kirchhoffs mom, Carol, said even during the toughest part of life, she has always been proud of her daughter. Shes done a great job since her release, working really hard every day, doing her best in school and with her son, Carol Kirchhoff said. Im very happy that I get to participate with that. Dali Rust belongs to those creative people who are willing to share what they see and interpret it with the rest of the world. The filmmaker came to the Costa del Sol from Lithuania to discover a new world in the south, full of appreciation for the Andalusian lifestyle and the people's way of thinking. "I noticed that Andalusian people are almost never alone. It looks like they intentionally surround themselves with people. Perhaps they do it to disguise the fact that an inner loneliness exists. Our norms still dictate that we are basically extroverts dependent upon each other's company - crowds, flocks, festivals etc. and even in the 21st century, we are still scared of not fitting in with society's norms," she explains. Dali doesn't dislike people. She simply spends more time on her own because it allows her to exercise her imagination. She assumes she prefers to be by herself because this helps to get rid of her social phobias. "We all have fears: some more, some less. One of the fears is of being alone, or abandoned, or isolated," she said. Dali once even decided to seek solace in the middle of the forest. "I made a conscious choice to reroute my daily activities. In the forest I didn't need a lot. The lack of television was compensated by enjoying my young children and watching nature. I had plenty of time to re-examine my purpose in life," she says. That experience helped her to "survive" during the recent lockdowns. "I don't mind confinement because I am self-sufficient," she told SUR in English. Originally from Lithuania, the filmmaker has captured the solitude of some characters in Nerja. / Jurij Grigorovic In her films, Dali tries to reveal what is hidden beneath the everyday social norms, the visible facades. However, it was precisely the facades of Nerja that attracted her to settle there and inspired her to start a new documentary. "All my films are devoted to the social ambience, inner world, isolation and loneliness. One of my significant documentaries was the film Nadiezhda, about the solitude of a woman in need. Another film, Marina's House, is a portrait of a sister of the famous filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky, who preserves the traditional values of dignity, sincerity, respect and honesty. My last film, The Balcony of Europe is about a few peculiar inhabitants of Nerja," said Dali. In this Nerja documentary Dali wanted to show two worlds - the visible one and the characters' closed little worlds. One of the people of the film is Eloi, a middle-aged craftsman, who lives in a cave. Two other town-dwellers - a cobbler, Serafin, and an elderly seamstress, Juana - devote most of their time to their favourite, but lonely, work and communicate, generally, only with their pets. Serafin works and sings with his caged birds in his workshop, while Juana has a little helper by her side - a purring cat. In the Nerja film, Dali has managed to show a different style of living on the Costa del Sol - with self-imposed isolation and 'social distancing' existing even before the pandemic came, making living on balconies routine. "During the first lockdown the balcony became an improvised shelter for social interaction. Some neighbours played different games, others cheered themselves up by playing musical instruments. My character in the film, 67-year-old Miguel, has always socialised with people via his balcony," Dali said. Miguel is a creator of illuminated model ships and his works are located on a balcony, clearly visible to people passing by. "For him, his small balcony has always been an arena of self-expression and social interaction," she added. Dali is hoping to show her film in Nerja but for now it can be seen on You Tube. The social studies teachers at Scotts Ridge Middle School in Ridgefield have long sought to educate students about racism and include voices of traditionally marginalized groups. But after George Floyd was killed by a police officer last May, the teachers reviewed their curriculum with an even more critical eye. We said, Are we doing a good enough job? said Tom Broderick, who teaches eighth-grade social studies at the middle school in Ridgefield. George Floyd heightened these issues, but race has always been an important topic in American history. This was the case across the Danbury area. Districts have re-examined their curriculum, developed new programs for students and better trained their staff to address racism, diversity, equity and inclusion. Several districts created committees and mission statements and revised policies that center around these issues. Many districts were building on work they had been doing for years. We have really made deliberate attempts to more deeply understand our family and students, so we can address underlying issues around these topics, said Kara Casimiro, Danbury director of teaching and learning. Laying the groundwork Several districts created structures that will help them better focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. One district, however, has faced backlash. The Easton, Redding and Region 9 district formed a task force last summer to address racism and criminal justice issues, and the boards adopted an equity statement this past week. But opposition from some community members have slowed efforts to send out a survey that would help improve the curriculum. The very first step is to conduct an assessment of our strengths and weaknesses, Heather Whaley, who chairs the task force, said at Tuesdays joint boards meeting. Thats what were trying to do with this survey. New Fairfields new Equity Action Team, which includes students, staff and board members, surveyed students in sixth through 12th grade, with plans to survey parents of elementary children. Questions to the students centered diversity, inclusion, cultural awareness and their sense of belonging. It really tried to get at what kids experience personally at school, said Julie Luby assistant superintendent, who added the team has 900 responses to analyze. Brookfield adopted an equity statement last June and created an inclusion subcommittee with various community members. We want everyone to feel welcomed and valued and listened to, Superintendent John Barile said. After challenging conversations with adults, students and alumni, Newtown added a diversity and equity subgroup to its Parent Educator Advisory Council, Superintendent Lorrie Rodrigue said. Re-Center, a Hartford organization focusing on race and equity in education, acted as a facilitator. The most significant change in Newtown will be the addition of an equity and inclusion coordinator, a grant-funded position the district is hiring for to start in the fall, she said. Improving curriculum Eighth-graders at Scotts Ridge Middle School study American history from the 13 colonies through the Reconstruction period. Learning about the history of racism is intertwined within that and helps students understand current events, Broderick said. Among the assignments is listening to the stories of former slaves, he said. It is our job and our responsibility to do the best we can to ensure that our students certainly have a fundamental understanding of history, all history, and that were trying to contextualize that as best we can to the happenings of current, modern day America, said Timothy Salem, principal at Scotts Ridge. Broderick and his colleagues meet after major current events to discuss how to address them in the classroom. They rely on resources available for educators, he said. They also review their lessons yearly and try to include marginalized voices. However, there are so many to include that it can be hard to determine how much time to devote to each, he said. That, I think, is the biggest challenge, said Broderick, who presented to around 85 educators in the state in February about how conversations on race and equity should be a regular part of the curriculum. Danbury will launch an elective course in the fall on Black and Latino studies, per the states new requirement that a class like this be offered. Danbury is buying more multi-cultural texts, so that all students are represented, Casimiro said. But theres still work to be done here, she said. We really have to dig into and its not an overnight fix its really culturally relevant teaching and what that really means, Casimiro said. Its complex. Theres no one book, theres no one piece of text and it's not a matter of checking a box. Its really a deliberate attempt to meet the students in front of you. Newtown administrators formed a student advisory council to explore curriculum through the lens of equity and inclusion. These are practices that are good practices for any district at any point in time, Rodrigue said. We want to always make sure were engaging students with the curriculum and instruction at every classroom and every grade level. New Fairfield contracted with EdAdvance, the regional educational service center, to audit its curriculum, Luby said. The nonprofit has conducted focus groups with staff and plans to survey educators, she said. We will take their feedback and use it to do any revisions that are necessary, she said. A lot of our curricula has been rewritten recently, so we dont think itll be a drastic piece. A couple seniors capstone project is researching and identifying diverse childrens literature. Luby plans to compare those text to the classroom libraries to see how New Fairfield could improve. Thats an example of kids taking action to impact the school system and leave a legacy, she said. Programs for students Bethel keyed into these issues a few years ago when the district saw an uptick in hate speech and some racial incidents, Superintendent Christine Carver said. The board then revised its school climate plan to include issues around hate speech, discrimination and unconscious bias, while setting goals around inclusiveness. The elementary schools in Bethel focus on the importance of being kind and respectful, while the middle and high schools are more explicit. The Anti-Defamation League ran its Truth About Hate program, Carver said. Ridgefield High School has partnered with the Anti-Defamation League for seven years, with the organization this past week naming the school as one of eight in Connecticut to earn a No Place for Hate designation. This initiative gives staff, students and families a framework to take a stand against all forms of hate and communicate a clear, unified message that all students have a place where they belong, the organization said. Ridgefield High School also participates in two other league programs that have bettered the schools climate and culture, while creating a more inclusive environment for all students, Principal Jacob Greenwood said. At the elementary level, New Fairfield is implementing whats called a responsive classroom, which focuses on teaching kids to interact with each other respectfully. Third through fifth-grade already had this, so theyre getting advanced training, Luby said. New Fairfield teaches restorative practices at the secondary levels, she said. This emphasizes an environment where everyone is valued and fixing problems, rather than solely punishing, she said. A pastor from a Black church in Bethel has talked to students about understanding unconscious bias and how to have civil conversations about these issues with peers, she said. This year, Bethel is working to establish a mentor program for students of color to partner with community members. The district wants to create a program for older peers to mentor younger students. A Black Student Alliance at the high school and a diversity club at the middle school have formed, Carver said. In Ridgefield, a Holocaust survivor spoke virtually this year to 10th and 11th grade students. Those students also watched a presentation with a Sikh and a former white supremacist who co-authored a book together, Greenwood said. New Milford partnered with School Climate Consultants and Choose Love Movement, which formed after the Sandy Hook tragedy, to address these issues. We are transforming the district to become more equitable and safe, New Milford schools said in a statement. Training staff The Anti-Defamation League worked with New Fairfield staff in the fall and winter, focusing the first time on implicit bias and the second time on having difficult conversations with students, Luby said. Some staff read a book on justice issues last summer, with plans to encourage all educators to read another book this summer. A speaker addressed diversity during a professional development session for Newtown staff in November, while the district brought in the Connecticut Center for School Change in April. They continued with helping us with our staff for them to gain a much more meaningful and in-depth understanding about their own identity and what that means in a broader scope, when it comes to equity and inclusion, especially with persons of color, Rodrigue said. In New Milford, staff participated in a 20-hour virtual training session that was meant to help them build high quality relationships among all school community members and positive community building that is trauma-free, the school climate organization states. They also learned restorative practices. Ridgefield High Schools goal is to implement more anti-bias curriculum in 2021-22. Professional development focused on subject area curriculum and strategies for teachers to create inclusive environments in their classrooms are both components of this plan, Greenwood said. In Danbury, some teachers attended a training session that focused on ensuring lessons address the needs of all students and how linguistic differences should be seen as assets rather than deficits, Casimiro said. Bethel is trying to recruit educators from minority backgrounds, which has been a huge challenge, Carver said. We want all of our students to feel an included part of the Bethel Public Schools community, so were going to continue to try to look at what that means and the actions we need to take, she said. Newtown has expanded its recruitment practices to attract a variety of candidates, including people of color, Rodrigue said. Thats part of the effort to ensure the districts work is lasts, she said. You can do a lot of things and its here today, gone tomorrow, she said. We want things that are long-lasting, sustainable and really have an impact. Ellen Strauss spent years independently investigating the disappearance of her longtime friend Kathie Durst, and the Weston attorney remains adamant about seeking justice. Straus believes Robert Durst has gotten away with murder before, but now that the commercial real estate heir is on trial for the 2000 murder of his friend Susan Berman in her Los Angeles home, she thinks theyll [the prosecutors] get him. Robert Durst pleaded not guilty to first-degree murder in the California case. And since his trial has resumed in California, New York authorities have reopened their investigation into the 1982 disappearance of Kathie Dursts a former Connecticut college student and have categorizing it as a homicide. The death penalty is too quick and easy, Strauss said, noting she wants Robert Durst to live his life out in prison and think about what he did. Strauss was supposed to be a witness in the Los Angeles case, but after packing her bags and getting on a plane last year she returned home because her husband was concerned for her health amid the coronavirus crisis. Kathie Durst was last seen leaving a Newtown party in 1982. Strauss had known Kathie Durst for years the two were classmates at what was then known as Western Connecticut State College in Danbury.and they remained good friends years after. Strauss said she still recalls getting phone calls from Kathie detailing how Robert abused and physically assaulted her. Her advice to Kathie: Get the hell out of Dodge. Robert Durst has since admitted to abusing Kathie, as well as fighting with her about divorce in their North Salem, N.Y. cottage on Jan. 31, 1982. But he claims he put her on a Manhattan-bound train and never saw her again. Durst had also admitted to leaving a note with Los Angeles police that had Bermans address and the word CADAVER written on it. These admissions are just a couple Robert Durst has made over the years, in addition to him admitting he chopped up the body of his 71-year-old friend Morris Black in a case in which he was acquitted. She told us if anything ever happens to me, Bob did it. Dont let him get away with it, Strauss said of Kathie, who she described as a saucy, smart and beautiful woman who was a breath of fresh air. Soon after Kathie Durst went missing, Strauss started looking into the disappearance, spending decades investigating Robert Durst. From sifting through his trash to tracking his movements and uncovering aliases he used, Strauss said she was like a pit bull chasing him, refusing to give up on the promise she made to Kathie. He was tying up all the loose ends and getting away with it for years, she said, emphasizing she believes that Robert Durst killed Susan Berman because she knew too much. So when authorities finally showed up at her Weston home to ask her about her investigation into the matter, she handed over all of her old files to them, glad they would finally take a look at what she compiled. Watching the trial unfold, Strauss said she hopes the jury wont feel bad for him because of how frail he looks. Its hard to prove a lot of things but there are certain things that, if it walks like a duck, it talks like a duck, she said. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) People sponsoring new new ballot initiatives said Friday that they want the Mississippi Supreme Court to reverse its recent ruling that invalidated the state's initiative process. They said they are doing so because Secretary of State Michael Watson announced Thursday that he would not seek reconsideration of the courts 6-3 decision. A majority of justices ruled May 14 that a medical marijuana proposal, Initiative 65, was not properly on the November ballot because Mississippis initiative process is outdated and unworkable. The court's decision overturned voters' approval of Initiative 65 and took away citizens' process to put issues on the statewide ballot. The Courts decision in this case has voided a fundamental right granted to Mississippi electors who have voted from 1992 to the present as well as to all those electors who will vote into the foreseeable future," an attorney for new initiatives on early voting and broad legalization of marijuana wrote in papers filed Friday. The initiative process was put into the state constitution in 1992. Mississippi requires initiative sponsors to gather one-fifth of their petition signatures from each congressional district. The process was put into the state constitution when Mississippi had five districts. The state dropped to four districts after the 2000 census because of stagnant population, but the initiative process was not updated. The state attorney general issued a legal opinion in 2009 saying initiative sponsors should collect signatures from the five old districts. Madison Mayor Mary Hawkins Butler sued the state days before the 2020 general election, arguing that the medical marijuana initiative was not properly on the ballot. Her attorneys argued that the constitution creates a mathematical impossibility: With four districts, more than one-fifth of the signatures must come from each. A majority of justices agreed in the May 14 ruling. Butler opposed the medical marijuana measure because it would have limited cities' ability to regulate where such businesses may locate. About 1.3 million people voted in Mississippi in November, and more than 766,000 of them voted in favor of the medical marijuana proposal, Initiative 65. Thats about 10,000 more residents than voted in November for then-President Donald Trump, who easily won in Mississippi despite losing his race for a second term. ____ Follow Emily Wagster Pettus on Twitter at http://twitter.com/EWagsterPettus. HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) A Connecticut judge kept bail at $675,000 Friday for a man charged this week in connection with a 1984 kidnapping and sexual assault after police said a DNA database linked him to the crimes. George Legere, 73, who was living in Springfield, Massachusetts, was arraigned in Hartford Superior Court. He did not enter a plea. His next court date was set for June 25. He is charged with three counts of first-degree kidnapping in the abduction and sexual assault of a woman found in a vehicle slumped over the steering wheel with the horn sounding in Avon at about 4 a.m. on April 13, 1984. She survived the attack. The Associated Press does not name survivors of sexual abuse unless they come forward publicly. Legere's public defender, Michael Wagner, called the allegations somewhat dated and said Legere could not post such a high bond because his only income is Social Security disability payments. He said Legere, a former Windsor, Connecticut, resident, attended UCLA and has a Master's degree in computer science. Springfield police arrested Legere on May 19 based on the 1984 allegations. Avon police served an arrest warrant on him Thursday at a Springfield jail and brought him to Connecticut, authorities said. Police in Avon, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) west of Hartford, said DNA was collected from the 1984 crime, but the state crime lab was not able to identify a suspect at the time. The DNA information was entered into a national database. Police said they were recently notified by the crime lab that a match came up between the DNA evidence and Legeres DNA. Authorities said Legere had a DNA sample taken from him when he was released from a prison sentence in Massachusetts. Legere has a criminal record that includes arrests and convictions in 31 separate cases, including convictions for sexual assault and kidnapping, Avon police said. A bail commissioner said in court Friday that Legere's record also includes a 2019 assault with a firearm conviction in Massachusetts, a 1974 kidnapping conviction in Connecticut and a 1968 negligent homicide conviction in Connecticut. BOSTON (AP) Coronavirus developments around New England: MASSACHUSETTS Its back to nearly normal in Massachusetts. Gov. Charlie Baker lifted almost all COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday including a statewide face covering mandate that has been in place during much of the pandemic. The mandate is being replaced with a mask advisory that echoes recommendations from federal health officials. Unvaccinated individuals are still encouraged to wear masks in public areas, especially indoors. There are still locations where masks will be required, including on public transportation. Baker has also said that some businesses may still require customers and visitors to continue wearing masks inside. Customers should respect those businesses and don a mask while inside, he said Friday. Some of the hardest hit businesses have been restaurants, which can now welcome back visitors for indoor dining without restrictions. About half the states population is fully vaccinated. Baker will officially lift Massachusetts pandemic state of emergency on June 15. ___ MAINE Maine reported 108 new COVID-19 cases and no new deaths Saturday. The states cumulative COVID-19 cases rose to more than 67,600 on Saturday, according to the states Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Since the pandemic began, 825 people have died from COVID-19 in Maine. The state also lifted most mask restrictions this week. Unvaccinated people are still encouraged to wear face coverings in indoor public spaces. ___ VERMONT The Vermont Education Agency will strongly recommend that schools continue to follow the agencys COVID-19 prevention measures for the rest of the school year when Vermonts emergency order is rescinded, said Education Secretary Dan French. The majority of our students in the K-12 system will not be fully vaccinated before the end of the school year, he said Friday, adding that theres also not enough time left in the school year for schools to adopt new procedures. Schools should plan to return to normal operations in the fall, with full in-person learning five days a week, French said. The state believes its unlikely any mitigation measures will be needed in schools in the fall and distancing will not be necessary. Officials will review over the summer whether masks are needed. We feel confident about the fall due to the success of our vaccination efforts to date, French said. It will be important, however, for students and adults to continue to get vaccinated through the summer and fall but a large percentage of Vermonters will be fully vaccinated by the fall. Gov. Phil Scott has said that once 80% of Vermonts eligible population has received at least one dose of vaccine, he will lift the remaining pandemic-related restrictions and then the emergency order. ___ NEW HAMPSHIRE Keene State College is honoring graduates with an in-person commencement ceremony Saturday, with plenty of safeguards in place because of the coronavirus pandemic. Each graduate was allowed just two guests, and participants were being required to show either proof of vaccination or a recent negative test for the virus. The campus was closed to anyone not involved with the ceremony, and was expected to reopen at 5 p.m. ___ RHODE ISLAND Rhode Island's current and former governors have issued a combined 170 executive orders since March 2020. That's more than any other New England state, according to a review by WPRI-TV. Former Gov. Gina Raimondo issued 128 between March 2020 and March 2021, while Governor Dan McKee has signed 42 since he was sworn in on March 2, 2021, according to the governors website. The review of The Council of State Governments data shows Connecticut has the second-most executive orders since March 2020, followed by Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont. ___ CONNECTICUT Connecticut reported eight new COVID-19 deaths on Friday, bringing the total number of deaths since the start of pandemic to more than 8,200. State health officials reported about 200 new confirmed or probable cases of the disease bringing the total number of confirmed or probable cases in the state since the start of the pandemic to more than 347,000. There were a total of 110 people hospitalized with COVID-19 Friday. More than 9.2 million COVID-19 tests have been conducted in the state since the start of the pandemic. WASHINGTON (AP) The U.S. Postal Service wants to raise rates on first-class stamps from 55 cents to 58 cents as part of a host of price hikes and service changes designed to reduce debt for the beleaguered agency. The request for the changes, which would take effect Aug. 29, was filed with the Postal Regulatory Commission. It includes price hikes for first-class mail, magazines and marketing mailers. The price hikes are part of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy's 10-year plan for the agency, which faces an estimated $160 billion in operating losses over the next decade. The onslaught that hit bats in Connecticut beginning in 2008 is ongoing. Its one of the great environmental disasters of our time, happening in real time in front of us. Urban wildlife expert Laura Simon likens the loss of bats flying at dusk to not hearing birds songs in spring. You think Wait a minute. Somethings missing here, she said. But there are small areas of solace a better understanding of the bats that still live in the state by both wildlife experts and by humans in general. People are now saying I never knew bats were good. Now I want them around, said Jenny Dickson, head of the wildlife division of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Theyre saying OK. Lets find a better place for the bats, Simon said. The bat bad news continues, however. In April, a report written jointly by a variety of federal and state groups, including the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Geological Survey found that nationally, the populations of three species of bats the northern long-eared bat, the tricolored bat and the little brown bat have declined by 90 percent from 1995 to 2018. The survey is the most comprehensive study of bat populations ever compiled in the US, involving 200 study sites in 27 state and two Canadian provinces, as part of the US Bat Monitoring Program. The report may strengthen the arguments for two of the species the tricolored bat and the little brown bat to be added to the federal Endangered Species list. The fish and wildlife service already lists northern long-eared bats as a threatened species. Connecticut is ahead of the federal government in that regard. The DEEP now lists all three species as endangered, along with the eastern small-footed bats and the Indiana bat. Whats killing the bats is a non-native invasive species a fungus that human boots or backpacks probably carried from Europe to caves in New York. Bats spread the fungus rapidly. It was first identified in New York the winter of 2006-2007. A year later it was in Connecticut The fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans infects bats skin and prevents them from hibernating safely. They become restless, and leave their winter quarters too early, only to die of dehydration and starvation. Because the fungus leaves a smudgy white residue on the bats faces, its known as White Nose Syndrome. Dickson said all three species used to be common in the state. Now, using acoustic surveys, the DEEP finds them here and there. The northern long-eared bat used to be the most ubiquitous bat in the state, she said. Its declined by 98 percent. In the last year, we heard maybe one or two. Tricolored bats have declined by 95 percent in the state, and little brown bats by 90 to 95 percent, she said. They used to be one of the most abundant bats in the state, Dickson said of little brown bats. But because human contact stresses bats which are stressed enough the DEEP now only surveys bats acoustically, listening for their piping vocalizations at night. Doing so has had unexpected benefits. Dickson said the DEEP staff has occasionally picked up on the sounds of Eastern small-footed bats a species it wasnt sure was still around in the state. Its also learning more about three species of tree-roosting migratory bats that flutter up from the South to summer here. People have also begun to pay more attention to bat conservation. The Northwest Connecticut Land Conservancy has installed a gate at Torys Cave part of a nature preserve in New Milford in part, to keep people out of the cave and away from the bats that overwinter there. People are different, said Paul Elconin, the conservancys director of land conservation. But when you explain whats happening, they appreciate and sympathize with the situation. Joe Gray, owner of Bat R US, a wildlife control company in Bethel, said he still gets calls to get bats out of peoples attics. But some clients who now know about bats prodigious, environmentally-beneficial ability to eat hundreds of flying insects a night want to keep them on their property. People are putting bat houses up, Gray said. Thats the way to go. Dickson of the DEEP said she is tremendously encouraged by this change in attitude. We are finding we can co-exist with the natural world, she said. Contact Robert Miller at earthmattersrgm@gmail.com ALBANY, N.Y. The latest federal data shows that two-thirds of adults in New York state have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. At the same time, hospitalizations statewide are down to 1,143 patients, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said Saturday. The total is the lowest since Oct. 31. On the vaccine front, about 46% of 20 million residents are fully vaccinated, according to data as of Friday from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The national average is 40%. ___ MORE ON THE VIRUS OUTBREAK: Just in time to plan summer vacations, Europe sees dramatic drop in coronavirus cases More states ease lingering virus rules as vaccine rates rise Vietnam finds new virus variant that is a hybrid of India, UK strains Chinese city locks down neighborhood after virus upsurge ___ Follow more of APs pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic and https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-vaccine ___ HERES WHAT ELSE IS HAPPENING: OKLAHOMA CITY -- Oklahoma state agencies will be barred from requiring a mask or coronavirus vaccination as a condition of being allowed to enter a state building or office under an executive order signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. It is time to return to normal, Stitt said in a statement after signing the order Friday. It takes effect Tuesday. The order does not apply in medical settings with patients. Stitt refused to issue a statewide mask mandate, but in November required masks to be worn inside state buildings, an order that was lifted in March. ___ BRUSSELS Thousands of protesters angry at pandemic-related restrictions marched to European Union headquarters in Brussels and had minor tussles with police over their unauthorized gathering. The crowd initially assembled in a Brussels park Saturday for a party designed to flout Belgiums COVID-19 rules and a related gathering calling for Europeans to claim back their freedom. Participants then marched to the district of the Belgian capital that houses key EU buildings. Police officers blocked them and dispersed the marchers by early Saturday evening. Earlier Saturday, about 1,000 health care workers demonstrated at an authorized protest in Brussels to demand more financial support and hospital staff after a coronavirus-dominated year. ___ SAN FRANCISCO California residents are celebrating the sunny Memorial Day weekend more upbeat than they have been for any other holiday since the pandemic began, thanks to dramatically lower virus case rates and increasing vaccinations. About 90% of the state population is in the lower two of four tiers that restrict business operations and other activities. By June 15, California will end the tier system and relax social distancing and masking rules. Many tourist attractions say theyre already swamped. One business owner in wine country says shes had to limit the number of nights her restaurants and bar are open because she cant find enough people to work. ___ PARIS Thousands of people packed inside a Paris arena for a concert Saturday as part of a public health experiment to prepare France to host big events again. The show at AccorHotels Arena in eastern Paris featured 1980s French rock band Indochine and DJ Etienne de Crecy. But the attention was mostly on the concert-goers. The Paris public hospital authority helped organize the event to determine whether its safe to allow 5,000 people wearing masks to dance together in the open pit of an indoor concert without social distancing. The attendees got to see the show for free but were required to take three virus tests, two before and one after the concert. To further reduce risk, organizers only allowed people 18-45 years old without underlying health conditions to participate, according to the hospital authority. Frances cultural venues were shut for most of the past 14 months as authorities tried to contain persistent surges of virus infections that filled hospitals and were linked to more than 109,000 deaths. HANOI Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant thats a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K., the Vietnamese health minister said. Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said Saturday that scientists identified the variant while examining the genetic makeup of the virus that had infected some recent patients. He said lab tests suggested it might spread more easily than other versions of the virus. Long says the new variant has spread to 30 of Vietnams 63 municipalities and provinces, and could be responsible for a recent surge in confirmed cases. Viruses often develop small genetic changes as they reproduce, and new variants of the coronavirus have been seen almost since the one that causes COVID-19 was first detected in China in late 2019. The World Health Organization has listed four global variants of concern the ones found in the U.K. and India, plus two more identified in South Africa and Brazil. Vietnam initially stood out in its success battling the virus. As of early May, it had recorded just over 3,100 confirmed cases and 35 deaths since the start of the pandemic. But in the last few weeks, the country has confirmed more than 3,500 new cases and 12 more deaths. ___ BOSTON Its back to nearly normal in Massachusetts. Gov. Charlie Baker lifted almost all COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday, including a statewide face covering mandate that has been in place during much of the pandemic. The mandate is being replaced with a mask advisory that echoes recommendations from federal health officials. Unvaccinated individuals still are encouraged to wear masks in public areas, especially indoors. There are locations where masks will remain required, including on public transportation. Baker has also said that some businesses may still require customers and visitors to continue wearing masks inside. Customers should respect those businesses and don a mask while inside, the governor said Friday. Some of the hardest hit businesses have been restaurants, which can now welcome back visitors for indoor dining without restrictions. About half the states population is fully vaccinated. Baker will officially lift Massachusetts pandemic state of emergency on June 15. ___ OKLAHOMA CITY Oklahoma state agencies are barred from requiring a mask or coronavirus vaccination as a condition of being allowed to enter a state building or office under an executive order signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. It is time to return to normal, Stitt said in a statement after signing the order Friday. Every Oklahoman must have access to all government services whether or not they choose to be vaccinated or wear a mask. The order takes effect Tuesday. It was announced after Stitt signed into law a bill prohibiting schools and colleges from adopting mask or vaccination requirements. It, does not apply in medical settings with patients, Stitt refused to issue a statewide mask mandate but in November required masks inside state buildings, an order he lifted in March. The Oklahoma State Department of Health on Friday reported 452,777 total coronavirus cases since the pandemic began and 1,214 currently active cases in the state. ___ LONDON The Duchess of Cambridge has received her first dose of COVID-19 vaccine as Britain extends its inoculation program to younger residents. The 39-year-old wife of Prince William formerly known as Kate Middleton received her shot at Londons Science Museum, a mass vaccination center near the couples home at Kensington Palace, according to a photo posted on their Twitter feed. Kate got her shot Friday, a few weeks after her husband. Im hugely grateful to everyone who is playing a part in the rollout thank you for everything you are doing, the duchess said in a tweet posted Saturday. Britain this week extended its COVID-19 vaccination program to everyone over the age of 30. The program has been gradually expanded to progressively younger age groups since it began in early December, and more than 70% of adults have already received at least one dose. Other members of the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, publicized their vaccine appointments to encourage people to get their shots. ___ BEIRUT Lebanons health authorities launched a COVID-19 vaccination marathon to speed up inoculations around the country, including areas where turnout has so far been low. The daylong campaign offered AstraZeneca vaccines at 30 different centers around the country without advance appointments to encourage people over age 30 to show up. Lebanon's capital, Beirut, was not included in the campaign. As of Saturday afternoon, 7,700 people had been vaccinated in the push. A vaccination program that started in February targeted older age groups, primarily through registration on a government-operated platform and appointments. Photos of lines outside centers north of Beirut showed high turnout for the appointment-less drive, particularly among foreign workers, many of whom had been reluctant or unable to register on the government-operated digital platform. There were also lines in towns and villages in the east and mountains, where turnout has so far been fickle. So far, over 700,000 people have been vaccinated in the country of 6 million. Lebanon has reported a total of 530,000 confirmed cases and 7,700 deaths since February 2020. ___ MONTGOMERY, Alabama The pace of COVID-19 vaccinations in Alabama has fallen to a level not seen since the earliest days of the immunization campaign even though less than 30% of the states population is fully vaccinated. Statistics from the Alabama Department of Public Health showed Friday that the number of people getting shots in recent days was similar to the rate in January, when vaccine supply was still very limited. Officials are worried that large numbers of people are simply refusing to get shots, meaning the threat of the new coronavirus will remain higher than necessary. Its very distressing because we have vaccine and we have it in every corner of Alabama, said Dr. Karen Landers, assistant state health officer. Several vaccination sites have closed because of the lack of demand, and some areas have considered turning down vaccine shipments. In Opelika, East Alabama Medical Center said very low demand and plenty of vaccine supply meant a community clinic would close after giving patients a second round of shots on June 14. ___ ROME Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting across the continent, after Europe led the world in new cases last fall and winter in waves that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, forced more rolling lockdowns and overwhelmed intensive care units. Now, vaccination rates are accelerating across Europe, and with them, the promise of summer vacations on Ibiza, Crete or Corsica. There are hopes for a rebirth of a tourism industry that in Spain and Italy alone accounts for 13% of gross domestic product but was wiped out by the pandemic. Europe saw the largest decline in new COVID-19 infections and deaths this week compared with any other region, while also reporting about 44% of adults had received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the World Health Organization and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Europes seven-day rolling average for new cases per 100,000 people had been higher than any other region from mid-October through the beginning of December, then from early February through April, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Now, no European country is among the top 10 for new cases per 100,000 people. ___ MANILA, Philippines The Philippines has lifted a ban on the deployment of workers to Saudi Arabia, which it imposed after receiving reports that workers were being asked to shoulder COVID-19 test and quarantine costs in the oil-rich kingdom. Philippine Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said that after Saudi Arabia formally notified his country Saturday that recruitment agencies and Saudi employers would bear the costs of tests and 10 days of quarantine for Filipinos, he decided to lift the ban. The ban, which Bello imposed Thursday, prevented more than 400 Filipino workers from boarding their Philippine Airlines flights for Saudi Arabia on Friday. Many were stranded at the Manila airport, with some begging in tears for the government to immediately lift the ban. I apologize for the inconvenience and momentary anguish that it may have caused our dear overseas Filipino workers, Bello said, but added our Saudi-bound workers will no longer be disadvantaged. The Philippines is a leading source of global labor. Its regulations require recruitment agencies and foreign employers to cover the costs of COVID-19 tests and quarantines, which would be a financial burden to the mostly poor workers. ___ KABUL, Afghanistan Afghanistans Health Ministry announced the shutdown of all public and private universities and schools in the countrys 16 provinces, including Kabul, for at least two weeks starting Saturday. The decision follows a surge in cases. On Friday, 977 people tested positive for COVID-19 and 18 died, most of them in Kabul. Only 3,800 were tested. Over 600,000 people have received a first dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine, the ministry said, without counting the armed forces. The vaccination drive has been put on hold due to shortages and the remaining stocks are reserved for those who got the first shot. ___ BEIJING China on Saturday reported 16 new confirmed coronavirus cases including two authorities said were believed to have been acquired locally. The two locally transmitted cases were in Guangdong province in the south, adjacent to Hong Kong, the National Health Commission reported. It said the other infections are believed to have been acquired abroad. Mainland Chinas death toll stands at 4,636 out of 91,061 confirmed cases, according to the NHC. ___ ATLANTA Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp declared Friday that public schools no longer have his permission to require masks for coronavirus protection, though his executive order fell short of banning such mandates outright. The Republican governors written order came two days after Kemp declared: The time for mandates is over. Were not going to have a mask mandate for our kids, Kemp said. Our teachers have had the ability to get vaccinated. It certainly doesnt keep anyone from wearing a mask. The actual order adjusting Georgias few remaining coronavirus restrictions isnt so strongly worded. Instead, Kemps order says Georgia school districts can no longer claim their authority to require masks comes from the governor. Its unclear how many Georgia districts ever required employees and students to wear masks. While a number of Atlanta school districts enforced the requirement, many districts in outer suburbs and rural areas only strongly recommended masks. Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said school boards can likely require teachers and staff to wear masks without the governors permission, much like they impose dress codes. TROIS-RIVIERES, QC, May 28, 2021 /CNW/ - The governments of Canada and Quebec, in partnership with the City of Trois-Rivieres, announced a total of $36.6 million in funding to renovate and modernize the J.-Antonio-Thompson Theater. The announcement was made today in the presence of the Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry, on behalf of the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, Pablo Rodriguez, Lieutenant of Quebec and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons, Nathalie Roy, Minister of Culture and Communications, and Jean Lamarche, Mayor of TroisRivieres. The work will include: expansion of the reception area, ticket office and foyer; the replacement of approximately 100 seats; the reorganization of the dressing rooms and seats to allow for better viewing; the expansion of the artists' rooms, the addition of multifunctional rooms for special events and the repair of the roof, insulation and electrical installations. Thanks to this project, the J.-Antonio-Thompson Theater will be able to compete with Quebec's major performance venues by ensuring greater accessibility for people with reduced mobility and improving the comfort and experience of all spectators. The Government of Canada is investing $10 million in this project through the Community, Culture and Recreation Infrastructure Stream under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program. The Government of Quebec is also investing $10 million through the Cultural Infrastructure Development Assistance Program (PADIC). The City of TroisRivieres will for its part contribute more than $16.6 million to the project. Across the country, Canadians and Quebeckers are feeling the impact of COVID-19. Together, Canada and Quebec are working to reduce the impact of the pandemic, ensure the health and safety of the population, support businesses and promote job creation, economic growth and investments in cultural infrastructure. Quotes "Investing in cultural infrastructure helps build strong, vibrant and inclusive communities. The renovation of the J.-Antonio-Thompson Theater will improve the accessibility of this heritage site and encourage the presentation of high-calibre cultural events in the Mauricie region. Canada's infrastructure plan is strengthening our communities and creating jobs for today and tomorrow." The Honourable Francois-Philippe Champagne, Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry on behalf of the Honourable Catherine McKenna, Minister of Infrastructure and Communities "These investments will allow cultural infrastructure to compete with leading establishments and attract high-quality arts events. In return, these events will contribute to the local and provincial economic recovery and create opportunities for local artists, while improving the well-being and cultural experience of Quebeckers. That is why I am personally delighted with the project to renovate the magnificent J. Antonio Thompson Theater." Pablo Rodriguez, Lieutenant of Quebec and Leader of the Government in the House of Commons "The improvement of a place of this magnitude will have a beneficial impact on the economic revival of the cultural milieu and for the economy of the region. Its new installations will consolidate the status of the J.A-Thompson room as a major cultural dissemination hub in the Mauricie region. Thanks to this partnership, an investment in a project of this magnitude becomes possible and only makes winners. First, the citizens of Trois-Rivieres who will have access to a quality cultural offer in an inviting setting of which they will be proud, then our performing artists and creators, who will be able to work in places designed for highlight them." Nathalie Roy, Minister of Culture and Communications "This is excellent news for the cultural dynamism of Trois-Rivieres. This work is more than mortar, brick and concrete. It is an investment in our economy, our quality of life and also our creativity. It is a real tonic administered to institutions and organizations that contribute to better social and community life in our towns and villages. The improvement of this place of diffusion anchored in the region's identity will ensure that it will be able to continue to play for a long time a beneficial role on the dynamism of our region while confirming its status as a cultural landmark and will continue to be a source of pride for the citizens of Trois-Rivieres." Jean Boulet, Minister of Labor, Employment and Social Solidarity and Minister responsible for the Mauricie Region "We welcome today's announcement with great joy. Thanks to these contributions, we are counting on a very-large scaled production offer, while greatly enhancing the spectator experience. With this support, we are reaffirming Trois-Rivieres' leadership position in cultural offerings both in Mauricie and provincially. The J.-Antonio-Thompson room is already recognized as one of the most beautiful in Quebec. It's a gem. I am very happy for Trois-Rivieres and for all lovers of cultural products: this is what we are doing for them. " Jean Lamarche, Mayor of Trois-Rivieres Highlights Under the Investing in Canada Infrastructure Program (ICIP), the federal government plans, between 2018 and 2028, to invest more than $ 7.5 billion in Quebec for projects targeting community, cultural and recreational infrastructure, green infrastructure, public transit, and infrastructure in rural and northern communities. The Cultural Infrastructure Development Assistance Program stems from the Integrated Bilateral Agreement. The MCC is responsible for the cultural infrastructure sub-component of the ICIP, which has a budget of $ 100 million, including $ 50 million from the federal government and $ 50 million from Quebec, to improve the quality and accessibility of cultural infrastructure in the province.Associated Links Investing in Canada Plan Project Map Federal investments in Quebec infrastructure projects Investing in Canada: Canada's Long-Term Infrastructure Plan Cultural Infrastructure Development Assistance Program Follow Infrastructure Canada on Twitter , Facebook , Instagram and Linkedin Follow the Minister on social media Twitter: @MCCQuebec Facebook: @MCCQuebec SOURCE Infrastructure Canada For further information: Chantalle Aubertin, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, 613-941-0660, [email protected]; Louis-Julien Dufresne, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister of Culture and Communications, 418-380-2310; Information: Media Relations: Infrastructure Canada, 613-960-9251, Toll-free: 1-877-250-7154, Email: [email protected]; Media Relations Team: Ministere de la Culture et des Communications, 418-380-2388 Related Links www.infrastructure.gc.ca MIAMI, May 26, 2021 /CNW/ -- Edenor, the largest energy distribution company in Argentina, has selected OverIT as their new cloud provider for scheduling, optimization, and mobility, to transition from their existing on-premise platform ClickSoftware , now part of Salesforce. By using Geocall Cloud Offering, Edenor is planning to: Optimize the work and schedules for over 4,000 technicians Reduce travel costs by approximately 30% Improve first-time fix rates by 25% Respond to emergent work 5 times faster Leverage subject matter experts using a real-time collaboration platform in the field Deliver advanced safety and work procedures via mobile devices Geocall's flexibility and user-friendly interface also make it ideal for handling unforeseen tasks that happen in technical or commercial operations and provides access to guided procedures. Ultimately, Geocall was chosen due to its market-leading GIS integration capabilities for 2D and 3D asset-intensive monitoring, combined with "zero-touch" Augmented Reality remote collaboration to support Edenor with their innovative field execution. Luis Lenkiewicz, Edenor CIO, said, "Edenor is in a clear transformation path to the Cloud; thus, the Field Service selection process needed to be extremely thorough. OverIT was selected due to its robust SaaS platform, superior expertise, and knowledge in the field, and mostly their many industry references for Utilities and specifically for electricity distribution worldwide. OverIT is, without a doubt, the leader in this space." "Edenor's selection of OverIT's SaaS offering to replace existing on-premise ClickSoftware p l atform is a testament of OverIT's unique capabilities and opportunity to support complex use cases in the Utility industry. We expect most customers that find themselves in the same situation as Edenor will migrate to OverIT in the next 12-24 months", said Alejandro Nestares, SVP and GM OverIT Americas. Edenor is the largest electricity distribution company in Argentina, with 4,776 employees. On December 31st, 2020, Edenor had the highest number of customers in the country, which amounts to over three million, and their energy purchases represent 20% of the country's overall energy demand in 2020. Backed by US capital with development headquarters in Italy and main US offices in Boston and Miami, OverIT is a multinational company with more than 20 years of international and cross-industry experience in Field Service Management. The firm is recognized by premier global advisory and consulting organizations as a leading vendor in FSM and AR industries. www.overit.us Marketing Contact: Carly Kroll | [email protected] | +1.847.867.2232 Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1248583/OverIT_Logo.jpg SOURCE OverIT The Sierra de las Nieves has been declared a National Park at last by the Spanish parliament. All political parties on the approving committee voted in favour of the designation. It is the sixteenth National Park in Spain and third in Andalucia, after the Sierra Nevada and Donana. The area, inland on the western Costa del Sol, behind Marbella, will have maximum levels of protection and the decision marks the culmination of activity first started in 1917 to preserve its beauty and sensitive environment. The new National Park has 10 out of the 27 natural land systems in Spain's National Parks legislation and stands out for its Pinsapo pine forests. Over half the surface area where this protected species grows is in the Sierra de las Nieves. The regional government now has to present a master plan for the park's management. Nunavut communities to benefit from increased connectivity OTTAWA, ON, May 28, 2021 /CNW/ - Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted how much we rely on our connections. Now more than ever, Canadians across the country need access to reliable high-speed Internet to work, learn and connect with friends and family from home. Through the Universal Broadband Fund's (UBF) Rapid Response Stream, the Government of Canada is taking immediate action to connect all Canadians to the high-speed Internet they need. Today, the Honourable Daniel Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs and Member of Parliament for Saint Boniface-Saint-Vital, on behalf of the Honourable Maryam Monsef, Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development, announced $6.9 million in federal funding for Northwestel and SSi Micro to bring high-speed Internet to residents of Nunavut. These projects will improve Internet connectivity and affordability for over 9,800 underserved households in all 25 communities of Nunavut. Funding is being allocated as follows: Northwestel: $1,993,286 SSi Micro: $4,992,716 The Universal Broadband Fund was launched in November 9, 2020. Projects funded under the now $2.75-billion program, as well as through other public and private investments, will help connect 98% of Canadians to high-speed Internet by 2026 and achieve the national target of 100% connectivity by 2030. Today's announcement builds on the progress the Government of Canada has already made to improve critical infrastructure in Nunavut. Quotes "Affordable, reliable, high-speed Internet service is an essential part of the daily lives of Nunavummiut and all Canadians and it critical to their success. Today's investment will improve Internet capacity and affordability for the existing high-speed Internet service of over 9,800 households in all 25 Nunavut communities. These projects will help sustain jobs, improve access to health care and online learning services, and keep people connected to their loved ones. The Government of Canada has committed nearly $208 million to four connectivity projects in Nunavut, which will connect more households to better, faster Internet. We will continue to make investments like these to help connect every Canadian to the high-speed Internet they need." The Honourable Daniel Vandal, Minister of Northern Affairs and Member of Parliament for Saint Boniface-Saint-Vital "Today's announcement will make Nunavut's fastest Internet speeds more affordable for residents and businesses in four Nunavut communities right away. Northwestel home Internet customers in Iqaluit, Rankin Inlet, Cambridge Bay and Arviat will see their bill go down by $20 a month starting this month. I want to thank the Government of Canada for its continued partnership in building a more highly connected north." - Paul Gillard, Vice-President, Business Markets, Northwestel "This investment from the Rapid Response Stream allows QINIQ to bring more affordable and much-needed backbone capacity into Nunavut. While more work will need to be done, this is another key step to close the digital divide for the thousands of Nunavummiut who rely on QINIQ broadband. We are committed to accomplishing this and to delivering on Canada's Connectivity Strategy to further improve broadband services in the North." Dean Proctor, Chief Development Officer, SSi Canada Quick facts The Government of Canada has committed over $208 million to four connectivity projects in Nunavut . to four connectivity projects in . Canada's Connectivity Strategy aims to provide all Canadians with access to Internet speeds of at least 50 megabits per second (Mbps) download / 10 Mbps upload. The Universal Broadband Fund (UBF) is a $2.75-billion investment designed to help connect all Canadians to high-speed Internet. Applications to the UBF were accepted until March 15, 2021 , and are now being evaluated. investment designed to help connect all Canadians to high-speed Internet. Applications to the UBF were accepted until , and are now being evaluated. The UBF is part of a suite of federal investments to improve high-speed Internet. The suite includes the Connect to Innovate program, which is expected to connect nearly 400,000 households by 2023, and the recently announced $2-billion broadband initiative from the Canada Infrastructure Bank. Associated links Stay connected Follow Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada on Twitter: @ISED_CA SOURCE Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada For further information: Contacts: Marie-Pier Baril, Press Secretary, Office of the Minister for Women and Gender Equality and Rural Economic Development, [email protected], 613-295-8123; Media Relations, Innovation, Science and Economic Development Canada, 343-291-1777, [email protected] Related Links http://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/icgc.nsf/eng/home India has registered its strong objections to UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir's remarks on Kashmir during his visit to Pakistan. During his visit to Pakistan, UNGA President connected Palestine with the Jammu and Kashmir issue, saying it is Pakistan's responsibility to bring this to the UN Platform more aggressively. India has registered its strong objections to UN General Assembly President Volkan Bozkirs remarks on Kashmir during his visit to Pakistan. During his visit to Pakistan, UNGA President connected Palestine with the Jammu and Kashmir issue, saying it is Pakistans responsibility to bring this to the UN Platform more aggressively. Volkan Bozkr is a Turkish diplomat and politician who served as President of the United Nations General Assembly. This sparked many doubts, as he is required to remain neutral during his one-year time in office. Giving such a comment in Pakistan, however, calls into doubt not only his morality, but also his understanding of the Kashmir situation. In a sharply worded statement, the Ministry of External Affairs dismissed his unwarranted references to Jammu and Kashmir, calling the remarks unacceptable. When the President of the United Nations General Assembly makes inaccurate and prejudiced remarks, he does a great damage to the office he holds, the statement stated, adding that his conduct is genuinely regretful and undoubtedly weakens his stature on the global platform. According to Dawn, Bozkir claimed that there was a lack of political will to resolve the Kashmir dispute in comparison to the Palestinian conflict, despite the fact that both have been raging for almost as long. The remarks will be interpreted as a breach of the President of the General Assemblys code of ethics, which is outlined in Annex XI (a) and established in Resolution 70/305 of September 2016. The President shall exercise his or her duties and obligations in an impartial and equitable way, as well as with complete honesty and good faith, the Annex states in paragraph 2. Read More: Tech billionaire Mark Cuban invests in Indian crypto startup Polygon MIAMI (AP) Jesus Lopez says he feels like a stranger in the place he was born. He's from Guadalajara, Mexico, but his life was in Chicago. After 15 years in the city, he was deported a year ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to go back because I belong there, that's where I have my friends, my family, said the 25-year-old, once a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that gives protections to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Lopez, who said he didn't renew his spot in the program because he couldn't afford it, hopes to benefit from new efforts by advocates, groups and attorneys to bring back immigrants they believe were unfairly deported from the United States. With President Joe Biden in office, one of the new proposals from advocates urges creating a centralized Department of Homeland Security office to consider requests from deported immigrants trying to reunite with their families in the U.S. We have deported hundreds of thousands of individuals, and to do that and not even have an effective safety valve to review bad decisions violates due process, said Nayna Gupta, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Washington-based nonprofit that proposed the idea. It's a long shot: White House officials have never publicly mentioned the idea, and it doesnt yet have a supporter in Congress. The campaign, however, shows how immigrant advocacy has become emboldened after four years hardline immigration policies under former President Donald Trump. It also shows how varied ambitions are among pro-immigrant advocates. Many are focused instead on immigration bills that have passed the House but appear stalled in the Senate as large numbers of unaccompanied children crossing the border have weakened the White Houses position. The measures would give legal status to DACA recipients like Lopez, more farmworkers and others with special protections. Another bill Biden proposed to offer a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally includes some provisions for a chance for deportees to come back to the U.S. But the Biden administration has not spoken publicly or answered questions about the possibility of regularly considering those requests. More than 700,000 immigrants have been deported from the U.S. in the last three fiscal years, according to federal data. U.S. law includes ways for deportees to return, but they rarely succeed. For some deportees, the change of administration offers hope. Claudio Rojas says he feels better since Trump left office, but he still lives with anxiety and can't sleep some nights in his Buenos Aires home. I am not in a detention center, but I feel like I am in jail in my own apartment. I am in Argentina, but I feel I am a foreigner. I can't adapt, said Rojas, a 55-year-old handyman deported in 2019. His wife, two sons and two grandsons are in Florida. Rojas and his family overstayed a tourist visa. After a decade, he ended up in federal custody after a police stop and got a deportation order. Rojas did not leave, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him again for seven months. He held a widely publicized hunger strike, and two filmmakers made a documentary based on his and others' experiences. Days before Rojas was to speak at the 2019 Miami Film Festival, he was detained again and deported. The Argentinian has sued and is waiting for a decision from a federal appeals court. I want back the life I lost, all this time that I lost, Rojas said. The National Immigrant Justice Center says Congress doesn't need to act on their proposal and that creation of a centralized process to review applications could be done through executive action because it is based on existing laws. The plan asks the government to take into account factors like people who were eligible for legal status and had applied before being deported or those who have compelling circumstances. The proposal has been shared with White House staff, the group said. It plans to invite Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to discuss the proposal and include a letter signed by 75 immigrants rights organizations supporting the plan. A White House spokesperson referred questions about the proposal to the Department of Homeland Security, which did not immediately respond. Advocates point to how the government has started reunifying families that the Trump administration separated at the border under its zero tolerance" policy. In the process of doing that, hopefully the various agencies involved recognize that this is something that can be done, that we have processes in place, such as humanitarian parole, to bring people back, said Alina Das, co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at New York University School of Law. And while efforts to bring back deported veterans have persisted for years, advocates have started a new campaign with that goal, which Biden promised to carry out during his campaign. In February, three California lawmakers reintroduced a bill to allow certain deported veterans to return. If someone deserves a second chance, those are our veterans, Democratic state Rep. Mark Takano said recently. Besides that effort, DACA might have the most chance of success in Congress. Lopez, the Mexican immigrant, was 9 when he was brought to the U.S. and became a DACA recipient in 2012. He didn't renew those protections a few years later because of money issues. He was arrested in 2019 when Iowa police stopped the car he was riding in with friends and found a small amount of marijuana. He ended up in ICE custody and was released nine months later. Last year, Lopez traveled from Chicago with his two brothers to what he thought was a routine ICE check-in in Iowa. Instead, he was detained and deported. He said he dreams of going back to Chicago to work construction, live with his family and help his grandmother with errands. This new administration gives me the hope of thinking that they see things in a more human way," Lopez said. NORTH HAVEN An unusual bind is befuddling a streets worth of North Haven residents: the post office wont deliver mail to their homes. They dont understand why. The residents say when they decided to move into the new development, a road called Mikeys Way that sits near Route 17 and has 10 homes, they were told they would be able to get curbside delivery once the road became public. Now, the post office has insisted they use a centralized pick-up point at the front of the road, a practice a spokesperson said is in line with U.S. Postal Service policies. Developer Joseph Ciarleglio said construction of Mikeys Way began in 2016, with residents moving in as early as 2017. Because the road still was private and its improvements incomplete, residents picked up mail either at the post office or from a cluster of temporary mailboxes stationed at the end of the road, he said. Meghan Friedmann / Hearst Connecticut Media According to the developer, he was led to believe that once the road became public, the post service would offer curbside delivery. First Selectman Michael Freda, who has headed the town for more than 11 years, said the postal service has done so for other new developments in town. The town incorporated Mikeys Way in April. Thats when Lori Kowaleski moved her mailbox from the end of the road to the front of her house, she said. And then we stopped getting our mail, she said. When Kowaleski went to the post office to figure out what was going on, she said, she was told the mail stopped coming because Mikeys Way residents are supposed to have a communal drop-off point. Postmaster Katrina Enos, who started the job in 2019, declined to provide curbside delivery, according to Ciarleglio, Freda and several residents. When asked for comment, USPS spokesperson Amy Gibbs issued a statement drawing on language in the Postal Operations Manual, which notes centralized delivery is the preferred mode of delivery for new homes. Centralized delivery is the established mode of delivery for all new residential and commercial developments. Curbside, sidewalk delivery, and door modes are generally not available for new delivery points, Gibbs wrote in an email. The area surrounding Mikeys Way has an already established strategic delivery system that adopts the best practices for most efficient and cost effective delivery. It has been determined that new delivery points cannot be added to this segment based on normal postal policy and procedure. Meghan Friedmann / Hearst Connecticut Media It was an answer that did not satisfy Freda. Im gonna have to alert all of my colleagues across the state, all my chief elected officials that I work very closely with, that apparently all new developments in town are not gonna get mail delivered to the house, he said. The operations manual states non-centralized delivery modes are generally not available for new delivery points, with very rare exceptions, as determined by the Postal Service in its sole discretion, on a case-by-case basis. Freda stressed that the matter is discretionary, citing another portion of the manual. Section 631.21 under curbside delivery states that delivery may be provided at the curb with approval from the postal service so long as (boxes) can be efficiently, safely, and conveniently served by the carrier from the carriers vehicle, and so that customers have reasonable and safe access, he said. Meghan Friedmann / Hearst Connecticut Media Gibbs also pointed to a need for efficiency in postal operations. The Postal Service continues to deliver First-Class service to all 161 million delivery points in the United States of America while not receiving any tax-payers dollars to fund our operations, her statement said. In order to remain solvent, efficient and effective, the Postal Service must adhere to a standard for delivery that applies to all residents in every state and in every community. Enos referred inquiries to Gibbs when asked for comment. Like Freda, residents have been puzzled by the post offices decision. Charlotte Cusano said some USPS parcels are in fact getting delivered directly to Mikeys Way homes. Freda said whats happening at Mikeys Way has never been an issue before. He and residents pointed out that similar developments, such as Winding Brook Road, receive curbside delivery. Two residents on that street confirmed they never had any issues with their mail. We just want some answers, Kowaleski said. Theres other developments that have mailboxes in front of their houses. Aron Chun, another neighbor, said he would be less frustrated if the expectations had been different. But he always believed they eventually would be able to get the mail delivered to boxes in front of their homes, he said. I honestly dont know why I cant get my mail and have to go to the post office every other day, and Im afraid I might miss something important, he said. (Im) just very frustrated. We should be able to get our mail delivered in front of our house, said fellow resident Aleksandra Rosinski. The street is a town road. Thats just really confusing, and I dont know why this had to happen this way. She hopes the post office ultimately will agree to deliver to her curbside mailbox, she said. Freda has the same wish for his residents. One of my roles here is to help every citizen in this town, he said. The delivery of mail to each household in town is critically important. Lori Kowaleski / Contributed photo meghan.friedmann@hearstmediact.com YPSILANTI, Mich. (AP) Eastern Michigan University has finalized an agreement with a school in China to establish a joint college of engineering. The agreement with Beibu Gulf University calls for a 15-year cooperative partnership that will begin with up to 300 students being enrolled in the new program annually for the first four years, Eastern Michigan said in a release. Russ Boxer/AP CHICAGO (AP) The Chicago intersection where an actor who appeared in the movie School of Rock was killed while riding his bicycle was flagged three years ago by a traffic safety group as notoriously unsafe and hazardous by a traffic safety group, but it says no improvements were made. In its 2018 study, the Active Transportation Alliance identified the intersection in the Avondale neighborhood on the city's northwest side as a high-crash area because of its poor visibility and heavy traffic. ROME (AP) When Italy won the Eurovision Song Contest with an over-the-top glam-rock performance, the victory signaled more than just a psychological boost for one of the countries hardest hit by COVID-19: Held before a live, indoor audience of 3,500, the annual kitsch fest confirmed that Europe was returning to a semblance of normalcy that was unthinkable even a few weeks ago. Coronavirus infections, hospitalizations and deaths are plummeting across the continent, after Europe led the world in new cases last fall and winter in waves that cost hundreds of thousands of lives, forced more rolling lockdowns and overwhelmed intensive care units. Now, vaccination rates are accelerating across Europe, and with them, the promise of summer vacations on Ibiza, Crete or Corsica. There are hopes for a rebirth of a tourism industry that in Spain and Italy alone accounts for 13% of gross domestic product but was wiped out by the pandemic. We dont speak of 2020. We speak of from today onward, said Guglielmo Miani, president of Milans Montenapoleone luxury shopping district, where European and American tourists have started trickling back, wooed in part by in-person meetups with design teams and free breakfasts at iconic cafes. The hope is that Asian tourists will follow next year. Europe saw the largest decline in new COVID-19 infections and deaths this week compared with any other region, while also reporting about 44% of adults had received at least one dose of vaccine, according to the World Health Organization and European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. Europes seven-day rolling average for new cases per 100,000 people had been higher than any other region from mid-October through the beginning of December, ceding the unwanted top spot to the Americas over the new year before reclaiming it from early February through April, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Now, no European country is among the top 10 for new cases per 100,000 people. And only Georgia, Lithuania and Sweden are in the top 20. But the virus is spiking in Southeast Asia and much of Latin America and hitting the Maldives and Seychelles particularly hard this week. Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO's chief of emergencies, warned that with the global situation still fragile and volatile, Europe is by no means out of the woods. Relaxing measures prematurely has contributed to the surge we have seen throughout 2020 and during the first quarter of 2021, he warned. We must stay the course while striving to increase vaccination coverage. The biggest concern for Europe is the highly contagious variant first detected in India, which has brought that country to its knees and found a growing foothold in Britain. The British government warned Thursday that the variant from India accounts for 50% to 75% of all new infections and could delay its plans to lift remaining social restrictions on June 21. If weve learned anything about this virus, its that once it starts to spread beyond a few cases, it becomes very difficult to contain, said Lawrence Young, a virologist at the University of Warwick. Only extremely stringent local lockdowns soon after a few cases are detected will prevent the virus from spreading. Rising British cases linked to the variant prompted Germany and France this week to require U.K. passengers to quarantine. Vaccines appear still to be highly effective against the variant detected in India, but it is important for people to get both doses to ensure full immunity, said Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the University of Cambridge. In populations where theres partial immunity, either from previous infection or low levels of antibody (from a single shot), then the virus will have that nice sort of sweet spot of an advantage of immune evasion, plus greater transmission, he said. But that hasnt stopped countries from trying to woo back tourists, even from Britain. At least 12,000 people from Britain began descending Friday on Porto, Portugal, for the Champions League final between Manchester City and Chelsea. Visitors have to show a negative COVID-19 test to get into the stadium for Saturday's match, but no quarantines are required on either end of the trip. Luckily I've had two vaccines," said Casper Glyn, a 51-year-old lawyer from London who came to Porto to cheer on Chelsea with his two young sons. They are young and healthy, so I feel good." On Monday, Spain lifted entry requirements including the need for a negative virus test for visitors from 10 countries, including the U.K. British travelers are highly sought after at Spanish beach resorts because they tend to spend the most. Spain lifted the measures after its two-week contagion rate dropped below 130 new infections per 100,000 people, down from a record of 900 at the end of January. Fernando Simon, head of Spains health emergency coordination center, said he would prefer authorities shouted that Spain is open to tourism in 20 days, not now, when we still need to be cautious. I think we should lower the tone of euphoria a little, he said. Greece, too, was voicing caution even after it recently allowed domestic travel and reopened most economic activity. About a third of the Greek population has received at least one vaccine dose, but new infections and deaths remain high. Yes, hospitalizations are dropping, yes, deaths and intubations are down, (but) there are still people entering hospital who could have been vaccinated and werent, Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said, encouraging Greeks to get their shots. And some, unfortunately, are losing their lives. Its a tragedy, he said. But elsewhere, the euphoria is real. There is a palpable sense of relief and hope as summer approaches in Poland, where the number of new daily infections has plummeted from over 35,000 in late March and early April to lows in the few hundreds. More than 19 million vaccine doses have been administered in the nation of 38 million. This week, North Macedonia closed all but one of its COVID-19 treatment centers and field hospitals following a dramatic 90% decline in confirmed cases. Italy and Cyprus are due to let restaurants reopen for indoor dining on Tuesday with discos a big summertime moneymaker for southern European beach resorts scheduled soon thereafter. The party was already underway in the Dutch city of Rotterdam last weekend when Maneskin an Italian rock band that got its start singing on Romes central shopping street won the Eurovision Song Contest. The whole event was a relief, lead singer Damiano David said. This Eurovision means a lot, I think, to the whole of Europe. Its going to be a lighthouse. ___ Jordans reported from Berlin and Barry from Milan. Associated Press journalists Aritz Parra in Madrid, Helena Alves in Porto, Portugal, Nicky Forster in New York and reporters across Europe contributed. RICHMOND, Va. (AP) Asking dogs to follow their noses won't work anymore in states that have legalized marijuana. As Virginia prepares to legalize adult possession of up to an ounce of marijuana on July 1, drug-sniffing police dogs from around the state are being forced into early retirement, following a trend in other states where legalization has led to K-9s being put out to pasture earlier than planned. In Virginia, the rush to take marijuana-detecting dogs out of service began even before lawmakers voted last month to accelerate the timetable for legalization. A separate law that went into effect in March prohibits police from stopping or searching anyone based solely on the odor of marijuana. Virginia state police are retiring 13 K-9s, while many smaller police departments and sheriffs offices are retiring one or two dogs. Most are in the process of purchasing and training new dogs to detect only illicit drugs, including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines. Some departments are unable to afford up to $15,000 to buy and train a new dog, so they are disbanding their K-9 units. The dogs trained on multiple drugs alert in the same way for all of them, so it's impossible to tell whether they are indicating the presence of marijuana or an illicit drug. The dogs also cannot distinguish between a small, legal amount of marijuana or a larger, still-illegal amount of the drug. For police, that means they can no longer be used to establish probable cause for a search. We won't use our dogs trained in marijuana because that could be a defense an attorney would raise for a client, to say, 'Which odor did the K-9 alert on was it marijuana or was it an illegal drug?" said Bedford County Sheriff Mike Miller. Using a dog that has been trained to detect all drugs except marijuana can help "guarantee he didnt hit on marijuana, that he found heroin or something else, Miller said. Miller's office retired one dog and is now using a second dog for tracking and apprehension duties only, not for drug detection. His office also bought a new dog not trained on the scent of marijuana; that dog will be used to detect other drugs. Miller said he'd like to purchase a second drug-sniffing dog, but isn't sure when he will find the money in his budget. Other states that legalized marijuana earlier have had to make similar adjustments. The trend is everywhere, said Don Slavik, executive director of the United States Police Canine Association. Once you train a behavior in a dog, that never goes away. They don't want any mistakes, so that is why they want to bring in new dogs, he said. A 2017 ruling from the Colorado Court of Appeals solidified concerns that using marijuana-trained dogs in places where the drug is legal may not withstand legal challenges. Kilo, a Moffat County Sheriff's Office dog trained on multiple drugs, alerted on a man's truck during a 2015 traffic stop. Officers found a methamphetamine pipe containing white residue. The court found that Kilo's alert was not a reliable indicator of illegal activity because the dog could not differentiate between marijuana and an illegal drug. The court overturned the man's drug possession conviction, finding that police did not have legal grounds to search his truck. The ruling was later upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court. In Massachusetts, where recreational marijuana became legal in 2016, the Quincy Police Department shifted two dogs from drug detection to patrol work, then retired them about 18 months later. Lt. Bob Gillan, the department's K-9 Unit Supervisor, said drug traffickers quickly figured out how to raise doubt about the legality of a search by a dog trained to detect marijuana. Usually, when they're delivering their illegal drugs, they will always have marijuana burning in the car. Any defense attorney worth his or her salt will say, Well, your dog hit on a legal substance, (not the illegal drugs), he said. Sgt. Scott Amos, the canine training coordinator for Virginia State Police, said that with the July 1 legalization date approaching, police are busy training new dogs to detect MDMA, also known as ecstasy; cocaine, heroine and methamphetamines, while also getting 13 dogs ready for retirement. Apollo, Aries, Bandit, Blaze, Jax, Kane, Mater, Nina, Reno, Sarge, Thunder, Zeus and Zoey are being adopted by their handlers, Amos said. Cumberland County Sheriff Darrell Hodges said his office recently had to retire its drug-detecting K-9, a Belgian Malinois named Mambo. He said his 17-person department doesn't have the money to purchase and train a new dog. You work with them day in and day out, and they become part of you, and to just take it away is kind of tough, he said. Hodges said all turned out well for Mambo, who was adopted by his handler. The dog is actually living a wonderful life,'" he said. He has his own bedroom in a house and is getting spoiled rotten. Arnold Gold / Hearst Connecticut Media NEW HAVEN Firefighters battled a deep-seated blaze for several hours at a New Haven scrap metal yard on Chapel Street Friday night. There were no injuries reported and the fire, which burgeoned within a large pile of scrap metal outside, did not extend into the building, according to Rick Fontana, the citys Director of Emergency Management. What's Included With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 712-243-2624 or email circ@ant-news.com. SMYRNA, Tenn. (AP) A small jet carrying seven people crashed into a Tennessee lake on Saturday, and authorities indicated that no one on board survived. The Cessna C501 crashed into Percy Priest Lake near Smyrna after taking off from a nearby airport about 11 a.m., the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. Rutherford County rescue crews were still at the scene of the crash late Saturday and planned to work through the night, Rutherford County Fire Rescue Capt. Joshua Sanders said at a news conference. He indicated that there were no survivors. Our efforts have transitioned from a rescue effort to that of a recovery effort. ... We are no longer ... looking for live victims at this point, Sanders said. County officials identified the seven killed in a news release late Saturday. Brandon Hannah, Gwen S. Lara, William J. Lara, David L. Martin, Jennifer J. Martin, Jessica Walters and Jonathan Walters, all of Brentwood, Tennessee, were presumed dead. Their names were released after family members had been notified. Earlier Saturday, officials confirmed that at least one person had died in the crash and that search crews had found a debris field and identified parts of the airplane in the lake. Sanders said the crash appeared to have taken place entirely in the lake. Authorities also did not release registration information for the plane, which was heading from Smyrna Rutherford County Airport to Palm Beach International Airport. The Tennessee Highway Patrol told news outlets that a witness saw the plane go into the water near a marina. The National Transportation Safety Board and FAA both had investigators at the scene. Smyrna is located about 20 miles (32 kilometers) southeast of Nashville. Percy Priest Lake is a reservoir created by the J. Percy Priest Dam. It is a popular spot for boating and fishing. TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) A city-owned utility in Traverse City can't be held responsible for the death of a tree trimmer who had contact with a power line. The Michigan Supreme Court turned down an appeal Wednesday from Zachary Adams' family, which means a Court of Appeals decision in favor of the utility will stand. Bailey Bruce runs a yoga studio. Shes still requiring her patrons to wear masks, at least for the time being. I wanted to wait a month after the mask mandate was lifted to see what happens, she said, opting instead for a very slow opening back to normal. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may have said masks are no longer required if you are fully vaccinated, with some exceptions, but Bruce is not ready to make the shift. She said businesses and customers are in a transition period. You don't know what the right thing to do is right now, she said. Actually, Studio Grounded, Bruces yoga and fitness studio in North Haven, is running classes three ways: Outside with no masks, online and masked inside, which is still limited to nine spots. I never want to be responsible for someone getting sick, she said. If I made a decision that caused people to get sick, I don't know how I would live with that right now. There are, experts say, a few reasons why that shift from masks is not immediate, but rather a transition. As in Bruces case, anxiety is one of them. I think it's totally understandable that people have some anxiety still, and want to wear masks in certain settings, said Sherry Pagoto, a professor in the University of Connecticuts Department of Allied Health Sciences. Some of that anxiety is actually quite healthy, because we do want to have some concern about our risk for disease. We don't want it to overtake our lives, but we also don't want to be blind to the risk. How to change a habit There is no hard-and-fast rule but, according to Kiran McCloskey, it takes a median of about 60 days to build a habit. It depends on the behavior, how complex it is, how rewarding it is, she said. McCloskey, a UConn doctoral graduate, has researched the subject of habit alongside Blair T. Johnson, a professor in psychological sciences. McCloskey and Johnson said habit could be responsible, at least in part, for a persons unwillingness to take off a mask despite the CDCs recommendations. When we create a habit, we're essentially creating a link between a context and the response that you're going to have, McCloskey said. It just becomes this automatic link in your brain that when I'm in this context, I do this behavior. Johnson used the example of seat belts. I'm old enough that I remember when those things came out, he said. At first, when seat belt mandates were new, people had to be convinced to use them. There were arguments using negative reinforcement use a seat belt or get a ticket and more positive incentives seat belts save lives. Modern cars remind you, often with an annoying noise, to put on your seat belt but, in many cases, its no longer necessary. It's a system in your brain that is recording how often you do something, how frequent it is, Johnson said. At some point, that reinforcement value probably doesn't matter much. It's just that your system has recognized that as a way to survive. Thats when you've had a true habit. Habits may be the result of conscious behavior, but they become habitual when the behavior is no longer conscious. It's really a set of primitive components of your brain that are mostly involved with habits, Johnson said. Those cues kind of come at you, something's missing. And it's not really a thought. It's more like a feeling. McCloskey and Johnson talk about habits like a physicist might talk about energy habits, they said, can neither be created nor destroyed, but can and do shift and take different forms. The thing about habits is that they don't go away. You can replace them, you can establish new habits, but the old habits are still there, Johnson said. Your craving to engage in those kind of pops out when it's cued by a context. But now that the CDC has changed its rules and societal expectations have shifted, so will the habit of mask wearing. When contexts change, that's going to be a particular place to develop a new habit, McCloskey said. In some Asian countries, people are accustomed to wearing masks when they get ill, or in crowded situations like subways. As the context of mask-wearing shifts, so will the habits around them. Maybe around the world it will become a hygiene habit, like other habits that we do to protect ourselves from health risks, where maybe we wear a mask on planes all the time, or we wear a mask on buses, or like other places where it's very crowded, Pagoto said. Perception of reality A Hearst Connecticut Media Group poll of readers, asking which Connecticut businesses continued to require masks returned complex results. Eighteen of the 158 responses were regarding Stop & Shop, of which 10 said masks were still required and eight said masks were no longer required. As of May 19, Stop & Shop no longer requires those who are fully vaccinated to wear masks in Connecticut stores, although we will continue to strongly encourage everyone to do so, a company spokesperson said. But the differing understanding of the expectations come down to perception of reality. The question though, is how much of it is a habit for the actual mask wearing and how much is it a cognitive habit as well, like how we're seeing the outside world and how we are appraising our interactions with other people, McCloskey said. That phenomenon, Johnson said, is not limited to masks. People do assume that they know more than they do, on a lot of issues. It's probably more widespread than people realize, he said. What you've identified is that perception doesn't necessarily match reality. Introversion, mindfulness and neuroses People who adhered to mask mandates early on in the pandemic tended to fall into two groups, McCloskey said. There were the more conscientious types, who were more mindful of their behaviors and tended to not form habits as quickly. People who are conscientious just had fewer habits in general. They reported that they didn't do things as automatically, they would do things much more deliberately, McCloskey said. So, in this case, shifting their behavior to the new recommendations was probably easier than for people who are less conscientious and therefore not monitoring their behaviors as closely and who may engage in behaviors more on autopilot than people who are more conscientious. The other group are those McCloskey said were more neurotic, which he defined as people who had the tendency to feel negative emotions. What we found was that neurotic individuals did often have higher habit. They, in general, had a lot more automaticity for their behaviors, she said. In the context of COVID, especially if they're feeling more anxiety about COVID, they're going to feel more rewarded for wearing their masks. Pagoto said some people may also be continuing to wear masks because they prefer a sense of anonymity. People who are more introverted, for example, may hang on to masks a little bit more, because they don't mind being a little bit concealed and covered up, she said. Whereas maybe people who are more extroverted might be like, I need to get this thing off so I can talk and I can emote. But considering the shifting expectations from the CDC and varying requirements of businesses, Pagoto said whatever the reasons are to continue wearing a mask people should just feel comfortable leaving them on. When it comes to mask wearing, if you want to wear it more than the CDC is saying, I think people should continue to do that, if that's what they're comfortable with, she said. You can't be too safe. If you exceed the level of the CDC recommendations, you're just even safer. That being said, Bruces business has suffered because of her continued use of masks. The pandemic itself was a hurdle, and some patrons have expressed their dislike for business mask requirement. She said her business has taken a huge hit. I have had people who wont come in because we require a mask, she said. I have lost some business because I require that. SHORELINE It will seem like Christmas in May when a Netflix movie crew shoots a holiday movie in Madison and Essex this weekend. On Friday, set designers started to work at R.J Julia Booksellers in Madison. While temps were a balmy mid-60s, a garland was hung above the bookshelves and a holiday scene, complete with a steepled church surrounded by little paper evergreen trees, was created in the front windows of the bookstore. The movie crew is in Madison ready to start shooting The Noel Diary, starring Justin Hartley (This is Us), Bonnie Bedelia (Parenthood) and Treat Williams (Everwood). Netflix has acquired the rights to Richard Paul Evans New York Times bestselling novel, The Noel Diary. The upcoming adaptation of this holiday-themed story is about a man who receives the best Christmas present he could ask for: the chance to re-write his past, according to whats-on-netflix.com. Lori Fazio, chief operating officer at R.J. Julia Booksellers, noted that the R.J. Cafe will be open all day on Saturday, but patrons wont be able to catch any glimpses of the stars or cast from their tables. Theyre going to block it off completely, she said. For the third day of shooting this movie, crews and stars will be in Madisons R.J. Julia and The Griswold Inn in Essex. Part of the story is that we have two individuals who are kind of strangers and theyre going on this road trip together, during Christmas time, and one of them happens to be a famous author, explained the assistant location manager, who spoke on the condition of anonymity per his contract. So, the other one is unaware of this, but she stops into a bookstore and finds his book and purchases it and thats how she discovers just how famous he is, he added. So, thats what were doing in the bookstore. The former location of Khaki & Black, next door to the bookstore and currently unoccupied, will be utilized by the crew. That works perfect for us to stage some of our background actors, for them to get ready and they can just walk right over next door, so we rented that out, said the assistant location manager. He explains how R.J. Julia was chosen. We have a team of folks that are part of my department to get a look into the location scouts and we task them and say, We need to find the most charming book store thats straight out of a postcard, and that happens to be in Madison, he explained. This shoot is scheduled immediately after the crew films the main characters in Essex. Were using the Griswold Inn as an inn, he said. We have scene there that plays as a New England inn. Its all about the look, he added. How can we find what were looking for thats within our range of being able to travel to. He explained that the entire movie is being filmed exclusively in Connecticut, including Bridgeport, Essex, Madison, Manchester and New Canaan. He stressed that the film crew has worked very closely with the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development-Office of Film, TV & Digital Media to make connections in individual towns and obtain the necessary permits. This is a particularly large crew and its a ton of work to go from place to place, thats for sure, said Executive Producer Andrew Gernhard of Johnson Production Group CT. He talked about the choice of Madison and Essex for shooting locations. Its a Christmas movie, so its all about texture and the feeling of the movie and it just has a great look, Gernhard said of R.J. Julia. The Gris is great, he added. We did a movie there years ago called Christmas at Pemberley Manor, and Essex as a whole has a beautiful look for any type of movie, thats for sure. Both Madison and Essex are looking forward to welcoming the filming crews into town. Its very exciting, especially with the pandemic we havent seen really any activity, said Michele Call, Madison Chamber of Commerce assistant director. So, to see a movie being filmed in our little downtown, feels normal again and its exciting normal, like it would have been pre-pandemic, she added. Madison First Selectwomen Peggy Lyons echoes this. I think its really exciting for our town to be featured in a Netflix film and it just shows what a great environment we have here in Madison, she said. While Essex First Selectman Norm Needleman thinks that the forecast for storms this weekend will keep some fans away, he has engaged the help of the police and public works department to keep disruption down to a minimum. I think theyre (the film crew) constantly revising how theyre handing it, but we do everything we can to accommodate them and work together, Needleman said. We want to make this work for everyone, he added. Its good for the town, good for the state. In Madison, the police department, fire department and office of the first selectman have been working with the production company for the last two weeks to ensure that we keep as much parking freed up for visitors to town and that theres as minimal disruption as possible. It will be somewhat disruptive, Lyons said. The actual shoot is not happening until the evening, but theres a lot of equipment involved and a lot of planning involved, so they will start coming into town midday. Needleman sums up what it means to his town to have the movie crew chose them. Its just kind of cool, he said. It reaffirms the fact that were in this quintessential New England, beautiful town. A dedication ceremony will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday at the American Veterans Monument in Hyde Park, for six flag posts which have been erected at the monuments entrance to honor those who have served. (File photo) Niagara Falls, NY (14301) Today Mainly clear. Low near 60F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Mainly clear. Low near 60F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. A Tiv community in Benue State north-central Nigeria, Shikaan Mbagene Kpav has decried the silence of the federal government and security ag... A Tiv community in Benue State north-central Nigeria, Shikaan Mbagene Kpav has decried the silence of the federal government and security agencies over the attack and killing of innocent people by herders in the state. Residents of Shikaan Mbagene Kpav told newsmen on Saturday that they were worried over the attack on their community in the early hours of Thursday. The community says 36 persons were killed by the herders and they did not receive any sympathy from the Buhari led government. A spokesman of the community, Mr. Andrew Tom said 36 people, including students of the College of Education in Katsina-Ala. He said The incident stirred a lot of reactions on social media. But this government is not sensitive to the plight of its citizens. While others are being treated well a majority of the sections of this country are neglected. The Fulanis are carrying AK 47 rifles and moving freely and unchallenged by our security operatives but when they catch other peope who carry such weapons for self-defence they use all kinds of force to make sure they put them in prison or even kill them for carrying guns to defend themselves. Mr. Tom said Mr. President should know that they cannot kill us all before the expiration of his tenure and we know that it will not be possible for him to appoint another of his tribal man to rule this country. His administration is coming to an end soon and should Nigerians take up arms against his people in the end how would he imagine that situation, because I see the possibility if this ugly situation continues and the behaviour of the government remains unchanged for other tribes in Nigeria he added. Bashir Magashi, minister of defence, says President Muhammadu Buhari considered national interest above ethnicity in the appointment of Fa... Bashir Magashi, minister of defence, says President Muhammadu Buhari considered national interest above ethnicity in the appointment of Faruk Yahaya as the new chief of army staff. The president had appointed Yahaya, a major-general, on Thursday to replace Ibrahim Attahiru, the army chief who died in a plane crash. Before his appointment, Yahaya was the theatre commander of the counter-terrorism military outfit in the north-east which is code-named operation Hadin Kai. Some critics had accused the president of been biased with the appointment. But Magashi, in a statement through Mohammad Abdulkadri, his spokesperson, said Yahaya was appointed based on merit and his track records. He is an organic infantry general who is tested and trusted to actualise the national aspirations to restore peace in the dark spots and areas of insurgency, kidnapping, and banditry, as well as other allied threats to the nations corporate existence, he said. With the appointment of General Yahaya, President Buhari has expediently put national interest above ethnic and religious chauvinism by fulfilling all requirements necessary. These include his unblemished track records of service, professional, command, and operational competencies among other yardsticks that culminated into his emergence as most suitably qualified new army boss. The minister commended Buhari for the well thought-out strategic appointment of Yahaya as a replacement for the late Attahiru. He also said he is confident in Yahayas capability in sustaining the trajectory of taking offensive and aggressive campaigns to the camps, corridors, and cells of the adversaries to obliterate them. The minister, while pledging the ministrys support for the new army chief, said plans were underway by the federal government to immortalise Attahiru and others who died in the plane crash. Unlimited website access 24/7 Unlimited e-Edition access 24/7 The best local, regional and national news in sports, politics, business and more! With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime. Economic and social activities have been paralysed in Imo over the Sit-At-Home order by Nnamdi Kanus Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). Th... Economic and social activities have been paralysed in Imo over the Sit-At-Home order by Nnamdi Kanus Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB). The sit-at-home, to commemorate Biafra Remembrance Day, is scheduled for 30 and 31 May, but people are already staying at home for fear of possible attacks. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that residents of the state deserted markets and streets of the state capital for safety. The statement issued by Kanu said the day was set aside in remembrance of over 5 million Biafrans who died during the 1967-1970 civil war in Nigeria. NAN reports that people also kept away from the Government House axis with businesses around it under lock and key, while a combined team of security agents were seen patrolling the streets of the state capital. The Commissioner of Police in the state, CP Abutu Yaro had earlier issued a statement, assuring residents of adequate security and urged the people to ignore the threat. But only the presence of the military and police forces were noticed on the streets, while people kept away from the popular Ekeukwu Owerri Market and the timber market in Naze. A commercial motorist, Mr Okechukwu Nnaji told NAN that motorists started experiencing poor patronage from commuters from May 28. As I speak with you, I have not gotten N 2,000 since three days now. I normally make N8,000 daily. I dont know how to feed my family if things do not improve soon, he said. A food vendor, Mrs Angela Eze popularly known as (Mama Africa) expressed worry that the situation might affect the economy of the state drastically. She appealed to government to use diplomacy and find lasting solution to the problem. In Onitsha, Anambra, some travellers going to Asaba and other parts of the country expressed dismay over delays caused by security checks at the busy Niger Bridge. Those who spoke to NAN said travellers were made to spend hours at the Bridgehead before crossing. Those who managed or succeeded to cross over to Asaba and vice versa did so trekking or using commercial motorcycles. A traveller, who pleaded anonymity, said he joined an early morning vehicle heading to Lagos but was delayed by the check point mounted by the Police and Nigeria Army. I have spent more than three hours here trying to drive across the bridgehead. They said some gunmen killed five soldiers yesterday at Ihiala. I believe that this is why they are delaying us here, the source said. A commercial driver, Mr Kelechi Onwudiwe attributed the intensified security checks to the sit-at-home directive by members of the proscribed IPOB. The traffic here in Onitsha is terrible. It is deliberately caused by soldiers who are searching for members of IPOB, Onwudiwe said. In his reaction, the Police Public Relations Officer, Anambra Police Command, DSP Tochukwu Ikenga said the security check was a routine exercise. Ikenga said the checkpoint was part of strategies security agencies used to control and screen people coming and leaving the state. The check has been there before now even before the sit-at-home order. The purpose of the check point is to screen road users, detect crime and maintain law and order. In as much as we are still analysing the security situation, the check point is like an ordinary day exercise for us, he said. The spokesman said the Police were bent on delivering its mandate of protecting lives and property The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has expressed support for the introduction of Sharia in the South-West. The Islamic group told the... The Muslim Rights Concern (MURIC) has expressed support for the introduction of Sharia in the South-West. The Islamic group told the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) and other Christianity adherents to mind their business. The comment followed a warning by the PFN against any move to introduce Sharia law in Yoruba States through the ongoing constitutional review by the Senate. MURIC Director, Professor Ishaq Akintola, accused Christians of always being the first to fire shots and heat up the polity. He said Christians know very well that Shariah is the Allah-given fundamental human right of Muslims but are determined to deprive them using unorthodox methods. PFN and other Christian groups are fully aware that Shariah was in the South West decades before the arrival of Christianity in 1842. Shariah was practiced in Ede under Oba Abibu Olagunju (Habeeb, a Muslim name) and the Ede Shariah Court operated up till 1913 at Agbeni area of the town. It was moved to Agbongbon area in 1914. Shariah was applied in Iwo under Oba Momodu Lamuye (Muhammad Lamuye) who died in 1906. Even the seventh Akirun of Ikirun, Oba Aliyu Oyewole (died 1912), instituted Shariah in Ikirun in 1910. These are just examples of the existence and spread of Shariah in Yorubaland and the Christian leaders are not oblivious of the fact that it was the British Christian colonialists who stopped Shariah in Yorubaland and imposed Christian common law. However, they are equally aware of the rising tide of Islamic awareness in the same South West. They have seen the hitherto passive Muslim community being transformed into an active, articulate and politically conscious populace. They are afraid that the sleeping giant is waking up to take back what belongs to it. MURIC called on Nigerians to understand the siege mentality of Christians who, like all aggressors, believe that attack is the best form of defence. The Islamic group said as the benefactors and inheritors of colonial rampage that lasted more than a century, Christians are determined to keep all the loot which their principal bequeathed to them. They have forgotten that the only thing that is constant in life is change. We are worried about the voyeuristic disorder which has again manifested in the PFN. It is a Peeping Tom syndrome that propels our Christian neighbours to crane their necks in order to see what is in the pot of soup of the Muslims. It is called giraffing in examination hall parlance. Akintola recalled that the Constitution Review Panel asked Nigerians to forward their views regarding what they want in the constitution. The director said instead of telling the panel what the Christians want, PFN was insisting on what they do not want Muslims to ask for. The issue is what do the Christians want? It is clear that they have been over-pampered by the colonial master who handed over our common patrimony to them on a platter of gold. So now they want nothing because they already have all they need. But they want to sustain the status quo because it favours them. Decorum, courtesy and protocol demand that Christians should ask for what they lack and what they want. But instead of doing that they are asking the committee not to tolerate the demands of Muslims. Yet Christians already have their own common law and the shariah has nothing to do with them. It is Muslims who need Shariah. This attitude can be compared to that of the dog in the manger whose master gave it its own meat and bone. The dog ate and was filled up. But when the master gave hay to the horse, the dog came barking ferociously in order to prevent the horse from accessing the grass. But do dogs eat grass? How uncharitable can our neighbours be? MURIC warned the PFN and its co-travellers to steer clear of the path of Muslims in the South West, adding that the demand for Shariah is a civil rights matter. Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike says no financial bank will be allowed to frustrate or delay delivery time of any development p... Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Ezenwo Wike says no financial bank will be allowed to frustrate or delay delivery time of any development projects of his administration in the state. The governor was reacting to complaints that some financial banks that receive money and handle various payment schedules for his administration often fail to release agreed contract sum to contractors. Speaking at the flag-off ceremony for the construction of Aluu -Omagwa Road on Saturday, Wike said the state government will not hesitate to terminate any contract it has with such financial banks. Part of the problems we have is the banks. When you give contractors money, the banks will make sure that they delay release of the money. The next time any of our contractors complain about their funds not being released to them, that will be the day we will terminate any relationship we have with them. No bank will hold us to ransom. We cannot continue to work like this. Nobody will frustrate our work. Any contractor that is being frustrated by them, do not hesitate to let us know. We cannot allow them to frustrate our work. Wike stated that he has fulfilled every promise made to the people of Ikwerre Local Government Area that included schools and roads. Having received such measure of development projects, Wike urged them to stop being politically naive particularly when it comes to giving more votes to the peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Frankly speaking, whats important is that nobody will now say that we have not been able to touch Ikwerre Local Government as it is. We have, and nobody can deny that fact. All these things I have done without giving excuses. But when it is your turn, youll say they came and carried your results away. Stay and defend your votes. It is a challenge to Sir. Celestine Omehia, Chris Orji and Samuel Nwanosike, all of you. I do know that all of us have agreed to do this together. Therefore, whatever promise we have made as a party, and as an administration, we have no excuse but to fulfill the promise that we have made to you. Performing the flag-off, former Deputy Governor of Rivers State, Engr. Tele Ikuru described governor Wike as a champion who puts the interest of the state above all other considerations. A people deserve the kind of leadership they get. In 2015, we were offered two choices; a champion and an accredited stooge. We selected you the champion. Between the time youve come to government and today, it is one project or the other. It is either youre commissioning or flagging off project. You have shown your love for this state numerously. For everything that you discuss with any person anywhere and place, you will discuss the interest of Rivers people into it. In his description of the Aluu -Omagwa Road project, Rivers State Commissioner for Works, Elloka Tasie-Amadi said the road will be reconstructed into a 9.82km long and 9.3km wide. According to him, the road will bring transportation access, serve as alternative route to Omagwa and the Port Harcourt international Airport while also attract numerous benefits to the host and adjoining communities. On his part, the chairman of Ikwerre council, Hon. Samuel Nwanosike, thanked the governor for the numerous projects his administration has executed in the council. He stated that when the road is completed, it will boost the economic fortune of farmers who will be able to take their produce to markets in Port Harcourt and other parts of the State. Your living room could be your hospital Home care is on the rise, thanks to changes wrought by COVID Watertown, NY (13601) Today Some clouds. Low 56F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. Low 56F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. A grave of a COVID-19 victim is seen with a Brazilian flag at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery in Manaus, Amazonas state, Brazil, on April 29. Michael Dantas/AFP via Getty Images/TNS Nogales High School graduated its Class of 2021 during a ceremony at Apache Stadium on May 21. At least three months after the conflict began, residents continue to raise concerns and lodge complaints over air and noise pollution created The long push to tear down Interstate 10 over North Claiborne Avenue received a critical endorsement earlier this spring, when President Joe Bidens $2 trillion infrastructure proposal specifically called out the span that bisects Treme as a historic inequity in need of removal. But White House support is only one of many things that would need to fall into place in order to return Claiborne to its former glory. Preliminary studies conducted over the past decade suggest years of additional planning and construction and the outlay of potentially billions of dollars would need to happen before the project comes to fruition. And while Mayor LaToya Cantrells administration is eagerly eying the federal funds that could be available under the infrastructure plan, officials said this week that Claiborne isn't near the top of the city's wish list of needed projects. Ramsey Green, Cantrell's deputy chief administrative officer for infrastructure, said in an interview Wednesday that drainage work, improvements to the drinking water system and repairs to surface streets are all better candidates for federal money than what would be a massive, years-long project to reroute traffic through the city. I think about residents and what the major priorities are, Green said. My interpretation is that their priorities are: dont have boil water advisories, that water doesnt flood in our neighborhoods and we figure out a way that, if were going to see the impacts of climate change in our city, that were prepared for it. +5 With Louisiana's failing infrastructure in the spotlight, Joe Biden pitches $2T plan to fix it President Joe Biden pitched his plan to modernize the countrys infrastructure during two Louisiana stops on Thursday, telling a small crowd i Even if the Cantrell administration threw its full weight behind taking down the Claiborne Expressway, there would be significant hurdles. First, Bidens infrastructure proposal is still tied up in Congress, where it is expected to face broad if not complete opposition from Republicans in both the House and Senate. It remains unclear what the final bill will look like, or if it will include explicit funding for two highway removal projects in New Orleans and Syracuse, New York highlighted by the White House when it unveiled its plan. Whatever the final outcome, the Biden administration has said it would be up to city leaders to decide how to best spend the money in their communities. Thats up to the locals and we would leave that to the mayor to decide her priorities, said Cedric Richmond, who represented New Orleans in Congress before becoming the head of Bidens Office of Public Engagement. But the lack of interest from the city particularly when the federal government seems eager to put its weight and funding behind the project has riled some long time advocates. By not centering the removal of the Claiborne Expressway in their plans, the Cantrell administration is ignoring an unjust history that continues to reverberate through the area to this day, said Amy Stelly, an urban planner who has long led the efforts to remove the interstate. President Joe Biden to tour S&WB's Carrollton Plant this week, according to White House President Joe Biden has argued his wide-ranging, $2.3 trillion infrastructure plan is a solution to decades of underinvestment in roads, pipes "When you look at what this inflicts, not to mention the economic hardship and disinvestment it brings, yes it needs to be at the top of the list if we want to make New Orleans a healthy and viable city," Stelly said. "Clearly the people are not first here." Years of planning Taking down the Claiborne Expressway has been talked about for years, though never with the kind of detail that would be needed to move forward with a plan. Both a report written to guide the New Orleans' recovery after Hurricane Katrina and its 2008 master plan called for the city to look into whether, and how, to remove the highway. The first step in that direction was a 2010 report by the Congress of New Urbanism, which has advocated for the removal of urban freeways that bisect communities as I-10 does. That study painted a picture of the possibilities that could exist on Claiborne, including its return as a boulevard and the recreation of the historic traffic circle at St. Bernard Avenue that predated the highway. Four years after that plan, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development funded a study that laid out how it all might be accomplished. A team of transit planners, economic-development consultants and other experts created a menu of options that ranged from full removal of the highway from St. Bernard Avenue to Tulane Avenue to leaving it in place but getting rid of a few on-ramps at key intersections. The most expansive plan would reconfigure the Pontchartrain Expressway on the edge of the Warehouse District and build collector roads to handle the 140,000 cars and trucks including port traffic that travel the Claiborne Expressway each day. A new highway would run from Broad Street to Tchoupitoulas Street to help move traffic around the East Bank while the Pontchartrain Expressway brought traffic across the Mississippi River. +5 Biden infrastructure plan would 'redress historic inequities,' like this New Orleans highway The proposed $2 trillion infrastructure plan being unveiled by President Joe Biden Wednesday is aimed at fixing thousands of roads and bridges That proposal, which estimated no change in travel times for most trips within the city, also called for hundreds of millions in investments in rapid-transit improvements and a streetcar line along Claiborne, pushing the total costs above $4 billion. In its initial roll-out of the infrastructure plan, the Biden administration said it would be dedicating a total of $20 billion to a program to reconnect neighborhoods cut off by past infrastructure investments. The U.S. interstate highway system was a modern marvel that sped travel across the country and spurred the growth of hundreds of cities and suburbs. But it also accelerated White flight from urban areas while many of its spurs particularly those running through inner cities sliced through minority communities and devastated thriving neighborhoods. 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 'Main Street of Black New Orleans' Before the elevated expressway was built, Claiborne Avenue was the oak-lined heart of Treme known as "the Main Street of Black New Orleans" with shops and other businesses catering to the community. That changed with a 1946 plan to update the city's arterial system. It was initially designed by famed city planner Robert Moses, who became infamous for slicing highways through poor neighborhoods, including the Cross-Bronx Expressway in New York City. In New Orleans, Moses sought to build an expressway not through Treme but along the riverfront of the French Quarter, which was then a White working-class neighborhood. +2 Claiborne Avenue study looks at removing ramps but leaving elevated expressway It began in 2010 with a proposal to tear down the elevated Interstate 10 expressway over North Claiborne Avenue. It then expanded into a much Moses discouraged building a highway over Claiborne Avenue because it was outside the city center and because of its potential effects on the area, according to Tulane University geographer Richard Campanella. But a decade later the City Planning Commission added it to the plans anyway. And while preservationists successfully scuttled the riverfront highway, the Black residents of Treme didn't have the same political clout. The undoing of similar historic errors has occurred in other cities as urban cores have seen a revival. But they've cost billions of dollars and taken decades. The Big Dig in Boston, which took down an elevated expressway, replaced it with parks and rerouted traffic underground, took more than 25 years. Jeff Roesel, who heads the New Orleans Metropolitan Regional Planning Commission, noted that a much simpler project than the Big Dig or removing the Claiborne Expressway the widening of I-10 is still underway in Jefferson Parish nearly 20 years after it was first approved. I dont want to say it cant be done because if youve got enough time and money you can do a whole bunch of stuff. But it would be very challenging, Roesel said. Other priorities Green, the citys infrastructure chief, said the city had not requested that the White House highlight Claiborne Avenue when it promoted the infrastructure plan. On reading those early materials, Green said he saw it less as a specific project to be pursued than a warning about the damage that can be caused by projects built without measuring the human cost of installing such infrastructure. But at the moment, Green said, the citys priorities are focused on other concerns: fixing its ancient and broken drainage system and streets. In terms of righting past wrongs, Ramsey suggested that providing justice for the residents of Gordon Plaza, a neighborhood of 54 homes built on a landfill near Florida Avenue, and restoring Lincoln Beach, a recreation area on Lake Pontchartrain for Black residents during segregation, are on officials minds. New Orleans is now in the midst of a citywide road reconstruction program, primarily funded by a $2.4 billion settlement with FEMA for damage during Hurricane Katrina. Even after that work is done, the city has estimated that another $800 million will be needed to fix roads deemed to be failing and $1.2 billion to fix drainage lines throughout the city, Green said. Weve got to do some real heavy lifting before we can make that a priority, Green said of Claiborne. Stelly challenged the idea that Claiborne isn't the nexus of all the other issues the city has sought to address, pointing to the economic impacts, the drainage and environmental problems of dirty rainwater that now runs off the highway and the potential health effects of living on such a highly-trafficked corridor. She also blamed the interstate for attracting homeless residents and drug dealers to the neighborhood. "One of the most obvious impacts is the total disinvestment in the neighborhood and yes there are things that are creeping back, but were looking at a 50-plus year period of disinvestment in addition to all the environmental ills and social ills that come with that," she said. When it comes to what the city is hoping for out of the infrastructure bill, look no further than what it chose to show Biden when he was in town earlier this month. Instead of heading to Treme and the expressway, officials took Biden to the Sewerage & Water Boards Carrollton Plant, home of its creaking turbines and aging water system. Still, much may depend on exactly how the final infrastructure plan is structured. Richmond said that, as designed, the infrastructure plan would put different types of funding in different buckets. New Orleans might be able to apply for money to improve streets and pipes while also seeking funds to take down the interstate. Im interested in seeing where this could go, but when the White House mentions it, thats serious and it's important," Green said. "So we have sort of discussed it internally, discussed it with the (state Department of Transportation and Development) and were curious what kind of direction this might take. The New Orleans metro area added 4,500 jobs in April from the month before, but the area still has nearly 60,000 fewer jobs than it did before the start of the COVID pandemic. There were 526,400 nonfarm jobs in the region in April, according to data released Friday by the Louisiana Workforce Commission, compared to 521,900 jobs in March. In comparison, there were 586,300 jobs in February 2020. The numbers are not seasonally adjusted. Louisiana added 6,800 jobs month-to-month, for a total of 1.8 million. That's 123,000 more jobs, or 7.2% more than in April 2020. The data was compiled through surveys conducted during the second week in April, a few weeks after the state allowed everyone over the age of 16 to get the COVID vaccine. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell eased some capacity restrictions on indoor events around the same time. The Crescent City added 42,100 jobs from April 2020, an 8.7% gain. The leisure and hospitality sector added 2,000 jobs month-to-month for 64,300 jobs. That was up 20,800 jobs, or 47.8%, from April 2020. Education and health services added 1,000 jobs from March to hit 102,800. That was up 7,100 jobs from April 2020. Trade, transportation and utilities added 700 jobs to hit 104,600, up 8,300 from April 2020. The New Orleans unemployment rate was 8.1%, up from 7.5% in March but down from 16.6% in April 2020. The Louisiana unemployment rate was 6.6% in April, the same as it was in March. The state unemployment rate in April 2020 was 12.7%. The national unemployment rate was 5.7% in April, down from 6.2% in March. The rate was 14.4% in April 2020. 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 BATON ROUGE: The Baton Rouge metro area lost another 1,500 jobs between March and April but has rebounded from the height of job losses during the coronavirus pandemic. The Capital Region had 387,100 jobs in April, up 32,700 jobs, 9.2% more than compared to April 2020. The Baton Rouge leisure and hospitality sector lost 700 jobs between March and April, adding back 13,400 jobs, or 60% over the year to 35,700. Trade, transportation and utilities were down 1,000 jobs over the month and up 5,000 jobs over the year, up 7.9%, for 67,800 jobs. Construction dropped month-over-month, losing another 100 jobs but recovering 5,000 since last year, or 13.6%, for 41,600 jobs overall. The Baton Rouge unemployment rate, not seasonally adjusted, was 5.8%, flat compared to March, but down from highs of 11.7% in April 2020. LAFAYETTE AREA: Acadiana lost 300 jobs between March and April to reach 190,000 jobs. It added back 8,600 jobs over the year. Education and health services was down 800 jobs over the month to 32,700. The sector was up 2,800 jobs for the year. Leisure and hospitality was up 100 jobs over the month and 6,400 jobs over the year to 19,300 jobs. Mining and logging, which includes oil and gas, was up 100 jobs over the month but still down 3,400 jobs over the year, or 9.4% for 10,000 jobs. The unemployment rate in Lafayette was 5.9% in April, down from 6.4% in March, but up from a peak in April 2020 of 11.3%. OTHER AREAS: Shreveport-Bossier City added 1,600 jobs over the month and recovered 10,900 over the year to 168,100. Monroe added 200 jobs over the month, added 5,200 jobs over the year to 74,000. Alexandria added 100 jobs over the month, added 3,600 jobs over the year to 59,900. Hammond added 100 jobs over the month and 3,800 over the year to 45,400 jobs. Houma-Thibodaux lost 100 jobs over the month but added 3,800 jobs over the year to 81,800. Lake Charles lost 100 jobs over the month and 2,900 over the year for 92,000 jobs. The St. Tammany Health System has launched the Be Well Bus, a mobile health screening vehicle that will travel around the community delivering health info, outreach and medical screenings in multiple neighborhoods. The 40-foot-long bus will visit local businesses, festivals, community events and other locations wherever resources are needed. Were excited to announce this amazing resource for our community, said Anne Pablovich, STHS community health coordinator. Its all part of our commitment to world-class health care, close to home. The bus (BeWellBus.health) contains containing a registration area and two private care rooms to facilitate preventive health care in the field. Clinical professionals from St. Tammany Health System and its partner, Ochsner Health, will travel on the bus to destinations throughout St. Tammany and Washington parishes to offer 3D digital screening mammography, vaccinations (COVID-19 and others), and health checks including blood pressure, arterial ultrasounds and cancer screenings. We will be able to perform screenings on the bus for a broad array of cancers, including breast, prostate, skin, head and neck, Pavlovich said. Plus, well be able to provide the DNA fecal immunochemical test (FIT kit) for colon cancer screenings and do lung cancer assessments that may lead to follow-up for those who need low-dose CT lung testing at the STHS Cordes Pavilion. The Be Well Bus is an initiative that is part of a larger initiative called Healthier Northshore aimed at improving the health and wellness of St. Tammany and Washington parish residents. During a solemn ceremony rife with reverence for law enforcement, some of those who form St. Tammany Parishs thin blue line, gathered last week to pay tribute to their colleagues who died on that hazardous line. In doing so, members of various north shore police agencies attired in full dress uniforms vowed to support the families left behind by those who made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of others. The parishs Law Enforcement Memorial Ceremony at the David C. Treen Instructional Technology Center in Mandeville opened with city Police Chief Gerald Sticker announcing that 135 law enforcement officers in the U.S. were killed while serving their communities so far in 2021. Last year, 362 died in the line of duty. As Sticker and others soon pointed out, St. Tammany has contributed to the glum statistics over recent years. It was to those heroes and their families that the May 27 ceremony was dedicated. Its an honor for us to host this event, Sticker said afterward. We do it to make sure the families know we are supporting them and that were there for them. The names of 15 St. Tammany law enforcement members killed over the past several decades were called out in a roll of honor. As each name was read, family members of the fallen officers walked up to a memorial wreath at the front of the event center and placed a red rose around the wreaths border. The listing of police killings in St. Tammany goes back to July of 1958, when Mandeville officers Jake Galloway and Gus Gill were killed by a man who opened fire on them with a .12-gauge shotgun as the officers responded to a domestic disturbance. Included in the honor roll was Mandeville Capt. Vincent Liberto, a 25-year veteran of the department who was fatally shot following a vehicle pursuit on Sept. 20, 2019. He and another officer had chased the vehicle until it crashed on the U.S. 190 off ramp at La. 22. One of the men in the vehicle exited the car and opened fire, killing Capt. Liberto and wounding the other officer. The suspect was taken into custody and booked with first-degree murder of a law enforcement officer, attempted first degree murder and other offenses. St. Tammany top stories in your inbox A weekly guide to the biggest news in St. Tammany. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Louisiana State Police Superintendent Col. Lamar A. Davis, keynote speaker at the event, acknowledged the unbearable sadness that comes with the loss of those who dedicate their lives to protect and serve others. But, he said the families of those who died in the line of duty should know that they dont grieve alone. Please know we are here for you, Davis told them. We will never forget your loved ones sacrifice and legacy. They will endure in our hearts forever. In his remarks, Davis mentioned Jefferson Parish Sheriffs Office deputy Stephen Arnold, who died May 23 as a result of injuries he sustained while executing an arrest warrant at a home in New Orleans in 2016. He also recognized State Trooper George B. Baker, who died in May of 2020 from injuries he sustained while assisting Hammond Police in pursuit of two suspects. These and other law enforcement professionals exemplify the values of duty, selfless service and personal courage, Davis said. The job of a police officer is a dangerous one, the police superintendent said. It should never be taken for granted. It should always be cherished. We run to the fire when others run away. Pamala Culotta was among the two dozen or so family members of the fallen officers attending the ceremony. Her son, Covington Police Lt. Douglas Wade Sharp, died a hero in April of 2011. Sharp had received two Medal of Valor awards, including one in 1997 for pulling a man and his dog from a burning apartment complex and another for saving a man from a burning building in 2006. He sacrificed his life 10 years ago to save his young daughter when a tornado ripped through their campsite in Mississippi. As violent winds hit, Sharp threw his body over the sleeping 9-year-old to shield her. Seconds later, a huge sweet gum tree crashed through the canvas, hitting the lieutenant on the back of the head and killing him instantly, but leaving his daughter unharmed. Culotta said she was moved by the memorial to the fallen law enforcement heroes. I dont think they could hold a higher tribute, said Culotta, who lives in Mandeville. It gives us a good feeling in our hearts and shows that our loved ones are not forgotten. A Harvey man charged with gunning down a man and wounding an 8-year-old girl in Marrero more than six years ago pleaded guilty to manslaughter Thursday in a deal with prosecutors. Jared Simmons, 29, was originally charged with second-degree murder and obstruction of justice in the killing of Anderson Charles "C.J." Massey III. If convicted on the murder charge, Simmons would have faced life in prison. Prosecutors, with the consent of the victims' families, agreed to lessen the charges to manslaughter and obstruction of justice in exchange for Simmons' guilty plea. He was sentenced to 30 years by 24th Judicial District Judge Shayna Beevers Morvant. Simmons is the second man to be put behind bars in the case. Kendell Ellis, 32, is serving life in prison after being convicted in 2018 of second-degree murder, attempted murder and conspiracy to commit robbery, according to court records. Investigators say Ellis and Simmons opened fire on Massey in the 1100 block of DiMarco Drive on Oct. 23, 2014. A stray bullet struck 8-year-old Anaya Thomas as she played outside with a relative. 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 Massey was killed by the gunfire. Thomas was taken to a local hospital for treatment. +6 2 charged in Marrero shooting that killed man, injured child A Jefferson Parish grand jury on Thursday (March 19) handed up a five-count indictment charging two men in a Marrero shooting that left one ma Detectives suspected that Massey was shot because of a drug dispute and that Ellis had contacted him shortly before he was attacked. Deputies said they found a "substantial" amount of marijuana, drugs, guns and cash in Massey's apartment following his slaying. Prosecutors filed charges against Simmons and Ellis in March 2015. The obstruction of justice charge stemmed from Simmons driving away from the scene with a car police considered to be evidence. Aiming to better meet a critical nursing shortage in Louisiana, Chamberlain University, the largest nursing school in the country, is teaming up with LCMC Health to offer a tuition-free nursing program. The "Called-to-Care Scholars Program" is open to applicants nationwide, but will address health care workforce shortages in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish, where LCMC Health has six hospitals, officials announced this week. Based in Chicago, Chamberlain has a campus in Jefferson. LCMC Health will fund all of the tuition costs for up to 90 students per year seeking a Bachelor of Science in nursing. In exchange, students will work for the hospital system for up to three years after graduation, officials said. +3 Dillard University gets $1 million from Ray Charles Foundation for food studies program Dillard University has received a $1 million grant from the Ray Charles Organization to create a scholarship in food studies and support a bro The students will be split across three sessions in September 2021, May 2022 and July 2022. The U.S. faces a projected shortage of half a million nurses by 2030, according to a study by the American Journal of Medical Quality. Hospital systems have said the pandemic has only increased burnout as health care systems face critical staffing challenges. In Louisiana, the aim is to build a sustainable talent pipeline that can help fill critical job openings, according to Greg Feirn, CEO of LCMC Health. Feirn also said it was important to train compassionate nurses who can align with priorities outlined by the National Academy of Medicine, which calls for achieving more health equity by 2030. 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 Tulane to require students to be vaccinated in fall; joins Xavier and Dillard in mandating shots Tulane University said Thursday it will mandate that all students get the COVID-19 vaccine next semester, joining a growing number of institut Research shows problems like poverty, unemployment, inadequate housing, lack of public transportation and neighborhood deterioration can all lead to poor health, and organizations have been trying to figure out ways to break barriers to accessing care. "This is truly an investment in people, as our nurses are often the magic ingredient in providing health care with heart," Feirn said. "Their dedication and compassion represent that one-of-kind care that comes from one-of-a-kind people." Ochsner Health, an LCMC competitor, is also trying to address shortages of nurses and other health care providers. In the past year the organization has announced new programs with Delgado Community College and Loyola University New Orleans. +6 $38M health education center lauded by Louisiana leaders as place 'to train future heroes' At a groundbreaking Wednesday for the Ochsner Center for Nursing and Allied Health at Delgado Community College, a new building and program sl Karen Cox, the president of Chamberlain University, said the university wants to form more partnerships with hospital systems and aspiring nurses across the U.S. "We are excited to launch this program and continue to leverage the scale and breadth of our footprint," she said. More rain and more flooding caused by climate change, along with plans to divert some of the Mississippi River's flow, mean more freshwater is headed to Barataria Basin. That's bad news for the oysters there, and for people fond of eating them. But a new LSU study says some oysters might do better than others. "Really productive oyster grounds right now are going to be exposed to a lot of really freshwater," said Joanna Griffiths, an LSU alumna, marine biologist and the study's lead author. "We want to know if those oysters can even tolerate it and how we might be able to further increase their tolerance." The study's findings suggests oyster hatcheries could breed bivalves with a greater chance of surviving those conditions. Found in brackish water, eastern oysters can withstand a wide range of salinities as adults. They grow best in waters ranging from 14 to 28 parts per thousand. The study focused on oysters as larvae, their most vulnerable stage, after growing the parents at a fresher Cocodrie site and a saltier area near Grand Isle. For two weeks, the microscopic larvae swim through the water column, with a premature shell that offers little protection from changing water conditions or predators, before permanently settling on a hard surface. Using the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries' Grand Isle hatchery, Griffiths tried to raise larvae under two scenarios: Some in a more stressful environment with a salinity of 8 parts per thousand, others in the species' preferred salinity of 15 ppt. Larvae that grew successfully in a lower salinity tended to share the same parents, suggesting the trait was innate to those oysters and passed down genetically. When larvae from the same parents was placed in the saltier baths, they grew even more rapidly. Where the oysters' parents lived had little effect on larval growth rates. Environmental news in your inbox Stay up-to-date on the latest on Louisiana's coast and the environment. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up That might make selective breeding even easier if those oysters grow well in both environments, said Morgan Kelly, an assistant LSU professor of biology and Griffiths' faculty adviser. "It could mean that if you pick oysters that are tough at those low salinities, they're actually tough everywhere," she said. "It could benefit them in both locations." The Department of Wildlife and Fisheries manages one of only two hatcheries in Louisiana and produces seed for the state's small group of farmers who cultivate oyster in cages. The study's methods for selecting parents and testing larvae could offer hatcheries some insight into replicating the process to create their own broodstock for hardier oysters. +2 Caught by drone, two Port Sulphur men fined for harvesting oysters in polluted waters Two Port Sulphur men, one described by authorities as a repeat offender, were fined this week for harvesting oysters in a polluted area of Pla "We're hoping that this information about how to identify families that are tolerant of low salinities might help the hatchery choose the right parents to produce those seed oysters for oystermen," Kelly said. Further study is needed, Griffiths said, to determine how those oysters would react to other factors such as warmer water temperatures. "It's not just low salinity that they're dealing with," she said. "A lot of their tolerance may decrease if they have to deal with high temperatures at the same time." Conservationists, business people, residents and politicians have been wringing their hands for decades over Louisiana's fragile coast. One proposal, diverting part of the Mississippi River into the Barataria Basin, dates from 1925, and is gaining steam now. This interactive timeline illustrates some of the major developments: It began in 2010 with a proposal to tear down the elevated Interstate 10 expressway over North Claiborne Avenue. It then expanded into a much broader study looking at everything from economic development to neighborhood revitalization along the 3.9-mile-long South and North Claiborne corridor from Napoleon Avenue to Elysian Fields Avenue. Now, as the $2.7 million Livable Claiborne Communities study moves toward its scheduled August completion, planners have narrowed down their recommendations on the issue of the expressway to three proposals, including two that would leave the elevated roadway in place but remove some or all of the on- and off-ramps between Tulane Avenue and St. Bernard Avenue. The original 2010 report said eliminating the expressway would have numerous benefits, such as removing an eyesore, reducing noise and air pollution, increasing opportunities for public transit and promoting investment in the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods. That 60-page document was done for the local group Claiborne Corridor Improvement Coalition and the Congress for the New Urbanism, a national organization that advocates "walkable, human-scaled neighborhoods." Planners now working on the broader study -- financed mainly with federal grants and managed by the Mayor's Office of Place-Based Planning -- suggest there could be large gains from more modest changes. Under what they call Scenario 1, the ramps at St. Philip Street and Esplanade Avenue and the lakeside ramps at Orleans Avenue would be removed and local street connections restored across Claiborne between Orleans and Esplanade. These changes would "go a long way in reconnecting Treme ... and opening up new redevelopment sites," according to documents distributed at recent community meetings. Scenario 2 would go further, also removing the ramps at Canal Street and Tulane Avenue and the flyover ramps near St. Bernard Avenue. New ramps would connect the expressway with the surface-level Claiborne Avenue at Tulane Avenue and St. Bernard Avenue. The planners suggest that a streetcar line could be added along North Claiborne. Scenario 3 would go all the way, removing the entire elevated roadway from Tulane Avenue to St. Bernard Avenue. The various scenarios were presented at two public meetings in March at Craig Elementary School and the Ashe Cultural Arts Center. "This is a study, not a plan," said David Dixon, the Boston-based urban planner who was the chief architect of New Orleans' master plan. As such, the final product won't be a recommendation for a specific plan of action on what to do with the expressway. Instead, the planners will lay out various options for action in the fields of transportation, economic development, community revitalization, jobs, housing and cultural preservation. The alternatives are then supposed to be evaluated further under the National Environmental Policy Act and a preferred alternative identified. However, the city has yet to obtain funding for that stage of the process. Despite the wide range of the study, it's clear that the fate of the elevated roadway is the most controversial and attention-grabbing focus of inquiry. It's hard to find residents who would disagree with many of the study's other stated goals, such as to "ensure equitable access to economic prosperity" or "find sustainable solutions for our flood-prone environment." Ideas such as restoring the tree canopy along streets, helping residents find jobs at the city's new hospitals, maximizing public-transit access to jobs, preserving neighborhood culture and increasing the number of affordable housing units find little resistance. But the idea of tearing down an expressway traveled by more than 60,000 vehicles a day has produced loud objections since it was first put forward. The elevated Claiborne expressway, built in the 1960s, has long been the object of criticism, especially since the construction of Interstate 610 reduced the need for an inner-city freeway. Both the Unified New Orleans Plan, created to guide the city's post-Katrina recovery, and the city's new master plan called for studying the possibility of removing it. 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 Hoping to give further momentum to the idea, a group of local civic activists and planners in July 2010 released a detailed report, titled "Restoring Claiborne Avenue," that advocated the removal of the elevated expressway. The report suggested turning the 2.2-mile stretch of expressway between Elysian Fields Avenue and the Pontchartrain Expressway near the Superdome into a surface-level boulevard tied into the city's regular street grid. Although travel times for motorists who now use the expressway would be longer, the increases would be only a few minutes, the report said, and accessibility to the French Quarter and other destinations along the expressway route would "improve substantially with a better-connected street network." The 2010 report also argued for the financial feasibility of demolition, saying the choice was not between spending millions on demolition and doing nothing. "The Claiborne expressway is an aging interstate that ... is nearing the end of its useful life and beginning to deteriorate," the report said. It "will require more frequent maintenance, and possibly reconstruction, to carry traffic safely." In fact, it said, the Federal Highway Administration had found that several interchange ramps on the highway were deteriorating and needed more than $50 million in repairs or replacement. Mayor Mitch Landrieu said at the time that he was open to the idea of demolition. "It could be a game-changer," he said. "I'm not saying I'm for it. I'm just saying it's worth thinking about." The report said removing the elevated expressway would increase travel times for motorists who use it by 3 to 6 minutes in peak travel times and by 2 to 4 minutes at other times of day. The biggest effect, it said, would be on large trucks that now use the expressway to travel between eastern New Orleans and the city's east bank wharves or the West Bank. On the other hand, traffic that is passing through New Orleans would simply use I-610, which would probably be redesignated as I-10. Despite the report's findings, some of the motorists who regularly travel the expressway howled at the idea of having to use a surface street and deal with numerous traffic lights to get to and from jobs or other destinations in the inner city. And even though it had been an article of faith among many New Orleanians for decades that construction of the expressway had destroyed a thriving African-American business corridor along North Claiborne, as well as visually blighting the Treme and 7th Ward neighborhoods, it turned out that some residents of those neighborhoods had developed something like an affection for the roadway, or at least for the spaces under it, which the residents have found ways to decorate and to use for recreation and community events. At a first round of public meetings in December, many participants said they feared that removing the expressway would destroy the economy and life of the neighborhoods all over again, though others saw it as an opportunity for revitalization and renewal. Most were concerned about how traffic would be accommodated within or outside of their neighborhoods if I-10 were removed. In short, expressway opponents discovered they had to deal with criticism, or at least questioning, from some of those nearby residents they probably had assumed would be natural allies. The city's application for the $2 million federal grant to study ways to revitalize the Claiborne Avenue corridor, awarded jointly by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Transportation, had made clear where its authors' sympathies lay on the issue of the elevated expressway. It described the highway's history as "a tale of environmental and social injustice ... tied to the overall decline of many of New Orleans' most historically and culturally significant communities." The application noted that the 2010 report had "found that removing the expressway would not cause significant traffic impacts. However, the topic ... is a highly sensitive, polarizing issue that elicits emotional reactions from residents throughout the region, and therefore demands a thoughtful and thorough study." With the second round of public meetings concluded, the planners doing the study will continue modeling scenarios and analyzing alternatives leading up to more public meetings in June and release of a final report in August. Staff Writer Reese Gorman covers elections, local politics and the COVID-19 pandemic for The Norman Transcript. He started as an intern in May of 2020 and transitioned into his current position as a staff writer in August of 2020. Work is moving at a steady pace on the new Bahrain International Exhibition and Convention Centre (BIECC) in Sakhir with 30 per cent of the project already completed. The foundation stone for the BD84-million ($221 million) mega project was laid by HRH Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Crown Prince Prime Minister, in January last year. The project next to Bahrain International Circuit features exhibition halls and conference rooms fitted with the latest technology to host major shows and celebrations and seal trade transactions. The 149,000-sq-m facility will include 10 exhibition halls covering a total of 95,000 sq m and a 4,500-sq-m conference hall, in addition to attached stores and independent entrances and exits. It will also feature two VIP majlis to receive high-level visitors, in addition to control rooms, internal roads, services and parking for 1,600 cars, of which about 130 parking spaces will be reserved for VIPs. With the work in full swing, the expo centre is due for completion by the second quarter of 2022, said Minister of Industry, Commerce and Tourism, Zayed bin Rashid Al Zayani after an inspection tour of the BIECC facility yesterday (May 11). Al Zayani, who is also the Board Chairman of Bahrain Tourism and Exhibition Authority (BTEA), received a briefing on the latest developments in implementing the project. He praised the efforts of the Ministry of Works, Municipality Affairs and Urban Planning for its supervisory role supporting the implementation of the strategic project. The minister affirmed that the project is the biggest one carried out by BTEA and will provide an exemplary venue to host international events. The centre will further attract the organising companies of exhibitions and conferences to hold their international events in it, said Al Zayani. This will further promote the tourism sector in the kingdom so as to diversify revenues and achieve the aspirations of His Majesty King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, he added.-TradeArabia News Service Walter F. Huebner, age 93, renowned astrophysicist and lifelong traveler, passed away peacefully at his home in Norman, Oklahoma, on June 1, 2021, surrounded by family. No services at this time. View full obituary and share condolences online at www.havenbrookfuneralhome.com. Antes Fort -- Richard L. "Rick" Bay, Jr., 73, of Antes Fort passed away May 26, 2021 at UPMC Williamsport. He was born April 4, 1948 in Jersey Shore, the son of Alice G. Bay (Sheets) and the late Richard L. Bay Sr. Rick was a 1967 graduate of the Jersey Shore High School and a 1969 graduate with an associate degree in the Machinist Program. He worked as a machinist at Gleason Works in Rochester, N.Y. Upon returning to the Jersey Shore area, he worked at Met-Fab, a division of Jersey Shore Steel, from which he retired. After a year he decided that full retirement was not for him and went on to work for Chambers Bus Service in Jersey Shore. Rick really liked his job as a school bus driver. He enjoyed the kids and always said that "if you let the kids know what you expect from them, be consistent with the rules, you will not have a problem." Rick was a motorcycle and vehicle enthusiast. He loved going to car shows and seeing what accessories he could add to his vehicles. He is survived by his mother; sister-in-law, Linda K. (Bay) Rhinehart (Kenneth); two sons, Richard J. Bay (Jennifer) of Williamsport and Corey M. Bay of Pine Valley, N.Y.; two grandchildren, Cody A. Bay and Brian T. Bay; a niece, Kayla L. Rhinehart; nephew, Arliss J. Rhinehart; and one grandniece, Cambree J. Rhinehart. A funeral service will be held 11 a.m. Wednesday, June 2, 2021 at Frederick B. Welker Funeral Home, 125 N. Main St., Jersey Shore. A time of visitation will be held at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday until the time of service at Welker Funeral Home. He will be laid to rest in the Jersey Shore Cemetery. www.WelkerFuneralHome.com To plant a tree in memory of Richard Bay, Jr. as a living tribute, please visit Tribute Store. Rome, GA (30161) Today Thunderstorms this evening, then skies turning partly cloudy after midnight. Low 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Thunderstorms this evening, then skies turning partly cloudy after midnight. Low 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%. WASHINGTON Dan Crenshaw had to take a break from making skydiving videos as he continues to recover from surgery on what hes called his half a good eye. If you go above a thousand feet, your eye explodes, the Texas Republican said. Crenshaw, a former Navy SEAL, is easily identifiable by his eye patch. Its a constant reminder of the roadside bomb blast in 2012 that destroyed his right ... The UNWTO Regional Commission for the Middle East held a key meeting in Riyadh, where the members agreed to work on the creation of harmonised protocols to support the resumption of regional travel in the wake of Covid-19 pandemic. High on the agenda at the meeting for these 13 members was adopting a coordinated approach to developing unified protocols for safe and responsible travel throughout the region. The meeting took place in the Saudi capital, a day after the United Nations specialised agency for tourism opened its first regional office there. The UNWTO Middle East Member States have agreed to work together on core initiatives intended to harmonise travel protocols and reinvigorate regional travel through: *Developing a common framework to reopen international borders; *Creating approved Public Health Corridors between destinations to promote specific tourism experiences and relaunch hotspot tourism destinations; *Implementing a common digital health solution to facilitate travellers experience through interoperability and blockchain as technologies to help develop common standards; and *Working to implement the IATA-UNWTO destination tracker, a monitoring system to track health data, regulations and movements across borders and to protect the health and welfare of the regions 450 million inhabitants. News featured Henry County farmers leading H2Ohio efforts in region NWS file photo Henry County farmers have led the way in the first round of the H2Ohio water conservation program, with 63% of farmable acres signed up. Henry County farmers have been leading the way in a new state initiative designed to improve water quality in Lake Erie and reduce algal blooms. Abby Winsink, H2Ohio technician for Henry County, and Bob George of Henry Soil and Water Conservation District, updated the Henry County commissioners Thursday on the local progress of the program. H2Ohio was initiated by the state to improve water quality in the Western Lake Erie Basin, including Henry County, by implementing strategies to better manage fertilizer nutrients on farm fields, erosion and water resources. One of the key elements of the program has been the voluntary nutrient management plans (VNMPs). Creating one of the plans is necessary for anyone participating in the program and it uses current soil tests, within the last four years, to provide nutrient recommendations. The majority of our farmers had that, Wensink said. There were some who had a sample that was older, but through this theyre caught up on that. So they have recent soil samples that show what their soils can take and where to move forward. She added this included working in partnership with the nutrient dealers. All of our dealers really stepped up and were able to help us in writing these plans for their farmers and our farmers, Wensink added. She also said while nutrient plans were drawn up in the past, they were often drawn up by conservation groups but they often were not useful to growers and so did not get used. On our side of it, it was a one-sheet Excel spreadsheet with what their current soil test levels were and their current plans for nutrients, Wensink said. We are referencing that document. Those documents were turned into Wensink in December and are being utilized during the spring plantings. They are using it to benefit their operations, rather than heres this document sitting on the shelf, Wensink said. George said he was leery of the nutrient plans at first given their history, but the volunteer plans are turning out different. What were doing with it is so much different than previous nutrient plans, George said. Were utilizing these with the farmer themselves, and its really become an education piece for us, for the farmer and for the dealers. You have to know where youre at before you can start to remedy the situation, said Henry County Commissioner Bob Hastedt. Of the 14 counties in the initial run of H2Ohio, Henry County led in farmers utilizing it at 63%, with Williams County coming in with 62%. The next highest was Paulding County at 57%, while other nearby counties were, Defiance and Fulton (31%), Lucas (29%), Putnam (55%) and Wood (43%). The low county was Mercer at 24%. Initially, the program goal was to have 103,000 acres of farmland in the 14-county area signed up for the VNMPs, but there have been 1.1 million signed on, with 133,000 of those coming from Henry County. We have over exceeded the whole program itself, and our Henry County landowners have done a fabulous job of signing up and following through, George said. Another benefit of the program has been to offer funding for farmers to transport manure from further origin points and using it on fields that have not typically had it applied. So its spreading that manure across the watershed, as opposed to keeping it concentrated on that field thats located right behind the barn, Wensink said. Cover crops, such as cereal rye, have increased as a winter cover crop. Wensink said farmers who have used it for a couple of years are helping others who are just now showing interest. Cover crops reduce soil erosion and help reduce water quality degradation due to excess nutrients. The program also promotes the use of water drainage control boxes which can allow drainage control structures to be shut off in the winter, allowing the water table to rise and preventing excess nutrients from entering streams. Wensink said Henry County has 157 of the boxes set to be installed this year. Thats been a really popular practice over the years, and Henry County probably has more than any other county, George said. A second year of funding has been approved by the state and the Ohio Department of Agriculture is working with Gov. Mike DeWine to secure funding for 2023. DeWines executive budget released in February included the funding, but the legislature also must include it. Its important for the state to follow through, theyve got to continue to fund H2Ohio, Henry County Commissioner Glenn Miller said. Napoleon, OH (43545) Today Widely scattered showers or a thunderstorm this evening. Then partly cloudy. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight Widely scattered showers or a thunderstorm this evening. Then partly cloudy. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%. Huawei has reinforced that it will be revealing the Watch 3 series on June 2, one of the company's first products to launch with HarmonyOS 2.0. Huawei has teased the Watch 3's design too, in what could be a departure for its smartwatch series. 4 Reviews , News , CPU , GPU , Articles , Columns , Other "or" search relation. 5G , Accessory , Alder Lake , AMD , Android , Apple , ARM , Audio , Business , Camera , Cannon Lake , Cezanne (Zen 3) , Charts , Chinese Tech , Chromebook , Coffee Lake , Comet Lake , Console , Convertible / 2-in-1 , Cryptocurrency , Cyberlaw , Deal , Desktop , Exclusive , Fail , Foldable , Gadget , Galaxy Note , Galaxy S , Gamecheck , Gaming , Geforce , Google Pixel , GPU , How To , Ice Lake , Intel Evo / Project Athena , Internet of Things (IoT) , iOS , iPad Pro , iPhone , Jasper Lake , Lakefield , Laptop , Launch , Linux / Unix , Lucienne (Zen 2) , MacBook , Mini PC , Monitor , MSI , OnePlus , Opinion , Phablet , Radeon , Renoir , Review Snippet , Rocket Lake , Rumor , Ryzen (Zen) , Science , Security , Smart Home , Smartphone , Smartwatch , Software , Storage , Tablet , ThinkPad , Thunderbolt , Tiger Lake , Touchscreen , Ultrabook , Virtual Reality (VR) / Augmented Reality (AR) , Wearable , Windows , Workstation , XPS , Zen 3 (Vermeer) Ticker Huawei has reiterated that it will be launching new HarmonyOS products on June 2. Initially, the company just dropped hints about releasing its latest OS, on which we have previously reported. However, now it has explicitly referenced HarmonyOS running on the WATCH3, as the company stylises it. To date, there have been no leaks about the Watch 3's design, discounting Huawei Central's render. Huawei's teaser implies that the Watch 3 has a rotating crown, like the Apple Watch. The image below does not appear to be a button, so a crown would be the logical alternative, in our opinion. Huawei also states that the Watch 3 is its return to flagship smartwatches. The company has released plenty of budget smartwatches and fitness trackers, but it has been just eight months since it announced the Watch GT 2 Pro. In saying that, the Watch GT 2 Pro was only a minor improvement over the Watch GT 2, a smartwatch that Huawei launched in September 2019. Hence, Huawei has not released a new flagship smartwatch in over 20 months, arguably. The Senate is set to approve a big innovation bill aimed at making the U.S. more competitive with China and other countries I hold myself accountable. Words cannot express the guilt I still feel. ... I would give my life for hers, Pichon said. According to court records, Howard was the getaway driver for his girlfriend, Pichon, who stole a case of beer from an East Chicago grocery store and didn't stop when approached by a uniformed police officer. Hammond police joined East Chicago police in the chase as it crossed into their city. Howard ran a red light and crashed into a vehicle driven by Paramo at the intersection of Columbia Avenue and Gostlin Street. An attorney for Paramo and Chambers' family said in March that East Chicago and Hammond had agreed to a settlement totaling $1.2 million in a federal lawsuit filed after the high-speed chase Feb. 15, 2017. As part of the settlement, Hammond and East Chicago each agreed to create and place a bronze plaque memorializing the life of Chambers with a legend that reads, in part, "May her memory be a blessing." The plaques will be placed in Hammond's Pulaski Park Community Center and the East Chicago Police Department's training room. Boswell said Howard and Pichon deserved harsher sentences, because they led police on the chase without regard for the safety of other motorists. The fight at the party Nov. 2 at a home in the 6700 block of New Jersey Avenue in Hammond was a simple disagreement, Godshalk said. A police officer responded, but he did not see anyone with injuries, made no arrests and cleared the scene, he said. Whitelow told police his Betty Boop keychain, which was found at the scene of Smith's homicide, was stolen during the party. Police later brought the keys to Whitelow's home and used them to unlock his front door and start his Lincoln Aviator. Godshalk suggested Smith stole Whitelow's keys during the party as a way of getting back at Smith and threw them out his car window as he parked on White Oak Avenue outside his girlfriend's home. "It defies logic that Shaun's keys could magically show up at that scene," Godshalk said. Kooce said it was ridiculous to think Smith would steal the keys and throw them out in front of his girlfriend's home. Koonce replayed video and audio recordings for the jury during her closing statements, arguing Whitelow enlisted a friend who drove a dark-colored Chevrolet Impala to help him stalk and kill Smith. LOS ANGELES (AP) The 19-year-old daughter of Moneyball writer Michael Lewis and former MTV correspondent Tabitha Soren died in a Northern California highway crash. Dixie Lewis was a passenger in a car driven by her friend and former Berkeley High School classmate, Ross Schultz, 20, who also died in the Tuesday afternoon accident, according to her family and authorities. We loved her so much and are in a kind of pain none of us has experienced, Michael Lewis said in a statement to Berkeleyside, a community news site that first reported the deaths. She loved Ross, with whom she died. She loved to live and our hearts are so broken they cant find the words to describe the feeling. Her family, including siblings Walker and Quinn, will find ways for her memory to live in her absence, Michael Lewis said. A statement from Schultzs family said they would hold his memory dear and present and find ways to remember him, and Dixie, forever. Hanoi, May 29 (UNI) Vietnam has detected a new strain of the coronavirus that combines characteristics of the UK and Indian variants, national Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long said on Saturday. Both UK and Indian variants are believed to be more transmissible than the original coronavirus, but the Indian one is also potentially less susceptible to antibodies developed by the immune system. The Vietnamese strain is an Indian variant with additional mutations that are the same as those of the UK strain, according to the health minister. "The Ministry of Health would announce the new coronavirus variant on the global genome map," Long said, as quoted by the VnExpress news outlet. According to the minister, the new strain stands behind the recent spike in the number of new coronavirus cases in Vietnam. UNI XC-RHK1342 CHICAGO (AP) The longtime chief of staff to former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan pleaded not guilty Friday to lying under oath to a federal grand jury that was investigating a bribery scheme involving electric utility Commonwealth Edison. Timothy Mapes entered the plea through his lawyer during a hearing conducted remotely before U.S. District Judge John Lee, who allowed the 66-year-old to remain free pending trial. Wednesdays indictment states Mapes was granted immunity to testify and that his words or evidence he provided can't be used against him in a criminal case unless he committed perjury, gave a false statement or otherwise failed to comply with the immunity order. Mapes testified before the grand jury on March 31, according to the indictment. Mapes attorneys released a statement this week rejecting the perjury allegation, contending the governments entire case is about Madigan. Tim Mapes testified truthfully in the grand jury, they wrote. His honest recollections in response to vague and imprecise questions about events that allegedly took place many years ago simply do not constitute perjury. This case, of course, is not about him but about the governments continued pursuit of his former boss. PORTAGE Portage High School Spanish teachers Andrea Pappas and Bri Snemis wanted to incorporate more project-based learning with their students this year to help them grasp the vocabulary and make it stick in their minds better. They came up with the idea to make pinatas with their students and teach them the traditional symbolism behind them. Spanish 1 students made pineapple pinatas and those in Spanish 2 made llamas. As they were working on this project, Pappas had the idea to create a COVID-shaped pinata for all her students to sign and then hit on the last day of school. After the challenges of the past school year, she thought it would be a cathartic experience for her and the kids. She was concerned the pinata wouldnt come together because of the size she was attempting to make it, so she didnt tell the students in advance. They were all surprised when she brought it in on Thursday. Only her last class of the day a group of mainly freshmen taking Spanish 1 were able to hit the pinata, but her other classes got to sign it throughout the day. Some of them just wrote their names, but others, Pappas said, wrote notes such as, COVID, you need to go. "We've been amazed at how many Three Dunes Challenge T-shirts we've sold," Weimer said. "We were told don't waste your time trying to sell T-shirts to kids, but we've even been selling them to youth in the smallest sizes. People have gotten engaged on that trail and posted it. One hiker carried his older, dying dog up there. It means something to everyone. It's a challenge, and you can't beat the views." Visit Michigan City LaPorte Executive Director Jack Arnett, whose tourism agency markets the east end of the Indiana Dunes National Park, said visitation was expected to increase this summer because of pent-up demand. Dunes Tourism The Chicago skyline is easily visible from the top of the recently renamed "Diana's Dune." "Everything was shut down last year, but now people have the opportunity to come back and stay," he said. "We have the third most vacation rentals in the state in LaPorte County. Come stay in one of our many bed-and-breakfasts." The Indiana Dunes National Park saw a spike of more than 20% in attendance last year, National Park Service spokesman Bruce Rowe said. The scene with the face occurs near the end of a particularly brutal episode. June has once again escaped and been recaptured. She has been bound, muzzled and tortured. Thats not even the worst part. The worst part is watching a procession of characters the sadistic enforcer Aunt Lydia, Junes former lover Nick, her sometimes-ally Lawrence, an interrogating lieutenant with a youth-minister vibe act as though none of this is happening, or it is happening for her own good, or is her own fault. The nail-pulling is bad, but the denial of reality is worse. June asks to be released from having to fight. Shes tired of repeating herself, of making the same face, of being locked up in gulags and prisons and beautiful houses. She would rather die than relive it. Aunt Lydia responds with what sounds like kindness, but of course isnt that Junes life is in no danger: She will simply be sent to a forced-labor and breeding colony. June laughs, because shes cursed with clarity in a world distorted by ideology. So much change to adjust to, Aunt Lydia clucks soothingly. But try to remember that all of this is your doing. She looks June in the eye: Youre responsible. Your fault. Your choice. This series has put June into a trap. She started as an ordinary person, an Everywoman, but the show gradually transformed her into something more abstract: the female condition, maybe. Or feminist ideals, or democratic values, or hope for an equitable world, or simply righteousness. She cant give up, and she cant lose. But she cant win either, not when the battles are being fought in parallel realities. This is how we end up in a fourth season, watching her slog through another round of this fight. Soon, The Handmaids Tale will have to try to bend its way to some satisfying conclusion. June can get out to safety, at least physically. But if this show has insisted on anything, its that safety is an illusion, and out doesnt exist. We carry the roots of our destruction with us. Whatever resting point the show may find for her, whatever Canada of the oppressed imagination, it will likely be better than what you get in reality, which is the knowledge that whatever righteous struggle you were a part of will long outlast you and never be fully won. Source photographs: Screen grabs from Hulu FRONT PAGE An article on Tuesday about poets in Myanmar overstated what is known about the origin of lines from a poem read by Ko Khet Thi at another poets funeral. While he recited the poem, it is unknown if he wrote it. TRACKING AN OUTBREAK An article on Friday about unexamined intelligence possessed by the United States related to the origins of the coronavirus misstated the day that Gen. Mark A. Milley told reporters he had not seen any conclusive evidence about the cause of the pandemic. It was Wednesday, not Thursday. METROPOLITAN The Big City column on Page 3 this weekend about the candidates for Manhattans district attorney incorrectly paraphrases Tali Farhadian Weinsteins response to a question about conflicts of interest during a recent debate among the candidates. Ms. Farhadian Weinstein said she would not recuse herself from prosecuting cases involving donors to her campaign, not that she would recuse herself in any instance where she had ties to the accused. MAGAZINE An article on Page 26 this weekend about the scholar Andrea Smith omits the location of the University of Wisconsin campus from which her sister, Justine, received an undergraduate degree. It is the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. It is not entirely unheard-of for disputes over top spots in high school graduating classes to escalate to litigation. The competition over such accolades can be an intense, even ruthless, zero-sum game. And in the fight to be valedictorian, there is more at stake than just bragging rights. In Texas, the highest-ranking high school graduates can receive free tuition for their first year at in-state public institutions. Ms. Sullivan and her parents were inspired by a case last year in Pecos, Texas, about 100 miles from Alpine, where two students claimed to be valedictorian amid confusion over a glitch in the schools tabulations. One of the students with professional legal representation filed for a restraining order and sought an injunction to block Pecos High School from naming its valedictorian. After Ms. Sullivan could not get a lawyer, her parents were disappointed but willing to drop the matter. But she refused. She got advice and records from the family in the case in Pecos, using the petition in that case as a guide to start writing her own. Her parents her father, a rancher; her mother, a forensic interviewer read it over and helped her tidy up the language. We arent even close to being lawyers, Ms. Sullivan said. In Alpine, a town of roughly 6,000 people in Texass Big Bend Country, some who know Ms. Sullivan said they were surprised she would take this on. There are other ways to spend ones last summer before college. (She plans to attend the College of Charleston in South Carolina and major in biophysics with the aim of going into medicine.) But she had always been serious about school and a bit steely in her resolve. Shes already going to college, she already has scholarships, said Teresa Todd, a local government lawyer who is a longtime friend of Ms. Sullivans mother and whose sons are close in age to Ms. Sullivan. She worked really hard for this, and I think all kids deserve to know where they fall in the pecking order. Kids have to show their work, Ms. Todd added. Why doesnt the school have to show their work? She said she offered some advice to Ms. Sullivan ahead of her hearing: Be herself. Be respectful. Dont let the other side get you off your game. Foster Friess, a Wyoming businessman who founded an investment firm, made a fortune and gave a lot of it away to Republican presidential candidates and charities, sometimes with flair, died on Thursday in Scottsdale, Ariz. He was 81. His organization, Fosters Outriders, which confirmed the death, said he had been receiving care at the Mayo Clinic there for myelodysplastic syndrome, a disorder of the blood cells and bone marrow. On Twitter, Gov. Mark Gordon of Wyoming, who defeated Mr. Friess in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, called Mr. Friess a strong and steady voice for Republican and Christian values. Mr. Friesss run for governor was his only try at major elected office. In the political arena he was primarily known for his donations, particularly to the presidential bids of Rick Santorum, the former United States senator from Pennsylvania, in the 2012 and 2016 campaigns. After Mr. Santorum left the 2016 race, Mr. Friess became one of the first Republican megadonors to embrace Donald J. Trump. WASHINGTON President Biden on Friday unveiled $3.6 trillion in tax increases on wealthy Americans and big corporations to pay for his plans to combat climate change, reduce income inequality and significantly expand the nations social safety net. For the wealthiest taxpayers, the proposals would mean higher taxes on their income, the sale of their investments and the transfer of their assets when they die. Starting at the end of 2021, the top individual income tax rate would rise to 39.6 percent from 37 percent, reversing the Trump administrations tax cuts for the highest income taxpayers. The new rate would apply to income over $509,300 for married couples filing jointly and $452,700 unmarried individuals. Taxes on capital gains the proceeds of selling an asset like a stock or a boat for people earning more than $1 million would be taxed as ordinary income, effectively increasing the rate wealthy individuals pay on that money to 39.6 percent from 20 percent. Because capital gains income would also still be subject to a 3.8 percent surtax that helps fund the Affordable Care Act, the conservative Tax Foundation estimated that high-earning taxpayers in some states could face tax rates on their capital gains that are above 50 percent, the highest such tax burden in a century. Really, its not about one single thing. Matthias Doepke, an economist at Northwestern, on whats causing the global she-cession In Her Words is available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox. After more than a year of on-again, off-again school and day care closures around the world, theres not a doubt as to who has borne the brunt of the caregiving burden: mothers. We saw mothers working out of their bathtubs with their children playing nearby; we saw children interrupting their mothers on live television; we heard mothers scream into the void. As a result, millions of women particularly those with children were either pushed out of their jobs or were forced to downsize their careers, spurring what many economists are calling the worlds first she-cession. In the U.S., White House policy advisers and members of Congress have held up womens enormous job losses as an urgent reason to expand investment in child care by historic proportions, which they argue will jump-start the recovery. The authorities in Zimbabwe have arrested a freelance reporter who works for The New York Times and accused him of improperly helping two other Times journalists make a reporting trip there recently, his lawyers said Friday. The reporter, Jeffrey Moyo, 37, who was arrested on Wednesday, has denied any wrongdoing, and his lawyers have called the accusation spurious. Efforts by the lawyers to secure his release have so far been unsuccessful. Mr. Moyo, who is based in Harare and has a wife and 8-year-old son, has done work for The Times and a number of other news organizations, including The Globe and Mail of Canada. His arrest has come amid a crackdown on press freedom in the southern African country. We are deeply concerned by Jeffrey Moyos arrest and are assisting his lawyers to secure his timely release, The Times said in a statement. Jeffrey is a widely respected journalist with many years of reporting experience in Zimbabwe and his detainment raises troubling questions about the state of press freedom in Zimbabwe. A small but menacing rally this month in Poland followed a decision a few days earlier by the elected council in Walbrzych, a former mining town in the southwestern part of the country, to declare that vaccination against the coronavirus was mandatory for all adult residents. That decision, the mayor, Dr. Roman Szelemej, said in an interview, reflected the simple medical fact that vaccination is the only thing that can prevent this disease. But instead of calming nerves, he lamented, it made this small point on the map of Poland a place for all the skeptics of science and reality to focus on. Wariness of coronavirus vaccines runs deep in Poland, particularly among younger people, with a survey by the University of Warsaw indicating that around 40 percent of the population is averse to getting inoculated. That is a lower level of skepticism than in France but still enough to make vaccines a rallying cause for a diverse and, Dr. Szelemej fears, growing minority who live in a different reality based on distrust of all scientific, moral and political authority. There are no rules, no laws, no facts, no scientific achievements, no proven data. Everything is questioned, everything is fragile, he said. This is dangerous, very dangerous. The government in Spain ended the Covid-19 state of emergency on May 9. The countrys inoculation campaign is accelerating. And Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez recently predicted that 70 percent of the population of 47 million would be vaccinated by mid-August. But amid the good news, some medical experts in Spain have urged the authorities to bolster access to testing, which they say remains essential in limiting the spread of the coronavirus. There has been a debate in Spain over whether pharmacists, in addition to doctors, should be able to conduct tests. According to the Spanish General Council of Pharmacists, only 790 of the countrys 22,100 pharmacies can conduct tests. Jesus Aguilar, the president of the council, said that in the few regions where pharmacists had been allowed to test, the outcome had been excellent. Fifty Shades itself grew out of fan fiction, and your readers were already writing their own versions of Fifty Shades from Christians point of view. Was that partly what inspired you? It was an interesting thing because, when it was fan fiction, I did write a couple of chapters from his point of view. So, you know, then people said, Oh, we want some more of this. Then, of course, they made the movies and as everyone knows, the first movie was a very trying time for me, so I came back, and I just wrote the book, and I didnt tell anyone. I just thought, I need to get back in touch with these characters, and thats what I did. I didnt realize that people would want more. That was probably a little shortsighted of me, but Im always amazed people read what I write anyway. So it grew out of wanting to reclaim the characters for yourself after being dissatisfied with the first movie? Yes. Definitely. It was not a happy experience. Ive not really said anything about it, and I dont particularly want to say anything about it. Just to say, I was very pleased to be back in the book world. The books from Christians perspective have been very popular with many of your readers, but there were some fans who said it feels like youre trying to milk this franchise without advancing the story. What do you feel like the new book adds to the story? Its written for those hard-core fans who want it. Its not written for anyone who doesnt want to read it, you know? Its very simple. And also, it goes back to seeing those five books. I feel the sense of, it wasnt complete, and now it is, and that goes back to the question, have you finished with this? I have for now. This, hopefully, will give me some freedom to go and explore something else. Rewriting your own books is almost like writing fan fiction of your own novels, but its tricky too, because you dont want to contradict the plot of your earlier works, right? Two major airlines, American and Southwest, have postponed plans to resume serving alcohol on flights in an effort to stop a surge of unruly and sometimes violent behavior by passengers who have shoved, struck and yelled at flight attendants. Both airlines announced the policies this week after the latest assault was captured on a widely watched video that showed a woman punching a flight attendant in the face on a Southwest Airlines flight from Sacramento to San Diego on Sunday. The flight attendant lost two teeth in the assault, according to her union, and the passenger, who was identified by the police as Vyvianna Quinonez, 28, has been charged with battery causing serious bodily injury. She has also been barred for life from flying Southwest, the airline said. It was not immediately clear if Ms. Quinonez had a lawyer, and she did not respond on Saturday to messages left at a number listed under her name. These findings arent just limited to academic studies. In his recent book Richer, Wiser, Happier, the veteran financial journalist William Green draws on many hours of interviews with highly successful investors, and, as youd expect, a recurring theme is that these people tend to work hard, and outthink, out-research and out-hustle the crowd. But a counterintuitive subtheme also emerges: how seriously his subjects tend to take breaks, time off and make space in their lives for definitive distance from the all-day, every-day 21st century work cycle. Many including Charlie Munger, Warren Buffetts longtime collaborator make a point to carve out time for quiet and contemplation. For Mr. Munger, that means ignoring up-to-the-second market news and crowd noise and instead exercising extreme patience. For another one of Mr. Greens interviewees, Laura Geritz, the chief executive at Rondure Global Advisors, it means taking time to sit by a stream and journal. Developing a regular meditation practice, Mr. Green notes, has become a mission-critical habit for many successful investors. This isnt an afterthought or a hobby or a personal wellness tactic, Mr. Green said in an interview. Its a reflection of the ruthless pragmatism that made his subjects successful in the first place in the eternal hunt for an edge, they found their rest ethic. Its almost a countercultural move, Mr. Green said. I dont think you have deep thought without structuring your life this way, he said, at a time when everybody is constantly pinged and reacting to short-term stimuli. Similarly, Mr. Fitch and Mr. Frenzel point out in their book that famous athletes like LeBron James take rest and recovery quite seriously, treating it as part of their regimen, not as an escape from it. The same should be true for many professionals and knowledge workers, Mr. Fitch said. Too many managers and workers are stuck in a dated mind-set that prizes long hours over all else. Quantity of input doesnt matter, Mr. Fitch argues. Its quality of output. Microdosing relaxation The good news is that at least some companies are starting to take breaks seriously. For starters, Mr. Fitch said, some are acknowledging that unlimited paid time off, a popular gesture among employers who have tried to address the issue, doesnt really do the trick. It can end up feeling like just another responsibility, and nobody wants to be the employee who takes the most days off. Lately, companies including LinkedIn and Roblox have experimented with mandatory vacation for all or most employees in the form of spring break periods. Actions like these that emphasize the value of time off represent a profound shift, Mr. Fitch said. He and Mr. Frenzel, both tech entrepreneurs, are tinkering with a software tool that would help human resources departments prod workers to take days off. In Congress, a bill with bipartisan support would allocate $500 million in annual spending over the next three years to support domestic manufacturers of vital medical equipment. While industry executives commend these moves, they say that time is running out. The American Mask Manufacturer's Association, a recently created trade group, said its 27 members had already laid off 50 percent of their work force. Without concerted action from Washington, most of those companies will go belly up within the next two months. An immediate boost, they say, would be to rescind the C.D.C. guidelines, born during the pandemic, that force health workers to repeatedly reuse N95 masks, even though they are designed to be thrown away after contact with each patient. Many hospitals are still following the guidelines, despite the 260 million masks that are gathering dust in warehouses across the country. Were not looking for infinite support from the government, said Lloyd Armbrust, the associations president and the founder and chief executive of Armbrust American, a mask-making company in Texas. We need the governments support right now because unfair pressure from China is going to kill this new industry before the legislators even get a chance to fix the problem. The association is planning to file an unfair trade complaint with the World Trade Organization, claiming that much of the protective gear imported from China is selling for less than the cost of production. The price for some Chinese-made surgical masks has recently dropped to as low as 1 cent, compared with about 10 to 15 cents for American masks that use domestically produced raw material. This is full-on economic warfare, said Luis Arguello Jr., vice president of DemeTech, a medical-suture company in Florida that earlier this month laid off 1,500 workers who made surgical masks. He said that in the coming weeks, 500 other workers who make N95 masks would also likely be let go. China is on the mission to make sure no one in the industry survives, and so far theyre winning, Mr. Arguello said. Their mother went into cardiac arrest just before midnight. She was resuscitated, but the doctor had a question: What did the family want to do if Magalie Salomons heart stopped beating again? The decision was left to Ms. Salomons son, Xavier. He was 18 years old. It was an alarming position to be in, particularly for Xavier, who had never felt much responsibility for the household. His father had died nine years earlier, and his mother worked overnight shifts as a home attendant, which meant he was often home alone with his 16-year-old sister, Adriana. Still, Xavier felt no obligation to take on a big brother role, preferring to dodge chores and duties. He gave little thought to blowing his Burger King paychecks on Yeezy sneakers or gifts for his girlfriend and tended to hole up in his room on his phone. But when the hospital called, it was Xavier who was asked for answers. He panicked. Do whatever it takes, he pleaded. Then Covid-19 arrived, and he no longer could attend support meetings and no longer had to take urine tests no support and no accountability, as his mother put it. Dell received some wrenching personal news and coped by shooting heroin. He overdosed, and the hospital barely brought him back to life. Dell returned to drugs, and his baby soon had to get medical treatment for somehow ingesting meth when his parents were high. In quick succession, Dell lost his job, lost the baby to foster care, lost his apartment and gave up his other son to be raised by others. A good man who loved his children and had been doing so well had seen his life collapse and was now living in his car with his new wife. His baby is now being put up for adoption. Life is bleak and I did it to myself, he texted me recently. Living in a 1996 Honda Civic and not seeing my kids because I dont have a roof is the worst. He asked me to help by investing in a scheme he had devised to house people in shipping containers. If you would go out on a limb for us, he said, it might just save our lives. I was heartsick, but Dells mother, who herself has been drug-free for six years, begged me not to give him money or anything that he could sell; she fears that the proceeds would go to drugs that would kill him. The best hope to save his life, she said wretchedly, is for him to be arrested and go through detox. Ive never seen him this bad, his mother told me. * This column may seem like a depressing read, but the truth is that while people relapse into addiction, they also, miraculously, pull themselves out with help. Years ago in Nashville I met Shelia Simpkins, who was trafficked into prostitution at the age of 6. She spent many years enslaved by violent pimps, struggling with addiction and repeatedly getting arrested but finally left with the help of a program called Thistle Farms. She earned a B.A. and helped countless other women start over. This seems mistaken. Yes, if we never figure out the truth of Covids origins, the dangers of media groupthink will be the only lesson we can draw for absolutely certain. But if we could find out the truth, and it turned out that the Wuhan Institute of Virology really was the epicenter of a once-in-a-century pandemic, the revelation would itself be a major political and scientific event. First, to the extent that the United States is engaged in a conflict of propaganda and soft power with the regime in Beijing, theres a pretty big difference between a world where the Chinese regime can say, We werent responsible for Covid but we crushed the virus and the West did not, because were strong and theyre decadent, and a world where this was basically their Chernobyl except their incompetence and cover-up sickened not just one of their own cities but also the entire globe. The latter scenario would also open a debate about how the United States should try to enforce international scientific research safeguards, or how we should operate in a world where they cant be reasonably enforced. Perhaps that debate would ultimately tilt away from China hawks, as David Frum argues in The Atlantic, because the lesson of a lab leak would be that we actually need more binding of China to the international order, more cross-border health and safety standards, more American scientists in Chinese labs, and concomitantly, more Chinese scientists in American labs. Or perhaps instead you would have an attempted scientific and academic embargo, an end to the kind of funding that flowed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology from the U.S.A.I.D., an attempt to manage risk with harder borders, stricter travel restrictions, de-globalization. Either way, this debate would also affect science policy at home, opening arguments the likes of which we havent seen since the era of Chernobyl and Three Mile Island about the risks of scientific hubris and cutting-edge research. This is especially true if theres any chance that the Covid-19 virus was engineered, in so-called gain of function research, to be more transmissible and lethal a possibility raised by, among others, a former science writer for this newspaper, Nicholas Wade. But even if it wasnt, the mere existence of that research, heretofore a subject of obscure intra-scientific controversy, would become a matter of intense public attention and scrutiny. That scrutiny might not lead to wise decisions, just as the panic over nuclear power arguably led both energy policy and environmentalism astray. To return to the bet with which we started, the regulation of science has to exist in a balance between Martin Rees and Steven Pinker, between healthy pessimism about human blundering and healthy ambition about what human ingenuity can do. If the pandemic blossomed from a reckless blunder, any reckoning could easily go awry, with a crusade for safety pushing us deeper into technological stagnation. But if we find out that a single laboratory and a few scientists are responsible for one of the greatest human catastrophes in generations, its no use to wish the reckoning away. Bess Rattray, 54, a writer and volunteer emergency medical technician, grew up in East Hampton and now lives near the villages main business district. Ms. Rattrays cellphone frequently fails in her own home, forcing her into the front yard. Sometimes, she said, her phone will simply say unavailable, which typically occurs when there are too many people using cellphones in the area. Thats bananas in this day and age, she said. In this incredibly wealthy area, and so close to the biggest metropolitan area in the country. The Hamptons lack of reliable service, she said, also presents a real safety hazard. We all know, in the emergency services, there are places where radios and cellphones might not work, she said. You go off the road in one of those places and youre sort of out of luck. Though some vacationers may relish being unreachable, for others its a matter of productivity. Nicole Castillo, 46, the executive vice president of WordHampton, a public relations firm, estimates that 30 percent of her job takes place outside of the office. Ms. Castillo lives and works in the Springs neighborhood and said that she is often communicating with clients on the go. On the weekend, its super-challenging to even get a text through, she said. At her office, her cell reception doesnt really work at all, and the company has had to buy boosters. Michael Schwarz, 38, the founder and C.E.O. of the tech company Improove, Inc., moved with his girlfriend to East Hampton from New York City last June. Mr. Schwarz was aware of the reception reputation of his new hometown. I figure: How bad can it be? he said. Then, what he referred to as the toxic combination of unreliable internet and nonexistent cell service proved pretty bad, indeed. To hear more audio stories from publications like The New York Times, download Audm for iPhone or Android. The internet is a fossil machine. It preserves our thoughts, our political positions, our jokes, our photos, our triumphs and our mistakes in silicon amber, just waiting to be dug up. And that has led to a kind of modern sport: Find an outrageous piece of a persons past that can be weaponized, put it on display for all to see and hope for the worst. The most surprising thing, though, is that this is still happening. The latest target of adversarial archaeologists is Emily Wilder, 22, who was fired by The Associated Press just three weeks into the job after the Stanford College Republicans surfaced her pro-Palestine activism and social media posts while in college. Though she was based in Arizona, her old posts caught the attention of national political figures from the right who amplified them, arguing that her views compromised her employers ability to accurately cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The A.P. contends that the firing was for social media conduct while Ms. Wilder worked for the media outlet, but it seemed to Ms. Wilder and her supporters that the incident was triggered by the years-old Facebook posts. Weve been living with social media and its powers of preservation for nearly two decades now, since Facebook came into existence in 2004 and gradually convinced a billion of us that it was a good idea to leave a digital trail online attached to our real names. This is a cycle so familiar that the progression from unearthed post to contrition or firing feels lockstep. It almost makes you forget that it wasnt supposed to be this way. As more and more people documented their lives online, so that our whole selves, past and present, were visible, society was predicted to become more empathetic and forgiving. But instead the opposite has happened. The Biden administration said late Friday that it would reimpose economic sanctions on certain state-owned companies in Belarus, the latest diplomatic pushback from a Western government after the countrys authoritarian leader forced down a European passenger jet last weekend. The plane, a Ryanair Boeing 737 headed from Greece to Lithuania, was traveling through Belarusian airspace on Sunday when it was diverted and forced to land in Minsk, the capital, with an escort from a fighter jet. Roman Protasevich, a Belarusian opposition journalist who had been living in exile abroad, was detained along with his girlfriend after the plane landed. Belaruss president, Aleksandr G. Lukashenko, a brutal and eccentric strongman, has claimed that he rerouted the plane because of an emailed bomb threat, not to seize Mr. Protasevich. But a Swiss email provider has said that the email cited by the Belarusian authorities was sent after the plane had already been diverted. I have an appointment on Thursday, so Im still doing this. Its a lot of days, a lot of time. The doctor would take pictures of my eye every time and kind of hope that it was going to get better. I had this hole, from the damage and everything. And wed watched in the picture: the hole, it looks OK, its staying the same. And then one week, he saw it getting worse. And then he says, I dont want to tell you this, but we are going to have to get surgery. And I just look at this picture. Its like this huge rip, a huge hole, everything looks just so out of place. I literally was empty-handed standing there. And theres no way to twist it to make it seem like I was a real threat. If that can happen while Im trying to be there to just witness change then like, what else is there? If something so innocent can be met with such violence, I dont know what there is to do. Someone actually said something very beautiful to me. They said, Its good that you went because you took someones pain that night. At first I was like, I dont really know what to say to that. This whole time, I havent felt like what happened to me was empowering. I havent felt like I made a change. I havent felt that way at all. But when he said that, that I took someones pain that night, it just was like an eye opener. That was going to happen to someone. It wasnt anything I did. It wasnt anything I could have controlled. I was there. I was Black. It was the police. Minneapolis Suud Olat, 31 As the countrys major political parties move further apart, so does the legislation that flows from them and like voting rights and abortion, guns are no exception. This month, Texas became the 20th state to pass legislation that says a permit is not required to carry a concealed handgun, according to Anne S. Teigen, an expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Illinois and the city of San Jose, Calif., where nine people were killed in a mass shooting this past week, are considering bills that would tax things like ammunition, and certain types of guns. There is no single reason for the surge, but social scientists point to many potential drivers. There is a breakdown in trust and a breakdown in a shared, common reality, said Lilliana Mason, a political scientist at the University of Maryland who writes about political violence. There is also all this social change, and social change is scary. Many gun store workers reported that last year set records for sales and also that they noticed different types of buyers walking in the door. Thomas Harris, a former law enforcement officer who works at the gun counter at Sportsmans Warehouse in Roanoke, Va., said that around March last year, the customers he would speak with began to include more white-collar workers, such as people from insurance firms and software companies. He said many of the buyers were not conservative and most had never handled a gun. Outside of seeing something on TV or in a movie, they knew nothing about them, he said, adding that they did not know how to load a gun or what a caliber was. He said many of these apparent first-time buyers purchased more expensive guns, in the range of $400 or more. The purpose, he said, was not to carry the gun around in public, but to keep it at home. They were saying: Were going to be locking down. Were constrained to our homes. We want to keep safe. The Northeastern and Harvard data come from a survey of 19,000 people conducted in April. Researchers found that about 6.5 percent of American adults bought guns in 2020, or about 17 million people. That was up from 5.3 percent in 2019, said Dr. Matthew Miller, a professor of epidemiology at Northeastern, who conducted the study with Deborah Azrael, a researcher at Harvard. While about a fifth of gun buyers last year were first-time buyers, the share was about the same in 2019, he said, suggesting that the trend did not start with the pandemic. How do you think she was able to capture what she did in the book? She was clearly an intrepid person. She obviously was a person of great agency, a person who was courageous. And a person who had a great sense of herself. We see that in the book when it was time to get identity cards and most people had to have a white person or an employer or someone come and vouch for them in order to get one, a pass like race cards in South Africa, for example, to be able to be out on the street. She said, What was I supposed to do? Who was I supposed to call? Ive always earned an independent living and Ive never worked for a white person in my life. So what does a person whos intrepid, entrepreneurial, independent do? What does a Black person, a Black woman like that do in such a circumstance? She eventually figured it out, of course. This was a woman who had never really asked anyone for anything. These are the human feelings that are going through the minds and hearts of people of that community, who in an instant, lost everything, and for many, even their hope. Lets talk about something your grandmother wrote in the beginning of the book. She questions democracy, and asks, Is democracy a mockery? Absolutely, it was a voice to the future. She spoke prophetically and she thought that these questions had to be answered honestly, authentically, and from a deep place of reflection. My great-grandfather was a World War I veteran, and he had returned from the European Theater and was living in Tulsa or in the Tulsa area at the time of the massacre. So within my own family, I have that aspect of reflection to think about my own forefathers who fought abroad for the freedom of Europe and came home not able to exercise their full civil rights or full civic participation. To exercise even their right to life, right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness here at home. And so these taglines, if you will, begin to ring hollow. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave? Or is it a place where mob rule can take the lives and livelihoods of so many without any justice. No punishment for the perpetrators. No justice for the victim. No cost for the crime. Image Credit... Trinity University Press Who do you hope the book reaches? Everyone. And I would hope that people are touched by the human part of this story. Mary Jones Parrish said she hoped the book would reach the thinking people of America. I would like this book to reach them as well. In the military, intervening, especially against someone of a higher rank, can be culturally difficult, especially for younger recruits. Barriers sometimes get in the way from people intervening, said Carmen Schott, the sexual assault prevention and response program manager for the Air Forces Air Mobility Command. If someone is higher rank, you might be more timid to say something. The Air Force has put a lot of effort into making clear nothing negative will happen if you intervene. The aim of the virtual reality program is to act out scenarios with airmen in simulated environments. The technology allows the airmen to select from cues at the bottom of the screen to have an interactive conversation with a photo-realistic virtual actor, one whose facial expressions and reactions are meant to make the training more effective. In this behavioral rehearsal, airmen learn what may be useful to say, such as asking their buddy if he has a gun in his house, and why some other responses like man up are not helpful. Participants get feedback on their empathy score and tips on how to improve in future encounters. Virtual reality training puts the user in a scenario, not in a classroom where you are zoning out and on your cellphone, Ms. Schott explained. You are an active participant. You have to be ready. I think that it is going to help airmen retain and remember knowledge. We dont want people to feel judged. They may not make perfect decisions, but they will learn skills. Kevin Cornish, the chief executive of Moth+Flame, a virtual reality learning firm in Brooklyn, looked a little like an interloper on the Air Force base here, a casually dressed artist among uniforms. Mr. Cornish, who was working on Taylor Swift music videos when he became entranced by the immersive experience of a 360-degree camera used in one of them, said that there was something so invigorating about somebody making eye contact and talking to you. He said he was increasingly seeing companies turn to virtual reality to simulate difficult work conversations and game out scenarios, especially around diversity and inclusion. By the time Donald J. Trump was in the White House in January 2017, the D.N.C.s house was ablaze, Sam Cornale, the committees executive director, said in an interview this week. That month, Bob Lord, an unassuming, bespectacled chief security officer at Yahoo, was still mopping up the largest Russian hacks in history: a 2013 breach of more than three billion Yahoo accounts and a second breach in 2014 of 500 million Yahoo accounts. Mr. Lord, who discovered the breaches when he took over the job, helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation identify the assailants. A courtroom sketch of Karim Baratov, one of the hackers in the Yahoo case, still hangs on his wall. Mr. Lord left the team Yahoo affectionately calls The Paranoids, took a six-figure pay cut and headed to Washington in January 2017 to become the D.N.C.s first chief information security officer. The way he saw it, the D.N.C.s 2016 breach wasnt so much a cybersecurity issue as it was a problem of workflow and corporate culture. Mr. Podestas aide, for instance, had asked a staff member to vet whether the infamous Russian spearphishing email was safe, and the aide responded that the email was legitimate. It was a typo; he later said he had meant to write illegitimate. By the time anyone realized what was happening, Mr. Podestas risotto recipes, and excerpts from Mrs. Clintons Wall Street speeches, were being dissected online by the news media and conspiracy theorists. WASHINGTON Six days after his inauguration, President Biden vowed that his administration would see everything through the lens of racial equality, making it the business of the whole of government. On Friday, his $6 trillion budget began to make good on that promise. Sprinkled throughout the presidents enormous spending plan are scores of programs amounting to tens of billions of dollars intended to specifically bolster the fortunes of Black people, Asian people, tribal communities and other historically underserved groups in the United States. Mr. Biden is not the first president to spend money on such programs. And civil rights advocates said the budget released on Friday fell short in some critical areas like student loans, where they say even more money is needed to rectify a longstanding lack of fairness and a lopsided burden being carried by people of color. Its going in the right direction, but its not a perfect document, said Derrick Johnson, the president of the N.A.A.C.P., who said he was disappointed that the presidents budget did not call for canceling student loan debt, which falls disproportionately on Black Americans. In a statement on Saturday, President Biden called the proposed law, along with similar measures in Georgia and Florida, an assault on democracy that disproportionately targeted Black and Brown Americans. He called on lawmakers to address the issue by passing Democratic voting bills that are pending in Congress. Its wrong and un-American, Mr. Biden said. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote. Republican state lawmakers have often cited voters worries about election fraud fears stoked by Mr. Trump, other Republicans and the conservative media to justify new voting restrictions, despite the fact that there has been no evidence of widespread fraud in recent American elections. And in their election push, Republicans have powered past the objections of Democrats, voting rights groups and major corporations. Companies like American Airlines, Dell Technologies and Microsoft spoke out against the Texas legislation soon after the bill was introduced, but the pressure has been largely ineffective so far. The final 67-page bill, known as S.B. 7, proved to be an amalgamation of two omnibus voting bills that had worked their way through the states Legislature. It included many of the provisions originally introduced by Republicans, but lawmakers dropped some of the most stringent ones, like a regulation on the allocation of voting machines that would have led to the closure of polling places in communities of color and a measure that would have permitted partisan poll watchers to record the voting process on video. Still, the bill includes a provision that could make overturning an election easier. Texas election law had stated that reversing the results of an election because of fraud accusations required proving that illicit votes had actually resulted in a wrongful victory. If the bill passes, the number of fraudulent votes required to do so would simply need to be equal to the winning vote differential; it would not matter for whom the fraudulent votes had been cast. Democrats and voting rights groups were quick to condemn the bill. S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation, said Sarah Labowitz, the policy and advocacy director at the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state thats already the most difficult place to vote in the country. Yad Vashem, the memorial in Israel to victims of the Holocaust, which also recognizes those who saved Jews from genocide, has been critical of Pius XII. In its museum, beneath a photograph of him, an initial statement said he did not intervene in the deportation of Jews from Rome. The language was softened in 2012, based on new research, to say he did not publicly protest their deportation. Last year, the museum urged caution in drawing any conclusions until the popes archives could be thoroughly examined. Image Sister Margherita wrote several books arguing that, far from being passive, Pope Pius XII had allowed thousands of Jews to hide in Vatican institutions during World War II. Sister Margherita was considered the popes foremost defender outside of the Vatican. She wrote several books arguing that, far from being passive, he had allowed thousands of Jews to hide in Vatican institutions during the war. She said that she had interviewed scores of them, and that they were grateful to him for saving their lives. She received an award in 2003 from Pope John Paul II for her work promoting the truth about Pope Pius XII. In a speech acknowledging the award, she noted that her own order in Rome had sheltered 114 Jews in its convents, and that in gratitude they had presented one of those convents with a five-foot statue of the Madonna. She also made numerous appeals to Yad Vashem to reconsider its characterization of the popes actions. If Jewish leaders say today that Pius XII did nothing to save Jews, they are disputing the testimony of other Jews who said he did quite a lot, she told New Jersey Jewish News in 2007. It is terribly unfair, Sister Margherita added, to put so much blame on Pius, who had no army besides a few Swiss Guards with which to resist Hitler, while leaders like Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, who had the means to bomb the concentration camps, failed to do so. Thomas Sullivan, a prominent defense lawyer in Chicago who, during his brief time as a federal prosecutor, helped initiate an extensive undercover investigation of corruption within the county court system that led to the convictions of judges, lawyers and sheriffs, died on May 18 at his home in Wilmette, Ill., outside Chicago. He was 91. His wife, Anne Landau, confirmed the death. Mr. Sullivan had established himself as a formidable lawyer when he was named United States attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in 1977. He had helped build the pro bono practice at Jenner & Block, the firm where he worked for his entire career, and had argued successfully in state court in 1971 that marijuanas classification as a hard drug was unconstitutional; the case involved a man who had been sentenced to a mandatory 10 years in prison for possession of a small amount. As federal prosecutor, Mr. Sullivan embarked on an audacious plan to root out bribery and case-fixing in the Cook County Circuit Court system. It included installing listening devices in judges chambers and creating fabricated cases that would be tried before judges who were under investigation. The sting came to be known as Operation Greylord. If we used real cases, he said in an interview on his law firms website in 2014, and the prosecutor or judge takes a bribe and a guy is released from a minor crime and then goes out and commits a really horrible crime, Im going to get blamed for it. So you cant use real cases; you have to use fake cases. RIO DE JANEIRO Florencia Gonzalez Alzaga, a photographer from Buenos Aires, hatched her plan to fly to the United States for a coronavirus vaccine after the subject came up in her Zoom book club. Juan Pablo Bojaca, an Instagram influencer from Colombia who specializes in frugal travel, urged his 137,000 followers to give it a try, posting a step-by-step video guide that showed him clearing passport control in Miami. Jose Acevedo, a real estate agent in Paraguay, was stunned by how easy the whole thing was in Las Vegas. Frustrated with the lagging pace of vaccine campaigns at home and seeing a surplus of doses in the United States where tens of millions of Americans have opted not to get inoculated wealthy and middle-class Latin Americans with American tourist visas have been flocking to the United States in recent weeks to score a Covid-19 shot. The prison was already packed, its population more than double its 5,000-person capacity. Recent prisoners include two American journalists and an Australian economic adviser. Hundreds of pro-democracy protesters have also been crammed in, some with fresh gunshot wounds. For 134 years, Insein Prison has stood as a monument to brutality and authoritarian rule in Myanmar. Built by British colonizers to help subjugate the population, the pizza-shaped penitentiary became infamous for its harsh conditions and the torture of prisoners during a half-century of military dictatorship. Now, with the Myanmar military back in control after a Feb. 1 coup, the aging prison has become a central part of the continuing crackdown against the pro-democracy movement in the Southeast Asian nation. The junta has detained more than 4,300 people since February, according to a rights group. The primary destination has been Insein, the most prominent of 56 penitentiaries. Hong Kongs borders have been sealed for more than a year and its quarantine rules which require compulsory hotel stays of up to three weeks are among the strictest in the world. Corporate executives, however, are now eligible for special treatment. The citys Securities and Futures Commission quietly published a notice on Friday saying that fully vaccinated senior executives from local companies or their international affiliates could apply for an exemption from the standard quarantine requirements when they visit or return to Hong Kong. Companies must submit detailed itineraries for their executives, who are allowed to leave quarantine accommodations only for approved activities, the notice said. The commission did not issue a news release, and the notice offered no explanation for the timing or justification for the measure. Neither the Securities and Futures Commission nor Hong Kongs Department of Health responded to requests for comment on Saturday. The Chinese territory reported no new cases on Friday. Though densely populated, it has managed to avoid a full lockdown and has kept its coronavirus caseload low through aggressive social distancing rules and forced quarantine in government facilities for close contacts of Covid-19 patients, among other measures. Even vaccinated travelers must quarantine in hotels for up to three weeks, depending on where they fly in from. Vietnam has discovered a new variant of the coronavirus that the countrys health minister said was a mix of the variants first detected in India and Britain and was also more contagious, according to news reports. Nguyen Thanh Long, the health minister, said in a government meeting that the new variant combined the variant discovered in India with mutations from the one initially detected in Kent, England. The concentration of virus in the throat fluid increases rapidly and spreads very strongly to the surrounding environment, Mr. Long said at the meeting, a recording of which was obtained by Reuters. He called the variant very dangerous, Reuters reported. It was not immediately clear how fully the new variant is understood. Mr. Long cited lab cultures in discussing its transmissibility, but they may not necessarily reflect how the virus behaves in real-world situations. It was also not clear whether its prevalence is known or whether it might evade the protections afforded by vaccines or natural immunity acquired through earlier infection from a different version of the virus. Viruses mutate constantly, but most of the mutations dwindle away. Covid-19 vaccinations among the countrys newly eligible tweens and teens have given a much needed boost to the nations campaign, at a time when vaccination rates have fallen among the oldest age groups and mostly stalled among young adults, despite efforts by state officials to entice people to get a shot. Average daily number of people in the U.S. receiving a first dose, by age Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention | Note: The last five days of data are excluded because not all vaccinations on those dates have been reported yet. Lines show the seven-day moving average of the number of people newly vaccinated. Excludes data from Texas because the state does not report age data to the C.D.C. Anomalies reflect fluctuations in the availability of age data. After falling sharply in April and May, daily vaccination rates have been inching upward again, driven in large part by the immunizations of 12- to 15-year-olds. In the two and a half weeks since this group has become eligible for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, about 2.5 million have gotten their first shot, making up about a quarter of all new vaccinations. Even though 12- to 15-year-olds are just 5 percent of the population, numbering nearly 17 million, experts say that reaching them can have significant benefits for the rest of the country. Beyond reducing infections in their communities, vaccinated youth may encourage older family members to get a shot and help their families return to a feeling of normalcy. For 15 months, kids have experienced loneliness and heard a message that being close to other humans is risky and puts their families at risk, said Dr. Rebecca Weintraub, a faculty member at Harvard Medical School and a volunteer vaccinator. Many kids are eager to get vaccinated as they anticipate learning in a classroom and hanging out with friends with decreased risk of bringing the virus home. But public health experts also say that they expect the burst of vaccinations among adolescents to be short-lived, just as adults eagerness to get vaccinated rose and fell. I think people who were really excited about getting their kids vaccinated signed up and got it done quickly, said Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Theres been a lot of availability over the last two weeks, so it was easy to do if you wanted to do it. I think its going to be harder to maintain that interest, she added. There are signs that vaccinations among tweens and teens may increase. In a May poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation, about 24 percent of parents of children 12 to 17 said their child had already received at least one shot, and another 18 percent said they would get their kids vaccinated right away. About 20 percent wanted to wait to see how the vaccines worked before getting a child vaccinated. Inoculation rates among the youngest eligible Americans, those ages 12 to 17, have varied across the country; in 16 states, at least 30 percent of people in this group have received at least one shot. Percentage of residents given at least one shot, by age group Name 12 to 17 18 to 64 65 and older U.S. total* U.S. total* 23% 56% 85% Vermont Vt. 51% 75% >99% Hawaii Hawaii 44% 78% 98% Massachusetts Mass. 42% 74% 95% Connecticut Conn. 41% 70% 93% Maine Maine 38% 67% 93% Rhode Island R.I. 38% 66% 94% New Hampshire N.H. 36% 64% 92% Maryland Md. 35% 65% 88% Oregon Ore. 32% 60% 84% Washington Wash. 32% 64% 88% Virginia Va. 32% 63% 87% New Mexico N.M. 31% 66% 90% California Calif. 31% 65% 90% Colorado Colo. 31% 62% 86% New Jersey N.J. 30% 69% 90% Minnesota Minn. 30% 61% 90% Illinois Ill. 28% 61% 88% Delaware Del. 27% 58% 91% New York N.Y. 27% 63% 83% Puerto Rico P.R. 26% 57% 65% Pennsylvania Pa. 25% 62% 98% Alaska Alaska 25% 56% 80% Washington, D.C. D.C. 24% 66% 82% Wisconsin Wis. 24% 55% 89% Michigan Mich. 23% 53% 83% Utah Utah 22% 55% 86% Iowa Iowa 21% 54% 87% Ohio Ohio 20% 49% 82% Nebraska Neb. 19% 55% 86% West Virginia W.Va. 19% 40% 74% Arizona Ariz. 19% 50% 82% Texas Texas 18% 52% 81% Montana Mont. 18% 48% 81% North Carolina N.C. 18% 47% 79% Kentucky Ky. 17% 51% 84% South Dakota S.D. 17% 54% 90% Kansas Kan. 16% 52% 90% Florida Fla. 16% 49% 88% Indiana Ind. 15% 45% 81% Missouri Mo. 15% 45% 78% Nevada Nev. 15% 51% 80% North Dakota N.D. 13% 47% 82% South Carolina S.C. 12% 41% 82% Arkansas Ark. 12% 42% 76% Tennessee Tenn. 11% 41% 77% Georgia Ga. 11% 44% 79% Oklahoma Okla. 11% 46% 82% Wyoming Wyo. 10% 39% 75% Louisiana La. 7% 38% 77% Mississippi Miss. 6% 36% 75% Alabama Ala. 5% 37% 76% Idaho Idaho <1% 42% 79% Show all Show fewer *Includes people vaccinated in the states, territories and three countries with special agreements with the United States: Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands. Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Andrew Beveridge, SocialExplorer Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Andrew Beveridge, SocialExplorer Additional work by Jasmine C. Lee. But some states are much further behind. My concern is that the early data show limited interest in states that are already seeing waning interest across adult populations, Dr. Weintraub said. Some states are also lagging among the oldest groups. In more than a dozen states and Puerto Rico, about 20 percent of people 65 and older have not yet received a vaccine. While its good to get kids vaccinated, and its definitely a bonus in keeping rates down, Dr. Sell said, I still think the real focus should be on those older people, those people who were in the first priority groups. She added: There are still gaps there. There are still people there who need to be vaccinated. Those are the people who are going to get really sick and end up in the hospital. Bill Gates Rubenstein is providing crisis support for Cascade Investment, which manages the fortune of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, and its embattled leader Michael Larson after the New York Times ran a May 26 article about a "culture of fear" that exists at the company. Gates hired Larson 27 years ago to oversee Cascade, and he grew its assets from $10B to $130B over that period. The Times says Larson "engaged in a pattern of workplace misconduct," including judging women on their attractiveness, showing colleagues nude photos of women, making sexually inappropriate remarks and bullying. It reported that Cascade made payments to at least seven people who witnessed or knew about Larson's behavior in exchange for agreeing not to speak about their time at the firm. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is closely tied to Cascade, is a long-time Rubenstein client. "Rubenstein has worked with the firm for years, and we are supporting them on this as well," a spokesperson at the firm told O'Dwyer's. The Times quoted Chris Giglio, head of Rubenstein's crisis group, numerous times in the article. He denied some but not all the instances of Larson's alleged misconduct. "BMGI takes all complaints seriously and seeks to address them effectively to guarantee a safe and a respectful workplace," said Giglio. He was a Kekst CNC partner, HL Strategic Solutions president, Estee Lauder executive VP-global communications and Freud Communications COO prior to joining Rubenstein in December 2020. Larson told the Times, "Calling BMGI a toxic work environment is unfair to the 160 professionals who make up our team and our culture." IT appears the further away some commuters are from Heuston Station in Dublin the cheaper the train fare. For example a flexi ticket from Tullamore station to Heuston station which is a distance of 93km costs 11.69. However, Offaly commuters living in Portarlington pay 13.59 for their flexi ticket to Dublin a distance of 66km. Those travelling by train from Portlaoise station to Heuston a distance of 80km pay 15.79 for their flexi ticket. A flexi ticket from Athlone costs 14.49 a distance of 127km. A spokesperson for Irish Rail said: ''We do have pricing by zone which is governed by distance however, they are also governed by the line they are on i.e. Express, Economy 1 and Economy 2 these lines are denoted by the Level of Service on each.'' Tullamore station to Heuston station = Economy 1 Route Portlaoise station to Heuston = Express Route Portarlington to Heuston = Express Route. Athlone station to Heuston = Economy 1 Route. But this does not explain how an Economy train leaving Tullamore can suddenly become an Express train from Portarlington when there are the same number of stops. For example the 5:44 train from Tullamore to Heuston has its first stop at Portarlington. Once it leaves Portarlington the train stops at Kildare, Newbridge, Sallins and Hazelhatch and finally Dublin Heuston - price 11.69. The people who got onto the train in Portarlington are on the same train and experience the same number of stops whether the train is called Express or Economy. Yet they pay 13.59. It appears that commuters travelling from Portarlington may be paying a premium because they are on the Dublin/Cork line which is the busiest line in the country and is classed as high demand. Meanwhile the Dublin/Galway line is classed as low demand. On the positive side travellers from Clara have the best of both worlds as they can go to Heuston for the same price as people from Tullamore - 11.69. However, it doesn't work the other way round as Clara people can travel to Ceannt Station in Galway also for 11.69 while Tullamore people pay 12.49 for their ticket. THE late Offaly jockey Pat Smullen was honoured over the weekend at the Curragh racecourse when a special room was opened in his honour. Legend Pat Smullen was a Champion Jockey on no fewer than nine occasions and rode almost 2,000 winners worldwide. He was stable jockey to Dermot Weld for 20 years and the Curragh was his second home. Even after all his success at the Curragh as a jockey, it was out of the saddle that he had perhaps his finest day when he was the driving force behind the Pat Smullen Champions Race For Cancer Trials Ireland on Longines Irish Champions Weekend 2019, which raised 2.5 million for Cancer Trials Ireland for their work into pancreatic cancer trials and research. The Pat Smullen Jockeys Room mosaic mural tribute was designed by Pats wife Frances and her artist sister Monika Crowley who worked with Richie Buttle from ProPhoto in Co Wexford to develop the artwork. The mosaic mural is made up of over 400 photos of Pat which were donated from many of Pats friends and colleagues. The unveiling coincides with Pats birthday. There will be a formal opening of the jockeys room when the Curragh welcome back racegoers. Padraig McManus, Chairman of the Curragh Racecourse, said: ''It is very important that there should be a lasting memory of Pat in the Curragh so that we and future generations can be reminded of his wonderful achievements. The Irish Enterprise Awards, run by EU Business News, has named AllPro Recruitment in Tullamore the Best Boutique Recruitment Agency - Midlands in this years awards. AllPro Recruitments founder, David Gleeson said, It is an honour for the AllPro Recruitment team to be recognised for their hard work over the past year. The Irish Enterprise Awards recognise and highlight enterprises that are thriving across the entirety of Ireland. AllPro Recruitment was selected by an assessment panel following in-depth evaluation of AllPros performance, achievements, skill-set and reputation. This is the first year that AllPro Recruitment has been recognised in the Irish Enterprise Awards, coinciding with AllPros fifth year in business. AllPro Recruitment specialise in offering the highest level of service for both temporary and permanent staffing solutions in Construction, Manufacturing, Office Support, Accountancy & Finance, Engineering, Energy and Healthcare across the Midlands region. Its been a very challenging year for the midlands, but we are very proud that we have been able to help businesses and job seekers through this past year. And we are now focusing on further improving our services so we can better support employers and job seekers going forward," says Andrea Scally, Commercial Director of AllPro Recruitment. Speaking about the winners recognised as part of this programme, Awards Coordinator Katherine Benton commented: Congratulations to all the winners of the Irish Enterprise Awards. It is with great pride and joy that we showcase the best of the best from across the entirety of Ireland. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of 2021 ahead. Despite the rain, first responders in New Braunfels and Comal County were kept busy with typical service calls during the Memorial Day holiday Transition Year students in the Sacred Heart School in Tullamore are once again taking to the sewing machines in their return to the international high-end fashion competition, Junk Kouture. As the name suggests, the competition challenges students to envisage a couture fashion piece made from everyday junk. The finished product will then be displayed on a global platform to showcase the talents of young local budding designers and artists. Rubbish in the form of cow tags, old IKEA bags, recycled electrical wire, mop heads, recycled leather handbags as well as butcher twine is twisted, cut, glued, dyed, and sewn in novel yet technical ways to make the modern dresses, headpieces, and shoes. This year, the students entry will be milking it for all its worth as they create an udderly unique take on junk fashion with their cow-themed design. Tag You're It is the name of one of the dresses up for consideration for this years judges. The Tag Youre It team is made up of students Hannah Carey, Tiffany Ravenhill, and Audrey Bennet and although the dress, which is constructed from recycled cow tags, is destined for the stage, there is another reason for its creation. The dress has been inspired by the students collaboration with the Tullamore Lions Clubs Hooves 4 Hospice project which aims to increase awareness and funding for a level three hospice in the midlands. The reason for this, Audrey says, is because, The midland region of counties Laois, Longford, Offaly, and Westmeath, is now the only area in Ireland which does not have a level three regional hospice. She continues, Members of the midlands community who need full time specialised end-of-life care, have no choice but to travel to Dublin, Limerick or Galway which is an additional burden on family members who must travel long distances to visit their loved ones. Art teacher Ms McCormack says, This has been a great achievement for our students. She adds that Learning through a pandemic has been a learning curve for everyone but it is a credit to our students in the way in which they have learned to adapt. The Art department is pleased to see the links students are making in the community as Mr Corley notes, Its great to see how Art is being used to make links in the local area while also raising awareness for a very deserving cause. The Transition Year students at the Sacred Heart Schools students are eager to play their part with The Lions Club, who have undertaken a target of 1 million for their Hooves 4 Hospice fundraising drive. The fundraiser invites farmers to donate an animal to the project. When the animal is sold, the proceeds are lodged to the Hooves 4 Hospice account. To date, Hooves 4 Hospice have 468 animals committed to the project, meaning the fundraiser is halfway to its target. Each donated animal is tagged with a unique Hooves 4 Hospice ear tag, just like the ones used in the Sacred Heart Schools Tag Youre It dress. More information on the Junk Kouture competition and the Hooves 4 Hospice fundraiser can be found on the Sacred Heart Schools social media pages and the Hooves 4 Hospice website. What's Included With a Digital Only subscription, you'll receive unlimited access to our website and e-edition. Our digital products are available 24/7 and are accessible anywhere, anytime. If you have any questions or need further assistance, please call our customer service team at 716-372-3121 or email nfinnerty@oleantimesherald.com. Scenes from the Memorial Day ceremony and parade held in Oneida on May 28, 2021 The Catholic Cemeteries Trust will launch legal action against the NSW government decision to merge the five trusts managing Sydneys cemeteries. The Irish budget carrier, a vocal critic of state bailouts for legacy competitiors, hailed the ruling by judges in Luxembourg. It said aid granted to TAP and KLM only succeded in "rewarding inefficiency." Babbit was one of five people who died after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol on January 6. 'Descendants' stars Dove Cameron, Sofia Carson and more have paid tribute to the late Cameron Boyce on what would have been his 22nd birthday after he passed away in 2019. Mr Putin warmly greeted his Belarusian counterpart and agreed with him the outcry over the plane and arrest of an opposition journalist was an "outburst of emotion". Staunch conservative Friedrich Merz has lost many power struggles within the Christian Democratic Union. Now he's throwing his weight behind struggling chancellor candidate Armin Laschet to get what in return? Authorities are looking into claims a company has been charging the government for hundreds of rapid COVID tests it has not carried out. Widespread free testing for the public is key to Germany's plan for reopening. The new routes follow EU advice against using Belarusian airspace. On Sunday, the Minsk government sparked international outrage by forcing the landing of a Ryanair jet to arrest a dissident journalist. 2008-2021 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. New Zealand Herald 29 May 2021 Japan has extended a coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and other areas for 20 more days, with infections still not slowing as.. The double Olympic champion is banned from competing at her preferred 800-meter distance due to high testosterone levels. Semenya has switched to 5,000 meters but failed to meet the qualifying time at a race in Durban. Namibia has welcomed the gestures as a "first step" but activists have criticised Germany for the lack of direct reparations. Michael Ryan made the assertion after President Joe Biden this week ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the virus first emerged from an animal source or from a laboratory accident. Four people have died in and around Cali as nationwide protests move into a second month. Colombian President Ivan Duque has called upon more than 7,000 personnel to deal with the unrest in the region. Gibraltar Joins Meeting of Overseas Territories Political Council The Political Council of the Leaders of the UK Overseas Territories gathered virtually for a lengthy discussion about matters of common interest. This meeting is normally preparatory to a full engagement with the United Kingdom Government through the Joint Ministerial Council with the Overseas Territories. Gibraltar was represented by the Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia, the Minister for Education and the Environment Professor John Cortes and UK Representative Dominique Searle. A total of twelve territories attended todays meeting, these being Anguilla, Ascension, Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Falkland Islands, Gibraltar, Montserrat, Pictairn, St Helena, Tristan Da Cunha and the Turks and Caicos Islands. There was a detailed discussion on the relationship of the territories with the United Kingdom following the UKs departure from the European Union. This included questions of trade, financial programmes to replace EU funding and the evolving constitutional relationship. Those present were updated on plans for COP26 and on a number of other environmental questions. Part of the meeting was devoted to a discussion of post-COVID recovery and resilience matters. The Deputy Chief Minister Dr Joseph Garcia said: The Government attaches considerable importance to maintaining a close working relationship with the other Overseas Territories as part of the wider British family of nations. This is a part of that formal engagement. There are clearly areas of discussion which are less relevant to Gibraltar because all territories are unique and have their own different interests. However, discussion on COVID, on the effects of the UKs departure from the European Union and on the Environment are common challenges to us all. It is also essential to listen and to learn from the experience of others. Five things you need to know about the coronavirus pandemic this Saturday morning. The US has said it's working with partners in the EU on a list of punitive measures targeting key members of the Belarusian government. The move is a response to the arrest of a dissident journalist on a Ryanair flight. Eurasia Review 24 May 2021 Many countries have stepped up in the global fight against the pandemic, as have institutions such as the World Health.. Pepper's family had given up on finding the 10-year-old German shepherd after she went missing from home in Rankin Inlet, Nunavut. They didn't realize that Pepper was on an epic journey to track them down. Police and protesters clash during anti-government protests, as the country marks a full month of social unrest that has claimed dozens of lives. Colombian President Ivan Duque announced that he was deploying military troops to Cali, which is at the epicentre of the protests. Demonstrations have been held in several European cities against the government in Belarus after a plane carrying a dissident journalist was grounded in the country last weekend. Ontario received permission from Health Canada to extend the expiry of some doses of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine on Saturday, saving thousands of shots from potentially going to waste. President Joe Biden's release of his $6 trillion spending plan late Friday before a holiday weekend ''shows exactly how proud they are of this disaster of a budget,'' Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., told Newsmax Friday. ''This is the latest budget ever in the history of the United... The United States on Friday announced punitive measures against Belarus targeting the regime of strongman President Alexander Lukashenko, who met with Russian leader Vladimir Putin amid a global outcry over the forced diversion of a European plane. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki called for a credible international investigation into the events of May 23, which [] President Joe Biden is proposing a six trillion dollar (4.23 trillion) budget for next year piled high with new safety net programmes for the poor and middle class. HM Customs Seize 2 Consignments of Cannabis Resin A 48-year-old woman was remanded in custody yesterday after she was arrested by HM Customs for possession of cannabis resin related to two separate incidents. The first dates back to the 29th April 2021, when officers of the Controls Section seized two packages containing a combined weight of 3.607kg of the controlled drug. These were being sent by courier to a UK address, under false names. An investigation continued to determine the true identity of the female concerned. Officers of the Investigation Branch then circulated information regarding the true identity of the suspect. On 26th May 2021, Enforcement Officers of the Outfield and Four Corners stations, in collaboration with the Flexible Anti-Smuggling Team and Dog Section, arrested Ella DRAPER, a UK national resident in Spain. Upon searching the vehicle, a further package was detected weighing 1.05kg for which she was further arrested. The case against the defendant has been adjourned until 1st June 2021. The Collector wishes to congratulate officers for the good work and for the joint efforts in apprehending the offender. Outspoken television quit his role on Good Morning Britain after ITV asked him to apologise over his Meghan Markle comments. PA - Press Association STUDIO 29 May 2021 Hundreds of people have gathered in central London to protest against the coronavirus vaccine rollout.Many of the crowd in.. Emma Stone promoted the Friday launch of family-friendly film Cruella launches on Disney+ with a very non-family-friendly bit on Jimmy Kimmel Live!: perfectly reciting Steve Martins fk-filled monologue from the 1987 John Hughes classic, Planes, Trains & Automobiles. However, the argument could be made that since Stone told Jimmy Kimmel she first learned this curse-packed speech when she was eight years old, maybe it counts as kid-friendly? For those of you who dont know the movie by heart, as Stone clearly does, the film follows Martins character, Neal Page, who is trying to get home to Chicago to spend Thanksgiving with his wife (Laila Robins) and kids, when his flight is rerouted to a distant city in Kansas because of a freak snowstorm. He spends the rest of Planes, Trains & Automobiles using planes, trains and automobiles to try and complete his journey, while stuck with fellow traveler Del Griffith (John Candy). The famous fk monologue Stone recites comes at a point in the film when Neal is trying to get a rental car and loses any semblance of the polite man he once was. Kimmel prompts the beginning of the speech by saying the rental-car clerks line, May I help you? You can start by wiping that fking dumbass smile off your lazy fing checks. And then you can give me a fing automobile. A fing Datsun. A fing Toyota. A fing Mustang. A fing Buick. Four fing wheels and a seat. And I really dont care for the way your company left me in the middle of fing nowhere with fing keys to a fing car that isnt fing there. It doesnt end there. Watch Stone perfectly recite Martins fk monologue during her appearance on Kimmels ABC late-night show via the video above. And watch the original scene here. Reuters - Politics 29 May 2021 The Biden administration said on Friday it is drawing up a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian.. Al Jazeera STUDIO 26 May 2021 Colonel Assimi Goita says he acted after president and prime minister failed to consult him about a new government. Eurasia Review 18 May 2021 By Mahima Duggal* A fluid and evolving concept, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has been mired in controversy since.. The NPA's criminal probe into former Eskom boss Matshela Koko and multinational ABB's R2.2 billion Eskom tender has intensified with Mutual Legal Assistance requests filed to Swiss and German prosecutors. CBS 13 Sacramento 01 Jun 2021 California prosecutors said Tuesday that they won't again seek the death penalty against Scott Peterson in the 2002 slaying of his.. CBS 2 New York 28 May 2021 Police have released a new photo of a missing Maine woman who was last seen in Manhattan. Eddyville Man Injured in I-24 Jeep/Semi Crash By West Kentucky Star Staff EDDYVILLE - An Eddyville man was injured in a Wednesday collision on I-24 involving two semi-tractor trailers and an SUV.The Lyon County Sheriff's Department said the crash happened at the interchange of I-24 and US 62. A semi driven by Magnus Nwakuna of Colorado Springs, Colorado, failed to yield to another semi as it left the westbound ramp and the trucks sideswiped each other. The other semi, driven by George Johnson of Madisonville, then struck a Jeep driven by 52-year-old Donnie Lewis of Eddyville.Lewis was taken to Mercy Health Lourdes Hospital. The other drivers were not injured, but all three vehicles reportedly sustained significant damage. NPR 31 May 2021 Republican lawmakers in Texas had to give up on a voting bill after Democrats walked out before a final vote. The bill contained.. AGENCY [mdash]MaryAnn Wanner, 75, of Agency, died at 4:45 a.m. June 9, 2021 at Ridgewood Specialty Care. She was born February 18, 1946 in Lake City, IA to Lubbert and Erma DeVries. She married Martin Joseph Wanner and he preceded her in death on March 18, 2021. MaryAnn had worked as a beaut Jim Volant loves a good parade, especially when its one to honor and/or remember veterans. The former Gladwin County police officer now serving with the Clare County Sheriffs Office said he hasnt counted the years, but knows hes been either marching or driving in veterans parades for a long time. Gladwin Countys Veterans Affairs Direct Ken Roberts said Volant is known for his consistent involvement in the parades and veteran activities. Former Gladwin Police Chief Duane Bean said Volant is a stand-up guy. Hes very committed to his country and community, Bean said. Jim has a heart of gold. The Vietnam Army veteran started the activities when living in Gaylord and continued them after moving to Gladwin. Volant said he wants veterans to know they stand honored and appreciated. It's something Volant too feels now, but didnt always. When returning home from Vietnam, Volant was treated badly, spit on, shouted at and more. He said when taking part in parades and other veteran activities, it somehow eases some of the difficult feelings he has about the unwelcome reception when returning home. When he takes part in the activities, he feels rewarded to have served. Maybe I am welcome home now, said Volant, who served 36 years as a Michigan State Trooper and 10 as a Gladwin police officer. We didnt create the war, he added. Volant was drafted, yet stayed an extra year in the Army focusing on electronics. Volant said he doesnt regret his decision to be in the Army. He was drafted but was going to join anyway after high school. I feel proud to have served, he said. When he drives in the parades, he uses a 1969 Nova decorated in Patriotic symbols. The car is dedicated to his best friend growing up in Lake Orion, Raymond Whelply, who was shot while Volant was serving in Vietnam. In addition, Volant helped establish a pavilion inside of the Gladwin North Park for the American Legion. Since the development in the past two years, membership has doubled. Prior to Christmas, Volant suffered from cancer, directly attributed to agent orange, that he was exposed to in Vietnam. The father of two grown daughters, one who works in a jail and another in a courthouse, is recovering. Volant said veteran organizations are helpful, because like him, when people come back from active duty, they dont often want to talk about what they experienced. But if they do, not a lot of people want to hear it. But often, veterans will talk to each other. A lot of veterans have problems they cant talk about, not a lot of people will listen, he said. Gladwin Mayor Dee Jungman deems Volant a tremendous asset to Gladwin County and to local veterans. He is a great human being, Jungman said. If Volant could change things, he would increase veteran spending and teach students more about veterans, what they went through, and the wars they fought on many levels. A Midland native has returned to the mitten to open up a California inspired womens clothing boutique in the Ashman Street Plaza. Mindy Worsley launched SoCal Threads Boutique online in November 2017. The owner and founder of the women's clothing boutique said shes always dreamed of opening up a physical location to complement her online shop. Now with the help of family and business neighbors, SoCal Threads Boutique will open on Saturday, June 5, at 713 Ashman St., Suite 3 in Midland. Mindys husband, Brian Worsley said the couple moved to California for 16 years, which he attributed to his pursuit of his career dreams. Now Mindy is beginning to fulfil her own. Mindy said her kids helped her name the brand and her extended family in Midland and Sanford areas has helped build the store into her vision. She said her brother put in new flooring, her step-dad helped install the clothing racks and aunt and uncles have come to the shop to help out as well. Brians aunt and uncle own Sanford Hardware in Sanford. He said it was inspiring to watch his family overcome the struggles of the pandemic and the flood. Its great to see that everyone has been supportive of her store and everyone calls to ask what we need (help with), Brian said. That was one of the biggest draws of coming back here, (it) was to help build up the community and to be a part of a community again. Mindy said the store caters to the coming and going nature of trends, while supplying customers with staple items like denim jackets and plain white tees. Michigan has always been my home, even when I was in California, I always had my Michigander shirts, Mindy said. Theres just something about Michigan pride that you dont see in other states. Were SoCal Threads, thats where we started and I love that we can blend that together. Mindy secured a suite in the Ashman Plaza on April 19. Mindy said she visited coffee shops in the area to work on the SoCal Threads online shop, one of them was her now neighbor, Live Oak Coffeehouse. I just want it to be a space where people can come (shop), grab a coffee, listen to music and chat, Mindy said. That kind of mirrors what Live Oak has already created here I want to extend that into the boutique area. The owners of Live Oak Coffeehouse rent out the suite to Mindy. General manager of the Live Oak Coffeehouse Daniel Terhune said the businesses within the building often collaborate to promote midtown. The two brands have already partnered with Botanica Modern Market for a giveaway to social media followers. Our mission is to create a community within the building that people feel welcome to join and be a part of, Terhune said. We want everyone to feel like when they come (in) theyre a part of that community and they feel more connected with the community at large when they leave. Terhune said customers come to the plaza and shop store-to-store like they would at a traditional mall setting, however, he said the small businesses provide a personal hospitality experience. SoCal Threads Boutique will open to the public from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 5. To Floyd Andrick, the prospect of cleaning more than 140 headstones of Civil War veterans at the Midland Municipal Cemetery isn't as daunting as one might expect. If he's tempted to feel overwhelmed, he reminds himself of what those soldiers endured 160 years ago many of them wounded or killed in battle, many of them imprisoned in life-threatening conditions. Andrick's own great-granduncle, Joseph Rowe, is one of those veterans buried at the Midland Cemetery. "I think about what all of them endured. I think about that when I clean their headstones," said Andrick, a lifelong historian, who so far has cleaned 85 of the total of 148 headstones of Civil War veterans at the cemetery after his friend, Justin Frost, had cleaned five others prior to Andrick starting this endeavor. While continuing to do his work at the cemetery on a recent afternoon with Memorial Day approaching, Andrick said he intends to see the job through to the end. "It's just a good feeling," he said. "Everybody should have a headstone to show that they existed." Many of the veterans' headstones have unfortunately become illegible due to decades of not being cleaned and a resulting accumulation of black mold, moss and lichens, explained Andrick, who has been cleaning headstones for many years. But after 15 to 30 minutes of cleaning and scrubbing, each headstone looks remarkably improved, as he demonstrated while cleaning the headstone of William H. Hurd. He cleans with water, followed by an application of "D/2" solution, which continues to clean the headstone for several weeks. "It is amazing to start with a headstone that is black with discoloration and covered in growth, to see a transformation in a matter of minutes to a clean legible headstone," Andrick said. Honoring the legacy of local Civil War veterans Andrick's endeavor started with a project that he and Jake Huss of the Midland County Historical Society launched earlier this spring to mark the 160th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, which began on April 12, 1861. The result was a public tour of Civil War veterans' graves at the Midland Cemetery the weekend of April 17-18. Actors and actresses portrayed seven of the Civil War veterans that are interred there or their family members. Almost 200 people attended a total of 24 tours over the two days, with each tour lasting a little over an hour. Among the actors, Andrick portrayed Rowe, his great-granduncle, while Huss portrayed Rufus Waldron. Waldron was wounded in battle and captured, and took 18 months to recover from his wounds while at Andersonville Prison in Georgia, where 45,000 Union soldiers were imprisoned at one time or another and 13,000 died. Rowe was one of only 400 soldiers to ever escape from Andersonville and did so by hiding in a wagonload of dead prisoners that were being taken outside the prison to be buried. Afterward, he returned to his own Army unit and continued to fight. Rowe eventually settled in Midland, became a blacksmith, married and raised a family. Huss noted that having the resources of the Midland Center for the Arts, both in terms of actors and wardrobe items, was a tremendous help in putting together the tours. "We had a big pool of people to pull from," Huss said. Before the tours, Andrick took time to clean each of the seven designated veterans' headstones. And once the tours were over, he was inspired to continue cleaning the rest of the Civil War veterans' headstones. He figures that all of them will be cleaned within a few weeks. Unfortunately, five of the Civil War veterans buried at the Midland Cemetery do not have a headstone. Andrick credited Midland resident Wilma Diesen, who recently compiled a booklet that shows where every Civil War veteran in Midland is buried. Without her work, he said, he wouldn't have been able to locate the headstones. Tours in Coleman and Edenville coming up in the fall Looking ahead to the fall, Huss and Andrick said they plan to organize Civil War tours in Coleman and Edenville similar to the ones done in Midland in April. The tour in Coleman is scheduled for Sept. 18, and the tour in Edenville for some time in October. Heroes and Hand Raisers is a series created by United Way of Midland County in partnership with Midland Daily News. Each week, snapshots of volunteerism and human generosity via quotes, photos, snippets and stories will shine a spotlight on those who are impacting our community by raising their hand to help meet the needs of their neighbors. This week honors Midland Public Schools, headed by Superintendent Michael Sharrow. Q: In what ways have you and/or your team donated time, talents or resources? A: During the flooding that followed the mid-Michigan dam failures in May 2020, many students and staff rolled up their sleeves, put on their tall boots and were there to assist with cleaning, disinfecting and purging the homes of our neighbors who had been affected by the flood waters. Our school communities also helped by donating food, gift certificates, clothing and other items that were needed. In addition, Midland Public Schools on the night the alarms were ringing and the flood waters were rising, opened the doors of the Midland High School gym as an emergency shelter and welcomed neighbors who had to leave their homes with just a moments' notice. Many of these neighbors were elderly, disabled, medically fragile, frightened and exhausted. It was a night none of us will forget. MPS administrators and staff offered a "safe port in a scary storm" to make sure our neighbors had a comfortable place to lay their heads during an uncertain time in our community with the COVID pandemic around us. The shelter was open for several days until all of the residents had a more permanent place to reside until they could return to their homes. MPS didn't do this alone. The MPS Chartwells Food Service staff stepped up and prepared and served food for shelter residents. EnviroClean, the MPS custodial contractor, came in to clean and disinfect the shelter adhering to COVID protocols. Medical professionals and many other community members came in and volunteered their time in many different ways in the shelter. In addition, donations of food, water, personal care items, pet food, toys and more were received from local individuals and companies, other parts of the state and from around the country. Through this scary time, kindness was alive and well in Midland and most especially in this temporary shelter. Q: What inspired you to step up in this way? A: Midland Public Schools staff and students believe it is important to help however we can. During that time, our staff and students saw many different ways they could help and didn't hesitate to do so. As far as the emergency shelter, we were honored to be able to provide a safe, dry and warm place for community members to rest and take a breath during a scary time. The Midland community has assisted Midland Public Schools is no many, many ways during the years. Assisting with the flood efforts was a way for us to show our love and commitment to this very special community. Q: Why is it important for you and/or your organization to raise your hands in our community? A: Our community is our family, and it is important to us to raise our hands and help where and when it is needed. We have to take care of each other. Q: How have you been impacted by United Way? A: For several years, United Way of Midland County graciously partnered with us in the volunteer program: United for Success. United Way of Midland County has been a wonderful community partner for Midland Public Schools through the years. Q: What is your hope for Midland County? A: That Midland County continues to thrive and grow and be a great place for MPS students to grow their futures. We hope to see the camaraderie and teamwork that was so prevalent during the flooding of 2020 to continue to be part of our community for many years to come. NEW ORLEANS (AP) Although similar meetings have been contentious, online forums about renaming two New Orleans parks didnt draw any opposition, a newspaper reported. The parks are the French Quarter's Washington Artillery Park, which honors a regiment that fought for the Confederacy, and Behrman Park on the citys west bank, named for a segregationist former City Council president. Washington Artillery Park would be renamed for Lt. Gov. Oscar Dunn, who took office in 1868 as the nations first Black elected executive, The Times-Picayune / The New Orleans Advocate reported. Behrman Park would be renamed for Morris F.X. Jeff Sr., who ran what was then known as the Colored Division of the New Orleans Recreation Department. City Councilwoman Kristin Gisleson Palmer, whose district includes both sites, held the forums to get public input separate from the formal City Council naming process. That process started a year ago during protests against police brutality and racism after a police officer murdered George Floyd in Minneapolis. Next month, the City Council will take up new names for four parks and, later, 33 streets that its Street Renaming Commission recommended for changes. The formal process for renaming streets requires reports from planners and hearings before the Planning Commission, but council members can change park names on their own. Washington Artillery Park, a raised square which provides views of Jackson Square on one side and the Mississippi River on the other, is a popular tourist spot. The commission's website about it notes that, after the Civil War, the Washington Artillery Association was renamed the Louisiana Volunteer Field Artillery and helped crush labor strikes throughout the state including precipitating the events that led up to the massacre of some six dozen Louisianans outside Thibodaux in 1887. The commission recommended Dunn, who was born in the French Quarter and was enslaved during his early life, both because of his connection to the area and because of the parks prominence, said Sue Mobley, an adviser to the commission. Someone of Dunns importance occupying a place of gravitas that he deserves was important in selecting this location, she said. Four Arrested in Mayfield Meth Investigation By West Kentucky Star Staff MAYFIELD - Four people were arrested Friday on drug charges in the Mayfield area.The Graves County Sheriff's Department learned that 30-year-old Joshua D. Burd, a man they had encountered in previous drug investigations, might be selling methamphetamine again. They pulled over a pickup truck he was driving Friday afternoon near the I-69 interchange on West Broadway. A passenger in the truck, 35-year-old Brandon Burd, was arrested on a warrant for flagrant non-support.A search of the pickup uncovered a large amount of meth, valued at about $7,000, so Joshua Burd was arrested. Officers then executed a search warrant at a home on Melody Lane. When deputies arrived, Joshua's father, 48-year-old Stephen C. Moore, reportedly tried to deny access to the home, but was arrested after a scuffle. Deputies received only minor injuries.Three children and two other adults were in the home, including a woman who said Moore had just assaulted her. Officers seized methamphetamine, digital scales, meth smoking pipes, marijuana and other drug evidence from the home, and 68-year-old Gary S. Hobbs was arrested on possession charges.The three children in the home were taken to another location by relatives.Joshua Burd of Louisville faces charges of trafficking methamphetamine 2nd or subsequent offense and possession of drug paraphernalia 2nd or subsequent offense. He has served two prison sentences for prior offenses, and is currently under supervision by the Kentucky Department of Corrections in Louisville.Brandon Burd of Hickory was arrested on the felony warrant for flagrant non-support and on charges of trafficking methamphetamine and possession of drug paraphernalia.Stephen Moore of Mayfield was charged with obstructing governmental operations, assault 4th degree, strangulation 1st degree and possession of meth 2nd offense.Gary Hobbs of Mayfield faces charges of possession of meth 2nd offense and possession of drug paraphernalia 2nd or subsequent offense. AUSTIN, Texas (AP) Texas Republicans dug in Saturday for a final weekend vote on some of the most restrictive new voting laws in the U.S., putting the last touches on a sweeping bill that would eliminate drive-thru voting, empower partisan poll watchers and limit voting on Sundays, when many Black churchgoers head to the polls. The changes would need to be approved before midnight on Sunday, when the GOP-controlled Legislature wraps up a session dominated by Republicans muscling through staunchly conservative measures pertaining to guns, abortion and how race can be taught in public schools. But none have drawn backlash like Senate Bill 7, which Republicans packed with a raft of new voting restrictions that would alter how the country's biggest red state conducts elections. Democrats have virtually no path to stop it from passing, thereby putting Republicans on the brink of a major victory in their nationwide campaign to impose new voting restrictions driven by former President Donald Trumps false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has said he will sign the measure, which Democrats have said they would challenge in court. President Joe Biden released a statement calling the Texas bill's final form "wrong and un-American. Today, Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote. Its part of an assault on democracy that weve seen far too often this year and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans, Biden said. The final version of the bill was hashed out behind closed doors by negotiators from the state House and Senate, nearly all of whom were Republicans. They preserved the elimination of 24-hour polling stations and drive-thru voting centers, both of which Harris County, the state's largest Democratic stronghold, introduced last year in an election that saw record turnout. GOP legislators are also moving to prohibit Sunday voting before 1 p.m., which critics called an attack on what is commonly known as souls to the polls" a get-out-the vote campaign used by Black church congregations nationwide. The idea traces back to the civil rights movement. Democratic state Rep. Nicole Collier, chairwoman of the Texas Legislative Black Caucus, said the change is going to disengage, disenfranchise those who use the souls to the polls opportunity." Collier was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final version, none of whom signed their name to it. She said she saw a draft of the bill around 11 p.m. Friday which was different than one she had received earlier that day and was asked for her signature the next morning. Texas is also set to newly empower partisan poll watchers, allowing them more access inside polling places and threatening criminal penalties against elections officials who restrict their movement. Republicans originally proposed giving poll watchers the right to take photos, but that language was removed from the final bill that lawmakers were set to vote on this weekend. Another new provision could also make it easier to overturn an election in Texas, allowing for a judge to void an outcome if the number of fraudulent votes cast could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome. Major corporations, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell, have warned that the measures could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections, and in some cases, ripped business leaders for speaking out. The top Republican negotiators, state Sen. Bryan Hughes and state Rep. Briscoe Cain, called the bill one of the most comprehensive and sensible election reform bills in Texas' history. Even as the national media minimizes the importance of election integrity, the Texas Legislature has not bent to headlines or corporate virtue signaling, they said in a joint statement. Texas already has some of the country's tightest voting restrictions and is regularly cited by nonpartisan groups as a state where it is especially hard to vote. It was one of the few states that did not make it easier to vote by mail during the pandemic. It is also the last big battleground in Republicans' efforts to tighten voting laws around the country. Florida, Georgia, and Arizona have also approved new voting restrictions in recent months. Since Trump's defeat, at least 14 states have enacted more restrictive voting laws, according to the New York-based Brennan Center for Justice. It has also counted nearly 400 bills filed this year nationwide that would restrict voting. Republican lawmakers in Texas have insisted that the changes are not a response to Trumps false claims of widespread fraud but are needed to restore confidence in the voting process. But doubts about the elections outcome have been fanned by some of the state's top GOP leaders, including Attorney General Ken Paxton, who led a failed lawsuit at the U.S. Supreme Court to try to overturn the election. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who chaired Trumps presidential campaign in Texas, offered a $1 million reward to anyone who could produce evidence of voter fraud. Nonpartisan investigations of previous elections have found that voter fraud is exceedingly rare. State officials from both parties, including in Texas, as well as international observers have also said the 2020 election went well. ___ Associated Press writer Nicholas Riccardi in Denver contributed to this report. LAS VEGAS (AP) A federal appeals court said Friday the nations largest private prison corporation can be held liable for negligence by a man who spent almost a year in solitary confinement at a southern Nevada facility without ever seeing a judge on marijuana-related charges. The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a jury can hear Rudy Riveras lawsuit claiming that CoreCivic Inc. employees failed to tell the U.S. Marshals Service while Rivera languished in custody from November 2015 to October 2016 at the Nevada Southern Detention Center outside Las Vegas. A reasonable jury could find that CoreCivic caused plaintiffs prolonged detention by failing to notify the Marshals of his continued detention without a hearing and by discouraging and preventing him from seeking outside help, a panel of three judges said. A CoreCivic official said the company is confident a jury will find CoreCivic wasn't responsible for Rivera's prolonged detention without a court appearance. CoreCivic does not have legal custody of detainees and is not responsible for the arraignment or tracking the arraignment of detainees, Ryan Gustin, company public affairs manager, said in a statement. Rivera had numerous resources at his disposal to challenge his legal custody, the statement said, including telephones that he used to call family members, mail, attorney visits and legal reference materials. Rivera also "never submitted any verbal or written grievance about this issue, Gustin said. The resurrected case now returns to U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, where a judge in 2017 dismissed it saying that because Rivera was in U.S. Marshals Service custody, the company wasn't responsible for Riveras 355-day detention. They were basically taking the position that, Eh, what were we supposed to do? Not our fault, said Riveras attorney, Mitchell Bisson. He said damages for negligence, intentional infliction emotional distress and civil and constitutional rights violations could amount to much more than $1 million. Rivera, 42, lives in Stockton, California. He said the ruling gave him reason to hope the broken system we are in now will be torn down and that no one else will have to go through what I did. The year I spent in there trying to plead my way out was the hardest time of my life, and Im still struggling with the effects it had on me and my family, he said in an email through his attorney. I hope CoreCivic now realizes that they cant just point their finger in the other direction and avoid the consequences of their actions and inactions. Rivera was arrested in California in October 2015 and appeared before a federal judge there before he was transferred in custody to Nevada on an indictment charging him with marijuana-related offenses. The charges were eventually dropped, after a deputy federal public defender, reached by letter, informed a judge who ordered Rivera brought to court the next business day. The judge declared Rivera's prolonged detention extreme and egregious and ordered his immediate release, the appeals court order noted. Rivera had been separated from other detainees and inmates at the 1,000-bed prison due to a previous gang affiliation, according to court documents. Jailers were nearly the only people he encountered. During his detention, Rivera repeatedly told CoreCivic employees ... that he had not been to court and did not have (a lawyer), the judges said in Fridays ruling. But CoreCivic employees neither informed the Marshals of Riveras plight nor took any other steps to remedy the situation. Rivera testified he was told to just sit there and wait. The court noted the Marshals Service contracts with state, local and private facilities to house about 85% of the 160,000 people in federal custody nationwide, and is the primary customer at eight of CoreCivics 47 facilities around the country. CoreCivic, which is publicly traded and was formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, secured its first federal contract in 1983. Nearly $400 million worth of U.S. Marshals Service business accounted for 21% of company revenues in 2020, according to the companys annual Securities and Exchange Commission report. The appellate judges said the Marshals Service is the primary customer at the 1,000-bed prison. The medium-security facility opened in 2010, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) west of Las Vegas. The Rocky Mountains boast plenty of plunging waters as the snow melts in Colorado each year. Whitewater rafting can be the ultimate mountain experience for either families looking for a casual float or for experienced rafters looking for their next big thrill. Here are 10 places to whitewater raft in Colorado: Arkansas River, Echo Canyon River Expeditions (Photo) Courtesy of Echo Canyon River Expeditions Buena Vista riverwalk (Photo) Credit SWKrullImaging (iStock) Arkansas River, Salida (Photo) Credit Jacob Boomsma (iStock) Arkansas River, Royal Gorge (Photo) Credit Ty Wilson Bucket List 2021 Tiger Wall Yampa River (Photo) Credit National Parks Service Cache La Poudre River, Fort Collins (Photo) Credit Richard Haro Animas River (Photo) Credit Different_Brian (iStock) South Platte River, Deckers (Photo) Credit Nathan Van Dyne Eagle River, Vail (Photo) Credit Edsel L (Flickr) San Miguel River, Telluride (Photo) Credit Walter Siegmund (Creative Commons) Piedra River (Photo) Credit RobertWaltman (iStock) River Tubing (Photo) Credit BluIz60 (iStock) Summer is the perfect time to take a scenic float in Colorado. Here are 8 of the best lazy rivers for tubing in Colorado this summer. Grab your tube, throw on some shades, and get ready to relax as you float down the river! River Tubing (Photo) Credit BluIz60 (iStock) Clear Creek, Golden (Photo) Credit foto_graffiti (Flickr) Yampa River, Steamboat Springs (Photo) Credit Wild Frog Photography (Flickr) San Juan River, Pagosa Springs (Photo) Credit Pagosa Outside Poudre River, Fort Collins (Photo) Credit Joe Flood (Flickr) South Platte River, Denver (Photo) Credit Kent Kanouse (Flickr) North Star Nature Preserve, Aspen (Photo) Credit Thaddeus Roan Animas River, Durango (Photo) Credit amygdala_imagery (iStock) Arkansas River, Salida (Photo) Credit Jacob Boomsma (iStock) Medano Creek (Photo) Credit Spencer McKee (copy) Leslie James Leslie James is all about Colorado when it comes to writing features, sharing adventures, and creating colorful galleries. She loves camping, hiking, mountain biking and snowboarding. Leslie joined OutThere Colorado in November 2020. Follow Leslie James Close Get email notifications on {{subject}} daily! Your notification has been saved. There was a problem saving your notification. {{description}} Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items. Save Manage followed notifications Close Followed notifications Please log in to use this feature Log In Don't have an account? Sign Up Today No one needs to sell Rob Woodrow on the value of "cover crops" in farming. Woodrow, a professional farm manager for landowners throughout Illinois, said planting non-cash crops such as rye and clover in the fall after harvest helps soil retain moisture and nutrients, controls weeds and reduces erosion for the next growing season. The benefit of cover crops during the following spring and summer may be seen through less herbicide that needs to be applied on the same fields, and an increase in per-acre yields for corn and soybeans, according to Woodrow, who is based at Farmland Solutions in Sherman. "Cover crops aren't a cost," he said. "They are a benefit." An effort is underway in the Capitol to expand funding for a state program that gives farmers financial incentives to plant cover crops. With state budget negotiations raging as the General Assembly races toward the end of its regular spring session Monday, soil-conservation advocates said the initiative is important, and not just for farmers, but for everyday consumers and taxpayers, as well. Cover crops help preserve Illinois' fertile soil, and the organic matter essential to the quality of the soil has been reduced by half over the past 180 years because of erosion, advocates said. "That's a huge loss in terms of an agricultural resource that has been able to provide for a healthy and vibrant agricultural economy in the state for generations," said Maxwell Webster, Midwest policy manager of the American Farmland Trust, an agricultural conservation organization. In a state where agriculture is the No. 1 business and contributes more than $8.8 billion to the state's economy annually, cover crops are planted on only 5% of the state's 24 million acres of cropland. The state's 2-year-old Fall Covers for Spring Savings program can inspire farmers to adopt the practice throughout the state and reduce the runoff of soil and farm-related chemicals into lakes, streams and rivers, Webster said. Reduced runoff saves money on water treatment and reduces the need for increases in local water rates, he said. Fewer nutrients released from farm fields into water supplies also lead to better conditions for fish and promote the fishing-related economy in the Midwest and in the Gulf of Mexico because fewer chemicals make their way south in the Mississippi River, Webster said. Also in need of preservation and expansion is Illinois' $14 million-a-year series of land-conservation initiatives known as the Partners For Conservation Program, he said. Those programs, including grants that support soil and water conservation districts throughout the state, are scheduled to expire July 1, Webster said. "We need to make sure these kinds of programs are there and are dependable year after year," he said. The Partners for Conservation Program passed the legislature in 1996 without a dissenting vote and was intended to provide $100 million for conservation efforts over the next six years, but the funding expansion didn't happen, Webster said. He said Illinois' chronic budget problems have hindered the state's plan, adopted in 2015, to reduce the loss of nutrients applied to the soil to grow cash crops but lost through erosion. The Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy set goals to reduce total phosphorus and nitrogen losses to Illinois waterways by 45%. The interim goal was reducing nitrate and nitrogen losses by 15% and total phosphorus by 25% by 2025. "We're way off pace with the directions that those initial programs established in terms of supporting stewardship practice across the state and protecting clean water and healthy soils," Webster said. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Identical bills in the House and Senate to establish the Illinois Partners for Nutrient Loss Reduction Act would renew the Partners for Conservation Program for five years, incorporate the cover-crops program, and focus state efforts on reducing the soil nutrient loss. Annual funding for the program would increase from $14 million to $27 million in five years and attract millions more in federal land conservation dollars and other philanthropic and corporate support, Webster said. However, those bills haven't progressed in the legislature. At this point, advocates hope to at least preserve, and potentially expand, the Partners for Conservation Program and the cover-crop program for the next fiscal year by inserting lines in the state budget for fiscal 2022. Webster said the cover-crops program, funded with $300,000 in general revenue fund money in the current and previous fiscal year, was "wildly popular." The program offered farmers who planted cover crops the opportunity to have their federal crop insurance reduced by $5 per acre for the next cash-crop planting season. That discount, while not covering all the costs for cover crops, may cover half to all of the cost of crop insurance, Webster said. But the $300,000 in state funding allowed crop-insurance subsidies for only 50,000 acres each year. In 2020 and 2021, the total acreages requested by farmers for the program was more than double the acres allowed. There was an unmet demand of more than 135,000 acres in 2021, according to American Farmland Trust. Advocates want to see funding for the cover-crops program increase to $1 million annually for and subsidize crop insurance for 200,000 acres. "It's a drop in the bucket for the state budget," said Kris Reynolds, a Montgomery County farmer who is Midwest regional director for American Farmland Trust. "It's one of the best investments we can make." Grant Hammer, executive director of the Association of Illinois Soil and Water Conservation Districts, said, "Cover crops help hold soil in place, and that soil that's held in place obviously stays out of the interconnected ditches and streams that form what are called watersheds. So it helps with things like flooding and keeps contaminants out of waterways." The financial benefits from cover crops sometimes can't be seen immediately, but research supports the long-term benefit, Webster said. Incentives are needed to help justify the additional time and up-front costs farmers must make and convince the broader population of farmers that cover crops are worth it, he said. Any challenge is that 60% of Illinois farmland is rented. Renters sometimes are less focused than land owners on the long term, Reynolds said. Many Midwestern states are trying to expand the use of cover crops. Illinois' program is modeled after a program in Iowa, Webster said. A pilot program is being developed in Indiana, and there are efforts to develop a similar program in Wisconsin, he said. In addition to improving water quality, cover crops help make agricultural land "more resilient to changing climate" such as more frequent droughts and flooding, Hammer said. Average citizens may be skeptical about the need to expand the use of cover crops when Illinois' corn and soybean yields frequently set records, Webster said. But technological advances in seeds and fertilizer eventually may be offset, he said. "We're having good things happen," he said, "but as soil losses increase over time, we're afraid that those will then act negatively against those record yields and other things we're seeing to have a detrimental impact. Hammer added: "Farmers want to be good stewards, and they've had a vested interest in maintaining their land. ... There's widespread support for cover crops as a multifaceted solution for climate issues and water-quality issues throughout the state." Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 UTICA With more than 13 miles of trails, towering sandstone bluffs and 18 canyons, colorful spring flowers, brilliant fall colors and a concentration of bald eagles each winter, Starved Rock State Park has much to offer visitors. There also is fishing and boating in the Illinois River, which serves as the northern boundary of the park. People have been coming to Starved Rock, since long before it became a state park in 1911. Trains and a ferry used to bring people from Chicago for music and dancing. And before that it was a gathering place for Native Americans as well as trappers and traders. Among the most visited state parks in Illinois, it attracted an estimated 2.1 million visitors between July 1, 2019 and June 30, 2020. It is located near the community of Utica at the intersection of Illinois 178 and Illinois 71. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated interest in the outdoors, Starved Rock was seeing a surge in visitors. The park can get crowded, especially on weekends. It is best to arrive early. Lisa Sons, the parks natural resources coordinator, said, All who visit Starved Rock will take away memories, whether those memories captured are from a family picnic along the shorelines of the Illinois River, getting that tug on the fishing line along the sea wall, seeing a canyon and waterfall for the first time, hiking in the great outdoors with a group of friends or a naturalist appreciating the simple beauty of nature at work. Kathy Casstevens, marketing director for Starved Rock Lodge and Conference Center, said, its the unexpected that makes Starved Rock State Park special. Youre driving along flatlands and cornfields, then you find these glacier-carved canyons, said Casstevens. I think its the surprise that makes it the most exciting. Much of the canyon-carving goes back to a catastrophic flood about 16,000 years ago. Known as the Kankakee Torrent, water from melting glaciers rushed through the area, forging the unique landscape in an otherwise flat part of Illinois. Be prepared to climb and descend scores of stairs if you hike at Starved Rock. Leave the stroller in the car, other than along the sea wall lining the river or in the upper area by the lodge, where you can find interesting sculptures carved from trees. The stairs, boardwalks and observation platforms were built to protect the fragile and highly erodible soil and sandstone and protect visitors. Hiking off designated trails is strictly prohibited and can result in a fine. Sons said, Asking a ranger what their favorite trail is, is like asking a mom to choose her favorite child. However, she said, When I go out on my own to bird watch or just enjoy the day, I always seem to find myself on the east end at Ottawa and Kaskaskia (canyons) or between Owl Canyon out to Hennepin and Route 71." Like Sons, Casstevens couldnt be limited to one favorite. If youve never been here before, I tell people to start at the arrow on the east end of the veranda (at the lodge). It points at Starved Rock. You get your bearings, and you understand that you are on top of a bluff. And Starved Rock is another bluff, and Eagle Cliff is another bluff, she explained. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} From the lodge, she recommends hiking to St. Louis Canyon, which also takes a hiker past Aurora, Sac and Kickapoo canyons. This hike has fewer stairs to negotiate than others. Her other favorite hike is in the eastern portion of the park. Drive east on Illinois 71 from Illinois 178 to the Parkmans Plain parking lot, which has portable restrooms except in late fall through early spring. From the parking lot, follow the trail through the woods and down about 150 steps and follow the signs to LaSalle Canyon. St. Louis is beautiful because it has a vertical waterfall and a wonderful walk through the canyon, said Casstevens. LaSalle Canyon has a curtain waterfall thats very horizontal, and you can walk behind it. The trail to it lets you walk along the Illinois River. The waterfalls are mostly fed by runoff and tiny streams. During dry periods, they may be just a trickle or non-existent. On the other hand, if there has been too much rain, some canyons may become inaccessible because of flooding. Of course, a first visit to Starved Rock State Park would not be complete without a trip to the top of the bluff from which it got its name, Starved Rock, just over a quarter-mile from the visitors center. The top of Starved Rock gives you a commanding view of the Illinois River, 125 feet below; the lock and dam run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and islands in the river. Those islands are popular with birds, particularly bald eagles in winter. The top of the rock was once the site of Fort St. Louis, built by the French in 1682. The fort was later abandoned but used by traders and trappers until a fire around 1720. From its summit, you can see the area across the river where a Native American village was located. According to legend, Chief Pontiac of the Ottawa was murdered in the 1760s by members of the Peoria tribe, which had a village along the Illinois River, and allies of Chief Pontiac traveled there to avenge his death. Tribe members fled across the river, taking refuge on the high ground of the bluff, but they were surrounded. Those who did not die in the fighting eventually starved to death, according to the legend, passed down through oral history, with some variations, said Sons. According to the stories, as many as 2,000 people died, but Sons notes, Archaeologists, both in the 30s, 40s into the 1980s did extensive excavations and research They could not find any conclusive evidence to support that scale of a starvation on top of the rock. About 60 to 90 minutes from the Chicago area, Starved Rock State Park is a suitable day-trip destination, but if you want to extend your stay, there are several choices. The state park has a campground with 129 Class-A Premium sites, and there are private campgrounds in the area. Starved Rock Lodge, run by a concessionaire, has both hotel-type accommodations and cabins. Privately run Grand Bear Resort at Starved Rock, an indoor waterpark and hotel, is located across from the park on Illinois 178. The original portion of the Starved Rock Lodge and the cabins date back to the 1930s and the Civilian Conservation Corps. The CCCs also did trail work. Bikes are prohibited on the trails at Starved Rock. However, the Illinois and Michigan Canal Trail, which is open to bicycles, can be accessed in Utica, and Matthiessen State Park has designated multi-use trails where mountain bikes are allowed. Kayak rentals are available at Kayak Starved Rock, located by the Lone Point on the east end of the park. River cruises are available through the lodge, June to October, ranging from a one-hour ride to tours that combine a hike or lunch. The boat is wheelchair accessible. There are picnic areas and shelters on the river level on the west end of the park and at Lone Point on the east. Numerous dining options are available from the Back Door Lounge and dining room at the Starved Rock Lodge to restaurants in Utica. Contact Lenore Sobota at (309) 820-3240. Follow her on Twitter: @Pg_Sobota Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. BLOOMINGTON Community leaders this week praised new legislation expediting reviews of hate crimes in response to an escalation of violence toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders amid the coronavirus pandemic. It definitely is a good start, I think," said Li Zeng, Illinois State University associate professor and president of AsiaConnect ISU. "We feel excited and happy for the signing of the act, but at the same time realizing we have a lot to do. President Joe Biden signed the bill into law last week after it passed the House 364-62. The Senate approved the bill in April in a 94-1 vote. The bill expands the U.S. Justice Department, allowing the attorney general to appoint an official who will expedite the review of any reports of hate crimes made to law enforcement. Federal grants will be available to state and local agencies to assist in implementing new guidance for hate crime investigation, reporting, identification and training. Of the reports, the two largest categories were verbal harassment, 65.2%, and shunning/avoidance, 18.1%. The third-largest reported category was physical assault, 12.6%. Stop AAPI Hate was founded by the Asian Pacific Planning and Policy Council (A3PCON), Chinese for Affirmative Action, and the Asian American Studies Department of San Francisco State University. It is in response to growing concerns of xenophobia and violence toward Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. Zeng and Mayuko Nakamura, a member of AsiaConnect, which seeks to promote various cultures within Asia and provide support to the community, said anti-Asian rhetoric existed long before the pandemic brought the issue to the forefront. In response to a rise in violence against Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, AsiaConnect formed an Anti-Racism working group, which has sought to educate the broader community about anti-Asian hate. Nakamura serves as chair of the working group. In March, the group held a webinar to educate people about the deep history behind anti-Asian rhetoric, as far back as the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Around 200 people tuned in to the virtual meeting, which was held in the days following the mass killings at three Atlanta-area spas in which eight people were killed, the majority of whom were of women of Asian descent, the Associated Press reported. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Robert Aaron Long, 21, who is white, was arrested and charged with the killing. "This problem has been in America for a long time, its just invisible, its just not being spoken about," said Zeng. "The pandemic made people realize that we cannot be silent anymore, and we have to speak up and we have to address this problem. Though supportive of the recent bill, Nakamura said she would like to see a more expanded classification for hate crimes. She said the current classification depends on the motivations of the person committing the crime, but she said perpetrators might not always explicitly state their motivations. Beyond the bill, Nakamura and Zeng highlighted the need for continued grassroots efforts to bring attention to the violence the Asian community is facing. "Sometimes issues related to the Asian community, people don't talk about it," said Nakamura. "Sometimes it's like it's forgotten, or it doesn't come to people's awareness that the Asian community is suffering from this kind of thing." The reason, they said, could stem from microaggressions and the "model minority" stereotype that furthers the rhetoric that Asian Americans are perceived as achieving high socioeconomic success due to being law abiding, respectful citizens who are hardworking, and who achieve success through being hardworking, said Zeng. "On one hand it creates a kind of distance between Asian communities and other communities like Black communities, Latino, Latina communities," said Zeng. "Another thing is, I think Asians and Asian Americans also take in that rhetoric and try to sometimes unconsciously or consciously act and behave in following that model." That's where education can play a role, they said. AsiaConnect and Not in Our Town Bloomington-Normal, a grassroots anti-discrimination movement, are planning events for members of the Asian community to share their experiences, as well as educational opportunities. The next step is having dialogues, having conversations to bring people together and listening," said Archana Shekara, associate professor at ISU and steering member of NIOT. "Instead of being the reactionary model, I think we need to have a model where we listen. If we can listen to people who have different experiences we can build empathy. "Its healthy for our community to build this empathy and bring people together. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Contact Sierra Henry at 309-820-3234. Follow her on Twitter: @pg_sierrahenry. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. NORMAL Susan Jones father, Robert Bruce, died of COVID-19 on Dec. 22, almost 76 years to the day that he shipped out as an 18-year-old sailor during World War II. We havent even buried his ashes yet, said Jones, who lives in Normal. But she and her sister, Sara Downs of Bloomington, have a keepsake to honor their father and his service: a U.S. flag flown over the Illinois Capitol. The flag was presented to them earlier this month by state Rep. Dan Brady, R-Bloomington. Its something he has been doing for about five years at his own expense. I was just looking for a way we could honor veterans and their families, Brady explained. He and his staff check obituaries of veterans to see if they are from his district. If so, a letter is sent to the family advising them of the opportunity to have a flag flown over the Capitol in honor of the deceased veteran. He includes a laminated copy of the obituary. Families also may come to his office at 104 W. North St. in uptown Normal or call 309-662-1100 to obtain the necessary form. We partner with the secretary of state on this, said Brady. Brady provides the flag, and staff from the secretary of states office fly the flag over the Capitol. Then they lower it and bring it to Bradys office in Springfield. Brady then puts the flag in a special box along with a certificate of authenticity verifying that it was flown over the Capitol. Allison Henrichsmeyer of Bloomington, a senior at Normal Community High School who is working as an intern for Brady this semester, has been overseeing the logistics and created a more efficient system for tracking the process, said Brady. Henrichsmeyer said she is proud to be working on the project. I have many family members who are veterans, she said. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Brady said the service is provided to about 80 families a year and Were on track to do that this year. But it seems like its a little busier this year. Families used to be able to request a specific day for the flag to be flown, but with the pandemic causing the Capitol to close from time to time, that hasnt been possible. Brady hopes to return to having requested dates available. I try to deliver as many of them (the flags) in person as possible, said Brady. The Pantagraph accompanied him as he delivered two of the flags and took time to visit with the families. Thank you for your dads service to our country. People still remember and care, Brady said before giving the flag to Jones and Downs. Another sister and a brother live out of town. Jones said it is an honor to receive a flag flown over the state Capitol. Before moving to Bloomington, her father had been active in the Kenney Hallsville American Legion Post 1133, where he served on in their honor guard. My dad lived by the Golden Rule. I dont think he ever said a bad word about anybody, she said. Brady also delivered a flag that day to Sharon Daniels of Normal, whose husband, Tony, was a Vietnam veteran who served in the Marines from 1960 to 1970. He joined the Normal Police Department in 1977, serving for 20 years and retiring as a lieutenant. Sharon and Tony Daniels were married for 31 years. He loved his country, she said. This is sure an honor for Tony. Brady sees the gesture as an additional remembrance and a way to honor the veterans and their families. Its a keepsake for the family and a reminder to them that we appreciate the service that their family member gave to the country, he said. Contact Lenore Sobota at (309) 820-3240. Follow her on Twitter: @Pg_Sobota Love 4 Funny 0 Wow 1 Sad 0 Angry 0 Get Government & Politics updates in your inbox! Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. BAGDAD, Ariz. (AP) A day after frantically fleeing a remote Arizona mining town where a wildfire destroyed at least a dozen homes, hundreds of residents were allowed to return Friday. Evacuation orders for the community of Bagdad were lifted as the blaze was now 50% contained, the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management said. Crews will monitor the fire perimeter into the night. Authorities said firefighters managed to halt the blaze's advance with assistance from aircraft dropping water and fire retardant. The fire started Thursday afternoon in the community in desert hill country about 100 miles (160 kilometers) west of Phoenix. It grew to 150 acres (61 hectares), prompting officials to issue 570 evacuation notices to residents. There have been no reports of injuries in the town of about 2,000 and there were conflicting reports about how many homes burned. The Yavapai County Sheriffs Office estimated in a statement that 25 to 30 homes were lost while the Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management said 13 homes plus at least 10 other buildings had been destroyed. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. An initial investigation indicated that road work may have started the fire but the investigation was ongoing, the sheriff's office said in a statement Thursday night. State forestry officials have not commented on the cause. Air tankers and helicopters dropped fire retardant and water on homes, brush and dry grass and a shelter was set up at an elementary school in the town of Wickenburg, about an hour's drive from Bagdad. Bagdad resident Jerry Hoddy, whose duplex was engulfed by the fire, told azfamily.com that he learned of the blaze thanks to a neighbor who banged on his door while he was napping. Hoddy said he grabbed his phone, a briefcase with important documents and three fishing poles. Despite the loss of his home, Hoddy was thankful he and others escaped without injury. My involvement with sports all through high school and college has prepared me mentally for most disasters that life can throw at you. Well all get through this as a community, Hoddy said. Aerial video streamed Friday by azfamily.com showed multiple gutted or flattened homes, some with charred vehicles parked on driveways, amid apparently undamaged homes. At one home, a motorboat in the backyard was the only large object that appeared to survive the fire. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Biden unveiled a $6 trillion budget for next year that's piled high with new safety net programs for the poor and middle class, but his generosity depends on taxing corporations and the wealthy to keep the nation's spiking debt from spiraling totally out of control. Biden is spending the Memorial Day weekend in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden started the Memorial Day weekend by visiting a rock climbing gym in northern Virginia as the state lifted all COVID-19 distancing and capacity restrictions at private businesses and much of the nation pushes toward a greater sense of normalcy. The president later paid tribute to the armed forces with an address at a Virginia Air Force base. Senate Republicans this week blocked creation of a bipartisan panel to study the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol in a show of party loyalty to former President Donald Trump, aiming to shift the political focus away from the violent insurrection by his GOP supporters. Minority Republicans used a filibuster, for the first time under Biden, to derail the bill. Below, the AP takes a closer look at the time-honored tactic. Also this past week: --A sweeping Senate bill aimed at making the United States more competitive with China and shoring up domestic computer chip manufacturing with $50 billion in emergency funds was abruptly shelved Friday after a handful of Republican senators orchestrated a last-minute attempt to halt it. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. --The U.S. government blocked imports of seafood from the fleet of a Chinese company that authorities say forced crew members to work in slave-like conditions that led to the deaths of at least three Indonesian fishermen last year. --Lawyers say lawsuits filed by protesters who were forcefully removed from a park near the White House before a photo op by Trump should be dismissed because the new administration is not likely to repeat the events of last June. The discovery of a fresh cyberespionage campaign targeting U.S. and foreign government agencies and linked to the same Russian hackers blamed for the SolarWinds intrusion adds a new point of tension to the upcoming summit between Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. --Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer is talking with the head of the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia and taking questions from students. His public comments are being parsed as some liberals encourage the 82-year-old justice to retire while Democrats retain narrow control of the Senate. --Republicans across the country are passing legislation to limit how issues of race are taught in public schools, prompting concerns from teachers and racial justice advocates that the government will try to censor critical lessons about slavery and race relations. --As he heads into his 2022 reelection campaign, Floridas Ron DeSantis has emerged from the political uncertainty of the pandemic as arguably the countrys most prominent Republican governor and is seen as an early White House front-runner in 2024, if the former president doesnt run again. --The drama surrounding a retirement in the position that oversees elections in one of Iowas most populous counties has voting experts concerned about what it could signal about the future. Is the dust-up a short-lived local spat or an early warning that these quiet but critical local roles across the country will turn as partisan as any race for governor or Congress? --Black women are stepping up as statewide candidates for the Senate and governor as Democrats look to expand their top-tier ranks across the South. --Emerging from two years of relative silence, former House Speaker Paul Ryan joined the fight against Donald Trump on Thursday, urging fellow conservatives to reject the former president's divisive politics and those Republican leaders who emulate him. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Sharp to Challenge Comer in 2022 Primary By West Kentucky Star Staff MADISONVILLE - The former Chairman of the Republican Party in Hopkins County is running for Congress in 2022.David Sharp recently announced his candidacy in Madisonville, where he also signed a term limit pledge, saying he will support and co-sponsor any bill that would establish term limits, if elected. He also questioned incumbent James Comer's acceptance of money from political action committees and special interest groups. Sharp said 96 percent of Comer's campaign money in the last election was from special interest or large money donors.Sharp's Facebook page expresses his opposition to the agenda of "the squad," a progressive left-wing group of Democrats in Congress. He also says he is pro-life and would sponsor a House bill to defund Planned Parenthood within his first 90 days in office.Sharp promises that his campaign message will focus on restoring individual freedoms to Kentuckians and keeping government accountable and limited.He is a military veteran and lifelong Republican who was party chair for Hopkins County and is currently employed as a finance director for a business.Comer's spokesman Matt Smith told WEHT that Comer welcomes competition and is seeking re-election in 2022.On the Net: Just shy of two months after the controversial fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a police officer in a Little Village alley, the Chicago Police Department last week unveiled a new foot pursuit policy intended to provide alternatives to chases and regulate the ones that do occur. Chicago police Superintendent David Brown and others expressed optimism that the new rules while still preliminary would work to solve a stubborn issue that often drags the department into controversy. But the devil may be in the details. Experts, legal observers and other stakeholders said the new policy has gaps and a lack of specifics that may allow officers to chase suspects at virtually the same rate they do now. There are parallels between Chicagos new rules and those other cities have adopted. But while some, including one lawyer for a family affected by a recent shooting, expressed optimism, others pointed to a vagueness that may not cover the problem to the degree Brown and others hope. The success of a new policy also will depend on how officers react on the ground once it is in place, experts said. A decade ago, if someone ran you just chased before you knew they were involved in criminal activity, said former Tuscon Chief of Police Roberto Villasenor, who served on former President Barack Obamas Policing Task Force and now advises departments across the country on policing issues, including reform. A policy will help slow you down, and it will counter the normal instinct so that mistakes are not made, abuses dont occur and people are not hurt. But Toledo family attorney Joel Hirschhorn was among those skeptical of what a policy means in a place like Chicago, with its entrenched police practices. Training officers who have already been on the street for years and getting them to abide by new rules could be the biggest challenge. And old dogs dont like to learn new tricks, Hirschhorn said. Forced into a policy Chicago had been criticized for taking several years to adopt a policy, even as other cities have acknowledged that officers charging after suspects on foot should happen rarely, if at all, and only after other options are considered. Then in March, the Chicago Police Department was forced into action in the wake of not only Toledos fatal shooting but that of Anthony Alvarez, 22, who was fatally shot by police in Portage Park following another foot pursuit. The Illinois Latino Agenda was just one of many voices calling for Chicago police to adopt new rules, even going so far as to ask that all chases be halted unless someones life is in danger. Last week, the city finally unveiled its interim policy. It goes into effect June 11, but also will be revised as it moves toward final adoption in September, police officials said. Some of its highlights include not allowing officers to separate from their partners if they cant see the person theyre chasing; stopping the chase if officers believe they wouldnt be able to control that person; and making attempts to contain a suspect in a particular area by notifying outside police units as an alternative to chasing them. The policy also calls for officers to determine whether a foot chase is too risky to proceed, assessing the seriousness of the crime the suspect is wanted for against whether a pursuit could jeopardize the safety of the suspect, officer or any bystanders. Similar considerations are taken by officers when deciding to engage in motor-vehicle pursuits. The foot-pursuit policy was based on those in other major cities. Baltimore, for example, approved a policy in February 2021. Like Chicago, that city is undergoing court-mandated reform in the wake of the U.S. Department of Justice finding widespread civil rights violations by department members. In both Chicago and Baltimore, foot pursuits were highlighted as a problem. And a glance at both citys policies shows similarities in several areas, including requiring that officers must be able to provide a justification for any foot pursuit. Both sets of rules also state that a suspects flight alone is not enough reason to begin a foot chase; that officers will not be disciplined for deciding not to chase a suspect; and include requirements to activate body cameras and make attempts to use tactics such as canines or air support. But while both include guidelines on the risks the chases bring, the Baltimore policy clearly states that it is not an utmost priority to capture someone in such a pursuit: Members must be mindful that immediate apprehension of a suspect is rarely more important than the safety of other members of the public and BPD members. The Baltimore policy also prevents officers from using generic language to justify a chase like saying they were in a high crime area as their additional reason for chasing someone who suddenly runs from them. It is the lack of such specifics in the Chicago policy that experts said could provide enough slack for police to continue chasing suspects basically as they do currently. Its vague and at times even self-contradictory, Nusrat Choudhury, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said of the new policy. But what a policy needs to do is give clear and easy to understand guidance on when not to chase someone on foot. But while some experts said Chicagos new rules may not be specific enough, the leader of Chicago polices largest union said he thinks they already have gone too far. John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the Chicago polices largest union, blasted the new directive as a no-foot-pursuit policy. The new policy could theoretically preclude almost any foot chase, Catanzara said. Catanzara also said the new policy was not discussed with the FOP, which he said goes against the unions collective bargaining agreement with city officials. Specifically, he said the union was not consulted about the fact that the new order comes with the potential for disciplinary action. Clearly, were going to be challenging it, he said. Toledo and Alvarez While some experts have said the policy, as written now, would not have prevented either the shooting of Toledo or Alvarez, at least one attorney said under the new rules his client would not have been pursued. If this policy were in place and followed, Anthony Alvarez would still be alive, said Todd Pugh, who represents the Alvarez family and is a veteran criminal defense attorney. Officer body-camera footage and third-party security video that captured the chase and shooting on March 31 showed the 22-year-old, who was walking across a gas station parking lot, dart away from the officers as they advanced toward him quickly in an unmarked SUV. The officers chased him first in the SUV and then on foot, including through an alley, until they rounded a corner onto a small lawn at Eddy Street and Laramie Avenue. There, video from a home security camera shows Alvarez stumbled, got up and tried to continue running before Officer Evan Solano shot him. A handgun appeared to fall to the ground from Alvarezs right hand after he was struck by gunfire. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. At no point in the video did it appear that Alvarez was pointing the gun at officers. Nor has the police department explained why the officers tried to stop him, though Solanos attorney has said Alvarez drew the officers attention because he fled from them the previous night during an attempted traffic stop for driving on a suspended license. Pugh noted that under the new policy, officers are prohibited from chasing someone solely because they run away. A traffic violation alone also is no reason to begin such a pursuit, Pugh said. Most significantly, Pugh said that the officers apparently knew Alvarez had a suspended license showed they knew who he was and could have used other less aggressive tactics to find him later, as the policy directs. They knew Alvarez, they knew who he was, they could have gone to his house, Pugh said. Pugh also noted that Solano was running with his gun apparently unholstered, which the policy cautions against but doesnt prohibit because it creates a greater inherent risk. Overall, the policy is a marked improvement after years of officers rushing into a scene and touching off chases, Pugh said. But Hirschhorn, the attorney for Toledos family, was less enthusiastic about the policy, calling it anemic and in need of strengthening. Toledo was shot in a Little Village alley at 2:30 a.m. March 29 after officers responded to a ShotSpotter alert in the area of 24th Street and Sawyer Avenue. Responding officers, who arrived within a minute, saw Toledo and 21-year-old Ruben Roman and chased both down an alley. Roman was caught immediately, but Officer Eric Stillman continued to chase Toledo by himself. One video of the chase released by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability appeared to show Toledo tossed a pistol through a gap in a fence and then turning toward Stillman with his arms raised. Hirschhorn said not even a full second passed between Stillmans direction for Toledo to drop the gun and the officer firing. The lawyer also noted that Stillman, too, had apparently unholstered his gun during the chase. The fact that he unholstered his weapon, he had made a conscious decision to subdue by shooting, Hirschhorn said of Stillman. The veteran Miami-based criminal defense attorney, who is partnering with local counsel, said he welcomed the new policy. Its overdue, but remains amorphous and anemic and certainly gives law enforcement plenty of wiggle room, Hirschhorn said. Tim Grace, the lawyer who represents the officers who fatally shot Toledo and Alvarez, said he believes both of his clients wouldve been in compliance with the foot-pursuit policy if it had been in effect at the times of both shootings. In Alvarezs case, the foot chase stemmed from officers believing he was wanted on suspicion of driving on a suspended license the day before the March 31 fatal shooting, Grace said. Such an offense in Illinois can be charged as a Class A misdemeanor crimes in which Chicago police officers are allowed to chase suspects under the new foot pursuit policy. As for the Toledo shooting, Grace said Stillman had reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause to chase Toledo after a ShotSpotter device detected gunshots in the area. If this foot pursuit policy is designed to stop those kinds of foot pursuits, then the city lost, Grace said. Were going to have 2,000 murders this year. The point to some experts, however, is that officers have to change their entire response pattern to avoid armed confrontations. Chicago civil rights attorney Sheila Bedi said if Stillman saw Toledos gun during the chase, he could have opted to pull back and seek help containing him instead of chasing him, which increased the likelihood of a deadly result. It demonstrates he is not calculating the total risk, Bedi said. More detail needed? For the policy to work, it has to be looked at as a dramatic shift in how officers approach chases, experts said. And some said the policy as written does reflect a larger philosophical shift that puts the emphasis on reducing chances for harm and injury. But as the policy moves toward final approval, several also said more details need to be added, including more clear language for officers as they try to decide if the chase is appropriate. For example, the policy seems to direct officers away from chasing for low-level offenses by barring pursuits for anything less than a Class A misdemeanor, but even some of those crimes can be considered minor, experts said, including possession of alcohol by a minor and possession of drug paraphernalia. That kind of mixed message is not a service to officers trying to understand when to chase, some experts said. When you look closely it is not going nearly as far as it should even with the bar on Class A, said the ACLUs Choudhury. I think this policy leaves a lot of room for officers to still exercise discretion. There needs to be more guardrails. Chicago police said Thursday the department at this time is only providing e-learning or computer-based training for officers on the temporary policy. Experts said the policy will only be as good as the training that supports it, and that might not be good enough. Scenario-based, in-person training is essential, said Adam Bercovici, a former Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant who is now a security consultant. He called the new CPD policy comprehensive but said a failure to properly train does a disservice to officers, especially if they find themselves in situations where they could be hurt or later sued. You have a big agency, and youre going to have to retrain everybody to do this, and thats going to take a couple of years, said Bercovici, who reviewed CPDs foot pursuit policy at the Tribunes request. You cant put the policy out, and then put a bunch of people with e-learning and hope that everythings going to go all right. Villasenor, the former Tucson chief and current police adviser, agreed. Giving officers the most exact language possible and good training will be the key to the success of the policy, he said. The job itself is tenuous and nebulous, Villasenor said. You hire people who can think on their feet and you also cant just throw them out there. You need to give them fair direction as to what you expect. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 SPRINGFIELD Elementary school children in all public schools in Illinois would be entitled to at least 30 minutes of unstructured playtime each day under a bill that passed the state House on Saturday. Thats only half the amount of playtime that the original bill would have required as it passed out of the Senate. The original bill also would have applied to students from kindergarten through eighth grade, but the bill was narrowed as a concession to opponents that included groups representing teachers, principals and administrators. Even with those changes, Senate Bill 654, which some have dubbed the right-to-play bill, cleared the House by the smallest allowable vote total, 60-52. The bill was sponsored by Sen. Robert Peters and Rep. Aaron Ortiz, both Chicago Democrats who recalled their own time in school without being allowed recess time. Yes, it's personal to me, because I never had recess growing up, ever, Ortiz said on the House floor. And I don't want to see any child in our state to go without an opportunity to have recess. It wasnt immediately known how many Illinois schools do not currently provide daily recess. A number of lawmakers said it was common practice in Chicago Public Schools, but Rep. Sue Scherer, D-Decatur, a former teacher, said she had seen it elsewhere. And I can tell you exactly why it was cut out. It was because the people who sat in these green chairs decided that the only way to know if children learned was to make them test, test, test, she said. And so the schools, the teachers, the principals, the students feel so much pressure from these tests that they don't even feel there's time to go out and play because there's so much anxiety. Under the amended bill, all children from kindergarten through fifth grade would be entitled to at least 30 minutes of supervised, unstructured, child-directed play during any school day lasting five clock hours or longer. That time could be divided into two recess periods of 15 minutes each. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} During days that last less than five clock hours, the time allotted for play would be at least one-tenth of the day. Schools would not be allowed to use physical education classes as a substitute for recess. Nor would they be allowed to withhold recess from a student as a form of discipline, unless the students presence poses an immediate threat to the safety of others. Play develops social skills, teaching children how to organize, cooperate, resolve conflict, share, and lead, Ortiz said. Play gives children the freedom to be creative and explore. Several House members, however, questioned whether mandatory recess time would take away from instructional time that schools are also required to provide across a wide range of subjects. We think about the state testing that's required in reading, math and science, said Rep. Daniel Swanson, R-Alpha. These administrators are going to have to take time out of some class to make up that 30 minutes or they drop, possibly music, they drop possibly art, or they drop some other curriculum to make up for that 30 minutes. Ortiz, however, said the time could be broken up into 15-minute segments and that each school would have the ability to decide for itself how to reallocate the instructional time. The bill now heads back to the Senate, which passed the original bill on a 36-16 vote in April, to decide whether it will concur in the changes made by the House. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 When reading last weeks indictment of Tim Mapes, its important to remember that federal prosecutors have been trying to prove that his old boss, former House Speaker Michael Madigan, was directing the effort to allegedly bribe him with favors. Madigans longtime chief of staff was indicted May 26 for allegedly lying to a federal grand jury and attempting to obstruct the grand jurys corruption investigation. Illinois union workers rally behind Climate Union Jobs proposal Hundreds of union workers joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers Friday in front of the Illinois Capitol in support of the states nuclear power industry. It says right there in the indictment that the grand jury is investigating efforts by [Madigan], and efforts of [Madigans former consigliere Mike McClain] on [Madigans] behalf, to obtain for others private jobs, contracts, and monetary payments, in order to influence and reward [Madigan] in connection with [Madigans] role as Speaker of the Illinois House of Representatives. So, they asked Mapes questions about whether Madigan had directed Mike McClain to perform sensitive tasks, or whether Madigan had directed McClain to exercise Madigans power and authority, or whether Madigan or his staff had sought McClains advice, or whether McClain had performed work for Madigan or received assignments from him or served as his communications conduit, or whether McClain assisted Madigan with matters concerning the Illinois House of Representatives, its members, its lobbyists, or with the entities or individuals having pending matters before the Illinois House of Representatives. While these are all central questions to the feds probe of Madigan, they are not necessarily questions that would criminally implicate Mapes. The government obtained an order from Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer in March to give Mapes immunity for his grand jury testimony. He could respond without incriminating himself. Anyone with even basic knowledge of the case against Mike McClain would know that the feds had tapped and then seized his phone and his computer. Its no surprise, therefore, that the FBI possessed numerous conversations between McClain and Mapes, and prosecutors asked Mapes about those convos during the grand jury proceeding. Did McClain tell Mapes anything hed discussed with Madigan or what he was doing on behalf of Madigan during 2017-2019? No, Mapes said, according to the indictment. Did Mapes know about any tasks or assignments for McClain from Madigan in 2017 and 2018 or any time after McClain officially retired from lobbying in 2016? No. Etc. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Mapes attorneys claim the questions were vague and imprecise and were about events that took place many years ago. Maybe some of the questions couldve been vague, but Tim Mapes was infamous for making it his business to know everything and never seemed to forget anything. He was a detail guy and had a voracious appetite for news and gossip. And the record shows that McClain never made it a secret to almost anyone that he was doing things for Madigan after he supposedly retired from lobbying at the end of 2016. The feds tapes and emails of McClains conversations with Mapes himself may have proved just that. As an example, McClain described to Mapes work and assignments from [Madigan] between 2017 and 2019, the indictment claimed. Mapes also allegedly provided McClain messages communicated to Mapes from Madigan about tasks McClain was performing on behalf of McClain. That Mapes would allegedly lie to a grand jury when he most certainly knew what the government had on him is either profoundly stupid and careless or some real-life Hollywood stuff. Its natural to be paranoid about the timing of this indictment, coming just five days before the spring sessions adjournment and during a very difficult negotiation over ComEd parent company Exelons demand for yet another giant ratepayer subsidy for three more nuclear power plants. The feds have had a habit for a couple of years of announcing indictments at crucial points during Illinois legislative sessions, and this may have been no different. Part of the Madigan probe centers around the 2016 Exelon nuclear bailout, after all. The indictment contains a single mention of ComEds current CEO, although it doesnt even hint at even a tiny bit of scandal. Mapes was simply asked whether he had any knowledge of Madigans impressions of the guy. But the feds did throw in that name check, which could make people wonder what the heck is going on because the federales dont generally toss around names without some sort of purpose even if that purpose may be chaos. Rich Miller publishes Capitol Fax, a daily political newsletter, and CapitolFax.com. Love 0 Funny 1 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 The Supreme Court last week caused quite a stir by announcing they would hear arguments on pending legislation by the Mississippi legislature forbidding abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The legislators based their position on the evolving understanding of fetal development through ultrasonography and increasing evidence that women whose abortions were performed in the second trimester were significantly more likely to die of abortion related causes. The Mississippi law would be widely supported by the American public according to recent polls. The most recent Gallup poll on the matter (2018) showed that 65% thought that abortion should be illegal in the second trimester (after 12 weeks). A January 2020) Marist poll found 7 in 10 Americans support limiting abortion after the first trimester. Not to mention a 2011 United Nations survey showing that America is one of only seven nations out of some 198 across the globe that allow abortion for any reason after 20 weeks of pregnancy Mississippis law reflects the diversity of approaches the states have taken on abortion in recent years. Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, New Mexico, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont would keep abortion legal for any reason. Six other states have previously passed similar laws. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Whereas 13 other states in recent times including Mississippi, have passed strong limits on abortion. Missouri, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Utah, have also passed prohibitions of abortion. None of the above laws have been enforced due to injunctions by federal courts. So there is quite a stir in the air due to the decision of the Supreme Court to hear the Mississippi legislators arguments. Is It possible the High Court, aware of polls showing most Americans support the need for some limits on abortions, is using this as an opportunity to raise the bar for federal courts in setting a precedent with its approval of the Mississippi case.? Such a ruling would also set in motion a process in addressing abortion that would take into account the apparent shifting views and will of the electorate in every state. Not to mention removing America from the elite seven nations worldwide that allow abortions after 20 weeks for any reason. John Ryan, Bloomington Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 This service applies to you if your subscription has not yet expired on our old site. You will have continued access until your subscription expires; then you will need to purchase an ongoing subscription through our new system. Please contact the Parsons Sun office at (620) 421-2000 if you have any questions LC Waikiki, a leading global fashion retail brand, has opened its second store in West Africa at Junction Mall, Nungua, Accra. The opening of the store makes Ghana the second country in West Africa where LC Waikiki expands its brand as part of its Africa growth strategy and in line with its mission 'Everyone Deserves to Dress Well. Commenting on the stores opening, Sevim Altn, Area Manager said: The goal of LC Waikiki is to help everyone to dress. Of course, there are a lot of retailers in the market both local and foreign. And at LC Waikiki, we want to ensure we are as affordable or the lowest priced retailer. The retail giant is currently operating more than 1,000 stores in 49 countries, 324 different cities on three continents and has almost 50,000 employees. Ghana's store opening marks the expansion LC Waikiki in West Africa following the resounding success in the East African market. By the end of 2023, LC Waikiki plans to expand further in Africa, namely to Congo and Zambia. The Turkish brand's target is to have more than 1,500 stores all over the world by the end of 2023. With more than 400 million items sold, the Istanbul-based company reported revenues of over US$2.2 billion in 2020. The grand opening of the Ghanaian flagship store had various guests and was done following COVID-19 Protocols. LC Waikiki has set the goal of affordable fashion beyond Turkish borders by connecting with various cultures in different markets. They are committed to providing customers from all age groups with products that are suitable for their style and budget. 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 As part of activities to celebrate a year of possibilities, Absa Bank Ghana is supporting ten selected schools across the country with PPEs and Water tanks to help the students apply the necessary health protocols to help the fight against COVID-19. The anniversary initiative worth GHs120,000 is expected to complement measures taken by the beneficiary schools to curb the spread of the virus. The items included 10,000-litre Polytanks, mechanized veronica buckets, bundles of tissue paper, hand sanitizers and liquid soaps as well as nose masks among others. At a short ceremony held in Accra to kick off the distribution of the items to the selected schools, Nana Essilfuah Tamakloe, Marketing and Corporate Relations Director at Absa Bank said, the bank will continue to be a force for good in society especially in these challenging times and provide support to alleviate the burden the pandemic has placed on many, especially the vulnerable.. As a bank that has been playing a shaping role in our society, we remain committed to supporting the fight against the pandemic. The support for these schools is therefore to complement efforts being undertaken by school authorities to keep our students safe, curtail the spread of the virus and to help consolidate the progress we are making as a country, said Mrs Essilfuah Tamakloe. The beneficiary schools are Bolgatanga Anglican Primary School (Upper East), Manhyia K.O. Cluster of Schools (Ashanti), Nanton Basic School (Northern Region), Nwawasua M/A Basic School (Brong Ahafo Region) and the Methodist Health Training Institute (Eastern Region). The rest are Agate Senior High School (Volta Region), Omankorpe Community School (Greater Accra), Adiembra Senior High School (Western Region), St. Mary Catholic Girls (Central Region) and Tarkwa Catholic Basic School (Western Region). Support to the fight against COVID-19 According to Mrs. Tamakloe, Absa Bank has committed over GHc2 million towards direct COVID-19 relief initiatives, including donations to the National Trust Fund, frontline workers and health facilities from the onset of the pandemic. Anchored on the theme We are One with You, Absa Bank Ghana marked its first anniversary after launching a new brand in February 2020 with a bold strategy, leveraging on an over 100-year banking heritage in the country. Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Following the swell in COVID-19 cases in India, Ghana has provided 150 oxygen concentrators to support hospitals in that country as a token to help India in its fight against the pandemic. The oxygen concentrators, which come with free after-sales and warranty support for a year, have been dispatched to about 30 hospitals across 14 states in India, mainly in the rural areas. Ghana also handed over seven units of 10-litre oxygen concentrators to the Ministry of External Affairs of India, through the Ghana High Commission in New Delhi. The Coordinator of the COVID-19 Aid to India, Mr Amar Deep S. Hari, who commissioned the medical devices that concentrate oxygen from ambient air, expressed his excitement about the gesture, indicating that they would be a long-term benefit to the beneficiary facilities. During the second wave of the COVID-19, although sitting far away from India, Ghanaians couldnt be just silent spectators when an alarm was raised that India was under a humanitarian crisis. So many Ghanaians started coming forward, whether they were drivers, teachers, doctors, students, businessmen and women, and government employees, and each contributed to the best of his or her abilities, he said. This gesture is mainly to show that Ghanaians from Africa are thinking of our Indian brothers and sisters and we are keeping you in our prayers, he added. Strong bond Mr Hari noted that as a country, Ghana was rich in tradition and culture, of which it was proud, adding that one of the main characteristics of Ghanaians was that they found joy in giving and sharing. Due to the similarities in the colonial past of both countries, he said, the peoples of the two countries had a strong bond. On business relations, he said India was the second-larges investor in Ghana for many years and also the biggest buyer for Ghanas gold and cocoa for chocolate. On the other hand, he said, Ghana also imported a lot of machinery and other products from India, indicating that there was a good connection between the two countries. Additionally, he said, Ghana continued to support India with medical expertise anytime that country requested it. While speaking to some of those medical professionals, I was surprised to know that they were prepared to risk their lives in the service of their brothers and sisters in India, Mr Hari stated. Distribution He indicated that the criteria for the selection of the beneficiary health facilities had been non-discriminatory, non-political and non-religious. Mr Hari said the first dispatches had already commenced, and that on receipt, the beneficiaries would do a test for the quality of flow and oxygen purity. In the same vein, he said, a detailed report of all the beneficiaries, along with the photos of the hospitals and the installed units, was being compiled to ensure accountability to the donors. 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 Sheriff Seeks Owner of Box with Coins, Jewelry By West Kentucky Star Staff BENTON - The Marshall County Sheriff's Department has recovered some items that may have been stolen and would like to return them to their owner.On Thursday, deputies found a box full of suspected stolen coins and jewelry, and it's possible they were stolen from somewhere outside the county.Anyone who has recently noticed vintage coins or jewelry missing should contact the sheriff's office at 270-527-3112.The owner of the items will need to provide a police report related to the items, pictures or documentation to verify ownership, or a detailed verbal description of the items. President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo Friday urged all residents of Ghana to endeavour to get counted for the sake of the nation's progress when the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) commences on Sunday, June 27. The census data, he said, was important for the development and growth of Ghana, and for us to achieve our vision of a brighter future for all our people and country. It was, therefore, the civic duty of everyone to do all that was required to support the priority national exercise. The President made the call when he launched the 30-day countdown to the 2021 PHC set to take off on the midnight of Sunday, June 27, 2021 across the 272 statistical districts across the country. Field data collection will, however, start with the listing of structures from June 13. Persons on transit and in short-stay institutions such as hotels, guest houses and hospital in-patients will also be counted on the census night. However, the enumeration of persons in households and long-stay institutions will commence from June 28 to July 11. He said the data would help to actualize the betterment of the welfare of the vulnerable, as enshrined in the national constitution. The media should, therefore, not create controversies around the process in order not to deter people from participating. The exercise, which will be the first digital population and housing census to be undertaken in Ghana, will use technology to improve results accuracy and timeliness. The census will provide important updated socio-economic, demographic and housing data to be used for decision-making and planning. President Akufo-Addo said the data to be obtained from the exercise would be used to gauge the progress of the nations development agenda, enable the measurement of the social and economic status of Ghana, and give the needed input for charting the roadmaps for achieving national targets. He disclosed that great effort had been made to ensure that enumerators were recruited from and would work in the communities they usually lived in. Government, he said, had taken all necessary steps to ensure that the census takes place in a safe and secure environment and with minimum or no disruption to the daily activities of all. Security personnel would be detailed to maintain law and order during the exercise. He, thus urged all persons, both Ghanaians and non-Ghanaians residents, to be ready to welcome census officials into their communities and places of residence and provide the necessary information. Noting the several concerns and sensitivities that people may have with the exercise, including boundary disputes and religious and political polarizations, the President stressed that the Census process was not an exercise that sought to divide or polarise Ghanaians around matters that are important to us individually and collectively as a nation. He explained: However, the Census remains an independent and professional process, whose outcomes will not be influenced by any of these. "Indeed, the Census process may help to resolve some or all of these issues. So please bear with the Census officials as they go about their business and provide complete and accurate information to them because they will count you as and where you are. Remember, the information you provide to them is strictly confidential; it will be handled only by persons who have taken the Oath of Secrecy under the Statistical Service Act 2019 (Act 1003). President Akufo-Addo appealed to the media, including social media users, not to create controversy and confusion around this important national development activity, but convey only reliable information that would facilitate and improve the process. Census data will save lives and livelihoodsWith that in mind, I want to encourage you to do the right thing and support publicity, education and advocacy activities by conveying only reliable information and facilitating constructive discussions on issues around the Census process, he charged the media. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, Chair of the Authority of Heads of State and Government, will on Sunday, May 30, in Accra, hold an extraordinary meeting of the ECOWAS Authority of Heads of State and Government on Mali's political upheaval. The meeting is intended to take a consequential decision on the recent happenings in Mali to bring normalcy and stability to the West African nation. It is also in line with the ECOWAS protocol on democracy and good governance, to restore normalcy following the arrest and detention of Transitional President Bah NDaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane on Monday night, May 24, 2021. Colonel Assimi Goita, the Vice-President of the Transitional Administration, led a coup and detained the Transitional President and Prime Minister to the Kati Military Base, outside of the national capital, Bamako. Col. Goita, last year, also led a military coup on August 18, to oust the then President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita, which led ECOWAS to set up a transitional administration to return the country to civilian rule within 18 months. Ms Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration briefing the media in Accra, on Saturday, on the Extraordinary ECOWAS Summit, said President Akufo-Addo took the decision to convene the meeting after consultation with his peers. "The purpose of the Summit is to enable the Authority to deliberate and take consequential decisions on the evolving political and security situation in the Republic of Mali. "As you are all aware, the past few days have witnessed some worrying developments in Mali, she said. "The arrest and detention of the President and Prime Minister of the Transition Government by the military has necessitated a re-evaluation of the strategies adopted by ECOWAS to bring normalcy to the country." The Minister announced that 10 Heads of State and Government had confirmed their participation, including Senegal and Benin. The meeting will also be attended by a special ECOWAS Mediator to Mali and former President of Nigeria, Mr Goodluck Jonathan, as well as the President and Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission. She said a communique would be issued at the end of the Summit. Meanwhile, Ms Botchwey said at the behest of the President of Ghana, an ECOWAS Mediation team, led by Former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who is ECOWAS Special Envoy and Mediator for Mali, embarked on a fact-finding mission to Mali from 25th to 26th May, 2021. The visit was to assess the situation and explore opportunities for the resolution of the crisis. Mr Jonathan will, therefore, report to the Summit on the outcome of the mission. 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 Mr Peter Kweikuma, Hohoe Municipal Census Officer, says everything is set for the conduct of the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) in the Hohoe Municipality. With the distribution of all logistics and finalization of all systems and trial censuses, Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) is ready to conduct the 2021 PHC and says to every person, You Count, Get Counted. Mr Kweikuma said this during the launch of 30 Days to the 2021 Population and Housing Census Night in an address delivered on behalf of the Government Statistician and the Chief Census Officer. He said the main goal of the Census was to achieve complete coverage of all structures and persons in Ghana, which dovetailed into the leave no one behind agenda of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This necessitated the demarcation of the country into small areas to facilitate the identification of all structures and other places where people live or sleep at night, he said. He said the Census slogan seeks to achieve inclusivity and individual ownership of the census agenda hence the phrase You Count, Get Counted was developed towards ensuring complete and accurate coverage and full preparations for data collection. Mr Kweikuma said the GSS created awareness, engaged to ensure clarity on the processes and relevance, worked towards the building of partnerships and established protocols for achieving ownership and participation. The District Census Officer called on the media to avoid all forms of inflammatory remarks that could impede the success of the census. The launch saw a sketch by students from the Hohoe E.P SHS in a live radio programme to answer possible questions that the public would ask during the census. 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 Barely a month after a massive clean-up and a decongestion exercise at Gbese in the Greater Accra Region, filth and unauthorized structures have resurfaced in the area. The exercise was organized by the Graphic Communications Group Limited (GCGL), in collaboration with the Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL), to rid the area of filth. It involved clearing of gutters and drains, sweeping the shoulders of the streets as well as gathering and disposing of refuse. As part of the exercise, structures that were seen to be obstructing the easy flow of water were demolished to help address the issue of flooding in the area. The move was part of the GCGLs national sanitation campaign which is aimed at drawing the publics attention to the worsening sanitation condition in the country. However, at a visit to the area yesterday, the Daily Graphic observed that the area had reverted to its former state. Observations It was observed that the streets in the area, including the market, had piles of refuse accompanied by a pungent smell and flies. In spite of the health implications of the situation, food vendors and fish sellers were seen busily going about their business without proper hygiene practices. It was also observed that filth in the gutters had also regenerated while the demolished structures along the streets had also resurfaced. Some gutters choked with plastics at Gbese in Accra weeks after a clean-up exercise was organised to clear the filth in the area Residents Strikingly, some of the residents who spoke to the Daily Graphic seemed not to be bothered about the situation. According to them, the area was clean and that good hygiene practices were being observed, contrary to the situation on the ground. A resident who gave his name as Nii Tackie said: Ever since the clean-up exercise, we have decided to maintain sanity in the area. Indiscriminate dumping of refuse has become a thing of the past. Asked about the filth generated on the street, he said previously, this area was dirtier than we are seeing today, there was filth at every corner and it became a breeding ground for mosquitoes but I think it is better now. Another resident, Naa Okailey, expressed worry over the situation in the area. She said there had been a series of clean-up exercises which had taken place this year but few days after the exercise, the situation returned. Its heartbreaking that this place has become synonymous with filth and that is because of how careless we are about our environment. This is causing a lot of health challenges, particularly for children in this area, she added. Background The Graphic Communications Group Limited has declared 2021 the Year of Sanitation and is focusing on efforts to engage the citizenry to adhere to good sanitation practices. As part of the campaign, the company has launched a National Sanitation Campaign to promote a clean environment and draw attention to the worsening sanitation condition in the country. Already the company, in partnership with the ZGL, has embarked on a clean-up exercise in Accra and Kumasi. 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 Member of Parliament for Mpraeso Constituency, Davis Ansah Opoku is confident in his discussions with the Moroccan Ambassador to Ghana, HE Mrs Imane Quaadil, on how the greater Kwahu could collaborate with Morroco in the areas of tourism, agriculture and support for the Muslim communities would yield positive results. According to Opoku, Moroccos tourism contributed an amount of MAD 81.4 billion ($8.89 billion) to their economy in 2019, and they attract lots of tourists each year. He, therefore, called on the ambassador to assist in the design of a tourism circuit and also the establishment of a tourism information centre in Kwahu. Tourism in Kwahu is an untapped field, he recounted, adding that each town has unique tourism sites, and investing in marketing these sites will create many jobs for our people. The MP said, we discussed fish preservation and also banana production, and possible exportation to Morocco. According to the MP, the Ambassador accepted an invitation to visit Kwahu with the hope of visiting the Rock City and the paragliding site and would love to see the greater Kwahu. He said he also used the opportunity to appeal to her to use her office to support the reconstruction of the Mpraeso Mosque. Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video Former Member of Parliament (MP) for Akwatia constituency in the Eastern Region, Baba Jamal says there is absolutely no sense in going to court because of burning excavators. To him, the President is making a mistake by allowing the military to burn confiscated excavators from individuals and companies mining illegally. Why dont we burn houses and other properties when the state seize them? he questioned in an interview with NEAT FMs morning show Ghana Montie. President Nana Akufo-Addo on Wednesday, May 26, 2021, noted that the state agencies are justified in destroying confiscated excavators from individuals and companies. I know there are some who believe that the ongoing exercise in ridding our water bodies and forest zones of harmful equipment and machinery is unlawful and, in some cases, harsh. I strongly disagree and I would advise those who take a contrary view to go to court to vindicate their position if they so wish. That is what the rule of the law is all about, he said But Baba Jamal also thinks otherwise he told NEAT FMs morning show host, Kwesi Aboagye that the President is misreporting the law. According to him, he [President Nana Addo] should rather tell us that he doesnt trust his people with the seized excavators because of their previous experience, hence, the illegal burning than telling affected people to go to court. This doesnt make sense to me, The former NDC lawmaker added. Source: king Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video A dose of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine being prepared at the COVID-19 vaccination clinic at the University of Toronto campus in Mississauga, Ont., on Thursday, May 6, 2021. THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin Thank you for reading the Philadelphia Tribune. You have exhausted your free article views for this month. Please press the "subscribe" button below and see our introductory price of $0.25 per week for 13 weeks. Otherwise, we look forward to seeing you next month. Michael Coard, Esq. can be followed on Twitter, Instagram, and his YouTube channel as well as at AvengingTheAncestors.com. His Radio Courtroom show can be heard on WURD 96.1 FM or 900 AM. And his TV Courtroom show can be seen on PhillyCAM/Verizon Fios/Comcast. The views expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Philadelphia Tribune. Senate Rejects Probe Into Capitol Riots By The Associated Press WASHINGTON, D.C. - Senate Republicans blocked creation of a bipartisan panel to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.The Senate vote on Friday was 54-35 six short of the 60 needed to take up a House-passed bill that would have formed an independent 10-member commission evenly split between the two parties. The Republicans were mostly united, but six voted with Democrats to move forward.Eleven senators nine Republicans and two Democrats missed the vote, an unusually high number of absentees for one of the highest-profile votes of the year. At least one of the missing Republicans would have voted in favor of considering the commission, according to his office.The investigations will happen with or without Republicans," declared Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, one of the Republicans who voted to move forward. "To ensure the investigations are fair, impartial and focused on the facts, Republicans need to be involved.Fridays vote was the first successful use of a Senate filibuster in the Biden presidency, and was emblematic of the profound mistrust between the two parties.The vote also is likely to galvanize Democratic pressure to do away with the filibuster, a time-honored procedure typically used to kill major legislation. It requires 60 votes to move ahead, rather than a simple majority in the 100-member Senate. With the Senate evenly split 50-50, Democrats needed support from 10 Republicans to move to the commission bill.Speaking to his Republican colleagues, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote they were trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug. He left open the possibility of another vote in the future on establishing a bipartisan commission, declaring, The events of Jan. 6 will be investigated.Though the bill to form the commission passed the House earlier this month with the support of almost three dozen Republicans, most GOP senators said they believed the bipartisan panel would eventually be used against them politically. While initially saying he was open to the idea, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell turned firmly against it in recent days, arguing that the panels investigation would be partisan despite the even split among party members.The attack was the worst on the Capitol in 200 years, with protesters interrupting the certification of Bidens win over Trump. Four of the protesters died that day, including a woman who was shot and killed by police as she tried to break into the House chamber. Dozens of police officers were injured, and two took their own lives in the days afterward.Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick collapsed and died after engaging with the rioters. The Washington medical examiner said he suffered a stroke and died from natural causes. Elmwood Park Zoo Executive Director Al Zone, far right, with Norristown Area High School students during the announcement that the zoo will host a free party for graduating seniors on June 9. The first Memorial Day after COVID-19 will close federal, state and local offices on Monday, and some city and county services will be altered IL Democrats Push Through 'Shameful' District Maps By The Associated Press SPRINGFIELD - Democrat-drawn legislative district maps to govern elections in the Illinois General Assembly for the next decade won legislative approval Friday, but not before a day of Republican acrimony and opposition from Democratic-leaning community groups who say they havent gotten clear answers about how the lines were drawn.The House voted 71-45 along party lines Friday night after 2 1/2 hours of debate to approve new district lines required after each Census to reflect population shifts. It followed a similarly partisan Senate vote, 41-18, in favor of the maps drawn outside of the public eye.The next stop is the desk of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who once promised to veto maps drawn by politicians. All eyes are on Pritzker, who as a Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 promised to reject a political product, opting for an independent, nonpartisan commission to create the districts. But Pritzker this month backed away from the pledge, saying only that he would nix an unfair map.Even though this is the final week of the General Assemblys spring session, Pritzker has not appeared publicly for days.Democrats called for redistricting hearings early Friday morning with only an hours notice for Republicans and advocates hoping to testify about the maps. In fact, the revised maps and language for bills passed out of both chambers less than 24 hours after Democrats filed them.Gov. Pritzker, speaking directly to you: Veto these maps, because as we proved today, they are (politically) drawn, said Springfield Rep. Tim Butler, the House Redistricting Committees ranking Republican. This is absolutely one of the most shameful things Ive seen, absolutely one of the most shameful things. They absolutely know it and they continue to do the same thing.Republicans and grassroots activist groups have decried the process concluded without benefit of official U.S. Census numbers, which have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats contend they must be completed by June 25, which is simply the date on which they lose complete control of the work.The constitution requires the Legislature currently controlled by Democratic super-majorities to produce a map by June 30. After that, the project goes to a bipartisan commission. Each time thats occurred since 1980, the panel has deadlocked and the name of the partisan tie-breaker is drawn from a hat.The people deserve better than bad data, fake deadlines and sham hearings, said Sen. Sue Rezin, a Morris Republican.Political lines must be redrawn after each Census to reflect changes in population and ensure protection of voters rights. They must be compact, contiguous, and of equal population, among other things. Critics wonder why the map cant wait for release of official U.S. Census numbers, which wont be available until late summer.During hastily called final hearings of the Redistricting Committees in both House and Senate, Republicans slammed the House redistricting leader, Rep. Elizabeth Lisa Hernandez of Chicago, after she acknowledged she didnt know until Thursday night all the sources of data that were used six days after the first version of the map was sprung on the public.Even then, she struggled to explain what numbers were mined or how, other than pointing to the Census American Community Survey, an ongoing review of changes occurring in communities, which critics maintain are not suitable for drawing lines.Despite the late notice of the hearings, representatives of several interest groups were able to tune in to complain about being left out.Until you send a message that inclusion counts, its just talk... we cant move forward. We cant have 10 more years of this, Dilara Sayeed of the Illinois Muslim Civic Coalition said via video conference.This map still only provides I believe one Asian House district in a state that has one of the largest Asian communities and the most diverse Asian communities in the nation, Sayeed said. This map still means zero state legislators can come from somebody who identifies as Muslim even though Illinois has the largest per capita Muslim population in the nation.During House debate, several Republicans called out Democrats for previously espousing independent map-making, reading from news articles and newspaper endorsement questionnaires their pledges to take politics out of the process. Democratic Rep. Will Guzzardi cried foul, contending its not inconsistent to say, I believe the system should be different and nonetheless, Im participating under the rules as they are today.Virtually nothing was said about the cartography before the first map popped out late May 21. A revision appeared late Thursday which Hernandez maintained was absolutely influenced by public input. GOP Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon claimed there was an intentional effort to withhold details from taxpayers, adding, It makes a mockery of this process.Republicans also criticized the surprise remap produced this week of state Supreme Court districts, the first revision in 60 years. The GOP claims its because Democrats fear losing their majority on the high court. The House approved that map Friday afternoon. Get ready for jazz. Fresh off its sold-out Time for Three Concert, Joye in Aiken continues its 2021 season with performances by top-tier jazz artists in the month of June. First up on the schedule is the Joye of Jazz on Sunday, June 6. The 2021 edition of this popular event will run from 3 to 9 p.m. To maximize safety in the COVID era, the event will be held outdoors in an open-air tent in front of The Willcox. Its going to be absolutely magical, said Joye in Aiken President Sandra Field. The tent, in that special setting, will be gorgeous. And having it outdoors will give us an exciting new twist on whats become one of the most important jazz events in South Carolina. Performing for the afternoon session will be Evan Christophers Clarinet Road. Christopher is a longtime icon of classic, traditional New Orleans jazz and is described by The Wall Street Journal as one of the worlds major clarinetists. The performance by Christopher and his band will run from 3 to 5 p.m., with doors opening at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $125 and will include individually plated light refreshments. At 7 p.m., trombonist Wycliffe Gordon headlines with his sextet. A 13-time winner of Trombonist of the Year from the Jazz Journalists Association and a six-time winner of Downbeats International Critics Poll, Gordon has performed at the Grammy Awards, been featured on Live from Lincoln Center, and performed as a featured soloist on the Ken Burns series Jazz, among many other achievements and honors. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Evening tickets are $150 and include a three-course dinner. All-day passes are also available for $250. June's jazz events continues on Thursday, June 24, when four nationally renowned, Juilliard-trained jazz artists take to the Etherredge Center stage in a Jazz Explosion to celebrate the opening of the Joye in Aiken Jazz Camp. The performers all serving as instructors for the four-day camp include Joye in Aiken Artistic Director for Jazz Riley Mulherkar on trumpet; pianist Mathis Picard; drummer Bryan Carter; and bassist Dan Chmielinski. The concert begins at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20. This is a chance to see some of the most exciting and accomplished jazz musicians on the scene today, said Field. All four of them have performed in the Joye in Aiken Festival to tremendous acclaim, and in fact Bryan Carter was our headliner at the Joye of Jazz in 2019. So the concert will be especially fun because it features some of our very favorite festival artists. Field said spaces for current and rising high school students are still available in the camp until June 4. To be held June 24-27 on the USC Aiken campus, the non-residential camp will include daily instruction, as well as a master class led by Gordon. The camp will end on the June 27 with a free public concert featuring the faculty and students. Tuition is $200 and financial assistance is available for students who would otherwise be unable to attend. We have so many fantastic opportunities to experience great jazz this year, for students as well as adults, Field said. If youre a jazz fan, or a young musician taking your inspiration from jazz, June will be a terrific time to be in Aiken. For more information about Joye in Aiken or to purchase tickets, visit joyeinaiken.com. Moncks Corner, SC (29461) Today Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible.. Tonight Thunderstorms this evening followed by occasional showers overnight. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. Like most other retailers in America, when the pandemic hit, Palmetto Moon went dark. The North Charleston-based collegiate merchandise seller and lifestyle-brand merchant closed stores, furloughed nearly 500 workers and temporarily shelved projects. The company applied for federal payroll protection funds and negotiated with vendors and landlords to stay afloat, but it never completely shut down. The business that started as a kiosk at Citadel Mall nearly two decades ago continued to sell online, registering sales at up to three times more than before the pandemic. To fill orders, it reached into its more than two dozen shuttered shops for inventory and continued to place orders with manufacturers, all the while trying to shave expenses like other businesses amid an uncertain future. The retailer reopened all of its stores by last June and launched two new shops, both in Tennessee, during the darkest months of the pandemic. In early May, the company opened its 28th store in Hoover, Ala., a suburb of Birmingham. Two more stores are set to be added to the mix by year's end within the merchant's six-state footprint across the Southeast, bringing its number of retail outlets to 30. New phase That expansion will occur under a new phase for Palmetto Moon. John Thomas, a former board member and chief merchandising officer of the expansion-minded retailer, recently lassoed the CEO job. He replaced Eric Holzer, who has twice served as chief executive and is now chairman of the board. "I'm trying to bring the company back to its core values," retail veteran Thomas, 52, said. They include a focus on customer service, offering a compelling mix of merchandise and tailoring stores to local markets. "You can't overemphasize listening to the customer," the new CEO said. That credo started at the first kiosk, where Holzer started selling beverage koozies and college paraphernalia for the fledgling business in Citadel Mall in 2002. "I remember the cart the warmth of seeing people walk up and interacting with them," Holzer said. "Now when you walk into any of our stores, someone is near the entrance and says, 'Welcome to Palmetto Moon. What can I help you find?'" "We want to know what customers like that we might not carry," Holzer said. As the company expanded into other states, first to Pooler, Ga., near Savannah, in 2014, it struggled with the question of rebranding the stores to fit the location. After all, the company logo includes the Palmetto tree and "crescent" similar to the elements of the South Carolina state flag. The crescent-looking part of the flag actually represents a gorget, a piece of armor protecting the throat, but many people confuse it with a crescent moon. Sign up for our new business newsletter We're starting a weekly newsletter about the business stories that are shaping Charleston and South Carolina. Get ahead with us - it's free. Email Sign Up! Palmetto Moon decided to stick with the name and tailor the shops to their surroundings. Instead of items from South Carolina colleges, the merchandise mix focuses on higher education schools in the state where stores are located. For instance, the store near Savannah carries Georgia Southern Eagles items in addition to those for the University of Georgia Bulldogs or the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. "Our focus is on a localized effort," Thomas said. Belk connection Thomas is no stranger to the machinations of the retail world. He worked in merchandising for the now-defunct May Department Stores Co. in its St. Louis headquarters before being recruited by Palmetto Moon founder Bob Webster, who worked for Belk in the 1990s. Thomas started working for Belk in its Charlotte base in 1999. Over the next 18 years he served in multiple management positions, including executive vice president of merchandising, ready wear and private brands. In 2009, he joined Palmetto Moon's seven-member board and served as a director until 2016. He left Belk in late 2017 and had to take a year off so as not to breach a non-compete clause. He started working for Palmetto Moon as chief merchandising officer in 2019. For Holzer, who eventually took on meatier roles in merchandising, buying and marketing after moving away from the kiosk and managing the store in Mount Pleasant, he believed it was time to step aside from the CEO role for a second time. "I looked at the company's long-term goals and its strategy," he said. "To me it was the right time." Holzer previously took the company's reins in 2016, when Webster and wife Karen sold a majority interest in the company. The buyer, New York-based private equity firm Topspin Partners, offers advice and strategic support but is not involved in the day-to-day operations. Two years later, he stepped down and Adam Stone, the former CEO of childrens apparel specialty retailer Hanna Andersson, was named to lead the company. Stone didn't stay long. After 18 months, he quietly left what had grown into a 25-store chain. "Priorities were shifting in the wrong direction," Holzer said without trying to be too critical of his predecessor. "We needed to make a change." In 2019, Holzer, with his years of experience and connections, returned to the corner office. "We had some complexities to navigate through," Holzer said. "The intention was to create a management team to take the company into the future." After two years, that team is in place, and Thomas is now running the retailer. Amber Dube is now executive vice president and chief brand officer while Laura Martinez was recently promoted to vice president of merchandising. Holzer will still be involved in the business chairman, but he plans to help wife Whitney, who is the daughter of the Palmetto Moon's founders, build and market her new brand of blankets and accessories called Seabird Society. Looking ahead, Thomas sees plenty of growth options as some retailers have folded in recent years and left voids in certain markets. "We know there are additional opportunities out there," he said. "There is an appetite for our brand. If you are not growing, you are falling a little bit behind. I think our future is very bright." WEST COLUMBIA In the last seven months of 2020, as South Carolina, the country and much of the world continued to be ravaged by the coronavirus, the Rev. Charles Jackson Sr. attended the equivalent of one funeral per week. There were as many as four funerals in one week, and twice there were two on the same day. Thats more than 30 deaths, including 16 members of Brookland Baptist Church, a predominantly Black congregation where Jackson serves as head pastor. It was a deluge of grief he had never before experienced in his 50 years at the pulpit. The church doors were locked and the hums and amens of the call and response did not rise from the pews of Brookland's dual West Columbia and northeast Columbia locations. That's a rarity for one of the largest and most influential churches in the Midlands a place of worship that prides itself on its community-mindedness and whose influence is so great that it's often a stop for presidential candidates. Theres been so much pain in our church family, he said. While not all the funerals he attended were for church members themselves, they were often relations of members. And while many deaths were not from COVID-19, the isolation those people felt in their final days and hours was nonetheless the same. At one point, it was overwhelming, Jackson said, particularly when three elder female spiritual leaders Gertrude Williams, Catherine Smith and Wilhelmenia Golstondied in a span of about 12 weeks. All were in their 90s. Gertrude, affectionately known as Grandma Gert," was a storied baker whose Christmas cookies were a treasured annual treat. Catherine, whose family called her a fashionista of her time, could be seen every Sunday dressed immaculately, from hat to heels, in white. She was a frequent visitor at the senior center. Wilhelmenia, a gifted seamstress, sewed clothing for her family and those in need. That one was tough, Jackson said, as these were the women who helped raise him when he began working with the church. I was like their son, he said. Jackson also knew of at least one senior who had not left home, but who contracted the virus from an asymptomatic grandchild. Feeling youre responsible for a grandmothers death, thats painful, he said. I found myself carrying their pain, Jackson said of his congregation. My shoulders were growing weary from helping carry the load of grief. I actually began feeling very physically exhausted. Thats when Jackson knew he had to make a change, shift his preaching away from the suffering and celebrate instead those who survived. His sermons became more about encouraging and giving hope. He preached: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Often, we think of seeing God in the heavens, but I reminded them you can see God right now, he told his members, speaking to them via livestream. It was after that message he got the calls, the texts, the emails telling him: Pastor, it felt like you were talking to me. You dont know how much I needed to hear that. Having been overwhelmed himself, Jackson also became concerned for leaders of smaller churches. He began convening virtual weekly meetings of roughly 50 pastors to provide support and talk about challenges. And the challenges were many. The Rev. Mike McCoy, a young pastor at St. Paul Baptist Church in Winnsboro, came into the job with enthusiasm, but quickly had to adjust to becoming an "online preacher" unable to see his flock. Then he lost a mother of his church to the disease. She was someone who I could talk to and love on and then shed love on me," he said. When the pandemic hit her, it took me for a twist, and I was in a moment of depression. But I had to go back," McCoy said. "I had to go back and stand on God's word because they didn't need a pastor thats weak. They needed to see me strong. They needed encouragement. They needed to know that the same God that I was preaching about was the same God that is going to get us through this pandemic." The Rev. Donnie Chambers of Red Hill Baptist Church in Gadsden lost at least three from his small congregation who had contracted COVID-19. It was kind of heartbreaking to see some lose their life because of the virus and trying to comfort the family. And then seeing so many funerals," he said. "We've had so many funerals in our area; it's just been overwhelming." The Rev. James Jamison, associate pastor at Brookland Baptist, found himself serving as an interim pastor in Newberry when New Enoree Baptist Church's own pastor died during the pandemic, though not from the virus. "Newberry, at one point, became a hot spot, so they were suddenly experiencing a lot of death and hospitals were overwhelmed with trying to care for people," Jamison said. But during a meeting at the end of March, there was hope on the pastors' lips. The COVID-19 vaccine had become widely available in the Palmetto State and it seemed an end was in sight. The Black community is disproportionately being affected by the virus the latest data showed 33 percent of COVID-19 deaths in the state were among Black people and they are reluctant about taking the vaccine, Jackson said. But many trust the integrity of the church. Jackson had his own hesitancy at first, but he was shaken from it by his faith. God convicted me and spoke to my spirit, he said. He said to me, Charles Jackson, what are you waiting to see? Have you not seen the deaths? Have you not seen and known and experienced the pain and suffering of your own people?' You cannot lead where you are not going, Jackson reminded himself. He began encouraging others to get the vaccine. He worked with Lexington Medical Center, of which he is a governing board member, to set up a clinic right there in the church's community wellness center. "I couldnt wait to get mine; hurry up and get me in there," Jamison, Jackson's associate pastor, said after receiving his first dose. "I have a lot more plans for the next 10, the next 20 years." "Aint that the gospel truth," Jackson said. Then Jackson called the group to prayer. We thank you God for your safekeeping of us," Jackson said. "You have so enabled and empowered us to push through this pandemic." Because even though theres been death, the pastors say, all has not been bad. Brookland Baptist highlighted the good it has done during the pandemic: 800 chicken and fish dinners served by its deacons; food bank and soup kitchen service for more than 100 people weekly; 30,000 pounds of groceries donated by its charitable foundation; 1,000 care packages and 20 permanent homes provided to the homeless; and financial assistance to 150 people behind on rent or mortgage or utilities. "There is a spiritual hunger now among the people of God," said the Rev. Charles Epps of Haskell Heights Progressive Baptist Church in Columbia, as well as a desire to gather again. On May 23, hallelujahs lifted to the high ceilings of Brookland Baptist Church for the first time in more than a year. "You may not be able to touch each other, but I came to tell you, you can touch God today. Hes not afraid of corona," the choral leader called out. As if on cue, the congregation surged into motion, bounding and rippling as they danced in the pews. Some were clapping and singing along: "I just can't stop praising his name." Others had arms outstretched and eyes aimed on the heavens. Still, there were many missing from his congregation upon its return, souls the church will collectively memorialize in the coming weeks. Together in fellowship once more, they will mourn their dead and pray for the close of this pandemic chapter. With hurricane season officially kicking off in South Carolina June 1 and Gov. Henry McMaster declaring May 30 to June 5 as South Carolina Hurricane Preparedness Week, The Post and Courier Myrtle Beach talked with two local emergency management directors and a hurricane expert with Clemson University about hurricanes and how to best prepare for them. Coastal counties such as Georgetown and Horry have unique concerns, said Pam Murray-Tuite, professor at Clemson's Glenn Department of Civil Engineering, specifically related to flooding. "The low lying areas of elevation makes (hurricane flooding) a challenge," Murray-Tuite said. Georgetown County's Emergency Management Director Brandon Ellis and Horry County's Emergency Management Director Randy Webster listed the following as the main things to keep in mind as residents prepare for the 2021 hurricane season. Plan and prepare now. Having a plan in place ahead of time for what you, your family and even your locally owned business will do if a hurricane hits is key, Ellis said. "Build a plan for your family to include your children and your pets because they have unique considerations as well," Ellis said. "We're harping on that locally, ensuring our local businesses and manufacturing facilities in Georgetown County are taking that initiative to plan now." Ellis also said communicating that plan with your friends, family, neighbors and anyone else will help you not only remember your plan, but make sure others know your plan in case something goes array. Emergency preparedness kits are also important to have, Ellis said, and recommendations for what should be in your kit can be found on both Georgetown and Horry counties' websites. Ellis also recommends residents review their insurance policies so they know what is included and not included and to make sure their coverage is adequate. Finding out you are under-insured is not something you want to learn after the fact, he said. Know if you live in an evacuation zone, and how they are different from flood zones. Living in an evacuation zone and living in a flood zone are not the same, Webster said. Evacuation zones are only based on the potential for storm surge, or the immediate impact from the windblown water, while flood zones are based strictly on riverine flooding. Knowing your evacuation zone, if you live in one, is important too. Both counties have three evacuation zones A, B and C and they operate on a hierarchy. For example, if Zone C is told to evacuate, all three zones are told to evacuate, if Zone B is told to evacuate, Zones A and B are told to evacuate, but not C, and if Zone A is told to evacuate, Zones B and C can stay put. Zone locations can be found on both Georgetown and Horry counties' websites. Evacuation mandates are recommended to the Governor's Office by local municipalities, and Webster said the goal of zones and mandates is to reduce the risk of resident injury or death. Sign up for our Myrtle Beach weekly update newsletter. Sign up for weekly roundups of our top stories, news and culture from the Myrtle Beach area. This newsletter is hand-curated by a member of our Myrtle Beach news staff. Email Sign Up! "There's no way you're going to protect your property to the extent that it's not going to be unscathed in storm surge," Webster said about residents being hesitant to evacuate. "Hopefully it's built enough to where it's still there when you come back, but the damage will be there." If your zone is told to evacuate, Ellis said it is important to know where you're going to evacuate to. While both Georgetown and Horry counties will have emergency pop-up evacuation shelters ready if needed, both Ellis and Webster recommended talking to family or friends who live inland about possible evacuations, as finding shelter is up to each individual. The main evacuation route in Georgetown, Ellis said, is U.S. 17 through downtown Georgetown to S.C. 521, which will eventually lead to Columbia. Horry County's evacuation routes can be found on its website. Even if you have lived through a hurricane before, still prepare and don't overestimate yourself. Though both Georgetown and Horry Counties have seen an influx of new residents move into them in the last few years who may have never experienced a hurricane before, lifelong residents should still prepare themselves every year, Webster said. "A lot of folks who've been through named hurricanes here still have not been through hurricane conditions," Webster said. "An example was with Florence, we barely saw hurricane winds in this area. We saw a tremendous amount of flooding from the rainfall, but we haven't had a direct impacts from a category three hurricane or higher storms since Hugo in 1989." 2020 was the fifth consecutive above normal Atlantic hurricane season according to the National Oceanic and Atmosphere Association, and it said this escalation is in part due to warmer Atlantic sea surface temperatures. As storms become more intense and happen more often, Murray-Tuite said it is important all residents be prepared, no matter how long they have lived in the region. "Sometimes it takes a really high category to motivate some people to evacuate, so prior experience with hurricanes and how it went in the past might not be a good predictor of how the hurricane could go in the future," Murray-Tuite said. Bottom line, Ellis and Webster both said, is to listen to your local officials. If they say to evacuate, it's probably for the best, they said. "Knowledge is power." South Carolina's Emergency Management Division announced May 28 its new interactive website that will guide people through the fundamentals of being prepared for hurricanes and tropical storms, hurricane.sc. This, paired with Georgetown and Horry Counties websites, can help Grand Strand residents with more questions not detailed above, such as what to do in the event of days-long power outages, how to handle re-entry if an evacuation does happen and what categories of storms can cause what damage. "The best thing to do (to prepare for a hurricane), and there's a lot, but in very simple terms, knowledge is power, and there are many places to look for information," Webster said. "The information's the same practically no matter where you get it from, so I would just stick with the county information that's available, and just recognize the fact that hurricanes are going to happen." Some want to play in the NBA. Others dream of being on the big screen. But Jordan Harper knew growing up she wanted to be like the nurse practitioner that helped treat her acne-rosacea. "I didn't have good skin so I cared about skin care a lot and loved going to the dermatologist," the South Carolina-based nurse, influencer and entrepreneur said. "Those with good skin often don't think twice about it until they're older and start to notice fine lines or sun spots." Harper went on to get her bachelors degree in nursing followed by a two-year master's program and is now a board-certified nurse practitioner. After building an Instagram account focusing on skin care education, which now has nearly 130,000 followers, she started skin care company Barefaced. It competes with medical-grade skin care brands likes Obagi and Skinceuticals. "Most of my followers are in their late 20s and mid-30s like myself and the team, and I feel like we could be friends," Harper said. "We are the consumer." Harper took three jobs after finishing her nurse practitioner program, working at a medical spa and a plastic surgeon's office, and shadowing at a dermatologist's office, to break into the industry. She was making significantly less than her peers but with a purpose in mind, she said. "When you're passionate about something, it's easy to learn," she said. "I was pursuing what I wanted to pursue and that's all that mattered." Gaining popularity on Instagram gave her enough visibility to offer office visits in Charleston and North Augusta, which included skin care consultations, botox and other injectables. But her long-term goal was always to have her own skin care brand. "I remember telling my best friend in high school that I wanted a skin care brand, I just always thought it would happen much later in life," she said. The timing of her brand launch in November 2019 couldn't have been better. Cosmetic procedure sales have been on the rise. The global beauty industry, including skin care, generates $500 billion in annual sales, according to consulting firm McKinsey and Company. Sign up for our Greenville development newsletter. Get all the latest updates on the Upstate real estate market, more openings and closings, exclusive development news and more in your inbox each week. Email Sign Up! Barefaced is selling well enough for Harper to work on her online store full-time. She also has ten employees with a background in dermatology or aesthetics. Her Instagram account both advertises the products and educates on how to best use them. Common photos show her wearing a mirrored visor that fully covers her face to protect her skin from the sun. She also videos her daily routine for her followers. Other times she will post before and after photos, or reviews from followers that use her products. Skin care should be personalized to your skin type and skin concerns, she said. "Even if it's the most popular product, it may not be good for your skin," Harper said. "Many people who consider their skin to be 'sensitive' actually have damaged their skin barrier over time by either using the wrong product for their skin type, using too many products/exfoliants, or by layering products that don't play nicely together." Barefaced products are formulated to play nicely together, Harper said. That way, she doesn't have to worry about ingredients causing reactions with each other when products are layered. It simplifies the process of building a regimen, she said. To develop her products, Harper works with a master formulator and chemist at a clinical-grade manufacturing facility in Dallas, Texas, which also manufactures products for other skin care companies. Each company owns its formulas so they aren't shared with other brands who use the same facility. Barefaced has remained a direct-to-consumer brand for now, though Harper said she has been approached about selling the products in stores. She likes having one place for her products so that she and her team of four skin care specialists can be sure customers are using products correctly and making the best choices for their skin. At the moment, her specialists are doing about 50 consults per week. Trusting someone to tell you what to do with your skin is a responsibility Harper doesn't take lightly, she said. Her goal this year is to find ways to reward her customers with new products and a loyalty program. "Skin care is important because if you feel good about your skin, that's what you project every day into the world," she said. "If you have skin issues, it's nothing to be ashamed of, but you naturally feel more confident when you take care of it." Kingstree, SC (29556) Today Thunderstorms early, mainly cloudy late with a few lingering showers. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Locally heavy rainfall possible.. Tonight Thunderstorms early, mainly cloudy late with a few lingering showers. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 100%. Locally heavy rainfall possible. MYRTLE BEACH Tourists have been lined along U.S. 17 Bypass and U.S. 501 for about a solid two months now, yet the official kick off to summer just occurred Memorial Day weekend. At least one hotel executive is claiming the demand for rooms is generating record revenue for hoteliers, pushing the price for a hotel stay in the usually affordable vacation spot higher than it's ever been before. For years, Myrtle Beach has been listed as an affordable vacation destination by GOBankingRates. Patrick Norton, vice president of sales and marketing for Brittain Resorts and Hotels, said 2021 has been every bit the anomaly 2020 was, albeit a positive one. "While the labor shortage has been challenging to navigate, the intense demand is generating revenue records that are shattering our previous high of 2019," Norton said. "Memorial Bike Week and July 4th are historically sell-out weeks and this year looks to be no different; however, we are seeing significant increases in (average daily rates) as the increased demand has created compression." Karen Riordan, president and chief executive officer of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, said the Myrtle Beach region's occupancy rate is 19 percentage points higher than it was at this time in 2019. "Occupancy is really high and there are a lot of people really excited to be here (Memorial Day) weekend," she said. "Businesses are so excited. The optimism is through the roof." Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Karen Riordan Myrtle Beach Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Karen Riordan gets ready to speak to reporters Friday, May 28, 2021, from the chamber's hea "We do think this is an indicator for the summer. Everything that we're seeing right now... is that this is the summer of the great American road trip. We are a 90 percent drive-to market, so that does bode well for us. And if we look at the other part of the equation, air service is way, way up at MYR." Myrtle Beach is really close to 90 percent occupancy, which, Riordan said, in the travel industry is considered "really full." She said 67 percent of vacationers arriving in Myrtle Beach are repeat visitors. Riordan said anecdotally the chamber is seeing the price of rooms inch higher and higher, but Myrtle Beach is not seeing double-digit increases like other tourist destinations throughout the nation. "With that increased compression and more demand, there is an opportunity for accommodations to charge more for those rooms since they are perishable and they do want them to sell," Riordan said. "But I don't think it's going to, in any way, hurt our reputation as being a family beach and being an affordable beach and that's how we want to be seen in America and in the world." Riordan said the word 'hopeful' is the best way to describe the projection for 2021. "There's such a positive mood right now. It's like people have been released," she said. "I feel like people do see a light at the end of the tunnel in regard to COVID... and they so want to get back to doing the things they enjoy doing. There's just this level of optimism and hopefulness that certainly was not in the air in May of 2020, and I think in 2019 we took all those things for granted. "And now that we spent an entire year plus living like this, I don't think we'll ever take that for granted again." Black Bike Week Myrtle Beach 2021 Tensions began to rise Friday afternoon as confusion led to a few motorists at 17th Avenue South to exit their cars to speak to city of Myrtle Taylor Damonte, director of the Clay Brittain Jr. Center for Resort Tourism at Coastal Carolina University, said he is seeing an increase in occupancy rates, as well. "Based on the data from KeyData Metrics... vacation rental reservations for the next 60 days appear to be substantially stronger than they were during either 2020 or 2019," Damonte said. "... Of course, the hotel lodging segment suffered more in 2020 than did the vacation rentals, but hotel occupancy during most of the last four weeks this year appears to have been higher than it was even in during the same weeks of 2019." "It appears to me that the Myrtle Beach area tourism industry is once again poised to rebound from a national/international crisis before many of the long-haul international or business travel destinations will." The Myrtle Beach International Airport is experiencing the same surge of business that's performing better than their record-breaking 2019 season. The airport is coming off an April that saw arrivals reach more than 108,000, which was above the 2019 record-breaking 107,488 April arrivals. However, as of the end of April, year-to-date totals in 2019 are still outperforming this year with totals of 291,431 and 237,517, respectively. The airport is, however, on the verge of 10 new Southwest Airlines destinations, some flights occurring five times per week, while United Airlines announced three destinations. Spirit Airlines is still, by far, Myrtle Beach airport's leading carrier, followed by American Airlines and Delta. Airport officials have said MYRs recovery rate has continually outpaced the national average since June 2020. Norton said he's glad 2021 looks like it will make up for a lackluster 2020. "It's been a once-in-a-lifetime year, one that was sorely needed following the lost travel season 2020," he said. NORTH CHARLESTON The calls came swiftly, one after another. Something horrible was happening in Deas Hill. The phone rang, but no one picked up. On one end of the line, a person pleaded frantically. "Come on baby," they said. "Stay alive for me. Please stay alive. I'm calling EMS right now. Oh my God. Come on man, come on." A woman's screams filled the background. Ten seconds passed. "This is 911. Please do not hang up. Your emergency is being routed to a call-taker." The prerecorded message came up often in more than 40 minutes of dispatch audio released to The Post and Courier by Charleston County officials on May 28. In all, frantic calls to 911 paint a fuller picture of a mass shooting that has rocked the quiet neighborhood of Deas Hill. On the night of May 22, a daytime children's event devolved into what authorities have called a raucous party complete with a stage, security personnel and a bar. Alcohol flowed freely, including to minors. Around 10:30 p.m., dozens of shots from a yet-unknown number of shooters tore through the night, initially wounding 14 people. Charleston County Coroner Bobbi Jo ONeal later said one of the victims succumbed to her injuries. Ronjanae Smith, 14, died of a gunshot wound at 6:54 p.m. May 23 at Medical University Hospital, almost a day after she was shot, the coroner said. Several residents previously described the chaotic scene to Post and Courier reporters. Teenagers fled active gunfire. Some took shelter in neighbors' homes while others frantically tried to find Piggly Wiggly Drive, the only way in or out of the enclave. In one recording, a caller and the people nearby can be heard out of breath as the sound of dozens of gunshots cracked in the background. The gunfire comes in rapid bursts, too many shots to accurately discern. There are muffled voices and screaming. A dispatcher does not answer before the call ends. "I need EMS now," a man said in another call. "One of my peoples just got shot." A dispatcher asks for the address, which the caller provides. The dispatcher instructs the caller to take his shirt off and use it to apply pressure to the victim's wound. "How many times was she shot?" the dispatcher said. A female comes on the line and says she thinks the victim was hit once. Several people yell in the background while the dispatcher tries to ask for information about the shooters and where they are. The call abruptly ends before the question is answered. About 9 minutes into the recording, one of the victims places a 911 call. She can be heard breathing heavily into the phone while the line rings. "I have been shot," she said, after the dispatcher answers. "I have been shot in my arm. I was at a party and they started shooting." The dispatcher asks where she was and tells the victim there is help on the way. "You've got help on the way? They keep constantly shooting. My car is over there and I don't know where my friends are." "All right, I want you to get yourself hidden," the dispatcher said. "Do you have someone with you that can help control the bleeding?" "Yes," the victim said. The dispatcher continues to ask for information, including whether she saw who was shooting. The victim replies that she didn't see who shot her. "I'm trying to hold down pressure on it, but it hurts," the victim said. "Please send help. Please. I'm sitting on the ground, trying to stay safe." Police arrive and the dispatcher tells her to go to them if the shooting has stopped. Someone in the background tells the victim to calm down. "My momma's gonna freak," the victim said. "Hello? They're trying to get an officer now." In all, the call lasts about nine minutes before officers arrive and start to help the victim, who tells the lawmen she's 17 years old. A series of North Charleston police supplemental reports, also released to The Post and Courier on May 28, shed more light on the shooting and the chaotic scene that followed. Many of the reports are brief and describe officers arriving in the area and helping victims. Some people were shot in the extremities or suffered minor injuries, the reports said. One of the documents describes the event as a graduation party. Another report describes a large crowd "of what appeared to be several hundred teenagers," fleeing from the shooting. "While on location I observed 100+ subjects fleeing from the location and numerous subjects on the ground around the location suffering from apparent gunshot wounds," an officer wrote in another supplemental report. "I then observed a Black female subject on the ground in front of a makeshift DJ stage suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the face." The deadly shooting and its aftermath have brought a spotlight to a community used to quiet. Deas Hill is sandwiched between Rivers Avenue, a rail yard and Interstate 26. Residents told The Post and Courier their community was a good place to raise a family, somewhere neighbors looked out for one another. Outsiders didn't typically come in. The party, and shooting it led to, brought an unwanted part of the outside world to their piece of North Charleston, residents told The Post and Courier. Now they worry their community will never be the same. Syndicated and guest columns represent the personal views of the writers, not necessarily those of the editorial staff. The editorial department operates entirely independently of the news department and is not involved in newsroom operations. Skinner, Frances Frances Lawrence Skinner, 96, passed from this life to her eternal home on Friday May 28, 2021 dying peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Frances was born to Rufus Earl and Clyda Wiggins Lawrence in Elim, SC. After graduating with a BA from Coker College, Frances moved to Charleston, SC working for the FBI and later as the Secretary for Citadel Square Baptist Church, where she met the love of her life, Dr. William Skinner. After their marriage in 1947, they made the decision to surrender their lives to fulfilling the Gospel of Jesus Christ and began their 38 year commitment to the people of Paraguay as full-time medical missionaries through the International Mission Board of Southern Baptist Convention. Frances possessed many talents among which were organizing the Nutritional Services for Centro Medico Bautista in Asuncion, Paraguay in its earliest beginning in 1952 and working with the Christian Radio Broadcast Outreach in Asuncion, Paraguay. For Frances, organization and administration were gifts that she expressed in many circumstances. Frances had a strong devotion to Bible teaching and led many classes, often under a mango tree.She had an amazing ear for music and became the music director playing the autoharp in the various outdoor worship settings, as she and her husband began churches and organized many prayer meetings and mobile clinics in Paraguay.Frances later became an accomplished harpist and developed her skill on the Paraguayan harp. It was Frances literary skills that the events of their journey as missionaries were chronicled and later became the material for her book, Adventures in Paraguay. Frances worked tirelessly by her husbands side and often took on the role of nurse and health educator with him which earned her the honorable distinction, Doctora, by the people they served in the remotest places in Paraguay. Following their retirement from missionary service, Frances enjoyed traveling, teaching Sunday School, fishing and catching the largest Walleye on Eagle River, Ontario, and participating in the establishment of The Paraguay Baptist Medical Center Foundation with their dear friends, Neal and Gail Buchannan and many others. Frances was preceded in death by her husband, William and her grandson William Lee Skinner; and is survived by two of her siblings, Dr. Charles Lawrence and Gene Morrison and her four children:Dr. Janice (William) Algea, Dr. William Lawrence (Laura) Skinner, Dr. Glenn Skinner, Peggy (Mark) Sims, and her 13 Grandchildren and their spouses, and 19 Great Grandchildren, and 3 Great-Great Grandchildren. She was cared for lovingly by Alice Grimes and Charlotte Watson, to whom her family is very grateful. Now there is in store for me the crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day- and not only to me, but also to all who have longed for his appearing. II Timothy 4:8. Funeral services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Tuesday, June 1, 2021 at the Woodlawn-Roesch-Patton Funeral Home in Nashville, Tennessee. Burial will follow at Woodlawn Memorial Park. Visitation will begin at 9:00 a.m. Tuesday at the funeral home. Expressions of sympathy may take the form of donations (tax deductible) to: The Skinner Fund for Nursing Students c/o Paraguay Baptist Medical Center Foundation 4101 West Green Oaks Blvd. Ste. 305, #175 Arlington, TX 76016 Milner& Orr Funeral Home of Paducah is in charge of local arrangements. Note: We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email circulation@postregister.com for help creating one. "The ratepayers of the borough and the authority should not be left to assume the unreimbursed authority costs." Official Pottstown protest of the sewer system sale Pull Quote "Over the past few months, I have had the opportunity to connect with a few of my classmates of color. And I have to say that their experiences here in the district were not as rosy as mine were." Elizabeth Brody, Spring-Ford alum Pull Quote PennDOT announces plans for eight road and bridge upgrades in Berks in 2021 Only if he or she keeps quiet about it, apparently. From the notoriously crazy city of Minneapolis comes this story: A Minneapolis Public Schools teacher was placed on leave this week for allegedly wearing a Trump mask to school on the anniversary of George Floyds death. What on Gods green Earth does a Trump mask have to do with the anniversary of Floyds death? But that is how the Minneapolis Public Schools framed the issue, and the school district implies a connection: The statement did not include any information about the teachers identity or their [sic] place of employment but reaffirmed the districts commitment to fighting bias, racism and microaggressions. We want to be clear: Every student in our school deserves to be treated with respect and dignity. Creating a welcoming, affirming culture is part of our ongoing work as a school district, including addressing bias, racism and microaggressions, said Minneapolis Public Schools. Each of our students have inherent value, and race and ethnicity are important parts of who we are and how we experience the world, the district added. In other words, the Minneapolis Public Schools are committed to a racist agenda, and a teacher wearing a MAGA mask, or some other pro-Trump symbol, somehow contradicts that agenda. To be fair, they may be right. If promoting racism is your goal, a pro-Trump mask can legitimately be seen as a threat. Trumpists believe that we are all Americans and we should put America first. That is like a clove of garlic to a vampire; liberals see political advantage in fomenting race hatred. So the first sign of dissent by a teacher must be snuffed out. I am curious to know whether a teacher who wore an Obama Hope mask, or a mask celebrating Joe Biden or any other Democrat, would similarly be suspended because it was the anniversary of George Floyds death. Or for any other reason. I will hazard a wild guess that it wouldnt happen. Then again, it doesnt need to happen, since the far Left is totally in control of public school classrooms. There are only a few outliers, like the teacher who was suspended in this instance, who even dream of rocking the left-wing boat. Doctor who has helped lead the fight against COVID-19 in Wales awarded MBE A doctor who has helped lead the fight against COVID-19 in Wales has been honoured by the Queen. Professional Lead for Health Protection at Public Health Wales, Dr Giri Shankar, has been awarded an honorary MBE by Her Majesty in recognition of his services to public health in Wales. Giri, originally from Bangalore in India, has played a major role in the response to the Coronavirus pandemic in his role as Incident Director. Giri said, To be recognised in this way is a real privilege. I have always seen my work as opportunity to serve the public and my interest has only ever been in doing things for the common good. Ive always been a firm believer that whatever you do, you should do with sincerity, devotion, and dedication. And thats what Ive tried to do throughout the pandemic. I am very grateful for the great team that I am part of and for the support that I get from my CEO Tracey Cooper and Chairperson Jan Williams. Dr Tracey Cooper, Chief Executive at Public Health Wales, said: I am delighted that Giris tireless work and commitment has been recognised in this way. He has been a key member of our amazing team who been at the forefront of the public health response to the Coronavirus pandemic in Wales and is an inspiration to us all. Giri is an exceptionally dedicated professional and a really great colleague who has become a well-known face and voice across Wales over the past 18 months. Together with all the staff at Public Health Wales, I offer him my congratulations. We are incredibly proud of him. Thank you Giri and well done from all of us. Jan Williams, Chair of Public Health Wales said, Members of the Public Health Wales Board join with me in sending Giri our warmest congratulations on this very well-deserved award. Giris leadership, professionalism and commitment have been exemplary throughout the pandemic and we are delighted that his selfless dedication to protecting the people of Wales has been recognised in this special way. Giris contribution has far exceeded what anyone could reasonably have expected of him and the people of Wales owe him a great debt of gratitude. We are so proud of him and hope that he and his family really enjoy this fitting honour. Giri joins a number of other Public Health Wales professionals who have been honoured for their outstanding response to covid-19 mobilisation and all represent the whole organisation. Wed also like to take this opportunity to reiterate how proud we are of all Public Health Wales staff for their outstanding work during the pandemic. Giri joined Public Health Wales in 2016 from Public Health England where he was Interim Deputy Director of Health Protection for the Public Health England East of England Centre. After training in Bangalore, India, Giri moved to the UK to complete his public health training. His lead areas include control of communicable diseases, emergency preparedness, vaccine preventable diseases, tuberculosis, research and development and field epidemiology training programme. ADVERTISEMENT Romania has started vaccinating children aged 12 to 15 on Saturday, before the official approval from Brussels, local media reported. Two mobile vaccination stations were set up in a public park in Bucharest to administer the jabs to children, online news portal hotnews.ro reported. The units used the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine. Parents or guardians must give their consent. On Friday, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) gave its approval to the vaccine for children aged 12 to 15, but the EU Commission is yet to give its authorisation. (NAN) Lanre Tejuoso, the newly-appointed Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council, University of Lagos, has prayed God to prevent any further crisis in the university. We pray that the evil witnessed in the times past, we shall witness no more; love will radiate within the council. It is our prayers that we will take this university, which remains one of Africas pride, to greater heights very soon, Mr Tejuoso, who represented Ogun Central in the 8th National Assembly, said in Lagos. He spoke at a church service to celebrate the 60th birthday anniversary of the institutions Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Management Services), Obinnaya Chukwu, on Thursday night. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Mr Tejuoso the universitys Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of Governing Council on April 10. The governing council was inaugurated on April 19. Mr Tejuoso succeeded Wale Babalakin, who resigned following a protracted crisis between him and the Vice-Chancellor of the university, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe. His speech at the church service was the first time Mr Tejuoso would speak publicly in his capacity as the Pro Chancellor of the University of Lagos. He told the congregation that committing all the councils activities to Gods hands would be key to achieving all its dreams. It is not a mere coincidence that I am speaking to this kind of large audience for the first time in my capacity as the pro chancellor, in a church. I want to thank God that my first public speech in this university is in the church, and I believe that with this, God is telling something. I believe that this foundation will make our tenure a very spiritually successful one, he said. Mr Tejuoso noted that the occasion was to honour Mr Chukwu, and prayed God to make him to age gracefully. Today is to celebrate our brother, a professor of repute. I rejoice with you on this special celebration of your diamond jubilee and pray for more wisdom and good health to ensure graceful ageing, he said. He said that he had known Mr Chukwu for less than 60 days and had noticed from his carriage that he lived a fulfilling 60 years. Earlier, Mr Ogundipe, a professor of Botany, said that Mr Chukwus academic excellence and leadership skills had assisted in shaping the universitys Department of Marine Sciences and the entire Faculty of Sciences. According to him, Mr Chukwu had built for himself, a strong reputation of excellence and discipline. ADVERTISEMENT These rare attributes have endeared you to the hearts of many. In addition to your continuous loyalty to the system, you have contributed immensely to building structures at various levels that you have had the opportunity to serve in the university. As Dean of School of Postgraduate Studies, Director, Quality Assurance and SERVICOM, and Director, Academic Planning, you raised the standards and left footprints. As a representative of congregation on the governing council, you stood firmly for ideas that brought development to the university and spoke vehemently against any idea that sought to undermine the institution, he said. Ogundipe said that Chukwus passion for the university was very visible throughout the crisis that almost consumed the university from 2017 to 2020. Today, I celebrate you and welcome you to the club of 60 and pray that God will continue to strengthen you and provide the health and energy required to continue to impact the world positively, Ogundipe prayed. Addressing the congregation, Mr Chukwu, a professor of Marine Science, thanked God for sparing his life. He said he would remain grateful for Gods grace that had been seeing him through, even in turbulent times. He said that Gods mercy rescued him on February 14, when he went down with COVID-19. It is not that I am more holy than those that could not come out of it; it is simply Gods mercy and grace. I pray that God, in His infinite mercy, will rest the souls of the departed in Jesus Mighty Name, he prayed. Mr Chukwu thanked all those who came to honour him, and prayed God to give them more reasons to celebrate. (NAN) The odds are stacked against pupils of LEA Primary School, Wuna, located in a rustic community in the Gwagwalada Area Council of Abuja, Nigerias capital city, as their education hangs in the balance. While schools reopened in Abuja, after the coronavirus pandemic lockdown in October 2020, seven-year-old Amina Ibrahim and her mates also resumed at the Wuna school; only to be faced with challenges that have now become an obstacle to their smooth learning. A windstorm, which struck while they were away during the lockdown, destroyed parts of the school buildings. The storm, which blew off the roofs of two of the four blocks of classrooms, is a costly one for a school that had been suffering from acute shortage of basic facilities. With five classrooms in the two affected blocks gone, pupils of different grades are now put in the same classrooms in an era when social distancing and other COVID-19 preventive measures are still strongly recommended. Our reporter spoke with several teachers, who asked not to be named for fear of victimisation, over the state of affairs of the school which has a total enrolment population of 348 pupils 166 boys and 182 girls. According to the teachers, the shortage of facilities occasioned by the windstorm made the school authorities resort to merging the pupils of Early Child Education (E.C.E) with those of Primary 1. We have just resumed for the 3rd Term (April 19, 2021), and the rains are here. Now, Primaries 1 and 2 as well as the Early Child Education pupils have no classroom of their own due to the havoc caused by the windstorm that affected their classrooms. Pupils toilet was destroyed too, a teacher said. Our reporter also found out from the teachers that pupils of Primary 2 and 3 are being taught together because the formers classroom was vandalised by the windstorm. As an interim measure, we had to merge the two classes, despite the attendant challenges of managing the pupils, one teacher said. Only primaries four, five and six now have their separate classes. Aside from the effect of merging pupils of different classes together, the overcrowding resulting from it also poses huge challenges to learning. For instance, PREMIUM TIMES findings show that the E.C.E pupils numbering 34 have been merged with 36 primary 1 pupils, resulting in a situation where 70 pupils learn in a classroom meant for a maximum of 35 pupils. The same applies to the merger of primaries 2 and 3, which has led to a total of 60 pupils learning in the same classroom with carrying capacity of 35 to 40 pupils at most, according to one of the teachers. Implication of merger of classes Charles Anikweze, a professor of education measurement and evaluation at Nasarawa State University, Keffi, said the merger of multi-grade pupils in a classroom is abnormal. Such a situation is not a normal situation; it is stop-gap measure to accommodate the unforeseen circumstances, he said. ADVERTISEMENT He, however, said such a teaching strategy is doable with competent teachers. Nonetheless, multi-grade learning is still possible depending on how competent the class teacher is. It is doable because what it means is that the teacher has to plan properly to ensure that different age grades of learners with different interest levels, different entry behaviours will still benefit from his or her instruction, he said. What it means is that the teacher has to pick something from the syllabus for lower-grade pupils, handle that one in such a way that the higher-grade pupils will still show interest in what is happening, he said. Mr Anikweze, who is the Head of Educational Foundations Department, Faculty of Education at the Nasarawa university, said the teachers would also have to give different tasks to the pupils according to their ability. Although he argued that teaching of merged classes could yield good results if expertly handled, It should not be regarded as an ideal way of teaching. More troubles for Wuna school Wuna, an agrarian community, is filled with rice farms and large herds of cattle grazing around waterholes. The community, like the school, lacks potable water, which is crucial in the combat against the raging pandemic. And if not for its bad roads that get vehicles either stuck in the heaps of sand or mud during the rainy season, Wuna would present a first-time visitor a scintillating picture of a serene and thriving community that is immune from the traffic gridlocks and other daily hazards of living in the satellite towns of the FCT However, the communitys agony runs deep as the future of its children is bleak. The loss of classrooms to windstorm is only one of the woes the pupils and teachers are contending with. The pupils and teachers are vulnerable to the problem of insecurity as suspected kidnappers were recently arrested from the school building by officials of the Nigerian Army. Due to the lack of perimeter fence over the school, kidnappers use the schools classrooms as hideout at night. Just last February, some kidnap suspects were arrested by soldiers from the nearby army barracks. We appeal to the relevant government authorities to help fence the school, a teacher said, adding that no kidnap case of a pupil has so far been recorded. In general, the poor state of the schools facilities and lack of water for handwashing as a preventive measure against COVID 19, has been given as an excuse by some parents who kept their children away from school so they could assist them on their farms. COVID-19 protocols, a luxury Attached to one of the abandoned block of classrooms in the school is a banner bearing seven precautionary guidelines against the pandemic with a bold red inscription, COVID-19 is real. The conspicuous banner urged teachers and pupils to wear face masks and wash hands with soap under running. However, this reporter observed that while teachers wore their facemasks, pupils were seated in crowded classrooms without facemasks. Water remains a luxury in the entire Wuna community, let alone a running tap for handwashing. When this reporter sought to know why the school lacked the necessary safety measures, sources within the school who asked not to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the press, said efforts to get hand-washing materials like running water, soap and hand-sanitisers failed because education authorities failed to supply them. We were only asked to resume school without any of the safety measures in place. We were only instructed to observe social-distance while in class, one of the sources said. Parents COVID-19 scare Following a directive by the Federal Ministry of Education that all schools should reopen on January 18, 2021, the Wuna primary school, in compliance, resumed classes. However, parents and guardians expressed unwillingness to release their children for classes due to the state of facilities at the school at a time of global health crisis. Although very few cases of COVID-19 have been recorded in the past few months in Abuja, a cross-section of parents interviewed by our reporter said they were scared about the lack of preventive measures against the dreaded virus in the school. A 42-year-old farmer, Sani Hakuri, whose three children attend the school, said his decision to keep his kids at home was informed by the lack of COVID-19 safety measures in the school. We learnt that handwashing and personal hygiene are key in staying safe from the deadly coronavirus disease. Yet pupils are crowded in classrooms due to the destruction of the schools classrooms; safety measures are lacking in the school as well as Wuna community as a whole. It is difficult to keep these children at home, due to the way COVID-19 has impacted negatively our source of livelihoods, we appeal to the government to quickly help rebuild the schools facilities to make learning conducive for our children, Mr Hakuri added. A housewife and mother of four, Mohammad Sadika, said, We cannot afford to get our children infected with COVID-19, since we learnt it could be contracted from crowded places like schools and markets. So, we decided to keep the children at home pending when the school is provided with water for hand-washing and other items like facemasks. Mrs Sadika also pleaded with the government to help rebuild the school, and support parents with source of livelihood so as to help our children learn properly. The children of Mr Hakuri and Mrs Sadika are among the several pupils that have stopped attending school since the Wuna school resumed in January, after the lockdown. Officials at the school say about half of the students in the school have stopped attending classes. Pupils battle against parents COVID-19 fear Shehu Lawal, an eight-year-old pupil at the school, lamented the trouble of having to stay at home due to the lockdown occasioned by COVID-19 and the destruction of his classroom by the windstorm. It was hard to stay at home a little longer after the coronavirus pandemic forced everyone out of school, but it is more difficult to learn in crowded classrooms due to the destruction of our classrooms; some of our classrooms have been blown away by windstorm. Sadly, no one knows when the roofs will be repaired, Lawal said in Hausa. For 12-year-old Ayuba Amir, he was able to convince his parents to resume school in January 2021, because he is a graduating Primary six pupil. The negative effect of the lockdown as a result of the pandemic were too much on me. So, I was excited when our school reopened in January. But my parents did not want me to return to school due to the coronavirus disease. I had to convince them that I needed to finish my elementary education, and must resume to take my final examinations. As pupils, we try to keep to basic hygiene, but it is difficult because of the absence of water and hand-washing soap in our school. 10.3 million out-of-school children in Nigeria The Nigerian government in April 2021 said there were 10.3 million out-of-school children in the country. It said various interventions by stakeholders in the education sector had led to a drop from 12 million to 10.3 million. The Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Education, Sonny Echono, noted that Nigeria still had problems of access to education. As a result of COVID-19, some other children have attained school age, they have added to the number, he said. With its many problems unaddressed, Wuna and its only school, with shrinking facilities, may be adding a significant number to Nigerias out of school children. Wuna school mirror of Wuna community According to the traditional ruler of Wuna (Etsu Wuna), Isah Yusuf, his ancestors migrated from various communities within the North-central region of Nigeria to Wuna community, which literally means hunting-ground in Gbari, the predominant dialect of the people. He said the community was famous for its wild animals such as lions, kangaroos and impalas, which drew a lot of great hunters across the region to settle in what is known as Wuna today. The Etsu Wuna said that the issues of access to clean water and a modern school system as well as primary healthcare, rank top on the list of developmental challenges confronting the sprawling community. In Wuna, our wives and daughters literally spend a whole day sourcing for water from the drying pond. They take turns to scoop water from the pond. As a result, children miss school. You can see that the primary school does not have water which is desperately needed in preventing the spread of the coronavirus disease. The only borehole we have here has broken down since last year. We have written countless times to the local council authority to help us fix the water problem, there hasnt been any response to our cry, the traditional ruler lamented. Narrating how the school was destroyed, Mr Yusuf said, In April 2020, while our children were home as a result of the coronavirus disease, there was a windstorm that blew up the school roofs. You can see that a whole block was removed completely by the windstorm, while the rest of the blocks of classroom are affected. Asked if the community had drawn the attention of the Gwagwalada Area Council and the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) authority to the state of the school, the traditional ruler said, The education department of the Gwagwalada council and all concerned are aware of the fact that the school roofs and other critical learning resources like chairs are inadequate. My headache as the leader of Wuna is that our children are being denied the opportunity of acquiring the basic education which is the foundation for attaining other life aspirations. Without education, the future of our children looks bleak. The most troubling of this issue is that no one knows when the school will be fixed for the children to resume classes, Mr Yusuf said. Closely related to the inadequacy of elementary education in Wuna is the absence of secondary education and its attendant consequences. We are faced with a number of challenges in this community. You have walked round the community, but you cant find a secondary school for our children who have completed their primary education up to junior secondary school level. Those who have graduated from here (LEA Primary School, Wuna) either trek long distances to a neighbouring community called Dukpah to attend the schools there or stay at home with their parents and work on the farms. Some of these children end up with the illegal mining activities around the community, which is not good enough for them, the traditional ruler noted. Located some miles from the 176 Guards Battalion in Gwagwalada, where an access road to the military facility is tarred up to the Nigeria Correctional Service custodial centre, Wuna is bedeviled by the problem of a dilapidated primary healthcare centre, a typical feature of many rural communities across Nigeria. A portion of the only primary healthcare centre, which is adjacent the primary school in the community, was destroyed by windstorm. The royal father said, You can see, too, that the toilet section of the primary healthcare Ccntre has been blown away by windstorm. That gives you an insight into the healthcare problems we are faced with in Wuna. Due to the lack of basic social amenities like electricity and potable water that would make life worthwhile, the nurses refused to live in the community. So, when there is an emergency like the situation I talked about earlier, its either the person is evacuated to a hospital at Gwagwalada or the person dies. Assessment in vain When our reporter visited the school in April, a teacher revealed that the level of damage to facilities at the school had been assessed by a team of supervisors from the works department of the local council in Gwagwalada. They recommended the reconstruction of the facilities, but no one knows when that will happen, the teacher said. You can see that the rains are here and by September, we will have new pupils in the school, the teacher lamented. Abuja education authorities promise survey The FCT Universal Basic Education Board (UBEB) established on November 15, 2005, and reconstituted on October 12, 2010, has the mandate to provide quality basic education, including early child care, primary, junior secondary and nomadic education, to Abuja residents. Responding to our reporters query about the deplorable state of Wuna school and the concerns of parents over the safety of their wards, Hassan Sule, the acting Executive Chairman, FCT UBEB, told our reporter that he had just taken over the headship of the agency and had directed that a survey of the facilities of the public schools in the capital city. Well, you (the reporter) have brought it to my attention. Among our mandates here, is ensuring that every child in the FCT gets quality education, and to achieve this there are things that we want to put in place which include improving infrastructure. I have already sent for a condition survey of all public primary schools in Abuja, so that we capture them in our annual school development plan. So, my staff are already carrying out the survey of all school facilities in the territory. This is to ensure that we improve the infrastructures to meet global standards. It is of a right that every Nigerian child has the right to quality education, Mr Sule said. A recent visit by our reporter to Wuna revealed that the conditions of the school in the community had not changed over a month after Mr Sule spoke about his plans for the Wuna school and other schools in Abuja. (This report was supported by the National Geographic Society (NGS)). ADVERTISEMENT The Nigerian Army says the troops of Operation Hadin Kai have eliminated 10 Boko Haram terrorists during an attempted attack on troops location in Rann, Headquarters of Kala Balge Local Government Area of Borno. The Director, Army Public Relation, Mohammed Yerima, in a statement on Saturday, said the feat was achieved barely hours into the tenure of the new Chief of Army Staff, Faruk Yahaya. Mr Yerima said that the terrorists came in their numbers mounted on gun trucks and attempted to infiltrate the main entrance to the town on Friday. He said that the troops were right on hand to counter the move and inflicted humiliating defeat on the terrorists who abandoned their evil mission and took to their heels. According him, troops chased the retreating terrorist and ensured there was no further threat to the town and the residents. Combatants successfully destroyed one of the gun trucks and recovered multiple weapons including one anti-aircraft gun, two machine guns and eight AK-47 rifles, neutralising 10 terrorists in the process, he said. (NAN) The Nigerian Army has said its men from the 6 Division Garrison, Port Harcourt and 29 Battalion, in conjunction with other security agencies, have killed seven members of the Eastern Security Network (ESN), the militant arm of pro-Biafra group, IPOB. It also said six other members of the group were arrested. The army said its men carried out the operation with the operatives of Nigerian Police, State Security Service and NSCDC. Army spokesperson, Mohammed Yerima, made this known in a statement on Saturday. According to the statement, the operation was conducted on Thursday when the combined security team conducted a Clearance/Raid Operation at suspected IPOB/ESN enclaves at Agbomchia Forest along Pipeline Road Ogali/Komkom Boundary between Eleme and Oyigbo LGAs of Rivers State. This comes a week after Nigerian security agents arrested a dismissed lance corporal allegedly responsible for training and recruiting members into the ESN. He was arrested after a top commander of the militant group, Awurum Eze, was arrested in Aba, Abia State. The group was alleged to be responsible for the killing of security agents and destruction of public properties in the South-east and South-south zones. It has, however, denied any involvement. In the statement on Saturday, the army said arms and ammunition were recovered from the camp of the group. It also said the group engaged security agents but they suffered no casualties. Read the full statement: TROOPS STORM IPOB/ESN TERRORISTS ENCLAVE IN AGBOMCHIA FOREST, RIVERS STATE, NUETRALIZE 7, ARREST 5 SUSPECTS Troops of 6 Division Garrison, Port Harcourt and 29 Battalion in conjunction with operatives of Nigerian Police, DSS, and NSCDC on Thursday, 27 May 2021, conducted a Clearance/Raid Operation at suspected IPOB/ESN enclaves at Agbomchia Forest along Pipeline Road Ogali/Komkom Boundary between Eleme and Oyigbo LGAs of Rivers State. In the fire fight that ensued during the Clearance/Raid Operation, 7 IPOB/ESN members were neutralized while 5 suspects arrested. Various items belonging to the criminals including arms and ammunition were also recovered by the security forces. The camp was promptly destroyed while suspects and corpses were handed over to the Police for further actions. There was no casualty on own troops and other security operatives as they have returned back to base in high morale. The Nigerian Army urges members of the public to always avail the troops with accurate and timely information that will help in tracking down and neutralise the so-called Unknown Gunmen (UGM) who are terrorizing the region. Mohammed Yerima Brigadier General Director Army Public Relations May, 29 2021 ADVERTISEMENT The United States government has uncovered more criminal activities involving Abidemi Rufai, the suspended aide of Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State. PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday obtained the U.S. governments court filing submitted in connection with its pending Motion for Review of Detention Order. Fraudulent claims for tax refunds The Acting U.S. Attorney, Tessa Gorman, said special agents from the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations had been investigating Mr Rufai for several years. Ms Gorman said Mr Rufai was being investigated for allegedly making fraudulent claims for tax refunds. On May 26 and 27, 2021, special agents from the Internal Revenue Service-Criminal Investigations notified the United States Attorneys Office that the IRS has been investigating the sandytangy58@gmail.com account for several years. IRS-CI determined that the sandytangy58@gmail.com account was used to submit fraudulent claims for tax refunds using American taxpayers stolen PII (Personal Identification Information). That is, Rufai filed tax returns in the names of taxpayers, using their stolen PII, and requested that tax refunds be paid out to bank accounts under Rufais control, the document stated. He was said to have filed 652 fraudulent tax returns, seeking approximately $1.6 million in fraudulent tax refunds, for the tax years 2016 through 2019. IRS-CI provided the United States Attorneys Office with information establishing that the sandytangy58@gmail.com email account was used (employing the same dot variant practice described in the Indictment) to file 652 fraudulent tax returns, seeking a total of approximately $1.6 million in fraudulent tax refunds, for the tax years 2016 through 2019, the court document obtained by PREMIUM TIMES partly read. The IRS rejected many of the filings, but accepted returns seeking approximately $900,000. The IRS is calculating the amount of refunds actually paid out on these returns. This information increases the need for detention in several respects. First, now that the loss and attempted loss associated with Rufais conduct has grown substantially. Rufai faces an even longer prison sentence, and therefore an even stronger incentive to flee. This incentive is compounded by the fact that the Grand Jury has now returned an Indictment charging Rufai with five counts of Aggravated Identity Theft, which carries a two-year mandatory sentence consecutive to any other sentence. Second, the fact that Rufai filed 652 fraudulent tax returns significantly increases the scope and seriousness of Rufais conduct, meaning that both Rufais personal history and characteristics, and the nature and circumstances of his conduct weigh even more heavily in favor of detention. Third, the extent of Rufais possession and use of stolen PII, and the economic damage caused by it, establishes that Rufai presents an economic danger to the community, Ms Gorman said. Backstory Mr Rufai was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York while heading to Nigeria on May 14. He allegedly used the identities of more than 100 Washington residents to steal more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) during the COVID-19 pandemic last year. At the end of a detention hearing held on May 19, 2021, the Magistrate of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Ramon Reyes, agreed with the government that Mr Rufai posed a serious flight risk, but found that the risk could be addressed by certain conditions of release, including a $300,000 bond. The magistrate went on to issue an order releasing Mr Rufai based on the bond in which Mr Rufais brother, who is licensed as an attorney in New York, was proposed as surety. But Mr Rufai was not released eventually because his brother did not sign the bail bond. The suspect was, therefore, remanded pending when he would provide an alternate surety. ADVERTISEMENT Following the refusal by Mr Rufais brother to stand as a surety, the defendants lawyer, Michael Barrows, on May 21, presented Nekpen Soyemi, a registered nurse, whose family comes from Nigeria. Ms Soyemi was later exposed as suspect in an investigation into an email impersonation scheme. Her husband, Idris Soyemi, is also said to have been convicted for wire fraud in 2014. The U.S. government on May 24 filed an emergency motion of stay release order before the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington at Tacoma, on May 24. The United States District Judge, Benjamin Settle, on Tuesday, granted the governments motion to stay release of Mr Rufai. ADVERTISEMENT The remaining 14 abducted students of Greenfield University were freed on Saturday after 40 days in captivity. Two other persons who were kidnapped alongside the students are also said to have been freed. The Kaduna Commissioner for Home Affairs and Internal Security, Samuel Aruwan, confirmed the release of the students to BBC Hausa Service on Saturday. The students were abducted from the private university in Kaduna State on April 20 after bandits invaded their hostels. Five of the abducted students were later killed by the bandits. The details of the release of the students were still sketchy at the time of this report but parents of the students had paid over N40 million as ransom to the kidnappers who still demanded more money. The Kaduna government had earlier adopted a policy of not negotiating with kidnappers, saying it encourages more kidnappings. However, protests were held in Kaduna and Abuja by relatives of the undergraduates who called on the state and federal government to ensure the release of the students. It is not clear if government officials were involved in the negotiations that led to the students being freed. The Executive Director, Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC), Olusegun Awolowo, has decried the use of pesticide residue in storing dried beans and other legume crops. Mr Awolowo spoke at a training programme on Suitable Storage Practices for Dried Beans on Friday in Awka. Represented by Jackson Arnold, NEPC South-east coordinator, Mr Awolowo urged beans farmers, processors and marketers to desist from such practice. He said the use of chemicals for crop preservation in the country had become worrisome. According to him, the European Union (EU) suspended the import of Nigerian dried beans due to the high amount of pesticide residue applied in their preservation. It was found that the quantity was above the maximum residue level needed, this should call for worry. This training is good for farmers, processors and marketers in the dried beans value chain, he said. He said many Nigerian farmers did not pay attention to the type of chemicals they use in crop preservation. The chemicals they use may not be banned; the issue here is that we need to stick to the required quantity. This will reduce incidents of rejection of Nigerian agricultural exports by European countries and other parts of the world, he said. Also speaking, Afolabi Bello, an assistant director in NEPC, urged bean farmers and exporters to prioritise quality production of crops. Producing quality products will enable us compete at the international market. If we do not export, we cannot survive because we need foreign exchange, he said. Patricia Pessu, executive director, Nigeria Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI), described the training as a good omen for farmers and marketers. Delivering a lecture titled Appropriate Handling of Dried Beans for Export and Food Safety, Ms Pessu said the training would tackle improper use of chemicals for food and crop storage. Represented by Grace Otitodun, chief research officer, NSPRI, she urged the participants to make good use of knowledge gained from the programme. The Commissioner for Agriculture in Anambra, Nnamdi Onukwuba, expressed the need for utmost hygiene in the food processing chain. Farmers should endeavour to produce beans and other legume crops organically, there are enough indigenous materials that can repel pests and enable better yields, he said. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reported that the theme of the programme was Conformity to European Union (EU) and Global Market Requirements to Enhance Competitiveness. ADVERTISEMENT (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) had warned Nigerians to beware of IGVM Ransomware, a file-encrypting infection that restricts access to data such as documents, images, and videos. Hadiza Umar, Head, Cooperate Affairs and External Relations of the agency, gave the warning in a statement on Saturday. Ms Umar said the virus corrupts the computer by encrypting files with the IGVM extension and attempts to extort money from victims by requesting for ransom in the form of Bitcoin cryptocurrency in exchange for access to data. She said the crypto-virus could spread in the form of web injectors, pirated software, spam emails, malicious software bundles, fake software updates, and deceptive online advertisements. How it works The primary task of IGVM ransomware virus is to check your computer system for target file formats and encrypt them using a private RivestShamirAdleman (RSA) key and once the virus locks the files, it then runs several commands via Command.Exe to delete Volume Shadow Copies from your system. It equally prevents the victims from restoring their file copies for free, using Windows tools. Next, the virus modifies Windows HOSTS file by adding a list of domains to it. These domains are mostly computer or IT-related websites. So the attackers capitalise on this measure to prevent the victim from seeking help or information online, she said. Panacea She urged Nigerians to ensure regular data backup and recovery plan for all critical information. Use application whitelisting to help prevent malicious software and unapproved programme from running. Keep operating system and software up-to-date with the latest patches. Maintain up-to-date anti-virus software, and scan all software downloaded from the internet before installing. Do not follow unsolicited web links in emails and do not download or open suspicious email attachments, she advised. The so-called decryption tool can be faulty or fail to work due to data modification on your end. It is a way of funding an illegal business model, hence citizens should avoid it. The fact that ransomware operators collect millions in ransoms each year simply encourages people to join this cybercrime industry, she said. She further urged Nigerians to report related incidents by contacting NITDA Computer Emergency Readiness and Response Team via the email support@cerrt.ng or telephone +2348178774580.(NAN) The Catholic Archbishop of Lagos, Adewale Martins, has urged the Federal Government to declare a state of emergency on insecurity in the country. In a statement e-mailed to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Saturday, the catholic archbishop said the call became necessary in order to save the country from the looming anarchy staring. According to him, incessant cases of kidnapping, murder, burning down of police stations, correctional facilities, and INEC offices nationwide, among others, have made the declaration of a state of emergency on insecurity inevitable. It is obvious that insecurity, apart from corruption, has become the single most serious problem that is facing our country today. Many innocent persons are being kidnapped for ransom, many are being attacked in their homes and displaced with their property destroyed and normal life disrupted daily. Even policemen and their stations are being deliberately attacked with impunity. What this means is that the country is gradually drifting into a state of anarchy. This, no doubt, portends a grave danger for our collective wellbeing, he said. In the statement signed by the Director of Social Communications, Anthony Godonu, the prelate bemoaned the inability of government at all levels to unravel the root causes of insecurity and bring the perpetrators and sponsors to book. Efforts to rid the country of kidnappers and bandits should include constant dialogue between representatives of the security agencies and major stakeholders such as religious leaders, traditional rulers, leaders of ethnic groups, the civil society, and political parties, the archbishop said. In addition to declaring a state of emergency, the prelate called on the federal government to roll out practical action plans with time frames within which insecurity will be brought under control. Systemic However, Mr Martins admitted that the problem of insecurity being experienced all over was part of an age-long systemic problem with governance at the national level. He also called on the National Assembly to fast-track the ongoing process of the amendment of the 1999 Constitution so as to pave the way for the creation of state police and revalidation of the federal character of the republic. These would certainly help in restoring peace and security all over the country. This is no time to play the blame game or to play politics through sectoral efforts. There must be a collective effort through a robust consultation with all stakeholders. We all must come together to fight this hydra-headed monster of insecurity that is making life difficult for our people, he explained. The Archbishop commiserated with the federal government and families of the Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru, and other military officers that lost their lives in the recent air mishap, saying the only way to honour them was to overcome insecurity and make the country a better place for all Nigerians. The prelate then appealed to the various ethnic groups agitating for self-determination to shun violence and embrace dialogue so as not to exacerbate the insecurity in the country. He reminded the political leaders that Nigerians are going through a lot of hardship occasioned by the economic downturn, calling for various forms of interventions to help cushion the hardship. The archbishop also called on well-meaning Nigerians to be their brothers keeper by extending hands of charity to the less privileged and the downtrodden in the society. (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT Rail passengers heading to tourist destinations along North Wales coast urged to plan ahead Passengers using the Wales and Borders network this bank holiday weekend are being encouraged to plan ahead. With good weather forecast across the UK the rail network is expected to be busy as people head to tourist destinations along the north Wales coast. There are also a number of events taking place which are open to the public, including horse racing at Chester Racecourse. Leyton Powell, TfW Safety and Sustainability Director, said: With fine weather predicted for the bank holiday weekend were anticipating services will be busy all over the Wales and Borders network. Where possible, were putting on additional services to popular destinations such as Barry Island but capacity will be restricted to support social distancing and queuing systems will be in place at some stations. Our advice to everyone is check your journey plans before you travel, use our Capacity Checker tool to see which services are likely to be busy, buy a ticket in advance and follow our Travel Safer guidance. Face coverings must also be worn on public transport, unless exempt. Anti-social behaviour will not be tolerated, and our security staff and the British Transport Police will be patrolling our network. To report an incident to the BTP, text 61016. Planned improvement work taking place over the bank holiday weekend means there will be no trains between Chester and Manchester Piccadilly and Liverpool South Parkway from midday on Saturday to midday on Monday. Replacement buses will be available. Rail updates: https://www.journeycheck.com/tfwrail/ Capacity Checker: https://tfwrail.wales/planning-ahead ADVERTISEMENT Former Niger Delta agitators said on Saturday that they were willing to cooperate with the federal government toward the overall development of the region. Tonye Bobo, leader of the Third Phase Presidential Amnesty Programme and member of the Special Committee of the Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP) made the pledge on behalf of the group at a stakeholders meeting in Benin City, Edo State. He said the dawn of a new era had come in the Niger Delta and that the people had decided to embrace peace for the socio-economic development of the region. We are already getting it right. As peace ambassadors, we have to change the narrative in the Niger Delta. We want the public to know that Niger Delta is now a region where people can do business without any molestation, he stated. Mr Bobo disclosed that all necessary measures had been put in place to stop incessant protests and the blockade of highways to press home certain demands. According to him, talks are ongoing toward sustainable peace in the area with the Interim Administrator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, Milland Dikio. He described Mr Dikio, a retired army colonel, as an upright man and one with the interest of the people at heart. Todays meeting is very powerful, looking at the calibre of persons present. Some of the stakeholders that could not make it to the meeting sent words of encouragement, support, and appreciation for the efforts we are making for the needful to be done, he said. The spokesperson of the group, Godstime Ogidigba, said one of the decisions taken during the meeting was the confirmation of the executive committee led by Mr Bobo for two years, after which election of the groups leadership would be conducted. He also said it was decided that the groups chairmanship position would be rotational. (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT Troops of Sector 2, Operation Hadin Kai, has successfully raided another suspected Boko Haram logistics base and arrested two fuel suppliers in the Gujba area of Yobe. The Director, Army Public Relations, Mohammed Yerima, in a statement said the raid was conducted on Saturday, following a sting operation. The brigadier general said the gallant troops also recovered several items such as 11 Jerri cans loaded with petrol, six Jerri cans of diesel and nine empty Jerri cans hidden in different locations in Gujba. He said that the arrested suspects were currently in the custody of the troops for preliminary investigation, adding that they would be handed over to the relevant agencies for prosecution. ALSO READ: Nigerian Army arrests suspected Boko Haram fuel suppliers He said that the acting Chief of Army Staff, Faruk Yahaya, had commended the troops for the feat. According to him, Mr Yahaya enjoined the troop to sustain the tempo and clear all suspected fortress and hideouts of the criminal elements. (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT President Muhammadu Buhari will depart Abuja on Sunday for Accra, Ghana to attend an emergency Extraordinary Summit of ECOWAS, convened to discuss recent political developments in Mali. The meeting is at the instance of the Chairman of the Authority of Heads of State and Government of ECOWAS and President of Ghana, Nana Akufo-Addo. Prior to the Extraordinary Summit, the President had met with the Special Envoy and ECOWAS mediator in Mali, former President Goodluck Jonathan, who briefed him on the latest developments in the country following his meeting with key political actors in the West African country. As the situation in Mali continues to evolve, Nigeria had condemned the May 24 military coup, the subsequent detention of the president and prime minister by soldiers, and called for the immediate and unconditional release of all civilian officials detained. President Buhari will be accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama; Minister of Defence, Bashir Salihi Magashi; Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Richard Adebayo; and the Director-General of National Intelligence Agency (NIA), Ahmed Abubakar. He is expected back in Abuja at the end of the one-day Summit. Femi Adesina Special Adviser to the President (Media & Publicity) May 29, 2021 ADVERTISEMENT Nigeria on Friday recorded 63 new coronavirus infections in seven states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). The new figure raised the total number of infections in the country to 166,254, an update published by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) Friday night indicates. According to the update, no new death was recorded from the virus, which has already claimed 2,071 lives in the country. The data shows that the new COVID-19 cases were reported in seven states and Abuja. Lagos recorded 25 cases, closely followed by Ondo with 22. Rivers State reported six while Akwa Ibom and Kaduna reported three each. Also, Kwara State reported two while Ebonyi and FCT reported one each. A breakdown of the data shows that 11 people were discharged on Friday after testing negative for the virus. This brings the total number of discharged persons after treatment to 156,546. Possible spike Nigeria has continued to report low COVID-19 cases since February but the recent declaration of more than 200 travellers as health hazards for evaded mandatory protocol, has raised the peoples fear of a possible spike. The country has, however, claimed she is taking precautionary measures to prevent importation of cases from countries experiencing a surge in COVID-19, hence, the declaration of violators as possible health hazards. The Nigerian government had issued a news protocol on May 1, insisting that non-Nigerians who had travelled to any of three highy-affected countries in the previous 14 days would not be allowed into Nigeria. It also said passengers(s) arriving in Nigeria from other destinations must observe a seven-day self-isolation at their final destination However, the government through the Presidential Steering Committee on COVID-19 has declared over 200 travellers wanted for allegedly violating protocols put in place to halt the spread of the disease. While working to prevent imported COVID-19 cases, Nigeria is also continuing with its vaccination programme with almost 2 million Nigerians receiving their first of two shots of the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. Over 4,000 people have also received second dose of the vaccine, according to the Executive Director of the National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), Faisal Shuaib. ADVERTISEMENT Governor David Umahi of Ebonyi State has charged security agencies in the state to defend themselves against armed aggressors who attack them and destroy their facilities. Mr Umahi gave the charge on Friday in Abakaliki while receiving the Deputy Inspector General of Police (DIG) in charge of South-east zone, Joseph Egbunike, in his office. The governor, who reiterated his support for the Operation Restore Peace, a police initiative in the zone, charged security agents to engage anyone who attacked them. It is wrong for you to be holding a gun and someone will attack, kill and snatch your gun. You do not need anyones permission to defend yourselves. I state clearly that if a youth has the courage to attack a security agent with a gun, such a security agent should shoot to defend himself if he can. I have made this point severally and will never regret doing so, he said. He said the security officials killed were humans too and also peoples fathers and mothers. The governor however, complained about shortage of police personnel in the state and urged the DIG to post more to the state for adequate security. You should not allow your personnel posted to the state to leave because we need them and will do everything possible to accommodate them, he said. Mr Egbunike in his remark, thanked the governor for his reception and noted that he was in the state to oversee the activities of polices Operation Restore Peace. Dialogue and diplomacy solve all issues of marginalisation, injustice, inequality, among others and this is exemplified with the prevailing peace in Europe, he said. While charging the people to cooperate with the police to solve the prevailing security challenges in the zone and country, Mr Egbunike said the challenging days in the country would soon be over. Security officials have been the targets of deadly attacks in Nigerias South-east and South-south regions for several weeks now. Facilities belonging to the Independent National Electoral Commission in the two geopolitical zones have also been set ablaze in similar attacks. ADVERTISEMENT Vietnam on Saturday said it had detected a new Coronavirus (COVID-19) variant comprising characteristics from both the British and Indian strains of the virus, state media reported. Nguyen Thanh Long, Vietnams minister of health, said the new hybrid variant was detected through genetic sequencing on COVID-19 patients in Vietnam, according to local newspaper VnExpress. Both the British and Indian variants of the virus are said to be more transmissible than other strains, which may explain in part why Vietnam is reporting record coronavirus cases. Vietnam has been praised for its response to the pandemic, yet after a month without any community transmissions of the virus, local transmission cases emerged again on April 27, and on May 15, Vietnam recorded its first COVID-19 death in eight months. The new cases was linked to a 27-year-old man who returned to Vietnam from Japan on April 7, and a Chinese expert entering the country for work, both of whom tested positive after completing their mandatory two-week quarantine. Vietnam has officially recorded 6,396 Coronavirus cases, including 1,492 imported cases and 47 deaths since the pandemic began. Over 3,000 of those reported cases have been confirmed in since April 27. (dpa/NAN) ADVERTISEMENT The Nigeria Army has restated its commitment to tackling numerous security challenges in various parts of the country. Danjumma Ali-Keffi, General Officer Commanding 1 Division Nigeria Army Kaduna made the remarks during the passing out of 80 regular recruit intake at the Depot Nigeria Army Zaria on Saturday. The military has been battling various security challenges occasioned by the activities of Boko Haram terrorists, armed bandits, kidnappers, IPOB and other criminal elements. Ali-Keffi, who was the Reviewing Officer and Special Guest of Honour at the event said the army will not rest on our oars until this country is safe for all of us. He noted that since its establishment in 1924, Depot Nigeria Army has the mandate of transforming able-bodied civilians into soldiers to meet the manpower requirement of the Nigeria Army. This function is of utmost importance, considering the numerous challenges of bedevilling our beloved country. It is noteworthy that as you pass out today, the strength of Nigeria army has been enhanced by 6,400 able-bodied men and women. He added that the Depot has been able to evolve innovative ways of improving the standard of training in the Nigeria Army. Mr Ali-Keffi noted that the Nigeria Army has been yielding a positive result, which is evident by the robust fighting spirit of the soldiers in various theatre of operations. With the excellent display of drill exhibited on this parade ground today, I am certain that you have acquired the basic training that is required of you to be good soldiers. He reminds the soldiers of the Oath of Allegiance administered to them and advised them to avoid acts that are capable of tarnishing the image of the Nigerian Army and the nation in general. NAN reports that the ceremony was observed while flags of many Nigerian formations at the parade ground flew at half-mast in honour of the late Chief of Army Staff, Ibrahim Attahiru. Seven gunshots were also observed in honour of Attahiru and 10 others who died in the crashed military aircraft on Friday, May 21. (NAN) Abidemi Rufai, a suspended aide of Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State, has now been charged with alleged conspiracy and wire fraud in a Unites States (U.S.) court. Acting Attorney, Tessa Gorman, disclosed in a statement seen by PREMIUM TIMES on Saturday that the charges are before the Western District Court of Washington at Tacoma. The statement said a federal grand jury has ratified the charges involving aggravated identity theft, a scheme he allegedly used to steal over $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington State Employment Security Department. A grand jury in the U.S. is a group of citizens empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. In total, nine counts of wire fraud and five counts of aggravated identity theft were ratified by the grand jury against the defendant. Mr Rufai is expected to remain in detention at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, for now. But the acting attorney said, prosecutors have asked U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle to order Rufai detained and transported to the Western District of Washington for arraignment on the indictment. Indictments The indictment alleges that Rufai used the stolen identities of more than 100 Washington residents to file fraudulent claims with ESD for pandemic-related unemployment benefits. Rufai also filed fraudulent unemployment claims with Hawaii, Wyoming, Massachusetts, Montana, New York, and Pennsylvania. Rufai used variations of a single e-mail address in a manner intended to evade automatic detection by fraud systems. By using this practice, Rufai made it appear that each claim was connected with a different email account, part of the statement seen also read. The prosecutors alleged that Rufai caused the fraud proceeds to be paid out to online payment accounts such as Green Dot accounts, or wired to bank accounts controlled by money mules. According to the government, some of the proceeds were mailed to the Jamaica, New York address of Rufais brother. Mr Rufai was also said to be residing at his brothers home during part of the period of the fraud. Law enforcement determined more than $288,000 was deposited into an American bank account controlled by Rufai between March and August 2020, the U.S. attorney added. Ms Gorman further said conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud are punishable by up to 30 years in prison when the offence relates to benefits paid in connection with a presidentially-declared disaster or emergency, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. She added that aggravated identity theft is punishable by a mandatory minimum two-year sentence to run consecutive to any sentence imposed on the other counts of conviction. Background Mr Rufai was arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York while heading to Nigeria on May 14. He allegedly used the identities of more than 100 Washington residents to steal more than $350,000 in unemployment benefits from the Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) during the COVID-19 pandemic last year. At the end of a detention hearing held on May 19, 2021, the Magistrate of the District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Ramon Reyes, agreed with the government that Mr Rufai posed a serious flight risk, but found that the risk could be addressed by conditions of release, including a $300,000 bond. ADVERTISEMENT The magistrate went on to issue an order releasing Mr Rufai based on the bond in which Mr Rufais brother, who is licensed as an attorney in New York, was proposed as surety. Complications Mr Rufai was not released because his brother did not sign the bail bond. The suspect was then remanded pending when he would provide an alternate surety. Following the refusal by Mr Rufais brother to stand as a surety, the defendants lawyer, Michael Barrows, on May 21, presented Nekpen Soyemi, a registered nurse, whose family comes from Nigeria. Ms Soyemi was later exposed as suspect in an investigation into an email impersonation scheme. Her husband, Idris Soyemi, is also said to have been convicted for wire fraud in 2014. The U.S. government on May 24 filed an emergency motion of stay release order before the United States District Court for the Western District of Washington at Tacoma, on May 24. Justice Benjamin Settle, on Tuesday, granted the governments motion to stay the release of Mr Rufai as U.S. uncovered more criminal activities involving the suspect. ADVERTISEMENT The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site of what was once Canadas largest Indigenous residential school. Reuters reported that the children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978. The remains were found with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist, according to the Tkemlups te Secwepemc Nation. More bodies may be found because there are more areas to search on the school grounds, she told Reuters. We know that through (The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada) how many missing children there are, and we know that there is still a lot of work, and we do know that many other first Nations who have had residential schools within their communities want to use new technology to be able to find their lost loved ones as well. A 2015 report established that there was harsh mistreatment inflicted on Indigenous children at the institutions. It said at least 3,200 children had died amid abuse and neglect, and it said it had reports of at least 51 deaths at the Kamloops school alone between 1915 and 1963. The investigation, according to Reuters documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s. It found more than 4,100 children died while attending residential school. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canadas largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery. The Kamloops school operated between 1890 and 1969 when the federal government took over operations from the Catholic Church and operated it as a day school until it closed in 1978. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the discovery as heartbreaking on Friday. The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart, he wrote on Twitter. It is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our countrys history. I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you. I hope that the National Assembly will follow through with a number of the crucial recommendations made by our Party and other organisations. As a country, we cannot afford to miss the opportunity to deliver a constitution that works for the people and supports their aspirations. Nothing delights me more than the opportunity to rethink our political system to encourage the emergence of a nation that works for all Nigerians. The ongoing Public Hearing on Constitutional Amendment is one of such opportunities. I hope that the Nigerian people and the political elite will engage in this process with the seriousness that it deserves. The Youth Party (a political organisation that Im privileged to lead) has submitted its recommendations and made presentations in five of the six geo-political zones of Nigeria, on the proposed alteration to the provisions of the 1999 Constitution, during the conduct of the momentous Public Hearing, which ended on Thursday May 27. The issues proposed by our party include judicial and electoral reforms, local government administration, allocation of funds, state police, gender equality, residency and indigeneship, local government elections and public revenue, fiscal federalism, and revenue allocation, among others. In our recommendations on gender equity and increased participation of women and vulnerable groups in governance, we are suggesting that a certain number or percentage of women and people with disability should be stated in the Constitution to guide the political parties in the fielding of candidates and also the governors/president in the choice of their cabinet members. Hence, we recommend the amendment of sections Section 48, 49, 91, 71, 72 to reflect the National Gender Policy by ensuring that 35 per cent of the composition of the national and state parliaments shall be reserved for women, to promote gender diversity. Equally important, on the rights of girls and women, we have recommended that the legal age of marriage be put at 18 years. On local government administration and autonomy, we recommended the deletion of Sections 3(6), 7(6) (a), 162(5), 8(5) and (6) and 153(1) (f) of the Constitution, which gives unfettered opportunity to the Federal Government to interfere with the power of States over the creation and management of the local government system. Expunging these constitutional provisions will place the local government system in their proper position under a truly federal structure. State governments should also be given the constitutionally guaranteed and unfettered power to create as many local governments as they deem fit. On public revenue, fiscal federalism, and revenue allocation, we are recommending that Section 162 (2) of the Constitution, as well as the legislative list, should be amended to allow the states to collect taxes over mineral resources within their territories and the remittance of 25 per cent of such taxes to the Federal Government. Furthermore, on the allocation of funds to local governments, the Constitution should expressly void and abolish Section 162(6), which provides for establishing joint accounts by States and local governments. The Constitution should, therefore, ensure direct federal funding of local government councils, without the interference of state governments. Section 3 (6) should also be abolished and deleted from the Constitution to allow for the creation of more local government areas in the country. On public revenue, fiscal federalism, and revenue allocation, we are recommending that Section 162 (2) of the Constitution, as well as the legislative list, should be amended to allow the states to collect taxes over mineral resources within their territories and the remittance of 25 per cent of such taxes to the Federal Government. The Constitution should be amended to clear the ambiguity over the collection of consumption tax (VAT) by the Federal Government for the benefit of the States. The States should also administer/collect VAT within their territories. For the creation of State Police, the Youth Party believes that a pilot State Police Programme can be implemented in economically viable states for four years. Furthermore, any State that is desirous of establishing a State Police Department must demonstrate the ability to fund the Department. Also, a State Police Service Commission with clear oversight powers and the ability to discipline erring officers must be established contemporaneously with any State Police Department. In the event of gross mismanagement or abuse of powers by a State Police Department, the Attorney General of the Federation shall have the powers to approach the Supreme Court for an order directing his or her office to take over the administration of such a State Police Department until the State demonstrates the ability to remedy and prevent the recurrence of the abuse or mismanagement. Concerning electoral reforms, the Third Schedule, Part 1, Section 14(1)(2) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria 1999 on the mode of appointment of INEC Commissioners and Resident Commissioners needs to have an amendment in order to preserve neutrality and protect the institution from the blatant partisanship currently displayed by officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). In partial support of the Uwais Committee Report on Electoral Reforms, we recommend that the National Judicial Council (NJC) be in charge of advertising the positions and screening applicants for vacancies into the positions of INEC commissioners and the Chairman, within 20 days from the date of the expiration of the terms of office of incumbents. The power to deregister a party should be exercised through the Federal High Court. We have had our own fair share of INECs disregard for the rule of law, having attempted to deregister our Party despite an order of the court restraining the Commission from doing so. Thankfully, a recent Appeal Court judgment has again ruled in our favour The NJC should then recommend three applicants to the President within 20 (twenty) days from the date of screening. The President should then forward one of the three nominees to the Senate for confirmation within 30 (thirty) days upon receipt of the list. On the deregistration of political parties, our Party has consistently argued that INEC should approach the courts for the deregistration of parties and state the grounds for their deregistration with sufficient clarity and precision. This power must only be exercised upon obtaining a court order granting leave to exercise the power. This is similar to the position for the disqualification of candidates, winding up of banks, and other similar institutions. The deregistration of a political party is equivalent to taking away the partys life, and the decision should be left to the court. The disqualification of a candidate from an election as a result of ineligibility, regardless of the evidence, cannot be done by INEC but by the courts. In that case, it is ridiculous that the political party sponsoring him or her can be deregistered administratively. This is unacceptable and bound to lead to injustice, not to mention the breach of fundamental human rights, freedom of association, and breach of fair hearing, contrary to Section 36 of the 1999 Constitution. The power to deregister a party should be exercised through the Federal High Court. We have had our own fair share of INECs disregard for the rule of law, having attempted to deregister our Party despite an order of the court restraining the Commission from doing so. Thankfully, a recent Appeal Court judgment has again ruled in our favour, describing INECs action as reprehensible. Finally, on the issue of the creation of States and local governments, it is our position that this must be based on the economic viability of the aspiring State to meet the financial needs of its people without recourse to the Federal Government or federal allocation. This should be followed by a referendum in the State. A new State must be economically viable, financially sustainable, it must have secured the consent of its residents/indigenes and the existing States that it would be carved from. I hope that the National Assembly will follow through with a number of the crucial recommendations made by our Party and other organisations. As a country, we cannot afford to miss the opportunity to deliver a constitution that works for the people and supports their aspirations. Tomiwa Aladekomo is the Chair of the Youth Party. ADVERTISEMENT Welsh Government could play part in future of Groves with onus on Wrexham Council to provide initiative The First Minister has indicated a willingness from Welsh Government to help resolve the future of a long vacant building in Wrexham. As we previously reported the Groves school building was subject to a listing hokey-cokey, with it being listed / challenged / relisted after court action and a final independent decision by then Cabinet Secretary Mark Drakeford. With the campaign to save the building locally featuring the then First Minister Carwyn Jones, as well as Lesley Griffiths MS, we asked the current First Minister Mark Drakeford about the issue. We noted that the empty building is impacting on the local education budget, and a recent plan for it to possibly become a medical training facility has fallen apart. We asked with Welsh Labour from top to bottom aligning itself with a campaign to save the building if they had any responsibility to find a solution for the building, if that is solely in the responsibility of Wrexham Council. Mr Drakeford explained: The lead responsibility is definitely with the council. I took the listing decision because I had had no involvement in it at all previously with anything todo with the school. I didnt know anything at all about it until I spent one weekend reading a very deep file of papers about it. I came to my conclusion completely independently of anybody else, and in the end, I thought the arguments in favour of listing outweighed the arguments against it. The lead responsibility then for responding to that lies with the local authority. That is not to say at all, that when they have proper proposals, then we will want to talk to them about it and see if theres a part we can play in it. But, the initiative has to come from the local authority, that is where the legal, as well as the local responsibility lies. Regarding the future of the Groves site, earlier this month the council said, The Council will now need to decide how best to manage the former Groves School building in accordance with our internal processes. Governor Ugwuanyi, entrusting Enugu State to the hands of God, is effectively delivering on his mandate of positively impacting the lives of the people of the state, against all odds, for sustainable peace and socio-economic growth. A potent vision pulls in ideas, people, peace, development and other qualities. It creates the stamina and will to make change happen. It inspires individuals, diverse stakeholders and complementary democratic institutions to commit, to persist and to give their best. Cut to the bone, this is the story of the Government of Enugu State, under the adroit leadership of the state governor, His Excellency, Rt. Hon. Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi, as he circumspectly navigates the mid-term of his concluding tenure amid local, national and global governance challenges. Leading from the front and directly confronting the avalanche of challenges crisscrossing the economy, dwindling resources, security and public health, in the last six years, Governor Ugwuanyi has simply proved that fear of God, passion, resilience, focus and inclusiveness represent the driving forces behind his administrations success story. Significantly, the foregoing challenges were the prevailing hurdles bedeviling the country since Ugwuanyi has been in the saddle as governor of Enugu State. This scenario has drastically and negatively impacted the nations financial status as federal allocations dwindled to an all-time low. Consequently, Enugu States purse keeps growing leaner with inherited huge debt profile and other wage bills to be serviced. It is on record that Enugu State, with its capital city Enugu, as the historical capital of Eastern Nigeria, East Central State, old Anambra State, old Enugu State when Abakaliki was part of it and the capital of the present Enugu State, has a huge monthly wage bill to be served in spite of the states limited resources. For instance, a preponderance of retired pensioners from other South East states who served the old states with Enugu as their capital, still receive their monthly pensions and other retirement benefits from the coffer of the Enugu State government. This is a huge financial obligation eating deep into the meager resources of the Enugu State government which Gov. Ugwuanyis administration has continued to fulfill in spite of the nations economic meltdown. Besides this, the Ugwuanyi administration has been up-to-date in the payment of the new N30,000 minimum wage and its consequential adjustment to the state civil servants, on or before the 23rd of every month, which is another huge burden on the states finances. This is even when some states have discontinued with the payment because of their dwindling resources. It could therefore be imagined what would be left for development issues from the lean federal allocations accruable to Enugu State. While these challenges have almost derailed many of his peers governance journeys, Ugwuanyis administration has emerged stronger, as many independent observers have genuinely acknowledged in their verdicts. Besides Enugus huge wage bill, in a dwindling economy, the nations security issues, the #EndSARS protests and the unexpected outbreak of the Novel Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) ravaging the world, just like any other state in the country, occupied and hindered the Ugwuanyi administrations second-term lofty development programmes. But, remaining focused and pushing further a transformational vision of Enugu State, in line with the promises in his inaugural address, Gov. Ugwuanyi exploited his intimate understanding of his turf to manage key human development, infrastructure, economic and sundry challenges. To sustain the positive changes he has incepted in the Enugu story, Governor Ugwuanyi has in the first two years of his second term in office maintained the tempo of his giant strides in rural development, healthcare delivery, infrastructural transformation, peace and security, education, investment promotion, youth empowerment, innovations and workers welfare, among others. For instance, Ugwuanyis administration has covered 690km of roads, largely concentrated in the rural areas; executed 1,355 verifiable projects in various primary and secondary schools across the 17 Local Government Areas of the state, under the ENSUBEB and PPSMB, in line with its vision to improve the learning condition of the students; recruited over 7,030 primary and secondary school teachers; procured and distributed over 50,000 classroom furniture and other learning tools for school children and their teachers across the state; supplied and installed computers to 490 primary and secondary schools; science equipment to 151 secondary schools, and constructed and renovated classroom blocks, offices and hostels. His administration also provided 100 patrol vans with communication gadgets for the security agencies in the state and 260 security vehicles, 260 motorcycles and 300 bicycles for the repositioned Vigilante/Neighborhood Watch groups and Forest Guards for their community policing operations, among numerous remarkable achievements in other spheres of development. During this years May Day celebration, jubilant workers of Enugu State were bold and proud to commend Gov. Ugwuanyi for his administrations laudable projects and programmes aimed at improving their living standard and that of the entire people of the state, as well as his unequalled resilience in the approval and payment of the new N30,000 minimum wage and its consequential adjustment to the state workers. The workers who spoke, through the State Chairman of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Comrade Virginus Nwobodo and his Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) counterpart, Comrade Benneth Asogwa, also appreciated Gov. Ugwuanyi, who was present at the annual event, for the sustenance of payment of salaries on or before the 23rd of every month, other welfare packages, as well as numerous development projects across the state, in spite of the states lean resources and even when the scourge of the COVID-19 pandemic was severe. Comrade Nwobodo, the NLC chairman who described Ugwuanyi as the most labour-friendly governor in Nigeria said that it is crystal clear that workers of Enugu State have never had it so good since the present democracy, as it is since the inception of the present administration of Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi. He thanked the governor, on behalf of the workers, for regular and prompt payment of workers salaries, pensions and other allowances, notwithstanding the high level of wage bill occasioned by the new minimum wage. ADVERTISEMENT On his part, the TUC Chairman, Comrade Asogwa, said that Gov. Ugwuanyi, through the peaceful implementation of the new N30,000 minimum wage and its consequential adjustment has broken the long history of industrial unrest, intimidation and neglect that heralded the previous minimum wage implementation in the state. Comrade Asogwa also commended the governor for regular payment of the 13th month salary bonus to state workers from 2015 (except for 2020 pandemic year), safety of lives and property, and the peaceful co-existence of Enugu State people, irrespective of their political, social or religious affiliations. The labour leader equally lauded Gov. Ugwuanyi for the ongoing simultaneous construction of two ultra-modern secretariat buildings for the state chapters of the NLC and TUC, by his administration, stressing that this further portrays the present government as an all-inclusive one that embraces every group and individuals as partners in governance. Comrade Asogwa went further to commend the governor for massive road construction, especially in the rural communities; transformation of the state-owned health facilities, particularly the building of a world class infectious disease control center in the former Colliery Hospital Enugu, and unparalleled environmental cleanliness in major cities of Enugu State. Your Excellency, workers of Enugu State are not only happy with your labour-friendly disposition, we celebrate your prudency in the management of the meager resource accruable to Enugu State. Only recently, members of the Nigeria Guild of Editors were in Enugu for their standing committee meeting ahead of their national convention. They inspected some projects by Gov. Ugwuanyis administration, such as the state-of-the art 14km Opi-Nsukka dual carriage way, the ongoing first state government flyover bridge project at T-Junction Abakpa Nike, Enugu, the massive construction works at the permanent site of Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT) Teaching Hospital and College of Medicine, Igbo-Eno, the massively rehabilitated and transformed Enugu State Infectious Diseases Hospital, for isolation and treatment of patients with infectious diseases, formerly known as Colliery Hospital Enugu and quality road infrastructure in the rural areas. Others include the Type-3 Primary Healthcare Centres, which were newly constructed in seven Local Government Areas of Enugu State and modern Cottage hospitals with Isolation wings ongoing in Awgu, Oji River, Udenu and Igbo Eze North LGAs, in line with the administrations vision to provide quality, accessible and affordable healthcare services, especially in the rural communities. The editors expressed their satisfaction with the massive development strides and other people-oriented programmes the governor was carrying out in the urban and rural communities of Enugu State, stressing that they were highly impressed. The guilds president, Mustapha Isah, disclosed that the quality of roads we saw in the rural areas, the massive dualized road in Nsukka; the primary and secondary healthcare facilities and even tertiary institution for the ESUT Teaching Hospital and College of Medicine, in Igbo-Eno, are impressive and commendable. Isah pointed out that Gov. Ugwuanyis decision to invest massively in the health sector is worthy of emulation in the sense that he has interest in the health of his people of Enugu State. He added that through his administrations massive investment in the health sector especially at the rural areas, the governor is making huge investments to ensure that in case we have any future outbreak like COVID-19, Enugu State will not be caught unaware. He (Ugwuanyi) is already putting foundations in place to ensure that the state is ready for any such future outbreak, Isah said. On his part, the editor of Vanguard Newspaper, Eze Anaba said: What we have seen is a determination by a governor to open up the rural areas; that is quite commendable because if you develop the rural areas, you develop the state. In his verdict, the editor-in-chief of The Guardian Newspapers, Martins Oloja, added: I am impressed by what I saw. I went inside the newly constructed and equipped Type-3 Primary Healthcare Centre and the Cottage Hospital with Isolation wing, the finishing was impressive. They considered so many things that people in the village need. It is very impressive and they even built quarters for doctors and nurses. A few days ago, the Enugu State University Teaching Hospital Association of Residents Doctors (ESUTH-ARD) passed a positive verdict on Gov. Ugwuanyi, describing him as a leader with the hallmarks of leadership. The doctors appreciated the governors giant strides in the areas of COVID-19 interventions, provision of medical equipment and construction of physical infrastructure, both at the Enugu and Igbo-Eno sections of the state-owned Teaching Hospital, among other health facilities, especially in the rural areas such as the Type-3 Primary Healthcare Centres. They pointed out that Gov. Ugwuanyi recognized the well-documented health hazards faced by health workers in the state and started paying a COVID-19 Hazard allowance in April 2020 and has continued till date, notwithstanding the dwindling revenues of the state, stressing that other state governors are to learn from and emulate His Excellency (Ugwuanyi) in this regard. Similarly, the Association of Medical Laboratory Scientists of Nigeria (AMLSN) at its 15th National Annual Public Health Lecture Series, graced by the Director General of Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Dr. Chikwe Ihekweazu, honoured Gov. Ugwuanyi with the COVID-19 Response Champion award, for his sterling performance and dedication to duty during the period the COVID-19 ravaged the globe. The foregoing close-up verdicts clearly confirm that Governor Ugwuanyi, entrusting Enugu State to the hands of God, is effectively delivering on his mandate of positively impacting the lives of the people of the state, against all odds, for sustainable peace and socio-economic growth. Louis Amoke writes from Enugu. The Kaduna State Government has confirmed that some persons were unaccounted for after bandits blocked the Abuja-Kaduna highway on Friday. However, the government said reports that the bandits kidnapped scores of people had not been confirmed by security officials. The government said some gunmen blocked the highway at about 3:30 p.m. but security agents responded swiftly to distress calls and checked their operation. PREMIUM TIMES reported a former senator, Shehu Sani, saying he received a distress call from a traveller that the bandits blocked the road between Jere and Katari at about 4 p.m. I have just got a call that bandits have blocked the Kaduna-Abuja road, in between Jere and Katari village in this broad daylight. Scores of people were kidnapped while many have made a fast u-turn in the face of gunshots, Mr Sani wrote on his Twitter handle. Also, a traveller @jpjohnson61, said he was caught up in the whole thing. I have never been this scared in my life. Situation is calm now. A joint military operation just cleared the road, we literally drove into them, GOD IS GREAT, he wrote in reply to Mr Sanis tweet. A driver who plies the road every day also told a PREMIUM TIMES reporter that he saw many cars turning back with their car headlights on, and many were parked at a distance for everything to calm. Kaduna govt responds Kaduna State Commissioner of Internal Security and Home Affairs, Samuel Aruwan, in a statement late Friday, said security agencies had not confirmed the number of those possibly abducted on the highway. Mr Aruwan said the security agencies manning the highway were yet to confirm that scores were kidnapped in the incident as reported by a social media enthusiast'. This was a veiled jab at Mr Sani, a vocal critic of the governor. Also, the official said the state, which is known for publicising security developments, will certainly make public feedback received by the military and police as soon as the agencies revert. At around 3:30 p.m., the Security Operations Room, a 24-hour hub, started receiving distress calls of a blockage around Kurmin Kare area of Kaduna-Abuja Road and immediately, contact was established with the Commanding Officer of Operation Thunder Strike (OPTS), a Defence Headquarters outfit, and Operation Puff Adder of the Nigeria Police for immediate counter action. The troops and the police operatives swiftly moved to the general area, saw motorists stranded on both lanes, and subsequently cleared the road. READ ALSO: The personnel after clearing the accumulated traffic saw one Honda car with Reg. No. RBC 864BL recovered with broken rear windscreen and another vehicle found empty with some luggage. From preliminary findings, the occupant or occupants may have been unaccounted for. Furthermore, beside the Honda vehicle, the following five citizens hidden in the forest appeared with their driver who confirmed they were complete having escaped in the commotion: RIFKATU YOHANNA RUKAYYA UMAR HAUWA JIBRIN JULIANA JOHN YAHAYA ALIYU BABANGIDA LAWAN M (DRIVER) As of this moment (9:40pm), the status of the occupant(s) of the Honda cannot be substantiated, and the veracity of the report that scores were kidnapped cannot be confirmed. The public will be briefed as soon as Government of Kaduna State receives operational feedback, Mr Aruwan said in the statement. ADVERTISEMENT ADVERTISEMENT The Deputy Speaker of Cross River House of Assembly, Joseph Bassey, has debunked a social media report written in his name against Donald Duke, a former governor of the state. The deputy speaker, in a statement issued on Saturday in Calabar, described the media report as false and mischievous. Mr Bassey said the fake report, which accused Mr Duke of having a role in the growing conspiracy to deny Cross River South District of producing the next governor, was totally misleading. The attention of the Deputy Speaker of Cross River House of Assembly has been drawn to a fake report trending on social media with the title: Donald Duke: Return of the Trojan horse. I, Joseph Bassey, who represent the good people of Calabar South II in the State House of Assembly, wishes to state that I am not the author or writer of the said fake report. The report is not only a mischievous act of some idle minds, but also a figment of their short imagination. Never did I ever sit to write such a report on the person of Mr Donald Duke, a former governor of Cross River. I have since left the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress and no amount of blackmail can pitch me against the former governor, whom I have high regards for. People should use their precious time to engage themselves in meaningful activities, rather than sponsoring fake reports to set uncertainties in the state, said the deputy speaker. The governor of Cross River State, Ben Ayade, recently defected from the Peoples Democratic Party to the All Progressives Congress. Many people believe that Mr Ayades defection would alter the 2023 politics in the South-south state. (NAN) Economic and social activities have halted in Imo over the sit-at-home order by the proscribed Indigenous People of Biafra (IPOB) over fear of possible attacks. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reporter who monitored the development on Saturday in Owerri, reports that residents of the state have deserted markets and streets of the state capital for safety. NAN reports that the pro Biafra agitators led by Nnamdi Kanu issued a statement that ordered people from the South-east to sit at home between May 30 and May 31 for the annual Biafra Remembrance Day. The statement issued by Mr Kanu said the day was set aside in remembrance of over 5 million Biafrans who died during the three-year civil war in Nigeria. NAN reports that people also kept away from the Government House axis with businesses around it locked while combined team of security agencies are seen patrolling the streets of the state capital. Assurances, complaints The Commissioner of Police in the state, Abutu Yaro had earlier issued a statement, assuring residents of adequate security and urged the people to ignore the threat. But only the presence of the military and police forces were noticed, while people kept away from the popular Ekeukwu Owerri Market and the timber market in Naze. A commercial motorist, Okechukwu Nnaji, told NAN that motorists started experiencing poor patronage from commuters from May 28. As I speak with you, I have not gotten N 2,000 since three days now, I normally make N8,000 daily. I dont know how to feed my family if things do not improve soon, he said. A food vendor, Angela Eze popularly known as (Mama Africa) expressed worry that the situation might affect the economy of the state drastically. She appealed to government to use diplomacy and find lasting solution to the problem. Anambra In Onitsha, Anambra, some travellers enroute Onitsha to Asaba and other parts of the country have expressed dismay over delays caused by security checks at the busy Niger Bridge, Onitsha in Anambra. Those who spoke to NAN said travellers were made to spend hours at the Bridgehead before crossing. Those who managed or succeeded to cross over to Asaba and vice versa did so trekking or using commercial motorcycles. A traveller, who pleaded anonymity, said he joined an early morning vehicle heading to Lagos but was delayed by the check point mounted by the Police and Nigeria Army. I have spent more than three hours here trying to drive across the bridgehead. They said some gunmen killed five soldiers yesterday at Ihiala. I believe that this is why they are delaying us here, the source said. A private vehicle commercial driver, Kelechi Onwudiwe, alluded the intensified security checks to the sit-at-home directive by members of the proscribed IPOB. ADVERTISEMENT The traffic here in Onitsha is terrible. It is deliberately caused by soldiers who are searching for members of IPOB, Mr Onwudiwe said. In his reaction, the Police Public Relations Officer, Anambra Police Command, Tochukwu Ikenga, said the security check was a routine exercise. Mr Ikenga said the check point was part of strategies security agencies used to control and screen people coming and leaving the state. The check has been there before now even before the sit-at-home order. The purpose of the check point is to screen road users, detect crime and maintain law and order. In as much as we are still analysing the security situation, the check point is like an ordinary day exercise for us, he said. The Nigerian Civil War which occurred between July 1967 to January 1970 led to the massive loss of lives on both the side of federal forces and the Biafran army. (NAN) ADVERTISEMENT A citizen-led initiative on Friday urged the Lagos State House of Assembly to intervene in the incessant insecurity and other issues ravaging the country. The initiative, which consists of about 17 organizations in Lagos State, was at the Assembly in Alausa today to protest the insecurity of lives and properties across Nigeria. The organisers said the action was ongoing simultaneously nationwide. In the demands presented to the Speaker of the House, the conveners said insecurity has persisted despite increased budgetary allocations. In the first and second quarters of 2021, Nigeria has experienced an exponential rate of atrocious incidents of armed violence across the country, with extremely high casualty rate. In different parts of the country, insecurity took various forms and dimensions, with thousands of deaths linked to these incidents. A most disturbing dimension to the growing insecurity in the land is the school raids accompanied by mass abduction of school children and the shutting down of schools that now deprive our children the right to education. We have also observed with trepidation, the constant and active attempts at muffling citizens voices within the shrinking civic space as evidenced during the #ENDSARS protests in 2020 and earlier this year. This kind of repression can only be a recipe for disaster in a democratic system. The statement further urged the Assembly to take urgent but people-friendly and right-sensitive actions to ensure the safety of lives and curb threats posed by vested interests of the peoples enemies. Akinbode Oluwafemi, the Executive Director of Corporate Accountability & Public Participation Africa, told PREMIUM TIMES that about 300 organisations signed up for the action across Nigeria. President Buhari should wake up from slumber and use all the powers that have been given to him as the C-in-C to secure the lives and properties in Nigeria, he said. He has all the resources necessary because Nigeria is rich enough to provide for these resources. All were saying is Enough is enough. Nigerian citizens are in a state of mourning. While addressing the rally, Eshinlokun Sanni, the Deputy Speaker of the House, said the lawmakers had debated the insecurity issues in the country two weeks ago. He said the Speaker would invite the groups to the House for appropriate representative discussion.. We can relate to what youre saying and were also concerned about the current situation, he said. About two weeks ago, we raised a motion on the floor of the House where we talked about security and asked the President to address the nation on the security issues because things are not going well. I can assure you that whatever grievances that you may have, Ill deliver it to the speaker. Also, with Mr. Speakers permission, Ill invite you when the security issue will be discussed in the House. The statement by the groups was signed by the leadership of Cee-Hope, Center for Dignity, CHSR, CENSOCHANGE, CWI, CAPPA, Education Rights Campaign, ERA/FoEN, GDI, Global Rights, HoMEF, Help Initiative for Social Justice & Humanitarian Development, JAF, Journalist Initiative for Sustainable Development, JDPC, NLC, PEDEP, Spaces for Changes and BudgIt. A Lagos-based politician, Arinola Oloko, who was addressed as a thug by Oluremi Tinubu, a senator representing Lagos Central, has explained what transpired between her and the senator. The politicians had an altercation on Wednesday at Marriott hotel in Lagos, the venue of the public hearing on constitutional review for South-West. In a video that went viral, Mrs Tinubu was heard addressing the woman as a thug, adding that she should shut up. I am not a thug, you cannot call me a thug, Mrs Oloko responded in the video. Mrs Tinubu chairs the Senate Committee on review of the 1999 Constitution in the South-West. As part of the review exercise, a public hearing on the constitution review was to hold across the six geopolitical zones in the country on May 26 and 27. The incident between the senator and Lagos politician caused commotion at the venue, with people calling on the senator to apologise for addressing the woman as a thug. I will not apologise for what I said. I saw it and I said it, Mrs Tinubu said. VIDEO: Remi Tinubu calls woman 'thug' at constitution review hearing pic.twitter.com/mhKSIL4bQA TheCable (@thecableng) May 26, 2021 What transpired In an interview with Punch Newspaper, Mrs Oloko explained what led to the altercation between her and the senator. We were at the venue, standing in a queue, only for us to get to a point and they said registration had closed. They did not say from the beginning that they had a certain number that they were restricting the hearing to. If so, they should have made us register online, so that we would have known that on getting to the centre we wouldnt bother trying to enter. Mrs Oloko said although many people were denied entry into the hall, access was given to senators, governors, local government chairmen, and government officials who came after them. She did this act led to a protest by people on the queue over unfair treatment. Mrs Oloko and few others were the most vocal on the queue complaining bitterly of bad treatment. I dont know what happened but the Senator came out and started saying, Call that woman! Come here! By default, I responded and went to her (Mrs Tinubu). I told her my name and told her I am in her constituency and that she is my senator and that we had been in the queue like forever. Senator Oluremi Tinubu is my senator and I respect her as my senator. I have tremendous respect for authority, she said. Mrs Oloko said she recounted what had happened on the queue to the senator, hoping that she would intervene. I thought she would say oh, this is wrong and all of that. But she said, Shut up! Shut up! Call the security to take this thug away. At that point, I told her, Ma, I am not a thug; I dont look like a thug. I am not being violent and I dont look a criminal. Thats the qualification of a thug. That was all that happened, she explained. Mrs Oloko added that her presence at the public hearing was to present a paper on the constitutional review. ADVERTISEMENT I was expecting a proper hearing for the Senate constitutional review. I was genuinely interested in the hearing, she said. ADVERTISEMENT The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, has promised to build a secondary school for the police in the State. He made the promise on Saturday while receiving delegation of the Police Wives Association of Nigeria (POWA) led by its President and wife of the acting Inspector General of Police, Hajara Alkali, during a courtesy visit at the Lagos House, Marina. The governor who received Mrs Alkali and her entourage in the company of the Lagos State First Lady, Ibijoke Sanwo-Olu, said government will continue to support Lagos Police Command and officers wives in the State. We will give Lagos Police Command more support, said the governor. We will continue to lend all the infrastructure they need to them. We will continue to work with them. There are so many things we are going to support the Lagos Police Command with. And once the men can have all what they require to work well, certainly it will also affect their wives at home positively. We are doing so much and we are willing to double what we are currently doing. We usually have a special place for Police Officers wives; for widows and even those who are not widows. We want to encourage them and support them so that they can be very valuable supporters to their husbands. Not only will we be supporting them with empowerment, we will also deliberately look for ways to improve them in skills acquisition and empower them through the Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation; Ministry of Wealth Creation and Ministry of the Sustainable Developments Goals. In respect to your request for a Police Secondary School in Lagos, we will try and not just give you land, we will give the land and also support you with the building. We will try and look for where is most adequate. Lagos is a small State, so land is always a challenge. But, wherever we find it, we will try and take it up so that it can accommodate a lot more students. Also speaking, Lagos First Lady said the incumbent administration is ready to do more for police officers and their wives in the State, adding that government will continue to lift women up in Lagos State. I am happy that our score card is reading pass mark. We are happy to do more. Lagos State is here to encourage all the women. We know that quite a lot happened last year and quite a lot of our officers are a bit demoralised. But to God be the glory, 2021 is a better year. We are going to continue to lift each other up, encourage ourselves as women because we know we are the gateway to our families, Mrs Sanwo-Olu said. Suspected hoodlums on Saturday disrupted the All Progressives Congress (APC) Chairmanship and Councillors primary elections in all the seven wards of Agege Local Government Area of Lagos State. Some aspirants vying for the chairmanship position in the LGA told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that electorate were chased from polling units and the whole process manipulated. According to them, while some electorate were dispersed by hoodlums, other voters insisted on voting of which still later resulted to chaos. Sola Osolana, a chairmanship aspirant, said: In spite of the zeal and aspirations of people at the early hours to cast their vote, the exercise was disrupted by hoodlums. There was no primary election in Agege; actually people came out early in the morning to cast their votes but were later scattered by some sponsored hoodlums. The exercise was also manipulated as wrong accreditation sheets were brought and the electorate could not find their numbers and names on the sheets. The activities of the hoodlums affected all the seven wards across the local government, he said. According to him, the accreditation sheets should have been sent to and pasted at the different polling units to ensure easy process of the election. Mr Osolana said the hoodlums touched all the wards in the council from A-G to ensure the election did not hold or was cancelled. We appeal to the party leadership to shift the primaries to the State Secretariat of the APC, Acme in Lagos. It is very clear that some people want the genuine change but few want to disrupt the change thereby manipulating the progress of the party, he said. Abiodun Ogunji, Vice Chairman, Agege Local Government, who is also an aspirant, decried the activities of the hoodlums during the primary election. There was no election in Agege. We want the election to be rescheduled with thorough supervisions from the leaders, he told NAN. Olubukola Sofidiya, also an aspirant vying for chairmanship position, decried activities of the suspected thugs. It is obvious that some people dont want progress in the local government. We saw one of the leaders who came in with thugs as they discovered that the election will not favour them. We appeal to the leaders of our party to save us and conduct another primary election for us at the State Secretariat ACME Lagos for proper exercise. We want the election at the neutral ground where there will be no manipulations or violence against the electorate, he said. ADVERTISEMENT Another aspirant, Sesanfunmi Adegbite, said that the primary election was manipulated as the name of electorate were not properly captured in the accreditation sheets. As far as I am concerned, there was no election in ward E. People were chased away from the venue while other electorate decided to stay to cast their vote which resulted to chaos and violence, Mr Adegbite added. Ganiyu Egunjobi, the present chairman of the council who is also an aspirant, when contacted on phone for his comments, said he would call back. He told NAN that he was in a meeting. (NAN) The 2021 CYO Track and Field Championship Meet was held at Divine Child on Friday, June 4. It marked the first time that Divine Child served as host for the event. Plattsburgh, NY (12901) Today Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening with more clouds for overnight. Low around 55F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-28 22:24:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Sri Lankan security personnel remove debris from the X-Press Pearl ship, on a beach at Pamunugama in Negombo, Sri Lanka, on May 28, 2021. Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) on Friday said that a major environmental disaster was expected following the burning of the X-Press Pearl ship near the Colombo Port and the impact was being assessed. (Photo by Ajith Perera/Xinhua) COLOMBO, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) on Friday said that a major environmental disaster was expected following the burning of the X Press Pearl vessel near the Colombo Port and the impact was being assessed. General Manager of MEPA Terney Pradeep Kumara told Xinhua that several teams from the Sri Lankan navy were on site attempting to douse the flames and most of the debris from the vessel have been washed ashore. He said debris have been washed ashore along the coastal line from the south to the west and over 1,000 officers were deployed to conduct a clean-up operation, adding that more officials would join in the clean-up efforts in the coming days. The public have been strongly advised not to touch any of the debris as it could contain hazardous material, he said. Kumara added that an expert committee has been set up to assess the environmental damage and study a possible oil spill. State Minister of Urban Development, Coast Conservation, Waste Disposal, and Public Sanitation Nalaka Godahewa told the media on Friday that a large amount of marine life have been killed as a result of the pollution from the X Press Pearl ship. He said that fish, turtles, and other marine life have been killed and more such loss of life was expected over the next few days. The Sri Lankan navy on Friday said it was continuing its fire fighting efforts to douse the flames on board the ship which caught fire near the Colombo Port on May 20. The navy further said there was a threat of the ship sinking on location and all efforts were underway to prevent this. There was no sign of an oil spill yet, the navy said. The X Press Pearl, registered under the flag of Singapore and carrying 1,486 containers with 25 tons of nitric acid and several other chemicals and cosmetics, departed from the port of Hazira, India on May 15. The vessel sent out a distress call while being close to the Colombo Port on May 20, and soon caught fire. Enditem VANCOUVER, BC, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The COVID-19 pandemic has forced companies to adapt quickly to thrive in the face of changing threats. Businesses have learned a lot about the value of remaining adaptable in the short-term, that is, throughout the pandemic. However, the pandemic has revealed a need for a longer-term approach to business that emphasizes resilience. "2020 was a wake-up call," advises McKinsey. "To thrive in the coming decade, companies must develop resilience the ability to withstand unpredictable threat or change and then emerge stronger." A Long-Term, Multifaceted Resilience Strategy is Needed Resilience is part of a long game that looks beyond short-term earnings, McKinsey says. What's more, they write, several factors will be major players, including "the digital and technology revolution, climate change, and geopolitical uncertainty." Resilience will be necessary to survive in the face of disruptions such as cybersecurity breaches, natural disasters, geopolitical risk, and other sources of uncertainty. Meanwhile, companies must "navigate concerns from their immediate bottom line, together with pressures from governments, investors, and society at large." Otherwise, without a resilience plan, "surprise gaps" will occur, which are deficits in resilience that threaten companies' survival. These surprise gaps can include environmental and other regulations, post-pandemic business continuity, supply chain and sourcing issues due to globalization and geopolitical factors, and shifts in consumer demand. As Madeline Taylor writes for the Institutional Asset Manager blog, in the COVID-19 pandemic, companies haven't been paying enough attention to geopolitical flare-ups, such as a global technology decoupling and a major cyber-attack. Indeed, COVID-19 has been the main priority for companies, but other issues, such as geopolitical risk, remain just as relevant, if not increasing in relevance. Beyond COVID-19 impacts, the recent Colonial Pipeline hack caused a massive fuel shortage in the south and the eastern United States, and, as Taylor says, "led to a rise in oil prices, and shares in US energy firms went up by 1.5 percent." Michael Evans of Forbes observes that though some businesses have performed well in the pandemic, like Amazon and Zoom, most smaller companies have not. The pandemic has highlighted companies' need to improve resilience in the long-term to boost growth, stay profitable, and remain adaptable. Ways to Build Resilience How does a company build long-term resilience to ward off such emerging threats and navigate uncertainties? McKinsey's approach to resilience involves different components of resilience, such as financial, technological, operational, organizational, reputational, and business-model resilience. They argue that these forms of resilience should be "baked in" to improve the company, not just during times of crisis, but also in more calm times. Evans suggests focusing on four key aspects foundational to success, including culture, leadership, change, and discipline. Revisit your "mission, values, and vision," he suggests, and "make sure you have buy-in across the entire organization, clear two-way communication between you and your employees, and agreed-upon accountability." What's more, he writes, ensures that culture and strategy are in harmony, so that your company and its employees can "walk the talk." Factoring in Corporate Resilience in Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) A Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) strategy can be part of a long-term corporate resilience strategy. Companies can evaluate previous M&A transactions and learn from prior failures to make better decisions in the future. Deloitte states that, in uncertain, chaotic economic times, it's also important to have a clear vision; consider value drivers such as "segment, geography, and end markets" to help "fortify value creation from the transaction strategy"; and understand how M&A activity may respond to and leverage the trends shaping industries. It's important to lead with empathy, while also maintaining a keen sense of awareness, to foster corporate resilience. Conclusion Though nobody knows what the future holds in our persistently uncertain economic landscape, businesses can prepare for tumultuous times by preparing a resilience plan for the long term. It's impossible to plan for all disruptions, but companies should seek to audit their crisis response mechanisms and seek to incorporate processes that ensure a baked-in response. PRLog ID: www.prlog.org/12871553 SOURCE Braeden Lichti MANASSAS, Va., May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Since the Defund the Police Movement started, Albuquerque has seen violent crime spike by 15.5%, property damages rise 13.3%, and 35 residents have been murdered in the city thus far in 2021nearly double what it was at this time in 2020. Melanie Stansbury, an Obama Administration alumna, has focused her campaign on support for the BREATHE ACT, a Black Lives Matter-crafted "defund the police" proposal. "With crime exploding rapidly around the country, including Albuquerque, the Democrats' Defund the Police movement puts every New Mexico citizen's life at risk," said Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman of FedUp PAC. FedUp PAC recently launched an extensive digital campaign in the Albuquerque area urging conservatives to contact everyone they know in New Mexico's First Congressional District (which includes almost three-fourths of Albuquerque) to vote for the pro-safety, pro-police candidate, Mark Moores. "This special election is a referendum on President Biden and the Democrats' radical Defund the Police policies," said Viguerie. "It will be up to conservatives to keep Stansbury from getting elected to Congress and becoming another vote for Pelosi, AOC, and the anti-safety Defund the Police movement." For more information on Stansbury's positions, please see this Washington Examiner article https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/new-mexico-special-election-republicans-2022 and visit www.FedUpPAC.org. RICHARD A. VIGUERIE is known as the "Funding Father" of the conservative movement. Viguerie transformed American politics in the 1960s and '70s by pioneering the use of direct mail to bypass the mainstream media. Today, he serves as the chairman of American Target Advertising. Viguerie is active in national politics as the Chairman of both ConservativeHQ.com and FedUp PAC, a national political action committee working to achieve a governing Constitutional conservative majority. Paid for by FedUp PAC www.FedUpPAC.org Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. FedUp PAC is an Independent Expenditure political action committee in support of electing a Republican Congress. Richard A. Viguerie, Chairman P.O. Box 1370, Manassas, VA 20110 Contact: Richard Viguerie, (703) 392-7676 SOURCE FedUp PAC Related Links http://www.FedUpPAC.org The BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging market is poised to grow by USD 4.57 Billion, progressing at a CAGR of almost 5.46% during the forecast period. Receive FREE Sample Report in Minutes! Key Highlights Offered in the Report: Information on how to identify strategic and tactical negotiation levels that will help achieve the best prices. Gain information on relevant pricing levels, detailed explanation of the pros and cons of prevalent pricing models. Methods to help engage with the right suppliers and discover KPI's to evaluate incumbent suppliers. Fetch actionable market insights on post COVID-19 impact on each product and service segments. Some of the Top BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging suppliers listed in this report: This BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging procurement intelligence report has enlisted the top suppliers and their cost structures, SLA terms, best selection criteria, and negotiation strategies. Amcor Plc United Parcel Service Inc. DuPont de Nemours Inc. CCL Industries Inc. Sonoco Products Co. Cryoport Inc. SpendEdge suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. SpendEdge's in-depth research has direct and indirect COVID-19 impacted market research reports. Request for a FREE sample to access the definite purchasing guide on BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging procurement. Related Reports on Pharma and Healthcare Include: 1. Vaccines Contract Manufacturing Services- Forecast and Analysis: The vaccines contract manufacturing services will grow at a CAGR of 11.93% during 2021-2025. Prices will increase by 9%-12% during the forecast period and suppliers will have a moderate bargaining power in this market. 2. Cell-based Assays Sourcing and Procurement Report: This report offers key advisory and intelligence to help buyers identify and shortlist the most suitable suppliers for their cell-based assays requirements. Some of the leading cell-based assays suppliers profiled are covered extensively in this report. 3. Vitamins- Sourcing and Procurement Intelligence Report: The vitamins market will register an incremental spend of about $ 3 billion during the forecast period. Only a few regions will drive the majority of this growth. On the supply side, North America, South America, Europe, Middle East and Africa, and APAC will have the maximum influence owing to the supplier base. To access the definite purchasing guide on the BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging that answers all your key questions on price trends and analysis: Am I paying/getting the right prices? Is my BioPharma Cold Chain Packaging TCO (total cost of ownership) favorable? How is the price forecast expected to change? What is driving the current and future price changes? Which pricing models offer the most rewarding opportunities? Table of Content Executive Summary Market Insights Category Pricing Insights Cost-saving Opportunities Best Practices Category Ecosystem Category Management Strategy Category Management Enablers Suppliers Selection Suppliers under Coverage US Market Insights Category scope Appendix About SpendEdge: SpendEdge shares your passion for driving sourcing and procurement excellence. We are the preferred procurement market intelligence partner for 120+ Fortune 500 firms and other leading companies across numerous industries. Our strength lies in delivering robust, real-time procurement market intelligence reports and solutions. To know more https://www.spendedge.com/request-for-demo Contacts: SpendEdge Anirban Choudhury Marketing Manager Ph No: +1 (872) 206-9340 https://www.spendedge.com/contact-us SOURCE SpendEdge WASHINGTON, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Concord Coalition today expressed disappointment that President Biden's first budget, covering Fiscal Years 2022 through 2031, will produce annual deficits in excess of $1 trillion for each of those years and increase the debt as a share of the economy from 110 percent this year to 117 percent in 2031. It is the first presidential budget since Fiscal Year 2009 that does not seek to reduce total deficits or lower the debt-to-GDP ratio from 10-year baseline projections. Concord Coalition Executive Director Robert L. Bixby issued the following statement: The Concord Coalition supports the administration's stated aim to reduce deficits over the long-term, and we acknowledge that the administration's projections show an improving outlook in the second decade. The budget, however, would produce a deep trough of additional debt over many years before we get to that point, even if things work out as planned. "With the economy showing encouraging signs of rebounding from last year's devastation, it is time to begin the difficult process of stabilizing, and then reducing, the unsustainable path the debt was on long before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. This budget leaves that task for another day while digging the hole even deeper over this presidential term and the next. "To be clear, current circumstances do not call for austerity, and a good case can be made for increased spending to support long-term growth, such as infrastructure, child care, and research. A good case can also be made for revisiting the tax cuts enacted in 2017. The central problem with this budget is that the new spending exceeds the new revenue for nearly a decade, which only adds to the burden of debt and dampens long-term economic growth potential. We are just at the beginning of what will be a highly significant debate over the size and scope of the federal government. To his credit, the president has made it clear that new proposals should be paid for. That is a good starting point for negotiations. As the process moves forward, The Concord Coalition encourages the administration, its allies, and its congressional opponents to engage in good faith bipartisan negotiations with no preconditions and with due regard for fiscal sustainability. A copy of this media release can be found here. The Concord Coalition is a nonpartisan, grassroots organization dedicated to fiscal responsibility. Since 1992, Concord has worked to educate the public about the causes and consequences of the federal deficit and debt, and to develop realistic solutions for sustainable budgets. For more fiscal news and analysis, visit concordcoalition.org and follow us on Twitter. SOURCE The Concord Coalition Related Links http://www.concordcoalition.org View our exclusive report on market scenarios, estimates, the impact of lockdown, and customer behaviour. Download FREE Sample Report! The report on the polyisobutylene (PIB) market provides a holistic update, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the increase in demand from the automotive industry and increasing demand from other diversified applications. The polyisobutylene (PIB) market analysis includes type, application and geography segments. This study identifies the growing demand for PIB-based fuel additives as one of the prime reasons driving the polyisobutylene (PIB) market growth during the next few years. This report presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. The polyisobutylene (PIB) market covers the following areas: Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Sizing Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Forecast Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Analysis Companies Mentioned BASF SE Braskem SA Chevron Corp. Daelim Co. Ltd. DuPont de Nemours Inc. Evonik Industries AG INEOS Group Holdings SA LyondellBasell Industries NV The Lubrizol Corp. TPC Group Related Reports on Materials include: Alcohol Ethoxylates Market by Application and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025: The alcohol ethoxylates market has the potential to grow by USD 1.16 billion during 2021-2025, according to Technavio. Download PDF Sample Advanced Polymer Composites Market by Fiber Type, End-user, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025: The advanced polymer composites market has the potential to grow by USD 5.25 billion during 2021-2025, according to Technavio. Download PDF Sample Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market ecosystem Market characteristics Value chain analysis Market Sizing Market definition Market segment analysis Market size 2020 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025 Five Forces Analysis Five forces summary Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition Market Segmentation by Application Market segments Comparison by Application Additives - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Automotive - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Others - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Market opportunity by Application Market Segmentation by Type Market segments Comparison by Type HR-PIB - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Enhanced PIB - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Market opportunity by Type Customer landscape Geographic Landscape Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Key leading countries Market opportunity by geography Market drivers Market challenges Market trends Vendor Landscape Vendor landscape Landscape disruption Competitive scenario Vendor Analysis Vendors covered Market positioning of vendors BASF SE Braskem SA Chevron Corp. Daelim Co. Ltd. DuPont de Nemours Inc. Evonik Industries AG INEOS Group Holdings SA LyondellBasell Industries NV The Lubrizol Corp. TPC Group Appendix Scope of the report Currency conversion rates for US$ Research methodology List of abbreviations Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Technavio's in-depth research has direct and indirect COVID-19 impacted market research reports. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: [email protected] Website: www.technavio.com/ Report: https://www.technavio.com/report/polyisobutylene-pib-market-industry-analysis SOURCE Technavio Related Links http://www.technavio.com/ Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-28 23:39:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Li Zhanshu, chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC) Standing Committee, meets with Saysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao National Assembly (NA) via video link at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei) BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday vowed to promote bilateral relations with Laos and jointly advance the socialist endeavor of the two countries. This came as China's top legislator Li Zhanshu met Saysomphone Phomvihane, president of the Lao National Assembly (NA) via video link. Noting China and Laos are friendly neighbors bound by same mountains and rivers, Li, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress (NPC), said the two countries' leaders have recently reached new consensus on building a community with a shared future between China and Laos. As this year marks the 60th anniversary of China-Laos ties, Li said China is willing to work with Laos to further deepen strategic communication, enhance mutual political support, drive the Belt and Road Initiative, and enhance cooperation on COVID-19 response to continuously upgrade traditional friendship between the two sides. Li also said China and Laos can strengthen theoretical exchanges and jointly draw wisdom and strength from history to advance ties between the two countries and two parties as well as the socialist endeavor. Li said the NPC is willing to enhance cooperation with the Lao NA to implement the important consensus reached by the leaders of the two countries and agreements on bilateral cooperation. He also urged keeping momentum of high-level exchanges via flexible means, communications on governance, legislation, supervision, development planning, among others, to improve legal support and institutional guarantee for promoting pragmatic cooperation. Saysomphone thanked China for the significant assistance offered in COVID-19 response and the economic and social development in Laos, and expressed the willingness to enhance communication with the NPC to contribute to building a community with a shared future between Laos and China. Enditem NEW YORK, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- LUVME HAIR, a prestigious wig brand, has observed a substantial increase in the number of customers coming to buy wigs for graduation ceremonies recently, and a rise in turnover compared to the previous years for this quarter. "For the latest months, there has been a significant increase in the percentage of purchasing our wigs as graduation matching or gifts. One of our customers who recently brought our wig, Alie, shares her graduation gift and photos with her friends with us. We are pleased to be able to bring happiness to these graduating children." said LUVME HAIR's customer service manager John. According to LUVME HAIR's sales statistics, the best-selling wig styles for the 2021 graduation season tend to be mature hairstyles. Most girls choose the natural hair color, and the most popular one is the long length curly wig cover with mature glamour. The manager of LUVME HAIR's customer research center summarized, "In the choice of hairstyles, we can find that this segment of graduating students want to distinguish themselves from the youthfulness and become more grown-up and reliable. Since the wig they choose carries their aspirations towards future, we are glad to provide better wigs for them and hope our wigs can accompany and witness their growth. For graduates who are now entering the new environment, it might be a considerable expense for preparing outfits that suitable for their coming job. Considering the limited financial capability of graduating students, LUVME HAIR is offering more privileges for them with a more affordable price of the products during the graduation season, hoping that they can enjoy the fashion and beauty looks brought by LUVME HAIR. With the arrival of May and June, graduation season is coming here again! With the custom of commemorating significant moments, everyone hopes to show their best on this milestone day of graduation. "I'm just so grateful. I wouldn't be where I am with my parents, so I'm happy they'll be able to be here with me. I've been waiting for this moment!" said by graduating senior Taylor from UFABC. According to Pinterest US trends, key words related to graduation such as graduation nails and graduation gifts have been on trend list for several weeks. Compared with previous years, searches associated with graduation hairstyles and wigs have also increased this year. Unlike the online graduation ceremony in 2020, many schools such as United States Military and University Of Florida have announced that they will hold their spring offline graduation ceremony as usual as the pandemic turns into a recovery this year. These universities have stated that they'll gear up prevention measures in the ceremony. This meant that students who attend the offline graduation ceremony needed to wear masks to life pre-covid. As the most identifiable part of the face is covered, and with consistent bachelor's uniforms, hairstyles become the best self-expression for graduates. For which, Wigs have become one of the fashion trends of the 2021 graduation season. Turnover of the entire wig market has increased significantly during the graduation season. SOURCE LUVME HAIR Related Links https://shop.luvmehair.com/ NEW YORK, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading Haircare brand HASK and renowned Global Hair Stylist, Nadia Stacey, announces its products are favored on the new Cruella Movie starring Emma Stone. Emma Stone as Cruella Best Selling 5 in 1 Argan Spray "The Argan 5-in-1 Leave-In Spray was a key product to use because of all the styling, it worked so well to protect hair from all the hot tools used on set. HASK's Leave-In Sprays are the best they're lightweight and free of all the nasties, which makes me feel comfortable when using them on my actresses! While filming, I also consistently used HASK's treatment hair masks to deeply condition and repair actors' hair under wigs I'd even send them home with the product to use as weekly treatments. The nourishing Coconut one is my fave! The Rose Oil and Peach Color Protection hair mask was a big hit for us because the black and white colored hair IS Cruella" says Stacey. When asked "Which HASK products did you actually use to create Emma Stone's Cruella hairstyle and why?" Stacey says, "To help create Emma Stone's iconic Cruella look, I prepped her hair with the 5-in-1 Leave-In Spray prior to heat styling. Then I applied HASK's Curl Enhancing Mousse and used a diffuser to boost and set the curls. To complete the look, I worked the Curl Defining Cream from root to tip to de-frizz and add shine. Cruel Curls have never looked so good!" HASK is sold at retailers nationwide and Amazon.com. For further details please contact: Allison LaGuardia at (203) 220-8410 or email [email protected] or Tyler Suhre at [email protected]. SOURCE HASK NEW YORK, May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network who are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area. EXPERT ALERTS Reducing Flight Anxiety Does Your Retirement Plan Pass the 3-Point Check-Up? How to Use Loving Kindness to Change Your Relationship to Emotional Pain 5 Risk Factors for Postpartum Depression Ways to Connect Deeply Through Pandemic & Beyond The Key to Success Hidden in Quiet Darkness Explore & Restore Notre-Dame's Treasures MEDIA JOBS RT TV, TV Reporter-Presenter ( Moscow ) RT TV ( Moscow ) ) RT TV ( ) RT.com, Fun Financial & Crypto Journalist (Remote) RT.com (Homeworking) OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES 3 Tips for Avoiding Jargon in Your Writing Blog Profiles: Dad Blogs Reducing Flight Anxiety Dr. Lyndsey Harvell-Bowman Director, Terror Management Lab James Madison University "With the flying public ready to board airplanes again, the flight anxiety that may have always been present is now made worse from the pandemic. Not only do we need to be concerned with safety and the potential of crashing, we also have to be concerned if those sitting close to us have a deadly virus. Consequently, we should expect to see an increase in unruly behavior from passengers," said Dr. Lyndsey Harvell-Bowman, director of the Terror Management Lab at James Madison University. With air travel continuing to pick back up as COVID-19 restrictions ease, many passengers are feeling new anxieties about mask wearing and spending time crowded in close quarters on a plane. Dr. Harvell-Bowman can provide valuable insight into these fears and offer some ways to reduce anxiety. In addition to anxiety-reducing strategies for passengers, she can also offer thoughts on how journalists and airlines can play a role in lowering passenger stress. https://www.jmu.edu/commstudies/people/faculty/harvell-lindsey.shtml Website: https://sites.lib.jmu.edu/terrormanagementlab/ Media contact: Ginny Cramer, [email protected] Does Your Retirement Plan Pass the 3-Point Check-Up? Pamela Yellen President, Bank on Yourself "1. Predictability of the growth in your plan. How important is it to you to know the minimum value of your plan and how much income it can provide you when you want to tap into it? If the market tanks by 50% or more (as it has twice since the year 2000) just before or after you retire, will it significantly affect your retirement lifestyle?" 2. Liquidity and access to your money. 401(k)s and IRAs have many restrictions on how and when you can access your savings. You'll have to pay taxes plus a 10% penalty if you withdraw money before 59. And you'll have to sell investments that you counted on for growth. If it's a bad time to sell, you're out of luck. If your 401(k) plan permits borrowing (IRAs do not), there are strict limits on how much you can borrow, how long you can borrow it for, and how you must pay it back. Because of this, you really have to consider the money in your retirement account as a non-liquid asset you won't touch until age 59. 3. Taxation of the income you take from your plan. People like the idea that they can contribute to a 401(k) or IRA with before-tax dollars. Over the years, they tend to forget they have only deferred their tax liability and are sitting on a tax time bomb, as they discover the IRS is taking 25% to 50% of the value of their retirement savings. It's a little-known fact that, if tax rates are the same, it doesn't make any difference if you pay your taxes before you put money aside, or when you take withdrawals. Ask yourself this very important question: What direction do you think tax rates are going over the long term?" Financial security expert and best-selling author Pamela Yellen investigated more than 450 savings and retirement planning strategies seeking an alternative to the risk and volatility of stocks and other investments. Her research led her to a time-tested, predictable method of growing and protecting wealth she calls Bank on Yourself that is now used by more than half a million people. Pamela is the author of the New York Times best-selling book "The Bank on Yourself Revolution: Fire Your Banker, Bypass Wall Street, and Take Control of Your Own Financial Future." Her new book is "Rescue Your Retirement: Five Wealth-Killing Traps of 401(k)s, IRAs and Roth Plans and How to Avoid Them" (FreeRetirementPlanRescueBook.com). Website: FreeRetirementPlanRescueBook.com Contact: Jennifer Thomas, [email protected] How to Use Loving Kindness to Change Your Relationship to Emotional Pain Julie Potiker Author, Mindful Methods for Life "Loving Kindness meditation invites you to expand your ability to have compassion for yourself and others. It opens the doorway to the possibility of being mindfully calm, clear, and loving in an otherwise chaotic world and it is an especially effective way to reorient yourself to painful emotions. By mindfully taking time to love and accept ourselves including all our emotions we give ourselves some breathing room. The practice of Loving Kindness is quite simple; it involves mantras that you repeat silently to yourself. You can do this while sitting in quiet meditation, but you can also do it while in traffic, standing in line at the grocery store, taking a walk outside, or anytime, anywhere that you find it useful." Julie Potiker is a mindfulness expert with extensive teacher training in a variety of tools and methods, including Mindful Self-Compassion. Through her Mindful Methods for Life program offerings and her book "Life Falls Apart, but You Don't Have To: Mindful Methods for Staying Calm in the Midst of Chaos" Julie helps others bring more peace and wellness into their lives. For more information, visit MindfulMethodsForLife.com. Website: MindfulMethodsForLife.com Contact: Jennifer Thomas, [email protected] 5 Risk Factors for Postpartum Depression Dr. Alan Lindemann Obstetric physician and maternal mortality expert Dr. Alan Lindemann "The goal here is to help expectant mothers and those who care for them to identify as early as possible whether the pregnant woman is more likely to face postpartum depression after birth. Knowing this in advance can allow time for additional support structures to be put in place to help the new mother through the challenging postpartum transition. Talk to your obstetric care provider about PPD and your risk factors as soon as your first prenatal appointment. It's never too soon to create a safety net of care for after the birth. Some of the most common risk factors for postpartum depression include: a history of depression, advanced maternal age, pregnancy complications, history of substance abuse, intimate partner conflict." An obstetrician and maternal mortality expert, "Rural Doc" Alan Lindemann, M.D. teaches women and their families how to create the outcomes they want for their own personal health and pregnancy. In his nearly 40 years of practice, he has delivered around 6,000 babies and achieved a maternal mortality rate of zero! Learn more at LindemannMD.com. Website: LindemannMD.com Contact: Jennifer Thomas, [email protected] Ways to Connect Deeply Through Pandemic & Beyond Dr. Bradley Nelson Holistic physician and author Dr. Bradley Nelson "Lend a helping hand Volunteering your time to help others is always a wonderful way to make a difference and feel more connected to your community. If you have skills like teaching art, a second language, or energy healing, you might volunteer your time to virtually offer classes or sessions to anyone needing some support. Write a letter Letters can be a powerful way to connect with people at any time! Sometimes it's easier to fully express yourself with a written note. You might send a postcard from your hometown, decorate a page with arts and crafts, or simply share what's happening in your life. Send thoughtful gifts Sending a care package is a wonderful way to let someone know you care! Apps such as Doordash and Ubereats are meal delivery services that allow you to send dinner or a sweet treat to a loved one, even if they live in a different town. Or you might pack up a box full of your homemade cookies, send a craft kit to a friend with kids (or a creative spirit!), or anything else you know your friend loves! Spend time outdoors together If you live close by, meeting up outdoors can be a great way to connect while keeping everyone in your life healthy. You might plan to meet up in a park, or take a walk together. Exercise is a wonderful way to support your body and mind. Release Trapped Emotions When negative emotional energies get trapped in our bodies, they can stop us from giving and receiving love freely. In fact, we have found that these emotions can become trapped around the heart, forming an energetic wall we refer to as a Heart-Wall. Heart-Wall Trapped Emotions are often responsible when someone feels as though they can't connect deeply in their close relationships. Tools such as [energy work] can free Trapped Emotions, release Heart-Walls, and balance energetic imbalances." Veteran holistic physician Dr. Bradley Nelson (D.C., ret.) is one of the world's foremost experts on natural methods of achieving wellness. He has trained thousands of certified practitioners worldwide to help people overcome physical and emotional discomfort by releasing their emotional baggage. His best-selling book "The Emotion Code" provides step-by-step instructions for working with the body's energy healing power. A newly revised and expanded edition of "The Emotion Code" is now available (May 2019, St. Martin's Press). For more information and a free Emotion Code Starter Kit, visit emotioncodegift.com . Website: DrBradleyNelson.com and DiscoverHealing.com Contact: Jennifer Thomas, [email protected] The Key to Success Hidden in Quiet Darkness Glenn Perry Co-founder, Samadhi Tank Co. "Exploration of self-discovery and creativity is easiest in an environment where nothing is happening. The floatation tank is designed to relieve the sensory overload people experience much of the time so they can experience an expanded state of consciousness in which anything is possible. This state allows people to distinguish new, unlimited possibilities. The floatation tank is a powerful instrument for change. It is an environment for learning about oneself, in whatever way one wishes, without distraction." Glenn and Lee Perry founded Samadhi Tank Co. and the commercial floatation tank industry in 1972. In their new book, "Floating in Quiet Darkness: How the Floatation Tank Has Changed Our Lives and Is Changing the World," they tell how floatation tanks help people reboot the brain, access deep calm, and invigorate childlike creativity. Website: samadhitank.com Contact: Klaudia Simon, [email protected] Explore & Restore Notre-Dame's Treasures Michel Picaud President, Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris "The group has launched a new donor engagement platform to renew public interest and investment. On this new interactive website, donors can engage with specific cathedral artifacts saved from the blaze and choose ones they wish to invest in restoring. Each artifact is a 'piece of the puzzle' awaiting restoration, and each has a unique history and story. Visitors to the site can learn about the history and cultural relevance of each piece, and earmark donations toward individual pieces or towards the cathedral's restoration as a whole." Michel Picaud is President of Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to raising funds to accelerate the restoration of the iconic Paris cathedral. The group is the official public charity leading the cathedral's international fundraising efforts for rebuilding and restoration. Website: FriendsOfNotreDameDeParis.org Contact: Klaudia Simon, [email protected] MEDIA JOBS: Following are links to job listings for staff and freelance writers, editors and producers. You can view these and more job listings on our Job Board: https://www.cisionjobs.com/jobs/united-states/ OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES: Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line at [email protected] 3 TIPS FOR AVOIDING JARGON IN YOUR WRITING . Too much jargon in your writing can alienate potential readers. We have tips for avoiding jargon-filled, acronym-riddled content. BLOG PROFILES: DAD BLOGS . We're getting ahead of Father's Day festivities and are recognizing a few standout dad blogs. They're full of advice, activities, and more. PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire. To contact ProfNet: [email protected] or 800-776-3638, ext. 1 Source: ProfNet SOURCE ProfNet Related Links http://www.profnet.com NEW YORK, May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Juan Monteverde, founder and managing partner at Monteverde & Associates PC, a national securities firm rated Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report and headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City, is investigating Fintech Acquisition Corp. IV ("FTIV" or the "Company") (FTIV) relating to its proposed acquisition of Perella Weinberg Partners. Under the terms of the agreement, FTIV will acquire Perella through a reverse merger, with Perella emerging as a publicly traded company. The investigation focuses on whether Fintech Acquisition Corp. IV and its Board of Directors violated securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to the Company by 1) failing to conduct a fair process, and 2) whether the transaction is properly valued. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/fintech-acquisition-corp-iv. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. About Monteverde & Associates PC We are a national class action securities litigation law firm that has recovered millions of dollars and is committed to protecting shareholders from corporate wrongdoing. We were listed in the Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. Our lawyers have significant experience litigating Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Class Actions. Mr. Monteverde is recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Securities Litigation in 2013, 2017-2019, an award given to less than 2.5% of attorneys in a particular field. He has also been selected by Martindale-Hubbell as a 2017-2020 Top Rated Lawyer. Our firm's recent successes include changing the law in a significant victory that lowered the standard of liability under Section 14(e) of the Exchange Act in the Ninth Circuit. Thereafter, our firm successfully preserved this victory by obtaining dismissal of a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted at the United States Supreme Court. Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019). Also, over the years the firm has recovered or secured over a dozen cash common funds for shareholders in mergers & acquisitions class action cases. If you owned common stock in the Company and wish to obtain additional information and protect your investments free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 971-1341. Contact: Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC The Empire State Building 350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4405 New York, NY 10118 United States of America [email protected] Tel: (212) 971-1341 Attorney Advertising. (C) 2021 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. SOURCE Monteverde & Associates PC Related Links http://www.monteverdelaw.com NEW YORK, May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Juan Monteverde, founder and managing partner at Monteverde & Associates PC, a national securities firm rated Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report and headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City, is investigating Strongbridge Biopharma plc ("SBBP" or the "Company") (SBBP) relating to its proposed acquisition by Xeris Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, SBBP shareholders will receive 0.7840 shares of Xeris per share they own. SBBP shareholders will also receive one contingent value right, worth up to $1.00 in cash per share or equivalent Xeris stock upon achievement of certain triggering events. The investigation focuses on whether Strongbridge Biopharma plc and its Board of Directors violated securities laws and/or breached their fiduciary duties to the Company by 1) failing to conduct a fair process, and 2) whether the transaction is properly valued. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/strongbridge-biopharma-plc. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. About Monteverde & Associates PC We are a national class action securities litigation law firm that has recovered millions of dollars and is committed to protecting shareholders from corporate wrongdoing. We were listed in the Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report. Our lawyers have significant experience litigating Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Class Actions. Mr. Monteverde is recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Securities Litigation in 2013, 2017-2019, an award given to less than 2.5% of attorneys in a particular field. He has also been selected by Martindale-Hubbell as a 2017-2020 Top Rated Lawyer. Our firm's recent successes include changing the law in a significant victory that lowered the standard of liability under Section 14(e) of the Exchange Act in the Ninth Circuit. Thereafter, our firm successfully preserved this victory by obtaining dismissal of a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted at the United States Supreme Court. Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019). Also, over the years the firm has recovered or secured over a dozen cash common funds for shareholders in mergers & acquisitions class action cases. If you owned common stock in the Company and wish to obtain additional information and protect your investments free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 971-1341. Contact: Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC The Empire State Building 350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4405 New York, NY 10118 United States of America [email protected] Tel: (212) 971-1341 Attorney Advertising. (C) 2021 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. SOURCE Monteverde & Associates PC Related Links http://www.monteverdelaw.com CHICAGO, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Osteopathic Association calls for truth in advertising, intellectual honesty, and transparency with the use of professional designations of non-physician clinicians in service of the public interest. We also call for organized, collaborative discussions among stakeholder organizations in the Physician, Advanced Practice Registered Nurse and Physician Assistant communities to find common ground on these important topics. The American Osteopathic Association (AOA), which proudly represents its professional family of more than 151,000 osteopathic physicians (DOs) and medical students nationwide, is deeply concerned by the potential harm to patient care and patient safety resulting from the erosion of physician-led, team-based care. A physician-led team ensures that professionals with the highest level and most extensive degree of medical education and training are adequately involved in clinical decisions and patient care. "Physician-led" does not imply "physician optional." The AOA, and the physicians whom we serve, value the important contributions made to our healthcare system by our non-physician colleagues. Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), Physician Assistants (PAs), and others have worked tirelessly with physicians to care for patients prior to and throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, often under suboptimal and emergency conditions that put their own health and safety at risk. Their selfless service is to be commended. However, it is important to recognize that there is no substitute for the unique and extensive education and training that provides the foundation for physician-level medical decision making. Non-physician clinicians, including APRNs and PAs, are an integral part of physician-led healthcare teams. Healthy discussions and collaboration, regarding safe and appropriate skill set substitution, roles and responsibilities are in order, and we welcome them. However, recent rhetoric has limited this important discussion to claimed territory and optical positioning through the use of professional titles, such as "Doctor" in a clinical setting by non-physicians and "Physician Associate" without consultation with the physician community. Further, we recognize the struggle of achieving professional parity (i.e. scope of practice, prescribing and compensation) between APRNs and PAs. However, efforts to seek parity among non-physician clinicians must not be at the expense of the truth in advertising and clarity of roles in our healthcare system. There are important differences between the education and training requirements for physicians and non-physician clinicians. Physicians across the United States, osteopathic (DO) and allopathic (MD) alike, must meet the same education, postgraduate training and testing requirements and practice in supervised environments that afford progressively greater autonomy before ultimately becoming eligible to treat patients on their own through licensure competency assessment and rigorous board certification standards. These requirements ensure that all patients are treated safely and with the same standard of care. DOs complete four years of medical school, which is comprised of two years of didactic study and two years of clinical rotations, followed by 12,000 to 16,000 hours of supervised graduate medical education (i.e. "residency") before becoming eligible to independently diagnose and treat patients. The American Academy of PAs (AAPA) has begun a push towards autonomy for PAs, first through their "Optimal Team Practice" model which was adopted in 2017 and advocates for the total elimination of any legal or regulatory requirements that PAs must maintain a relationship with a physician1, and now through their recent vote to change the PA name to "Physician Associate1." According to their press release, the name change followed several years of study by an international marketing and communications firm. Professional credentials, titles and how we convey such information to patients is of great import and not a matter of marketing. This title change could easily create confusion for patients and put their safety at risk. Likewise, there are nurse anesthetists who seek to use the title "nurse anesthesiologist," and other nurses with academic doctorates in nursing philosophy who use the title "Doctor" in a clinical setting, allowing patients to conflate their doctorates with the rigors of physician-level education and training. Many states have truth in advertising laws in place to protect against these situations and help ensure that patients know that important medical decisions are being guided by physicians.2, 3, 4 We strongly believe that all patients deserve access to high-quality medical care provided by a fully trained and licensed physician. The House of Medicine needs to collectively support the practice of medicine and work to ensure physician leadership for patient care. We are calling on our peers in the healthcare community to join together with policymakers to support policies that recognize the importance of the physician-led medical team model, ensuring that physicians, the only professionals with comprehensive medical education and training, are appropriately distinguished from non-physicians and are adequately involved in the care of this nation's sick and injured. About the American Osteopathic Association The American Osteopathic Association (AOA) represents more than 151,000 osteopathic physicians (DOs) and osteopathic medical students; promotes public health; encourages, funds and disseminates scientific research; serves as the primary certifying body for DOs; and is the accrediting agency for osteopathic medical schools. To learn more about DOs and the osteopathic philosophy of medicine, visit www.osteopathic.org. 1 See https://www.aapa.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Infographic_Optimal_Team_Practice_Letter_Size_FINAL_020819.pdf 1 See https://www.aapa.org/news-central/2021/05/aapa-house-of-delegates-votes-to-change-profession-title-to-physician-associate/ 2 See https://www.einnews.com/pr_news/533916837/njaops-supports-the-health-care-transparency-act-signed-by-governor-murphy 3 See https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/business-and-professions-code/bpc-sect-2278.html 4 See https://www.courts.state.nh.us/supreme/finalorders/2021/20190716.pdf SOURCE American Osteopathic Association Related Links https://osteopathic.org NEW YORK, May 29, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Juan Monteverde, founder and managing partner at Monteverde & Associates PC, a national securities firm rated Top 50 in the 2018-2020 ISS Securities Class Action Services Report and headquartered at the Empire State Building in New York City, is investigating: Frank's International N.V. (FI) relating to its proposed acquisition by Expro Group. Under the terms of the agreement, Expro shareholders will receive 7.272 shares of FI per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/franks-international-nv. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. PPD, Inc. (PPD) relating to its proposed acquisition Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, PPD shareholders will receive $47.50 in cash per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/ppd-inc. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. Cadence Bancorporation (CADE) relating to its proposed acquisition by BancorpSouth Bank. Under the terms of the agreement, CADE shareholders will receive 0.70 shares of Bancorp South and a one-time cash dividend of $1.25 per share they own. Click here for more information: http://monteverdelaw.com/case/cadence-bancorporation. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you Knoll, Inc. (KNL) relating to its proposed acquisition by Herman Miller , Inc. Under the terms of the agreement, KNL shareholders are expected to receive $11.00 in cash and 0.32 shares of Herman Miller per share they own. Click here for more information: https://www.monteverdelaw.com/case/knoll-inc. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. Kimco Realty Corp. (KIM) relating to its proposed acquisition of Weingarten Realty Investors (WRI). Under the terms of the agreement, WRI shareholders will receive 1.408 shares of Kimco and $2.89 in cash per share. Click here for more information: http://monteverdelaw.com/case/kimco-realty-corp. It is free and there is no cost or obligation to you. About Monteverde & Associates PC We are a national class action securities litigation law firm that has recovered millions of dollars and is committed to protecting shareholders from corporate wrongdoing. We were listed in the Top 50 in the 2018-2020I SS Securities Class Action Services Report. Our lawyers have significant experience litigating Mergers & Acquisitions and Securities Class Actions. Mr. Monteverde is recognized by Super Lawyers as a Rising Star in Securities Litigation in 2013, 2017-2019, an award given to less than 2.5% of attorneys in a particular field. He has also been selected by Martindale-Hubbell as a 2017-2020 Top Rated Lawyer. Our firm's recent successes include changing the law in a significant victory that lowered the standard of liability under Section 14(e) of the Exchange Act in the Ninth Circuit. Thereafter, our firm successfully preserved this victory by obtaining dismissal of a writ of certiorari as improvidently granted at the United States Supreme Court. Emulex Corp. v. Varjabedian, 139 S. Ct. 1407 (2019). Also, in 2019 we recovered or secured six cash common funds for shareholders in mergers & acquisitions class action cases. If you own common stock in any of the above listed companies and wish to obtain additional information and protect your investments free of charge, please visit our website or contact Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. either via e-mail at [email protected] or by telephone at (212) 971-1341. Contact: Juan E. Monteverde, Esq. MONTEVERDE & ASSOCIATES PC The Empire State Building 350 Fifth Ave. Suite 4405 New York, NY 10118 United States of America [email protected] Tel: (212) 971-1341 Attorney Advertising. (C) 2021 Monteverde & Associates PC. The law firm responsible for this advertisement is Monteverde & Associates PC (www.monteverdelaw.com). Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome with respect to any future matter. SOURCE Monteverde & Associates PC Related Links http://www.monteverdelaw.com BHE is one of the pre-eminent companies in the UAE representing top-tier defence and security companies, including General Dynamics Mission Systems "The level of interest in KWESST's products from a company with the pedigree of BHE reflects serious intent," said KWESST executive chairman David E. Luxton Micro Systems Inc. ( ) ( ) has announced the appointment of Bin Hilal Enterprises, LLC (BHE) as its representative in the key Middle East market of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The company noted that it featured its products at the signature IDEX defence show in Abu Dhabi in February 2021 and received many expressions of interest from end-users and prospective industry partners in the UAE and throughout the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). After an extensive evaluation process, KWESST said it has concluded a comprehensive representation agreement for the UAE market with BHE, which is one of the pre-eminent companies in the UAE representing top-tier defence and security companies, including Mission Systems. "We are excited at the interest from the UAE," David E. Luxton, the executive chairman of KWESST said in a statement. "It is also very encouraging to see the recent announcement that travel restrictions into the UAE have been relaxed, making it feasible to now conduct demonstrations there and pursue a number of opportunities." "The level of interest in KWESST's products from a company with the pedigree of BHE reflects serious intent," added Luxton. "As well, the UAE is a leader in advancing its defence industry internally and within the GCC. We therefore look forward to actively pursuing the potential for KWESST's solutions to this key Middle East market with a proven partner like BHE." He concluded: "Building a network of representatives as a way to grow internationally is a strategy I have successfully implemented a number of times in prior ventures." The company also informed shareholders that its interim financial statements and MD&A for the six-month period ended March 31, 2021, have been filed on SEDAR. KWESST develops and commercializes high-value ultra-miniaturized technology applications that make a critical difference to the safety and operational effectiveness of personnel in the defence and security industries. The company's current portfolio of unique proprietary offerings include: its signature TASCS (Tactical Awareness and Situational Control System) for real-time awareness and targeting information from any source (including drones) streamed directly to users' smart devices and weapons; the autonomous GreyGhost soldier-portable micro drone missile system that defends against small hostile drones including swarms using high-speed kinetic impact; a Ground Laser Defence system to counter the emerging threat of weaponized lasers against personnel; and the Phantom electronic battlefield decoy system to mask the electromagnetic signature of friendly forces with decoy signatures at false locations to deceive and confuse adversaries. All systems can operate stand-alone or integrate seamlessly with OEM products and battlefield management systems including Frontline, Edge, Killswitch and ATAK (Android Tactical Assault Kit) among others. KWESST also has developmental "smart ordnance" projects including its "Shot Counter" system, which records the number and type of rounds fired, for optimized firearms maintenance and performance. The company is headquartered in Ottawa, Canada, with representative offices in Washington, DC, London, UK and Abu Dhabi, UAE. Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com Santiago, May 29 : Chile on Friday reported 8,680 new cases of the novel coronavirus disease in 24 hours, the second highest figure since the start of the pandemic here in March 2020, bringing its accumulated caseload to 1,361,381, the Ministry of Health said. It was the second consecutive day to register over 8,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19 in a 24-hour period, which also saw 119 more deaths from the disease, raising the pandemic death toll to 28,928, the Xinhua news agency reported. Some 1,287,804 patients have recovered from the disease, while 43,793 cases currently remain active, with 3,067 patients in intensive care units, including 2,540 on ventilators. Chilean Health Minister Enrique Paris expressed concern "about this rise in cases," adding "it is essential to maintain self-care measures." The South American country has seen new outbreaks in recent days, with a rise in the hospitalisation of young people and adults yet to be vaccinated against Covid-19, despite the fact that around 50 per cent of its target population has received the vaccine, according to data from the ministry. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Los Angeles, May 29 : Actress Emily Blunt has described her first kiss as a "horror show", because she was left needing to wipe her mouth when the kiss was over. Blunt shared that she was playing spin the bottle with friends when the bottle landed on Ashley, whom she said was a tall and handsome boy with a 90s "curtained" hairstyle that she and her friends found attractive. "I spun the bottle, it landed on Ashley, and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is it'. Now, I had heard about the concept of French kissing but I thought: 'Why would that be pleasurable or nice?' And it wasn't," Blunt recalled during an appearance on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!", according to a report in femalefirst.co.uk. She added: "I was just horrified by the whole thing. I just remember surreptitiously wiping my mouth afterwards. It was horrible." Although her kiss with Ashley didn't work out, Blunt says she was able to find love with her husband John Krasinski. Her actor-filmmaker spouse had earlier praised Blunt as "the most tremendous actress of our time". Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 01:34:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Relatives of Palestinian Zakaria Hamayel mourn during his funeral in the village of Beita, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, May 28, 2021. Palestinian Ministry of Health said that Hamayel was dead after he was shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers during clashes in the village of Beita. (Photo by Ayman Nobani/Xinhua) RAMALLAH, May 28 (Xinhua) -- A young Palestinian man was shot dead and dozens were injured on Friday during clashes between Palestinian protesters and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, the Palestinian Ministry of Health said. The Palestinian young man was killed after he was shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers in the village of Beita, south of the West Bank city of Nablus, according to a ministry statement. Eyewitnesses said clashes between the two sides broke out in different areas in the West Bank, adding dozens were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. Every Friday for years, the Palestinians organize popular protest against the expansion of Israeli settlement and confiscation of land. In the last six weeks, 30 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers in several towns and villages of the West Bank, the Health Ministry said. Enditem Washington, May 29 : Over 40 per cent of the American population have been fully vaccinated against Covid-19 till date, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Over 133 million Americans have been fully vaccinated, while over 166 million have got at least one dose, Xinhua news agency quoted the CDC as saying in its latest update on Friday. Among the fully vaccinated, over 40 million are people aged 65 years and older, it added. Over 292 million Covid-19 vaccine doses have been administered across the US so far, according to the update. Over 157 million Pfizer/BioNTech doses and 123 million Moderna doses have been administered in the country, while 10.6 million Johnson & Johnson shots have been administered, the CDC data added. So far, 10 states have reached President Joe Biden's goal of vaccinating 70 per cent of adults by July 4 with at least one dose. In the update, the CDC also predicted that Covid-19 cases, hospitalisations and deaths across the country will fall over the next four weeks. It said that there will be a total of 596,000 to 606,000 Covid-19 deaths by June 19. The US has so far registered a total of 32,869,009 confirmed coronavirus cases and 586,890 deaths. The two tallies are the highest in the world. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Brussels, May 29 : The European Medicines Agency (EMA) has approved the use of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine for children aged 12 to 15. Pfizer-BioNTech becomes the first vaccine to be authorised for adolescents in the 27 member states of the European Union (EU), reports Xinhua news agency. Addressing a press conference here on Friday, Marco Cavaleri, EMA's vaccine strategy manager, said that the medicines' regulator had received the necessary data to authorise the vaccine for younger teens. The data shows that it is highly effective against Covid-19. He pointed out that the decision needs to be approved by the European Commission and individual national regulators. Regulators in Canada and the US had already recommended its use for teenagers. The EMA's recommendation was based on a study in more than 2,200 adolescents in the US showing that the vaccine was safe and effective. The trial showed that the immune response in this group was comparable to that in the 16-25 age group. The study shows that the vaccine was 100 per cent effective at preventing Covid, the EMA said in a statement. The most common side effects in children aged 12 to 15 are similar to those in people aged 16 and above. They include pain, tiredness, headache, muscle and joint pain, chills and fever. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Gaza, May 29 : A young Palestinian man was shot dead and dozens were injured during clashes between protesters and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank, the Hamas-run Ministry of Health said. The Palestinian young man was killed after he was shot in the chest by Israeli soldiers in the village of Beita, south of the West Bank city of Nablus on Friday, according to a Ministry statement. Witnesses said clashes between the two sides broke out in different areas in the West Bank, adding dozens were injured by rubber bullets and tear gas canisters, reports Xinhua news agency. Every Friday for years, the Palestinians have organised protests against the expansion of Israeli settlement and confiscation of land. In the last six weeks, 30 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured during clashes with Israeli soldiers in several towns and villages of the West Bank, according to the Health Ministry said. The development comes as a ceasefire is in effect between Israel and Hamas after the 11-day conflict in an around the Gaza Strip, which left at least 243 Palestinians and 12 Israelis dead. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Srinagar, May 29 : Two days after she was critically injured in a mysterious blast along with her daughter in J&K's Kupwara district, a woman succumbed on Saturday in the hospital. The 49-year old Sara Begum and her 19-year old daughter, Gulnaza Bano, belonging to Sharkoot village of Kupwara district, were critically injured when they were cleaning collard greens and some other wild vegetable they had collected from the nearby forest. Police said the duo had unintentionally picked a 'dead shell' along with the wild vegetable from the forest which went off during fiddling. "On May 26, they were cleaning the vegetables when the dead shell exploded. "The daughter succumbed immediately while the mother was shifted to Srinagar for treatment. She passed away in the wee hours of morning today", police said. Canberra, May 29 : The protection of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia is expected to be enhanced with a barge to be built at a cost of A$5 million ($3 million), the Queensland state government announced. The 19-metre vessel, based in Townsville, is designed to carry a small excavator, earthmoving machinery or 4WDs, and a rigid hulled inflatable, Xinhua news agency quoted the state government as saying. With a cruising speed of 20 knots, the floating ranger station is expected to operate up to 270 days a year and provide overnight accommodation for seven rangers, and up to 24 for day trips. The barge will play an important role alongside other initiatives aimed at protecting the reef, by supporting rangers to undertake extended patrol and infrastructure management duties, including protecting marine area and island national park. It is also expected to enable the rangers to better respond to incidents, and conduct compliance, diving and research operations. Australia's Environment Minister Sussan Ley said the barge would help prioritize the key conservation and rehabilitation activities. "Enhancing the resilience of our amazing islands and reefs through activities such as controlling invasive pests, re-planting native vegetation to support species like seabirds and turtles and trialling the application of reef rehabilitation techniques is a task our rangers are uniquely placed to do," Ley said. This vessel will provide the ideal platform from which to conduct these projects, said the minister. Queensland Environment Minister Meaghan Scanlon said the vessel will strengthen the capacity of Reef Joint Field Management Program in remote locations of the reef, and help rangers and specialists do their jobs more efficiently and safely. Scanlon also said the reef contributes A$6.4 billion to the economy every year and supports around 64,000 jobs. Colombo, May 29 : Sri Lanka's Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) said acid rains would possibly hit the island nation as a result of the burning X-Press Pearl container ship in the waters off the Colombo Harbour, local media reported. Chairperson of the MEPA Dharshani Lahandapura told local News First media outlet on Friday that nitrogen oxide gas emitted into the atmosphere will mix with water particles in the upper atmosphere to produce nitric acid for the acid rain, reports Xinhua news agency. The MEPA head said such air currents could move from the coastal areas into the country, and there is a possibility of acid rains in the surrounding areas. Lahandapura urged people to be vigilant to avoid exposures to rain directly and cover metal structures or vehicles outdoors. The Sri Lankan Navy on Friday said it was continuing the efforts to put out the flames onboard thethe Singapore-flagged ship which caught fire in waters off the Colombo port on May 20 and was threatening to cause an environmental disaster. The Navy added that the ship is in danger of sinking and efforts are underway to prevent it. There has been no sign of an oil spill, it added. The MEPA has warned of a major environmental disaster and is conducting investigations to assess the impact of the burning vessel. The X-Press Pearl was carrying 1,486 containers with 25 tonnes of nitric acid and several other chemicals and cosmetics from the port of Hazira, India, on May 15. The vessel sent out a distress call while being close to the Colombo Port on May 20, and soon caught fire. The Sri Lanka Navy said it had rescued 25 crew members from the cargo ship. Two injured Indian nationals among the rescued had been hospitalised for treatment, and one of them had tested positive for Covid-19, according to the health officials. The distressed container ship had crew members who are Philippine, Chinese, Indian and Russian nationals. New Delhi, May 29 : In a U-turn, WhatsApp has said that it will not limit functionalities for users who do not accept the new privacy policy that went into effect on May 15. The Facebook-owned platform that has filed a lawsuit against the Indian government in Delhi High Court over chat 'traceability', went ahead with implementing its controversial user privacy policy from May 15, saying that those who do not accept new changes will see limited functionality in the coming weeks. In a statement given to The Next Web, WhatsApp said on Saturday that it won't restrict any functionality even if the users don't accept the policy for now. "Given recent discussions with various authorities and privacy experts, we want to make clear that we currently have no plans to limit the functionality of how WhatsApp works for those who have not yet accepted the update," WhatsApp said. "Instead, we will continue to remind users from time to time about the update as well as when people choose to use relevant optional features, like communicating with a business that is receiving support from Facebook." WhatsApp rolled out its privacy policy globally including in India, where it has more than 400 million users. The users will not immediately lose their accounts or face curtailed functionalities, but they will have to eventually go through limited functions if they fail to accept the new norms in the due course of time. "After persistent reminders, the users will encounter limited functionality on WhatsApp until they accept the updates," the company had said. Earlier, taking the user privacy war to the court over new IT rules, WhatsApp said that that user privacy is in its DNA and requiring messaging apps to "trace" chats undermines people's right to privacy. The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) had asked social media platforms to abide by the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 by May 25, or face strict action. A WhatsApp spokesperson said that requiring messaging apps to "trace" chats is the equivalent of asking us to keep a fingerprint of every single message sent on WhatsApp. "It would break end-to-end encryption and fundamentally undermines people's right to privacy. We have consistently joined civil society and experts around the world in opposing requirements that would violate the privacy of our users," the spokesperson stressed. WhatsApp said that "we will maintain this approach until at least the forthcoming PDP (personal data protection) law comes into effect". -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text May 29 : Nawazuddin Siddiqui has been roped in to play an important part in Tiger Shroff's forthcoming film Heropanti 2, a sequel to his debut movie Heropanti. Directed by Ahmed Khan and bankrolled by Nadiadwala Grandson, the film also stars Tara Sutaria opposite Tiger. Reportedly, Nawazuddin will play the antagonist whom Tiger will be seen taking on. While the first shooting schedule of the film was wrapped up in Mumbai just before the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic struck the country, the second schedule of the film has been postponed till the current lockdown restrictions are lifted in Maharashtra. Nawazuddin will reportedly join the cast and crew for the second schedule. Music maestro AR Rahman has also been brought on board as the music composer of Heropanti 2, while Mehboob has been roped in as the lyricist. The film has been slated to release on December 3. Earlier, the makers were considering to cast Sara Ali Khan opposite Tiger. But last year, after actor Sushant Singh Rajputs death, Saras name cropped up in the drug scandal, and the young actor was also interrogated by NCB in the drug case. Following that, social media was abuzz with boycott campaigns and netizens started trolling her. Despite the deal with Sara was in the final stage, the makers of Heropanti 2 dropped the idea to cast Sara as they felt that it would jeopardize their venture. They instead roped in Tara in place of Sara. Tigers debut Heropanti, which released in May 2014, was a blockbuster. It featured Kriti Sanon opposite Tiger. Meanwhile, Nawazuddin Siddiqui managed to wrap up the shoot of his two films, Sangeen and Jogira Sara Ra Ra, amidst the pandemic. The actor was shooting for Sangeen in January this year in London, when the city was under a lockdown. Despite the horrible situation, Nawazuddin and the crew continued to shoot with all precautions in place. Immediately after Sangeen shoot, he started shooting for Jogira Sara Ra Ra. The actor is now waiting for the release of Bole Chudiyaan, which also stars Tamannaah Bhatia in the lead role. Paris, May 29 : A knife attacker, who was on the large after stabbing a policewoman in France, has been arrested, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin announced. "The gendarmes neutralised the individual suspected of stabbing the municipal policewoman in Chapelle-sur-Erdre. Thanks to them and thoughts for the gendarmes injured during this arrest," Darmanin tweeted on Friday night. The attacker was arrested shortly after 1 p.m. after an exchange of fire with gendarmes who sought after him. Two gendarmes were wounded by shots, according to BFM television. At around 10 a.m, the attacker entered the commune police station of La Chapelle-sur-Erdre in Loire-Atlantique and stabbed the policewoman several times before running away. The policewoman suffered serious wounds in the legs. Tel Aviv, May 29 : The Israeli government has extended an ongoing travel ban to seven countries, including India, until June 13, according to a joint statement. The statement issued on Friday by the Ministries of Health and Transport and the Prime Minister's Office also lists Ukraine, Ethiopia, Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and Turkey, Xinhua news agency reported. Israeli citizens and permanent residents who want to travel to one of these countries must apply to an exceptions committee. Meanwhile, all passengers arriving in Israel from these countries must go into quarantine, including those vaccinated and recovered from the virus. It was decided that the travel ban will also apply to Argentina and Russia next week. So far, a total of 839,429 coronavirus cases have been detected in Israel, with 6,406 deaths. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 02:19:47|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday met with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi where the leaders discussed the aftermath of the Ryanair incident, the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin agreed with Lukashenko's opinion that the reaction to the Ryanair landing demonstrated an "emotional outburst," and added there were many other common fields of interest both leaders could discuss, according to the statement. Putin recalled an incident that took place in 2013, when the airplane of the Bolivian president was forced to land at a different location, pointing out the reaction back then was rather quiet. Lukashenko in turn told the Russian leader he would show him documents related to the recent emergency landing of the Ryanair flight. "There has been an attempt to stir up the situation so it would end up being similar to that of August last year... It is simply clear what these Western friends want from us," he said, speaking of mass election protests in Belarus in 2020. The Irish airline Ryanair said that flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was directed to an airport in Minsk on Sunday as crew on the plane had been alerted to a possible security threat by Belarusian authorities, adding that nothing untoward was found. Enditem Tripoli, May 29 : Libyan Foreign Minister Najla al-Mangoush met with her Italian and Maltese counterparts and the European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement to discuss the cooperation against the illegal immigration. "Libya has been suffering from the illegal immigration," al-Mangoush said at a joint press conference following the meeting on Friday. The Minister added that she and the other three officials all agreed to secure the southern Libyan border from illegal immigration with the assistance of the European Union. Confirming the willingness of the EU to support Libya, European Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement Oliver Varhelyi said Libya is returning to stability and security and needs to develop the economy in a bid to provide work for their citizens. Maltese Foreign Minister Evarist Bartolo confirmed his country's support for the new Government of National Unity in Libya. Meanwhile, Luigi Di Maio, Italy's Foreign Minister, stressed the importance of enhancing security relations with Libya and the commitment to the long-term stability and development of the region. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), at least 7,096 illegal migrants have been rescued off the Libyan coast so far this year. The rescued migrants include 546 women and 336 minors. It added that 157 illegal migrants died and 349 others went missing on the Central Mediterranean route so far in 2021. The IOM figures reveal that a total of 575,874 migrants from over 41 countries currently live in Libya. The state of insecurity and chaos in Libya following the fall of its long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 has encouraged thousands of migrants to cross the Mediterranean Sea towards European shores. According to IOM and the UN Refugee Agency, migrants and refugees in Libya continue to be subjected to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, exploitation and violence, conditions that push them to take risky journeys with fatal consequences, especially sea crossings. Rescued migrants end up inside overcrowded reception centres across Libya, despite repeated international calls to close those facilities. Sanaa, May 29 : At least 31 Houthi rebels were killed in airstrikes launched by the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen's oil-rich province of Marib, a military source said on Saturday. "The airstrikes on Friday killed the militants in the desert while they were moving in three groups toward positions of the Yemeni army in the western district of Sirwah," the source told Xinhua news agency. Meanwhile, Houthi-run al-Masirah TV reported 15 coalition airstrikes on the Houthi positions in Sirwah, without providing further details. The Iran-backed Houthis began in February a major offensive against the Saudi-backed Yemeni government army to capture Marib, which hosts nearly 2 million internally displaced people. The UN has warned the offensive on Marib could lead to a major humanitarian catastrophe. A recent UN-brokered negotiation between Yemen's warring sides and other relevant parties has failed to produce a ceasefire agreement. According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), some 20,384 people have been displaced due to the ongoing fighting in Marib since February. Yemen has been mired in a civil war since late 2014 when the Houthi militia seized control of several northern provinces and forced the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi out of the capital Sanaa. The Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened in the Yemeni conflict in March 2015 to support Hadi's government. San Francisco, May 29 : As offices set to reopen after the pandemic and vaccination drive, only 30 per cent of companies in the US and Europe will embrace a full return-to-office model, according to a new report. While many business leaders are drawn to vaccine passports as a solution to bring their workforces back to the office full-time, global market research firm Forrester predicts that 70 per cent of US and European companies will pivot to a hybrid work model post-pandemic. Microsoft and Google have already laid out detailed plans for a hybrid workplace. "By shifting conversations to focus on the working environments that best suit employees' needs moving forward, organisations can ensure that their employees feel they are being heard and that they have the autonomy and tools to do their jobs effectively," said Keith Johnston, VP and group research director at Forrester. In a hybrid model setup, at least some employees can work anywhere they want for two or more days a week while coming into the office on the remaining workdays. According to Forrester, 55 per cent of US employees say they hope to work from home more often, even after the pandemic ends. "Nearly 47 per cent of US workers and 54 per cent of European workers believe vaccines will not completely stop the spread of the Covid-19 virus," the findings showed. Only 39 per cent of US workers and 34 per cent of European workers feel that their employers have a plan in place to provide vaccination. "Two-thirds of workers in both regions are not comfortable with employers collecting their personal data specific to the pandemic," the report showed. Tunis, May 29 : Tunisian authorities rescued 262 illegal immigrants of different nationalities in two different operations, according to a statement released by the Defence Ministry. "A rescue operation took place this afternoon off the coastal city of Sfax in southeastern Tunisia, when a unit of the naval guard managed to rescue 158 illegal immigrants from a sinking boat sailing to the Italian coasts," Xinhua news agency quoted the Ministry statement issued on friday night as saying. The group of illegal immigrants includes two infants, according to the statement. In a second operation earlier in the day, the Tunisian naval guard rescued 104 illegal immigrants of Tunisian, Moroccan, Sudanese, Egyptian and Ghanaian nationalities, also off the coastal city of Sfax. The rescued migrants have said they sailed off on Tuesday night from Libya towards the Italian coast. Tunisia has experienced an upsurge in immigration since the Libyan crisis started in early 2011, after which nearly 350,000 fled Libya via the Tunisian border in the course of a few months, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Kolkata, May 29 : The Phoenix Mills Limited and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board on Saturday announced the execution of definitive documents for a new joint venture to develop a regional retail centre in Alipore, Kolkata. CPP Investments will commit to investing approximately Rs 560 crore (C$93 million) in Mindstone Mall Developers Private Ltd in tranches, for an ultimate equity stake of 49 per cent. With the funds invested by CPP Investments and PML, Mindstone will develop a retail centre with a potential leasable area of approximately 1 million sq ft. The target completion date is for the second half of 2024. Commenting on the Mindstone deal, Atul Ruia, Chairman at The Phoenix Mills Limited, said: "We are pleased to grow our strategic relationship with CPP Investments to establish our footprint in Eastern India. This investment bears testament to the attractive long-term prospects of our robust business model of creating destination consumption hubs in key cities of India. With this asset, we are well on track to more than double our operational retail portfolio by 2024. We remain focused on expanding our portfolio by investing in attractive markets and ensuring timely execution of the projects." Shishir Shrivastava, Managing Director at The Phoenix Mills Limited, said: "Alipore, Kolkata is a premium neighbourhood and the site is strategically located, surrounded by a dense catchment of residential and office space. We believe that the site's proximity to established and developing micro-markets, through extensive and well-developed civic infrastructure, provides us with ample opportunity to cater to the region's significant untapped consumption potential. We see this will be a mall for the city of Kolkata and a dominant consumption hub for the state of West Bengal. Our mall will be designed by international architects with large and modern open public spaces that will be integral to the customer experience in Kolkata's largest retail centre. We intend to host the best of domestic and international brands, representing all categories of consumer wallet spend." Hari Krishna, Managing Director, Real Estate - India, CPP Investments, said: "We are pleased to further expand our relationship with The Phoenix Mills, a pioneer in India's retail property sector, to develop and own a premium retail centre in an underserved market. With this investment, CPP Investments' equity commitment to multiple ventures with The Phoenix Mills amounts to over Rs 2,620 crore. India is one of the most important markets for us in Asia Pacific and a critical part of our long-term strategy. Working alongside reputed development partners such as The Phoenix Mills allows us to expand our portfolio and enhances our ability to deliver solid long-term risk adjusted returns to CPP contributors and beneficiaries." Kolkata is a prominent business hub in Eastern India owing to its strategic location and excellent connectivity. It is home to several large manufacturing and information technology companies along with a well-developed banking sector. The city has witnessed a rapid expansion of residential and commercial development in the last decade. Alipore is an established location with various luxurious high-end residential projects and superior infrastructure. PML and CPP Investments are also extending their commitments to their current joint venture, Island Star Mall Developers Private Limited ("ISMDPL"). Both parties have agreed to invest collectively up to Rs 800 crore ($133 million) into ISMDPL in tranches as required, in the ratio of their respective shareholdings. The joint venture was formed in 2017 to develop, own and operate retail-led, mixed-use developments across India. Phoenix Marketcity in Whitefield Bangalore served as the seed asset for the alliance. In addition to owning and operating Phoenix Marketcity, ISMDPL owns - and is currently developing - three retail-led, mixed-use developments at Wakad Pune, Hebbal Bangalore and Indore. Brasilia, May 29 : At least four people were killed after a fire broke out in a Covid-19 patient area at a public hospital in the Brazilian city of Aracaju, capital of Sergipe state, local authorities said. The fire occurred on Friday in the Doctor Nestor Piva North Zone Municipal Hospital, according to reports from the municipal Health Ministry. A woman who was being transferred died at the scene, as well as three other people, while 35 patients, some on oxygen, had to be transferred to other area medical centres, reports Xinhua news agency. Fire Department spokesperson Lieutenant Fabiano Queiroz told local media that the fire blaze at about 6.30 a.m. and was brought under control about 30 minutes later. The fire may have originated in the air conditioning circuit of the Covid-19 area, according to the authorities. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) London, May 29 : UK Chancellor Rishi Sunak has called on the G7 member nations to continue working together to secure a green and sustainable global economic recovery. Sunak made the remarks at a virtual meeting on Friday ahead of the in-person G7 Finance Ministers' summit in London on June 4-5, reports Xinhua news agency. The G7 should ensure that tackling climate change is prioritised in economic and financial policy, according to a statement from the UK Treasury. Sunak also pressed for efforts to ensure that global financial markets play their part in the transition to net zero, such as improved climate-related financial disclosures and support for the development of international sustainability-related financial reporting standards, according to the statement. Following their virtual meeting on Thursday and Friday, the G7 Trade Ministers said in a joint communique that they are committed to continuing their collective work to drive forward global trade in support of the global recovery efforts from the Covid-19 pandemic. "We agree to advance key issues including trade and the environment, trade and health, and digital trade and to ensure that global trade serves as an engine for inclusive economic growth," the communique said. The countries said that they are united with the aim of delivering as many safe and effective vaccines as fast as possible, to as many people as possible across the world and will prioritise discussions and support work at the World Trade Organization in identifying solutions to expand global vaccine production and distribution. The G7 supports strategic investments to diversify production bases, working with industry, international organisations, regional bodies, and other governments to target funding effectively the communique said. The G7 includes Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. The UK holds the G7 presidency this year. Prime Minister Boris Johnson will host the G7 leaders for a summit in Cornwall in South West England next month. Mumbai, May 29 : Actor Pratik Gandhi likes to experiment with his palette but "ghar ka khana" his go-to food. "Most of the time 'ghar ka khana' (homecooked food) is my go-to food, but I keep experimenting. I like food. I like exploring different and new cuisines," Pratik told IANS. The actor, who rose to fame with his portrayal of Harshad Mehta in the popular series "Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story", is currently busy shooting for the upcoming horror comedy "Atithi Bhooto Bhava". He opened up on his food choices on "Star Vs Food", where he was seen trying his hand at whipping up cold-roasted globe artichokes and portobello mushrooms. The show airs on Discovery+. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Ottawa, May 29 : The remains of 215 indigenous children were discovered at a former residential school in Kamloops in western Canada, authorities said, adding an investigation into the matter has been launched. In a press release on Friday, the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations said: "It is unknown how many children died and disappeared while attending residential schools in Canada with few known locations of their resting sites. "Indigenous peoples continue to deal and cope with the past genocidal policies and entrenched colonial system. The investigation at this burial site will continue and it is expected that the number of child graves will increase. "It is expected that thousands of unmarked graves exist across Canada of indigenous children who died at residential schools. Families who never saw their children return home experience never-ending grief and continue to live with deep scars." The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in Kamloops city in British Columbia province announced that ground-penetrating radar uncovered the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, reports Xinhua news agency. Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said on Thursday that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist. Among the 215 children, some were three years old. The children were assumed to have been lost or runaway in Canada's residential school system. Casimir called the discovery an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School". The residential school was one of the largest from 1890 until 1969 when the federal government took over the administration before its closing in 1978. "The finding of these graves refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia as we remember the fear, horror and desperation experienced by families and communities as their children were forcibly taken away to residential schools," said Regional Chief Terry Teegee of British Columbia Assembly of First Nations. "It was a dreadful time of forced assimilation and genocide inflicted by the colonial Canadian state for over a hundred years. Finding these gravesites is urgent work as many families continue to mourn the loss of their missing children and seek information about their fates," he added. Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, called the news painful. "While it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it's always crushing to have that chapter's wounds exposed." British Columbia Premier John Horgan stated that he is horrified and heartbroken to learn that the burial site of 215 children had been confirmed. Marc Miller, Minister of Indigenous Services, said it was heartbreaking news and promised "to offer the full support of Indigenous Services Canada as the community, and surrounding communities, honor and mourn the loss of these children". An estimated 150,000 indigenous children across Canada were reportedly removed from their homes and forced to attend residential schools between 1890s and as recently as 1996. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada issued its final report on residential schools more than five years ago. The nearly 4,000-page account details the harsh mistreatment inflicted on indigenous children at the institutions, where at least 3,200 children died amid abuse and neglect. Islamabad, May 29 : At least nine people were killed and 16 others injured after a passenger van fell into a ditch in Pakistan's Muzaffarabad city, local media reported on Saturday morning. Police told the media that the victims included three children, and the injured have been shifted to the hospital, reports Xinhua news agency. The van was heading towards Chakothi sector from Rawalpindi, according to the reports. Road accidents are quite frequent in Pakistan mainly due to poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and unprofessional driving. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 03:51:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko Lukashenko told Putin he would show him documents related to the recent emergency landing of the Ryanair flight. MOSCOW, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday met with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi where the leaders discussed the aftermath of the Ryanair incident, the Kremlin said in a statement. Putin agreed with Lukashenko's opinion that the reaction to the Ryanair landing demonstrated an "emotional outburst," and added there were many other common fields of interest both leaders could discuss, according to the statement. Putin recalled an incident that took place in 2013, when the airplane of the Bolivian president was forced to land at a different location, pointing out the reaction back then was rather quiet. Lukashenko in turn told the Russian leader he would show him documents related to the recent emergency landing of the Ryanair flight. "There has been an attempt to stir up the situation so it would end up being similar to that of August last year... It is simply clear what these Western friends want from us," he said, speaking of mass election protests in Belarus in 2020. The Irish airline Ryanair said that flight FR4978 from Athens to Vilnius was directed to an airport in Minsk on Sunday as crew on the plane had been alerted to a possible security threat by Belarusian authorities, adding that nothing untoward was found. Chennai, May 29 : Former Vice Chancellor of Anna University and former Chairman of IIT-Kanpur, M. Anandakrishnan succumbed to Covid-19 on Saturday morning. A recipient of Padma Shri award Anandakrishnan, 93, passed away at a private hospital here. A renowned educationist, soft spoken Anandakrishnan played a key role in most of the educational reforms in Tamil Nadu. In 2017 he headed the Tamil Nadu Curriculum Revision Committee that revamped the syllabus for Class 1 to 12 under the state board. Born in Vaniyambadi in Tamil Nadu, Anandakrishnan graduated in Civil Engineering from the College of Engineering, Guindy in 1952 and did his Masters and Doctorate in the US. He returned to India and worked in central government, IIT Kanpur in various positions and moved back to the US on a deputation from the Department of Science and Technology as the Science Counsellor at the Indian Embassy in Washington. Later Anandakrishnan joined the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development. He had worked in the United Nations till 1989 in various capacities. On his return back to Chennai in 1990 he took up the position of Vice Chancellor of Anna University. He served in that position for two terms. Anandakrishnan was also appointed as the Advisor to the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu for Information Technology and E-Governance. Condoling his death, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M.K. Stalin in a statement said Anandakrishan was honest and was like a lighthouse for the students. He was instrumental for Tamil Nadu doing away with the common entrance test for engineering course admission and for adopting the single window admission system, Stalin said. Toronto, May 29 : Researchers have developed an Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that is capable of assessing the severity of Covid-19 cases with a promising degree of accuracy. The researchers from the University of Waterloo and Alexander Wong, a systems design engineering professor and co-founder of software company DarwinAI, said the technology could give doctors an important tool to help them manage cases. "Assessing the severity of a patient with Covid-19 is a critical step in the clinical workflow for determining the best course of action for treatment and care, be it admitting the patient to ICU, giving a patient oxygen therapy, or putting a patient on a mechanical ventilator," Wong said. For the study published in the journal Scientific Reports, deep-learning AI was trained to analyse the extent and opacity of infection in the lungs of Covid-19 patients based on chest x-rays. Its scores were then compared to assessments of the same x-rays by expert radiologists, the team said. For both extent and opacity, important indicators of the severity of infections, predictions made by the AI software were in good alignment with scores provided by the human experts. "The promising results in this study show that AI has a strong potential to be an effective tool for supporting frontline healthcare workers in their decisions and improving clinical efficiency," Wong added. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Hyderabad, May 29 : Telangana minister K Taraka Rama Rao, popularly known as KTR, is known for his quick responses to calls for help on Twitter. But he was left stumped on Friday, when a Twitter user reached out to him with a complaint against a food delivery service. KTR who is Telangana's minister for IT, and municipal administration and urban development, is known for helping people in distress during the current Covid pandemic. Twitter is awash with instances of people reaching out to KTR, for all types of help, ranging from emergency requirements of Covid medication, hospital beds, oxygen to e-passes, and his prompt responses followed by instructions to the concerned officials. However, on Friday, a disgruntled Zomato client tagged KTR, with a picture of chicken biryani, and claimed that despite placing an order for chicken biryani with 'extra masala and chicken piece', it was not supplied by the food delivery service. KTR, who is the chief minister's son, was taken aback by the tweet. "And why am I tagged on this brother? What do you expect me to do?" he queried with emojis. The bizarre request and the minister's puzzled response had the Twitterati in splits. --IANS pvn/ash Get Outlook for Android 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 The Taliban's strategy is not to allow peace in Afghanistan unless it is allowed unchallenged power to rule the country in the name of Islam. That reminds one of the strategies of the Muslim League led by Mohammad Ali Jinnah, to keep peace at bay by making communal demands that strained India's unity. There are many similarities between the Taliban of today and the pre-partition Muslim league. The Taliban want power without reference to the people's choice whether they want an Islamic system of democracy. They hate elections which they blame for all the ills in Afghanistan. The Muslim League, on the other hand, did not oppose elections in the United India, but it subverted the meaning of elections in democracy by splitting electorate on communal lines. Hindus and Muslims, who had lived together as one nation for centuries, were now called two separate nations who must vote separately. The Taliban do not have the art of splitting the Afghan people into fundamentalist Muslims and others to create a safe constituency for themselves. The Taliban's fear of their rejection by a large majority of Afghans (if they agreed for elections) had also haunted the Muslim league in United India where a very big Muslim majority did not subscribe to Leagues' policies. The Indian Muslim's attitude to this party was reflected in the 1937 provincial elections and the choice of a large majority of them to stay back in India which the league had succeeded in breaking up. The 1937 provincial elections results busted Jinnah's claim that the Pakistan League was Indian Muslims' only party. But it could win only 109 seats out of the 482 Muslim seats. In Punjab, it won only two out of 86 Muslim seats. That exposed League's acceptance among Indian Muslims. That frustrated Jinnah who became more poisonous. In 1940, he launched his two-nation theory which said Hindus and Muslims were two separate nations who cannot live together. That was his argument to break up India. The Taliban have so far not shown any desire to divide Afghanistan on sectarian and ethnic lines. The reason, why Jinnah wanted the break-up of India to create Pakistan and the absence of the Taliban's interest in dividing Afghanistan is simple. The British backers of Jinnah were interested in the creation of Pakistan. But the Pakistani backers of the Taliban thought any division of Afghanistan will harm Pakistan's own interest. Between the end of the Afghan war in 1988 and the installation of the Taliban into power in Kabul by the Pakistani Army in 1996, Pakistani newspapers were full of expert assessment predicting break-up of Afghanistan into five to seven provinces. During the Afghan war in 1980s, a coterie of Pakistan's then Military ruler Gen. Zia Ul Haq toyed with the idea of bringing Afghanistan under Pakistan's sway after the war to use that country for strategic depth and to keep inimical powers away from that country. The Taliban were most suited to Pakistan's designs. Elections, democracy and constitutionalism in Afghanistan defeats Pakistan's designs and threaten to demolish the Taliban's identity. One has to very critically analyse Pakistan oft repeated statement that peace in Pakistan depends on peace in Afghanistan. This statement creates an impression that Pakistan is dying for peace in Afghanistan for its own sake. But the analysis shows that this country used its Taliban guests and terrorist activities in Afghanistan to kill peace and progress efforts in that country. The Taliban terrorists were given safe heavens in Pakistan's tribal areas adjoining Afghanistan. Besides Pakistan, the Taliban enjoy the support of Russia and China in much lesser degree, though all three of them are not particularly interested in democracy in Afghanistan. All of them are interested in some kind of peace not so much for the sake of the goods of that country as for their country's vested interests. If the Taliban rule Afghanistan: (i) Pakistan may try to realize its dream of holding sway over this country, (ii) China may more freely exploit its natural resources and expect the Taliban not to let Afghan territory be used by Chinese Muslim rebels and (iii) Similarly, Russia may hope the Taliban will not let anti-Russia terrorists to use the Afghan territory. The question arises: who is interested in peace in Afghanistan for the sake of Afghans? Kolkata, May 29 : It was a meeting that hardly lasted for a minute but the meeting between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee created a huge political controversy. When senior leaders of the BJP claimed that it was the chief minister's ego that resisted her from staying away from the review meeting with Suvendu Adhikari, Trinamool Congress alleged that the meeting with the Prime Minister personally was pre-scheduled but she was not allowed time as promised by the PMO. The controversy started in the morning when an official from the PMO called Suvendu Adhikari and was asked to stay in the review meeting at Kalaikunda. Adhikari, who is also the Leader of the Opposition in the state legislative assembly, reached Kalaikunda at 1 p.m. much before the arrival of the Prime Minister. Interestingly Mamata Banerjee announced from her review meeting in Hingalganj that she won't be able to stay at the review meeting but she would hand over the estimate of the damage caused by the storm. According to highly placed sources in the state secretariat, chief minister's announcement comes after chief secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay confirmed that Prime Minister has given her separate time but when she reached Kalaikunda she was made to sit in a separate room and was informed that as the review meeting has started already, she will have to wait. Sources close to the chief minister said that she insisted for one minute time but she was requested to wait. Mamata Banerjee then walked into the review meeting, handed over the paper and walked out. This one-minute incident was enough to attract strong political repercussions. Just after the meeting Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar who was also present wrote, "At the Review Meet by PM #CycloneYaas to assess damage caused. CM and officials @MamataOfficial did not participate. Such boycotts both in consonance with the constitution and federalism. Certainly, by such actions neither public interest nor interest of state has been served. Trinamool Congress MP Kalyan Banerjee was quick to respond. In his tweet, Banerjee wrote, "@jdhankhar1, can you tell us, under what provision Nandigram MLA can be present in the review meeting between the central government headed by @narendramodi and state government headed by @MamataOfficial. Stop doing politics @jdhankhar1 in this situation". Suvendu Adhikari who was in the centre of the controversy wrote, "When Hon PM Shri @narendramodi stands strong with the citizens of West Bengal in wake of cyclone Yaas, Mamata ji should also set aside her ego for the welfare of people. Her absence from the PM's meeting is murder of constitutional ethos & the culture of cooperative federalism". "Today is a dark day in India's long-standing ethos of cooperative federalism, a principle held sacred by PM @narendramodi. If her track record is anything to go by, @MamataOfficial Didi's administration was unable to manage Amphan relief. Rampant loot plagued the relief works. Even now, West Bengal is suffering and the state government is in absent mode," he added. Union Home Minister on his Twitter handle wrote, "Mamata Didi's conduct today is an unfortunate low. Cyclone Yaas has affected several common citizens and the need of the hour is to assist those affected. Sadly, Didi has put arrogance above public welfare and today's petty behaviour reflects that". Trinamool Congress refuted the allegation. The party's spokesperson, Kunal Ghosh said, "There is no place for any kind of controversy. It was a meeting between the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister. The chief minister met the Prime Minister and submitted to him the details of the damage caused by the storm. There the matter ends". State BJP President Dilip Ghosh said, "This cannot be a good example of cooperative federalism. She gave preference to her personal ego more than the pains of the people of the state. Suvendu Adhikari is the Leader of the Opposition and the Prime Minister has invited him to be present. Her absence in the meeting will send a very wrong signal". TMC General Secretary Partha Chatterjee said, "Those who are speaking of her insensitivity should know that she was in the state secretariat whole might to oversee the pains of the people. She is the one who is personally overseeing the relief operations in the state. I would like to ask where were those people during the storm?" -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : India Inc. has largely welcomed the decisions taken by the GST Council on Friday to exempt Covid relief items from duty and easing compliance burden for taxpayers but said the measures stopped short of giving complete exemption to taxpayers from late fee payment and also missed out on providing zero rating of Covid supplies. Industry body FICCI said that the Council's decision providing relief on import of Covid-related items and Black Fungus drug were a welcome move, and now GoM recommendations would be awaited to see what action is proposed on GST rate for other medical supplies for Covid including that for vaccines and ventilators. "We welcome the decisions announced by the GST Council. We appreciate the government's efforts in fighting the Covid-19 pandemic and enabling better access to medical products and solutions to the country and are happy that some of the key asks from FICCI have been considered," Uday Shankar, President, FICCI, said. "We eagerly look forward to the report of the Group of Ministers formed for consideration of further reductions in GST rates on Covid-related essentials. A quick decision on this front will help us attain self-sufficiency in this need of hour. At this juncture we cannot afford to lose further time," he added. The GST Council on Friday extended relief on import of Covid-related relief items, if purchased or meant for donating to government or any other relief agency, by exempting it from the Integrated Goods and Services Tax till Aug. 31, 2021. Also, the drug required for treating Mucormycosis fungal infection, has been included in list of items exempted from IGST. Furthermore, the Council also recommended amnesty scheme to reduce the late fee and provide some relief to the small taxpayers. However, FICCI recommended a waiver from the late fees and interest to provide maximum benefit to taxpayers hit hard by pandemic disruptions. The decision regarding extension of due dates of various compliances under GST laws for the month of May and June, 2021 will also provide a big relief to the taxpayers during this difficult time. Also, the announcement regarding optional return filing for 2020-21 for taxpayers with a turnover less than Rs 2 crore will provide a further respite to the smaller companies. "FICCI was also hoping to see a decision regarding our long pending demand for zero rating of healthcare services for a period of 24 months during this pandemic period for the healthcare sector. We believe this would further empower the healthcare undertakings to prepare and tackle the ongoing second wave and impending third wave," Shankar said. Also, though it was pointed out that amid the current situation it is not the right time to undertake correction of inversion duties, FICCI feels that the matter warrants a quick decision as it continues to impact our competitiveness. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Kabul, May 29 : A key military US base called the New Kabul Compound (NKC) has been handed over to the Afghan forces, the Ministry of Defence announced. Fawad Aman, a spokesman for the Ministry, said that at a ceremony on the occasion on Friday, US and NATO forces commander Gen. Scott Miller emphasised the international community's continued support to Afghan forces, reports TOLO News. The withdrawal of the US and NATO forces from the country started on May 1. According to figures provided by US Central Command, the Pentagon has so far removed the equivalent of approximately 160 C-17 loads of material out of Afghanistan and has turned over more than 10,000 pieces of equipment to the Defense Logistics Agency for disposition. The figures also show that the US had by last week officially handed over five facilities to the Ministry of Defence. Pentagon officials have said that the US has completed up to 25 per cent of the entire withdrawal process. Violence however, remains high in the country, especially after the three-day ceasefire from May 13-15. The Ministry of Defence on Saturday said that at least 210 Taliban were killed in clashes and defensive operations by Afghan forces in 18 provinces, including Kabul, in the last 24 hours. Thiruvananthapuram, May 29 : The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the second biggest ally in the Congress-led UDF on Saturday said that it was the Left Government in 2011 which came out with the government order under which 80 per cent of the merit-cum-means scholarships went to the Muslim community and 20 per cent to the Christian community (Latin Catholic and converted Christians). Speaking to the media, senior IUML legislator P.K. Kunhalikutty said it was the Left government which came out with the order and they are now spreading canards that it was the UDF government in 2015 which decided on this. "This is nothing but covering up of facts and all what the then UDF government (2011-16) did was to go forward with the order which the Left government first came out in 2011. The Left is now trying to put the blame on us," said Kunhalikutty. But veteran CPI-M leader and former State Minister Paloly Mohammed Kutty said the Left government then which he was a part, (2006-11) said the then Congress government (2011-16) came under duress from the IUML and it was they who had done this and the Left government had no role in it. It was on Friday, a division bench, headed by Chief Justice S. Manikumar gave the order on a public interest litigation, directing that the scholarships should be distributed on the basis of the population of the communities. The Kerala High Court ordered to cancel the 2015 state government order under which 80 per cent of the merit-cum-means scholarships went to the Muslim community and 20 per cent to the Christian community (Latin Catholic and converted Christians). However the Kerala Catholic Bishops Conference on Saturday welcomed the verdict and opined that it's not against any one particular community and the benefits should go to all the minority communities. Incidentally it was Mizoram Governor and former state BJP President P.S. Sreedharan Pillai who last year for the first time had gone on record to say that Cardinal George Alencherry, the Major Archbishop of the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church, had shared his concerns that 80 per cent of the funds for the minority community are going to 'one' particular community and the Christian community is getting just 20 per cent. In Kerala, of the 3.34 crore population, the Muslim community accounts for 88.73 lakh, while the Christian population stands at 61.41 lakh. However if the apportionment is going to cover all the Christians, then the new ratio will see the Muslims getting 60 per cent and Christians 40 per cent. But if it is going to be applicable in the present form to only the Latin and converted Christians, then the present 80:20 ratio will continue. Welcoming the new judgement was veteran Kerala Congress opposition legislator and former State Minister P.J. Joseph who on Saturday said that if need be, let a new survey be conducted to find out who all can get the benefits of this. Meanwhile, the Pinarayi Vijayan government has decided not to do anything in haste and it has asked the Law department to study the new order in detail and with the Assembly now in session, the first signs of a renewed tussle between the ruling Left and the Congress led UDF on this can be expected, starting from Monday. However the Kerala unit of the BJP has welcomed the new order and its senior leader George Kurian said this was what the BJP has always been batting for, that the apportionment should be based on the population. -- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed Islamabad, May 29 : In yet another act of brutality, a 16-year-old teenage boy was gang raped Pakistan's Dera Ismail Khan city by at least five people, who also filmed and uploaded the video of the incident on social media. District Police Officer (DPO) Dera Ismail Khan, Najmul Hasnain has confirmed that the incident took place during the holy month of Ramadan. "This crime took place in Kari Shamozai area, in which the five accused raped a 16-year-old boy. And in order to make him as an example, they also uploaded the video of the shameful act on social media. "When it started making rounds on the internet, the police was informed about it by the father of the victim and an FIR was registered against the five accused," Hasnain added. Even though the five accused have been identified, the police are yet to make an arrest. Upon inquiry with the locals of the area, it was revealed that all the five accused have fled from Dera Ismail Khan to Karachi. The incident has also come to the attention of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Mahmood Khan, who has directed the police to arrest the culprits involved and produce them before the court with all the proof. Khan also directed the police authorities to make this case and the culprits an example for other criminals. He assured the family that the perpetrators will be brought to justice. Human rights activists have raised serious reservations on the consistently increasing cases of assault and sexual abuse of women and children, who remain as the most vulnerable segments of the Pakistani society. "Children and women are the most vulnerable segments of our society and the crimes against them are increasing with each passing day without inviting any attention," said rights activist Imran Takkar. "Parents don't understand the importance of educating their children about sex crimes and child predators and due to this such incidents are happening on a very large scale." Another unfortunate thing about the incident is that it happened during Ramadan, when Muslims across the word observe a month-long fast. "It is unfortunate that the crime took place in Ramadan but it was reported to police a month later, which is yet another evidence that victims try to hide such crimes to save their honour," Takkar added. New Delhi, May 29 : Nikita Kaul, wife of Major Vibhuti Shankar Dhoundiyal, who sacrificed his life in the Pulwama attack in Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, has donned the olive green to continue the legacy of her husband. On Saturday, Northern Army Commander Lt Gen Y.K. Joshi pipped the stars on her shoulders. She had passed out of the Officers Training Academy on May 26, this year. On Saturday she was formally commissioned into the Indian Army. She will be joining the force as Lieutenant. Udhampur-based Defence PRO said in a tweet, "#MajVibhutiShankarDhoundiyal, made the Supreme Sacrifice at #Pulwama in 2019, was awarded SC (P). Today his wife @Nitikakaul dons #IndianArmy uniform; paying him a befitting tribute. A proud moment for her as Lt Gen Y K Joshi, #ArmyCdrNC himself pips the Stars on her shoulders!". In 2019, Major Dhoundiyal posted with 55 Rashtriya Rifles, sacrificed his life in the Pulwama attack. He was killed during a gun battle with Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terrorists just days after a car bomb attack in Pulwama killed 40 paramilitary Central Reserve Police Force personnel. Major Dhoundiyal was married for just nine months before his demise. Thereafter Nikita Kaul made the inspiring decision to join the Indian Army leaving her corporate job. Just six months after her husband's death, Nikita filled the Short Service Commission (SSC) form. She cleared the exam and the Services Selection Board (SSB) interview as well. She went at Officers Training Academy (OTA) at Chennai for her training. She left her corporate job to join the Indian Army and in 2020 she passed the Short Service Commission (SSC) examination and the Services Selection Board (SSB) interview. Back then she had stated, "I took my own time to recover from the major loss and the decision to sit for the Short Service Commission examination happened gradually. Just filling the form in September last year was a big decision. But I had decided that I want to walk on a similar path like my husband." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 04:18:58|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Politicizing science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, a leading expert told Xinhua on Friday. "I concur with the many scientists who say that politicizing the science does not help genuine efforts to identify the origins of SARS-CoV-2, or ongoing collaboration between Chinese and western scientists," said Hume Field, a science and policy advisor for China and Southeast Asia of EcoHealth Alliance in New York. It just generates "doubt" and "mistrust" on "both sides," and fundamentally undermines the united global efforts needed to prevail against this virus and this pandemic, Field told Xinhua in an interview. In late March, the World Health Organization (WHO) released a report on the global tracing of COVID-19 origins, following a joint research with China on issues including the pathways of the virus and future investigation in different countries. The experts made assessment of the likelihood of possible pathways. According to the report, COVID-19 introduction through an intermediate host is "likely to very likely," introduction through cold/food chain products is "possible," and introduction through a laboratory incident is "extremely unlikely." Enditem New Delhi, May 29 : Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra on Saturday once again launched a direct attack on the central government over the oxygen crisis in the country during the second wave of the Covid pandemic, saying the government increased oxygen export by 700 per cent in 2020. In a Facebook post, the Congress leader said that as the second wave of Covid-19 raged, almost every Indian state began reporting a shortage of oxygen. The Uttar Pradesh Congress in-charge also said that SOS calls for oxygen cylinders and oxygen beds in hospitals throughout India flooded social media and all other mediums of public appeal. "Many died gasping for air, while others watched helplessly as their loved ones breathed their last without access to this most basic of medical facilities. Who is responsible for the lack of oxygen in hospitals across India?" she asked. In her post she further stated that India is not an oxygen "deficient" country. The oxygen producing industry in India was incentivised by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru's government to supplement the steel industry back in the 1950s and 60s. This laid the foundation for a robust infrastructure that enables India to produce 7,500 MT of oxygen per day. Just to give you an idea of the requirement for medical oxygen in India, let's look at the oxygen consumption of all Indian hospitals put together at the peak of the second covid wave. Citing examples she said that India produced 7,603 MT of Oxygen per day on May 1, 8,920 MT per day on May 6, 8,944 MT per day on May 9 and 8,344 MT per day on May 20. She said that at its height, this figure was 8944 MT. This means that the oxygen shortfall at the peak of this wave was less than 1500 MT. "So, what went wrong?" she questioned. Attacking the government, Gandhi said, "The (Narendra) Modi government increased its oxygen exports by over 700 per cent in the year 2020, a pandemic year. Most of this supply went to Bangladesh. It also made no investments towards the early import of surplus oxygen." She also alleged that in a shocking example of incompetence, the Modi government made no effort to arrange for the transport of oxygen from oxygen producing facilities to the hospitals of India in case of an oxygen emergency. "Since the primary use of oxygen until the pandemic hit was industrial, India is estimated to have only 1200-1600 specialised cryogenic tankers available to transport oxygen across the country. In the time between the first and the second wave, the Modi government did nothing to increase this number or to put in place a logistical contingency plan for the re-diversion of industrial oxygen to oxygen used at medical facilities," she said. She also alleged that by the end of the first wave it was clear that one of the essential treatment requirements for Covid-19 was medical oxygen. "In fact, the government floated tenders for 150 oxygen producing plants to be set up in 2020, however most of them are non-functional," the Congress leader said. She also said that the government's own Empowered Group-VI warned of an impending oxygen shortage in April 2020, over a year ago. "The government completely ignored this warning," she said, adding that the Parliamentary Committee on Health stated in its report in October 2020 that the price of oxygen cylinders should be controlled. "However, it rose from Rs 4,000 in 2020 to Rs 7,000 in 2021. Similarly, the refill price of cylinders also rose from Rs 500 to Rs 2,000 during the same period. Like most of the other recommendations made by the committee, this too fell on deaf years," she alleged. She also pointed out that while state governments kept flagging the shortage of oxygen to the Centre, the inhuman government approached the courts in an effort to reduce the oxygen quota for the states. "In fact, the Modi government needlessly politicised the supply of oxygen, making it arbitrary and dependent on the party to which the Chief Minister of a given state belonged," she said. Slamming the government, Priyanka Gandhi said that it was clear that the Modi government's lack of planning and incompetence is responsible for the shortage of oxygen that devastated lives in the second wave. Posing questions to the government, she asked, "Why were no steps taken to ensure a contingency supply of oxygen? Why was the advice of the Empowered Group-VI summarily ignored? Why was no provision made for increasing the number of cryogenic tankers, when by all accounts a second wave was imminent? "Today, industrial oxygen is being re-diverted for medical usage. Why did the Modi Government increase its oxygen exports by over 700 per cent in 2020, the very year that the pandemic ravaged the world? Why were the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee on Health ignored and consequently, no control exercised on the price of oxygen cylinders and their refilling?" she added. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Seoul/New Delhi, May 29 : Samsung Electronics took over Chinese brand Xiaomi to become the world's second-largest vendor of wearable devices in the first quarter of the year, a report has showed, on the back of its wireless earbuds sales. The South Korean tech giant moved ahead of China's Xiaomi for the first time to take the runner-up spot with a market share of 11.8 percent, which was up 0.6 percentage point from a year earlier, according to the latest report from market researcher International Data Corporation (IDC). At third place, Xiaomi was the only company among the top five brands to suffer an on-year decline in its wearable devices sales. Xiaomi's market share dropped to 9.7 percent from 13.3 percent from a year ago after its wearable shipments slipped 1.8 percent on-year to 10.2 million units, , Yonhap news agency reported, quoting from the report. Samsung shipped 11.8 million units of wearable products in the January-March period, up 35.7 percent from a year earlier. "Driving its volumes higher has been its truly wireless earbuds, including the Galaxy Buds Live, Galaxy Buds+ and the most recent addition, the Galaxy Buds Pro," IDC said. "Also contributing to the company's growth were earwear shipments from its JBL subsidiary with its mass-market and less expensive models. Meanwhile, the company's smartwatches and wristbands sustained their growth, reaching new first quarter records," it said. Apple maintained its top position, but its market share dropped to 28.8 percent from 32.3 percent a year earlier as its sales growth was below the industry average. The US tech titan shipped 30.1 million wearable devices in the first quarter, up 19.8 percent from a year earlier. The worldwide wearables market grew 34.4 percent on-year to reach 104.6 million units in the first three months of 2021, the highest for any first quarter. Another Chinese tech powerhouse, Huawei, ranked fourth with an 8.2 percent share, down from 8.4 percent a year earlier. India-based BoAt took the fifth spot with a 2.9 percent share after its shipments more than quadrupled to 3 million units in the first quarter. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : Full-service carrier Vistara on Saturday inducted its first fully owned Airbus A320neo aircraft. Accordingly, the aircraft, registered VT-TQE, arrived in Delhi from Airbus' production facility in Toulouse, France. The aircraft is one of the 13 Airbus A320neo that Vistara had purchased in 2018 as part of a larger order totaling 50 aircraft from the Airbus A320neo Family, including the Airbus A321neo aircraft as well. Besides, the new set of A320neo aircraft that Vistara has been adding to its fleet come with higher range capability, enabling the airline to fly longer regional international routes without payload restrictions. "The Airbus A320 is an integral part of our fleet and growth story, and this particular aircraft is, indeed, special," said Leslie Thng, Chief Executive Officer, Vistara. "It mirrors the maturity that Vistara has achieved in the Indian aviation industry in a short span of time, continuing to steadily grow in scale, size and operational assets." Furthermore, the company said that the current addition to Vistara's fleet takes the total count of the airline's owned aircraft to three. The airline had also purchased six Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft for long-haul international operations, two of which are already in service. Presently, Vistara has 46 planes in its fleet -- 36 Airbus A320, two Airbus A321neo, two Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner and six Boeing 737-800NG aircraft. Hyderabad, May 29 : Telugu actor Allu Sirish revealed the second pre-look poster of his next, whose title is yet to be announced. The actor took to Instagram on Saturday to reveal the poster. The second pre-look features Sirish holding co-star Anu Emmanuel's hand while sharing a romantic moment. Similar to the first pre-look, the faces of the characters are not in focus and only their entwined hands. Sirish, who was last seen on the big screen in "ABCD: American Born Confused Desi" captioned the image as: "Here's our second pre look. Can't wait to share the first look tomorrow at 11am. Mark the date and time". The actor was recently seen in the music video of Darshan Rawal and Neeti Mohan's hit song "Vilayati sharaab" alongside Heli Daruwala, The video has crossed 100 million views on YouTube. Sirish's upcoming untitled project has been directed by Rakesh Sashii and is presented by his father Allu Aravind. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Panaji, May 29 : Goa Transport Minister Mauvin Godinho on Saturday demanded an apology from Tamil Nadu Finance Minister P.T.R. Palanivel Thiagarajan for insulting small states, Goa in particular, during the 43rd GST meeting chaired by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday. Addressing a press conference here, Godinho, who represents the Goa government at GST Council meetings, said that the TN Finance Minister's alleged comments dismissing the stature of small states in the Indian Union were condemnable, a day after Godinho and Palanivel Thiagarajan clashed with each other. "The Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu should apologise. What is he trying to tell me? That he is against the Constitution of the country? Does he not believe in the Constitution of India? Does he not believe in equality before law? Does he not believe that whatever your status, whatever your standing in society, whether your constituency comprises of lakhs of voters or a few thousand voters, everybody has got one vote," Godinho said. "I want to remind the new Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu Mr Palanivel, refrain from conducting yourself in a manner as a big brother versus small brother or big state versus small state. We all have equal rights. His attitude should be condemned by one and all right-thinking people. He should not target Goa," Godinho said. The Goa Minister said that during the meeting, Palanivel allegedly said that more attention should be paid to the sentiments of bigger states, rather than smaller states like Goa. "I took offence at yesterday's meeting because he said 'what is Goa, it is a small thing, it is a small population. You should listen to me', he was trying to tell the Union Finance Minister," Godinho said, recounting the incident at the GST Council meeting on Friday. The Goa Minister also said that he had pitched for more GST revenue share for Goa on account of the stoppage of the mining industry and the crumbling tourism industry, which has been impacted by the pandemic. "I was making a case for Goa that we should get special preference because our requirements are small in terms of our finances, devolving to the state from the Centre. I made a case that our mining is literally stopped. During the lockdown there are no tourists, so how is our state going to survive? We need more finances," Godinho said. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Bogota, May 29 : Colombian President Ivan Duque has announced military assistance would be sent to support police in the Cauca Department after several people died in protests. "Starting tonight the maximum deployment of military assistance will begin," the President said in a statement on Friday. "We can't have islands of anarchy in this country," Duque added. Earlier in the day, Cauca Governor Clara Luz Roldan declared a curfew from 7 p.m. to 5 a.m. "to preserve the health, life and safety of Cauca residents", dpa news agency reported. Four people died on Friday in Cali in armed clashes over street blocks which have been affecting the mobility of residents and goods, local media reported. Since the end of April, there have been numerous protests in different cities in the South American country. So far, at least 42 people died in connection with the demonstrations. Initially, the demonstrators had protested against a tax reform that has since been withdrawn. Opposition to a health reform, also scrapped, and advocacy for the fragile peace process were then some of the new issues that brought people out onto the streets. Damascus, May 29 : At least two people were killed and 317 others injured during celebratory gunfire in Syria marking President Bashar al-Assad's re-election to a fourth term, a war monitor reported on Saturday. The casualties resulted from celebratory shots fired randomly by Assad's supporters in several areas including the capital Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo, dpa news agency quoted the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights as saying. The two who died were a young man and a child in Aleppo, the observatory said. Assad was re-elected for a fourth seven-year term with 95.1 per cent of the ballots in the election in government-held areas and dismissed by the opposition as a sham. Three contenders, including Assad, ran in Wednesday's polls, Syria's second presidential election since the country's civil war started in 2011. The election was condemned as fraudulent by Syria's opposition as well as countries such as the US, the UK, France, Germany and Italy. Assad won 88.7 per cent of votes in the 2014 election, which was Syria's first with multiple candidates. With the help of Iran and Russia, Assad has retaken control of more than 60 per cent of the country. The rebels still hold some areas in north and north-western Syria, while Kurds rule areas in the north-east. Assad, 55, has ruled Syria since 2000. His father, Hafez al-Assad, governed Syria from 1971 to 2000. Taipei, May 29 : The Taiwan government will only import Covid-19 jabs through direct contracts with original vaccine manufacturers, a top official said here on Saturday. Central Epidemic Command Center (CECC) chief Chen Shih-chung expressed gratitude for the goodwill initiatives by entrepreneurs and religious organisations to assist procurement or donations of vaccines, but emphasized that "since vaccines go into human bodies", their quality, efficacy, safety and liability must be assured, reports dpa news agency. Chen said any prospective intermediaries needed to produce direct authorisations from the original manufacturer and that, after the introduction, the Taiwan government "will arrange the procurement through direct discussions with the original manufacturer." Chen did not mention any new developments regarding the consideration by the Japanese government of supplying Taiwan with some of the AstraZeneca vaccine Tokyo procured from the British-Swedish multinational. However, Taiwan's state-run CNA news agency reported that the Japanese government has begun talks with AstraZeneca to alter their original procurement contract to permit Japan to supply jabs to Taiwan. The island is working to get an outbreak that erupted in early May under control Taiwan reported 21 new fatalities on Saturday, bringing the total death toll to 99. So far there has been 7,806 cases in a population of 23.6 million. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Washington, May 29 : After the forced landing of a passenger plane in the Belarusian capital Minsk with a dissident journalist on board, the US government has said it will reinstate sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned companies next week. The White House did not name the nine state-owned companies targeted by the sanctions, which are to be reinstated as of June 2, reports dpa news agency. In addition the US "is developing a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the (President Alexander) Lukashenko regime associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23", Press Secretary Jen Psaki said. The US measures come on top of EU sanctions against the authorities in Belarus. Sanctions against Lukashenko's government were tightened after a flight from Athens to Vilnius was diverted to Minsk on May 23. Dissident Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich and his partner were subsequently arrested at the airport in Minsk, to international condemnation. A new legal instrument is being prepared to give US President Joe Biden more leeway to impose further punitive measures, Psaki said on Friday. The State Department had issued a travel warning for Belarus, and the Federal Aviation Authorities warned passenger airlines to "exercise extreme caution when considering flying in Belarusian airspace". Chennai, May 29 : Credit rating agency CRISIL Ratings Ltd affirming AAA/Stable rating for Oriental Insurance Company Ltd's Rs.750 crore subordinated debt said the insurer plans to grow at 5-10 per cent this fiscal. The rating agency said the insurer is predicting the growth over the near to medium term on the premise that the second wave of the pandemic should tail out by the end of Q1 2022. The business growth will be driven by motor, health and fire segments. Oriental also plans to run down its loss making crop portfolio to about 10 per cent of the total premium base, CRISIL said. The rating agency also reaffirmed the insurer's corporate credit rating at AAA/Stable. According to CRISIL, the rating on the hybrid instrument is centrally based on forbearance granted by Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) to Oriental Insurance from adhering to provisions 3(vii) and 5(vii) of Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Other Forms of Capital) Regulations, 2015, for this specific subordinated debt issue of Rs. 750 crore. The forbearance allows the company to service the interest or coupon payments to the investors in the issue throughout the life of the instrument, irrespective of solvency ratio. IRDAI has also granted forbearance against provision 14 of the regulation and has allowed the company to issue subordinated debt to the extent of 25 per cent of its networth as on September 30, 2018, CRISIL said. At a time when the central government is mulling to divest its stake in one of its three non-life insurance companies that includes Oriental Insurance, CRISIL said its ratings reflect the company's strategic importance to, and expectation of strong support from, the Government of India (GoI), in addition to its established market position in the Indian general insurance industry. The rating agency also added that it is monitoring the developments relating to privatisation plans of the central government. CRISIL said the insurer's strengths are partially offset by the low cushion in solvency ratio and capitalisation remaining dependent on equity infusion by the government. The company's underwriting performance remains modest, imposing pressure on overall profitability and solvency. Last fiscal Oriental Insurance had settled about Rs.609 crore of Covid-19 claims. However, claims for non-Covid illnesses/ casualties were lower during the year, CRISIL said. Owing to restricted public activity last fiscal, claims were lower in other segments. For nine months ended December 31, 2020, the company reported an underwriting deficit of Rs 2,366 crore, which led to an overall loss of Rs 758 crore for the period. This modesty in earnings profile was partly offset by Rs 1,737 crore of investment income earned during the first nine months of fiscal 2021, said CRISIL. According to the rating agency, for FY22 the growth in new business in segments like motor could be muted as new sales volumes in the auto sector will happen only at a gradual pace once the lockdowns across states are lifted. Renewal premiums from the retail segment could also be impacted on account of job losses and pay-cuts. For the health segment - which is the second largest after motor, growth prospects will remain strong driven by increased market awareness and demand for multiple covers. In a scenario where pricing for Covid-19 policies is revised upwards, growth in this segment could be higher than that of last fiscal. However, with increasing ticket size of Covid-19 claims, the impact of actual losses borne by the insurers after the second wave - on their underwriting performance and capital and solvency position, remains to be seen, CRISIL said. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 09:22:46|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BRASILIA, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian Minister of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply Tereza Cristina said the arrival of 5G technology would help spur younger generations to return to rural areas. "Our rural population is aging, and we need more young people to work in the fields. With this tool (5G), I am very hopeful of bringing young people back to the countryside," Cristina was quoted as saying by state news agency Agencia Brasil. Given connectivity, producers "will be able to interact with urban areas" and "young people will be interested in returning to the field to work with their parents," she said. The minister estimated 60 percent of rural producers have Internet access and that 5G will boost that figure quickly. Brazil has installed its first rural 5G antenna on an experimental basis in the town of Rondonopolis, which is in the west-central region of the country. The tender for the implementation of 5G technology in Brazil is scheduled to take place by the end of June. According to government estimates, 5G technology will be available in all Brazilian state capitals in July 2022. Enditem Mumbai, May 29 : In a unique gesture, the Sir H. N. Reliance Foundation Hospital (HNRFH) will provide free vaccination to the families of children undergoing cancer treatment at the hospital, an official spokesperson said here on Saturday. For this, the HNRFH has tied up with Access Life Assistance Foundation, an NGO that provides multi-disciplinary supportive care to families of cancer-afflicted children who come to Mumbai for treatment. The NGO also runs five childhood cancer care centres in Mumbai which accommodate at least 60 families of children suffering from cancers at any given time. The children face the harsh realities of life but still venture out regularly encountering risks for their chemotherapy and other follow-up cancer treatment. They are accompanied by their family members to the hospital for the ongoing treatment and are at risk of contracting the Covid-19 virus whenever they step outside. Accordingly, the families of all such cancer-hit kids shall be given free Covid-19 vaccination jabs to ensure their safety, said the HNRFH official. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi/Washington, May 29 : The anti-India 'Friends of Kashmir' group in the United States has been found to be actively linked to the banned Islamist terror groups and the Pakistan government. Sam Westrop and Martha Lee of the Middle East Forum (MEF), widely known for its meticulous journalistic investigations in the US, have unearthed the nexus between a Texas-based group, 'Friends of Kashmir', Pakistani regime and the US Congress members. The authors, in their joint investigation, accessed exclusively by IANS, have exposed how the Pakistani establishment exerts its influence through its terror groups in Kashmir, its diaspora and various fronts and lobbies in the US. On August 5, 2020, Friends of Kashmir and its head - a prominent pro-Pakistani activist, writer and self-described poet named Ghazala Habib - organized an online discussion on Kashmir, in collaboration with the Pakistani embassy and its consulate in Houston, Westrop and Lee have noted in their comprehensive report. Speakers at the webinar included the two co-chairs of the United States Congress's Pakistan Caucus, the President of Pakistan-administered Kashmir, and the Pakistani ambassador to the United States and the Houston consul-general. Other speakers included Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson, along with Texas state legislators Ron Reynolds and Terry Meza. The webinar was held to run Pakistan's campaign against India, launched by Prime Minister Imran Khan after the Modi government brought the state of Jammu & Kashmir on August 5, 2019, at par with other states of India. Broadcast on social media and American Pakistani television channel TVOne USA, the webinar was attended by Congressional Caucus co-chairs Representatives Jim Banks and Sheila Jackson Lee. Even as Banks, who is an outspoken critic of South Asian Islamist groups, Pakistani media tried to project him as a supporter of 'Friends of Kashmir'. With offices also in Islamabad and Karachi, Friends of Kashmir describes itself as a US based "International Non-Political Organization" focused on Kashmir. Their activities, "are the product of close collaboration with the Pakistani regime", Westrop and Lee said. During the webinar, Ghazala Habib thanked the Pakistani government for opening the "consulate doors for us 24/7," describing it as "our first home." In fact, Habib is also on close terms with President Masood Khan. "Habib does not just represent the interests of the Pakistani regime; she is also endorsed by prominent Kashmiri terror activists. In 2020, leaders of the Kashmiri Hurriyat political alliance, including Syed Ali Gilani and Asiya Andrabi, appointed Ghazala Habib as their representative in the United States," Westrop and Lee said in their report. Gilani is an infamous Kashmiri separatist who used to serve as the "Head of Jihad" for the now banned branch of the Islamist movement Jamaat-e-Islami in Jammu & Kashmir. Andrabi, meanwhile, founded the banned outfit Dukhtaran-e-Millat (Daughters of the Nation), which, The Economist notes, "supports terrorists" and advocates jihad. Andrabi claims to have embraced al-Qaeda officials, telling them that if "you belong to Sheikh Osama's al-Qaeda then you are very welcome because he was a legitimate leader of Jihad." Andrabi has long been involved with Friends of Kashmir. In February 2017, the Texas group organized a conference at which the pro-Al Qaeda Andrabi spoke remotely, along with terror activists such as Yasin Malik and Shabir Shah, both of whom were arrested by Indian law enforcement in 2019. It emerged that Malik had apparently "visited" the [designated terrorist organization] Lashkar e Taiba (LeT) camps in Muree in Pakistan occupied Kashmir and addressed the LeT cadres there." As for Shah, he was reportedly "in touch with the global terrorist Hafeez Sayeed, chief of banned outfit 'Jamat-ud-Dawa' based in Pakistan," and received "money for carrying out separatist activities in J&K." In January 2021, Friends of Kashmir and Habib organized a protest in support of Malik, Shah, and Andrabi, in which she referred to the violent extremists as "heroes" and the "Kashmiri leadership." Despite her connections to terrorists, Habib claims in an interview to "already have moral support in the United States "from many senators, Congressmen and influential people from the business community." Habib was far from the only terror-tied speaker to share a platform with several members of the United States Congress. Star speaker Riffat Wani is a Kashmiri activist under investigation by Jammu and Kashmir Police. Wani regularly expresses support for terrorists on social media. She has glowingly described the late, infamous Kashmiri terrorist Burhan Wani as one of "those who inspire others to resist occupation." Burhan was a commander of the terrorist organization Hizbul Mujahideen, who successfully persuaded young Kashmiris to "join the holy war." In fact, Riffat Wani frequently appears to honor "mujahideen" killed in violent clashes with Indian law enforcement, such as praising the "martyrdom" of the infamous terrorist operative Riyaz Naikoo. "Other advertised speakers at the webinar included a spokesperson of Khalistani group Sikhs for Justice; as well as Raja Najabat Hussain and Abdul Hameed Lone, both of whom are officials of the JK Self Determination Movement International, which security services claim to be a front for Pakistan's ISI. Another senior Pakistani politician listed as a presenter was Mushahid Hussain Syed, a former regime minister who has openly praised the activities of the murderous terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba. British-Pakistani activist and politician Lord Nazir Ahmed was also featured in advertising for the event, although was not brought out to speak at any point. Perhaps his presence was considered unhelpful following his anticipated eviction from Britain's House of Lords, all while he awaited trial on child abuse and attempted rape charges," Westrop and Lee reported. Lord Ahmed, who has a long history of involvement with Islamist causes in the United Kingdom, has been involved with Friends of Kashmir for several years. In March 2020, Lord Ahmed was listed as a speaker at another Friends of Kashmir event, alongside half a dozen prominent Pakistani politicians and Kashmiri leaders. They were due to be joined by Ghulam Nabi Fai, a Kashmiri-American activist convicted in an American court in 2011 of serving as an agent of Pakistan's ISI. "As these examples show, the August webinar, featuring alleged rapists, terror-supporters, anti-Semites, ISI-connected activists and U.S. Congress members was not a one-off example. In fact, it is just the latest initiative of an energetic Pakistani regime influence operation, based in Texas, which is working alongside Islamists from Europe and South Asia to influence American legislators and media, and to manipulate American Muslims' grassroots power." This network's efforts are yielding results, Westrop and Lee claimed. "In a recent document published by the Pakistani Embassy, officials presented putative endorsement of the regime's position by 20 Senators and Congress members." These elected officials, along with think tanks, human rights organizations and media outlets, have been, the embassy reports, successfully encouraged to take pro-Pakistan position on Kashmir and run smear campaign against India. Dhaka, May 29 : Six suspects have been arrested and produced before a court in Bangladesh on Saturday for the gang rape of a woman inside a moving minibus. The incident took place on Friday at about 11.30 p.m., in Savar's Ashulia area of Dhaka and a case has been registered, the police said. The victim has been sent to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital for treatment. The suspects have been identified as Aryan, 18, Shaju, 20, Sumon Miah, 24, Monowar, 24, Shohag, 25, and Saiful Islam, 40. The case statement says that the victim went to visit her sister in Manikganj on Friday. She took a bus from Manikganj at around 6.30 p.m. to return to her home in Narayanganj. The victim arrived at the Nabinagar bus stand at around 8 p.m. to catch another bus. As she was waiting for another public transport, a New Gram Bangla bus driven by Sumon, who was aided by Monowar and Saiful, arrived. They said they would charge Tk 35 for a trip to Tongi Station Road. All the passengers were dropped off before reaching the destination. The driver took the bus and left for Savar Nabinagar again and closed the windows and doors of the bus. The the six people including the driver and his assistant raped the woman in the running bus. A patrol team of police asked to stop the bus, they found it suspicious. The bus sped past them on C&B Bypass in Ashulia bridge area. Police chased the bus and intercepted it after crossing Jahangirnagar University. But the driver changed the direction of the bus when it reached the Ashulia bridge area, the police said. Checkpost police asked to stop the bus and rescued the victim. "The victim said she was gang raped on the bus by the six men," a police official told IANS. After she was rescued, the police detained the six men at 11 p.m. on Friday, Ziaul Islam, Inspector of Ashulia Police Station, told IANS on Saturday afternoon. Mumbai, May 29 : Among the reasons Pranati Rai Prakash loved shooting for the music video of Kamal Khan's Punjabi track "Gabru" is that it required her to be on a mini road trip. "I travelled from Gurgaon to Chandigarh for the shoot. It was a road trip. I love road trips. We halted at dhabas for delicious daal makhnis and aloo parathas. Everyone was new to me but felt like friends, so shooting for it was fun," she recalls. The actress says the video was very different from the work she has done before. "I think each project I do has a different essence to it. Gabru has a lovely fun vibe to it and I loved the 'salwar kurte mein running in the Punjab ke khet' sequence," says Pranati, who made her debut in the film "Family Of Thakurganj" in 2019 and will be seen in "Penthouse" opposite Arjun Rampal, as well as the web series "Cartel". About "Gabru", she adds: "It's a sequence on how a guy falls in love with a girl and secretly admires her and eventually they fall in love. The story moves from a club to the fields of Punjab. I liked both my looks -- the western and the desi. I enjoyed shooting for this one." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Thiruvananthapuram, May 29 : Kerala Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) President Mullappally Ramachandran on Saturday asked the media here not to spread baseless news about him and the Congress. Ramachandran said as soon as the recent Assembly poll results came out and the United Democratic Front (UDF) did not perform well, he submitted a detailed report to All India Congress Committee (AICC) President, Sonia Gandhi. "We were not able to perform well in the recent state Assembly elections and I have taken full responsibility for the party's failure. Along with my report I had informed Congress President Sonia Gandhi of stepping down as the party's Kerala unit President. I had mentioned that I will remain as the state unit President till alternate arrangements are made and it should happen at the earliest. During my tenure, I received full support of Sonia Gandhi and unconditional support from Rahul Gandhi as well," Ramachandran added. In the past few days the media here was speaking of a new letter written by Ramachandran to Sonia Gandhi about his inability to work as the party was divided among factions in the state. "Let me make things clear, the so called second letter of mine is not at all true. I have written no such letter at all. Moreover the media here on Friday was talking about me not attending the first UDF meeting after the recent state Assembly elections. I attended such meetings by virtue of being the state Congress President. Since I have already informed about my decision to quit as the party's state unit President, it would not be correct on my part both politically and morally to take part and therefore, I did not," said Ramachandran, a former Union Home Minister during the UPA regime. "Then there was a factually incorrect report that I had boycotted the Ashok Chavan committee looking into the defeat of the party. I told Chavan that I will be sending the copy of the report that I had sent to AICC President and I don't have anything more to add or take back from that report and this can be considered as my statement," he added. He told the media that their assessment of affairs of the Congress in the state was totally wrong. "There is nothing like what you (media) people are now reporting about the factionalism in the party's state unit. It's nothing like what you are saying," said Ramachandran. Incidentally it was under Ramachandran that the Congress-led UDF had won 19 out of the 20 Lok Sabha seats but he had then said 'success has many fathers, failure is an orphan'. During the recent Assembly polls, Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan created history in the state when he led the party to a second consecutive win by winning 99 seats in the 140-member Kerala Assembly with the UDF only managing 41 seats. Outgoing Leader of Opposition, Ramesh Chennithala, despite getting the support of the majority Congress Legislators was replaced with V.D.Satheesan by the party high command and now all eyes are on who would be the new party state unit President. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Mumbai, May 29 : Actor Vivek Anand Oberoi on Saturday announced his plans to provide food for over 3,000 underprivileged children who are battling cancer. The actor added that he plans to reach out to more children within the next three months. In a long video message he posted on Instagram, Vivek also urged people to contribute as much as can, adding that a contribution of just Rs 1,000 could go into providing an entire month's food to a child fighting cancer. "Cancer Patients Aid Association (CPAA)'s 52-year-old holistic approach towards cancer care has always looked beyond just the treatment. It aims to save the lives of those who cannot afford treatments. Thousands of patients and their families have benefited from CPAA's Food Bank so far. We are building a fund to sustain this meal program for the next three months. We cannot do this alone, and that is why we need your help. A small contribution of Rs 1,000 can ensure food for one patient for an entire month." -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : Around 60 per cent of people have stated that the Centre should have postponed assembly elections in five states and Panchayat polls in Uttar Pradesh in view of the second wave of the pandemic, claimed the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. The ABP-C Voter snap poll found that in urban areas, a total of 61.8 per cent of people said that the elections should have been postponed. Similarly in rural areas, a total of 60.3 per cent people felt that it should have been postponed. Only around 27.8 per cent in urban areas stated that there was no need to delay polls. Also, 28 per cent of people in rural areas stated that the Centre should have postponed the polls. Rest of the people in urban and rural areas stated they can't decide whether the government's decision to hold elections was correct or not. The survey was conducted among 12,070 respondents across the country between May 23 and May 27, 2021. The assembly polls took place when the second Covid-19 wave hit India hard. Tamil Nadu, Puducherry and Kerala went for polls on April 6. In West Bengal, polling was held in eight phases from March 27 to April 29. In Assam polling was held in three phases from March 27 to April 6. Uttar Pradesh Panchayat, Block and Zila Panchayat elections took place in four phases from April 15. The first phase of polling took place on April 15, second phase on April 19, third phase on April 26 and fourth on April 29. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : The Covid-19 second wave, since April, overwhelmed the health care system, leading to short supply of medical oxygen, essential drugs and left many people struggling to get hospital beds for their treatment. The worries of people were also multiplied, due to the severe shortage of vaccines amid the deadly second wave and warning of a looming third wave. The devastation caused by this deadly viral infection, has also impacted the popularity of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government with regard to the Covid vaccine management adopted to combat the lethal virus, along with its decision to export vaccines to needy countries amid the pandemic. According to the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card, 44.9 per cent people, both in urban and rural areas, think that the Modi government has appropriately handled the Covid vaccine management amid the pandemic. Breaking down this number reveals that 50.6 per cent people in urban areas are of the opinion that the government has properly handled the Covid vaccine, while 42.4 per cent in rural areas also think in the similar way. But 46.5 per cent people in rural areas think the government did not appropriately handle the Covid vaccine management, which assumes significance in the backdrop of reports stating the second wave of Covid-19 pandemic affected the rural areas on a much larger scale, in comparison with the first wave last year. Even according to the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), the virus making in-roads in rural areas of the country, is a big concern. 43.9 per cent people both in urban and rural areas think the government did not appropriately handle the Covid vaccine. 11. 2 per cent people in urban areas could not say anything on handling of Covid vaccine management by the government. Many political leaders have hit out at the Centre over its decision to export Covid vaccines to other countries, instead of prioritising inoculating its own citizens. According to the CVoter-ABP News survey, 47.9 per cent people, in both urban and rural areas, seem to agree with the Modi government's decision to export Covid vaccines. This includes 54.5 per cent people in urban areas and 45.1 per cent in rural areas, which do not see any fault in the government's decision to export vaccine. However, 34.5 per cent people, which includes 29 per cent urban and 36.9 per cent rural, did not agree with government's decision to export vaccines. People who had nothing to say on this policy decision were 17.5 per cent, which includes 16.5 per cent in urban areas and 18 per cent in rural areas. The sample size for the survey was 12070 and it was conducted between May 23-27. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : : Around 55 per cent of people say that this year the Kumbh festival should have been symbolic from the beginning in view of the second wave of Covid 19, the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card has revealed. The ABP-C Voter snap poll found that in urban areas, 57.8 per cent people stated that Kumbh festival should have been symbolic from the beginning. Similarly, 54.2 per cent of people in rural areas have the same view. A total 21.7 per cent of people in urban areas stated that it was right to hold Kumbh festival the way it was held. Similarly,19.2 per cent of people share the same view. The survey stated that 20.5 per cent in urban areas stated that the Kumbh festival should have been organised in its original form but with more precautions. Similarly, 26.6 per cent of people in rural areas also stated that more precautions should have been taken. The survey claimed that sample size of the poll was 12070 and was carried out from May 23, 2021 to May 27, 2021. The Kumbh festival formally began in Haridwar on April 1 with several restrictions imposed on devotees coming to attend the event amid rising cases of Covid-19 in various states including Uttarakhand. A total of 12,000 police and 400 paramilitary force personnel were deployed keep an eye on the Kumbh festival spread over an area of 670 hectares from Haridwar to Devprayag. Amid surging Covid cases, the Prime Minister requested in mid-April to keep Kumbh symbolic as two Shahi Snans have already taken place. On April 17, the Juna Akhara announced the end of Kumbh festivities. India's overall tally of Covid-19 cases now stands at 2,77,29,247 with 22,28,724 active cases, and 3,22,512 deaths, so far. In the last 18 days, India has recorded over 68,000 deaths. On May 24, India crossed a grim milestone of three-lakh deaths due to the coronavirus infections, thus becoming world's third country after the US and Brazil to cross three-lakh deaths. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Jaipur, May 29 : Nurseries of the Rajasthan Forest department are developing hundreds and thousands of medicinal plant saplings that shall soon be gifted to state residents as part of state government's Ghar Ghar Aushadhi Yojana. The mega scheme plans to reach out to all 1,26,50,000 families residing in the state (according to census 2011), extending them an opportunity to take home saplings of the four selected medicinal herbs, namely Tulsi, Aswagandha, Gilloy and Kalmegh. In the five-year duration of the scheme, each family shall be entitled to receive 24 saplings, starting with eight saplings in the first year, that aggregates to more than 30 crore saplings. A budget announcement by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, the massive plant gift campaign is intended to bolster the beneficial relationship between plants and people. These plants have been native to Rajasthan and have traditionally been used as health supplements and in herbal medicines. As part of the campaign the plant saplings will be provided with information on their upkeep and proper use. "Rajasthan is rich in biodiversity and is home to several medicinal plants. The Ghar Ghar Aushadhi Yojana of the state government will help in conservation of this natural wealth and help people understand the importance of herbs and plants around them for health," said Sreya Guha, Principal Secretary Forest and Environment Department, Rajasthan. Several of the state government departments are contributing to make the scheme a success. While the Forest Department is the nodal department for the scheme, district level task forces have been constituted in all districts under their respective District Collectors to ensure due implementation at ground level. The scheme will be monitored by state level committee headed by the state chief secretary. A fund of Rs 210 crore has been sanctioned by the state government for the five-year scheme, of which Rs 31.4 crore will be spent in first year for distributing more than 5 crore saplings among half of the households in state. The following year an equal number of saplings will be distributed among remaining families. Every family will receive eight saplings at a time, two of each of the four herbs. In five years every family will receive in total 24 saplings. The distribution process is scheduled to commence from the monsoon season. Probably India's largest medicinal herb promotion programme, the Ghar Ghar Aushadhi Yojana of Rajasthan government arrives at a time when humanity is grappling with a pandemic. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 10:00:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Medical workers wheel a patient into the emergency room at Maimonides Medical Center in the Brooklyn borough of New York, United States, March 8, 2021. (Xinhua/Michael Nagle) "Secret service reports usually have the property that they are secret and will remain secret. So we cannot check whether such a report actually exists, what is really there and what evidence is included, if any. The bottom line is that the current debate is based on hearsay." BERLIN, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The COVID-19 lab leak theory is falsely claimed and some media reports from the United States are based on hearsay, a German biologist has said. Matthias Glaubrecht, scientific director and professor from the Department of Animal Diversity at the University of Hamburg, made the remarks in a recent interview with German media Der Spiegel. So far the most impeccable hypothesis is from the World Health Organization that COVID-19 jumped to humans via intermediate hosts, according to the biologist. Passengers wearing face masks are seen in a subway car in Sao Paulo, Brazil on March 22, 2021. (Xinhua/Rahel Patrasso) "In nature, new virus variants are constantly emerging, (and) genes are changing. Even the best experts cannot tell where new sequences come from," Glaubrecht told Der Spiegel. He questioned some media reports that cited U.S. intelligence information suggesting that the virus is man-made and leak from a laboratory in Wuhan. Travelers wearing face masks are seen at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, the United States, Feb. 2, 2021. (Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua) "Secret service reports usually have the property that they are secret and will remain secret. So we cannot check whether such a report actually exists, what is really there and what evidence is included, if any. The bottom line is that the current debate is based on hearsay," said Glaubrecht. When asked about the origin of the coronavirus, Glaubrecht said it is difficult for scientists to give conclusive evidence where the virus came from. "We only have to estimate what is more plausible," Glaubrecht said. New Delhi, May 29 : More than 60 per cent people believe that India's relations with different countries of the world improved under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as per the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. The ABP-C Voter survey found that 62.3 per cent of the respondents feel that the country's relations with different nations of the world have improved during the current tenure of the Modi-led government which is into its second term. The survey was carried out between May 23 and May 27 on 12,070 people across the country. About 16.9 per cent respondents believe that India's relations with other countries have worsened and 17.1 per cent feel that the country's relations with other nations have remained the same. About 3.7 per cent were unable to say anything. The survey found that 77.5 per cent urban and 55.8 per cent rural respondents feel that India's relations with other countries of the world improved under Prime Minister Modi. On the other hand, more people in rural areas feel that the relationship with the other countries of the world has worsened under Prime Minister Modi. As per the findings of the survey, 18.9 per cent respondents in rural areas believe relationships with the rest of the world have worsened during the tenure of the Modi government. About 21.2 per cent rural and 7.6 per cent urban respondents feel that India's relations with other countries have remained the same during the last seven years under Prime Minister Modi. A total of 2.7 per cent urban and 4.1 per cent rural respondents have nothing to say on India's relationship with the rest of the world under Prime Minister Modi. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : Two-wheeler major Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India has recommenced production at its plants in a phased manner. The company has manufacturing plants in Manesar (Haryana), Tapukara (Rajasthan) and Vithalapur (Gujarat). "We are gradually resuming production operations following all Covid-19 compliance and lockdown guidelines by respective state governments," said Atsushi Ogata - Managing Director, President & CEO, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India. "While there are visible signs of recovery in the country, we will continue to monitor the situation very closely and are moving forward with safety and well-being of all our stakeholders as a top priority." Besides, the company announced support package for dealers under lockdown. Accordingly, the company shall bear full interest cost of dealer's inventory under complete lockdown for 30 days or more. "We are confident that, full interest support on the existing dealer inventory of those dealers who are under lockdown for 30 days or more will ease their immediate business continuity concern," said Yadvinder Singh Guleria, Director - Sales & Marketing, Honda Motorcycle & Scooter India. "Also, there is a positive momentum visible in Covid-19 vaccination drive along with various other measures by Central and State governments. However, HMSI is moving forward with a calibrated approach across its entire ecosystem ensuring synergy for stable and efficient operations. We expect easing of restrictions by various local administrations and state governments in near future and are accordingly moving forward cautiously in a stepwise manner to serve our customers." Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- Syndicated from IANS New Delhi, May 29 : Over 50 per cent people believe that the Narendra Modi government has taken the right decision to implement Citizenship Amendments Act (CAA) to give Indian Citizenship to persecuted religious minorities from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis or Christians, according to the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. The ABP-C Voter survey found that 53.3 per cent people believe that the Modi government has taken the right decision to implement CAA, while 21.8 per cent respondents said that no, it was a wrong decision. About 24.9 per cent of respondents didn't say anything about the Modi government's decision to implement CAA. The survey found that the Modi government's decision has more support in urban areas rather than rural areas. The survey revealed that about 64.8 per cent respondents in urban areas supported the decision to implement the CAA while 48.3 per cent respondents in rural areas hold the same view. In urban areas, 19.7 per cent of respondents did not support the new amendments in the Citizenship Law while 22.7 per cent in rural parts of the country opposed the new amendments. About 15.5 per cent respondents in urban areas and 29 per cent in rural areas were not in support or against the amendments in citizenship law to persecuted religious minorities from neighbouring countries who arrived in India before 2014. The survey was carried out between May 23 and May 27 on 12,070 people across the country. The Country had witnessed massive protests against the CAA after it was passed by the parliament in 2019. -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Beijing, May 29 : People with depressive symptoms are more likely to experience a rapid decline in kidney function later in life, suggests a new study. The study, to be published in CJASN, showed that participants with frequent depressive symptoms were 1.4-times more likely to experience rapid kidney function decline than participants with infrequent depressive symptoms, after adjustments. "CKD is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease, kidney failure and mortality worldwide," said researcher Xianhui Qin, MD (Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University in China. "Therefore, the identification of more modifiable risk factors may possibly reduce the huge burden of CKD and its related complications by leading to early detection and prevention," Qin added. Depression is a common condition in middle-aged and older adults, and it can contribute to a variety of mental and physical problems. Previous research has found a link between depressive symptoms and rapid kidney function decline in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). For this study, the team examined information on 4,763 individuals with healthy kidneys when they enrolled in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). At the start of the study, 39 per cent of participants had high depressive symptoms, and during a median follow-up of 4 years, 260 (6 per cent) participants experienced rapid kidney function decline. There was a significant association between depressive symptoms at the start of the study and rapid decline in kidney function during follow-up. New Delhi, May 29 : Even as the opposition parties are opposing the Central government's ambitious Central Vista project, about 41 per cent people backed the government's decision to launch and continue with the project during the Covid crisis, according to the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. As per the ABP-C Voter survey, 41.8 per cent feel that the Narendra Modi government's decision to start and continue with the Central Vista project during Corona times was right. The survey pointed out that 48.5 per cent people in the urban areas and 38.9 per cent respondents living in the rural areas described the government's decision to go ahead with the Central Vista project during Covid times as correct. On the other hand, 33.9 per cent of the respondents said that it was not right on the part of the government to go ahead with the project amid the Covid crisis. The survey said that 29.5 per cent people in urban areas and 35.7 per cent people in rural areas feel that it was not a good decision. A total of 24.4 per cent people choose not to comment on the issue. The survey was carried out between May 23 and May 27 on 12,070 people across the country. The opposition parties have been critical of the Central Vista project, saying that it shouldn't be continued at a time when the country is reeling under the Covid pandemic with many people complaining of not getting hospital beds, vaccines, oxygen cylinders and life-saving drugs. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text New Delhi, May 29 : Former Congress President Rahul Gandhi has been one of the most vocal critics of the Narendra Modi-led governments strategy to combat the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently, Rahul Gandhi had said that India will be hit by multiple Covid waves if the government fails to get its vaccine strategy right. He even held the Centre and the Prime Minister directly responsible for so many deaths due to Covid in the country. However, the Congress leader's criticism of Modi seems to have failed to touch a chord with the people as most feel that if given the opportunity, Rahul Gandhi would not have handled the Covid crisis in a better manner, according to the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. As per the ABP-C Voter survey, 22 per cent respondents think that if Rahul Gandhi was the Prime Minister during the present health crisis, he would have handled the situation better. In the urban areas, 20.1 per cent people feel that the Congress leader would have handled the Corona crisis in a better manner had he been the Prime Minister of the country, while 22.8 per cent in the rural areas mirror this opinion. On the other hand, 63.1 per cent people feel that Narendra Modi is handling the coronavirus crisis in the best possible manner, something which Rahul Gandhi would have failed to do. In the urban areas, 65.8 per cent respondents think Modi has handled the Corona crisis in the best possible manner, while 61.9 per cent people in the rural areas feel the same. A total of 14.9 per cent respondents said they cannot say anything on this aspect. From the survey, it is apparent that Rahul Gandhi's criticism of Prime Minister Modi amid the pandemic has not made him either a popular candidate for the PM's post, nor could he convince the people that had he been the PM, he would have tackled the situation in a more effective manner. The survey was carried out between May 23 and May 27 on 12,070 people across the country. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) -- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text Shimla, May 29 : A farmer from Himachal Pradesh has developed a self-pollinating apple variety that does not require long chilling hours for flowering and fruit setting. Its plantation has now spread to plain, tropical, and subtropical areas across India where the temperature is as high as 40-45 degrees Celsius. Commercial cultivation of this apple variety has been initiated in Manipur, Jammu, low-hills of Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chhattisgarh and Telangana among other states. Progressive farmer and Class X passout Hariman Sharma of Paniala village in Bilaspur district has developed this apple variety named HRMN 99. Besides apple, he has been growing mango, pomegranate, kiwi, plum, apricot, peach and coffee. The most interesting part of his farming practice is that he can grow apples along with mangoes in the same field. He believes the farmers can start raising apple orchards in the lower valleys of Himachal Pradesh and elsewhere too. In 1998, Sharma had purchased apples for consumption and had discarded the seeds in his backyard. In 1999, he observed an apple seedling developed from the seeds disposed off by him. Being an innovative farmer with a keen interest in horticulture, he could sense that an apple plant growing at a warm place like Paniyala, situated 1,800 feet from the sea level, was extraordinary. After a year, the plant started blooming, and he observed fruits in 2001. He preserved the plant as "mother plant" and started experimenting by grafting the scion (young shoot) and by 2005 created a mini orchard of apple trees that continue to bear fruits till today. From 2007 to 2012, Hariman went around convincing others that growing apples in low-chilling conditions is no longer impossible. Eventually, the innovative variety was scouted by the National Innovation Foundation (NIF)-India, an autonomous body of the Department of Science and Technology. It verified the claims of the innovator and evaluated the distinctiveness and potentiality of the variety by facilitating molecular and diversity analysis studies and fruit quality testing. The NIF also provided financial and technical support for establishing and expanding the nursery, besides aiding the registration of the variety under the Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers Right Act, 2001. During 2014-2019, the multi-location trials of the variety in low-chilling areas were conducted by NIF by transplanting over 20,000 saplings at over 2,000 farmers' fields and 25 organizations in 30 states, including Rashtrapati Bhavan in Delhi. Fruit setting has been reported from 23 states and UTs. These are Bihar, Jharkhand, Manipur, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Karnataka, Haryana, Rajasthan, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Orissa, Puducherry, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi. During research, it was observed that HRMN-99 plants having three-eight years of age produced five to 75 kg fruits per plant per year in four districts of lower Himachal Pradesh, Sirsa in Haryana and Manipur. It is bigger in size compared to other varieties, with very soft, sweet, and juicy pulp and striped red over yellow skin colour during maturity. Kolkata, May 29 : A Day after the Central government recalled West Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay for central deputation, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday alleged that the decision was a result of political vendetta of the Centre. Banerjee also urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to withdraw the letter and allow Bandopadhyay to continue to work for the state, especially in the wake of the ongoing Covid crisis and the post-Cyclone Yaas situation in Bengal. "What is his (Alapan Bandopadhyay) fault? Being the Chief Secretary, it is his duty to assist me. They might have a lot of grievances against me and they are insulting me in different ways. I have accepted that, but why is he (Bandopadhyay) being victimized? He is honest and is working round-the-clock. I urge the Prime Minister to withdraw the letter and allow him to work," Banerjee said while addressing a press conference on Saturday. The Chief Minister was referring to the incident of the meeting with the Prime Minister on Friday and said that the Central government was reacting in a vindictive manner. Detailing out the happenings during and after the meeting with the Prime Minister, she said, "I came to know about my meeting with the Prime Minister late on Thursday evening, but by that time I had fixed my schedule. Still as the Prime Minister was coming, it was my courtesy to meet him and so I sought some time from the Prime Minister and I was allowed." "I had to cut short my programme to reach Kalaikunda, but I had to wait for 20 minutes because of security protocols. Then we were told that the review meeting had started and I shall have to wait for an hour, but we requested them to allow us only one minute so that we could submit our estimated loss (caused by the cyclone) to the Prime Minister, but they were reluctant. So I entered into the meeting room and submitted the estimate," Banerjee said. The Chief Minister also said that she had sought permission from the Prime Minister before leaving for Digha. "Where is our fault and why should the Chief Secretary be victimised for this? The state was not even consulted before taking the decision. They are always creating problems for us. This is not right," she said. The Chief Minister also hinted that there is hardly any possibility of relieving the Chief Secretary at this juncture. When asked if the state would move the court, Banerjee said, "They have filed a caveat in the court and CAT (Central Administrative Tribunal), making it obvious that they will move the court. We want to solve the problem through negotiation and so I think the Centre would understand." The Chief Minister then alleged that the BJP government at the Centre is always in a mood of confrontation because it cannot digest defeat. Alleging that it (the Centre) is doing politics in everything, Banerjee said, "Initially, it was a meeting between the Chief Minister and the Prime Minister but then it was revised. The Prime Minister went to Gujarat and Odisha but there the opposition leaders were not invited. "Even when he came to make a survey during Amphan last year, the leader of the opposition was not invited. So why this time? The review meeting in a way became a meeting of BJP leaders where I was alone." The Chief Minister further alleged that the BJP government at the Centre is doing everything to insult her at each step. "I can do anything for the people of the state and if the Prime Minister wants me to hold his feet - I am even ready to do that for the benefit of the people. They are continuously insulting and propagating false information through different news channels and media houses. This cannot continue," she said. Mumbai, May 29 : Shoot for the popular sitcom "Bhabiji Ghar Par Hai" has resumed in Surat and actor Rohitashv Gour is glad to be back on set as Tiwari ji. The show was among many that were stopped when Covid cases started increasing earlier this year. "I am a workaholic and it is good to be back on set. For an actor, it is a relaxation when we go to a new location and a new set. The new location is full of greenery, which propels one's thinking. Last year when the lockdown was announced, we never thought there would be a second wave and another lockdown. So, for an actor it is a second setback. No one wants to be sitting idle at home. An actor's job is to go to the set and work," he told IANS. The actor id thankful that the makers of the show thought of having enough episodes in bank, which prevented them from working amidst the pandemic. "I would also like to praise our producers for the way they have visioned this new normal. We had enough bank of episodes so we could wait and start our shooting later. Otherwise, we would have to start early like others at the peak of pandemic," said Rohitashv, praising producers Sanjay and Binaiferr Kohli. He added: "We should all get the vaccines and then build hard immunity to face this disease. Making episodes for future and creating a bank is really a commendable job." The new episodes will be about the birthday celebrations of Anokhelal Saxena, played by Saanand Verma, at a resort. Chandigarh, May 29 : Punjab Police on Saturday said that two of the main accused who had gunned down two Assistant Sub Inspectors -- Bhagwan Singh and Dalwinderjit Singh -- in Jagraon on May 15, have been arrested. The accused Baljinder Singh and Darshan Singh, who were carrying rewards of Rs 2 lakh each, are associates of gangster and drug smuggler Jaipal Bhullar and they were arrested from Dabra in Gwalior on Friday evening. Another associate, Harcharan Singh, who had allegedly given shelter to them, was also arrested. Director General of Police Dinkar Gupta said during investigation they came to know that the suspects could be in hiding in and around Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. A team from the Organised Crime Control Unit (OCCU), led by Inspector Pushpinder Singh, sent to Madhya Pradesh for further investigations. He said after investigations for a few days, the OCCU team managed to track the suspects and arrested them from a platform at the Dabra railway station near Gwalior. The suspects were planning to board a train to Maharashtra, Gupta said. Gupta said the arrested duo has a criminal past and both of them had been convicted in two different murder cases earlier. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 10:01:35|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close DUBLIN, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin said Friday that more COVID-19 restrictions will be eased as of early June thanks to the progress in the vaccination program. In a televised speech, he said that more than 2.6 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines have been administered nationwide and half of the eligible population will have received at least one dose of vaccine soon. "Almost 100 percent of our citizens over the age of 70 are now fully vaccinated," he said, adding that "this is unsurpassed in the European Union (EU)." "Given our progress in the vaccination program during the month of May and the current levels of the virus in our society, all of the measures that we hoped to introduce in June will now go ahead," he said. According to a detailed plan published on the Irish government website, with major restrictions to be eased, all hotels will be allowed to resume services to overnight guests as of June 2 and all restaurants and bars to offer outdoor services as of June 7. Starting from July 5, if the public health situation permits at the time, people can receive visitors from up to three households inside their home, the maximum number of people attending an organized indoor event will be increased to 100, and indoor services can resume in restaurants and bars. From July 19, Ireland will operate the EU Digital COVID Certificate for travel within the EU and the European Economic Area, but this is also subject to the public health situation at the time. The Irish Department of Health on Friday reported 467 new cases, bringing the national count to nearly 260,000 with 4,941 deaths. Enditem New Delhi, May 29 : A Delhi court on Saturday sent Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar to four more days of police custody in the murder case of a 23-year-old wrestler. The Delhi police had sought seven more days of police custody, after Kumar was produced before Metropolitan Magistrate Mayank Goel in the case, after the expiry of his 6-day police custody. However, the court ordered another four days of police custody. According to the prosecution, Kumar and other accused took the deceased allegedly to Chhatrasal Stadium and beat him up mercilessly. The police submitted that eight people have been arrested so far in the case and one licenced pistol was recovered from Kumar. The police added that Kumar did not cooperate during the 6-day custody period. The prosecutor argued that Kumar's custody is required to recover more incriminating evidence, unearth the complete conspiracy and trace the accused who are yet to be arrested. The prosecution alleged that Kumar is the main culprit in the heinous crime, where a young wrestler had died, and added that it was evident in the video clip seized from one of the accused and statement of eyewitness. Kumar's counsel opposed the police application seeking further police remand in the case. The counsel also accused the police of leaking selective information to the media to create a prejudice against his client. "I'm not saying media shouldn't be allowed (to report). I'm saying selective leaks shouldn't be allowed," said the counsel. Kumar's counsel submitted that the police custody should not be misused or given on mere asking, as not even a single ground has been given for the same. "no ground for further extension is made out.they are asking for complete 14 days. But they failed to give any reasonable ground," Kumar's counsel argued. A Delhi court on May 23, sent wrestler and Olympic medallist Sushil Kumar, arrested in connection with his alleged involvement in the death of a wrestler at the city's Chhatrasal Stadium, to six days police custody. According to the police, Kumar and his associates allegedly assaulted fellow wrestler Sagar Dhankar and his two friends Sonu and Amit Kumar at the stadium on May 4 night. Dhankar succumbed to his injuries later. The Delhi Police have filed an FIR under Sections 302 (murder), 308 (culpable homicide), 365 (kidnapping), 325 (causing grievous hurt), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code. They have also included Sections 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease), 120-B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (common intention) of IPC and various sections under the Arms Act. New Delhi, May 29 : In pursuance to the revision of GST Council at its meeting, the government on Saturday constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM) to examine the issue of GST concessions and exemption to Covid relief material. The eight-member GoM will have Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad K. Sangma as it convenor. It will submit a report on the matter by June 8. The GoM shall examine the need for concessions/exemption and make recommendations on Covid vaccines, drugs and medicines for Covid treatment, and testing kit for Covid detection, as per the terms of reference of the GoM. The group will also decide on the rates and concessions for other Covid related medical goods such as medical grade oxygen, pulse oximeters, hand sanitisers, oxygen therapy equipment such as concentrators, generators, ventilators, PPE kits, N95 masks, surgical masks, temperature checking equipment and any other items required for Covid relief. The GST Council agreed on GoM to decide rates and concessions for Covid relief material to see that any duty relief benefits the consumers and not just the medical service fraternity. The GoM will be assisted by a committee of officers from the centre and the states as convened by the ministerial group. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Jammu, May 29 : J&K Lt governor, Manoj Sinha on Saturday inaugurated the Defence Research and Development Organisation's (DRDO) 500-bedded Covid hospital and dedicated the facility to the people of Jammu. Of the total 500 beds at Bhagwati Nagar Centre in Jammu city 125 would be Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds, while others would be a set of COVID beds with 24 hours oxygen facility. The hospital would be equipped with ventilators, monitors; in-house pharmacy, diagnostic facility, x-ray and CT scan facility. "I am grateful to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh for extending all possible assistance to J&K", said the Lt Governor. Speaking on the management of ongoing pandemic and future challenges, the Lt Governor observed that the DRDO hospital, with efficient mechanism will play an important role in adding to the government's efforts in the fight against Covid pandemic. "I must congratulate and appreciate Chairman, DRDO Dr. G Satheesh Reddy and his entire team for working round-the-clock to build this well-equipped medical facility in record time. "Our health infrastructure in Jammu and other areas of the division continues to be the backbone of healthcare services. This hospital too is expected to become fully operational in 3-4 days, after trial run of all the facilities", said the Lt Governor. Underlining the importance of providing best health care services to the people, especially those living in remote areas, the Lt Governor remarked that the robust health infrastructure in Jammu division with decentralised community health system in the form of Panchayat Covid Care Centres has an extensive outreach even in several far-flung locales. We have also devised an effective and rapid response system to quickly mobilise the physical and human resources within healthcare delivery apparatus. "We all as society must fight the pandemic together and recalibrate our priorities, giving utmost importance to Covid protocol and vaccination. So, I urge every citizen of J&K to follow Covid-appropriate behaviour for weeks and months to come to effectively tackle this health crisis", he said. Meanwhile, the Lt governor went around the various sections of the newly established hospital including patients block, ICU ward, General wards, Pharmacy, wherein, he inspected and enquired about the facilities available for the patients. He directed the health functionaries to ensure strict compliance of the hospital referral policy for effective patient care management. The Lt governor was informed that all the information and record would be maintained through a hospital management software. Wi-Fi facility, water Supply with RO facility, camera surveillance with all safety norms and other essential facilities would be extended to the patients. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) New Delhi, May 29 : More than 50 per cent of the people agree with the view that revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir has led to a permanent solution to the vexed issues facing J&K, according to the ABP-C Voter Modi 2.0 Report Card. The ABP-C Voter survey suggests that more than 55 per cent people in the urban areas agree that revocation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir has led to a permanent solution for J&K, while close to 50 per cent respondents in the rural areas hold similar views. As per the survey, 30.4 per cent respondents disagreed with the view that abrogation of Article 370 has solved the J&K issue, including 30.2 per cent in urban areas and 30.5 per cent in the rural parts of the country. A total of 18.6 per cent participants declined to comment on the matter. New Delhi, May 29 : The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Saturday said that it has filed a chargesheet against an ISIS operative Mohammad Iqbal in connection with its probe into the Madurai Hizb-Ut-Tahrir module case. An NIA spokesperson here said that the agency filed the chargesheet against Iqbal on Friday before a Special NIA court in Chennai under several sections of the IPC and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. The official said that a case was registered at Madurai City in Tamil Nadu relating to uploading of denigrating posts on Facebook by accused Iqbal. The NIA had taken over the probe on April 15, 2021. The anti-terror probe agency official said that during investigation it was revealed that the posts on the Facebook page "Thoonga Vizhigal Rendu is in Kazimar Street" were uploaded by Iqbal to incite communal disharmony amongst different religious groups, in a manner prejudicial to the maintenance of public order. The official said, "Iqbal had conspired with other suspects in the name of Hizb-ut-Tahrir, a banned organisation in many countries, and had professed and preached about establishing Islamic State Caliphate or Khilafa and implement Sharia globally including in India by overthrowing non-Islamic governments." The official said that as part of the conspiracy, Iqbal had participated in closed door meetings and also created multiple social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, WhatsApp etc to upload posts intending to disclaim, disrupt the sovereignty and territorial integrity of India and to excite disaffection towards the government. India, like the rest of the world, is facing a pandemic, which till today has affected 168,599,045 people and resulted in 3,507,477 deaths worldwide. Amid this crisis, the world has also started vaccinating people against Coronavirus and so far, administered 1,545,967,545 jabs to the beneficiaries. India, which has been on the forefront of developing vaccines, has so far administered vaccine doses to about 20.1 crore people and there are 4.24 crore people who have been fully vaccinated without any chaos. This achievement is hailed by the world leaders who know the capabilities and acumen of our Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Narendra Modi started his first tenure as Prime Minister of India from May 26, 2014 and was again sworn in as the PM on May 30, 2019, thereby completing seven glorious years in the service of nation this year. The journey had not been a smooth ride for the simple reason that he had to fight more enemies within than those across the borders. Opposition parties and a section of society that has been tutored to see ill, talk ill and then spread ill won't digest but the fact remains that Modi has awakened the nation by showing people how to govern without corruption and how enemies are shown their places without letting this all affect development. Unlike Congress and other past rulers, these seven years didn't see even an iota of corruption, coal blocks were auctioned in the most transparent manner, spies within the system were weeded out, defence forces were strengthened by making all the necessitated purchases like Apache helicopters and Rafale jets besides building tanks and missiles indigenously, country was made to hold massive cleanliness drives, all central schemes reached deserving sections without pilferage and all mega infrastructural projects were completed beforehand for socio-economic development and empowerment of Indians. It was the vision of Narendra Modi that several new initiatives were taken up to help India have an access to minimum basic facilities that Congress and its allies had been denying to our people for the past seventy years without any regret. Central schemes including Beti Padhao Beti Bachao, Jan Dhan Yojana for enabling poor to have access to banking system, Ease of Doing Business through 'Make in India', Namami Gange project to clean holy river, providing electricity and potable water to people in far off places, houses for poor, empowering farmers and institutions like NITI Aayog were all floated/completed/launched to put India's economy on fast-track besides ushering an unprecedented transparency. Today, India is seeing construction of super highways, tunnels, railway lines, highest railway bridge, sending satellites, preparing for Moon landing, building ports for shipping and one of the most important project - Central Vista, that will not only take the country's eyes off the British era structures but will also help the old and worn out structures to pave a way for enabling India to have an new and indigenously built Parliament House and other offices, which will glorify the Nation for centuries to come. Voices of dissention on every issue had been cropping up but it was the will and vision of Narendra Modi that India got an iconic Statue of Unity leaving the Statue of Liberty far behind when it comes to its dimensions, and India also passed several good laws like Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act that gave a dignified life to Muslim women., besides farm bills which are taking middle men out of the affair. The biggest wound that Congress and its allies had ever given to India was the Partition and with that had come into existence Jammu and Kashmir's so-called special status, taking advantage of which, the stakeholders used to blackmail the Centre and created mountain out of a hill by describing Article 370 as an indelible mark. It took the Indian Parliament no time to ward-off all rumours and the controversial Article was abrogated without any violence and along with that, Article 35-A was also gone that denied our daughters their rights. This was a major achievement that insane persons won't even dare to recall or be reminded of. It was Pandit Jawahar lal Nehru who chose to take oath as first Prime Minister of India at a time when over two million innocent Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims were being massacred and about twenty million people were being displaced along religious lines, creating overwhelming refugee crises in the newly-constituted dominions in 1947. Contrarily, Narendra Modi chose not to harm a single innocent soul in the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and yet gave Ladakh its due share of being a Union Territory (UT) while abrogating controversial articles and simultaneously showing Pakistan our India's military might by striking within its territories that's known as 'Surgical Strike'. Today, when some bad elements are still trying to flare up communal hatred by instigating particular communities in the name of Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), Farm Laws or are disapproving the handling of COVID-19 crisis, our Prime Minister is showing utmost restraint. He is doing this only to ensure that his aim to empower people, bring home persecuted Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan and other such nations, increase income of farmers and vaccinate entire India stands accomplished. Taking a strong decision of demonetisation to check black money, bringing home from abroad all the stranded people during COVID-19 crisis, handling foreign affairs meticulously, bringing all the NRIs on a common platform, boosting their morale and ensuring that country stands by them, tightening noose around crooks who looted Indian banks but were not paying back and giving country a fair and effective education policy to ensure that no educational qualification, even that of drop-outs goes waste, is the end result of seven years of statesmanship, which the opposition is unable to digest. In seven years, how Modi has changed India is an example to reckon. He, by empowering culturally rich Indians, ending corruption and redefining the nationalist consensus, has given India a new vision. Having sailed through the turbulent waters, he faced allegations of polarisation yet emerged as winner. Today, when the entire opposition is pitted against just one name 'Modi' and not the issues confronting people, it establishes that Narendra Modi is rewriting history - history of commitment, national self-esteem and self-reliant. India, post-independence, had become colony of a chosen few families and bureaucrats, and liberating the nation from their hands is what a statesman like him has done. After the verdict of Supreme Court, Ram temple is being built at Ayodhya. BJP today is the largest political group in the world and in seven years' time, Narendra Modi has changed the perception of people towards governance. Blemished by corruption at every step, people were dejected and there was a brain drain. Today things are the other way round with more and more youth indulging in start-ups and becoming job givers than job seekers. Facing the pandemic, while BJP and Narendra Modi as PM are providing maximum relief to people affected with pandemic or cyclones through 'Seva Hi Sangathan' programme, he continues to be humbled and indebted to people at all times for letting him take over the reins of power to serve the country and not rule it. Lastly, a message for those who are into Modi-bashing that this won't lead to his defeat even in 2024 general elections because undeterred and far away from these hate speeches or divisive politics, he is going strong and building a strong nation. They must read the signboard ahead, "Work in progress". (Raman Suri is an Executive Member of the BJP's J&K unit. The views expressed are personal) Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Beijing, May 29 : Alibaba's cloud computing unit is making its Apsara operating system compatible with processors based on Arm, x86, RISC-V, among other architectures, the company has said. Alibaba Cloud is one of the fastest-growing businesses for the Chinese e-commerce giant and the world's fourth-largest public cloud service in the second half of 2020, according to market research firm IDC. "The IT ecosystem was traditionally defined by chips, but cloud computing fundamentally changed that," Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud's Intelligence group, said at the conference on Friday. "A cloud operating system can standardise the computing power of server chips, special-purpose chips and other hardware, so whether the chip is based on x86, Arm, RISC-V or a hardware accelerator, the cloud computing offerings for customers are standardized and of high-quality," Jianfeng added. The global chip market has mostly been dominated by Intel's x86 in personal computing and Arm for mobile devices. But RISC-V, an open-source chip architecture competitive with Arma's technologies, is gaining popularity around the world, especially with Chinese developers. Started by academics at the University of California, Berkeley, RISC-V is open to all to use without licensing or patent fees and is generally not subject to America's export controls. The Trump Administration's bans on Huawei and its rival ZTE over national security concerns have effectively severed ties between the Chinese telecom titans and American tech companies, including major semiconductor suppliers. Arm was forced to decide its relationships with Huawei and said it could continue licensing to the Chinese firm as it's of UK origin, the report said. But Huawei still struggles to find fabs that are both capable and allowed to manufacture the chips designed using the architecture, it added. The US sanctions led to a burst in activity around RISC-V in China's tech industry as developers prepare for future tech restrictions by the US, with Alibaba at the forefront of the movement. Alibaba Cloud, Huawei and ZTE are among the 13 premier members of RISC-V International, which means they get a seat on its Board of Directors and Technical Steering Community. New Delhi, May 29 : To mark the seventh anniversary of the Narendra Modi government on Sunday, the BJP has planned an extensive outreach exercise by carrying out Covid-relief activities which will also take place in areas bordering the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir and other remote villages across the country. As per the plan to mark the seventh anniversary of the Modi Government, the BJP will organise special Covid-relief activities in one lakh villages across the country. BJP Jammu and Kashmir co-in-charge Ashish Sood told IANS that several activities related to Covid-prevention and relief have been planned across the state including the Kashmir Valley as per the directions of the central leadership. "These activities are planned as per Prime Minister Modi's vision to reach out to everyone. At the time of pandemic, the Jammu and Kashmir unit of the BJP will reach out to people living in villages of Samba and other districts bordering LoC," Sood said. Sood said party workers will educate people about preventive measures and help villagers and others in J&K to overcome vaccine hesitancy. Apart from village outreach programmes, BJP workers across the country will distribute ration and organise blood donation camps. The BJP has also asked its ministers in the Modi government and MPs and MLAs in party-ruled states to visit at least two villages across the country following all Covid protocols. In a statement, BJP media in-charge and Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni said,"Under the guidance of Prime Minister Modi ji and leadership of our party chief J.P. Nadda ji, the BJP will carry out Covid-related relief work in one lakh villages across the country. The party workers will distribute masks, sanitisers and other essential items required in the ake of pandemic under Sewa Hi Sangathan 2.0." The BJP also plans to hold blood donation campaigns. "Workers will also organise blood donation camps across the country, in which about 50,000 workers from all morcha (wings) of the party will donate blood," Baluni said. Baluni further stated that party chief Nadda has asked the party-ruled states to prepare a programme for the welfare of children who have lost their parents due to Covid, to help secure their future. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Two killed by terrorists in Anantnag. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Two killed by terrorists in Anantnag. (Photo: IANS) Image Source: IANS News Srinagar, May 29 : Two persons were killed after terrorists fired upon them from a close range in South Kashmir's Anantnag district on Saturday, police sources said. Sources said that the terrorists fired upon Shahnawaz Ahmad Bhat, 35, and Sanjeed Ahmad Parray, 20, at Jablipora Bijbehara in Anantnag. Both have succumbed to their injuries later. Police sources added that the area has been cordoned off and operation was launched to nab the terrorists. New Delhi, May 29 : The Centre on Saturday reconstituted six empowered groups into ten to tackle the current Covid-19 crisis in the country. The Ministry of Home Affairs said in an order that Niti Aayog (health) member V.K. Paul will lead two committees - emergency management plan and strategy and vaccination who will oversee procurement, manufacturing, import, logistics, daily supply and utilisation and amount of vaccine wastage. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan will lead the empowered panel for emergency response capabilities which include hospital (beds and ICU), equipment and medicines. Giridhar Aramane, Union Secretary, ministry of road transport and highways will head the empowered committee for oxygen requirements of the country which include production, imports, logistics, equipment, PSA plants and conversion of industrial oxygen to medical oxygen. Union Labour Secretary Apurva Chandra has been appointed head of the empowered committee for augmenting human resource and capacity building. Director General, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) Balaram Bhargava will head an empowered committee for testing. Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog will head the empowered committee for partnerships with private sectors, NGOs and international organisations. Secretary, Information and Broadcasting Ministry, Amit Khare has been made head of the empowered committee for information, communication and public engagement. Secretary DEA, Ajay Seth has been appointed head of the empowered committee for economic and welfare measures which oversee coordination of economic measures and emerging issues relating to growth and employment. Union Home Secretary Ajay Kumar Bhalla has been appointed head of the empowered group for pandemic response and coordination which include overseeing containment measures and guidelines, centre states coordination, legal and administrative aspects, and logistics and supply chain management. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 11:03:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Xinhua writer Wang Yaguang BANGKOK, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Over the past 100 years, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has gone a long way toward the prosperity China has achieved, and overcome many difficulties to bring the country closer to the world center stage, a former Thai diplomat has said. This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC. "It's obvious that without the CPC, China would not be like what it is today," former Thai Foreign Minister Tej Bunnag told Xinhua in a recent interview. Tej, also the Thai ambassador to China during 1986-1990, has witnessed China's opening up to the outside world and its transformation from an impoverished backwater into a major contributor to the world's economy. "When I first went to China in 1973, Shenzhen was just a small fishing village. Now it's an international city of more than 10 million residents and a high-tech hub," said the 77-year-old China observer. Under the leadership of the CPC, China has made remarkable progress in all fields. "What impresses me most is the rapid growth of the general wealth of China," he said. The Chinese people are enjoying much higher per capita GDP and standard of living than ever before, and the country has managed to eradicate extreme poverty, Tej said. In his view, China's infrastructure development is also "amazing." Back to his days as an ambassador to China, he said, it took more than three hours to travel from Beijing to Tianjin -- around 110 km between both cities, while currently it only takes half an hour on a high-speed train. Throughout its 100-year history, the CPC has been firmly marching on the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics, flexibly adapting to changes and improving its policies, which Tej believes is a source of the party's strengths. China has been committed to its reform and opening-up, pursued innovation-driven development, raised proposals such as the Belt and Road Initiative, and promoted a new type of international relations and the building of a community with a shared future for mankind, making contributions to the world's development, he said. "I'm sure the CPC will continue to change and develop for the benefit of the Chinese people," Tej said. Speaking about the fight against COVID-19, he said China has done wonderfully in containing the pandemic and "has shown a good internationalist spirit in helping other countries with vaccine, which we all appreciate." "The first vaccine that was used in Thailand came from China's Sinovac. We will continue to cooperate with China and seek assistance from China in increasing our vaccination campaign," he said. Enditem Bengaluru, May 29 : An MLA of the ruling BJP in Karnataka, L.A. Ravi Subramanya, has courted controversy after a telephonic conversation between a social activist and hospital staff went viral, in which the MLAs name figures more than once, allegedly asking for a commission of Rs 900 to administer Covid vaccine to people. Subramanya is the uncle of BJP MP from Bengaluru South, Tejasvi Surya. His Assembly constituency Basavanagudi is part of the parliamentary constituency represented by Surya. In the purported audio clip that has now gone viral on social media, the hospital staff could be heard telling social activist Venkatesh that the vaccine cost of Rs 900 has to be remitted to Subramanaya's office and only after that inoculation will be done at the AV Hospital. In the purported conversation, the staff member claiming to be working at the AV hospital is asked why the vaccine costs so much. To which, the hospital staff curtly says that those who want free vaccines can go the vaccine centres run by the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP). The staff member does not revert when she is told that vaccines are not available there. The AV Hospital is located in the Hosakerehalli area in Bengaluru. While Venkatesh has claimed that he had lodged a complaint against Subramanya, it is still not clear in which police station the complaint was filed. Reacting to the controversy, Subramanya flatly denied all the allegations. "This audio clip is the handiwork of 'miscreants' who did it with an intent to malign my name. I visited the AV Multispeciality Hospital at Hosakerehalli, which was highlighted in the audio clip, to meet those who intentionally supported these charges," he argued. The MLA asserted that it is a shame that miscreants have indulged in such a smear campaign, and that too when the entire world is working towards a common good to help each other during the pandemic. As the controversy erupted, the AV Hospital promptly issued a statement refuting any role of the MLA or any public representative in the entire vaccination drive being carried out by the hospital. "It is clarified that the vaccination drive in the hospital is an independent activity of the hospital. The MLA has no connection with it. The vaccines are procured by the hospital and are administered to the people at government prescribed rates," the statement said. Earlier, Subramanya along with his nephew Surya had stormed into a BBMP war room and lashed out at the officials and workers for bringing disrepute to them on May 2, and billed it as the biggest expose of the bed blocking scam. Bommanahalli MLA Satish Reddy too had gone with them and slammed the control room staff. Since then, Surya has been criticised for singling out 17 Muslims staff who worked in the 212-strong war room and insinuating that they were part of the bed booking scam. Later, videos surfaced which showed Satish Reddy's aides manhandling IAS officer V. Yashavantha for refusing to handover beds to the MLA. This act was strongly condemned by the IAS association of the state, which demanded that those who attacked the IAS officer should be arrested. Another controversy broke out when Reddy's aide Babu was arrested by the police for his alleged involvement in the bed booking scam. The probe was ordered by Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa minutes after Surya had held a press conference on the expose on May 2. Palghar/Mumbai, May 29 : Twelve days after Cyclone Tauktae's devastation along the Maharashtra west coast, a new threat has emerged - complaint of an oil spill from one of the barges that ran aground near the Palghar shore. However, the Indian Coast Guard late on Saturday denied the claims by local fisherfolks. Local fishermen, who said they have noticed the oil spill around the grounded Barge GAL Constructor, off Vadrai, eported the matter to the Satpati police station. Maharashtra Machhimar Kruti Samiti Palghar president Manendra Arekar, has raised the issue. "We estimate there is at least 80-tonnes of diesel, besides large quantities of lubricants and grease on board the barge. It is 12 days since the barge ran aground, but no agency concerned has turned up here to remove diesel and oil board the barrage," Arekar told mediapersons. He claimed that as a result, diesel and oil are now leaking in a big way from the barge into the Arabian Sea and oil-slicks are already visible in the vicinity of the stuck barge, posing a big ecological hazard in the coming days. Till July 31, the Maharashtra government has imposed a ban on fishing in the sea, because of the south west monsoon and thr breeding season of marine life. "Already people have been complaining about the foul smell in the fish that we catch along the shore. Before long, the oil spill will affect the fish in the area,' Arekar added. He appealed to the state government and other authorities to immediately remove diesel and oil on board the barge and also do something about the oil spill in the area. Reacting to the concerns expressed by the local fishermen about the oil spill in their area, the ICG said that the barge was carrying 78,000 kilolitres of "high flash high speed diesel" and not crude oil. "No breach of the oil tank is reported... Afcons Infrastructure Ltd has arranged M/s Seacare which has laid a 400 mts boom around the barge while M/s Shree Krishna is undertaking hull repairs. Besides, M/s Smith & Coy has been hired for removal of the vessel, " the ICG said. The ICG said that its Guard helicopters had reported "silvery oil sheen" of 50 meters width.A "No oil spill has been reported on shore now and continuous liaison has been maintained with agent of GAL Constructor," an ICG spokesperson said. "Sorbent pads have been laid along the boom. It will be recovered with binge oil with the help of fishing boats," the ICG added. New Delhi, May 29 : The Congress on Saturday accused BJP MP Tejasvi Surya and his uncle Ravi Subramanya of making profits by being involved in an alleged vaccine commission scam in Karnataka during the second Covid wave that has struck the country hard. Congress spokesperson Pawan Khera claimed that the Basavanagudi MLA Subramanya has been asking Bengaluru residents to get vaccinated at a particular private hospital and also referred to leaked audio clips, where the supervisor of the hospital purportedly tells a man that the price of Covid vaccine cannot be less than Rs 900 as they have to give Rs 700 to Subramanya per dose from this money. Addressing a press conference here, Khera said, "Today, some audio recording were leaked in the local media of Karnataka, where Subramanya, third term MLA and real uncle of Surya, who is also the national president of Bharatiya Janata Yuva Morcha, where in those audio recordings, supervisor of a private hospital clearly tells member of the public that per vaccination he will have to pay Rs 900, not a penny less." The Congress leader said that the supervisor also tells on telephone that Rs 700 of this Rs 900 have to be given to Subramanya. "These are shocking startling revelations. It is like getting caught red handed. This is a private hospital. There is a background to this, very revealing background to this, which seals the entire case, makes it an open and shut case. What is that background? Earlier this week, Surya had advertised his own picture along with this hospital, which there are nursing homes also attached exhorting people to get vaccinated from this hospital, where his hoardings, banners are displayed, where in the price per vaccination, which is Rs 900 is also mentioned," he said. Khera said that the name of this private hospital was also mentioned, the name and photograph of the BJP MP is also there. Firing salvos at the government, the Congress leader said, "We want to know how vaccines are available at this private hospital when they are not available in government hospitals for common people? Who is responsible for this? How are they (BJP leaders) getting vaccines?" Khera also demanded that an FIR should be lodged against Surya. "This is cash for vaccines. The membership of Surya from the parliament should be ended with immediately. We owe to the people of Karnataka, the membership from the Karnataka Assembly of Subramanya, should be ended right now, we owe to the people of Karnataka. If you want to save lives of people of Karnataka, this is hardly any sacrifice for you Prime Minister Narendra Modi. This is the least you can do," he said. Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dhaka, May 30 : A human trafficking network spearheaded by Dhaka's Tiktok Hridoy, 26, is active across Middle East, India and Bangladesh. The gang has contact with some hotel chains in India, where girls are trafficked, Md Shahidullah, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Tejgaon Division, disclosed this at a media briefing here on Saturday. Shahidullah told IANS: "Hridoy has a gang comprising some people from the southeastern districts of Bangladesh and some others from Indian states." Recently, Hridoy was in the news after a video of his alleged involvement in the gang-rape and brutal torture of a Bangladeshi girl in India's Bengaluru went viral on social media. Assam police had shared clips from the video that was circulating on social media to trace the accused, following which the Bengaluru city police arrested four men and two women in connection with the case. The Bangladesh police later identified Hridoy from Dhaka's Maghbazar as one of the perpetrators of the crime. The rape victim's father later filed a case with the Hatirjheel police station under the Human Trafficking and Pornography Act on Thursday night. The victim's mother said they were unaware that their daughter had been trafficked to another country. She appealed to the police, "Bring back my daughter right away. I can't imagine her being so far away, in another country." The victim, who had studied up to grade three, had married a man from Chandpur seven years ago. The couple with their three-year-old daughter used to live in Moghbazar. Her husband is a migrant worker who went to Kuwait three years back, and the woman used to regularly visit her parents. "A little over a year ago, she met her husband's friend Hridoy in Moghbazar and told me that he would help her find work abroad with her husband. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway," the victim's father said. He alleged that his daughter might have been coerced into going to India. He could not keep in touch with her as he fell ill following the outbreak of Covid-19. All five Bangladeshis arrested in connection with the incident in India went there illegally, and none of them had passports or visas. They used to traffic school and college girls by conning them with TikTok related promises, Shahidullah said, adding: "India will investigate the case in its own way and we will probe the matter in our own way. However, since the perpetrators are Bangladeshis, efforts are being made to bring them back to the country through coordination between the two countries. Efforts to bring the survivor back are also being made." Paruima Airport, Paruima, Guyana [ PRR / SYPR ] If you are planning to travel to Paruima or any other city in Guyana, this airport locator will be a very useful tool. This page gives complete information about the Paruima Airport along with the airport location map, Time Zone, lattitude and longitude, Current time and date, hotels near the airport etc... Paruima Airport Map showing the location of this airport in Guyana. Paruima Airport IATA Code, ICAO Code, exchange rate etc... is also provided. Paruima Airport Info: Paruima Airport IATA Code: PRR Paruima Airport ICAO Code: SYPR Latitude : 5.81545 Longitude : -61.0554 City : Paruima Country : Guyana World Area Code : 350 Airport Type : Small Timezone : America/Guyana Paruima Airport Timezone : GMT -04:00 hours Current time and date at Paruima Airport is 15:55:03 PM (-04) on Saturday, Jun 12, 2021 Looking for information on Paruima Airport, Paruima, Guyana? Know about Paruima Airport in detail. Find out the location of Paruima Airport on Guyana map and also find out airports near to Paruima. This airport locator is a very useful tool for travelers to know where is Paruima Airport located and also provide information like hotels near Paruima Airport, airlines operating to Paruima Airport etc... IATA Code and ICAO Code of all airports in Guyana. Scroll down to know more about Paruima Airport or Paruima Airport, Guyana. Paruima Airport Map - Location of Paruima Airport Load Map Guyana - General Information Country Formal Name Co-operative Republic of Guyana Country Code GY Capital Georgetown Currency Dollar (GYD) 1 GYD = 0.005 USD 1 USD = 209.386 GYD 1 GYD = 0.004 EUR 1 EUR = 253.545 GYD More GYD convertion rates Tel Code +592 Top Level Domain .gy This page provides all the information you need to know about Paruima Airport, Guyana. This page is created with the aim of helping travelers and tourists visiting Guyana or traveling to Paruima Airport. Details about Paruima Airport given here include Paruima Airport Code - IATA Code (3 letter airport codes) and ICAO Code (4 letter airport codes) Coordinates of Paruima Airport - Latitude and Longitude (Lat and Long) of Paruima Airport Location of Paruima Airport - City Name, Country, Country Codes etc... Paruima Airport Time Zone and Current time at Paruima Airport Address and contact details of Paruima Airport along with website address of the airport Clickable Location Map of Paruima Airport on Google Map. General information about Guyana where Paruima Airport is located in the city of Paruima. General information include capital of Guyana, currency and conversion rate of Guyana currency, Telephone Country code, exchange rate against US Dollar and Euro in case of major world currencies etc... PRR - Paruima Airport IATA Code and SYPR - Paruima Airport ICAO code ...showcases the direct correlation between Christian Discipleship and Network Marketing Leadership development. Local Social Entrepreneur Curry Russell has officially published his first book through one of the largest US Christian book publishers Xulon Press. His book Jesus Christ the First Network Marketer showcases the direct correlation between Christian Discipleship and Network Marketing Leadership development. After joining a network marketing company Curry went to his first Network Marketing event in Akron Ohio in the fall of 2014. Throughout the day he heard from multiple speakers and trainers who shared information about how to help other people with the services that company offered. The information was so closely aligned with the structure taught by Jesus to the twelve disciples that he walked up to the main speaker and asked, Jesus was the first network marketer wasnt He? The speaker looked right at him and said You figured it out. That one moment changed his life forever. This vision to help Network Marketers understand Christianity and Christians understand Network Marketing has taken over 6 years to get out of his head. We are finally excited to announce this book is available everywhere books are sold. For more information you can learn more about the book at https://JesusNetworkMarketer.com Curry Russell is currently one of the Top Leaders in a Network Marketing company building it part-time. An Airborne Veteran of the war in Afghanistan, a Husband and Father of 2 children. Curry has spent more than 20 years traveling the world providing technical guidance and support for the 9-1-1 Public Safety industry. He has been in Network Marketing for only 6 years and has built a global organization of customers and distributors. Having earned many industry accolades including 5 cruises, car bonuses, public speaking opportunities, Leadership conferences, and having been featured in an industry focused magazine. To learn more about his book Jesus Christ the First Network Marketer, please visit https://JesusNetworkMarketer.com. To contact Curry Russell for more information about the book: Email: curry@eliteprofitplan.com Call or Text: 304-812-2183 ### Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the worlds largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 15,000 titles published to date. Jesus Christ, the First Network Marketer is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com. The huge success of PayBitos brokerage application has inspired us to make things simpler for crypto brokers and traders. PayBito upgrades its FIX exchange so that brokers can connect their tools to the markets in a more seamless manner. Crypto exchange and trading platform PayBito makes way for enhanced crypto trading, hence accelerating functions by upgrading their Financial Information eXchange. Supporting the FIX protocol version 4.4. and offering FIX API to institutional traders exclusively, PayBito attains a milestone by upgrading its Financial Information eXchange platform. The upgraded platform will allow brokers to enable their traders to get access to simple and easy cryptocurrency trading. What is FIX? Financial Information eXchange or FIX signifies an electronic trading protocol that happens to be recognized globally. Several financial players like exchanges, banks, broker leaders, and more worked collectively to form this protocol. FIX has been designed especially concerning the real-time transfer of notable amounts of business data within market contributors. As a principal trade interface protocol, FIX happens to be inherent to various order management and trading systems. Financial Information eXchange of PayBito: PayBito's Financial Information eXchange works based on the FIX protocol 4.4. It happens to be steady, fast, and extremely reliable. It enables traders to receive market data, connect with the exchange platform, as well as help place orders by utilizing the trading software. The Managing Directors Viewpoint: In a communicative session with the media regarding the upgrade of FIX eXchange, Raj Chowdhury, Managing Director of PayBito, commented, The huge success of PayBitos brokerage application has inspired us to make things simpler for crypto brokers and traders. PayBito upgrades its FIX exchange so that brokers can connect their tools to the markets in a more seamless manner. Users can expand their clientele, connect with numerous brokers by leveraging a customized interface or application for enhancing their chances of trading all at the same time in a more easy manner. Who Benefits From PayBitos Financial Information eXchange? Apart from making things simpler for brokers and traders, the Financial Information eXchange of PayBito is highly beneficial for: 1. Institutional partners/investors 2. Crypto traders and corporations 3. Cryptocurrency exchange companies 4. Hedge funds and asset managers 5. Financial Brokers 6. Research companies 7. Rating agencies Offering FIX API to all institutional traders, PayBito helps streamline things on the part of brokers as well as traders. Owing to the scalability and safety of the platform, traders can directly work on the algorithms on their machines instead of working it out on a commercial platform, thereby safeguarding all the essential data secure. About PayBito: PayBito is a leading cryptocurrency asset trading platform operating globally. The platform is designed and managed by a team with rich experience in Banking security systems, Cryptocurrency trading, and Blockchain technology. It is available in the web version as well as in iOS and Android stores. PayBito services include white label cryptocurrency exchange, white-label payment gateway, exchange affiliate, and coin listing. PayBito offers some of the best rates and top-notch security in the crypto world. Can we talk? In last weeks Publishers Weekly, I summarized the principles of The Freedom to Read, a statement essential to the ethical foundation of the library and publishing community since 1953. The statement did more than expound principles: It committed the signatories to fight for them. Today this commitment is being questioned by people within the library and publishing communities. Many do not believe that publishers should release books that express dangerous ideas or books that are written by bad people. They reject the idea that the best answer to a bad book is a good one. How are we to resolve these differences? So far, there have been Twitter debates. Petitions have been circulated. There has been a lot of talk about harmful books, but much less about how demands for suppression conflict with the commitment to publish a broad range of ideas. There has been little dialogue and almost no give-and-take. Yet there is strong evidence that conversation works, if not to fully resolve differences at least to build greater interpersonal understanding and lower the temperature of conflict, opening the way to further communication. The National Coalition Against Censorship has some experience in this area. In 2017, building on groundwork by the American Booksellers Association, we launched a pilot program, the Open Discussion Project, that sought to bring liberals and conservatives together in independent bookstores to discuss the issues that divide them. This seems even more foolhardy today than it was four years ago, but we did our homework. We learned that political polarization was not new. Researchers had identified the problem in the 1970s, and nonprofits have been trying to find a solution ever since. There were some encouraging results from experiments with groups that were small enough to let the members get to know one another. They developed empathy, making it possible for them to discuss their differences. We were surprised by the large turnout at the initial meetings in the six stores participating in the pilot. We had hoped that the groups would be small, but 80 people showed up at the first meeting at Gibsons Bookstore in Concord, N.H. The pilot established that many people are eager to engage with those who hold different viewsnot to punish or convert them but to find a place where they can discuss their differences. While we were unable to proceed with a national rollout of the program, two of the stores continue to hold meetings and others are considering restarting their groups. The Bipartisan Book Club, which began at Politics and Prose in Washington, D.C., includes liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. Now operated by its members, the club meets every six weeks to discuss books that present different perspectives. The topics include policing, gender identity, social cohesion, capitalism, antifa, and diversity. More evidence of success is the response to Nadine Strossens book Hate: Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, Not Censorship. As the president of the ACLU from 1991 to 2008 and a prominent defender of civil liberties, Strossen has always had a busy speaking schedule. But between the publication of her book in May 2018 and the beginning of the pandemic, she made more than 300 appearances, mostly to talk about hate speech. Though Strossen often speaks to junior high and high school students, many of her events were on college campuses where activists were organizing against racism. Instead of fearing the wrath of students, she urged those who had invited her to actively reach out to students who disagree with her. Many did attend speeches and rejected her argument that restrictions on hate speech are ineffective, but other students were convinced by her argument that the best way to fight hate is to continue to organize and protest against it. There is so much that is encouraging about our new age of protest and its promise for eliminating the injustices suffered by people of color, women, and members of the LGBTQ community. Inevitably, this has put pressure on all of our major institutions to change. It is particularly difficult for publishers, who must balance their desire to be more inclusive with a commitment to promote free expression. To maintain this balance, we must commit ourselves to talking about the problem. NCAC is ready to do whatever it can to help. My email is chris@ncac.org. Christopher M. Finan is the executive director of the National Coalition Against Censorship and the author of From the Palmer Raids to the Patriot Act: A History of the Fight for Free Speech in America. DEAL OF THE WEEK Elliotts Child Joins Random House Invisible Child, by Pulitzer Prizewinning journalist Andrea Elliott, was originally acquired in a North American rights deal by Kate Medina at Random House. The debut nonfiction book, which is subtitled Poverty, Survival and Hope in an American City and is now set for October, chronicles eight years in the life of Dasani Coates, a girl experiencing homelessness in Brooklyn. The publisher said Elliott spent nearly 10 years reporting the project. The sweeping narrative weaves stories of Dasanis life and childhood with her family history, tracing the passage of her ancestors from slavery to the Great Migration. Random House added that the book is by turns heartbreaking and inspiring as it illuminates some of the most critical issues in America through the life of one remarkable girl. Elliott, who was previously a staff writer at the Miami Herald, is now an investigative reporter at the New York Times; in addition to a Pulitzer, she has won a number of reporting awards, including a George Polk Award and a Scripps Howard Award. She was represented in the 2014 deal by Tina Bennett. FROM THE U.S. Atria Re-ups Correa in Triple In a rumored seven-figure agreement, Armando Lucas Correa sold The Silence in Her Eyes and two other novels to Daniella Wexler at Atria. Correa, author of the international bestseller The German Girl (which was recently optioned for TV adaptation), was represented by Johanna Castillo at Writers House in the world rights deal. Atria described Silence as a Hitchcockian thriller about a motion-blind young woman who, after just losing her mother, becomes entangled in an act of violence connected to a new tenant in her New York apartment building. The other two books are currently untitledboth are works of historical fiction. The first is a family saga that follows a Cuban clan over the course of generations. The second is, Atria said, a love story that interweaves the last-minute separation of two young soulmates on the Kindertransport in 1939 Berlin with the Operation Pedro Pan child-rescue mission that took place in Cuba 23 years later. Noblin Does Double at Morrow For six figures, Lucia Macro at William Morrow re-signed Annie England Noblin (Sit! Stay! Speak!) in a two-book deal. Priya Doraswamy at Lotus Lane Literary negotiated the world rights agreement. The first book under contract, Christmas at Corgi Cove, follows a woman who, while trying to save her familys lakefront inn from going under, stumbles into an unexpected romance. The heroine, the publisher explained, must contend with an attractive and infuriating hotelier who makes an offer that is difficult for her to refuse. Corgi Cove is set for summer 2023, and the second book will be released in summer 2024. Celadon Ties Down Michaelides Bestselling author Alex Michaelides (The Silent Patient) signed a new two-book deal with his current publisher, Celadon Books. Ryan Doherty took North American rights to the currently untitled novels from Sam Copeland at Rogers, Coleridge & White. Michaelidess next book, The Maidens, is being released by Celadon in June. Stanford Gets Happy at Viking Happy for You by Claire Stanford was bought at auction by Lindsey Schwoeri at Viking. The Wylie Agencys Jackie Ko brokered the North American rights deal. The novel, Viking said, is the story of a young woman who leaves academia for a job at a tech company where she is tasked with helping to quantify happiness. It explores Asian American identity, gender roles, and the impact of increasingly invasive, norm-reinforcing apps and algorithms on our relationships with others and with ourselves, through one womans journey to find an authentic happiness all her own. Stanford is a PhD candidate in English at UCLA. Happy for You is set for spring 2022. This article has been updated with new information. In the months since Hipocampo Childrens Books has reopened to in-person browsing, a group of pre-teens and teens have made the space a regular stop on their wanderings through the Rochester, N.Y., neighborhood where it opened two years ago. Their relationship to the store is as new as the store itself, but their ties to the owners go much deeper. All were kindergarten students of co-owner Henry I. Padron-Morales in the dual-language immersion program at the nearby Anna Murray Douglass Academy School No. 12. One is the son of Padron-Moraless business partner Pamela Bailie. For Bailie and Padron-Morales the bookstores existence is a tribute to changes in the world of childrens books. They met through the school as Padron-Morales was headed toward retirement, both excited at the existence of #OwnVoices childrens books that were never on the shelves of bookstores when they were kids. We were both seeing that there was starting to be a change in some of the literature that was coming out, Bailie said. It was becoming a little more reflective of the many cultures and the many backgrounds of people in the United States. That change took on particular significance for the two given the diversity of Rochester, where nearly 40% of the population is African American and almost 20% are Latino. So instead of retiring, Padron-Morales teamed up with Bailie to create a bookstore where they could celebrate books by authors about cultures reflected in their own community. Neither had any experience in bookselling, but they knew picture books and early readersand, most importantly, they knew their community. Starting in 2017, they began planning the store and started scouting locations for the right spot. Time and again, they came back to the neighborhood near the school. The school sits atop the site where civil rights leaders Frederick Douglass and Anna Murray Douglass made their home, and the alleyways of the nearby streets are lined with murals honoring the deep heritage of the place. One day, Padron-Morales walked inside a storefront that was up for lease on a highly trafficked street in the neighborhood and knew it was the place to open the bookstore. The plaque says its an 1857 building, and all of a sudden it hit me, Padron-Morales said. Frederick Douglass may have walked into this when it was an apothecary in his day. He walked up and down this street. How many places are there, where there is a history that goes back to the industrial age, where all these buildings were brick-and-mortar? It gave me a nostalgic feeling. It gave me a feeling of connection. Bailie and Padron-Morales originally hoped to open in November 2018, but their small business loans were held up by the government shutdown. They opened in spring 2019 instead, with board books, picture books, early readers, chapter books, middle grade, and YA titles, mixing in an abundant stock of multicultural and #OwnVoices books with classics and new releases. But as they neared their first anniversary, the pandemic ground their operations to a halt. Still, they persevered and settled into a division of rolesBailie handles logistics and finances while Padron-Morales works the counter and plans eventsand hit the targets in their business plan. Pre-pandemic, Hipocampo drew customers by inviting authors, artists, and musicians, who crafted storytimes, performances, and sing-alongs. During the pandemic, Padron-Morales opened a Covid-safe micro-school program in the bookstore that immediately attracted 20 applicants, from which he picked four pupils. Emerging from the pandemic, the store has enough sales, foot traffic, and demand that the co-owners are adding some adult titles and preparing to make their first hire. They are also looking to grow as readers themselves. Padron-Morales is a Nuyorican from Brooklyn. Bailie is Irish and Turkish, from Belfast. Neither had read the new wave of #OwnVoices YA books until they opened Hipocampo. I didnt know that the whole YA world had developed into something so strong, Bailie said. When youre reading these books, its so rare that youre just having one feeling. Youve got this whole wide, full range of emotions and feelings and thoughts. I love it. It feels more realistic. Now Padron-Morales and Bailie want more, hoping that publishers will continue to expand what they publish for the children they see taking those books down off the shelves at Hipocampo. For both owners, those readers experiences are where everything begins and ends. Theres an energy were seeing, that comes at us when people walk in, in how they feel the space, Padron-Morales said. We love that energy. We love the physical composition of the brick-and-mortar, we love the community dynamic thats occurring. I dont mean to get mushy, but we come at this from a perspective of love. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 11:20:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Xi Jinping, Li Keqiang, Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng attend a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Ju Peng) BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed self-reliance and self-strengthening in the country's science and technology development on Friday while also calling for improved openness, trust, and cooperation with the international sci-tech community. The balanced approach underscores China's recognition of its own development path and the resolution to continue opening up to the world. From the revolutionary times to the reform era, the Communist Party of China always attached great importance to the cause of science and technology and put them in a key, strategic position in China's development. In what has become a Chinese household saying, the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping said science and technology constitute a primary productive force. Facing an increasingly complex world where the global economy is at risk of unilateralism and protectionism, it is imperative to pursue the innovation-driven development that suits China's realities. It is a consensus in China that it is impossible to ask for, buy, or beg for core technologies in key fields from other countries. Only by holding these technologies in our own hands can we ensure economic security, national security, and security in other areas. In the face of intense international competition, and against the broad backdrop of growing unilateralism and protectionism, China needs to pursue an innovation path suited to its national circumstances. It should especially put enhancing its original innovation capabilities in a more prominent position and strive to make ever more "from zero to one" breakthroughs. Meanwhile, China will continue to actively engage in cooperation with the international scientific and technological community, which is mutually beneficial. WWE SMACKDOWN REPORT: DO YOU LIKE TAG TEAMS?, ROMAN IS NOT HAPPY, MY FEUD FOR A CROWN, AND MORE immy Uso and Jey Uso are in Roman's locker room and Jimmy is excited to be in action as a team for the first time in over a year. Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman show up and Roman looks at them. Roman asks if they feel good. Jimmy says he is ready. Roman wants to make sure he has this straight. He wants to know what Jimmy's intentions are with his brother and what the end game is. Jimmy says the end game is to win. They are going to get gold to put their titles next to Roman's title. Roman says Jimmy sounds like he has it figured out and he is happy for him and he wishes Jimmy luck. Jimmy leaves the room and Roman asks Jey if his brother is talking for him now. Jey tells Roman he is with him. Roman tells Jey to tell Jimmy. We are in Tampa, Florida and your announcers are Michael Cole and Pat McAfee. The Street Profits make their way to the ring. Montez says it is Friday night in the Thunderdome and he asks Angelo if he noticed that he has had a pep in his step this week. Tonight is a night unlike no other night. Tonight is the Clash of the Titans. Tonight is the Street Profits versus the Usos. Ford says they had a little fun at the Uso's expense last week. When the Street Profits heard that the Usos were challenging them, they were flattered. Of all the teams in the world, they chose us. Ford says they have been down since day one. Ford mentions the Haka. That isn't the type of Usos are they are facing tonight. It has been an entire year since Jimmy returned from his injury. Roman lives in Jey's head rent free. Dawkins says it looks like Roman will be taking residence in Jimmy's head too. Ford asks if his eyes are deceiving him because he sees the Usos. Jimmy asks if they hear it and they have jokes. It doesn't matter if I have been on the shelf for a year or ten years, the best tag team in the business is back. Jimmy wants to remind them who they are talking to. Six time WWE Tag Team Champions, back to back Tag Team of the Year, and soon to be seven time Tag Team Champions. Jey says this is family business and you have stuck your nose in the middle of it. You are on social media saying this is a dream match, welcome to the nightmare. Jimmy says when they win, they move one step closer to being tag team champions. Dawkins asks if they think they are stepping stones. You used to run the tag division. We run this division now. We go to commercial. Match Number One: Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins versus Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso Jimmy and Dawkins start things off. They lock up and Dawkins backs Jimmy into the corner and Dawkins with a side head lock and shoulder tackle. Dawkins with another shoulder tackle and Ford tags in. Ford is sent onto Jimmy with a belly-to-back into a splash for a near fall. Jey tags in and Jey with a kick and punch to Ford. Jey with an uppercut and he chokes Ford in the corner. Jey with an Irish whip and Ford floats over and flips around. Ford with an arm drag into an arm bar. Dawkins tags in and they hit a double belly-to-back suplex for a near fall. Jey runs Dawkins into the corner and Jimmy tags in and hits a forearm and a chop for a near fall. Jimmy with a diving head butt and chop. Dawkins with kicks but Jimmy with a chop. Dawkins with an arm drag. Jey tags in and he punches Dawkins. Jey with a head butt to Dawkins. Jimmy tags back in and he punches Dawkins. Dawkins with an arm drag into an arm bar and Ford tags in. Ford with a drop kick to Jimmy and then Dawkins with a drop kick to Jey. Ford and Dawkins clothesline Jimmy and Jey to the floor and then Jey is sent over the ringside barrier while Jimmy is sent over the announce table as we go to commercial. We are back and Dawkins with an arm bar and Ford tags in and hits a forearm off the turnbuckles to the arm. Jey tags in and he trips Ford and sends Ford to the floor and into the ringside barrier. Ford struggles to get back to his feet and Jey sends him back into the ringside barrier again. Jey wtih a belly-to-back suplex on Ford. Jey kicks Ford and Jimmy tags back in and Jey with a back breaker and Jimmy with a double sledge to Ford. We see Roman and Paul watching in the back as if they were the Emperor and Anakin Skywalker at the opera/ballet/space show. Jimmy with a forearm and suplex to keep Ford from making the tag and Jimmy gets a near fall. Jey tags in and they make a wish with Ford. Ford with punches but Jey with a forearm to the back. Jey with a reverse chin lock. Jey with a punch and Ford punches back. Ford fights out of the corner and he is flipped over by Jey and Ford with an enzuigiri that sends Jey to the floor. Jimmy stops Ford from making the tag by grabbing the leg. Forrd gets to his feet and he hits an enzuigiri on Jimmy. Jey pulls Dawkins off the apron as Ford dives to the corner. Jimmy with a pop up Samoan drop for a near fall. We go to commercial. We are back and Ford blocks a superplex from Jey. Ford is knocked off the turnbuckles and Ford holds his wrist. Ford with an enzuigiri and he goes up top again. Ford leaps over Jey and both men with clotheslines and both men are down. Dawkins tags in and he punches Jey and Jimmy. Jey with a thrust kick and Jimmy tags in but Dawkins sends Jey to the mat and Dawkins with a flying corkscrew elbow and flapjack for a near fall. Jimmy gets to the apron and he kicks Dawkins. Dawkins punches Jimmy on the turnbuckels and Ford flips over the ring post onto Jey. Dawkins goes for a butterfly move but Jimmy escapes and hits a super kick for a near fall. Jimmy runs into a shoudler from Dawkins and Dawkins with a butterfly neck breaker for a near fall. Dawkins goes for a butterfly neck breaker again and Jimmy has a super kick blocked. Dawkins with Anoitment but Ford misses a Seven Star Frog Splash. Jimmy with a super kick for the three count. Winners: Jimmy Uso and Jey Uso Megan Morant is in the back with Dolph Ziggler and Robert Roode. Megan asks about their problems when they lost the title and if tonight will be any different. Roode says their strategy at Backlash was off. Dolph says Rey used super human strength because his child was in danger. Ziggler says they are aces and they do what they want when they want. They will become Smackdown tag team champions again. Match Number Two: Natalya and Tamina versus Ruby Riott and Liv Morgan in a Non Title Match The match is joined in progress and Ruby sends Natalya into the ropes and Liv tags in and hits a drop kick to the back. Ruby tags back in and Liv sends Ruby into the corner with a shoulder. Liv tags back in and she kicks Natalya into the corner and Ruby sends Natalya face first into the turnbuckles. Liv gets a near fall. Ruby tags back in and she applies a reverse chin lock. We are told that Tamina was attacked before the match so she is not on the apron. Ruby with a clothesline for a near fall. Liv tags in and she misses a double stomp and Natalya with a double leg take down and then she goes for a double sharpshooter and Ruby and Liv kick her away. Tamina pushes Liv onto Ruby to break up a cover. Tamina tags in and Ruby goes for a side Russian leg sweep but Tamina blocks it. Ruby with punches but Tamina with a forearm to the back of the head and hits the ropes. Natalya pulls Liv off the apron and Tamina blocks an arm drag off the turnbuckles. Tamina with a head butt. Liv with a facebuster to Natalya on the floor while Tamina hits the Superfly splash for the three count. Winners: Tamina and Natalya Adam Pearce is in his office looking at his phone and the Usos enter. Jimmy points out they won and didn't miss a step. Adam says it was an impressive win and the Street Profits are a tough team. Jimmy wants the winner of the tag title match next week. Adam makes the match official and Jimmy leaves the office happy while Jey is conflicted. Coverage Continues on Next Page If you enjoy PWInsider.com you can check out the AD-FREE PWInsider Elite section, which features exclusive audio updates, news, our critically acclaimed podcasts, interviews and more by clicking here! Coronavirus 56 more COVID cases in Berks; no deaths @LisaScheid on Twitter I explore how our lives are shaped by our relationship to the land, water and air. Have a question you want me to answer? Email me. Cancel culture. Its a term we throw around a lot these days, but it doesnt become real until it hits you or someone you know -- which is exactly what happened this past weekend when my friend Rick Santorum became cancel cultures latest victim. Lets be clear, cancel culture is about control and intolerance. As CEO and president of Concerned Women for America, Ive experienced the venom. The reality is that the left is insecure in its own principles and unable to defend its own positions, so it seeks to silence others. And the more effective one is in advocating, particularly for traditional American values, the more hateful the cancel culture becomes. Which brings me back to Rick Santorum and the 25-year campaign to cancel him. They first tried to silence him when he was a 38-year-old junior U.S. senator. Santorum took to the Senate floor to expose the barbaric procedure we now know as partial-birth abortion -- at a time when no one else in Congress would do so. He passionately spoke for the innocent children who were never given the chance to speak for themselves, and he used the deafening cries of the unborn to end what liberal giant Daniel Patrick Moynihan called infanticide. Not learning their lesson, those on the left continued their crusade to cancel Santorum when he fought to reform our welfare system, raise awareness of the injustice of fatherlessness in America, sound the alarm against the radical Islamist regime of Iran and defend our ally, Israel. Each time Santorum succeeded, and the woke mobs only got more desperate. He used to joke that his children thought his first name was ultra conservative because that preceded his name in every article written about him. But lets be real, the unforgivable sin committed by Santorum was his defense in 2012 (as the Republican presidential front-runner) of the institution of traditional marriage, a position also embraced previously by Barack Obama and both Bill and Hillary Clinton. But the left cant be confused with the facts. As a United States senator and then as a presidential candidate, Santorum continually defied the odds. As a CNN political commentator, he emerged as the networks go-to Republican because of his ability to effectively communicate conservative principles and policies, the very thing that makes him dangerous to the woke mob. Starting last fall, I always knew when Santorum was appearing on CNN not because I watched the news channel, but because he would trend nationally on Twitter after every appearance. The concerted campaign to cancel Rick Santorum had taken shape led by some of Hollywoods elite, Obama administration alumni, and the coastal intelligentsia. Time and again, the left tried and failed to cancel Rick Santorum, but this past weekend the mob thought they had finally succeeded when CNN released him. Santorums crime? Saying Western European settlers founded the United States, and that they did so to establish a nation premised on freedom and liberty. Im sure William Penn would be surprised to learn that he did not found Pennsylvania as a refuge for religious liberty. It would likely shock Thomas Jefferson to learn that he did not write the Declaration of Independence. And James Madison, newsflash, youre not the Father of the Constitution. Lets be clear, giving credit where credit is due is not dismissive to others. It didnt matter that Santorum proactively recognized that Native Americans were here first or that he soundly condemned the atrocities committed against them, comparing those acts to the treatment of African slaves. The cancel culture came for Rick Santorum; CNN capitulated, and the leftist mob celebrated. Sadly, at the end of the day, everyone loses when we can no longer freely debate ideas. American exceptionalism counts on the free market of ideas to create common ground. We can never bring ourselves together in a culture of fear and squelched debate. CNN is damaged and less interesting now that it no longer has Donald Trump as a straw man and fewer conservative voices to generate vigorous debate. CNN, the most trusted name in news, is apparently afraid of the truth, but it must be told. Its time to become engaged. Its time to stand up for our values and our country. Its time to stop being silenced. As Rick Santorum said the night he defied the odds and won the 2012 Iowa caucuses, Game on! 92, passed away March 12, 2021. Visitation will take place Sunday, June 13, 2021 from 5 to 7 p.m. at the Reynolds Jonkhoff Funeral Home with a rosary at 5 p.m. A funeral Mass will take place on Monday, June 14, 2021 at 11 a.m. at St. Francis Catholic Church. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 11:47:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CARACAS, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Venezuelan Minister of Communication and Information Freddy Nanez said Friday that he stands ready to further promote the partnership between Venezuela and China. "The Communist Party of China (CPC) is the driver of the economic and political victories of this great country," said Nanez at an online event, adding the CPC has the "virtue of working day and night for the common good of 20 percent of humanity." He made the remarks during a video conference held in Caracas to mark the CPC's 100th anniversary, along with political figures, including China's Ambassador to Venezuela Li Baorong, and some media personalities. In his speech, Li said, "under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the Chinese people have achieved national liberation and independence." "For the past 100 years, no matter how the situation changes and the challenges facing the CPC, it always makes history, sets its goal, and steadily moves in the right direction," the ambassador said. Oscar Schemel, head of leading Venezuelan analysis firm Hinterlaces, said that Venezuela sees China as "a fundamental point of reference in which, without copying models, we could find elements adaptable to our own conditions," such as "the planning capacity of the Communist Party of China." Enditem Kenansville, NC (28349) Today Thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%.. Tonight Thunderstorms early, then cloudy skies after midnight. Low near 65F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 90%. Greenville, NC (27833) Today Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy early with some clearing expected late. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 12:07:00|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The world marked on Saturday the International Day of United Nations (UN) Peacekeepers, which was designated by the UN General Assembly to pay tribute to people serving in peacekeeping operations and honor those who have lost their lives in the cause. On various occasions, Chinese President Xi Jinping has expounded on China's contribution to international peacekeeping operations, and commitment to the path of peaceful development. May 6, 2021 During a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Xi said that China has decided to offer vaccines to UN peacekeeping operations and the International Olympic Committee, and will continue to actively support COVAX and make continuous efforts to eliminate the "vaccine divide." April 20, 2021 Xi delivered a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021. "China will stay committed to peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, develop friendship and cooperation with other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and promote a new type of international relations," Xi said. "However strong it may grow, China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence. Nor will China ever engage in an arms race," he added. Nov. 12, 2020 Xi delivered a speech via video at the third Paris Peace Forum, stressing that peace and development are the theme of the times, as well as the unstoppable trend of history. "We need to uphold multilateralism, oppose unilateralism, hegemony and power politics, and reject all forms of terrorism and acts of extreme violence," Xi said. China follows an independent foreign policy of peace and is committed to the path of peaceful development, Xi noted. Xi called on all countries to uphold international law and the basic norms governing international relations, determine their position on the merits of each matter, and rise above ideological bias and confrontation. China is willing to step up communication and coordination with France and other countries and play a positive part in efforts to secure political settlement of international and regional issues and uphold world peace and stability, he said. Sept. 3, 2018 In a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Xi said that China decided to set up a China-Africa peace and security fund to boost their cooperation on peace, security, peacekeeping, and law and order. Fifty security assistance programs would be launched to advance China-Africa cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, and in areas of law and order, UN peacekeeping missions, fighting piracy and combating terrorism, he said. Sept. 28, 2015 Addressing a peacekeeping summit in New York, which gathered leaders and representatives of over 70 countries and international organizations, Xi said the international community should increase support for Africa, augment the continent's ability to maintain peace and stability, and help it resolve its own problems in its own way. China, Xi added, maintains that the basic principles of UN peacekeeping should be followed, Security Council resolutions be carried out in full, and no country act beyond its given authority. Enditem Greenville, NC (27833) Today Overcast. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 75F. Winds NNE at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies early, followed by partial clearing. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. On June 11th, 2021, Billie Jean Swanigan Bates, born on August 17th, 1938, received her God's reward and her spirit was guided to her new heavenly home from the Bowers Hospice House in Beckley, WV. All those that knew Billie will remember her Christian faith, her kindness, her compassion and Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 12:28:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close GENEVA, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) on Friday reiterated its call for a "de-politicized environment" for the study on COVID-19 virus origins, as the whole process of the study is being "poisoned by politics." Speaking at a WHO press briefing on Friday, Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, called on "everyone out there to separate, if they can, the politics of this issue (COVID-19 origin study) from the science." "If you expect scientists to do their work, if you expect scientists to collaborate and actually get the answers that you want, actually seek in a non-blaming environment to find the origin of the virus so we may all learn how to prevent this happening in the future, we would ask that this be done in a de-politicized environment where science and health is the objective of this and not blame on politics," he said. The WHO senior official said it's "quite disturbing" to see over the past few days "more and more and more discourse in the media with terribly little actual news or evidence or new material" concerning the possible origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the culprit behind the current COVID-19 pandemic. While calling on governments to work together and create the space for the virus origin study to be done successfully, Ryan said the current politicization of this issue has put WHO in a "very unfair" position to "deliver the answers that the world wants." "So we would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper positive atmosphere, where we can find the science to drive the solutions through a process that's driven by solidarity," he said. Meanwhile, Maria Van Kerkhove, COVID-19 technical lead for WHO, suggested that everyone read in detail the virus origin study report publicized by the WHO team of international experts in March, which covers a wealth of knowledge and clearly outlines the technical approach concerning further virus origin study. Finding the virus's origins requires many studies and multiple missions, in which collaboration, openness and time are needed, she noted. Enditem BRIDGEPORT A man sought by Pennsylvania police for allegedly kidnapping and raping a woman is on his way back to that state. Jose Claudio-Diaz, 41, charged with first-degree kidnapping, assault on a police officer and being a fugitive from justice, agreed to waive extradition and return to Pennsylvania during a hearing before Superior Court Judge Kevin Russo on Friday. He had no comment as he was turned over to Pennsylvania law enforcement officers. On May 3, Connecticut state police said they received a report that Claudio-Diaz, who was being sought by Bethlehem, Pa., police on robbery charges and making terrorists threats, was traveling northbound on the Merritt Parkway with a kidnapping victim in a Nissan Rogue. Shortly after 2 p.m., state police said they spotted the vehicle near Exit 46. State police said a trooper pursued the Nissan while another trooper blocked the road at Exit 48. State police said they were able to force the Nissan over and the driver, identified as Claudio-Diaz, put his hands in the air. Police said a woman seated in the passenger seat of the Nissan, who was crying hysterically, said she had been held against her will by Claudio-Diaz. She was taken to St. Vincents Medical Center. State police said Claudio-Diaz was taken to Troop G where, while being held in a cell, he wrapped his shirt around his neck and allegedly attempted to choke himself. When troopers got the shirt away from him, state police said Claudio-Diaz then stuck his face in a toilet in what they described as an apparent attempt to drown himself. Pulled out of the toilet, state police said Claudio-Diaz threated one of the troopers and then spit in his face. State police said the woman later told police that Claudio-Diaz, who she previously met on an online dating site, had come to her home early Monday and threatened to kill her children if she didnt go with him. She said Claudio-Diaz had driven her to a local motel where he allegedly repeatedly sexually assaulted her, according to state police. He then ordered her to get back into the car and told her he was going to drive her to Springfield, Mass., where he allegedly had family. She said she had tried to call for help on her cell phone but he allegedly ripped it from her hand and thrown it away, state police said. CANAAN Designed by noted architect Richard Upjohn, Christ Church stands on a hill overlooking the main road and a train station. On Sundays, the Rev. Alex Gorecki of New Britain makes the long drive to hold a Sunday service. Its only been a few months since services resumed after the church was closed in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic, but very few people are attending. The church was holding several services a week before the shutdown, but now Gorecki comes only once a week. When COVID-19 came, everyone just stopped coming, Gorecki said. We had mostly older members, and maybe its just too hard for them to get here. But were trying to bring life back to the church. The Gothic revival, granite house of worship and its free-standing, two-story stone bell tower are accompanied by a parish hall with a small playground for Sunday School children behind it. The church, built in the 1840s and opening in 1846, operated for 166 years before it closed in 2012 as Christ Church Episcopal. At that time, according to a story in the Litchfield County Times, the congregations membership was dwindling, along with its financial resources. Then, in 2019, the Episcopal diocese decided to sell the church and property to a private owner, but a small group of residents decided it deserved another chance. They raised $50,000 in a GoFundMe campaign, then applied for grants and purchased the building for $100,000. Timothy Bryant Jones is one of the benefactors that set the wheels in motion to save it. I am chairman of the board of directors for Christ Church, and we incorporated in May 2019, Jones said. We settled on saving it, and God gave us the funding to do it. Its a historic church, and it means a lot to us. Now, it appears Christ Church needs to be saved again. Gorecki, a state employee who was ordained four years ago, runs a homeless ministry in Bristol. His training for the ministry, he said, is based on his mission: I believe in salvation by grace, through faith, he said. He has two ordinations, allowing him to preach Lutheran, Episcopalian and Baptist. The pastor often is joined by the Rev. Richie Cam, a Vietnam War veteran and American Indian who runs the Christian Outreach Center in Waterbury. On a recent Sunday morning, Cam arrived with a sign saying Freedom with an American flag, which he planned to place on the towns war memorial that stands directly in front of Christ Church. The sad thing is, people just dont go to church anymore, Gorecki said. But were trying. We put up fliers everywhere to let people know that were open, and that theyre welcome. With two pastors ready and willing to hold services, all Christ Church needs now is more people. Historic reenactor Kevin Titus, an actor and radio personality, is the churchs warden and a member. He recently arrived for church dressed as Upjohn, complete with a tall hat, a smart waistcoat, black britches and high boots. Titus loves the church and has belonged for years. His mother, Carol Ryan Titus, was a member. His book, The History of Christ Church is a tribute to the buildings history, Titus said. I came as Upjohn because he was an amazing guy, he said. He designed Trinity Church in New York City, and a lot of other ones, too. When the service began, Titus took his place near the altar, while Gorecki conducted a brief service with a hymn, communion and a sermon about the symbolism of Jesus walking on water. Jones arrived with his 2-year-old son Aiden and his wife, Ochide, and sat down in a back pew. Cam settled in nearby. At the conclusion of the service, the little group stood together and talked. We had this need to do mission work, and thats how we got involved in Christ Church, Jones said. We have supporters and want to grow; we want to do community outreach, a food pantry, to welcome AA to hold their meetings here; to show Gods love to the town. We can provide space for groups for their events. We used to have spaghetti dinners. .... We just want more people to come. Christ Church at 58 Main St. holds worship at 10:30 a.m. on Sundays. For information, call Gorecki at 860-518-0798, or email gorecki_aj@yahoo.com. JACKSON, Miss. (AP) The Gregorys were set to go to Paris last summer. Mollie Gregory was spearheading the trip. Shed booked flights for the family of four living in Belhaven. Those who knew French brushed up on their conjugations and pronunciations. It would be what the family needed. But as COVID-19 rapidly spread throughout France last March, its president closed the borders. Airlines grappled with safety measures as the pandemic ravaged the world. And Mississippi was beginning to see a rise in cases. The Gregorys trip had to wait. We were just secluded, said Larry Gregory, Mississippi Gaming and Hospitality Associations executive director. For Mississippians like the Gregorys, the pandemic devastated travel plans. It would also close restaurants, shut down public pools, rework summer camps and leave many cooped up in their homes wondering where to go and what to do. But for some, quarantine periods and mandates that kept them inside with their families was a relief. As June nears, Mississippians are ready to get back to what might be the new normal. LIA OCHOA, 49, OF BRANDON Luka Quinones, 4, and Leo Quinones, 2, holding bowls of frozen dessert, laughed and chatted with their grandmothers and mother outside of Berry Berry Good Yogurt in Flowood on Wednesday afternoon. Their grandmother, Lia Ochoa of Brandon, couldnt make the trip down to South Carolina to visit them, because the pandemic forced airlines to stop flights. But Ochoa, a Pearl High School Spanish teacher, is making up for the lost time by spending a month chasing after her grandchildren on the beach and around Brandon and Flowood. Shell soon be packing for a trip to Peru that she had to forego last year. Gianella Quinones, 31, is a mental health counselor at the Department of Mental Health in South Carolina and while her children are with their grandmother, shell be encouraging people to get vaccinated. Im grateful that we can do this summer, because it was difficult last summer to see how we were all either had to quarantine or practice social distancing or not even go out, she said. Taking a break from his frozen yogurt, Luka Quinones piped up. Mama, I got a plan too, he said. Swimming! JOSHUA DEDMOND, 33, OF JACKSON On Wednesday evening, 3-year-old Maddox Lavine-Dedmond is free to run around Laurel Street Park in Belhaven. At one point, COVID-19 was so rampant in the city, parks were off limits. Now, she goes from a swing set to the open field and back again. Her father, Joshua Dedmond of Jackson, said Maddox knows she still needs to stay safe, that the virus isnt over. She doesnt know the ins and outs of the coronavirus, but Maddox is ready to have a much bigger fourth birthday party in August. This time, her church and school friends will be there. Last summers limitations werent the only upheaval, said Dedmond, a southern regional organizer for the Labor Network for Sustainability. Civil unrest after the police killing of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, added to the intensity people were experiencing. For Dedmond, the time at home with his family was a much-needed reprieve. Maddox and her father are ready to get back out, but even at the park, Dedmond reminds his daughter its not yet safe to use the water fountain. Hes cautiously optimistic. I dont think the pandemics vanished, he said. Still mask up. Still try your best to be safe as possible. JUMOKE CASON, 22, AND JAMAR CASON, 19, OF PEARL Jamar Cason collected his high school diploma last summer. Proud of his accomplishments, his family planned to celebrate with a cruise. By March 2020, the Casons sea adventures would have to wait. Cruise Lines International Association, the leading trade organization for the industry, announced it would temporarily halt operations of ships departing from the Untied States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also put out a no-sail order. With their trip canceled, brothers Jumoke Cason and Jamar Cason were stuck at home, just like many Mississippians. I mean a lot of people really couldnt do anything, Jumoke Cason said. Im pretty sure a lot of people are going to be doing what they wanted last summer this summer. Jumoke Cason, who is working from home, said he could see another virus outbreak happening if people arent safe while they travel this summer. While many cruise ships are still waiting to get the green light to sail, Jumoke Cason, fully vaccainted, said he wants to head to California with his friends. For Jamar Cason, this summer is about focusing on himself, spending time working out and getting a job. I think now that things are opening up, people will begin to socialize more and you know, humans thrive off of interactions with other humans, Jamar Cason said. LARRY GREGORY, 62, OF BELHAVEN Despite a Paris trip pulled from under them, the Gregorys werent at a standstill. After weeks of waiting for a restock, they bought bicycles and took to the neighborhood streets. It was a silver-lining for Larry Gregory who remembers the rides, trundling alongside flowers and nature, as beauty among the pandemics darkness. That summer, his wife Mollie Gregory, whod never seriously put a brush to canvas before, began to paint. Nearly a year later, shes found her niche in abstract painting and has turned the hobby into business. The Gregorys still ride their bikes. Mollie Gregory still sells her paintings. And theyre prepping to make their way out West to Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks and the Black Hills National Forest by mid-summer. Its not Paris, but for now, its an adventure requiring a plane ticket. Were getting back to life, he said. BRIDGEPORT A New Rochelle man has been charged with sexually assaulting three children at a home here. Jimmy Flor-Funsang, 31, was charged Thursday with first-degree sexual assault, third-degree sexual assault, second-degree strangulation, intentional cruelty to a person, second-degree assault, first-degree reckless endangerment and risk of injury to a child. The victims are three juveniles and the allegations are incredibly disturbing, Assistant States Attorney Felicia Valentino said during Flor-Funsangs arraignment Friday. Superior Court Judge Earl Richards agreed and ordered Flor-Funsang held in lieu of $500,000 bond. Police said Flor-Funsang is accused of choking and sexually assaulting three children, aged 14, 10 and 6 multiple times in their home while he was visiting their mother. In February, the 14-year-old complained about the alleged abuse by Flor-Funsang to a school counselor, police said. When police said detectives questioned the mother about the allegations, they said she told them that the 10-year-old had previously claimed she was abused by the defendant but later denied it. During an interview with the three children at the Center for Family Justice, police said all three children said they had been abused by Flor-Funsang on multiple occasions while their mother was not home. NEW HAVEN It has been a violent year so far in the city, as it has been elsewhere in the country. Another person was shot and killed Wednesday night, police said, the citys 13th homicide so far in 2021. But additional help is on the way, city officials said, as they continue to work to curb the ongoing death and pain. Mayor Justin Elicker, Acting Chief Renee Dominguez and Community Services Administrator Mehul Dalal discussed the citys plans to combat gun violence and crime at Thursdays Compstat meeting, where police gather with the community to share news and intelligence. Elicker prefaced the presentation by noting gun violence rose in many American communities in 2020, which saw nearly 19,500 people killed, up from 15,447 the year before, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive. He attributed the increase to the coronavirus pandemic, which harmed the mental health and economic well-being of many Americans and interrupted social programs and the court system. Were seeing a significant uptick in violence across the nation, said Elicker. It is very clearly related to COVID. Dominguez said that as of Thursday morning there had been 45 shootings and 13 homicides this year in New Haven up from 31 and four at the same point in 2020. During the year, there have been 59 shootings and 13 homicides in Hartford and 42 shootings and six homicides in Bridgeport, she said. The citys approach to mitigating the violence is multifaceted, Dominguez said. The department will conduct targeted crime suppression efforts, she said, shifting officers and resources on a daily and weekly basis to try to tamp down on troubled areas in the city. Bicycle beats, re-instituted for the summer, began Wednesday. The departments shooting task force has widened its reach, as the department partners with police agencies in other communities. Project Longevity, which meets with gang and group members at risk of becoming involved in violence, and Project Safe Neighborhoods, which deals with at-risk individuals, both have held call-ins this year and have more scheduled in the coming months. Police officials also have conducted 90 custom notifications in 2021, meeting with individuals believed to be at risk of violence, Dominguez said. Thats about how many, historically, theyve done in an entire year, she said. We realized this year is a different year and we needed to do more, said Dominguez. Dalal said the city planned to use summer reset funds, provided by the federal government through the American Rescue Plan, to hire an additional four to five street outreach workers, which would at least double the amount in New Haven. The Connecticut Violence Intervention Program, headed by Leonard Jahad, reaches out to people in the wake of violence, seeking to provide aid to hurting families and dissuade retaliatory violence. Dalal said the city also is hoping to hire four additional workers for the Youth Connect program, which works with at-risk young people in New Haven, and devote a social worker to help the highest-risk cases at the new Project MORE re-entry center, which offers services to people returning to the city from prison. Elicker praised the efforts of police and staffers to date. He said he went to the scene of Wednesday nights homicide, where a West Haven man was fatally shot on Sherman Parkway. Officers, he said, had showed tremendous compassion in dealing with the mans loved ones. Jahad and Stacy Spell, project manager of Project Longevity in New Haven, have shown great care in trying to help people and dissuade violence, Elicker said. Although the future is uncertain, the city has successfully drawn down the level of violence at hand in the past, he said. In 2020, the city saw 20 homicides , the most since 2013, and 121 non-fatal shootings, up from 11 homicides and 78 shootings in 2019. There were 274 incidents of shots being fired, up from 151 in 2019. But, as officials have previously noted, crime has fallen since 2011, when 34 people were killed and 133 wounded, and since the heights of the 1990s. I think we have a strategy that is doing more ... (and) that has been proven to work in the past, said Elicker. But I think we can expect a challenging summer. The Rev. Boise Kimber, senior pastor of First Calvary Baptist Church and leader of the Greater New Haven Clergy Association, held a press conference in the wake of recent violence Thursday and blamed Elicker for not doing enough to address the increased crime in New Haven. If we do not get control over the violence in this community, people are going to begin to take things in their own hands because they feel as though there is no one that is watching, no one that cares and that no crimes are being solved, Kimber said. Kimber said the situation is getting more desperate. I need to share with you. It is a 911. People are afraid in this city, because you never know where a bullet is going to come from. And Im saying to families, members of my church, community people, we must bear some blame to get our houses in order, to get our kids in order, and stop being surprised when people are being shot at and killed in this city, said Kimber. We have a responsibility to be our neighbors keeper, and we need to step up to the charge and we need to do what is right and responsible for our own community. Elicker said the city was open to suggestions on how to bolster its violence intervention strategy, reiterating that it had proven successful in the past. He said it was unfortunate that Kimber continued to hold press conferences to criticize the citys efforts instead of coming together with officials in a constructive manner. As a member of the departments clergy academy, Kimber is invited to help canvass neighborhoods and speak with residents in the wake of shootings, Elicker noted. We need to come together as a community instead of holding press conferences and criticizing, said Elicker. william.lambert@hearstmediact.com NEW MILFORD Social justice for the equal treatment of everyone is a huge passion for Amy Carter, who is breaking ground as First Congregational Churchs first female senior pastor in its 300-year history. She takes on her new position June 1. Since 2012, Carter has been pastor at Hope Congregational Church in East Providence, R.I. She said shes very excited to come to First Congregational Church, and referenced the churchs recent Raise the Roof project, saying the church has also revamped everything under the roof, as well. They have redone their by-laws, they have looked carefully at their finances, and they have voted to become open and affirming, which means they affirm gay marriage, said Carter, which is a church code word for inclusive and accepting. The church, at 36 Main St., will welcome Carter at a June 6, worship service, at 10 a.m. Shes replacing Mike Moran, who left about two years ago after serving as pastor for 20 years. The 200-member church has had 15 previous pastors. Social advocacy As a social advocate, Carter was involved with numerous projects over the years, and one of her goals is to promote the LGBTQ+ community. In 2015, she was involved in Rhode Islands marriage equality campaign, which legalized gay marriage in that state. I was one of a large group of interface clergy who were staunch advocates for marriage equality, said Carter, 51, who has recently relocated to town from Rhode Island. We were at the Rhode Island State House as part of the Interfaith Coalition of Ministers, she said. It was the culmination of a few years of effort by many community groups including ministers, social activists, child advocacy places, and homeless shelters, who all worked together. Since that time, Carter has married about eight gay couples. In her new position, she said she particularly would like to support young people in the LGBTQ+ community. The reality for teens and younger folks coming out is it has an extreme effect on their lives, she said. The rates of homelessness and suicide are extraordinary. The pressures of how to safely navigate life choices for younger people are very, very difficult, so to have a trusted adult who can steer them to the resources they need is critical. She also addressed the community of color, and said people of color are disproportionately affected by most social justice issues access to healthcare, income inequality, housing and banking issues. In her new role, Carter intends to encourage open discussions about race. In my previous congregation, which was mostly non-white, a constant topic was racism and white privilege. Coming here to New Milford, with the changing demographics and the events of our world, it becomes more and more important for all people to be able to dialogue about race and how it impacts our lives. That is definitely something I will be bringing here. First Congregational Church is 97 percent white, which is pretty much in line with the New Milford census, Carter said. She added, however, that New Milford is a changing community, which she said she has observed by recent walks around town. The shift that has happened here since COVID is going to have noticeable societal effects when things start to reopen, and when your neighbors look different, people are going to start dealing with things differently, she said. Its really an exciting time to have come from serving a multi-racial congregation to a place where these changes are happening, so I feel really lucky to bring those skills with me. Additionally, Carter has been a strong advocate for womens health issues, which, she said, includes supporting access to abortion and birth control. She received an award from Planned Parenthood called Champions in Womens Health, for her advocacy. Carter plans to use her position as clergy to continue to advocate for womens health issues because the opposition is strong, she said. Reaching the community Sarah Rose, who was on the churchs search committee for a new pastor, said I am so excited to welcome Rev. Amy to New Milford. She is going to be a blessing both for the First Congregational Church of New Milford and the town. Her energy is electric, friendly, and welcoming. Carter said shes looking forward to not only serving as minister to the members of the church, but reaching out to the 6,000 residents of New Milford, for whatever the needs in the community are. She plans to get to know the community through regular coffees in public venues. Carter, who is single with three grown children, said, If you see someone driving around with a giant blue kayak on top of my Volkswagen thats me, so please say hello. Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect Rev. Amy Carter is the first woman to serve as the churchs senior pastor. sfox@milfordmirror.com Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 13:35:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ISLAMABAD -- At least nine people were killed and 16 others injured after a passenger van fell into a ditch in Muzaffarabad of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, local media reported on Saturday morning. Police told media that the dead, including three children, and the injured have been shifted to the hospital. (Pakistan-Road Accident) - - - - SAN FRANCISCO -- Boeing has halted deliveries of its 787 jets again after U.S. federal regulators wanted more information about its production flaws, according to a statement released by the company on Friday. Boeing is working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide more information about the company's analysis and documentation of work on new 787s, it said, adding that the delay affects "near-term" deliveries, but will not affect the 787s that have already been delivered to customers. (US-Boeing 787-Delivery Failure) - - - - UNITED NATIONS -- The Security Council on Friday welcomed Thursday's agreement reached by the Somali federal government and federal member states leaders on elections, which may steer the country out of the political crisis. In a press statement, the members of the Security Council commended Somalia's leaders for putting first their country's stability, security and development, and the best interests of the Somali people. (UN-Somalia-Elections) Enditem MADISON People who depend on mass transit to get around will find it easier to visit five of Connecticuts most popular state parks under an experimental program Gov. Ned Lamont announced Friday, the traditional start of the summer vacation season. Those who can get on trains will be able to meet free shuttle buses at the Madison train station to take them to the two-mile stretch of sand and nature preserve along Hammonassett Beach State Park. That expanse served as the backdrop Friday for Lamont to highlight vacation opportunities. Passengers arriving at the Milford train station can take a similar shuttle to nearby Silver Sands State Park. Similar opportunities will be available for access to Fort Trumbull State Park in New London, while bus connections will take riders to get to within 10-minute walks to Bluff Point State Park in Groton and Sleeping Giant State Park in Hamden, where the tiny parking lot often reaches overflow levels early on summer mornings. Called ParkConneCT, the pilot program is a joint effort of the state Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection. Its part of Lamonts goal to provide park access to those without cars, while also promoting tourism as the state economy recovers from the pandemic. During what turned out to be record attendance in the depths of the COVID pandemic last year, many people were discouraged by parks that closed to more cars early in the day because of pandemic restrictions. This transit option is very important, Lamont said in a news conference at a pavilion near the Middle Beach rotary, where, starting this weekend, shuttles will drop off pedestrians. We have a lot of kids in our state who havent been able to discover beaches like this. There are a lot kids down the street in New Haven who didnt always know how to get here and I really want them to have the opportunity to experience what we are all able to enjoy. Its valuable to have more ways for people to get to state parks, said Eric Hammerling, executive director of the Connecticut Forest and Parks Association, who did not attend Lamonts event. In a phone interview after the news conference, he predicted that 2021 will be busy. Parking lots last year were kept at 50 percent capacity, while this year there will be no such restrictions. The capacity is typically based on parking lot capacity, Hammerling said. Now with full capacity plus public transit options, it could be another record. Its time for us to get back to a new normal, said Katie Dykes, the DEEP commissioner. Over the last year a lot of us spent time kind of reflecting on things we had taken for granted, I think, and we saw that with respect to how people were rediscovering or connecting for the first time with all of the amazing state parks and state forests and wonderful recreation and land trusts all around our state. Dykes joined Lamont in announcing that many seasonal job opportunities remain in the parks, including lifeguard positions. Bryan Hurlburt, commissioner of the state Department of Agriculture, pitched the opportunities for agri-tourism, from shellfish operations to farmers markets and ice cream stands at dairy farms. Christine Castonguay, brand director and interim tourism director for the state Department of Economic and Community Development, said that research indicates a pent-up urge for travel, particularly in the Northeast, which should place the state in good position for long weekends and vacations. Castonguay announced that the states welcome centers in West Willington, Westbrook and North Stonington will reopen this weekend and those in Darien and Danbury will open on June 12 to greet visitors with travel resources. When asked how much funding she had in the state marketing budget with a month left in the fiscal year, she said about $1.2 million. But Lamont immediately corrected her and said he has budgeted $13 million over the next two years for marketing the state. Earlier this month the governor announced the newest marketing slogan: Say Yes to Connecticut. https://portal.ct.gov/DEEP/State-Parks/Park-Connect and https://portal.ct.gov/DOAG/ADaRC/Publications/Agritourism---Farm-Fun-in-CT MADISON When flocks of quarantine-weary beachgoers topped the limited capacity at Hammonasset State Park on busy weekends last year, officials in charge of nearby town beaches said overflow crowds brought added pressure and concerns about the virus to their shores. In Madison, the town cut capacity limits at its largest beach in half and banned non-residents from using beach parking on the weekends and holidays. Along the coast, other towns took similar measures to limit out-of-towners from the beaches. But with state parks like Hammonasset set to resume normal operations this weekend, and Gov. Ned Lamont declaring the state open for business, towns along the shoreline are now easing back on some pandemic-era restrictions at their beaches while considering what changes to keep long-term. Madison First Selectwoman Peggy Lyons said this week that visitors at town beaches will be encouraged to distance themselves from others this summer, but specific restrictions such as a mask mandate will not be in effect. The town also lifted capacity limits at its beaches, but will continue limiting the number of non-resident day passes sold on weekends and holidays. We still anticipate more people doing staycations than in normal years, Lyons said. But [last year] was extraordinary because no one could travel anywhere. In Guilford, First Selectman Matthew Hoey said officials decided to continue with last summers policy of only selling season passes to its beaches and not offering day passes. The price of those season passes, $35 for a resident and $70 for non-residents, will not change this year, he said. It was a policy decision made by the [Parks and Recreation] Commission that I think was influenced by the pandemic, and the success of the policy, Hoey said. Efforts to limit non-residents from town beaches, however, can also bring legal risks. Nearly two decades ago, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Stamford attorney who sued to gain access to Greenwich Point, a beach which at the time was off-limits to guests not accompanied by Greenwich residents. While the ruling prohibited blanket policies excluding non-residents from municipal beaches, towns have adopted other measures to limit non-residents. Some, such as a $750 seasonal parking pass for non-residents at Westports Compo Beach, have been criticized as discriminatory. Citing the Supreme Courts ruling, Westbrook First Selectman Noel Bishop said the town cannot take any action during a pandemic or otherwise to make its popular West Beach off-limits to residents of other towns. Still, he said the towns pandemic-era policy of making the beach parking lot available to residents only does not flout the ruling. Our beaches are public, its the parking lot that is not, Bishop said. Bishop said the policy was first enacted last year in part due to the overflow crowds from Hammonasset Beach, which was at limited capacity. The towns parking lot, which Bishop said has enough room for about 70 cars, would quickly fill up, leaving local residents with no place to park. Because we are a beach town, I dont have to tell you, the ability of our residents to get to the beach in the summer is the highest priority, Bishop said. Bishop said the policy will remain in place until the Fourth of July holiday, when the Board of Selectmen will revisit the issue. In Old Lyme, First Selectman Timothy Griswold said officials will take a different approach by having workers monitor the beaches and begin limiting parking along streets approaching Soundview Beach as it gets too full. The COVID stuff is relaxed with regard to masks and distancing and everything, however, there will be an effort to [limit] the number of people on the beach, Griswold said. Officials studied the capacity of the beach last year due to the pandemic, and determined it was around 700 people. Griswold said capacity will stay the same for the foreseeable future, not necessarily for COVID, but for personal convenience. You dont want to pack them in like sardines, he said. Hammonasset Beach will open this weekend, along with other state parks, without lower capacity restrictions. Will Healey, a spokesperson for the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, said the campground at the beach is already fully booked and all parks will still close to new visitors if they reach full parking capacity. Masks will not be required outdoors for vaccinated people, Healey said, citing guidance from the state Department of Public Health. Unvaccinated people are advised to continue wearing masks when in large crowds and unable to maintain proper distance. Visitors will be required to wear masks at indoor locations in state parks, regardless of their vaccination status, Healey said. An eastern meadowlark may not be as eye-catching as a brightly colored goldfinch, but its flute-like song will take your breath away. In fact, that song is a favorite of bird researcher David Barber, now a senior research biologist at Hawk Mountains Acopian Center for Conservation Learning in Orwigsburg. When working in Florida and conducting early-morning bird surveys in native prairies, as the sun was rising, the air was filled with the songs of meadowlarks, Barber recalled. Males would perch on the tallest vegetation, heads thrown back, singing their hearts out. These serenading songbirds also live and breed in Pennsylvania, but they need our help. The habitat they rely on to survive is vanishing at a staggering pace. Disappearing grasslands Eastern meadowlarks are not actually larks, but members of the blackbird family, just like orioles. And they spend a lot of time on the ground its not only where they foraging for insects, its where they build nests and raise their young, too. They also nest on the ground in grasslands and prairies, hayfields and pastures and generally need a minimum of six acres of natural, grassy habitat (not mowed lawns) to establish territory. But were losing this habitat at a dizzying pace to warehouse and housing developments and row crops and and the decline of meadowlarks mirrors the loss. Nationally, results from the North American Breeding Bird Survey indicate an 89% decline between 1966 and 2015. In Pennsylvania, its considered a species of greatest conservation concern, and short term trends indicate a decline of 11% to 40% in the state over the last 10 years. There are very few native grasslands left and many small farms have been replaced by large industrial farming that do not have these varied grassy habitats, Barber said. In addition, hayfields are often cut during the nesting season, resulting in the loss of nests and/or nestlings. Overgrazing of fields and pesticide use are also considered threats. Other birds that hunt and/or nest in native grasslands are also impacted, including species like the American kestrel, grasshopper sparrow, bobolink and northern harrier. Eastern Meadowlarks can produce several nests and will breed starting in late April through early August, so delaying mowing in hayfields during that period is ideal. Still, that isnt practical for many farmers, so delaying the first cutting could potentially allow at least the first nest of young a shot at survival. I would say first that farmers can also help the species by leaving fields fallow for a year to provide nesting habitat, delay harvesting hay until after the breeding season and reduce the use of pesticides, Barber said, noting that folks who dont live on farms can support conservation organizations and land trusts that work to restore native habitat. Over 3 billion birds have been lost in the last 50 years, and grassland species have declined by 50%, Barber said. Strong signals like this suggest that something is very wrong with our ecosystem, and we need to listen to these signals. The Pennsylvania Game Commission offers more info on mowing and wildlife nesting periods at www.pgc.pa.gov/Wildlife/HabitatManagement/Pages/MowingandWildlife.aspx. (Zerbe can be reached at leah.zerbe@gmail.com) POTTSVILLE In recent Schuylkill County Court action, Shawnelle A. Young, 27, of Pottsville, is headed to state prison after pleading guilty to a gun-related charge. Young must serve 18 to 36 months in a state correctional institution, President Judge William E. Baldwin ruled. Baldwin also sentenced him to pay costs and $50 to the Criminal Justice Enhancement Account and submit a DNA sample to law enforcement authorities. Young pleaded guilty to carrying a firearm without a license. Prosecutors withdrew four counts each of aggravated assault and simple assault, three of recklessly endangering another person and one of receiving stolen property. State police at Schuylkill Haven charged Young with carrying the gun on Feb. 29, 2020. Also recently in the county court, Baldwin sentenced Kevin A. Gradwell, 36, of Pottsville, to spend 72 hours to six months in prison, and an additional 12 months on probation. Gradwell had pleaded guilty on Nov. 20, 2020, to driving under the influence in one case and simple assault in another. Prosecutors withdrew charges of possession of drug paraphernalia and careless driving in the first case and criminal trespass in the other. Pottsville police alleged Gradwell was DUI on June 15, 2019, in the city, while Minersville police alleged he assaulted someone on Aug. 6, 2019, in the borough. Baldwin also sentenced Gradwell to pay costs, a $1,000 fine, $100 to the Substance Abuse Education Fund, a $50 CJEA payment and $100 in bench warrant fees, and submit a DNA sample to law enforcement authorities. In another recent county case, Baldwin revoked the parole of Heather A. Kessler, 35, of Mahanoy City, for a second time and recommitted her to prison. Kessler originally pleaded guilty on Jan. 9, 2019, to possession of a controlled substance. Prosecutors withdrew a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia. At that time, Baldwin sentenced Kessler to serve three to 12 months in prison and pay costs, a $100 SAEF payment, a $50 CJEA payment and a $50 bench warrant fee. Mahanoy City police alleged Kessler possessed drugs on June 5, 2018, in the borough. Baldwin first revoked Kesslers parole on March 10, 2020. POTTSVILLE Christopher L. Buck apologized Friday for what he had done, but it did not save him from the state prison sentence a Schuylkill County judge imposed for his breaking into an Ashland house in June 2020 and then leading police on a chase. Buck, 35, of Shenandoah, must serve 18 months to five years in a state correctional institution, Judge Cyrus Palmer Dolbin ruled. This could have been a much heavier sentence, said Dolbin, who decided to follow the terms of the plea agreement between prosecutors and Buck. Pursuant to that agreement, Dolbin also sentenced Buck to pay costs, $100 to the Substance Abuse Education Fund, $50 to the Criminal Justice Enhancement Account and $600 restitution, and submit a DNA sample to law enforcement authorities. Dolbin made the prison sentence consecutive to one Buck already is serving. Buck pleaded guilty to criminal trespass, alteration or destruction of a vehicle identification number, fleeing or eluding police, possession of a controlled substance and driving under suspension-DUI related. Prosecutors withdrew eight other charges. The prison term consisted of consecutive sentences of one to four years and six to 12 months. Girardville police charged Buck in connection with a series of incidents on June 12, 2020. Police said Buck broke into the residence at 1710 Spruce St., Ashland. After that, according to police, Buck damaged a vehicle identification number and led law enforcement on a chase. During this time, Buck also possessed heroin, police said. I would like to apologize for my actions, Buck said. You wont see me again, Your Honor. Prosecutors withdrew a second count of possession of a controlled substance and charges of stop sign violation, failure to drive at a safe speed, failure to yield to emergency vehicle, driving over divider, criminal mischief and driving unregistered vehicle. Buck already is an inmate at SCI/Camp Hill in Cumberland County, and Dolbin conducted the hearing by videoconference. To the Editor: I cant help but wonder whether or not callers to T&E actually watch Fox News or if they simply choose to believe what other media outlets report. Whatever the case, it appears to me that these callers simply arent paying attention to misinformation and outright lies that news programs (such as CNN, MSNBC, NPR, The Associated Press and the three major news outlets) spew forth on a daily basis. A few examples: Do these callers remember a sleazeball attorney named Michael Avenatti? He was referred to by Tucker Carlson as the creepy porn lawyer. He represented Stormy Daniels in a lawsuit against President Donald Trump. Major networks couldnt praise Avenatti enough. What a wonderful guy. Presidential material, insisted CNN anchors. Turns out Tucker got it right and the other reliable networks did just the opposite. How about all the claims that Russia had a bounty on U.S. troops in Afghanistan? Another lie that made the round on a routine basis. So called reliable sources in the intelligence community (unnamed, of course) perpetuated this lie on a routine basis. That is until well after the 2020 election was in the rearview mirror. Then theres one of my all-time favorites. A CNN reporter standing in front of a burning building set ablaze by rioters. The caption at the bottom of the screen read Mostly Peaceful Protests. Networks tripped over themselves to discredit the Hunter Biden laptop story. It was deemed to be Russian information and a Trump smear campaign. Fox News and the New York Post were criticized relentlessly for, of all things, pushing fake news. Want to hazard a guess who had that story right? Once again, the reliable news networks backtracked, but only after the election. Shock of shocks. For months, Fox News and The New York Post reported that there was a crisis on our southern border. Mainstream media outlets, as is their nature, downplayed the extent of the crisis. The Biden administration denied it, refused reporter access to detention facilities and placed a gag order on ICE. I guess Biden missed having his teleprompter because he inadvertently used the term himself when a reporter shouted out a question about the situation on the border. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died during the insurrection on Jan. 6 after being bludgeoned in the head with a fire extinguisher by a Trump supporter. No, wait. He died as a result of being peppered in the face with bear spray repellent used by a Trump supporter. Choose the lie you want to believe as long as Trump supporters get the blame. Turns out the officer died of natural causes after suffering two strokes. By the way, they never did release the name of the Capitol police officer who shot and killed an unarmed female Trump supporter named Ashli Babbit. In Columbus, Ohio, a white police officer shot and killed a Black female teenager who was apparently trying to stab another Black female teenager to death. Major networks, as usual, portrayed this a racist attack on Blacks. Had the officer stood by and done nothing, the headlines would be Racist cop stands idly by as Black teenager stabbed to death. If any of your callers can point out where Fox got it wrong, please enlighten me. William C. Wagner Frackville This to the caller from New Philly about Biden being for abortion. No, Biden is for a womans right to do what she feels she wants to do with her body. As a society, we have no right to tell a woman what to do with her body. As far as the gay marriage and the transgenders, they have a right to express themselves, too. We do not have the right to go against that. You could have your beliefs but you cant blame nobody for it. Frackville I saw the protest at Children and Youth. Several years ago, I called a state representative to find out who checks up on Children and Youth, Women in Crisis. I was told that was a good question and they had no clue. These agencies do everything by the book. Thats great in a perfect world but each case is different and should be treated that way and not compared to their textbooks. Auburn Theres a another scam going around about Publishers Clearinghouse with $5 million, $1,000 a week for life and a brand new vehicle. All you have to do is pay 1% to the IRS. So, tell me, who is the scammer here? They better cut this stuff out. Shenandoah Im from out of state and I think it is a shame about the Brandonville cemetery. I was up there two times already. The grass hasnt been cut. If whoever is cutting it cant keep up with it, I think they should hire someone else. This is a disgrace. Brandonville Mr. Trump and the Republicans believe in energy independence. We have enough oil for ourselves and for the whole world. The Democrats and Mr. Biden believe in independence, meaning not to use it. Go to electric cars. No thank you. Pottsville To the caller from Pottsville who said people collecting workmans comp paid into workmans comp, you obviously have never owned a business. Employees pay zero dollars into the workmans compensation fund. It is 100% funded by the employer. Pottsville I just saw three commercials in a row saying that if you owe money, dont worry about it. We can stop the debt collectors. If you owe money, you should pay it. Dont be a deadbeat. What kind of people are these? What is this world coming to? Minersville Todd Zimmermans view concerning Trump-Qaeda on Saturday, 5/22, is one that everyone should read. These are the facts and people should read the true facts and support them for the sake of this democracy. Friedensburg I just saw the Saturday, May 22, 2021, paper. I agree with Todd Zimmerman, American citizen, West Penn Township. This is not about Democrats versus Republicans. It is about democracy versus fascism. America must unify to defeat Trump-Qaeda. Schuylkill Haven Hey, Todd Zimmerman, Trump-Qaeda? Are you kidding me? Look at what disgraceful Biden is doing to this country. Trump didnt send those people into the Capitol. They went in on their own. By the way, Kamala Harris bailed out rioters, so dont talk to me about terrorism. Frackville I am calling about the congressman who said Jan. 6 looked like a normal tourist visit. I imagine he gets the medical marijuana card, because he is smoking something. Frackville The parking at Barefield Complex once again is causing problems for anyone driving or living in that area. Cars are always illegally parked at the intersection, causing poor visibility. Also, people throw their paper plates, napkins, etc., along the roadway. Where are our police? These cars should be ticketed. Mr. Shields, please try and correct these problems. Pottsville It looks like we are going to be helping out Palestine in the war over there. Going to cost us big bucks. Thank you, Joe. Hes talking with South Korea against North Korea. Thank you, Joe. Another two wars we have no business being in. Mind your own business. Take care of the United States, Joe. Tamaqua PETA India has been working towards their mission for the protection of animals from ill-treatment and use in meat, dairy and other industries, while advocating veganisim. While the company has been sharing numerous posts and videos about cruelty against animals, now it has been addressing the companies involved in use of dairy and meat products. After shooting a letter to Amul, PETA India now urged Burger King India to come up with 'vegan whoppers.' After Amul, PETA Indias message to Burger King India On their much-active Twitter handle, PETA India wrote that a Burger King outlet in Germany was trying to go completely meat-free. Tagging Burger King India, the organisation suggested that the latter come up with a vegan Burger King outlet, or to at least start a vegan option of the fast food chains whoppers category of burgers. A Burger King in Germany is trying out being totally meat-free. How about a vegan Burger King in India, and to start with #Vegan Whoppers at least please @burgerkingindia? PETA India (@PetaIndia) May 28, 2021 Netizens had mixed reactions to the post. While some backed Peta India for the idea, and one even promised to eat the vegan burgers, some claimed that vegan burgers were already a part of the menu. Others felt that it was not right to impose a particular food-eating habit and that people had their choice to consume any food that they wished to. For Burger king Germany For the vegan idea Rathore Viral (@RathoreRajVir7) May 28, 2021 Don't decide what should we eat. Sameer Pagare (@NustaTraveling) May 28, 2021 I will eat a vegan burger everyday and make others eat it too, do it burger King India Bhuvan (@Bhuwan_singh7) May 28, 2021 Veg burgers dont have milk or egg. Its available in India. pic.twitter.com/84Df4oQ8Nv Atmanirbhar (@LagbhagVakil) May 28, 2021 Are You Crazy, just keep these silly things to yourself. Don't try to intimidate people by your ideas. Ipanki7 (@ipanki7) May 29, 2021 This is after PETA calling on Amul to push for vegan milk and other dairy-free alternative made headlines. The former even shot off a letter to the Managing Directorof the latter, highlighting ways to benefit from the booming vegan food and milk market. This was not the first time that PETA had written such a letter, as this was in follow-up to their letter sent on February 17 this year. Even when Amul had paid a tribute to vegan Joaquin Phoenix on his Oscar win last year, PETA had taken a dig at the Indian company. Taika Waititi is directing his second Marvel movie, Thor: Love and Thunder, following the success of Thor: Ragnarok. The filming of the project is taking place in Australia and the filmmaker is staying with his rumored girlfriend, Rita Ora, at a hotel in Sydney. Last week, photos of him getting cozy with Ora, as well as his film's actor, Tessa Thompson, on a balcony went viral on the internet. Now, Waititi has reportedly been scolded by Marvel's heads due to the images. Taika Waititi reportedly reprimanded by Disney According to the Daily Telegraphy, Marvel executives were left extremely unimpressed after seeing pictures of him cuddling up with two women on the balcony of his home in Bondi, Australia. While he directs Marvel's upcoming movie, Rita Ora is also said to be a part of the project with Tessa Thompson reprising her role as Valkyrie. The trio was snapped wrapping their arms around each other with some drinks in front of them. Waititi was also seen kissing both the girls and the ladies, too, were clicked getting close to each other. The publication claimed that Taika Waititi's display also upset the bosses at Marvel's parent company Disney. An insider on Thor: Love and Thunder production informed that it is "not exactly the image" they are looking to project in relation to one of their biggest franchises. While the filmmaker is known for being a "party animal," the pictures have said to "cross a line" for company heads. The director will also helm an upcoming Star Wars film, another IP owned by Disney. Check out the viral Taika Waititi's photos below. Taika Waititi and Rita Ora are reportedly dating since last month. They arrived together at the premiere of RuPaul's Drag Race Down Under at the Sydney Opera House. The couple did not get photographed on the red carpet but sat beside each other at the venue. They are said to be taking their relationship to the next level as 30-year-old Ora is moving in with 45-year-old Waititi in New Zealand. Earlier this year, Rita Ora broke up with French director Romain Gavras. Taika Waititi also got separated from his wife, Chelsea Winstanley, in 2018, after being married for seven years. They have two daughters together, Te Hinekahu and Matewa Kiritapu. IMAGE: TAIKAWAITITI 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. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 14:09:32|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Members of China's 5th peacekeeping infantry battalion to South Sudan take a military exercise in South Sudan, on Jan. 4, 2019. (Photo by Zhu Xiaonan/Xinhua) BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The world marked on Saturday the International Day of United Nations (UN) Peacekeepers, which was designated by the UN General Assembly to pay tribute to people serving in peacekeeping operations and honor those who have lost their lives in the cause. On various occasions, Chinese President Xi Jinping has expounded on China's contribution to international peacekeeping operations, and commitment to the path of peaceful development. May 6, 2021 During a phone conversation with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Xi said that China has decided to offer vaccines to UN peacekeeping operations and the International Olympic Committee, and will continue to actively support COVAX and make continuous efforts to eliminate the "vaccine divide." April 20, 2021 Xi delivered a keynote speech via video at the opening ceremony of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference 2021. "China will stay committed to peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, develop friendship and cooperation with other countries on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, and promote a new type of international relations," Xi said. "However strong it may grow, China will never seek hegemony, expansion, or a sphere of influence. Nor will China ever engage in an arms race," he added. Nov. 12, 2020 Xi delivered a speech via video at the third Paris Peace Forum, stressing that peace and development are the theme of the times, as well as the unstoppable trend of history. Models present creations by Chinese college students during a side event of the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) in Madrid, Spain, on Dec. 12, 2019. (Xinhua/Lu Yang) "We need to uphold multilateralism, oppose unilateralism, hegemony and power politics, and reject all forms of terrorism and acts of extreme violence," Xi said. China follows an independent foreign policy of peace and is committed to the path of peaceful development, Xi noted. Xi called on all countries to uphold international law and the basic norms governing international relations, determine their position on the merits of each matter, and rise above ideological bias and confrontation. China is willing to step up communication and coordination with France and other countries and play a positive part in efforts to secure political settlement of international and regional issues and uphold world peace and stability, he said. Sept. 3, 2018 In a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the 2018 Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, Xi said that China decided to set up a China-Africa peace and security fund to boost their cooperation on peace, security, peacekeeping, and law and order. Chinese peacekeeper Yu Peijie (R) sings songs with local children in Juba, South Sudan, on April 30, 2018. (Xinhua/Wang Teng) Fifty security assistance programs would be launched to advance China-Africa cooperation under the Belt and Road Initiative, and in areas of law and order, UN peacekeeping missions, fighting piracy and combating terrorism, he said. Sept. 28, 2015 Addressing a peacekeeping summit in New York, which gathered leaders and representatives of over 70 countries and international organizations, Xi said the international community should increase support for Africa, augment the continent's ability to maintain peace and stability, and help it resolve its own problems in its own way. China, Xi added, maintains that the basic principles of UN peacekeeping should be followed, Security Council resolutions be carried out in full, and no country act beyond its given authority. The beloved Naagin of Indian Television, Surbhi Jyoti turns 33 today and the internet is filled with wishes for Surbhi Jyoti's birthday. While many of her friends and colleagues from the industry wished the Qubool Hai actress, how could her fans stay any behind? Surbhi's fans started flooding the web with their love and wishes for the star while celebrating, what they call, "Jyoti Ka Din". Each one of Surbhi Jyoti's shows has helped her garner more and more love and appreciation from the audience. Whether it was the naive, bubbly Zoya in Qubool Hai or the strong and powerful Naagrani, Bela in Naagin 3, Surbhi has always aced her roles. After winning many awards for her exceptional performances, Surbhi has become a fan favourite among the audience. Fans celebrating "Jyoti Ka Din" Recently, Surbhi Jyoti's Instagram has been flooded with her getaway pictures, be it from her trip to Sula Vineyards or the Maldives. And her advanced birthday wishes started right from the comments on her recent Instagram post where the actress can be seen posing amid some palm trees. Meanwhile, today on her birthday, all the SJians, as they like to call themselves, have wished Surbhi while calling today, "Jyoti Ka Din". Let's take a look at some of the fan wishes that caught our attention: A fan shared an adorable video of Surbhi Jyoti unwrapping some gifts that she received from her fans. The actress looks excited as she goes through each gift. The fan called Jyoti her "Queen" while sending her birthday wishes. Happy Birthday To You My Queen @SurbhiJtweets Wish You A Very Happy Birthday , And Lots Of Love & Happiness Keep Always Smiling, Our Support Always With You My Sweetheart#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti Jyoti Ka Din pic.twitter.com/KqkI5I5bU9 surbhi jyoti (@SurbhiJ_CutePie) May 28, 2021 Another adorable wish came from a fan called Reeta. She wished Surbhi a fantasy-filled birthday. She wishes for the actress to dance with fairies, chase rainbows and more. Today is your day. Dance with fairies, ride a unicorn, swim with mermaids, and chase rainbows. Happy Birthday to my dear Surbhi Jyoti. Loads of love & happiness to you baby! Jyoti Ka Din#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti SurbhiJyotiFanWorld (@Reeta_Sjian) May 29, 2021 Surbhi's fan Avni wished for her happiness while saying that the actress teaches everyone to stay happy and positive. She made a compilation of small snippets from Surbhi Jyoti's shows where the actress is seen flashing her charming smile. Happy birthday surbhi Jyoti @SurbhiJtweets may waheguruji Bless you with all love , happiness , success and good health .I just admire your every quality the way u always spread positivity...aap sabko jeena aur khush rehna sikhati ho ILoveYouSoMuch and I mean these words pic.twitter.com/I2Q9eKVDNQ A N V I (@anvi_29) May 28, 2021 Another fan wished for Surbhi to have a birthday filled with sunshine, rainbows, love and laughter. Wishing you a very special birthday and a wonderful year ahead! I hope your birthday is full of sunshine and rainbows and love and laughter! Sending many good wishes to you on your special day. Happy Birthday! I hope you have Jyoti Ka Din#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti #SurbhiJyoti Surbhi_jyoti_is_princesss (@is_surbhi) May 29, 2021 Sushmita who seems to be an ardent fan of Surbhi's enlists all of the various roles she has done while praising her range and versatility in acting. Be it bubbly Zoya or emotional Geethanjali or ferocious Naagrani Bela or even a more mature Zoya in Qubool Hai 2.0,Surbhi Jyoti had shown various range of versatility in each character she had played so far. Happy Birthday Queen @SurbhiJtweets #HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti Sush pandey (@Sushmitapande15) May 28, 2021 Aishwarya shared an edit of Surbhi Jyoti looking hot as ever while sending her birthday wishes. She also calls the actress her "favourite human". Happy Birthday to my favourite human! I love you with my whole heart @SurbhiJtweets JYOTI KA DIN#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti #SurbhiJyoti pic.twitter.com/xWHZXNzQG6 (@SpreadJyotiness) May 29, 2021 In an advanced birthday wish, one of Surbhi Jyoti's fans talked about how they did some good, charitable deeds on their idol's birthday. Happy birthday in advance sona . Sona your most special for our SJians . To commemorate you to remarkable for your bday we SJians are donated 20 oxygen cylinders , Feed 30 stray dogs & 100 homeless people . We are proud to having a great idol @SurbhiJtweets Vish_SJian (@VishSJian2018) May 28, 2021 Another fan called Surbhi wished the actress. She called her an angel and wished her while sharing an edit of Surbhi giving various expressions across all her shows. She wished her all the happiness and success. Happy Birthday Angel May this birthday brings you all the happiness and success in life Stay blessed JYOTI KA DIN#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti#SurbhiJyoti pic.twitter.com/xaESHRAx9e Surbhijyoti_swapnu (@Surbhijyotiswa1) May 29, 2021 Ritika pointed out how, growing up, Surbhi was an integral part of her childhood while wishing her in advance. I never could have made my day through childhood without you. Advance Happy Birthday to my dear Surbhi Jyoti. Loads of love & happiness to you baby!#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti Ritika (@Ritika_Sjian_) May 28, 2021 Another fan was seen sending a very thoughtful wish to the actress. As they know Hugh Jackman is her favourite, this fan wished for the actress to get a chance to work with him in future. I wish someday you get a project with your favorite Hugh Jackman! Youll totally rock it! Jyoti Ka Din#HappyBirthdaySurbhiJyoti#SurbhiJyoti (@sj_qh_kabhi) May 29, 2021 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. Money Heist has become one of the most popular series on Netflix over the last few years. The show has seen a successful four seasons to date and the fifth season will be releasing soon. Money Heist Season 5 first volume of the final season will be releasing on September 3, the second volume will be releasing on December 3. Both the volumes will further have a total of 5 episodes each. As Nairobi and Berlin wouldn't be seen in the show anymore, here's taking a ook at some of their best moments from the show. Best Moments of Money Heists Berlin and Nairobi in the show Berlin's Sacrifice Throughout the gang's journey in The Royal Mint of Spain, Berlin comes across as an egocentric psychopath who craves power. However, there is a scene where his sacrifice for the team deserves a special mention. In the second season, when the team is ready to escape through the tunnel they dig, Berlin stays behind and fights the cops which certainly kills him. Nairobi getting shot The Professor's gang is in the Bank of Spain when Alicia Sierra decides to play some mind games with Nairobi. She uses Nairobis emotional inclination towards her son and asks her to come to the window to see him. But when she does, a sniper shoots her. Luckily for the gang, that doesn't turn out to be the kill shot. Revelation of Berlin as Professor's brother At the end of season one, in a flashback scene, it is shown that Berlin had a conversation with the professor which indicated him as his brother. As they toast together, they sing Bella Ciao while revealing their real connection. This revelation did surprise all the viewers. Nairobi's death One of the most heartbreaking scenes in Money Heist is the death of a very popular character Nairobi. In the fourth season, Nairobi was held hostage by Gandia. He uses Nairobi as a bargaining chip to get away from a dire situation. When he succeeds, he shoots Nairobi straight in the head in front of all of the gang members, leaving everyone distraught. Berlin shoots Denver for his integrity After finding out that Berlin is an egocentric narcissist, the police tweak some information for their benefit. Berlin is moved to the core when he sees the news channels accusing him of trafficking women and raping minors. He says, I would never sell women and definitely not children. My ethic code doesnt let me do it. While Nairobi tries to calm him down, Berlin angrily states, What about my dignity, Nairobi? I have a reputation to maintain. Denver has screwed my honour and if someone screws my honour, Ill destroy them. Nairobi helping her new boss The team is still getting used to Palmero being in charge as they head into the Bank of Spain. While nothing is easy, the gang has to go in guns blazing against security and government officials. Palermo ends up getting blinded by glass shards, but Nairobi doesnt let that stop anyone. She steps up and pulls the glass out of Palermos eyes, so he can go back to being in charge. Berlin turns Arturo into a suicide bomber During the heist, when bank director Arturo Roman nearly gets the entire group killed including Oslo, Berlin stops playing the nice guy anymore. He pulls on the book of torture from the Holocaust, forcing the hostages to dig for hours and hours with no break. Berlin adds more drama to their work, showing what hes done to their leader Arturo. He turns him into a human timebomb and it's terrifying to see this transformation from Berlin. Tokyo gets thrown out of the bank by Berlin Tokyo is kind of the worst at times. But when the team starts getting restless after everything went poorly at the end of part one, Tokyo ends up planning a mutiny against Berlin, since shes still mad at him for lying about his health. It seemed like it could work, but Berlin is one step ahead as always and throws her to the wolves instead. 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. India's Chief of Army Staff Gen M M Naravane has clarified that the ceasefire along the Line of Control (LoC) between India and Pakistan does not mean the fight against cross-border terrorism has ended. In an interview with PTI, India's Chief of Army Staff Gen M M Naravane also hailed the ceasefire between the two countries along the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir and said that for the last three months it has contributed to a feeling of peace and security and it is the first step towards a long road of normalisation of ties between the two countries. However, the Indian Army Chief Gen MM Naravane also stated that the Pakistani Army is yet to dismantle the terror infrastructure along the LoC. On February 25, India and Pakistan released a joint statement after the Director Generals of Military Operations (DGMOs) of both countries discussed the established mechanism of hotline contact and the border situation. As per the joint statement, India and Pakistan's DGMOs reviewed the situation along the line of control (LoC) and reiterated that existing mechanisms of hotline contact and border flag meetings should be utilized to resolve any unforeseen situation. This meeting between the DGMOs of the two countries was amid continuing ceasefire violations along the LoC. Gen MM Naravane says Terror infrastructure not dismantled by Pakistan Army Almost after three months of ceasefire, the Pakistan Army is yet to dismantle the terror infrastructure operation near the LoC. India's Chief of Army Staff Gen M M Naravane outlined that the ceasefire does not mean India's fight against cross-border terrorism has come to a halt adding that the Pakistan Army has still not dismantled the terror infrastructure along the LoC. "Ceasefire along the LoC does not mean that our fight against terrorism has come to a halt. We do not have any reasons to believe that the terror infrastructure along the LoC has been dismantled by the Pakistan Army. Whether it is their inability or unwillingness, both are equally dangerous and concerning, especially seen in the light of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan," the Army chief said, referring to the Biden administration's decision to pull out American troops from Afghanistan by September 11. Referring to the ceasefire, Gen Naravane said there was not a single incident of cross-border firing by the two armies after the pact came into effect though there was an incident involving the Pakistani Rangers in the Jammu sector. "This year, we have seen a drastic reduction in the violence levels in Jammu and Kashmir. Security forces and other government agencies are working in sync to maintain pressure on terror groups and squeeze out the logistics support," he said. "Consistency in a reduction in infiltration attempts and terrorist incidents in the Union territory of Jammu and Kashmir will go a long way in assuring us of Pakistani intent to foster good neighbourly relations with us," Gen Naravane added. EAM Jaishankar Hails Indo-Pak Ceasefire As the India-Pakistan ceasefire continues, External Affairs Minister (EAM) S Jaishankar on Wednesday, highlighted that cross-border terrorism had been the issue since partition in 1947. In a conversation with former US National Security Advisor General HR McMaster, Jaishankar said that the two neighbours will have to find a way to co-exist while calling the ceasefire a 'good step'. Jaishankar is on a 5-day trip to the US to hold talks on vaccine import, QUAD, defence ties, trade relations etc. Days after the ceasefire agreement, Pakistan Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa called for India to 'bury the past and move forward' as the peace between the two neighbours would help to 'unlock' the potential of South and Central Asia. However, Pakistan backtracked maintaining that no talks can be held with India till Article 370 is restored. he said, "I hear many times that Pakistan has started talks with India. I want to make it very clear. Until India reverses its decisions taken regarding Kashmir including statehood on August 5, the Pakistan government will not talk with India." (Image Credits: ANI/PTI) (Story Inputs: PTI) New Delhi, May 28 (PTI) India on Friday hit out at President of the UN General Assembly Volkan Bozkir for his comments on Jammu and Kashmir, saying his "misleading and prejudiced" remarks does "great disservice to the office he occupies". Bozkir, at a press conference in Islamabad along with Pakistan Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi on Thursday, said it was "Pakistan's duty" to bring the issue of the Jammu and Kashmir more strongly to the UN. In a strong reaction, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) said his remarks are "unacceptable" and his reference to the Indian union territory is "unwarranted". "When an incumbent President of the UN General Assembly makes misleading and prejudiced remarks, he does great disservice to the office he occupies. The President of the UN General Assembly's behaviour is truly regrettable and surely diminishes his standing on the global platform," MEA Spokesperson Arindam Bagchi said in response to a media query on the issue. Expressing "strong opposition to the unwarranted references made with respect to the Indian Union Territory of J-K" by Bozkir during his recent visit to Pakistan, Bagchi said his remarks that "Pakistan is 'duty bound' to raise this issue in the UN more strongly are unacceptable. Nor indeed is there any basis for comparison to other global situations." Bozkir arrived in Pakistan on Wednesday on a three-day official visit at the invitation of Qureshi. Pakistan has been making concerted efforts to internationalise the Kashmir issue and stepped up anti-India campaign on the issue following New Delhi's decision to withdraw special powers of Jammu and Kashmir and bifurcate the state into two union territories in August 2019. India has told Pakistan that it desires normal neighbourly relations with Islamabad in an environment free of terror, hostility and violence. India has said the onus is on Pakistan to create an environment free of terror and hostility. PTI MPB PYK PYK (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Indian Coast Guard has been prompt in providing the required aid to the fire fighting mission onboard Singapore-flagged MV X Press Pearl following the request from Sri Lankan Navy. IGC on May 29 sent off Ship Samudra Pahari to boost the fire fighting process. Samudra Prahari is reportedly carrying 41,000 liters of Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF), an accredited suppressant agent along with 700 Kg DCP. IGC via its Twitter handle informed about the latest advancement. In a boost to ongoing firefighting onboard #MVX-PressPearl #ICG Ship Samudra Prahari carrying 41000 litres AFFF & 700 Kg DCP joined mission today. The Specialised Pollution Response Ship is capable of Multi-mission roles viz Firefighting, SAR & containment/ recovery of oil spill pic.twitter.com/jSnVFHWSrC Indian Coast Guard (@IndiaCoastGuard) May 29, 2021 India's assistance in the fire fighting mission On May 25, India responded to the request of the Sri Lanka Navy. The High Commission of India in Sri Lanka informed that Vessels Vaibhav, Vajra, and Samudra Prehari by Indian Coast Guard and Tug Water Lilly by Director-General has been deployed by India. To blow out the fire from the air, additionally, Dornier aircraft was also sent by India. The aircraft carrying fire extinguishing agents and oil dispersants reached the spot by 1600 hours on May 25. Maritime Pollution Preventive Ship was also sent off by the Indian Coast Guard. Reportedly there were 25 crew members from the Philippines, China, India, and Russia. All of them were safely evacuated from the burning ship. Explosion on MVX Press Pearl Singapore flagged- MVX Press Pearl caught fire on May 20 at its forecastle area and soon it spread out to quarterdeck where the bridge was stationed due to excessive wind and changing climate of the ship. The ship was at 9.5 nautical miles northwest of the Port of Colombo when the explosion occurred. Strong gales at the sea have reportedly tilted the ship to the right and thus eight containers have tumbled into the sea, it is speculated that some of the containers have sunk deep into the waters. The Marine Environment Pollution Authority thus has directed people in Colombo and Negombo to not touch or open any floating material around the coast. MVX Press Pearl was carrying chemical consignments for cosmetics from Hazira in Gujarat to the Colombo Port. In a surprise move, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) on Friday, invited Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists belonging to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and residing in 13 districts in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab to apply for Indian citizenship under the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). While rules of CAA enacted in 2019 are yet to be framed, the MHA issued a notification for immediate implementation of the order under the Citizenship Act 1955 and Rules framed under the law in 2009. The contentious CAA which has been in effect since January 2020, had triggered massive protests across the country, culminating in the Delhi riots in January 2020 which killed 53 people. MHA invites CAA applications "In exercise of powers conferred under Section 16 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (57 of 1955), the central government hereby directs that powers exercisable by it for registration as citizen of India under Section 5, or for grant of certificate of naturalisation under section 6 of the Citizenship Act 1955 in respect of any person belonging to minority community in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, residing in the districts mentioned and the states mentioned below," the home ministry notification said. In February, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai informed the Lok Sabha that the rules for the Citizenship (Amendment) Act were being framed. Rai informed that Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha have granted an extension of time up to April 9 and July 9, respectively to frame these rules. Recently, Home Minister Amit Shah had said rules of CAA are yet to be framed and the law will be acted upon after COVID vaccination is completed. What is the CAA? The Citizenship (Amendment) Act amends the previous Citizenship Act 1955 to make refugees who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship. Moreover, the Bill exempts the inner line permit areas in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh and areas falling under the Sixth Schedule in the regions. It will be applicable to the members of these communities having arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014. The Supreme Court is yet to hear the 150 pleas challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), after it refused to stay its implementation. (With PTI inputs) The Delhi High Court while hearing pleas on the shortage of black fungus medicine and issues faced by the patients expressed dismay. We are living this hell. Everyone is living this hell. Its a situation where we want to help but we are helpless, the Delhi High Court lamented. The Centre on its part presented a report pointing out its sources to procure the medicines and overcome shortages. Even so, the Delhi High Court directed it to give further details on the current status of its imports and when the stocks are expected. Delhi HC hears pleas on Black Fungus medicine shortage & patient problems The Delhi HC was hearing two pleas that sought medicine vials for two patients admitted for black fungus (Mucormycosis) infection and expressed helplessness regarding the situation. The High Court stated that it cannot pass any order that prefers one patient over others as they are suffering. The issue of medicine shortage was raised by advocate Rakesh Malhotra who expressed that cases of black fungus are rising in the country. The court was informed that steps are being taken to by the Centre to tackle the issue. It was also informed that the Centre is taking steps to procure 2.30 lakh vials of Liposomal Amphotericin-B from six countries. Even so, the Delhi HC sought an explanation from the government on the reason behind choosing the mentioned figure as the requirement today is quite high. The Union of India shall place a report giving the detailed current status of the said imports. It will be considered on Monday. It has to indicate how the figure of 2.30 lakh vials was arrived at and whether there is a greater availability of the drug which could be imported, a bench of Justices Vipin Sanghi and Jasmeet Singh said The court has directed the Centre to come back on May 31 with a 'definite statement' on the clarity over 2.30 lakh vials. The high court has asked the Centre to reveal "where are they, what is the stage, when are they coming to India, has the order been placed or not." However, the Centre's advocate responded by saying that the order for medicines has been placed abroad. Even so, the advocate was countered by the HC and stated that the order should have been received. We are only expressing out anxiety because of the proportions this thing is assuming. Every hour is assuming a new proportion, the bench said, adding that the effort here is to save lives and every hour matters. it said Additional Solicitor General Chetan Sharma stated that the information updated on the portal reveals that the number of patients under treatment for mucormycosis (black fungus) in India are 14,872 on May 28 (9:00 AM) and this includes 423 patients in Delhi. Out of the sources that have been presently identified abroad, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MoHFW) on May 24 has called upon Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) to take steps to procure 2,30,000 vials of Liposomal Amphotericin-B from Australia, Russia, Germany, Argentina, Belgium and China. "MEA has also been called upon to procure 50,000 tablets of Isavuconazole. Steps in this regard are being taken by the MEA, said the Centres report, filed through advocates Amit Mahajan, Kirtiman Singh and Nidhi Mohan Parashar. The Centre said that the domestic production capacity of Amphotericin B Liposomal Injection has been boosted as compared to April when it was 62,000, in May it was 1,40,000 and in June it is expected to be 3,25,114. Moreover, the Centre also remarked that the main impediment in granting more licences for the manufacture of Liposomal Amphotericin B is the shortage of raw materials and excipients worldwide. In addition, the Centre also informed that the MEA has been working on ensuring supplies of key excipients from sources abroad for the production of Liposomal Amphotericin B (Amphonex) in India and added that imports are being made by Mylan Labs from Gilead Inc.USA and the government is working to increase the imports and for early delivery. Centre's on medicine supplies for Delhi The Centre also informed that 400 vials were allocated to Delhi on May 24, 300 vials on May 26 and 1920 vials on May 27. It added that as per the tentative estimation of joint monitoring committee under the Directorate General of Health Services, 20 per cent of the total active COVID-19 cases are moderate to severe and may require hospitalisation. The Centre also pointed out that 20 percent of moderate and severe cases, 1:500 to 1:1000 cases may develop mucormycosis. According to the Union Health Ministry, people catch mucormycosis by coming in contact with the fungal spores in the environment. It can also develop on the skin after the fungus enters the skin through a cut, scrape, burn, or other type of skin trauma. The disease is being detected among patients who are recovering or have recovered from COVID-19. Moreover, anyone who is diabetic and whose immune system is not functioning well needs to be on the guard against this, the ministry has said. With PTI Inputs While India continues to ramp up its procuring and production capacity of the COVID-19 vaccination amid the reported shortage, the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has launched an offensive against the Central government, accusing it of profiteering from the crunch of anti-COVID jabs. Sharing a hotel advertisement, which has allegedly offered a vaccination package, several AAP leaders attacked the Centre, claiming a 'vaccination scam' as private parties pilot creative COVID-19 vaccine packages at a time when there is a scarcity at government centres across the country. However, the planned campaign against the Centre by AAP leaders failed to note that the government had liberalised the COVID-19 vaccination strategy, allowing private parties to procure the jabs as well. Hotels providing Vaccination Package? The 'Vaccination Package' pamphlet carrying the logo of Radisson Hotel Group, which has now gone viral on social media, offers customers a stay at the Radisson Hotel's Hitec City venture along with a COVID-19 vaccine by 'experts from a renowned hospital'. Pegged at Rs 2999, the viral 'Vaccination Package' pamphlet lists breakfast & dinner, clinical consultation and Wi-Fi as the offerings. Meanwhile, the Radisson Hotel Group has clarified that it is not running the 'vaccination package' at a group level but instead it is a unit level activity introduced by the Hi Tec City franchise, which is managed by Sarovar. "We would like to clarify that Radisson Hotel Group is not running any such offers at a group level. This is localised activity by the hotel, which is a franchised unit and managed by another operator," the Radisson Hotel Group said in an official statement to Republic Media Network. Sharing the hotel's pamphlet, AAP national spokesperson Raghav Chadha tweeted that the Central government has ensured 'no shortage of vaccines' in the private sectors while state government-run vaccination centres which provide free doses are shut due to the non-availability of vaccines. The same pamphlet was shared by several AAP leaders with a common hashtag #VaccinationGhotala. On one hand, Central Govt has ensured no shortage of vaccines in Private sector - with 'vaccination packages' in luxury hotels. On the other hand, State Govt run vaccination centres which provide free doses are shut due to non availability of vaccines.#VaccinationGhotala pic.twitter.com/DdV35eHL8b Raghav Chadha (@raghav_chadha) May 29, 2021 Is not #VaccinationGhotala behind these vaccination packages? Why Modi Ji cant procure vaccines for free vaccination & hotels offering vaccination packages? pic.twitter.com/UktS0WPlEf Rajesh Sharma (@beingAAPian) May 29, 2021 So is this it? Central govt ..did not procure vaccines ..did not allow Serum Inst / Bharat Bio to sell to states ..did not permit other international vaccines Just because they wanted to facilitate profits on Vaccines Sales for these 2 cos & private parties?#VaccinationGhotala pic.twitter.com/pAvHqHH6o9 Preeti Sharma Menon (@PreetiSMenon) May 29, 2021 Addressing a press conference on the same, Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia accused the Centre of maintaining a quid pro quo with private entities in the supply of COVID vaccines. Claiming that the Centre has been stating that there is a shortage of vaccines, Sisodia said that it continues to supply COVID jabs to private hospitals. "Due to Centre's management, no state has vaccines for the age group of 18-45. States have to shut down vaccination centre for the same age group. The Centre has told us that we will get vaccines for the 18-45 age group in June and not before June 10 that too in a limited supply. We had promised to vaccinate citizens within 3 months, but Centre exported vaccines, did not place timely orders, which is why there is a shortage of vaccines," the Delhi Deputy CM said. "What problem does the Centre have if we want to inoculate our citizens? When we ask Centre to provide us with vaccine, they respond by saying that there is a shortage but the Centre is providing private hospitals with doses, who are inoculating citizens at a much expensive price. What setting is this?" he added. SETTING ? FREE Vaccine Vaccine Private Youth Vaccine Vaccine !- Dy CM @msisodia #VaccinationGhotala pic.twitter.com/73ClScrzgw AAP (@AamAadmiParty) May 29, 2021 Pertinently, reports of vaccine shortage started coming to the fore only after the vaccination drive was opened to all adults above the age of 18 years, removing barriers of the prioritized group. The Centre had opened up the inoculation drive amid the growing chorus demanding the same, which included the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) in Delhi that claimed to vaccinate all adults within three months. Following the demand, the Centre announced that everyone above the age of 18 will be eligible to receive COVID-19 vaccine shots from May 1. Centre allows private procurement According to the Liberalised Pricing and Accelerated National COVID-19 Vaccination Strategy, COVID-19 vaccination will continue to be free for eligible population groups comprising health care workers, frontline workers and population above 45 years of age in government COVID vaccination centres which receive doses from the Government of India. Private hospitals would have to procure their supplies of COVID-19 vaccine exclusively from the 50 per cent supply earmarked for other than the Government of India channel, the new policy read. Now with vaccine shortage hitting the country, several states have taken a u-turn demanding centralised vaccine procurement policies as several state government's fail to receive any bid despite floating a global tender for COVID vaccines. In a letter to PM Modi last week, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said that it will take 30 months to vaccinate people in this category if the supply crisis continues. The chief minister also wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, requesting him to ensure an immediate supply of jabs and increase the quota for Delhi. As the country faces a shortage of vaccine, Kejriwal gave four suggestions to Modi, including procurement of vaccines from foreign manufacturers and inviting firms for production in India, part of which are already in transit. India To Get Vaccinations On-demand By August While India faces an acute shortage of COVID-19 vaccines, sources have said that from August onwards, citizens of the country would not have to register in advance or stand in long queues, and would simply be able to go and get vaccinated. This is on account of the country aiming to have 8-10 vaccine companies at its disposal by August and to manufacture over 300 crore vaccine doses by the end of the year, a figure that is double the country population. Union Health Ministry has announced that the 216 crore doses of COVID vaccines would be manufactured in India between August to December 2021, while Niti Aayog Member Dr VK Paul later informed that the number is likely to reach 300 crore doses by the first quarter of 2022. Global pharma firms Pfizer and Moderna are also in talks with the government to provide doses of their COVID vaccines, as per sources. Bharat Biotech's COVAXIN has received a major boost to production, with the government providing financial assist in setting up of several manufacturing units as well. On Saturday, BJP MP Meenakshi Lekhi slammed the opposition for criticising the move to initiate granting of citizenship of non-Muslim refugees in India from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. On Friday, the Ministry of Home Affairs invited applications from immigrants belonging to minority communities from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, residing in 13 districts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab to apply for Indian citizenship. The Lok Sabha MP welcomed the Central government's move and said these refugees are a part of our country as they belong to countries that were once a part of India. "The noise that was being made earlier against this law was baseless and it is against human rights as these refugees have lived in countries around India, which were once a part of India. There have been some conspiracies against the people belonging to the minority communities living in these countries. They had no way to go anywhere in the world. They have only this one motherland and every refugee has been given shelter here," Lekhi told ANI. 'Process of CAA remained incomplete due to COVID-19: Meenakshi Lekhi Lekhi further said these people have lived here for 40 years and should be given civil rights. The government has changed the law in 2019, but due to the pandemic, the process got stuck. "Those people, who have lived here for 40 years, should have been given civil rights under human rights, but that had not happened until today. By changing the law, they were given citizenship right in 2019. However, the process could not be completed due to the onset of the Covid pandemic. The elections made it clear that these people should be granted citizenship," she added. BJP MP claimed that the decision has been welcomed by the people. "The public has also welcomed it. Now the government has given instructions as per rules and it will be done while respecting human rights and keeping in mind the interests of the public," she said. Lekhi Criticises Opposition Hitting out at the Opposition, Lekhi justified the non-inclusion of the Muslim community, stating that they had already created a country for themselves. "Apart from these refugees, whoever wants to take citizenship of our country, there are rules for them to take citizenship. They have to apply under the Citizenship Act. A little change was made in the act for people who have been living here for years without citizenship and were given a little help. The reason behind the non-Muslim quota is also that the Muslims had created a country for themselves. Now, if they needed the citizenship of this country then why was that country formed?" the BJP MP said. "The refugee will get a place to live, the intruder will not," Lekhi stressed over that there is a need to understand the difference between refugees and intruders. What is the CAA? The Citizenship (Amendment) Act amends the previous Citizenship Act 1955 to make refugees who are Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians from Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan, eligible for citizenship. Moreover, the Bill exempts the inner line permit areas in Nagaland, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh and areas falling under the Sixth Schedule in the regions. It will be applicable to the members of these communities having arrived in India on or before December 31, 2014. The Supreme Court is yet to hear the 150 pleas challenging the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), after it refused to stay its implementation. (Image Credits: ANI/PTI) In view of rising COVID-19 cases, the Punjab government has imposed strict COVID -19 norms across the State. A shocking video of a ruling party's minister attending a wedding party surfaced on Friday. In the video, flouting all COVID-19 norms, Punjab Congress Minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot attended a wedding in Sangrur where he was surrounded by a large gathering of people. This incident came into the limelight a day after Punjab Chief Minister Captain Amarinder Singh held a COVID review meeting on Thursday and extended lockdown till June 10. As per the State government's strict COVID-19 guidelines, 'No gathering of more than 10 people, including weddings, cremations and funerals are allowed. 'I was not aware' In his defence, minister Sadhu Singh Dharamsot has said that he was not aware whether 10 or more than 10 persons were going to attend the party. He claimed that he went to the wedding alone along with his security personnel. No actions have been taken yet against the Minister. AAP demands FIR Meanwhile, alleging COVID protocol violation Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has demanded FIR against the Cabinet Minister. LoP Harpal Singh Cheema said rules are equal for everyone in the state. "No one is bigger than the law, rules are equal for everyone in the state. FIR should be lodged against the minister and legal action should be taken against him for violating COVID norms. If a common man goes outside his home without wearing a mask or violates any kind of COVID norma then the Punjab government takes actions," said AAP LoP Cheema. Punjab Congress MLAs flouts COVID norms However, this is not the first time when the ruling party minister has violated the COVID norms. On April 26, a video of a ruling party's MLA dancing at a wedding party emerged. In the viral video, flouting all COVID-19 norms, Punjab Congress MLA Balwinder Singh Dhaliwal can be seen dancing at a private party amid the pandemic in Phagwara. None of the people present at the party can be seen wearing masks or maintaining distance. The Jalandhar police filed an FIR against the bride and the groom, however, no action was taken against the MLA. COVID-19 cases in Punjab According to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Punjab on Friday reported 2,318 new COVID-19 cases with 5,995 recoveries and 177 deaths. The total active cases of the state remain at 48,231 with 4,93,854 total recoveries and 14,004 deaths. (Image Credits: PTI/PIXABAY) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 15:13:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MAIMANA, Afghanistan, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Ten Taliban militants were killed and six others wounded following airstrikes in two Afghan northern provinces on Friday, the military confirmed on Saturday. In Faryab province, a Taliban divisional commander and two of his subordinates were killed and two other Taliban militants were wounded after Afghan Air Force (AAF) targeted a Taliban hideout in Badghisi village, Khwaja Sabz Posh district, spokesman of the army's 209th Shaheen Corps Hanif Rezai told Xinhua. Meanwhile, seven Taliban militants were killed and four others were wounded in AAF strikes conducted on a Taliban's base in Hazhda Bala village in Sayaad district, Sari Pul province, he said. The Taliban group has not made a comment yet. Enditem A group of Russian hackers have launched a mass email phishing campaign, targeting government agencies, consultations, think tanks, NGOs and other foreign government agencies, reported Microsoft. The sophisticated attack was carried out using US Agency for International Development's email marketing account. After comparing the case with SolarWinds hack details, Microsoft has announced that it is the same organization responsible for SolarWinds hack 2021. Russian Hackers launch a mass email attack Nobelium has been identified as the organization responsible for sending out emails to about 3000 accounts. Microsoft also adds that at least a quarter of these accounts are associated with international bodies that look after foreign policy. It might be done to gain international intelligence. Both the United States and Britain are raising fingers at Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service. Just like the SolarWinds hack 2021, the emails contained a URL, clicking on which would provide access to the user's database. The email contained a poster and used former United State's president Donal Trump's name to lure the victims. The 'view documents' button opens a URL, which then provides access to the hackers. Have a look at the sample image published by Microsoft below. IMAGE: MICROSOFT SECURITY BLOG Microsoft's statement about the SolarWinds hack details "This week we observed cyber attacks by the threat actor Nobelium targeting government agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations. This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations. While organizations in the United States received the largest share of attacks, targeted victims span at least 24 countries," Microsoft says on their official blog post dated May 27, 2021. The email attack was going on since January 2021 The email attack was silently going on since January 2021, until the hackers used a mail-mailing service called Constant Contact on May 25. Apparently, the emails were coming from development organization in the United States. While initially, the campaign sent malicious URLs which used the Google FIrebase platform to gather details of those who accessed the URL, the technique evolved with time. In the month of April, hackers experimented with an ISO file integrated with JavaScrpt, which once opened, attaches to a computer like an internal drive itself. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency of the US is aware of the cyberattack and has opened a joint investigation along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We are responding to a cyber threat actor that leveraged a third-party compromised Constant Contact account to target more than 7,000 accounts across more than 300 government organizations, IGOs, & NGOs. View our Joint Cybersecurity Advisory with @FBI: https://t.co/lXeu29X0Fy Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (@CISAgov) May 29, 2021 IMAGE: SHUTTERSTOCK The United States President Joe Biden administration has given a proposal of USD 24.8 Billion Budget for National Aeronautics and Space Administration(NASA) for the fiscal year (FY) 2022. The Biden-Harris administration's funding proposal is the largest ever request for NASA. NASA is an independent agency of the US federal government which is responsible for the civilian space programmes and researches pertaining to space and aeronautics. "This budget request is evidence that NASAs missions contribute to the administrations larger goals for America: addressing climate change, promoting equity, and driving economic growth," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in his statement. Joe Biden's FY 2022 funding request for NASA marks a 6.6 per cent increase from previous allocations. NASA Administrator shared the information on his official Twitter handle and credited the President's proposal as recognition for NASA as the most reputed agency which contributes to the administration's goals, such as climate change, diplomacy, equity, economic growth, purposes of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) and more. .@POTUS FY22 budget request is $24.8B for @NASA, a 6.6% increase. Its recognition that NASA contributes to the administrations goals: climate change, diplomacy, equity, economic growth, STEM & more. And it's the largest request for NASA science ever! https://t.co/hm9bEp0Sls Bill Nelson (@SenBillNelson) May 28, 2021 Bill Nelson lauded the Budget proposed and stated NASA is uniquely positioned to help the world understand and mitigate climate change. NASA took to Twitter to establish the same. ...NASA is uniquely positioned to help the world understand and mitigate climate change. - Read Administrator @SenBillNelsons statement on the Biden-Harris fiscal year 2022 budget request: https://t.co/x9K2VXpijp pic.twitter.com/1gD0gChe1j NASA (@NASA) May 28, 2021 FY 2022 Budget Request- an investment in America's future Deeming the funding request an investment in America's future, Bill Nelson said NASA activities contribute to local and national economies, invest in next-generation through STEM education, and are essential to American leadership universally. According to him, the Budget allocation of this size will increase investment in climate research and science programmes. This FY 2022 budget, along with continued bipartisan support for NASAs goals and missions, will empower NASA and the United States to lead humanity into the next era in exploration an era in which government and the private sector partner to take us farther than ever before to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond and to expand science, economic growth, and well-being here on Earth," read NASA's press release. NASA FY 2022 Request priorities include: Addressing the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad Promoting Racial and Economic Equity Landing first woman and first person of colour on the Moon Broadening participation by historically underserved communities in STEM Diversity, equity, and inclusion in NASA grants Restoring Americas Global Standing Boosting Economic Growth Netizens Respond NASA FY 2022 Budget request of $24.8 billion obviously took netizens by surprise and impressed them too. While few responded to the news gleefully, others resort to humour to welcome the big news. I grew up loving NASA, but in 20 years almost no innovations were made. Then one man and one company (SpaceX) did more in a few years to improve taking payloads to orbit cheaper than NASA had done in decades. Before him we had to use Russian rockets... Do better NASA c4cullen (@cullenneely) May 28, 2021 Forward to the Moon! David willis (@DavidWillisSLS) May 28, 2021 Pls Government support NASA more & more ~~ Ideas Exo (@ExoIdeas) May 29, 2021 The National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASAs) Curiosity Rover has captured the breathtaking images of shining clouds as seen on Mars which would help the scientists to learn more about the Red Planet. Several images of the shining clouds on Mars were shared on the official Twitter account of the NASA Curiosity Rover with one of the captions saying, Sometimes you just need to stop and watch the clouds roll by... on Mars...Cloudy days are rare here because the atmosphere is so thin and dry, but I've been keeping my cameras peeled and wanted to share some recent pictures with you. As per NASAs official release on May 28, the researchers are now studying the clouds which not only arrived earlier but also formed higher than expected. The US space agency also noted that cloudy days are rare in the thin as well as the dry atmosphere of the Red Planet. At the coldest time of the year for the Martian planet, the clouds are formed typically at the equator of the planet, that is when the planet is farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. But, one full Martian year ago two Earth years scientists noticed clouds forming over NASAs Curiosity rover earlier than expected. Hence, this year, the researchers were all braced to capture the early clouds from the exact moment they first appeared in late January. The documentation of the scientists resulted are images of wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with colour. More than just spectacular displays, such images help scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different. NASA also noted that the "iridescent wisps" are actually called "mother of pearl." Heading into the weekend like a cloud on Mars. This GIF shows clouds drifting over Mount Sharp. Each frame was stitched together from six individual images. https://t.co/Gtgz9Iu822 (2/4) pic.twitter.com/VPvSri1Sdh Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) May 28, 2021 SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL LOOK AT THESE MARTIAN CLOUDS. No, seriously. These iridescent wisps are called "mother of pearl" clouds. The shimmery pastels result when the particles in the cloud are all nearly identical in size. https://t.co/Gtgz9Iu822 (3/4) pic.twitter.com/Op73fHoTwH Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) May 28, 2021 SWEET MOTHER OF PEARL LOOK AT THESE MARTIAN CLOUDS. No, seriously. These iridescent wisps are called "mother of pearl" clouds. The shimmery pastels result when the particles in the cloud are all nearly identical in size. https://t.co/Gtgz9Iu822 (3/4) pic.twitter.com/Op73fHoTwH Curiosity Rover (@MarsCuriosity) May 28, 2021 Curiositys one new discovery Owing to NASAs Mars Curiosity Rovers work, the team has already made one new discovery, according to the space agency which is that the early-arrival clouds are actually at higher altitudes than is typical. Most Martian clouds hover no more than about 37 miles (60 kilometres) in the sky and are composed of water ice. But the clouds Curiosity has imaged are at a higher altitude, where its very cold, indicating that they are likely made of frozen carbon dioxide or dry ice. Scientists look for subtle clues to establish a clouds altitude, and it will take more analysis to say for sure which of Curiositys recent images show water-ice clouds and which show dry-ice ones, NASA said. The fine, rippling structures of these clouds are easier to see with images from Curiositys black-and-white navigation cameras. But its the colour images from the rovers Mast Camera or Mastcam, that really shine literally, it added. IMAGE: Twitter/Unsplash Amid the ongoing tussle between Twitter and the Centre over non-compliance of the new IT rules, Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday, in an exclusive interview with Republic TV lambasted the Opposition over claims that the government is intimidating the microblogging website. Leaders who used Twitter as a medium to play politics are now doing politics of Twitter, the Minister said, attacking the Opposition. Explaining the law of the land, RSP said that if there is a complaint of an offence anywhere in the country, then everyone, who is in the know of information, is under a legal obligation to help the police in the investigation. In this instance, the police issued a summon to Twitter but they showed no interest. So, the police went to their office in India. Do business in India but follow the law of the land. That is digital sovereignty. The double standards of these private profit-making companies will not do, the Minister asserted. 'Govt intimidating social media' Earlier this week, the Delhi Police landed at Twitter's offices in Delhi and Gurugram to issue summons and seek a response over the 'manipulated media' controversy. The Opposition, however, labelled it as an undemocratic and grossly condemnable act. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav said that the police's visit to Twitter offices will bring down the declining global image of the BJP government. The Congress too accused the Centre of attempting to threaten Twitter and other social media outlets after it tagged several tweets by BJP leaders related to the 'toolkit' as 'manipulated media'. Citing the FIR registered in Chhattisgarh (against BJP national spokesperson Sambit Patra), the grand old party said that the BJP had 'panicked' which has prompted the Centre to rally behind the Delhi Police. Despite the new Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, coming into force three days ago on May 25, US-based micro-blogging site Twitter is yet to share details of compliance with the Ministry of Electronics and IT, sources have informed. While several social platforms including Sharechat, Koo, Telegram, LinkedIn, Google, Facebook and even WhatsApp complying with the rules now, Twitter is yet to fall in line, sources said on Friday. Centre vs Twitter Twitter on Thursday stressed that it will strive to comply with the guidelines, it has also sought amendments in the new rules. A Twitter spokesperson revealed that the microblogging service plans to talk to the government for amending certain clauses of these regulations which restrict a free conversation on the platform. Lamenting the purported use of "intimidation tactics" by the police, it back a collaborative approach to safeguard the interests of the people. In a scathing response to Twitter's statement over the implementation of the new IT guidelines, the Ministry of Electronics and IT on Thursday lambasted the US-based micro-blogging website for attempting to 'dictate terms' in the world's largest democracy - India. Ridiculing Twitter's claims of 'intimidation tactics' by the Delhi Police, the Union Ministry downplayed the statement issued by the micro-blogging site on Thursday as 'totally baseless, false and an attempt to defame India' Mali's constitutional court on Friday announced that the country's 2020 coup leader Col. Assimi Goita was to take over the role of president of the country's transitional government after the resignation of President Bah N'Daw. N'Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane resigned on Wednesday after they were released from detention. The U.N. Security Council said Wednesday after a closed meeting that the resignations were forced and demanded an immediate resumption of the civilian-led transition and said the military should return to their barracks. The U.N., the African Union and other international bodies, as well as the U.S., had also urged Mali's military to release the transitional leaders. N'Daw and Ouane were arrested on Monday, along with other leaders of the transitional government, hours after naming a new Cabinet that did not include two key military leaders. Goita, who led the junta calling itself the National Committee for the Salvation of the People, has served as Mali's vice president in the transitional government formed last September. He has held that position despite initial calls from the international community for an entirely civilian-led transition. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Australia has said that it is seeking World Trade Organization (WTO) intervention to resolve the dispute with China over anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed on Canberra by Beijing. As per news agency ANI, Australia Trade Minister Dan Tehan announced on May 28 that the government is taking the next step towards acquiring WTO claim against China for sanctions on barley. Australia-Chian bilateral relations have been deteriorating over a range of issues including trade disputes. Reportedly, China has till now decided to establish the dispute settlement panel and hence, Australia is turning to WTO to confirm its intent on making progress with the claim. Australian Trade Minister has also said that Canberra has been open for further discussions with Beijing considering the dispute over barley. However, Tehan added that Australia would continue to vigorously defend the interests of Australian barley producers" at the WTO. "The establishment of the panel is the next step in the WTO's dispute resolution process. The next phase of the process is the appointment of individuals to the panel to adjudicate the dispute," Tehan said. "The anti-dumping and countervailing duties on Australian barley have effectively stopped Australia's barley trade with China, he added. China's sanctions on Australian products China has imposed a range of tariffs and trade strikes on Australian products such as barley, wine, beef, lobster and timber. In December last year, Australia had first announced that it was launching WTO action against China over tariffs on barley. The bilateral ties between both nations deteriorated so much that the Chinese state-media warned of ballistic strikes if Canberra gets involved in a potential military conflict over Taiwan. Just last week, China also suspended all activities under the China-Australia Strategic Economic Dialogue, a forum launched in 2014 and last convened in 2017. That decision had followed Australia scrapping the Belt and Road (BRI) agreement with China. In November 2020, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison acknowledged the deterioration of bilateral relations as needless. During a major foreign policy address to a British think-tank on November 23, 2020, Morrison said that the ties with China are made more complex by the assumptions cast on Canberras actions which are "wrongly seen". IMAGE: AP In a spectacular sweet scientific discovery, an Australian scientist has discovered a new species of frog in the rainforest swamps of New Guinea. Steve Richards, a frog specialist at the South Australia Museum, first spotted the cocoa hued amphibian in 2016. Later, scientists at the Queensland Museum gave it the moniker of chocolate frog due to its brown coloured skin, a feature that distinguishes it from other tree frogs. Image: Queensland Museum Network Speaking to The Guardian about his discovery, Richards, meanwhile, explained that it was its swampy, spiky and incredibly tough habitat of the newly discovered frogs that delayed the Chocolate frogs discovery. There are floods, crocodiles and no roads. It is really an unpleasant environment to work in, he said. Image: Queensland Museum Network Litoria mira The frogs have been scientifically termed as Litoria mira We named the new frog Litoria mira because the word mira means surprised or strange in Latin, Paul Oliver, from Queensland Museum, who was in charge of the species genetic analysis said. The species have evolved to become genetically distinct to the point where two species would not be able to breed, reported the Guardian. Image: Australian Museum The closest known relative of Litoria mira is the Australian green tree frog. The two species look similar except one is usually green, while the new species usually has a lovely chocolate colouring. Whats a little surprising about this discovery is that the well-known and common green tree frog of Australia has a long-overlooked relative living in the lowland rainforests of New Guinea. Because of this we named the new frog Litoria mira because the word Mira means surprised or strange in Latin, Oliver said in an online statement. This comes as a teeny, tangerine hued, fluorescent frog that has recently been discovered in Brazils Atlantic Forest. Officially named Brachycephalus rotenbergae, the amphibian is a type of pumpkin toadlet. The discovery is being considered significant amidst ongoing efforts to conserve biodiversity in the South American state. The team which found the species consisted of herpetologists from Sao Paulo State University. Elaborating on the same, study leader Ivan Sergio Nunes Silva stated, the best moment to be a scientist is when you are looking at something new and you are the only person who knows." Image: Queensland Museum Network Hundreds of Israeli activists gathered in east-Jerusalem on Friday to demonstrate against the possible eviction of Palestinian families. Sheikh Jarrah has been the scene of frequent demonstrations and clashes between Palestinian protesters and police in recent weeks, over a court case in which a group of hardline Israeli settlers seeks to evict a number of Palestinian families from their homes. Israel calls it a real-estate dispute, while Palestinians and rights groups say the case highlights discriminatory policies that are aimed at pushing Palestinians out of Jerusalem to preserve its Jewish majority. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) A top Iranian commander on Saturday said Israelis should "go back" to previous homes in Europe, America and elsewhere. "Before your homes you sold in Europe, America and elsewhere become more expensive, go back and re-buy and rebuild them," said Ismail Ghaani, head of Iran's revolutionary guard's elite Quds force. Iran, Israel's arch-enemy, is a sponsor of Palestinian militant groups, including Hamas. Hamas has publicly praised Iran for its assistance, which experts say now primarily takes the form of blueprints, engineering know-how, motor tests and other technical expertise. The U.S. State Department reports that Iran provides $100 million a year to Palestinian armed groups. The comments come in the wake of an 11-day war between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. During the fighting, Gaza militants fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israel, while Israel bombed hundreds of targets linked to militants in Gaza. More than 250 people, the majority Palestinians, were killed in the war which ended a week ago. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) The clerics in Pakistan are promoting people to join the extremist group, Taliban as the state authorities continue to turn a blind eye to the situation, said Muhammed Sarfraz Khan, the former director of the Area Study Center of Peshawar University as per news agency ANI. Even though the Afghan Taliban is banned in Pakistan, videos and images of clerics soliciting support on Pakistani social media platforms have often emerged. As the US continues its final clampdown on extremist forces in war-torn Afghanistan, reportedly there have been concerns that some local terrorists in Pakistan could join the ranks of the Afghan Taliban in huge numbers. Budding from the United States decision to withdraw its remaining troops from May 1 from Afghanistan, clashes have also dramatically surged there with militants trying to capture as much territory as possible until the September 11 deadline draws closer. Muhammed Sarfraz Khan has reportedly also added that the redeployment of foreign troops will have a severe impact on the northwestern and western provinces of Pakistan. The situation is much different, say some experts Deutsche Welle stated that experts caution the situation in Afghanistan is developing towards similar violence as it did in the 1990s when the Taliban rose to power and thousands of Pakistanis joined the Afghan Taliban to tackle the Northern Alliance. However, as per ANI, some experts have also noted that the situation is much different now. Political analyst Rahimullah Yusufzai said, The situation is much different now because the government is watchful. It will not allow people to cross over into Afghanistan and fight for the Taliban. However, in remote areas close to the Afghan border, people might still go to fight and collect donations," he said as per ANI. In recent weeks, violence in Afghanistan has intensified especially after US President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of all remaining troops from the foreign country by September 11 this year. The Afghan security forces are presently fighting the extremist group in more than 100 provinces, as per reports. IMAGE: AP(Representative) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 15:17:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- A recent survey by China Youth Daily found that 60 percent of the respondents spend a daily average of more than an hour watching short videos, with 11 percent spending three hours or more on them. Of the 2,017 total respondents, 74.2 percent said reasonable time management is necessary to avoid excessive viewing of short videos. Short videos can be addictive as social media platforms keep recommending relevant content once a video ends, said Yang Binyan, a researcher with the Institute of Journalism and Communication Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She added that short videos, often showing fragments from day-to-day life, can induce a feeling of social connectedness for the viewers. A total of 73.7 percent of those surveyed said netizens should take part in more offline activities, including outdoor ones, to avoid overindulgence in short videos, while 50.8 percent suggest such platforms set up an anti-addiction system. The number of China's online short video users reached 873 million by the end of 2020, accounting for 88 percent of the total internet users, showed a report on China's internet development. Enditem Cuba's parliament, The National Assembly of People's Power, held a special hearing "Cuba in the face of two pandemics" on Friday demanding the lifting of the US embargo. Parliamentarians and experts spoke for several hours on the wide-ranging effects the 60-plus years of the US embargo has had on the island nation and new hardships it is now experiencing because of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. Figures provided to the United Nations by the Cuban government estimated that annual losses due to Washington's sanctions between 2019 and 2020 alone reached $5.5 billion dollars (US). The Gross Domestic Product of Cuba decreased by 11% in 2021. The direct effect on Cuba's 11-million citizens is the shortage of food and medicines. Cuba is also struggling to purchase syringes and other goods necessary for the COVID-19 vaccines they have developed locally. During the meeting, held in Havana's restored Capital building, images of supporters from other countries asking for an end to the embargo were displayed on large screens. Among those invitees was former US Representative James Moran, a Democrat from Virginia. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) Kathmandu, May 28 (PTI) Beleaguered Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli on Friday urged all political parties to form an all-party government and hold fresh elections, as he tried to justify the controversial dissolution of the House of Representatives twice by the President, saying a "functionless" Parliament turned out to be the main source of instability in the country. "To go for a fresh mandate of the people is not retrogression but a democratic process," said Oli in a televised address to the nation, a week after the House was dissolved by President Bidya Devi Bhandari. The president dissolved the 275-member House of Representatives on Saturday for the second time in five months and announced snap elections on November 12 and November 19 on the advice of Prime Minister Oli, who is heading a minority government. Oli, 69, called upon the political parties to form an all-party government and hold elections. Addressing the nation as the chief executive of the country, Oli took most of his time to criticise the moves taken by the Opposition parties and his fellow party leaders. He blamed the Opposition parties and dissident faction of the ruling CPN-UML for the dissolution of Parliament. He blamed his party's rival group for blocking his attempts to consolidate democracy and to take the nation to the path of socio-economic transformation. Oli said Parliament could not ensure stability in the country even after it was restored on February 23 through judicial intervention. Though it was reinstated through the Supreme Courts verdict, it turned out to be functionless and the main source of instability in the country, said Oli. He claimed that he tried to prevent the lower house of Parliament from being dissolved. I made my last ditch effort to form an alternative government as per Article 76 (5) after being assured of support from the Janata Samajbadi Party (JSP). However, Opposition parties, who played a dirty game of politics, forced the president to dismiss their claim for a new government, he said. Due to their erroneous claim, I was the victim and Parliament was dissolved as per the constitutional provisions," he said. Hinting at the support extended to Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba by more than two dozen lawmakers of UML and a dozen others belonging to the JSP, he warned of not accepting partyless character in the multiparty system adopted by Nepal. President Bhandari dissolved the House and rejected the bids of both Prime Minister Oli and the Opposition alliance's claims to form a government, saying the claims were insufficient. Nepal's Opposition alliance on Monday filed a writ petition in the Supreme Court demanding restoration of the House of Representatives and appointment of Deuba as the Prime Minister. Others had also filed petitions against the dissolution of the House of Representatives. The next hearing in the case will be held on Sunday, the government-run Rising Nepal newspaper reported. Earlier on December 20, the President had dissolved the Parliament and called snap polls on April 30 and May 10. However, two months later, the Rana-led Constitutional Bench on February 23 overturned the decision and reinstated the House. Constitutional experts have criticised Oli and Bhandari for their complicity in trampling upon the Constitution. In his address Oli also discussed the governments efforts to combat the coronavirus pandemic and claimed that his government made big achievements, including controlling the pandemic, during his three years tenure. Oli expressed gratitude to China, India and other friendly countries for helping the government in its attempt to control the spread of the coronavirus by providing necessary medical supplies. He informed that the Nepal government has received 3.2 million doses of vaccines against coronavirus in grants from friendly countries and purchased one million additional vaccines to start the drive against spread of the coronavirus. He also discussed the governments efforts to combat the coronavirus disease and also claimed that the positivity rate and death rate have fallen as a result of systematic government efforts. Prime Minister Oli also assured the people of vaccines against the coronavirus disease at the earliest. Those who have received the first shot of Covishield vaccines will be administered the second jab at any cost, he said. However, Nepal is currently facing a huge shortage of vaccines and was trying to get Chinese vaccines. Meanwhile, as the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court on Friday began hearing on the 30 petitions filed against the dissolution of the House of Representatives and announcement of mid-term elections, four former chief justices have again raised concern over the risk to a system governed by the rule of law. By dissolving Parliament time and again, punishing the House for no reason, introducing a number of ordinances, bringing a full budget instead of interim one, mockery has been made of the rule of law in the country, said a statement of a group of four former chief justices. The group includes former chief justices Sushila Karki, Kalyan Shrestha, Min Bahadur Rayamajhi and Anup Raj Sharma. PTI SBP PMS AKJ AKJ (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) The Philippines, on May 29, launched a diplomatic protest against Chinas continuing illegal presence and activities near its Thitu islands. In a press statement, the Filipino Foreign Ministry confirmed that it was objecting against the incessant deployment, prolonged presence, and illegal activities of Chinese maritime assets and fishing vessels in the vicinity of Thitu or the Pag-asa Island. Thitu islands, which literally translates to island of hope is a part of Spratly Islands, an archipelago located in the South China Sea, which is claimed by China, Taiwan, Vietnam, Malaysia as well as the Philippines. READ #DFAStatement: On the Continuing Illegal Presence and Activities of Chinese Vessels in the Pag-asa Islands Also found in this link https://t.co/VfJDcwyb0b#DFAForgingAhead pic.twitter.com/57jORFoQu2 DFA Philippines (@DFAPHL) May 29, 2021 'Withdraw vessels' In 2016, the Hague based Permanent Court of Arbitration rejected China's claims on the South China Sea and areas inside the nine-dash line and ruled in favour of the Philippines, which currently has operational control over the Thitu islands. China and Taiwan have both rejected the ruling. Meanwhile, the Philippines on Saturday asked China to call back its vessels from the disputed area asserting that the Pag-asa Island was an integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction. Beijing, which claims its sovereignty, without evidence, over the 3.5 million square kilometers the South China Sea, has ramped up its assertiveness in the region. Threatened with Chinas ambition to alter the status of the Pacific region and increased encounters with Chinese vessels, Manila has substantially increased patrol vehicles in the area, a Washington based think tank claimed. Recently, the Philippines Defence Minister accused China of planning to occupy more features in the disputed South China Sea as tensions between both nations escalate over Beijings territorial claims in the waters. China claims almost all of the South China Sea which is a resource-rich area and has even asserted its stance by building up several small shoals and reefs into military bases with airstrips along with other port facilities. Philippines Defence Minister Delfin Lorenzana lambasted China for its "utter disregard" of international law. The diplomatic war of words between China and the Philippines stemmed last month from a fleet of more than 200 Chinese ships after parking at Whitsun Reef off the Philippines is now scattered across the Spratly Islands. Image: AP Police clashed with protesters in Colombia on Friday as part of demonstrations in the country which have been ongoing for a month. In Madrid Cundinamarca, on the outskirts of the capital Bogota, police deployed water canon against demonstrators, who retaliated by throwing rocks. The protesters, who were originally rallying against government reforms, have complained of police brutality and are demanding freedom to demonstrate. In some parts of Colombia, protesters organized roadblocks that have led to fuel shortages, increased the price of food, and forced some factories to shut. At least 40 people have been killed during the protests, dozens more have been reported as disappeared and thousands of civilians and police were wounded in the last month. Human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch say that the death toll since the protests began has risen to 55 and that in at least 15 cases, the alleged aggressors were police. The Colombian government accepted Thursday a visit by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights to investigate. (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) During his five-day visit to the US, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, on May 28, met with the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Washington to discuss the wide range of issues, including COVID-19 relief, efforts to strengthen Indo-Pacific cooperation through the QUAD, their official press release stated. QUAD is also known as the QSD; it is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue between India, the US, Australia and Japan. The duo even discussed the India-China border state of affairs and intentions to direct support to Afghanistan. The US State Secretary took to his official Twitter handle to highlight worthy takeaways from this conclave. Productive discussion today with @DrSJaishankar on regional security and economic priorities to include U.S. COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation, and our support for Afghanistan. As friends, we will work together to address these areas of shared concern. pic.twitter.com/BtoGJTUGEr Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 28, 2021 India-US COVID-19 Vaccine Partnership EAM Jaishankar hinted at a "productive discussion" and he appreciated the mighty solidarity expressed by his US counterpart during trying COVID-19 times of India. He commented that the said rendezvous solidified the strategic India-US partnership by widening the agenda of cooperation. While both State leaders spoke about dominant issues such as COVID-19, vaccines, etc. inputs on global peace-security and issues with no vested interest did not keep at bay. They discussed regional developments, the coup in Burma and continuing support of Afghanistan. He took to Twitter to establish the same. Pleasure to meet @SecBlinken. A productive discussion on various aspects of our bilateral cooperation as well as regional and global issues. Covered Indo Pacific and the Quad, Afghanistan, Myanmar, UNSC matters and other international organizations. pic.twitter.com/7UDkXsyJdC Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) May 28, 2021 According to a statement by S Jaishankar, inevitably the delegates focused on the COVID-19 vaccine India- US partnership aimed at expanding access and ensuring its supply. "Secretary Blinken and Minister Jaishankar discussed a broad range of issues, including COVID-19 relief, efforts to strengthen Indo-Pacific cooperation through the Quad, and a shared commitment to combating the climate crisis and enhancing multilateral cooperation, including at the UN Security Council. Both also discussed regional developments, the coup in Burma, and continuing support for Afghanistan," the statement read. Meanwhile, a US State Department spokesperson Ned Price informed that India and the US levelled talks of heightening the cooperation of the United Nations Security Council. He took to Twitter and shared the official press release by the US. .@SecBlinken and @DrSJaishankar discussed increasing U.S.-India cooperation in the Indo-Pacific to support regional security and economic priorities. They also discussed strengthening U.S. COVID-19 assistance & enhancing @UN Security Council cooperation. https://t.co/XETpEd0kKY Ned Price (@StateDeptSpox) May 28, 2021 S Jaishankar's "terrific" meeting with US Defense Secretary. EAM S Jaishankar also met with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin where they reaffirmed their "commitment to sustaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region and discussed ways to deepen coordination with like-minded countries," a statement read. Lloyd Austin established takeaways from their meeting on Twitter. I had a terrific meeting with @DrSJaishankar today. He graciously hosted me in India in March, and I was delighted to return his hospitality. The @deptofdefense is deeply committed to strengthening our partnership w/ India as we work together to uphold a #FreeAndOpenIndoPacific. pic.twitter.com/tvHjA6bhqP Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III (@SecDef) May 28, 2021 Meanwhile, EAM S Jaishankar on Twitter hinted at a "comprehensive conversation about strategic and defence partnership". A warm meeting with US @SecDef Lloyd Austin. A comprehensive conversation about further developing our strategic and defence partnership. Exchanged views on contemporary security challenges. Expressed appreciation of the US military role in responding to the Covid situation. pic.twitter.com/ea0iBezGQZ Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) May 28, 2021 Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh is set to exchange at 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue later this year. San Jose (US), May 29 (AP) Authorities say the gunman who killed nine co-workers at a California rail yard had 12 guns and 22,000 rounds of ammunition at his home that he set on fire. Officials said Saturday that the shooter, Samuel James Cassidy, had coordinated a fire at his house to coincide with the violence at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose. The Santa Clara County sheriff's office said in a news release that a search of Cassidy's home also turned up multiple cans of gasoline and suspected Molotov cocktails. Taptejdeep Singh died trying to save others from a gunman. Kirk Bertolet saw some of his co-workers take their last breaths. Friends, family and survivors were mourning nine men killed this week when a disgruntled employee hauling a duffel bag full of guns and ammunition opened fire at a California rail yard complex, apparently choosing his targets and sparing others. Investigators were still trying to determine what might have set off Cassidy, who for years apparently held a grudge against his workplace. San Jose police said Friday that they determined a suspicious package at his home was safe. But investigators believe he set a timer or slow-burn device to start a fire at the house at the same time he attacked his co-workers. The victims were Alex Ward Fritch, 49; Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; and Lars Kepler Lane, 63. The minutes-long attack was marked by both horror and heroism. Singh, the father of a 3-year-old son and a 1-year-old daughter, was on an early shift as a light rail operator when the shooting began. He called another transit employee to warn him, saying he needed to get out or hide. From what I've heard, he spent the last moments of his life making sure that others in the building and elsewhere would be able to stay safe, co-worker Sukhvir Singh, who is not related to Taptejdeep Singh, said in a statement. Bagga Singh said he was told that his cousin put a lady in a control room to hide," The Mercury News in San Jose reported. He saved her and rushed down the stairway." Singh's brother-in-law, P.J. Bath, said he was told Singh was killed after encountering the gunman in a stairwell. He just happened to be in the way, I guess, Bath said. Bertolet, 64, was just starting his shift when shots rang out, then he heard the screams. He and his co-workers threw a table in front of their door, and Bertolet called the control center. Then there was silence. Cautiously, Bertolet left the barricaded office, hoping he could offer first aid. He couldn't. Bertolet, a signal maintenance worker who worked in a separate unit from Cassidy, said he is convinced Cassidy targeted his victims, because he didn't hurt some people he encountered. He was pissed off at certain people. He was angry, and he took his vengeance out on very specific people. He shot people. He let others live, he said. Glenn Hendricks, chairman of the transit authority's board of directors, said he had no information about any tensions between Cassidy and the co-workers he shot. Cassidy fired 39 bullets. Camera footage showed him calmly walking from one building to another with his duffel bag to complete the slaughter, authorities said. It appears to us at this point that he said to one of the people there: I'm not going to shoot you,' Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said. And then he shot other people. So I imagine there was some kind of thought on who he wanted to shoot. Cassidy's ex-wife said he had talked about killing people at work more than a decade ago. Cecilia Nelms told The Associated Press that he used to come home from work resentful and angry over what he perceived as unfair assignments. He also spoke of hating his workplace when customs officers detained him after a 2016 trip to the Philippines, a Biden administration official told the AP. A Department of Homeland Security memo said Cassidy also had notes on how he hated the Valley Transportation Authority, according to the official. The official saw the memo and detailed its contents to the AP but was not authorized to speak publicly about the ongoing investigation. The Wall Street Journal first reported the memo. It doesn't say why he was stopped by customs officers. It said he had books about terrorism and fear and manifestos but when he was asked whether he had issues with people at work, he said no. The memo notes that Cassidy had a minor criminal history, citing a 1983 arrest in San Jose and charges of misdemeanor obstruction/resisting a peace officer. San Jose police said in a statement through Mayor Sam Liccardo's office that they sought an FBI history on Cassidy and found no record of federal arrests or convictions. Whatever this detention at the border was, it did not result in an arrest that showed up on his FBI criminal history, and it was not reported to SJPD, the statement said. (AP) SRY (Disclaimer: This story is auto-generated from a syndicated feed; only the image & headline may have been reworked by www.republicworld.com) The White House has said that it believes the United States government managed to largely defend against the latest massive cyberattack on federal agencies, think tanks, consultants, and non-governmental organizations blamed on Russian intelligence operatives. It also said that the spear-phishing campaign should not further deteriorate the relations between Moscow and Washington ahead of next months summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his American counterpart Joe Biden. As per reports, the officials had downplayed the cyberattack as basic pishing which involved the hackers used malware-laden emails to target several computer systems of the United States and foreign government agencies along with other groups. On late Thursday, Microsoft unveiled the hacking effort and said that it believed most of the emails were blocked by automated systems that marked them as spam. As of May 28, the company also noted that it was not seeing evidence of any significant number of compromised organizations at this time. Dont think itll create new point of tension As per the Associated Press, James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies has said that I dont think it'll create a new point of tension because the point of tension is already so big. He also said that This clearly has to be on the summit agenda. The president has to lay down some markers to make clear that the days when you people could do whatever you want are over. Further, when White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked about the impact on the Biden-Putin summit due to the latest hacking effort, she said, Were going to move forward with that. While the US has previously blamed Russia or Russia-based criminal groups for the hacking operations, it did not blame anyone for the latest incident. Microsoft attributed the latest cyberattack to the groups behind the SolarWinds campaign, in which the security of at least nine federal agencies and several dozens of private sector companies was breached through a contaminated software update. What Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt revealed in the blog post on May 27 as Another Nobelium Cyberattack, the hackers gained access to an email marketing account of the US Agency for International Development. Hence, masquerading as a government body, they targetted 3,000 email accounts at over 150 different organizations. Burt said, This wave of attacks targeted approximately 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations. While organizations in the United States received the largest share of attacks, targeted victims span at least 24 countries. At least a quarter of the targeted organizations were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work. Nobelium, originating from Russia, is the same actor behind the attacks on SolarWinds customers in 2020. These attacks appear to be a continuation of multiple efforts by Nobelium to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts, he added. Not just the cyberattack that rocked the United States government earlier this earlier, but a range of issues have clouded the upcoming June 16 Biden-Putin summit. One of the issues of disagreements between both nations remains the US denial to rejoin the Open Skies arms control pact, which Moscow has already termed as political mistake. Now even though the White House has claimed to largely fend off the cyber attack, the revelation of a new spy campaign so close to the leaders meet mounts pressure on the White House to ramp up efforts to reportedly confront Kremlin over the aggressive cyber activity. IMAGE: AP Note: We've recently updated our online systems. If you can't login please try resetting your password. You must login with an email address. If you don't have an email associated with your account email please call (208) 542-6777 for help. We get it. You don't want to see the ads. We'd just ask you to understand that those ads help us pay the bills and our reporters. Please, consider white-listing the Standard Journal in your ad-blocker or, even better, purchase a subscription so that you can help support quality local journalism. The head of Belarus's national air carrier has said the EU countries' imposition of airspace restrictions in response to Minsk's Ryanair diversion last week is "despicable," as fallout continues over what many regard as a "state hijacking" to nab a Belarusian dissident journalist. Many of Belarus's neighbors and some other Western states have barred Belavia from overflights since the May 23 incident, in which a dubious bomb threat was cited in ordering a MiG 29 fighter jet to divert an Athens-to-Vilnius flight to Minsk. Belavia director Ihar Charhinets said via Facebook that such moves exhibited "fascist perversity" and the gradual closure of air corridors showed "they are mocking us," according to TASS. Belavia is wholly state-owned with about 30 aircraft and flew to nearly 60 destinations before the bans were announced. Alyaksandr Lukashenka, who has dominated Belarus for nearly three decades and is fighting for his political life amid unprecedented protests since a reelection claim in August, keeps a tight grip on all of the country's key industries. The United States has already levied sanctions in response to the forced Ryanair diversion and has called Belarusian authorities' actions a "false pretense" to allow them to detain Raman Pratasevich, an opposition activist and journalist. Charhinets accused European governments of hastiness for imposing restrictions before the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) could investigate fully. "All this is happening before an investigation of the incident, for which there may be some guilty parties, but Belavia is definitely not among them," he wrote. "They punish innocent Belavia, without even beginning an investigation. It's despicable." The ICAO has said Belarus's forced diversion could have violated international air-travel rules under the so-called Chicago Convention. Many countries have also strongly advised airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace. The European Union is still weighing its official responses, with a chorus of calls for toughening existing sanctions on Belarus and more, travel-specific strictures including banning Belavia from EU airports. Based on reporting by Reuters The executive board of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) has voted to suspend Belarus's national broadcaster over "serious and quite exceptional concerns" that threaten freedom of expression and other "core values." The alliance of public-service media said on May 28 that it had been "closely monitoring the suppression of media freedom in Belarus" and Belteleradio's (BTRC) actions amid the crackdown on dissent since Alyaksandr Lukashenka's disputed claim of reelection in August. "In light of these exceptional developments, the Executive Board has no alternative other than to propose the suspension of BTRC's membership of the EBU," it said. Belteleradio has two weeks to respond before the suspension comes into effect, the EBU said. The group cited "particular alarm" at the recent "broadcast of interviews apparently obtained under duress." That was possibly a reference to the broadcast this week of separate videos showing a detained Belarusian journalist, Raman Pratasevich, and his Russian girlfriend, Sofia Sapega. Both were seized by Belarusian authorities on May 23 after the forced diversion of their Ryanair flight between Athens and Vilnius by a Belarusian fighter jet in what has been widely condemned as a "state hijacking." "The EBU has been closely monitoring the suppression of media freedom in Belarus and have consistently called on BTRC, as a member of the EBU, to uphold our core values of freedom of expression, independence, and accountability," the alliance said in a statement. "Since the disputed elections last summer, we have been campaigning for the protection of independent journalism and freedom of expression in the country," it said. "We have publicly supported journalists at BTRC who have been protesting against government interference. We have also been monitoring BTRC's coverage and have communicated our concerns to their management." The EBU is an alliance of public-service media organizations, with more than 100 member organizations operating nearly 2,000 television, radio, and online networks in 56 countries in Europe and beyond. In March, it excluded Belarus from the Eurovision Song Contest for failing to submit an entry that complied with the nonpolitical nature of the competition. Minsk denounced that Eurovision decision as "politically motivated." Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 15:17:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KINSHASA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations (UN) has expanded humanitarian relief to the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as the country has evacuated residents from Goma in case of another volcanic eruption. The humanitarian focus has been on people directly affected by the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo volcano on May 22 in the northeastern province of North Kivu, said the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) on Friday. However, with new mass displacement of people following a new evacuation order, the focus is widening, and new assessments will take place in areas where people have moved to, said the UN body. Thousands of people are displaced and on the move following a state evacuation order of 10 districts in Goma, capital of North Kivu, it said. Water, sanitation, and disease outbreak prevention are among the priorities, it added. Nearly 400,000 people were evacuated since Thursday from Goma and its surroundings to areas designated by authorities as a precaution against the risk of another eruption, according to DRC authorities. The evacuation came after the province's military governor, General Constant Ndima, warned about a possible fresh volcanic eruption following intense seismic activity in Goma at the foot of the Nyiragongo volcano, as well as in surrounding areas and neighboring Rwanda. "Current data of seismicity and soil deformation indicate the presence of magma under the urban area of Goma with an extension under Lake Kivu," the governor said, noting that another eruption might occur with very little or no warning signs. The authorities relocated the majority of Goma's residents to the city of Sake, while some other residents chose to cross the border into Rwanda's Gisenyi where the local government offers shelter for the affected people. The nearby town of Sake, 25 km northwest of Goma, is an area prone to cholera outbreaks where at least 19 suspected cases have been recorded in the last two weeks, said the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF). It warned that the chaos of the latest exodus will result in more children being separated from their families. The agency anticipates up to 280,000 children face displacement in the new evacuation. The eruption of the volcano on May 22 has killed at least 32 people, while about 2,000 homes have been destroyed, according to local authorities. Lava, ash and gas destroyed houses, schools and health structures, affected water and electricity supply systems, and cut off roads. Enditem Protests were held in several European capitals on May 29 as part of a global day of solidarity with the Belarus opposition called by exiled opposition leader Svyatlana Tsikhanouskaya. Protesters in Warsaw were joined by the parents of Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich, who was forcibly detained in Minsk last week together with his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, after a commercial jet that they were traveling in was diverted and forced to land in the Belarusian capital. "I'm calling on all EU countries and the United States to please help us free Raman and Sofia, as well as everyone else who has been imprisoned, Pratasevich's mother, Natallya, told the crowd of several hundred. The demonstrators shouted slogans against longtime Belarus strongman leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka and waved the red and white flag of the Belarusian opposition. Tsikanouskaya attended a similar demonstration in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. "We are here today to express our determination to continue the struggle for freedom. We will not back down," she told the crowd of about 150 people. About 100 people, mostly Belarusians, protested in the Ukrainian capital. "A North Korea is being built step by step," protester Syarhey Bulba said at the May 29 protest. The day of solidarity was held to mark the first anniversary of the arrest of Tsikhanouskaya's husband. Syarhey Tsikhanouski, a popular blogger, who had planned to run against Lukashenka in the countrys August 2020 presidential election. Protesters in Kyiv used their shoes to strike a portrait of Lukashenka as a tribute to Tsikhanouski's slogan, "Smash the cockroach." Earlier, Tsikhanouskaya called for a global day of solidarity with Belarus to mark the anniversary. She urged people to join a "global rally" on the day that marks the first anniversary of the start of nonviolent protests in Belarus and "the harshest repressions in our modern history." Tsikhanouskaya, who ran for president in her husband's place and became the main opposition candidate, said politicians and the Belarusian diaspora would participate in the global rally on May 29. "But the main thing is for Belarusians to support each other on this day in the country -- by all possible means: street rallies, symbols, letters to political prisoners," Tsikhanouskaya said on Telegram. She urged people everywhere to hold demonstrations, join virtual events, sign petitions, write letters to political prisoners in Belarus, post on social media, and light up the facades of buildings in red and white, the colors of the Belarusian opposition. "It's very important to send a clear signal of support to brave Belarusian people fighting for freedom, but also to urge the dictatorial regime to end violence, stop torture, release all political prisoners, and conduct a new free and fair presidential election," Tsikhanouskaya said in a statement issued by her office. Crisis In Belarus Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country's legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent. Belarus has been in political turmoil since authoritarian leader Lukashenka claimed victory in the August election, which the opposition claimed was rigged in his favor. Authorities in the country have responded to anti-government demonstrations with a violent crackdown, detaining tens of thousands of protesters. Hundreds have been tortured, according to human rights groups, and several protesters have died as a result of police actions. Lukashenka faces mounting pressure and new sanctions over the diversion on May 23 of a commercial flight and the arrest of Pratasevich and his girlfriend, who were taken off the flight after it landed in Minsk. European Union foreign ministers are discussing possible economic sanctions, and the United States on May 28 said it would reimpose sanctions on nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises on June 3. The United States is also coordinating with the EU and other partners to develop a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian government "associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23," White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement. The outgoing European Union high representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina has expressed regret that the international community "changed gears too quickly" in that Balkan state but expressed hope that a new German-led diplomatic offensive could soon help draw attention to Bosnia's plight. Valentin Inzko announced his resignation on May 27 and is expected to be followed in the job by Germany's Christian Schmidt from August 1. "Perhaps the international community made a mistake when it changed gears too quickly from what we had -- a robust, strong, international presence -- to domestic responsibility, domestic solutions," Inzko told RFE/RL's Balkan Service in an exclusive interview. Bosnia, which comprises a Bosniak and Croat federation and the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, is still governed under the 25-year-old Dayton peace agreements that helped cease ethnically fueled violence following the breakup of Yugoslavia. The country faces an array of problems that arise from parallel structures of regional and executive power, as well as a major drive for independence by the leader of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik. Inzko has served as the implementer of civilian safeguards set out in the cease-fire in Bosnia for 12 years. He said he had hoped on his arrival that the "energy that ruled here for the first 10 or 12 years would be utilized." "Of course, I expected faster progress," Inzko said. Inzko came into the high-representative post with a mandate to wrap up its operations. But lingering ethnic resentments including many built into its governance, centrifugal forces sometimes encouraged by neighboring states, and corruption and political paralysis have badly hampered the running of the country. Inzko has publicly challenged a push in some quarters to shut down the Office of the High Representative (OHR) "as soon as possible." Inzko told RFE/RL that "if a shutdown were good, I'd shut down the OHR tomorrow," but unfortunately "the international community, especially I personally, have seen it get worse and worse every year." He cited Dodik's push for a referendum on Republika Srpska's possible secession from Bosnia. "Mr. Dodik probably doesn't want a state," Inzko said, adding a list of complaints the Bosnian Serb leader has directed at the judiciary and the European security mission in Bosnia, EUFOR. "He doesn't want positive things and he wants everything to be according to his taste and preference. It cannot [be], because there are international laws and conventions and Mr. Dodik must abide by them." Inzko cited progress since the early years after the Dayton agreements, when Bosnia had no border force, no legitimate currency of its own, "nine ministries instead of three" to represent rival institutions, three flags, three anthems, and other issues. He said the international community was present at the time "in a very robust way" that has since flagged. "That phase needs to be refreshed, so that now this phase of Mr. Schmidt's is...a mix of the first and second phases," Inzko said. "There will absolutely be a [diplomatic] offensive," Inzko predicted. "I think the offensive is already under way." He cited Schmidt's talks with senior U.S., German, and EU officials, as well as conversations with regional leaders. "[German Chancellor] Angela Merkel herself said that Bosnia-Herzegovina will now be more on the agenda at a higher level, to return [Bosnia] to the agenda," Inzko said. But, he said, "there are conflicts that are much bigger, and some are older, but they are all bigger than Bosnia-Herzegovina" and "when people wake up in the morning in Washington or Berlin, Bosnia-Herzegovina is not in the foreground for them." "This is why we much be grateful to Germany, Mr. Schmidt, for returning Bosnia-Herzegovina to the international agenda," Inzko said. Bosnia is populated by about 3.8 million people -- about half of them Bosniaks, around 30 percent Serbs, and around 15 percent Croats. Inzko said ongoing forces tugging at Bosnia's unity and disputes over certain sides' choices to elevate war criminals to hero status were evidence that "there are still people living in the past, who glorify the wrong people." Based on an interview by Dzenana Halimovic MOSCOW -- Dozens of Russian diplomats and their families have left the Czech Republic after Prague ordered their expulsion in April. A flight carrying 54 Russian Embassy employees and their families left Prague on May 29 for Moscow, according to the Russian state news agency TASS. In all, Prague has ordered 63 diplomats to leave the country. The remaining Russian diplomats are expected to leave the Czech Republic on May 31. It was the largest expulsion of diplomats in the history of relations between the two countries. The diplomatic row began in April, when the Czech government accused Russian intelligence agents of carrying out two explosions at a military arms depot in the eastern part of the Czech Republic in October 2014. Two Czech citizens were killed in those explosions, which Prague says were aimed at destroying munitions that had been sold to Ukraine. At the time, Prague ordered the expulsion of 18 Russian diplomats, saying they had used their diplomatic status as a cover for intelligence work. Moscow responded by expelling 20 Czech diplomats. On April 22, the two sides agreed that their diplomatic representations would be brought to strict parity, with each mission comprising seven diplomats and 25 technical employees. By the end of May, the Czech Republic must dismiss 79 Russian citizens who have been working for the Czech diplomatic mission in Russia. The Russian government on May 14 officially declared the Czech Republic and the United States to be "unfriendly" states. Officials from both countries say Indonesian authorities have released an Iranian-flagged tanker seized four months ago over the suspected illegal transfer of oil. The May 28 move reportedly followed an Indonesian court ruling earlier in the week that the vessel, the MT Horse, could be released and its captain put under a two-year probation without a fine. A spokesman for the Indonesian coast guard, Wisnu Pramandita, announced the release. Iran has been accused of disguising the destination of its oil transfers since the United States reimposed harsh sanctions on its exports after Washington withdrew from a major nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers in 2018. Jakarta said after it seized the MT Horse in late January that it suspected the tanker of an illegal transfer in Indonesian waters. Iranian officials described the issue as "technical." The MT Horse last year reportedly delivered more than 2 million barrels of condensate, a mixture of light liquid hydrocarbons similar to a light crude oil, to Venezuela, which is also a target of U.S. trade sanctions. U.S. and Iranian officials are currently engaged in indirect talks, along with other signatories, to revive the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action, which placed checks on Iran's disputed nuclear program in exchange for relief from U.S. and other international sanctions. Based on reporting by Reuters NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says he thinks it is likely that Belarusian authorities organized the diversion last week of an Irish airliner to Minsk with ally Russia. The military alliance leader was speaking to Sky News on May 28 aboard a British aircraft carrier during NATO's largest military exercises of the year. "We know the very close relationship between Russia and Belarus, and therefore it's hard to believe that the regime in Minsk could do something like this without any kind of coordination with Russia," Stoltenberg said. Alyaksandr Lukashenka has relied heavily on Moscow's support since a fiercely disputed reelection bid in August 2020 that sparked massive public protests and a fierce crackdown on dissent. A Ryanair flight was diverted during a flight between Greece and Lithuania on May 23 after Lukashenka ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to accompany the aircraft because Belarusian authorities said they had received information there was a bomb aboard the plane. No bomb was found when the aircraft was searched on the ground in Minsk, but Lukashenka critic and journalist Raman Pratasevich and a Russian friend aboard the flight were detained. The United States and others believe the incident was staged as a "false pretense" to snatch Pratasevich. Many governments and rights groups have demanded Pratasevich's release, and Belarusian opposition leaders have expressed fears for his life. Lukashenka met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on May 28, where the Russian leader described international reaction to the airliner's diversion as an "outburst of emotions." Washington has imposed fresh Belarusian sanctions and is coordinating with the European Union and other partners to impose other penalties on Minsk. Many governments have advised their airlines to avoid Belarusian airspace. EU foreign-policy chief Josep Borrell warned on May 28 there was a risk of an escalation after Moscow denied access to two European carriers that skirted Belarus en route to Moscow. Belarusian opposition supporters held a rally in central Warsaw on May 29, almost a week after Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, were arrested after a commercial airliner they were on was forced to land in Minsk. His parents addressed the rally, asking the international community to help free their son and all political prisoners in Belarus. Belarusian strongman Alyaksandr Lukashenka was in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi for a second day of meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The talks on May 29 were described as informal by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who said the day before that the summit would last just one day. Peskov also told journalists that Russia was prepared to send the second $500 million tranche of a $1.5 billion loan to Belarus "in the immediate future." Crisis In Belarus Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country's legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent. Lukashenka has been under intense domestic and international pressure since a disputed presidential election in August 2020 that has been widely denounced as falsified. The election, which gave Lukashenka a sixth presidential term, prompted mass demonstrations and an often brutal crackdown by his government. Russia has been Lukashenka's main ally throughout the events, providing political, technical, and financial support to the Belarusian government. Earlier this month, Minsk scrambled a fighter jet to divert a Ryanair commercial passenger jet and force it to land in the Belarusian capital, citing a purported bomb threat. Although no bomb was found, authorities in Minsk detained journalist Raman Pratasevich, a prominent opposition activist. During the first day of the Sochi talks on May 28, Putin dismissed the Western reaction to the flights diversion as "an outburst of emotions." With reporting by TASS Senior male Turkmen officials and managers of major private companies have been ordered to shave their heads and wear a traditional Turkmen skullcap as signs of mourning following the death last month of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov's father. Myalikguly Berdymukhammedov, a retired police lieutenant colonel who held positions in the Turkmen government during Soviet times, died on April 18 at the age of 88. Women working in state agencies must wear mourning shawls trimmed in black, RFE/RL correspondents say. The order lasts for 40 days. Following his father's death, Berdymukhammedov did not appear in public for seven days, missing the celebration of National Horse Day on April 23. The president's son, Serdar, who serves as deputy prime minister, hosted the celebrations. In more recent days, the president has appeared at official events in mourning garb and traveling in a black car, although he has previously ordered only the use of white cars in the country. The government has reportedly been collecting money from state-sector works to pay for various commemorations. The United States will impose more sanctions on Belarus after the diversion of a commercial flight to Minsk and the arrest of a journalist on board. The moves include reimposing full sanctions against nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises on June 3, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on May 28 in a statement outlining the measures. "We take these measures, together with our partners and allies, to hold the regime accountable for its actions and to demonstrate our commitment to the aspirations of the people of Belarus," Psaki said. The United States is also coordinating with the EU and other partners to develop a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian government "associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23," Psaki said. Belarus's forced diversion of the Ryanair flight on May 23 was done "under false pretenses," she said, adding that the flight, which was traveling between two member states of the European Union, and the subsequent removal and arrest of Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich "are a direct affront to international norms." The nine state-owned Belarusian enterprises that will be hit with sanctions effective June 3 had previously been granted relief under a series of general licenses by the Treasury Department. As a result of the move, U.S. persons will be prohibited from engaging in transactions with these entities, their property, or their interests in property, Psaki said. In addition, the State Department has issued a warning to U.S. citizens urging them not to travel to Belarus, and the Federal Aviation Administration has issued a notice warning U.S. airlines to exercise extreme caution when considering flying in Belarusian airspace. The Ryanair flight was diverted after authoritarian leader Alyaksandr Lukashenka ordered a MiG-29 fighter jet to accompany the aircraft because Belarusian authorities had received information there was a bomb on board the plane. No bomb was found when the aircraft was searched on the ground in Minsk. Psaki said the diversion of the flight took place amid an escalating wave of repression by the Lukashenka regime "against the aspirations of the people of Belarus for democracy and human rights." Crisis In Belarus Read our coverage as Belarusians continue to demand the resignation of Alyaksandr Lukashenka amid a brutal crackdown on protesters. The West refuses to recognize him as the country's legitimate leader after an August 9 election considered fraudulent. She called on the government to allow a "credible international investigation" into the diversion of the flight, to immediately release all political prisoners, and to enter into a "genuine political dialogue with the leaders of the democratic opposition and civil society groups that leads to the conduct of free and fair presidential elections under OSCE auspices and monitoring." She said the United States will continue to advocate for action against the Lukashenka regime for its "affront to international norms and undermining of democracy and human rights," she said. Lukashenka, who met in the Russian Black Sea resort city of Sochi with Russian President Vladimir Putin on May 28, said the reaction by Western countries to the incident had been an "outburst of emotions." With reporting by AFP and Reuters The White House has suggested that government agencies largely rebuffed the latest cyberassault on U.S. targets by suspected Russian intelligence operatives and downplayed adversarial tensions ahead of a summit next month between the U.S. and Russian presidents. On May 27, Microsoft said hacking group Nobelium, originating from Russia, had launched an assault on government agencies and think tanks using an e-mail marketing account of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). AP quoted unnamed administration officials on May 28 as describing the attacks on USAID, think tanks, and other organizations as "basic phishing," in which e-mails are used to try to embed malware in computer systems. Asked whether the hacking discovery would affect the Biden-Putin summit, White House principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "We're going to move forward with that." U.S. President Joe Biden is slated to hold his first summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin since taking office in January in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 16. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters this week that Moscow did not have any detailed information from Microsoft on the attack and that it so far was not a topic on the summit agenda. The "wave of attacks" targeted about 3,000 e-mail accounts at more than 150 different organizations, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post. Burt said Russian-based Nobelium was the same actor that was behind a major attack last year on SolarWinds customers, including U.S. government bodies. The SolarWinds attack compromised at least nine government agencies and hundreds of private companies, and was functioning from 2019 before being detected late last year. This latest effort appeared to have been less stealthy, experts have said. At least one-quarter of the organizations targeted in the latest cyberattack are involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work, and the targeted victims are in at least 24 countries, Burt said without saying whether any of the attempts led to successful intrusions. Most appeared to have been blocked by spam guards, Microsoft said on May 28, adding that it was "not seeing evidence of any significant number of compromised organizations at this time." A USAID spokesperson said that agency was still investigating the possible intrusion. The Biden administration's proposed $6 trillion budget includes $750 million to boost cyberdefenses at nine government agencies hit by the SolarWinds hack that was blamed by U.S. and British officials on Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The SolarWinds hack gave the perpetrators access to thousands of companies and government offices that used that company's software. This month, Russia's spy chief denied responsibility for the SolarWinds cyberattack but said he was "flattered" by the accusations that Russian foreign intelligence was behind such a sophisticated hack. With reporting by AP Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 16:52:53|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) National Committee, presides over a bi-weekly seminar held by the CPPCC National Committee in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Shen Hong) BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese political advisors have offered their suggestions on pushing forward the high-quality development of China's museum sector during a consultation session in Beijing. The biweekly session, organized by the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), China's top political advisory body, was presided over by Wang Yang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the CPPCC National Committee. At the session held on Friday, Wang called for people-centered approach and great efforts to remove institutional barriers to advance the high-quality development of Chinese museums in the new era, so as to better meet the ever-growing cultural needs of the people. A total of 11 political advisors and special representatives invited to the meeting put forward their suggestions, while 35 political advisors voiced their opinions via a mobile platform. The participants offered suggestions to optimize the layout of China's museum sector and address the existing circumstances featuring lack of special museums with industrial, regional and historical features and greater number of general, old-fashioned museums. They also suggested efforts to boost the differentiated and professional development of museums including the non-state-owned, university-administered, and rural museums. The political advisors urged enhanced research capability of Chinese museums, the development of tech-savvy and smart museums and organization of more online exhibitions for the public. They emphasized the role of Chinese museums in public education, especially for primary and secondary school students. The political advisors also called for further improving the mechanism of transferring and sharing excavated relics, granting more autonomy to museums through institutional reform and innovation, and improving the system of talent cultivation involving the museum sector. Enditem Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 18:31:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close SHENYANG, May 29 (Xinhua) -- All 413 members of the eighth Chinese peacekeeping force to Mali have been awarded the United Nations Peace Medal of Honor, in recognition of their outstanding contributions to peacekeeping operations. Since its deployment in July 2020, the Chinese peacekeeping force has successfully accomplished a series of missions assigned by the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali, including armed patrols, constructions and medical support. The eighth Chinese peacekeeping force to Mali consists of a guard detachment, an engineer detachment and a medical detachment. The medal award ceremony was held at the camps of the three detachments separately due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem Rocky Mount, NC (27804) Today Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy skies this evening will become partly cloudy after midnight. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. FILE - In this Saturday, May 8, 2021, file photo, Gov. Ron DeSantis, of Florida, watches the foursome matches during the Walker Cup golf tournament, in Juno Beach, Fla. DeSantis is pushing the Biden administration to approve a program he says would save tens of millions of dollars by importing drugs from Canada. Pandemic 2020 Receive the most important developments on the Conavirus (COVID-19) in your inbox every day. All stories linked in the newsletter are free to access. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:05:21|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Indonesia has released an Iranian oil tanker seized by the country's coast guards earlier this year, Iran's state TV reported Saturday. "The MT Horse, belonging to the National Iranian Tanker Company that had been detained in Indonesian waters since Jan. 24, was released on Friday," said the report. The vessel was released after a legal battle and efforts by senior Iranian officials and "has now resumed its mission," it added. In January, Indonesia announced that its coast guard had "seized the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and the Panamanian-flagged MT Freya vessels for suspected illegal oil transfer in the country's waters." Enditem Peterborough - Eva H. Sacharuk died, peacefully, at her home in Peterborough, N.H. on June 1, 2021. Before moving to Peterborough in 2019, she was a long-time resident of Wenham, Massachusetts where she raised her family with her husband Serge since 1960. Eva is survived by her loving husban Sanford, NC (27330) Today Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. D.G. Martin grew up in Davidson where his father was college president, graduated there, and has served as college trustee. He served as vice president of public affairs and chief lobbyist for the UNC System and lives in Chapel Hill. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:23:37|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TEHRAN, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Iranian President Hassan Rouhani congratulated his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad on his victory in a recent presidential election, Tasnim News Agency reported Saturday. By high turnout in the presidential election, the Syrian people have taken a major step toward determining the fate and prosperity of their country, Rouhani was quoted as saying. The Iranian president regarded relations between the two countries as "friendly and brotherly" and expressed confidence that this relationship will further grow in the years to come. On Thursday, Assad won his fourth seven-year term in the 2021 presidential race. Enditem WOONSOCKET, R.I. (AP) CVS is offering luxury vacations, cruises, concert tickets, a Super Bowl trip and other prizes to eligible customers who get a coronavirus vaccination at one of its pharmacies, the company announced Thursday. CVS is joining a growing number of businesses and governments offering incentives ranging from a free beer or doughnut to a $1 million prize for people to get a shot. Woonsocket, Rhode Island-based CVS is partnering with Norwegian Cruise Line, Procter & Gamble, Unilever and other companies in the #OneStepCloser sweepstakes promotion that starts Tuesday and lasts six weeks. The company has already administered more than 17 million doses, but is looking to overcome hesitancy by offering prizes that are a reminder of activities that are possible once vaccinated, the company said. Getting as much of the population fully vaccinated will bring us one step closer to all the things weve missed during the past 14 months, and keep our country moving in the right direction, Dr. Kyu Rhee, CVSs senior vice president and chief medical officer said in a statement. All customers ages 18 and over who have received a vaccination or are registered to receive a vaccination from CVS are eligible to enter. ___ HEALTH DEPARTMENT DATA The Rhode Island Department of Health on Thursday reported nearly 80 new confirmed coronavirus cases but no virus-related deaths. The new cases were out of slightly more than 8,000 test results returned the prior day, a positivity rate of less than 1%. The number of people in the hospital with the disease dropped to 65 according to the latest data, down from 70 the previous day. The number of people fully vaccinated in the state has now topped 544,000. The seven-day rolling average of daily new cases in Rhode Island has dropped over the past two weeks, from about 151 on May 11 to about 120 on Tuesday, according to Johns Hopkins. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:24:38|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Alexia Vlachou ATHENS, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The Port of Piraeus in Greece has installed a first set of smart solar benches accessible for people with disabilities. Piraeus Mayor Yiannis Moralis presented the two smart "infokiosk" benches, which are part of the city's plan to install several pieces of smart solar urban furniture in the coming months. The city's aim is to offer residents and tourists a tech-friendly place where they can relax and interact, he said. This is also the first time a municipality in Greece gives people with disabilities the opportunity to charge their electric vehicles for free in an open public space, he noted. "Our aim is to monitor the use (of these smart solar benches) and to expand this network. We live in a new era. We need to incorporate modern solutions. We want to be a smart city," Moralis said. Drawing on the smart city concept, the benches have four built-in USB (universal serial bus) ports for charging electric bicycles, electric wheelchairs and phones. They also provide wireless internet (Wi-Fi) access. The autonomous benches' built-in environmental sensors, powered by integrated solar panels, collect and share real-time information, such as weather forecasts. The benches are vandal-proof and have an anti-graffiti finish. "You can charge your mobile phone, you can connect to Wi-Fi, it is very practical," Dimitris, a resident of Piraeus, told Xinhua. Open to embracing new technologies, Piraeus has incorporated a series of initiatives in its digital development strategy -- an 80-million-euro (97.5 million U.S. dollars) investment plan that runs until the end of 2024 -- in order to make the city as smart as possible, according to a press release. (1 euro = 1.22 U.S. dollars) Enditem SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) Democrat-drawn legislative district maps to govern elections in the Illinois General Assembly for the next decade won legislative approval Friday after a day of Republican acrimony and opposition from Democratic-leaning community groups who say they've been ignored and haven't gotten clear answers about how the lines were drawn. The next stop is the desk of Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who once promised to veto maps drawn by politicians. The House voted 71-45 along party lines Friday night after 2 1/2 hours of debate to approve new district lines required after each decennial Census to reflect population shifts. It followed a similarly partisan Senate vote, 41-18, in favor of the maps drawn outside of the public eye but which Democrats contend were influenced by opinions voiced during 50 public hearings since April. All eyes are now on Pritzker, who as a Democratic candidate for governor in 2018 promised to reject a political product, opting for an independent, nonpartisan commission to create the districts. But Pritzker this month backed away from the pledge, saying only that he would nix an unfair map. Even though this is the final week of the General Assembly's spring session, Pritzker has not appeared publicly for days. Gov. Pritzker, speaking directly to you: Veto these maps, because as we proved today, they are (politically) drawn, said Springfield Rep. Tim Butler, the House Redistricting Committees ranking Republican. Republicans and grassroots activist groups have decried the process concluded without benefit of official U.S. Census numbers, which have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats contend they must be completed by June 25, which is simply the date on which they lose complete control of the work. The people deserve better than bad data, fake deadlines and sham hearings, said Sen. Sue Rezin, a Morris Republican. During hastily called final hearings of the Redistricting Committees in both House and Senate, Republicans slammed the House redistricting leader, Rep. Elizabeth Lisa Hernandez of Chicago, after she acknowledged she didn't know until Thursday night all the sources of data that were used six days after the first version of the map was sprung on the public. Even then, she struggled to explain what numbers were mined or how, other than pointing to the Census' American Community Survey, an ongoing review of changes occurring in communities, which critics maintain are not suitable for drawing lines. She added that input from 50 public hearings and election results were sources but was unable to elaborate, and repeatedly said she did not have a list of individuals who put lines on paper. Despite the late notice of the hearings, representatives of several interest groups were able to tune in to complain about being left out. Until you send a message that inclusion counts, its just talk..., Dilara Sayeed of the Illinois Muslim Civic Coalition said via video conference. We cant move forward. We cant have 10 more years of this. Political lines must be redrawn after each decennial Census to reflect changes in population and ensure protection of voters rights. They must be compact, contiguous, and of equal population, among other things. Critics wonder why the map can't wait for release of official U.S. Census numbers, which won't be available until late summer. A consultant who's on contract with House and Senate Democrats for $200,000 says the ACS numbers from before the 2010 Census varied only slightly from the official count. The constitution requires the Legislature currently controlled by Democratic super-majorities to produce a map by June 30. After that, the project goes to a bipartisan commission. Each time that's occurred since 1980, the panel has deadlocked and the name of the partisan tie-breaker is drawn from a hat. During House debate, several Republicans called out Democrats for previously espousing independent map-making, reading from news articles and newspaper endorsement questionnaires their pledges to take politics out of the process. Democratic Rep. Will Guzzardi cried foul, contending it's not inconsistent to say, I believe the system should be different and nonetheless, Im participating under the rules as they are today.' Virtually nothing was said about the cartography before the first map popped out late May 21. A revision appeared late Thursday which Hernandez maintained was absolutely influenced by public input. GOP Rep. Tom Demmer of Dixon claimed there was an intentional effort to withhold details from taxpayers, adding, It makes a mockery of this process. Republicans also criticized the surprise remap produced this week of state Supreme Court districts, the first revision in 60 years. The GOP claims it's because Democrats fear losing their majority on the high court. The House approved that map Friday afternoon. ___ Follow Political Writer John OConnor at https://twitter.com/apoconnor MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) The pace of COVID-19 vaccinations in Alabama has fallen to a level not seen since the earliest days of the immunization campaign even though less than 30% of the state's population is fully vaccinated. Statistics from the Alabama Department of Public Health showed Friday that the number of people getting shots in recent days was similar to the rate in January, when vaccine supply was still very limited. Officials are worried that large numbers of people are simply refusing to get shots, meaning the threat of the new coronavirus will remain higher than necessary. Its very distressing because we have vaccine and we have it in every corner of Alabama, said Dr. Karen Landers, assistant state health officer. Several vaccination sites have closed because of the lack of demand, and some areas have considered turning down vaccine shipments. In Opelika, East Alabama Medical Center said very low demand and plenty of vaccine supply meant a community clinic would close after giving patients a second round of shots on June 14. With about 28% of its population fully immunized, Alabama's vaccination rate is better only than that in neighboring Mississippi. With roughly 11,140 people dead of the illness caused by the new coronavirus, the state's overall death rate from COVID-19 is the eighth worst in the nation, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Over the past two weeks, the rolling average number of daily new cases in Alabama has decreased by 134, a decline of about 33%. But the state's rate of 210 new cases per 100,000 people over the last two weeks was second-worst nationally. The state has ended its mandatory face mask rule and many businesses have returned to near normal, but it wasn't immediately clear whether those changes led to the high rate of new cases. JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Two vaccines made by Chinas Sinopharm appear safe and effective against COVID-19, according to a study published in a medical journal. Scientists had been waiting for more details about the two vaccines, even though they already are being used in many countries, and one recently won the backing of the World Health Organization for emergency use. The report, published online in the Journal of the American Medical Association, concluded the two vaccines are about 73% and 78% effective, as Sinopharm has previously claimed. Researchers from Sinopharm and its local partners in the Middle East say the trial involved around 40,380 participants with the company's two vaccines -- one developed by the Wuhan Institute of Biological Products and the other by the Beijing Institute of Biological Products and a placebo. The trial was carried out in four countries Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan. However, the study provided data for just Bahrain and the UAE. Theres nothing very surprising. Its consistent with what they have claimed previously, but it does not completely eliminate the doubts about Sinopharm, said Jin Dong-yan, a medical professor at the University of Hong Kong who was not involved with the study. He raised doubts about how protective the vaccine was based on a recent surge of cases in the island nation of Seychelles, which had vaccinated a large majority of its population with the Sinopharm vaccine. The study, performed mostly in younger men, had little information about the vaccines effectiveness against severe disease. Some experts also expressed concern at the shortage of female participants, with nearly 85% being male. "Its important to make sure you have tested it in enough women to be able to start seeing any possible safety concerns," said Ashley St. John, an associate professor at Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore. A spokesperson for the company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The vaccines, both of which are made with inactivated viruses, have already been given to millions of people across the world. The World Health Organization cleared the Beijing Institute of Biological Products' shot for emergency use in early May, making it the first Chinese vaccine to receive the certification. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in April that China has provided vaccines to more than 100 countries, although it has not identified them. While China has six vaccines in use, the majority of its exports come from two companies: Sinopharm and Sinovac. ___ Wu reported from Taipei, Taiwan. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institutes Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. With clear, sunny skies and highs of 80 degrees in the forecast, this Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of the summer season in Seattle. And with state on track to reopen fully by June 30 or sooner if at least 70% of people 16 and older get at least one dose of the vaccine there is reason to be cautiously optimistic that this summer will be much better than the last. While some large-scale events like Bumbershoot remain postponed for the time being, other smaller events are chugging along as planned. From live music concerts (remember those?) to outdoor festivals, keep reading for 11 events and activities you can get out and do this season. Guido Mieth/Getty Images Dine like a champion at Lumen Field Lumen Field's popular Field to Table dining series will be returning in early June, featuring some of the city's most premier chefs. Foodies will get to enjoy an impressive four-course meal from award-winning chefs like Musang's Mel Miranda, Jerk Shack's Trey Lamont and Osteria la Spiga's Sabrina Tinsley in a one-of-a-kind venue where the likes of Russell Wilson play. Jacobo Zanella/Getty Images Shop at a farmers market Grab your reusable totes and masks: Seattle's neighborhood farmers markets are set to reopen for their spring/summer season, welcoming back the warmer days with local produce and goods. The Magnolia Farmers Market opens on June 1 while the Lake City Farmers Market opens on July 1. Both markets will run until September. The Phinney Farmers Market will remain closed for the year. Warren C. via Yelp Ride the slides at Wild Waves Wild Waves Theme and Water Park in Federal Way is set to reopen on June 18, giving families with stir crazy kids the opportunity to see their friends and let loose on rides and slides after a year of social distancing and remote school. Since the park is operating at reduced capacity, reservations are required in advance and can be made online. Courtesy Edmonds Spring Festival Pick up local goodies at a craft festival Seattle's indie craft shows are also back for the 2021 season. Urban Craft Uprising will be returning for the Edmonds Summer Fest on July 24 and later for the Tacoma Summer Fest on Aug. 7-8, showcasing hundreds of local artists and makers at each show. It's like Christmas in July for those who love handmade soaps, candles and the like. cgbaldauf/Getty Images/iStockphoto Visit lavender farms in Sequim If you missed out on frolicking through fields of tulips and daffodils earlier in the spring, don't worry: the Olympic Peninsula's fragrant lavender fields actually bloom later in the summer, making for an excellent day trip. While the popular Lavender Festival won't be going on as usual during the third weekend in July, Sequim's lavender farmers are still welcoming guests for field tours and U-Pick lavender opportunities, and to visit their gift shops filled with plenty of delicately scented delights. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images See the sights of Seattle on an Argosy Cruises boat tour Take a sightseeing cruise around Puget Sound with Argosy Cruises, which resumed operations last week just in time for the summer. The one-hour Harbor Cruises will run Friday through Sunday and the Locks Cruises through the Ballard Locks will run Saturday and Sunday. The tours are educational, but also provide excellent photo-ops of the city. MIKE URBAN/seattlepi.com file photo Catch a live show at Woodland Park Zoo's ZooTunes Live music is set to take center stage for the first time in over a year at Woodland Park Zoo's BECU ZooTunes summer concert series starting in July. By partnering with radio station KEXP, the zoo is focusing on hosting local Washington musicians this year with artists like The Posies, Naked Giants and Polyrhythmics set to perform. Tickets are only available online and are on sale now. Luis Alvarenga/Getty Images Watch a movie at a drive-in theater Probably one of the best business pivots brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic was the revival of drive-in movie theaters. Many around the Evergreen State are carrying on well into the summer to continue social distancing, including Bellevue's Vasa Park Resort Drive-In Theater and Oak Harbor's Blue Fox Drive-In. Bob Pool/Getty Images Head to the coast for a Kite Festival After going on hiatus in 2020, the Washington State International Kite Festival is making a colorful return to the skies this summer in Long Beach from Aug. 16-22, giving city dwellers an excuse to head to the scenic coast. JOSHUA TRUJILLO/SEATTLEPI.COM Eat scones at the Evergreen State Fair Monroe's popular 11-day fair is coming back this summer with the theme "Back in the Saddle Again Open for Fun in 2021." Now in its 112th year, this Snohomish County tradition is full of livestock, concerts, rides and of course, flaky Fisher fair scones smothered in jam. The fair will run from Aug. 26 through Sep. 6, closing for one day on Sep. 1. "Snohomish County welcomes some celebration after a year of struggle and sacrifice," County Executive Dave Somers said in a news release. "While the Evergreen State Fair may be a bit different this year, were looking forward to getting everyone 'Back in the Saddle Again!'" Westend61/Getty Images/Westend61 Fill buckets of berries Summer's abundance brings the return of berries , and plenty of local growers will be hosting U-Pick farms for cherries, blueberries and raspberries while they are in season. Bremerton's Blackberry Festival is also returning this year from Sep. 4-6, giving residents another chance to pick and eat berries to their heart's content. Posted by Campus Ministry on Sunday, May 30, 2021 at 12:09 PM PDT May 30, 2021 View Scripture Readings On this important national holiday, Memorial Day, we reverently remember those who served our country in times of war and paid the ultimate price for that service they paid with their very lives. It is heartbreaking to think about the sacrifice of those individuals as well as the unending sacrifice of their families. Mine is one of these families as we still mourn the loss of our cousin who died in Vietnam. It is our call as Christians to remember those who have died in military service to America, keep their families in prayer, and serve our veterans with compassion. Strangely, the solemnity of this national holiday is juxtaposed with the joyful nature of the liturgical holiday that we are observing Trinity Sunday. Trinity Sunday celebrates the triune God we worship, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; in more contemporary and inclusive language, we might refer to the three persons of the Trinity as Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer. In Seattle University Ignatian Silent Retreats, we oftentimes describe the Trinity as perfect mutuality of divine belovedness, which spilled over into creation. This belovedness is what created you and me, so it is our very essence! We are meant to work as co-creators with God, also pouring this divine love into the world a world that is clearly deeply troubled and in need of healing. The fact that we are currently observing Memorial Day brings this unfortunate reality into high relief. How do we recognize the spirit of slavery, as St. Paul describes it both as individuals and as a global community which causes us to live as communities of fear? It is this same spirit within us that allows us to forget our interconnectedness with one another and the planet, which makes war and violence possible. However, St. Paul says that we are all siblings, children of this living, loving God and as such, we are joint heirs with Christ, rejoicing in the glory of Gods reign and our freedom from fear! This is the great Christian paradox, that we are living in Gods reign, which is both present in the here and now and which is also still woefully incomplete. Particularly on solemn days like this one, we must live as Gods adopted children, bringing peace, love, and compassion into this world that still aches with conflict and division. It is my prayer that Jesuss words reassure us today as they must have reassured his disciples. Christ is with us until the end, always summoning us to be creative belovedness in this world and working with us to bring the Trinitarian reality of love and peace to fruition. On this day and every day may the souls of all our departed soldiers rest in peace and may their families experience the peace of God, the love of their communities, and the support of all Americans. ~ Words by Erin Beary Andersen, Associate Director of Campus Ministry London, KY (40741) Today Isolated thunderstorms this evening. Skies will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%.. Tonight Isolated thunderstorms this evening. Skies will become partly cloudy after midnight. Low 64F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 60%. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:35:13|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close by Saud Abu Ramadan, Emad Drimly RAMALLAH, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has recently been brought back to the global fore from several years of marginalization, especially during and after a 11-day-long round of the probably heaviest fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip's ruler Hamas since 2014, according to Palestinian analysts. The analysts agreed in separate remarks they made to Xinhua that a new path that leads to a comprehensive solution based on the vision of the two-state solution on the 1967 borders is in preparation with the mounting tension between Israelis and Palestinians. On May 15, the sixth day of the Israel-Hamas fighting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden. Before long, the foreign ministers of Germany, the United States, Egypt, Jordan and Britain successively visited Ramallah and held talks with Abbas in hopes of de-escalating the regional tension and bringing the peace talks back on track. Nabil Shaath, a diplomatic aide to President Abbas, told Xinhua that the Palestinian leadership has stressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken the necessity of ending the political vacuum that led to the growing tension in the region. "We believe the United States has to pressure Israel to show goodwill gestures about a real opportunity that Washington can use together with Arab and international states to resume the peace process which had been stalled for seven years," Shaath said. The current high tension since April, as most previous cases, started in East Jerusalem as Israel insisted on evicting 28 Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and then expanded to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, until Hamas fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem on May 10 that led to an immediate major air offensive on Gaza from Israel. In the West Bank, 30 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli soldiers during clashes. In the Gaza Strip, 255 were killed and 1,948 injured in the intensive airstrikes carried out by Israeli fighter jets. Abdulmajid Sweilem, a political analyst from the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the Palestinian issue mainly includes the status of Jerusalem, settlement expansion in the West Bank and the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. "The latest event leads to the unification of the Palestinian people in an unprecedented way over the past two decades," Sweilem noted. "No one under this unity can withdraw from calling for a just and fair solution based on international legitimacy." Former U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017 and then presented a so-called peace plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, better known as The Deal of the Century. The Palestinians categorically rejected his deal and severed ties with the United States. Meanwhile, Abbas presented a peace initiative before the United Nations Security Council, which included a call for holding an international peace conference. However, his initiative was opposed by Israel and the United States. The last Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, sponsored by the United States, continued for nine months and broke down in the spring of 2014. "There is now a significant change in the attitudes of the United States, which starts to adopt the vision of the two-state solution abandoned by the former administration of President Trump for four years," Haytham Daraghma, a political analyst from Ramallah, told Xinhua. "Following the mounting tension in the Palestinian territories, Washington reached a conclusion that it is impossible to bypass Palestinians' legitimate right of establishing an independent state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he noted. Enditem Thank you for reading! You have reached your 30-day limit of free access to SentinelSource.com, The Keene Sentinels website. If you would like to read two more articles for free at this time, please register for an account by clicking the sign up button below. We hope you find The Sentinels coverage of the Monadnock Region valuable. We rely on our subscribers to bring you strong local journalism and hope you will consider supporting our work by taking advantage of this special subscription offer here. Keene, NH (03431) Today Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies this evening will become overcast overnight. Low 52F. Winds light and variable. Amid a hoarder-like interior, police found 22,000 rounds of ammunition, 12 guns and other weapons in the home of the gunman in the San Jose rail-yard massacre, offering insight into the killer even as questions about one of Californias deadliest mass shootings continued to pile up. How did a long-time disgruntled employee walk onto his work site and kill nine people Wednesday? At one point, security videos show, he strolled across the light-rail yard from one building to another to continue the shooting spree. Were there warning signs? Did the shooter choose his victims as witnesses believe? How did he acquire the semi-automatic pistols and multiple, high-capacity clips that could have killed dozens. I think we would all like to know more about what warning signs couldve been spotted, said San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo. These are important lessons for us as we consider what steps we need to take to prevent these kinds of horrible incidents from happening again. Clearly, some of this involved how we can better intervene with mental health resources at the right time. And some of this involves how we can better regulate guns in our society. In the coming days and weeks, the ongoing investigation into the mass shooting at the Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose on Wednesday morning will likely answer some of the questions, offering insight into yet another mass shooting: what went wrong, what went right. In hindsight, the gunman, Samuel Cassidy, appeared to be a prime candidate for a mass shooting: He had a lot of firepower and a history of hatred. In his home, investigators found multiple cans of gasoline, suspected Molotov cocktails, the 12 guns and thousands of rounds of various types of ammunition. His ex-wife and ex-girlfriend both reported he had anger issues, violent mood swings, and voiced hatred of his employer. His father said he was bi-polar, although he hadnt displayed signs of impending violence days prior to the incident when he visited his parents, according to the Mercury News. In 2016, he was reportedly detained by federal customs officials after a trip to the Philippines and was found carrying a notebook that contained negative thoughts about the VTA, as well as a book about terrorism, according to the Wall Street Journal. At the time, he denied harboring ill will toward colleagues. We are learning that he was a very unhappy employee at VTA who seemed to be very isolated from other employees, but we all need to learn more, Liccardo said. Investigators continued to comb the shooting scene and Cassidys home for answers Friday, at one point safely deactivating a suspicious bundle of wires and batteries found in the attic of his house nine miles from the VTA yard. Inside the residence, investigators had to sift through a hoarder-like environment. It was very cluttered, lots of materials blocking passageways and entrance ways, San Jose Police Department spokesperson Steve Aponte said at a Friday afternoon media briefing. Aponte declined to answer questions about whether other explosive materials were found inside, or whether the fire and suspicious device found Friday were designed to injure bystanders or confuse law enforcement around the time of the shooting. Officials believe Cassidy set the fire that destroyed his home. While a motive is yet to be determined, he acted alone and he planned to inflict significant harm, officials said Friday. Based on current evidence obtained by Sheriffs Office detectives at the VTA yard and the suspects residence, it is clear this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could had the Sheriffs deputies not made entry to stop his rampage, according to a statement. A substation maintainer at the VTA and an employee since 2001, Cassidy was scheduled to report for a regular workday Wednesday. NBC Bay Area reported that he had a meeting that day to address questions about his behavior, including recent racist comments. Officials said they were reviewing all VTA records that pertain to Mr. Cassidy to determine whether any employees reported feeling fearful or uneasy around him. The current union contract does not include explicit language for suspending or firing an employee for harassment or aggressive behavior toward coworkers, though similar actions toward customers or the public could result in such serious discipline. It is believed his union president was on site when Cassidy opened fire. Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265 officials have not responded to requests for comment or issued statements. While many questions remain unanswered, officials said that what theyve learned from the now decades of mass shootings likely resulted in lives saved this time. Local emergency responders used a specific active shooter protocol to immediately move into buildings amid ongoing gunfire, rather than wait for the shooting to stop, said San Jose Battalion Chief Shawn Tacklind. It was the first time it was used in a real-life scenario, officials said. Amid the first calls of a shooter, 25 firefighters responded to the scene, a number that increased to 60 as reports of victims poured in. The firefighters put on bulletproof vests and helmets, joining dozens of officers and deputies at the scene, and formed a rescue task force, Tacklind said. We used to wait for the cops go in and clear the whole building, but now weve kinda flipped the coin where we go in with the officers as they clear the building, Tacklind said. Our goal is to get in there as quickly and safely as possible to increase somebodys chances of survival. Following active shooter training led by the Sheriffs Office, deputies and police officers streamed onto the site together in six teams, fanning out across the property to hunt down the shooter. From there, the teams are to isolate, capture, and neutralize - if needed the suspect, said Jim Cannan, one of two SWAT team lieutenants at the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office. Officials believe Cassidy began his shooting rampage in one location, Building B, before moving onto Building A, a large, three-story train yard where witnesses directed officers when they arrived. One worker pointed to the third floor and another on an exterior stairwell gave officers access inside with a key card, Cannan said. There, the team made their way through what was a command control location for VTA a jumble of terminals, cubicles and office space. Cannan declined to provide details about what happened then, if there was any interaction with Cassidy, or whether he was already dead when they arrived. Minutes earlier, even as shots continued at the scene, four police officers would have surrounded four firefighters in a tactical diamond formation, Tacklind said, adding eight such teams were sent into the scene. That way, we have 360 degree protection as we travel, and our guys will travel up and down hallways, corridors and into rooms, Tacklind said, adding the diamond moves together to check victims. Police would stand guard at the door and windows while we treat victims in that room. Tacklind said first responders want to get to potential victims during the golden hour, meaning 60 minutes from the time of injury to a hospital. On Wednesday, our personnel got to a couple victims that still had pulses and so yes, they were well within that golden hour, he said. The injuries ultimately were fatal an incredibly difficult result. They couldnt know that at the time, Tacklind said. At high risk to our people, they looked at it and said, Its a savable life, Im going to risk my life to go save them, he said. Officers and deputies emerged from the scene with blood on their clothing after attempting to save lives, Cannan said. As the scene unfolded, officials said their resources were stretched thin, with dozens of emergency responders at both the fire at Cassidys house and another at a lumberyard, both reported within minutes of the shooting. Im incredibly proud of the way our personnel responded, acted and reacted to such an adverse tragic event, Tacklind said. And even though there is a tremendous amount of hardship that everyone has to go through now, Im still proud of the firefighters and police officers. Staff writer Julie Johnson contributed to this story. Jill Tucker, Sarah Ravani, Lauren Hepler and Megan Cassidy are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: jtucker@sfchronicle.com sravani@sfchronicle.com lauren.hepler@sfchronicle.com megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @jilltucker @sarravani @meganrcassidy @lahepler A Placer County man who allegedly took part in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol was charged this week with assaulting a police officer with a metal sign and spraying chemicals during the rioting. FBI investigators identified Sean Michael McHugh of Auburn through a series of images captured as rioters overtook police barricades while Congress certified the results of the presidential election, according to a criminal complaint. It was unclear from the complaint whether McHugh has been arrested. McHugh was not in either of Placer Countys two jails as of Saturday, according to jail records. He had not been taken into custody in Auburn as of Friday, said Sgt. Joe Almeida of the Aubrun Police Department. McHugh is charged with unlawful entry, disorderly conduct, obstruction of justice and assaulting an officer with a deadly weapon. Identified as the owner of Construction and Electrical on Racetrack Street in Auburn, McHugh could not be reached for comment. As officers in riot gear fended off repeated attempts by rioters to breach the police line, prosecutors allege McHugh used a large metal sign to push into the officers. Several videos feature McHugh encouraging the crowd with his megaphone to intimidate officers and approach the police line, according to the complaint. Other videos show McHugh scuffling with an officer in an attempt to cross a police barricade. After rioters breached security and entered the West Terrace of the Capitol building, prosecutors allege McHugh sprayed officers with an unknown chemical spray holstered on his hip. The complaint also said McHugh flew from Sacramento to Washington D.C. on the day before the riot and stayed at a hotel three blocks from the Capitol. At the time of his arrest, he was on probation for a 2018 drunk driving conviction. Nearly 400 federal cases have been opened against individuals in connection with the riot, according to a database maintained by the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. Senate Republicans successfully filibustered a bill on Friday to create a special commission to investigate the attempted insurrection that left five people dead. The U.S. House of Representatives passed the measure last week. In a statement following the Senate vote, California Rep. Adam Schiff said the bills failure made it undeniably clear that Congress should get rid of the filibuster. While todays vote is a remarkably dark moment in our history, we will uncover the full and sad truth about that deadly day with or without Republican cooperation, Schiff added. Chronicle staff writer Steve Rubenstein contributed to this report. Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @NMishanec Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:53:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TAIPEI, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Taiwan on Saturday reported 320 new local COVID-19 infections and 166 backlogged local cases, including 21 deaths, the local disease monitoring agency said. It is the 14th consecutive day that new local infections have exceeded 200 on the island. Of the new local cases, 169 were male, 151 were female, and their onset of symptoms ranged from May 7 to 28. Among the 166 backlogged cases, 90 were male, and 76 were female, the agency said. A total of 21 deaths from COVID-19 were reported on Saturday, the highest daily toll on the island since the pandemic began. In addition to the local cases, Taiwan also reported seven new imported COVID-19 cases from Indonesia, India, and the Philippines. Taiwan is seeing a steep rise in local infections amid strained medical resources. Given the severity of local transmissions, Taiwan has extended its level 3 alert for COVID-19 to June 14. The total number of confirmed cases on the island since the epidemic began has risen to 7,806, including 99 deaths, the agency said. Enditem Prosecutors have notified Scott Petersons attorneys that they will not pursue the death penalty against him in the long-running murder case, his attorney said Friday. The Stanislaus County district attorney has taken the death penalty off the table, trial attorney Pat Harris told The Chronicle. The District Attorneys Office could not be reached for comment. The decision to drop the death penalty means Peterson would face life without the possibility of parole after being convicted of murdering his wife, Laci, and their unborn son, in 2004. He could get a new trial if his conviction is overturned, Harris said. In August, the California Supreme Court overturned Petersons death sentence over the trial judges handling of juror selection. In October, the court ordered a re-examination of Petersons convictions after finding that a juror in the case failed to disclose that she had been involved in previous legal proceedings. Stanislaus County prosecutors then said they would again seek the death penalty for Peterson. On Friday they reversed course. I believe that the reason they withdrew (the death penalty) is because they saw the handwriting on the wall, Harris said Friday. Scott could potentially get an unbiased, fair jury and we are going to prove that he did not murder Laci. Peterson, of Modesto, was convicted in 2004 of killing Laci, who was eight months pregnant with their unborn son, Conner, on Christmas Eve in 2002. Their remains were tossed in San Francisco Bay and washed up four months later in Richmond near a spot where Peterson said he went fishing. Peterson was convicted of two counts of murder on Nov. 12, 2004: first-degree murder in the killing of Laci, and second-degree murder for her unborn son. He was sentenced to death on Dec. 13, 2004. He maintains his innocence. Harris said the legal team is confident Peterson will get an entirely new trial involving guilt or innocence. Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NMishanec Jessica Christian/The Chronicle Two Asian American staff members at San Francisco General Hospital were assaulted Monday in what authorities are calling a hate crime. San Francisco Sheriffs deputies arrested a woman in connection with the crime but neither the department nor the hospital would provide any details. Angelina Balenzuela, 35, was arrested Monday morning, according to jail records. She is being held in San Francisco jail on $4,000 bail. The District Attorneys office confirmed that she faces two hate crime charges and two charges of battery on hospital grounds. The San Jose rail yard gunman who shot and killed nine people before turning the gun on himself Wednesday morning burned a pot of ammunition on his stove and sprayed his kitchen with accelerants to start a fire at his home shortly before the shooting, authorities said Friday. Samuel Cassidy, the alleged gunman, filled the pot with ammunition as a time-delayed incideniary to set the fire, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said Friday night, after the arson team concluded its investigation. Firefighters responded to the fire at Cassidys home on Angmar Ct. minutes after he opened gunfire at a union meeting at 6:34 a.m. about 9 miles away. Arson investigators are still working to determine whether the fire was an intentional distraction tactic to pull first responders away from the shooting. The intent was to burn down the house, Smith said Friday. He knew what he was doing. Investigators, who believe the gunman acted alone, recovered thousands of rounds of ammunition and a dozen firearms during a search of the San Jose home. As of Friday, investigators had tallied 12 suspected Molotov Cocktails, 22 cans of gasoline, 12 firearms and 25,000 rounds of ammunition. It could have been worse, said Deputy Russell Davis of the Santa Clara County sheriffs office. Cassidy had ammunition stored everywhere, under the crawl spaces and throughout various parts of the house. It appears the Cassidy coordinated the destruction in a planned event to take as many lives as he possibly could, the sheriffs office said in a statement. The gunman appears to have left no note or explanation for why he targeted coworkers in Wednesdays massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in Bay Area history. Investigators said Cassidy hated his workplace. He had been accused of raping and abusing an ex-girlfriend during violent episodes, according to court records. The nine victims, many of them longtime employees of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, were identified as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo; 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; Lars Kepler Lane, 63, and Alex Ward Fritch, 49. Nora Mishanec is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: nora.mishanec@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @NMishanec At least six Bay Area legislators were among 133 members of Congress who signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to condemn and confront a wave of antisemitism that has taken hold in the wake of the 11-day war between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. In the letter, released Friday, the legislators cite a visible increase in antisemitic incidents over the past few weeks. We find our nation in a tense moment, the letter reads. Just days after we appropriately responded to anti-Asian hate crimes, we come together to urge a strong response to the rising antisemitism spreading in our country. The letter called on Biden to name a special State Department ambassador to lead an effort to monitor and combat antisemitism. Among the letters signers were Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), Mark DeSaulnier (D-Walnut Creek), Ro Khanna (D-Santa Clara) Eric Swalwell (D-Castro Valley), Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) and Jackie Speier (D-San Mateo). The letter noted recent attacks against Jews in a Los Angeles restaurant, in New York City streets and online. We ask you to ... strengthen hate crimes education and reporting by local law enforcement, particularly to identify and help prosecute antisemitic hate crimes, the letter states. The letter to Biden comes as the Israeli government finds itself under increasing criticism following the recent armed conflict with Hamas in the Gaza Strip that killed 248 Palestinians and 12 Israelis. In the Bay Area, protesters have organized to block the unloading of an Israeli-operated freighter at the Port of Oakland. Pro-Palestinian rallies were held in Civic Center and in front of the Israeli consulate. And the United Educators of San Francisco teachers union voted last week to endorse the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement that seeks to put economic pressure on Israel, sparking outrage from some Jewish parents and praise from others. The Anti-Defamation League, a New York-based group that monitors antisemitic incidents in the U.S., said such incidents increased 75% during the 11-day conflict compared to a similar period before the fighting began. Many of these incidents appear to have been perpetrated by individuals scapegoating American Jews for the actions of the Israeli government, the ADL said in a statement. Steve Rubenstein is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: srubenstein@sfchronicle.com; Twitter: @SteveRubeSF Californias COVID-19 death toll could be far higher than current figures suggest, with up to thousands of additional deaths from the disease hiding behind other causes. New research shows that these additional deaths were particularly concentrated in certain parts of the state. Researchers at Boston University and the University of Pennsylvania calculated the number of deaths that occurred in every U.S. county in 2020 and compared them to predicted deaths in that county in a non-pandemic year. They used historical mortality data from 2011 to 2019 to estimate the number of predicted deaths for 2020. Epidemiologists refer to the difference between predicted and actual mortality numbers as excess deaths. The Chronicle examined how each California countys official COVID-19 deaths compared with the number of excess deaths for the states 47 counties with over 30,000 residents. We found that 42 counties had excess deaths in 2020 above predicted levels in a non-pandemic year. And of those, 29 had excess deaths that were not assigned to COVID-19, including 14 of the states 15 most populous counties. We refer to those excess deaths not accounted for by COVID-19 as residual deaths. In Los Angeles County, 27% of excess deaths during 2020 were residual deaths. In Alameda County, 37% of excess deaths were residual. The implication here is that there were potentially hundreds of missing or hidden deaths that are not being accounted for in the official statistics, Andrew Stokes, a professor at Boston Universitys School of Public Health and a lead author on the excess-deaths study, told The Chronicle, referring to Alameda Countys 37% residual death rate. Statewide, according to an April study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, about 32% of Californias excess deaths were residual. Thats higher than the U.S. overall rate of almost 28%. This is not just a triviality for academics to study, Kirsten Bibbins-Domingo, chair of the UCSF Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, told The Chronicle. These numbers are large. Some of these residual deaths can be attributed to factors related to the pandemic, like accelerating drug overdoses or lower standards of care driven by overwhelmed hospitals and individuals reluctance to seek health care in person during a pandemic. For instance, Mendocino County, which had a residual excess death rate of 1.4 per 1,000 people, the highest of any county we analyzed, saw increases in deaths due to heart disease, diabetes, suicide and influenza pneumonia, according to county health spokesperson Laura Arms. In San Francisco, the countys high residual death rate about 50% of the countys excess deaths werent assigned to COVID-19 appears to be mostly tied to its soaring fatal drug overdose count. Drug overdose deaths in the city spiked by 61% in 2020 compared with the previous year, going from 441 to 712 deaths. Stokes methodology for predicted deaths did not account for such a large increase in overdose deaths; he told The Chronicle that excess deaths were likely to reflect in part the effects of increases in drug overdoses in 2020. While not as extreme as San Francisco, California saw an overall spike in fatal drug overdoses last year, too. The state had a year-over-year 45% jump in overdose deaths as of October 2020, according to preliminary CDC data. Still, many of the residual excess deaths that California recorded last year are likely COVID-19 deaths that werent counted as such, researchers said. Stokes noted that some counties had fewer deaths than a normal year; those were probably counties with relatively few COVID-19 deaths that also had fewer deaths related to other causes, like other infectious diseases or traffic accidents, because of stay-at-home orders and other public health measures. An additional factor that might help explain Californias higher-than-average residual excess death toll is how it assigns causes of death. For deaths that happen outside of hospitals, the state relies on a sheriff-coroner system, which means there is an elected official who doesnt have to have a medical degree. An analysis for Stat News found that counties with a sheriff-coroner typically had higher rates of residual deaths compared with counties with state or local medical examiners. In addition to lacking thorough medical training, Stokes said, sheriff-coroners might be swayed by their political leanings. The politicization of coronavirus deaths during the Trump administration could have influenced some politically conservative sheriff-coroners away from attributing suspicious deaths to COVID-19. If some of these sheriff-coroners ... have partisanship or political leanings, that could certainly affect the propensity to assign COVID to the death certificate, Stokes said. Bibbins-Domingo noted that digging deeper into residual excess deaths was important for a few big reasons: First, excess mortality appears to be concentrated in populations that are already hard hit by COVID-19 suggesting that theres an even wider disparity than the current data suggests between wealthy, white populations and poorer populations of color. If (these) numbers hold, it suggests were underestimating even the degree to which these groups are being affected, she said. Second, the sheer magnitude of these residual deaths could mean that Californias tier system is based on incomplete figures. Poor data might lead to reopening a county prematurely where theres still a lot of virus around, she said. Adding to that point, Stokes said more accurate death counts could help individuals with their decision-making around the virus, too. If we fully account for these hidden deaths, and those are appearing in the obituary section of local newspapers as COVID deaths, that helps to compel people to act in a way that's more consistent with public health guidelines and to get vaccinated, he said. Susie Neilson is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer, and Nami Sumida is a Chronicle data visualization developer. Email: susan.neilson@sfchronicle.com, nami.sumida@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @susieneilson, @namisumida If everyone in the room at your workplace is vaccinated, you dont have to wear face coverings and you can skip socially distancing after July 31, according to revised state guidelines to be voted on Thursday. Those are some of the takeaways as California workplace safety regulators have updated the rules on what companies must do to protect employees from the coronavirus at work. The draft rules, issued Friday, come after the California Division of Occupational Safety and Health or Cal/OSHA Standards Board issued sweeping changes around masking, social distancing, testing and notification of workers potentially exposed to the virus at work late last year, bringing them in line with rules for protecting health care workers from airborne diseases. If everyones vaccinated, it will feel more normal at most workplaces, said Elena Hillman, a senior counsel at Cozen OConnor in San Francisco. Both she and Michele Ballard Miller, chair of the West Coast labor & employment practice at Cozen OConnor, said that the proposals language was confusing, meaning that many employers may need help to ensure they comply with the rules. The board was expected to vote on updated rules last week but paused to further tweak them in line with evolving guidance from federal authorities such as the Centers for Disease Control and the changing statewide picture around the virus and vaccines. Cal/OSHAs standards board will meet Thursday to vote on the proposal. Here are some of the details to be considered. Masks and social distancing The proposed rules would require employers to provide face coverings and ensure they are worn by employees over the nose and mouth when indoors, when outdoors and less than six feet away from another person. Exceptions include fully vaccinated people when they are outdoors and dont have symptoms, as well as when everyone in a room is fully vaccinated and do not have COVID-19 symptoms. However and it is a big however when unvaccinated workers are present, the rules imply that everyone in a room must wear a face covering, even the vaccinated people. Clearly this is a move to make it more difficult to not be vaccinated, Miller said. That leaves it up to companies to ask and track which employees are and arent vaccinated. In Santa Clara County that is now mandatory for all companies, a step other Bay Area counties in the states yellow tier have yet to take. The proposal says that workers must still socially distance until July 31, unless they are wearing respirators. Companies would still be required to instruct people on the importance of social distancing and mask wearing at work to prevent the spread of the virus. Social distancing also has to continue for employees who fall under an exception to mask wearing, unless they are fully vaccinated or getting tested for the virus at least once a week at a companys expense. All employees who are not fully vaccinated have to be provided protective respirators, like N95 masks, for voluntary use at work. Companies must train workers on how to properly fit the masks to their face. Some employers groups have protested that as time consuming and costly, especially for companies with large workforces. Testing and notification Requirements for employee testing when multiple infections or an outbreak occur at a worksite are largely the same. Businesses have to make free testing available to employees who may have been exposed to an infected person at work. Vaccinated people are also exempt from that requirement as long as they do not have any symptoms. Companies also have to make no-cost testing available to employees showing symptoms of the virus. Along with a separate state law requiring businesses with COVID-19 cases to notify their employees and health authorities, the proposed new rules would require an employer to give written notice that people at a worksite may have been exposed to COVID-19. That also has to be done within one business day of the time the employer knew or should have known about a case. The rules also dont prevent cities, counties and other localities from instituting stricter health mandates, leaving the door open for flexibility if virus cases spike in a particular location or workplace. Chase DiFeliciantonio and Carolyn Said are San Francisco Chronicle staff writers. Email: chase.difeliciantonio@sfchronicle.com, csaid@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ChaseDiFelice, @csaid During the mid-20th century circulation wars among San Francisco newspapers, The Chronicle sponsored a treasure hunt for a medallion buried at Ocean Beach. If found, the medallion could be exchanged for up to $1,000. That drew so many seekers that city officials begged The Chronicle to put a stop to it before the entire beach was dug up. The stunt, along with any number of zany plots to boost readership in the 1950s and 60s, was executed by promotion director Phelps Dewey, a Chronicle executive who later came up with the idea to create Chronicle Books and ran the Chronicle Features Syndicate, which premiered the Far Side comic by Gary Larson. Dewey was also involved in the start of SFGATE and, on the side, served as president of the California Newspaper Publishers Association. On weekends, he piloted his own small plane to an 18-acre farm in Covelo in Mendocino County. It was there, walking his land with his poodle Ethan earlier this year, that Dewey picked up a respiratory problem that advanced to pneumonia. He died March 29 at a hospital in Fort Bragg, said his daughter Suki Dewey-White. He was 93. At his retirement party in 1996, Dewey was presented with a mock front page of the paper describing him as the longest serving Chronicle publishing executive since Michael de Young, and that went back to the papers start in 1865. Phelps was a genius in getting people to enjoy working at The Chronicle and believing in the mission of the paper, said Tony Newhall, who worked as associate publisher alongside Dewey. It was a rough road, but the fact that he lasted nearly 50 years showed that Phelps could bear any difficulties in order to motivate people to feel that they were working for a cause. Phelps Dewey was born on March 23, 1928, in Minneapolis. He grew up in Galva, Ill., where his father, Maurice Dewey, had holdings in banking and farmland. Dewey was sent off to prep at Berkshire School in Massachusetts, where he ran hurdles on the track team. After graduating in 1947, he continued to Dartmouth College, but left during his sophomore year. Drawn to the romance of newspapering, he started as an ad salesman at a small daily in Fort Collins, Colo.. Tapping family money, he was able to purchase a pair of weekly papers in Espanola, N.M. After two years, he sold the papers and came to San Francisco, talking his way into an interview with Executive Editor Scott Newhall, another brilliant and creative mind. Between the two of them, they schemed and thought up these great promotions to get attention for The Chronicle, said Newhall, Scotts son. During the 1950s, The Chronicle was in a head-on battle for readers against three other dailies the Examiner, the News and the Call-Bulletin. The Chronicle and Examiner were the largest, and fought it out every morning for readers. Thats where the promotions came in. The Emperor Norton Treasure Hunt, named for the 19th century eccentric, became an annual search somewhere in the city for the hidden medallion, with clues published daily in the paper. People were talking about it, Newhall said. Families with kids made a weekend of going out and looking for it. In 1960, Dewey left The Chronicle to work as a press agent at the Los Alamos Laboratory in Santa Fe, N.M. He was soon lured to Chicago to work at the Daily News and the Sun-Times. But he returned to The Chronicle in 1963 and saw the circulation war through to its conclusion in 1965, when a joint operating agreement was formed to combine the business operations of The Chronicle and Examiner. Deweys promotions, including clever cross-marketing with sister station KRON-TV, had helped The Chronicle to the largest circulation, so it got the preferred morning edition and the Examiner published in the afternoon. They shared the Sunday edition. Chronicle Books started in 1967 by offering the book The Hills of San Francisco as a perk for subscribing. It was an instant hit, and Dewey decided to issue it as a trade publication available in bookstores and started anthologizing the works of famed columnists Charles McCabe, Stanton Delaplane and Art Hoppe. The first office consisted of Dewey and a desk in a single room in the Flood Building. From that single desk, Phelps launched one of Americas premier regional publishing houses, said Jack Jensen, president of the McEvoy Group, which now owns the company. The key to his success was to transfer what hed learned as a newspaperman into what resonated with the book-buying public. After 10 years, Dewey returned to the newspaper, where he served as assistant publisher and eventually executive vice president of the entire company. The digital revolution was coming, and Dewey was instrumental in building SFGATE, which went live in 1994. Phelps was as prescient in his promotional work, in the founding of Chronicle Books and in leading The Chronicle into the digital age, said Matt Wilson, former executive editor. He was able to nurture things from nothing into something. By the mid-90s, the de Young heirs had started to age and splinter in their interests, and the company was put on the market as individual units, separating the newspaper, TV, books and other entities. There was a very public and dramatic lawsuit over the sale of The Chronicle to Hearst Corp., which owned the Examiner, and constant upheaval and anxiety for 3,000 employees company-wide. Phelps worked as a conciliator in the process. In media, you have to break up the fights between the journalists and the businesspeople, said Alan Nichols, former chief financial officer of Chronicle Publishing, the holding company. You have to understand both sides. Phelps had the unique ability to cross over, and it always came from the heart. Even after his retirement, Dewey continued to advise and work with CEO John Sias on the sale of Chronicle holdings until it was finalized in 2000 with the merger of the Chronicle and Examiner staffs. He then flew off to his farm for good. He lived in a ranch house he built, and farmed hay and apples. He was unique, said Dewey-White, who runs a cattle ranch on property adjacent to her fathers. He owned a succession of poodles and walked them 2 miles in the hills every day. One of his pre-COVID hangouts was the post office in Covelo. He was interested in people and loved to sit around and talk to them, she said. It didnt matter who they were or what they did. Dewey was married and divorced three times. He was predeceased by a son, Richard Rogers Dewey. Survivors include his daughters, Suki Dewey-White of Covelo, Kimberly Michelle of Roseburg, Ore., and Tamar Shaddeau of Marysville (Yuba County); son, Peter Andrew Dewey of Moraga; eight grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren. There will be no service. Donations in his name may be made to the NorCal Poodle Rescue, 10126 Alta Sierra Drive, No. 282, Grass Valley, CA 95949. Sam Whiting is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: swhiting@sfchronicle.com Twitter:@samwhitingsf A bus driver somberly stepped down from his perch to place an operators manual among the roses while a dancer swayed in front of smiling photos and hand-scrawled notes. A fellow union member in a Si se puede T-shirt carefully arranged her offering of paper flowers and pinwheels one bouquet for each fallen colleague. The grief was still raw on Friday afternoon at a growing San Jose City Hall memorial for the nine people slain two days earlier at a rail yard just across downtown. What haunted 22-year VTA bus driver Diana Angeles, who like the alleged shooter is a member of the Amalgamated Transit Union, was thinking about what might have happened if a massacre came to her bus yard instead. Everybodys just traumatized, said Angeles, who heard the news on Wednesday, her day off. You never think its gonna happen to you. Next thing you know, your familys getting that phone call. Angeles was one among a steady stream of grocery store workers, churchgoers, truck drivers and others who filtered past the memorial on Friday after a large Thursday night vigil at the public plaza. Some wept. Others embraced co-workers they hadnt seen in months. Several were angry that a shooting similar to so many others had hit so close to home. To dancer and peace activist Sharat Lin, it seemed like the South Bay city had come full circle after a year of sickness, protest and now, more death. Lin was in the same plaza this time last year, when Black Lives Matter protests ended in clashes with police. This time, he hoped a dance to John Lennons Imagine might be one small step out of the cycle. Its just something for this moment, to hope for better, Lin said. Imagining the world without violence. Lauren Hepler is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: lauren.hepler@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @lahepler The car radio crackled, and Richmond police Sgt. Joe England put his foot on the gas. Calls were stacking up. He woke a disoriented woman who was lying in a playground without pants and sent her on her way. He provided backup while officers arrested a man for allegedly stealing a childrens bicycle from a Walmart and punching the security guard. England counted the number of working beat officers on two hands that Monday afternoon: nine, plus two supervisors himself included but one was booking someone into jail and another was in court. The call from four hours ago, reporting a catalytic converter theft, would have to wait. In a month, the size and structure of this East Bay police force could change, as Richmond pursues a bold experiment that other cities have tested following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd. For Richmond, it would mean laying off up to 35 police officers while shifting $10.3 million of the departments $67.2 million budget to social services. Activists and the mostly progressive City Council are enthusiastic. The mayor and police chief are wary, and residents appear divided. Some call for more robust policing. Others urge investment in jobs, housing and anti-violence programs to address the root causes of crime. People on both sides are keenly aware of the stakes. Among them is Marisol Cantu, a third-generation resident and member of the citys Reimagining Public Safety Community Task Force, which formed last June after Floyds death. Its 21 appointed members met for 10 months to craft a new funding plan, originally seeking to improve community relations with a leaner police force. Cantu believes that redistributing roughly 15% of the Police Department budget will change Richmond in such a tremendous way that its almost unfathomable, because it goes back to the philosophy of who is safe in the city. The diverted funds would supply $3.4 million for Richmonds unsheltered population and $2.5 million for the Office of Neighborhood Safety, bringing its annual budget up to $4.5 million. The YouthWorks Summer Youth Employment Program would see its funding soar from $375,000 a year to $2.3 million. And $2.4 million would be invested in a community crisis response program for calls related to mental health episodes, which currently fall on police. But Police Chief Bisa French says the cuts would hobble her force, and Mayor Tom Butt views the proposal as radical. City Manager Laura Snideman will present an alternative recommendation Tuesday: $5.58 million for social services, with $2.3 million drawn from police. Straining for the best metaphor to describe a fractured city, the mayor said people inhabit two planets with opposing views of the policing debate. On one, police are bad. And the fewer we have, the better, Butt said. On the other which is mine our Police Department is not perfect. But its better than a lot. And theres always room for improvement. He fears that police would no longer have enough staff to address the majority of complaints for noise, shoplifting, traffic violations, porch pirates, copper wire and catalytic converter thefts and would instead have to devote all their resources to serious crimes such as homicides, robberies and assaults. Some task force members see no problem with that change, arguing that violence should be the departments primary focus, and that people other than police should deal with quality-of-life issues. Theres been a couple of murders over the past couple of weeks in the city of Richmond, and I think they should just be spending time investigating, Armond Lee said. At 24, hes the youngest task force member a UCLA student and self-described police abolitionist, who acknowledges it may take years to eradicate traditional law enforcement. Chief French, the only Black woman in the state to helm a municipal police force, has found herself in a delicate position. She embraces reforms, but worries that her department will stumble if the city depletes its ranks. Its really setting me up for failure, French told The Chronicle. Nobody wants the chief to fail, said task force member Randy Joseph. Hes also the chair of the Community Police Review Commission, an oversight body that reviews complaints and evaluates department policies. In an ideal world, public safety shouldnt fall on one department, or one leader, Joseph said. We hear from the Police Department, Were overworked, were tired, stressed out, we cant do this, we cant do that, Joseph said. Then we say, OK, well take this stuff away from you to get it off your shoulders. And they go, No no no no no, dont do that. French said she is authorized to have 157 officers, but that 11 positions are vacant and shes reluctant to fill them knowing any new hires might get laid off. She applauds aspects of the Reimagining plan, saying the emphasis on youth jobs and violence prevention will eventually lead to a safer community. Yet the chief cautioned that because of seniority rules in the union contract, the first officers to lose jobs would be younger people of color whom she and a predecessor, Chris Magnus, worked to recruit. The debate has intensified as council members prepare to vote on a budget in June. A few dissenting voices on the task force contend that the proposed cuts are too rash. They include police union President Ben Therriault, who is running for Contra Costa County sheriff in 2022. He recently joined a coalition of merchants and neighborhood groups that are submitting petitions and running social media ads, hoping to keep police funding intact. The original intent of the task force making law enforcement better was hijacked, and it turned into a defund task force, Therriault said. Its unfortunate, he added. Because the ideas and concepts were good. Another member, Linda Whitmore, said she opposed laying off so many officers, but would endorse a more phased-in approach. One city adopting that strategy is San Francisco, where officials siphoned $120 million over two years from the police, sheriff and district attorney by eliminating vacant positions, scaling back overtime and shrinking the fleet of police cars. San Francisco will spend the money on programs to benefit its Black community, such as guaranteed income and help for small businesses. Oakland is still weighing whether to reduce police funding in the upcoming budget, though its policymakers are trying other innovations. Earlier this year, its City Council approved a plan to send crisis responders from the Fire Department to calls related to mental health. When French took the reins last year, she wanted to help more women and people of color ascend the ranks. But COVID decimated Richmonds budget, causing the Police Department to lose $10.3 million from the previous year, and forcing the chief to freeze 31 sworn and civilian positions. As the Reimagining plan inches forward, shes anticipating other cuts: investigations. The traffic unit. The community violence reduction team, which tries to quell human trafficking and retaliatory shootings. The regulatory unit that handles marijuana licenses and taxis. Within the rank and file, Therriault said he is struggling to fend off panic. Driving up Cutting Boulevard on May 24, England acknowledged that morale is low. As of that week, hed heard that some 20 officers had applied elsewhere. Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan Eyewitness testimony is often crucial in court cases, but can be hard for jurors to assess. So judges tell them what to consider, including how far a witness was from the scene, whether the witness was under stress, whether his or her account has changed, and until now how certain the witness was that the identification was accurate. But the state Supreme Court has called a halt to the level-of-certainty factor in California trials because of increasing evidence that eyewitnesses are not the best judges of their own observations. Research has shown that eyewitness confidence is generally an unreliable indicator of accuracy, the court said Thursday in a ruling on an assault case. Long-standing jury instructions in California trials suggest wrongly, the court said that an identification is more likely to reliable when the witness expresses confidence in it, and studies also show that a witness self-confidence is the most important factor in juror assessments of testimony. The justices told judges to remove witness self-confidence from the factors jurors should consider in evaluating eyewitnesses, at least until a state Judicial Council expert panel can review the instruction and decide whether any of it can be retained. The ruling illustrated the state high courts broad authority to re-examine and change the rules under which trials are conducted in California. Next Wednesday, the justices are scheduled to hear a death penalty appeal in which they have asked the opposing parties, and advocacy groups, to address possible revisions in jury instructions that could raise the standards for issuing a death verdict. The state public defenders office praised Thursdays ruling. Because erroneous eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions, the courts decision to revisit the states instructions on eyewitness identification is important to ensure the integrity of criminal convictions in the state, said Kathleen Scheidel, the offices assistant chief counsel. Attorney General Rob Bontas office also said it was pleased with the ruling. The case involved an assault at a motel in Santa Ana in July 2014. The victim said a man in a doorway beat and kicked her, knocked her unconscious, and stole her purse and cell phone. That night, while under anesthesia in a local hospital, she identified the defendant, Charles Henry Rudd, in a photo lineup. Three months later, she again picked Rudds photo from a lineup presented by police. At Rudds trial, the woman expressed confidence in her identification, and the judge gave jurors the standard instruction about factors to consider in evaluating her testimony, including the witness level of certainty. Rudd was convicted of assault and robbery, and sentenced to six years in prison, a term he has now completed. The court left Rudds conviction intact Thursday, saying he had a fair opportunity to challenge the witness account at his trial, but ordered the jury instructions changed statewide. In the 7-0 ruling, Justice Joshua Groban noted that Kansas and Georgia have barred the level-of-certainty jury instruction in their courts, New Jersey and Massachusetts have modified their instructions, and the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice recommended re-evaluation of the states jury instruction in 2008, but no action had been taken until now. We now join other jurisdictions (and the commission) in acknowledging that this form of instruction has the potential to mislead jurors, Groban said. The case is People vs. Lemcke, No. S250108. Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 20:00:40|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TOKYO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Dick Pound, the longest-serving member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), has said that he is supporting Sarah Lewis' run for president of the International Ski Federation (FIS). The former IOC vice president from Canada said in a testimonial on Lewis' official website that Lewis could end an "unbroken record of male leadership" if she wins the election on June 4. "I was delighted to learn that you are a candidate for the FIS presidency and I wish you the best of success," Pound said. "International Federations are generally change-resistant, especially with respect to leadership and yours, to date, for some 90 years, has been a textbook case. "In a sport that has welcomed a healthy balance of gender participation on the field of play, an unbroken record of male leadership, plus aggressive campaigning to extend that state of affairs speaks poorly for the kind of diversity you would bring to the position, not to mention the collaborative leadership you have been able to generate in your position as secretary-general. "I am proud to applaud all of the great qualities you would bring to the position." Britain's Lewis served as secretary-general of FIS for 20 years before being removed from the role last October. The other candidates are Swedish billionaire Johan Eliasch, put forward by GB Snowsport, Swedish Olympic Committee president and FIS vice president Mats Arjes, and Urs Lehmann, a former men's world downhill champion and current president of the Swiss Ski Federation. Lewis is the only Olympian and woman in the race. The election will be held at the FIS Congress General Assembly, which is due to take place virtually on June 4. Enditem SACRAMENTO A Bay Area man who was injured working as a prison firefighter and faces deportation to Laos because of a crime he committed at age 16 has been pardoned by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Newsom granted clemency Friday for Bounchan Keola, who was injured while battling the Zogg Fire near Redding last fall when a helicopter dropped water on a smoldering tree, causing it to fall on him and two others, records show. Keola fled Laos as a child. His pardon is one of 14 Newsom granted Friday, along with a score of commutations and medical reprieves. Keola, 39, suffered neck and back pain from the accident. He was released from prison about two weeks after the accident in October, after serving his full sentence, and immediately transferred to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. In his pardon, Newsom noted Keolas work as an incarcerated firefighter and said he has demonstrated that he is living an upright life and has demonstrated his fitness for restoration of civic rights and responsibilities. In 2001, Keola was sentenced to 28 years in prison after he fatally shot one person and injured two others in two gang-related drive-by shootings, Newsoms pardon states. He was 16 at the time of the crimes. This act of clemency for Mr. Keola does not minimize or forgive his conduct or the harm it caused, Newsom wrote. It does recognize the work he has done since to transform himself. A pardon restores the legal rights of a person who has completed a prison sentence, and it probably means the deportation case against Keola will be dismissed in immigration court. Newsom wrote that the pardon is further justified because Keola faces impending deportation and separation from his family because of his conviction. He is a permanent resident of the United States. But permanent residents and refugees can be subject to deportations if they are convicted of a crime, under federal law. Keola was released from ICE custody in January and has been fighting his deportation case, according to media reports. Being a Californian means believing that people can turn their lives around and deserve second chances but also that we are tied together and owe a duty to serve one another, Keola said in a statement. I have tried my best to earn that second chance and am thankful that the governor recognized that with a pardon today. His attorney said Keola was 2 when his family members fled Laos. After time in a refugee camp, they moved to a housing project in Richmond in 1988. Keola is a Khmu, an ethnic group from the north of the country, and his family fought alongside the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. He served his time. He had a pretty clean record when he was in prison, Anoop Prasad, a staff attorney at the Asian Law Caucus representing Keola, told The Chronicle last fall. He has no memory of Laos. Along with the pardons Friday, Newsom commuted the sentences of 13 prisoners and issued eight medical reprieves. Among them, Newsom issued a medical reprieve for a Bay Area man who was convicted of robbery in 1998 and faced a potential life sentence. N J Jackson from Alameda County was sentenced to 64 years to life in prison for two counts of robbery, a sentence handed down under the states former three-strikes law, which dramatically increased sentences for repeat convictions. In his pardon, Newsom stated that Jackson is 69 and qualifies for a wavier due to a medical condition, his advanced age and mobility restrictions, among other factors. San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Sarah Ravani contributed to this report. Dustin Gardiner is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: dustin.gardiner@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @dustingardiner If any good can come of the national nadir that is Senate Republicans stonewalling of an investigation of their own attempted murder by an antidemocratic mob, its the end of all illusion that Congress post-constitutional caucus deserves extraordinary deference from the majority still clinging to a semblance of the rule of law and reason. Just seven of the chambers Republicans were willing to join the Democratic majority Friday in voting to form an independent, bipartisan, 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol, which unfolded after Donald Trump incited an angry crowd into violently disrupting Congress certification of Joe Bidens election. It wasnt enough to overcome a filibuster, the procedure that also enables just 40 Republicans to block legislation to protect voting rights, prevent gun violence and reform immigration law. Even in the context of so much progress being stymied by the representatives of a micro-minority of Americans, the killing of the 1/6 commission constituted a remarkable rejection of common sense, nonpartisan legislation and a fundamental abdication of duty. I cant imagine anyone voting against establishing a commission on the greatest assault since the Civil War on the Capitol, President Biden told reporters the day before. It was the right sentiment with one correction: The building had in fact faced no such desecration since the British sacked Washington in 1814. Senate Republicans, however, turned deaf ears not just to the Democratic president but also to heartfelt pleas by and on behalf of the law enforcement officers injured and lost in the attack and its aftermath. Both the mother and partner of the late U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who died of a stroke the day after the melee, personally lobbied senators to no avail. Even some of Minority Leader Mitch McConnells own members seemed angry and dismayed at his decision to oppose the commission and urge the rest of the caucus to do so. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she was supporting the commission based on principles of democracy that we hold so dear, among them that we have free and fair elections, and we respect the results of those elections. Perhaps sensing that their defense of the filibuster was only becoming more untenable, two of the chambers most conservative Democrats, Arizonas Kyrsten Sinema and West Virginias Joe Manchin, fairly begged Republicans to vote for the commission. On Friday, Manchin called their refusal to do so an unconscionable ... betrayal of the oath we each take. Another conservative Democrat, Californias Dianne Feinstein, said that preventing a full investigation of the January 6 attack would increase the likelihood of another insurrection in the future. ... Our country and our democracy deserve better. And yet the day before, contradicting recent statements in support of reforming the reactionary procedure, she told an NBC News reporter that the filibuster is a nonissue. It should be clear by now that for those in Congress who would keep the Republic in any recognizable form, theres hardly any other issue. 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. Regarding Stolen from us: The victims of the San Jose mass shooting (Front Page, May 28): Thank you for writing about the victims in the Valley Transportation Authority shooting. More news agencies should follow your lead with maximum coverage of those lost and minimal coverage of the perpetrator. We must all do our part to discourage this kind of behavior. William Clark, Taylorsville, Utah Footing the bill Regarding States lure to get doses: millions in cash prizes (Front Page, May 28): So those who got vaccinated because it is the right thing to do are now footing the bill for lotteries and college scholarships to motivate others to get vaccinated? Jan Gross, San Rafael Plantation farm issues Regarding Newsom proposes huge fire spending (Front Page, May 24): It is terrific that our governor is spending so much on wildfire mitigation. I do, however, question the wisdom of over 1 billion dollars for fuel reduction but only $4 million to make buildings more resilient. If anything, it should be the reverse, and his limited, somewhat misinformed perception of how best to protect Californians is disheartening. Fuel reduction makes sense for the creation of 100-foot defensible space zones and fuel breaks, as well as to ensure evacuation routes. Our most destructive and deadly recent fires, like the Camp Fire, have been wind-driven, however, and fuel reduction doesnt protect against the effects of flying embers that can travel 1-2 miles. The presence throughout our forest lands of highly flammable single-species industrial plantation farms created by the timber industry doesnt help, either. A hardened structure has a fighting chance in a wind-driven inferno, and mature, biodiverse forests experience low-intensity fires that are easier to contain. We should all call on Gov. Gavin Newsom to focus more on home hardening and to ban logging practices that result in plantation farms. We should not let him fall prey to a Trumpian just rake the forest mindset. Jennifer Normoyle, Hillsborough Think of recycled water In your discussions about the California water supply, The Chronicle has systematically ignored the opportunities afforded by recycled water. This is a source that the cities have and that no one has yet claimed. For cities, it is cheaper than desalinization and probably increasingly competitive with current sources in price and volume. It is a proven technology, with Orange County using it for many years. It is time for The Chronicle to include this option in every discussion about water. Eric Groves, Kentfield File restraining order Prayers and thoughts just dont cut it with gun violence prevention, and it is too punishing to look backward to ask what went wrong. What remains is to look forward. To this end, the state of California, as well as 19 other states and the District of Columbia, have an infrequently used law that needs to be better publicized and used. That law would be the Gun Violence Restraining Order, also known as the Red Flag Law. Relatives, partners, friends, colleagues and the authorities may request from the court this special type of protection order against someone they fear may harm themselves or others. The court is then authorized to allow the police to confiscate that persons firearms, initially for 21 days, after which the judge may order a years extension. Under no circumstances should a spouse/partner/girlfriend live in fear of ones weapon being used against him/her. Invoking the Red Flag Law protects ones own life and likely that of ones community. San Francisco, like much of our state, is in an extreme drought. As the water provider to 2.8 million Bay Area residents and businesses, the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is ready to do its fair share to navigate this historic dry period while preserving and improving the Tuolumne River ecosystem that provides us with the majority of our water supply. Unfortunately, at this stage, it lacks a state partner willing to do the same. Californias State Water Resources Control Board has advanced a plan for the Tuolumne River that SFPUC modeling shows could result in the near-total depletion of San Franciscos water supplies during drought. Thats not just a San Francisco problem. Thats a problem for the more than two dozen cities, water districts and counties that get their water from San Franciscos regional water system. The state board wants to impose much stricter flow conditions upon San Francisco even more onerous than those in the 2018 Bay Delta Plan Amendment that the city is already challenging in court. On top of the Bay Delta Plans 40% unimpaired water flow requirement, the state is now trying to divert more water based on temperature and water salinity requirements, among other things. Under current customer demand levels, the SFPUC estimates its regional water system would experience shortages equivalent to approximately 75% rationing during a drought under these new state requirements. Crucially, there is no assurance that the water San Francisco is being told to give up under the states new plan wouldnt simply be snapped up and sent to Southern California or elsewhere. That is why, in consultation with the SFPUC, I sued the water board to stop its misguided plan. While San Franciscans can and will conserve more during this drought, we already have among the lowest per capita water usage in the state. In fiscal year 2020, the residential per capita water use in San Francisco was about 42 gallons per day, which is less than half the statewide average residential use of 89 gallons per day. The SFPUC has worked hard to be a responsible steward of our water supply. The city shares the goal of protecting the environment, including native fish species. We can do that while maintaining a sustainable water supply. This is not an either-or situation. The SFPUC has proposed increased river flows and habitat improvement measures on the Tuolumne River to benefit native fish species. Not only is San Francisco willing to implement these measures, were already taking action. In February, the SFPUC authorized $1.5 million to fund early implementation of habitat improvement projects on the lower Tuolumne River. We can preserve chinook salmon and other river wildlife during a drought without the state unfairly staunching San Franciscos water supply. San Francisco is aggressively diversifying its water sources. We now require recycled water systems in large-scale residential and commercial developments. Were developing groundwater sources and building a recycled water treatment facility that can save up to 2 million to 4 million gallons of drinking water per day. But diversifying our water supply further will take time. Were in a drought now. Brokering an agreement with the state is the best way to resolve our varying concerns and lawsuits. The SFPUC continues to negotiate in good faith, despite the states actions. In the middle of an extreme drought, we should all be working to ensure regions across California do their fair share to increase water efficiency. But singling out one of the most responsible water users is not the answer. Dennis Herrera is the City Attorney of San Francisco. On Apr. 18, two Alameda residents called the police on a 26-year-old father and Oakland resident named Mario Gonzalez. One caller told the non-emergency dispatcher: Hes not doing anything wrong. Hes just scaring my wife. Alameda police responded to the call by detaining and attempting to handcuff Gonzalez. Three officers and a civilian police employee then pinned him face down for five minutes until his body went limp. Gonzalez died right there in police custody. The incident was captured on body-camera footage that spread across the internet. The Alameda Police Departments first news release after the incident labeled Gonzalez a suspect and referred to his death as a medical incident, language strikingly similar to the news release that followed George Floyds death. Alameda is an island city of over 75,000 residents located off the coast of Oakland. Many of the streets are tree-lined, and most have a gentle speed limit of 25 mph. A writer in the 1980s called Alameda simultaneously a Navy town, a small middle-America city and an island of suburbia. The Alameda Naval Air Station operated here from 1940 to 1997, and redevelopment has been a heated topic of debate since the bases closure. Alamedas motto, The City of Beaches and Homes, hearkens back to an era of amusement parks and Victorian homes, which locals vigorously protect. Yet the exclusion of nonwhite people from those beaches and homes and the enforcement of racial boundaries has long been part of its lure. The Alameda Police Department has a reputation as racist that long preceded Gonzalezs death and even his birth. For decades, this island allowed a clear pattern of racial profiling and police violence to float above the radar, enabled by a lack of accountability for officers and decades of lip service and inaction by politicians. Theres also a deeper history of exclusion by many white residents, who are quick to defend the police regardless of their actions in order to protect their property and maintain the islands beatific mythology. The closest Alamedas police culture has come to public accountability was decades ago in the 1980s and 1990s, when its department was subject to a number of brutality lawsuits. In 1986, a Black woman named Virlee Berry said Alameda police officers discriminated against her when they dragged her from her vehicle, punched her in the face and arrested her. She later sued the city and received a settlement, but three of the officers involved counter-sued her for damaging their reputations. The chilling intent was obvious. When the case was settled in 1997, Berrys attorneys with the ACLU of Northern California argued: Police cannot use malicious prosecution suits as a form of intimidation to prevent victims of police brutality from seeking justice in the courts. How many others since then were intimidated into silence is unclear. But there has been no shortage of reported incidents. In 1991, Alameda police were revealed to have exchanged racist messages on patrol car mobile data terminals. Officers proposed wearing blackface, dressing up as Ku Klux Klan members and shooting Black people. Some residents called for the officers to be fired, but the six officers involved were only temporarily suspended. One of the officers involved in both the beating of Berry and the MDT scandal, Ronald Jones, was arrested in 2012 for stealing painkillers from a dead man. At the time of his arrest, he was a sergeant with 26 years in the department. Had he not been caught, he would likely be collecting a pension to this day. White Alameda residents, meanwhile, largely defended the officers involved in the 1991 scandal. Black residents and allies pushed the city to fire the officers and the police chief. There was even talk of attempting to recall then-Mayor Bill Withrow. But many white residents loudly defended the officers and the political establishment. Letters to the City Council from the self-professed majority of residents portrayed the minority coalition of those calling for reform as outside agitators. As one person wrote to the City Council: Alameda is a white community with white prejudices. Following these scandals and others, Alameda police allegedly reformed. The department began voluntarily collecting racial demographics of stops and arrests in 1999, but never reported, analyzed or published the data. In 2018, a city analysis of 20 years of marijuana-related felony arrests found that African Americans were disproportionately targeted. Though just 6 percent of the population, African Americans made up 32 percent of those arrested over a 20-year period. Gonzalez was not the first in-custody death in Alameda. On Dec. 5, 2018, Alameda police tased Navy veteran Shelby Gattenby to death. The city settled with Gattenbys mother for $250,000. Alameda police have also had no shortage of dubious non-fatal encounters. In July 2012, Sgt. Patrick Wyeth tackled Jeffrey Navarro and hit him multiple times with a baton, resulting in his hospitalization and a four-month rehabilitation. The city settled a civil rights suit for $450,000. Between 2015 and 2017, in response to a California Public Records Act request, the department reported 74 uses of force, a third of which were against African Americans. Black and brown people have shared these stories and concerns of racial profiling in Alameda for decades to no avail. After the 1991 scandal, the city appointed a Committee on Ethnic and Cultural Diversity. It found that racial problems exist in the city and police department, yet the council refused to adopt most recommendations to remedy those problems. The majority of people of color on the committee resigned before the report was published. On May 23, 2020, two days before Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, Alameda police tackled, handcuffed and arrested 44-year-old African American resident Mali Watkins for dancing in the street. A woman had called police after watching Watkins working out. Obviously something is very wrong, she told dispatchers. Its just weird, thats all. Police initially claimed that only one officer was present during the arrest, but a viral social media video later posted to Reddit revealed there were four officers, leading one City Council member to call the incident a cover-up. The arrest of Watkins amid the momentum of the George Floyd uprising led to massive marches and rallies in Alameda. Yet the City Council rejected calls to defund the police and to shift responsibility for responding to mental health emergencies and complaints about people experiencing homelessness away from armed officers. In fact, then-police Chief Paul Rolleri changed police policy so that officers would no longer respond to certain calls for service. But some residents feared that they would no longer receive services, and officials expressed concern that there was no plan in place for an immediate policy change. We can only speculate on what might have happened to Gonzalez had this shift taken place. The city also balked at a proposal to declare racism a public health emergency, and instead offered a rote statement about racism being a crisis all while removing substantive reform policies and timelines from the table. In the heat of the summer of protests, the council voted to sell the Police Departments tank, a heavy armored response vehicle. Last month, however, the council reversed that decision, following a request from the police. In August 2020, City Manager Eric Levitt appointed a Police Reform and Racial Equity Steering Committee. Many of its recommendations, which were released in March, mirrored demands from the 1990s, including a police review board. Other recommendations included shifting mental health calls from police to other agencies and a clear protocol for Alameda polices social media (which frequently included mug shots of Black detainees suspected of crimes). The council did not express interest in the committees proposal for a citywide racial equity department. The lack of political will to redress racial injustice from Alamedas elected officials largely reflects the present and historical policy preferences of many Alamedans. As early as 1913, real estate interests used racially restrictive covenants to exclude Black people and Asian Americans from Alamedas East End areas. By the 1930s, redlining discouraged investment on the northern waterfront, home to most of the islands African American and Asian American residents. With the onset of World War II, Mayor Milton C. Godfrey responded to public fear of Black workers migrating to Alameda with a call for unceasing vigilance for exclusion from wartime housing projects. The Alameda Housing Authority built most of its projects on the West End and segregated Black people to a few projects. Godfrey Park, adjacent to the Alameda golf course, honors the mayors legacy. Following the war, white residents moved out of the projects to white suburbs. Black residents, meanwhile, were forced to bounce from project to project, denied the ability to rent or purchase private housing in Alameda due to pervasive racism. The demolition of the projects in the subsequent decades forced most Black people from the island. Most African Americans who remain have been historically concentrated in areas with apartment complexes. Today, 47% of all residents own homes, compared with just 7% of Black people. The Latino homeownership rate is only 29%. That same prejudice that has tainted the islands politics of exclusion for a century was certainly still present after the arrest of Watkins last year. In letters to local newspapers, posts on social media and public comments at City Council meetings, some residents blamed Watkins. Others denied that Alameda had a history of systemic racism. Months after Watkins arrest, the Alameda electorate voted to maintain Article 26, the citys 1973 exclusionary zoning ordinance, which has banned the construction of multifamily housing and perpetuated racial segregation. There is no shortage of people here who blame Gonzalez for his own death, and who say they would still call the police on him, knowing that calls to law enforcement could lead to Black and brown deaths. Police profile. Politicians pander. And people protect the police who protect their property. Its the Alameda way. Yet there are still those on the island who demand justice. Protests following the arrest of Watkins and death of Gonzalez paralleled the anti-police-brutality marches of 30 years ago. Thousands of people, led by the Youth Activists of Alameda, a group of youth and young adults focused on racial justice, took to the streets following the arrest of Watkins. Transform Alameda emerged to identify alternatives to police and reimagine what safety means. Both groups are following the lead of Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice, the group supporting Gonzalezs familys demands, along with the Anti Police-Terror Project. The brutal death of Mario Gonzalez may be most peoples introduction to Alameda, but racism, violence and exclusion arent new to the many Black and brown people who live here or those who visit from across the bridge. Gonzalezs story has been the reality Black and brown people have known for a long time. Residents of the island mostly know this to be true. Too many have stayed silent or chosen not to listen. Racist, violent policing too often has received the explicit support of residents, and has been backed by a history of discrimination, segregation and exclusion in housing that goes back more than a century. To chart a different and just future, Alameda must stop ignoring its history. Rasheed Shabazz is a journalist, educator and historian. He is writing a history of African Americans and housing in Alameda, titled Alameda is Our Home. Two weeks ago, the greenest city in America sued Californias State Water Board to prevent measures that would restore the beleaguered San Francisco Bay-Delta. After more than a decade of studies based on the best available science, the state wants to require San Francisco to release more water from its dams into the Tuolumne River the source of our Hetch Hetchy drinking water to benefit fish, wildlife and downstream water quality. The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, meanwhile, wants a voluntary agreement for the Tuolumne River. Instead of providing the river with desperately needed flow, the city is proposing power-washing spawning gravel, building a fish barrier that would somehow block undesired fish, but allow good fish to pass unmolested, and restoring a small amount of floodplain habitat for baby fish. These half-measures are doomed to fail. Floodplains without enough water to inundate them are useless. A peer review commissioned by the National Marine Fisheries Service debunked the science behind the SFPUCs proposal. City Attorney Dennis Herrera, who Mayor Breed wants to appoint as the new General Manager of the SFPUC, is leading the lawsuit charge. The litigation is based on a Trump-era rule that has been challenged in court by Californias Attorney General and is likely to be abandoned by the Biden administration. It aims to weaken the states authority to safeguard water quality, an outcome that could have repercussions nationwide. Is this really the position San Francisco wants to be in, siding with Trump to block the states ability to protect our environment? If the SFPUC were serious about stewardship, the Tuolumne would not be in such dire straits. Where over 100,000 salmon once spawned, barely 1,000 returned last year. Gone are the millions of pounds of ocean-derived nutrients the salmon faithfully transported to upland habitats where they fueled the food web and fertilized the soil. The fact that 4 out of every 5 gallons of water are diverted from the Tuolumne is the leading cause of its demise. The negative impacts of these unsustainable water diversions ripple throughout the Bay-Delta. Six fish species are listed as endangered or threatened as a result of insufficient freshwater inflow. San Franciscos lawsuit increases the likelihood we will experience a mass extinction in the not too distant future. It also increases the risk that the commercial salmon fishing industry at Fishermans Wharf will be relegated to the history books, and that delta communities will continue to suffer from toxic algae blooms tied to insufficient river flows. The SFPUC wants you to believe the states plan to protect the Tuolumne River and San Francisco Bay-Delta would lead to water shortages during droughts. They claim their own plan would produce more fish, using less water than the states measures. Both of these statements are false. Even after two severely dry winters, the SFPUC has enough water stored in reservoirs to last roughly 4 years. In an average year, San Franciscos water rights entitle it to three times as much water as is needed, so its reservoirs fill quickly after a drought. In 2017, shortly after the past drought, the city was allowed to capture enough water to last 12 years, but had to dump 88% because its reservoirs were already full with a six-year supply. People who conserved during that drought should be outraged that their efforts provided almost no environmental benefit. Their work was hoarded behind dams, only to be dumped in a single year. The Tuolumne River experienced one good year at the expense of five terrible years. San Francisco does have a more sustainable path. By continuing our decades-long trend of using less water, investing much more in alternative water supplies such as recycled water, and partnering with San Joaquin Valley irrigation districts to bring agriculture into the 21st century, we can meet the states co-equal goals of restoring the Bay-Delta and Tuolumne River ecosystems while ensuring a reliable water supply well into the future. Los Angeles and Orange County turned in this direction years ago. Its time for the SFPUC to catch up. San Franciscans deserve a plan that represents their environmental values. Supervisor Aaron Peskin has introduced a resolution encouraging the city to pause its suit and to follow the science. Environmentally minded citizens should support the supervisors leadership. Peter Drekmeier is policy director for Tuolumne River Trust. He formerly served as mayor of Palo Alto. PARIS (AP) Thousands of people, masked and tested for the coronavirus, packed inside a Paris arena for a concert Saturday as part of a public health experiment to prepare France to host big events again. The show at AccorHotels Arena in eastern Paris features 1980s French rock band Indochine and DJ Etienne de Crecy. But the attention was mostly on the concert-goers. Kensington Palace/AP LONDON (AP) The Duchess of Cambridge has received her first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as Britain extends its inoculation program to younger people. Kate, the 39-year-old wife of Prince William, received her shot at London's Science Museum, a mass vaccination center near the couple's home at Kensington Palace, according to a photo posted on their Twitter feed. She got vaccinated a few weeks after her husband. For those who've grown up in the East Bay, Nation's Giant Hamburgers has always been there. You may not have noticed or realized it, but when you pause to think on those times usually, late night when you wanted a meal after a night out, there usually was a Nation's around, somewhere, to feed you. That isn't by accident. As CEO Grant Power tells it, when his father Dale Power began building the chain, he wanted to feed and take care of everyone. "My dad wanted to create a restaurant where someone maybe didn't sleep all night and they've got to get something to eat and they feel comfortable coming in their pajamas, ordering food," Power said. "You want the kids on prom feeling like, oh, this is a special spot where we can take our dates and have some pie. We want to love and serve and notice every member of society, as often as they can, in every possible setting, no matter what your day looked like." Nation's, with its late-night hours, has become the little hamburger spot that could. The business was started in 1952 by Russ Harvey, with its first location in San Pablo. Originally a hot dog stand, he eventually wanted to add burgers. He was a man in search of a burger that was made the way he wanted, and when he didn't find that, he created it. Back then, it was known as Harvey's (for obvious reasons). In 1961, an enterprising 15-year-old named Dale Power managed to land a job as a janitor at the second location, continuing to work there through college and graduate school, moving up in jobs. By 1970, Power had managed to buy his first restaurant location in Oakland and persuaded Harvey to become partners with him in a small, but mighty hamburger chain. Courtesy Nation's Giant Hamburgers Fast-forward nearly 70 years, and that chain has since expanded to 30 locations (with its latest location soon opening in Modesto). The business has built its reputation on its hamburgers, shakes, grilled sandwiches and pies. The pies are made fresh at their El Cerrito-based bakery each day, before being trucked out to various locations; they get produce deliveries from its farmer-vendors regularly. It's an ecosystem of food that the Power family has built over the years, meaning that customers get a consistent experience each time someone visits. In fact, the commitment to quality is so strong, Grant Power said, that the company even employs its own staff of secret shoppers to check on various locations and see what the service is like, and how the food is. But beyond that consistently tasty burger, or breakfast, or whatever it is that you gravitate toward on the menu, the real secret sauce (so to speak) is the family-centric stance the restaurant has taken. Power is only the third CEO to run the company, besides his father and Harvey, and they've resisted the urge to go public, take on shareholders and do all those normal things that most burgeoning chains would do to maximize its profit margins. That's not to say the chain isn't successful, but they would rather invest in themselves, and train their employees from the ground up, Power said. "Our agenda is being the best of what we do for another 50 years that's our mission statement, that's our plan," Power said. "It means we want to provide unparalleled career growth for high integrity individuals who are passionate, who work hard, who are committed, that's number one. Number two, we want to provide outstanding food at a fantastic value at a time where, for a number of reasons, economically, that's harder and harder for most Americans to experience and really appreciate." It's this commitment to family that's been what's been most unique to Nation's, in a world where high turnover rates and job-hopping have become the norm. As Power said, they're committed to the underdog. What Power loves about his job is hiring entry-level employees and "pushing them out of their comfort zone" and getting them to think about the next step of their careers. Barbara David started working with Nation's in 2003 as a crew member, working the cashier at its Tara Hills location. She had just arrived in the United States from the Philippines the year before, she said. Now, 18 years later, she's the manager of two Nation's locations. "I started as a cashier, then started moving little by little until I reached the managerial position," David said. "And then they pushed me to go on, like, 'you can do it' ... they're willing to help you." Kenya Ramirez, who works as an executive operations assistant at Nation's, feels the same way, saying she felt that the company is really a place she can grow. "I would say even during the interview, this company, they really made me feel like, 'Oh, wow, I could really grow here.'" "If you have a goal within the company, they really help you get to that goal," Ramirez said. "They really try to help you become a better you, like a more successful you and that's what I really like about this company." When Power says the company is family-run, he's quick to say that it's not run just by his family, but by their family of employees. Because of their longstanding commitment to employees that want to work their way up in the company, he wants to make sure everyone has a stake in the company. "It's unheard of how our long-term leaders are actual equity owners in the company," he said. "So that gives us continuity with more people who aren't just family members, where this [company] is their baby and they get to keep the stock until they die. ... I want to groom people underneath me so that this company can continue to do well for the rest of my life with time." According to Power, this commitment to family is what helped save the business during the pandemic. Power and his father, who remains chairman of the board, committed to not losing an employee, and managed to do just that. They spent $1 million in online advertising and in forming delivery partnerships to make sure they could weather the storm; they even managed to open a new restaurant in 2020. It also doesn't hurt that they own the property at 40% of their locations. "I think it was a cultural foundation that we've built, which is run the company conservatively," Power said. "So we had cash reserves that were gonna allow us to get through [the pandemic], even if things had been far, far worse. So we didn't panic, because we had a culture of always preparing for rainy days. ... We all stuck together in a way that I don't think there's any other retail company in the state or the world that have the unity and the family bonds that we had. We just stuck together." The key to Nation's longevity is its long-term goals, that aforementioned 50-year plan. They've already weathered the first 70 years, and the plan is to do more. "We transcend time: Our values are great long-term values," Power said. "We evolve, but we don't ever have to reinvent ourselves because of the fact that our values transcend time. Our mission is simple in that we want to develop people and give them growth and expand opportunities and we just want every corner of society to feel special when they walk in our front doors." TULSA, Okla. (AP) Theres been undeniable progress in the relationship between the Tulsa police and the city's Black community in the past 100 years. Then again, its hard to imagine it could have gotten worse. Complaints about police bias and a lack of enough minority officers remain. But the police chief is now a Black man from north Tulsa, the area that includes what once was Americas wealthiest Black business district. Back in 1921 decades before the civil rights movement even the thought of a Black police chief would have been inconceivable. That year, Greenwood the Black north Tulsa neighborhood that includes the area known as Black Wall Street was burned to the ground with assistance from the virtually all-white Tulsa Police Department. Sparked by accusations that a 19-year-old Black man had assaulted a 17-year-old white girl in an elevator, the Tulsa Race Massacre left as many as 300 Black people dead and thousands of Black residents displaced. Thirty-five square blocks were torched and damages spiraled into the millions. Tulsas police department deputized white mobs and provided them with arms. Numerous reports describe white men with badges setting fires and shooting Black people as part of the Greenwood invasion. According to an Associated Press article from the time, Black people who were driven from their homes by the hundreds shouted, Dont shoot! as they rushed through the flames. After the massacre went largely ignored for decades, awareness has increased in recent years. Police Chief Chuck Jordan stood in Greenwood in 2013 and apologized for the departments role. I cant apologize for the actions, inaction or derelictions of those individual officers and their chief, Jordan said. But as your chief today, I can apologize for our police department. I am sorry and distressed that the Tulsa Police Department did not protect its citizens during the tragic days in 1921. The appointment of Wendell Franklin to succeed Jordan last year is seen by some as a measure of progress. But Black Tulsans say thats not enough. I think its something that the community needs to see, said Ina Sharon Mitchell, a 70-year-old woman who was raised in north Tulsa. But how far does that change really go when the doors are closed? In a 2018 Gallup-Tulsa Citivoice Index poll designed to measure quality of life issues, only 18% of Black residents said they trust police a lot, compared to 49% of white residents, and 46% of Black Tulsans said they trust the Police Department not at all or not much, compared to 16% of whites. According to Tulsa Equality Indicators, produced in a partnership between the city and the Community Service Council, Black juveniles were more than three times more likely to be arrested in 2020 than white youths. Black adults were more than 2.54 times more likely to be arrested than white adults and 2.65 times more likely to experience use of force. In 2016, then-Tulsa police officer Betty Shelby shot and killed Terence Crutcher, an unarmed Black man. Shelby a white woman was acquitted of manslaughter. She was reassigned in the department before resigning. For Black Tulsans who grew up learning what happened in Greenwood, Crutchers killing brought old pain back to the surface. I believe that my brothers killing really unearthed a century of racial tension here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said Tiffany Crutcher, Terence Crutchers twin sister who is also organizing commemoration events for the anniversary of the massacre. Crutcher said the relationship between Tulsa's police and the community is still strained. Here in Tulsa, explicitly and specifically, theres not a really good relationship between law enforcement and the Black community, Black and brown communities, she said. The relationship isnt good at all. Theres no trust there. Crutcher started the Terence Crutcher Foundation with a goal to bridge the fear and mistrust between Black communities and law enforcement. She is frustrated with the lack of progress in Tulsa and is especially disappointed in Franklin. This is someone who doesnt believe someone who looks like me that the Tulsa Police Department has a problem with racially biased policing, she said. He says the problem doesnt exist. So for me, I dont care what color you are, but if you have a track record in building relationships with the community and doing whats fair in community policing, then I can deal with you. Putting someone in that position that looks like us is just a shallow act of putting lipstick on a pig. Franklin did not respond to several interview requests. During his tenure, he has said police need better training in dealing with the public. But he also testified before an Oklahoma legislative panel after 2020's nationwide protests over racial bias in policing that recruiting new officers is difficult because of growing anti-law enforcement public sentiment. Quite frankly, who would want to come do this job with everything placed upon us," he said. Greg Robinson, the 31-year-old founding organizer of Demanding a JUSTulsa and Director of Family and Community Ownership at Met Cares Foundation, said theres a lack of transparency from the Tulsa Police Department. I think the main problem is there is not a system of citizen oversight or accountability, he said. I think thats really where were falling down. Its not that all police are bad because theyre not. But everybody in our community isnt a criminal, either. And sometimes, it feels like we get policed like that. Mitchell said back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were more Black officers, and that fostered the feeling of a partnership. It's different now in 2019, according to the departments annual report, 8.4% of employees were Black, compared to 15.1% of the citys overall population. When I was a child and raised up, most of the police officers looked like me, she said. They lived in the community, so the relationship of the Police Department and the community was one-on-one. They knew the children. They knew the schools they went to. Now, you dont have that. Robinson, who also is a board member for the Terence Crutcher Foundation, remains hopeful that change can occur. He believes it ideally would start with outreach from the police and local oversight and inclusion from the Black community. The fact that Franklin is from the neighborhood helps Robinson remain optimistic. I hope that through his tenure he can really begin to inject, gauge the community around the changes that we have been advocating for, Robinson said. So far, it hasnt happened, but certainly, he is somebody who grew up out north. He should understand it. And I would hope that he would be courageous enough to really include us and involve us. Crutcher has taken her fight beyond Oklahoma. She said some of her recommendations are included in the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act that is under consideration. She said she was in Washington this spring with the family of Floyd, who was killed by police last year in Minneapolis, and relatives of Botham Jean and Eric Garner, who also died at the hands of police, pushing for the bill. She said her brother told her in their last conversation that he was going to make her proud, and that God is going to get the glory out of my life. I believe that the work that Ive done this righteous fight the fact that were at the precipice of some type of change is living proof of Terences last statement to me, she said. But we have so much work to do. ___ Find APs full coverage of the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre: https://apnews.com/hub/tulsa-race-massacre Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 20:09:34|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Members of the Ezz al-Din al-Qassam brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas movement, parade on trucks with rockets in the south Gaza Strip city of Khan Younis May 27, 2021. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua) After years of marginalization, Israeli-Palestinian conflict now returns to the global fore, especially after the 11-day heavy fighting between Israel and Hamas, with the two-state solution on the 1967 borders as the primary vision for regional peace. RAMALLAH, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The Israeli-Palestinian conflict has recently been brought back to the global fore from several years of marginalization, especially during and after a 11-day-long round of the probably heaviest fighting between Israel and the Gaza Strip's ruler Hamas since 2014, according to Palestinian analysts. The analysts agreed in separate remarks they made to Xinhua that a new path that leads to a comprehensive solution based on the vision of the two-state solution on the 1967 borders is in preparation with the mounting tension between Israelis and Palestinians. On May 15, the sixth day of the Israel-Hamas fighting, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas held a phone call with U.S. President Joe Biden. Before long, the foreign ministers of Germany, the United States, Egypt, Jordan and Britain successively visited Ramallah and held talks with Abbas in hopes of de-escalating the regional tension and bringing the peace talks back on track. Nabil Shaath, a diplomatic aide to President Abbas, told Xinhua that the Palestinian leadership has stressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken the necessity of ending the political vacuum that led to the growing tension in the region. "We believe the United States has to pressure Israel to show goodwill gestures about a real opportunity that Washington can use together with Arab and international states to resume the peace process which had been stalled for seven years," Shaath said. The current high tension since April, as most previous cases, started in East Jerusalem as Israel insisted on evicting 28 Palestinian families from their homes in Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, and then expanded to the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, until Hamas fired a barrage of rockets toward Jerusalem on May 10 that led to an immediate major air offensive on Gaza from Israel. In the West Bank, 30 Palestinians were killed and hundreds injured by Israeli soldiers during clashes. In the Gaza Strip, 255 were killed and 1,948 injured in the intensive airstrikes carried out by Israeli fighter jets. Palestinians are seen at a destroyed house in the northern Gaza Strip town of Beit Hanoun, on May 24, 2021. (Photo by Rizek Abdeljawad/Xinhua) Abdulmajid Sweilem, a political analyst from the West Bank city of Ramallah, said the Palestinian issue mainly includes the status of Jerusalem, settlement expansion in the West Bank and the Israeli blockade imposed on the Gaza Strip. "The latest event leads to the unification of the Palestinian people in an unprecedented way over the past two decades," Sweilem noted. "No one under this unity can withdraw from calling for a just and fair solution based on international legitimacy." Former U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel in late 2017 and then presented a so-called peace plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, better known as The Deal of the Century. The Palestinians categorically rejected his deal and severed ties with the United States. Meanwhile, Abbas presented a peace initiative before the United Nations Security Council, which included a call for holding an international peace conference. However, his initiative was opposed by Israel and the United States. The last Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations, sponsored by the United States, continued for nine months and broke down in the spring of 2014. "There is now a significant change in the attitudes of the United States, which starts to adopt the vision of the two-state solution abandoned by the former administration of President Trump for four years," Haytham Daraghma, a political analyst from Ramallah, told Xinhua. "Following the mounting tension in the Palestinian territories, Washington reached a conclusion that it is impossible to bypass Palestinians' legitimate right of establishing an independent state on the 1967 borders with East Jerusalem as its capital," he noted. LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) Fourteen university students and staff abducted from their school in northwestern Nigeria were released Saturday after spending more than a month in captivity. Gunmen abducted the students and staff from Greenfield University in Kaduna state on April 20. Authorities have said that one person was killed during the kidnappings. TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Advocates for renters in Kansas are troubled by the end of the state's ban on evictions and foreclosures on home mortgages for people who are struggling financially because of the coronavirus pandemic. Top Republican lawmakers on Friday rescinded the executive order from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly imposing the ban. State law gives leaders of the GOP-controlled Legislature the power to rescind such orders. Republicans have long argued that the states moratorium prevents landlords from getting paid. Many landlords have their own mortgages to pay on the properties they rent. But advocates told The Topeka Capital-Journal that ending the state's ban is troubling because of questions about how long a nationwide ban from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will stay in place. The CDC ban, imposed through June, would prevent evictions and foreclosures in Kansas, but it could be nullified by a federal lawsuit. If that goes away, I think were going to be in for a world of hurt, said Dustin Hare, a Wyandotte County organizer. Hare said the CDC's ban was more effective. But Vince Munoz, an organizer with the advocacy group Rent Zero Kansas, said providing rental assistance is not as helpful as "simply saying we arent going to have evictions. The state has a rental assistance program and an aid program specifically for Wichita residents. But advocates don't like that the Kansas Emergency Rental Assistance program pays landlords instead tenants. Also, it has processed only 167 of 4,038 applications. ROCKLAND, Maine (AP) The Maine attorney general's office is seeking to demand that law firms in Maine and New York return millions of dollars allegedly overpaid by the estate of the late artist Robert Indiana. All told, about $10 million in fees has been paid to law firms and to the estate's personal representative through the end of March, according to a court document. And the attorney general contends $3.7 million paid to four law firms and about $400,000 collected by the estate's personal representative were excessive. BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) An Alabama man convicted in a drug distribution case has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. U.S. District Judge Corey L. Maze on Friday sentenced Anthony Lamon Frazier, 39, of Talladega, to 10 years in prison followed by five years of supervised release, U.S. Attorney Prim F. Escalona said in a news release. ALAMOGORDO, N.M. (AP) With New Mexico legalizing recreational marijuana, Alamogordo is repealing the city ordinance against unlawful possession that has been on the books since 1960. The Alamogordo Daily News reported that the repeal ordinance approved unanimously by the commission will take effect June 29, the same date that state law will allow people age 21 and over to possess up to 2 ounces (56 grams) of marijuana. BRUNSWICK, Maine (AP) Bowdoin College on Saturday awarded 467 degrees at its 216th commencement ceremony on Saturday. A pair of seniors, Sarisha Kurup and David Zhou, delivered the commencement in keeping with a tradition that dates to 1806 of giving speaking honors to graduating seniors. The graduating class included students from 41 states, along with 22 countries and territories. Gov. Janet Mills delivered a video greeting. Honorary degrees were awarded virtually to National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci, along with NASA astronaut and Maine native Jessica Meir, and civil rights activist and Bowdoin alumnus DeRay Mckesson. An honorary degree was given posthumously to civil rights activist and Freedom Rider William Harbour. LAS VEGAS (AP) The body of a young boy was found near a hiking trail west of Las Vegas, and he appears to be the victim of a homicide, authorities said Friday. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department said hikers found the body Friday morning near Mountain Springs. SANTA ANA, Calif. (AP) A Southern California man who pleaded guilty to illegally operating kiosks where customers could buy Bitcoin with cash, or sell Bitcoin in exchange for cash has been sentenced to two years in federal prison. Kais Mohammad, 37, of Yorba Linda, received the sentence at U.S. District Court in Santa Ana Friday, according to an Orange County Register report. Mohammad pleaded guilty last year to operating an unlicensed virtual currency business and laundering between $15 million and $25 million in Bitcoin and cash over a five-year period through Herocoin, federal prosecutors said. The company operated kiosks at malls, gas stations and convenience stores throughout Southern California, where the exchanges would be dispensed through the machines. Mohammad also knew that some of his clients funds came from illegal activity, said Ciaran McEvoy, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorneys Office. A former bank employee, Mohammad knew he was required to register his company with the U.S. Treasury Departments Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, that he needed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and that he needed to report various virtual currency exchanges, but chose not to, McEvoy said. He eventually registered the company after he was contacted by FinCEN, but still failed to conduct due diligence and report suspicious customers, McEvoy said. As part of the plea agreement, Mohammad forfeited 17 kiosks and an unspecified amount of cash and cryptocurrency, officials said last year. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The gunman who nursed a seething hatred of his California workplace amassed an arsenal and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at the home he tried to burn down before killing nine co-workers at a rail yard, authorities said after searching the residence. Samuel James Cassidy's home in San Jose was a hoarder's nest of clutter and weaponry that included 12 guns, nearly two dozen cans of gasoline and a dozen or more suspected Molotov cocktails, Santa Clara County sheriffs officials said Friday. The cache was in addition to the three 9 mm handguns that Cassidy, 57, brought Wednesday to the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority in San Jose, authorities said. He also had packed a duffle bag with 32 high-capacity magazines and fired 39 shots before killing himself as law enforcement closed in. While witnesses have said Cassidy appeared to target certain people, the Sheriffs Office said Friday that it is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could. Cassidy also rigged his home to burn down before leaving for his workplace several miles away by putting bullets in a cooking pot on a stove that apparently detonated, igniting fire accelerants that were placed in the kitchen, sheriff's officials said. At an afternoon news conference, city police spokesman Steve Aponte described the home as very cluttered, lots of materials blocking passageways and entrance ways. Guns were stashed near doorways and in crawl spaces. They may have been placed there so Cassidy could grab them in an emergency such as law enforcement arriving, sheriff's Sgt. Joe Piazza said. Cassidy's locker at the rail yard had materials for bombs, detonator cords, the precursors to an explosive, Sheriff Laurie Smith said. Questions remained about what might have set off Cassidy's lethal rampage and whether there were warning signs. Patrick Gorman, special agent in charge of the San Francisco field division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said he was not aware of any information about Cassidy, such as tips from the public, being shared with his division before the shooting. U.S. customs officers who detained him in 2016 on his return from the Philippines found books about terrorism and fear as well as a memo book filled with notes about how much he hated the Valley Transportation Authority. But he was let go, and a resulting Department of Homeland Security memo on the encounter was not shared with local authorities. Cassidy had worked for the Valley Transportation Authority for more than 20 years but he had expressed hatred and resentment of his workplace for at least a decade, according to his ex-wife. A co-worker described him as an outsider who didn't mingle with others. Meanwhile, the president of the union that represents transit workers at the rail yard sought Friday to refute reports that Cassidy was scheduled to attend a workplace disciplinary hearing with a union representative Wednesday over racist comments. John Courtney, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, said in a statement that union officials were not, repeat not" there to attend any such hearing or to respond to any jobsite or racial-oriented complaints." KGO-TV reported Friday that the Valley Transportation Authority had confirmed Cassidy wasn't facing a disciplinary hearing the day of the shooting and no future hearings were scheduled. Neighbors and former lovers described Cassidy as moody, unfriendly and prone to angry outbursts at times, especially after drinking. But they expressed shock he would kill. Cassidys elderly father, James, told the Mercury News in San Jose that his son was bipolar. He said that was no excuse for the shooting and apologized to the victims families. I dont think anything I could say could ease their grief, he said. ___ Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 21:08:25|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close KUWAIT CITY, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The 17th Arab Media Forum opened in Kuwait on Saturday to discuss the role of new media in the Middle East. At the opening ceremony of the virtual forum, Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul-Gheit said Arab media institutions must interact with the new media or so-called "citizen media". Governments of Arab countries must have an intelligent presence to protect the national interests and make the new media more purposeful and carry a better value for the community, he added. Faisal Al-Mutlaqqem, assistant undersecretary for external media of Kuwaiti Information Ministry, praised the role of the Arab Media Forum in keeping on addressing Arab issues even in the light of the coronavirus pandemic. Madhi Al-Khamis, general secretary of the forum, highlighted the great impact of the information and telecommunication revolution on Arab media. "Although this session is held exceptionally virtually, we witnessed a huge participation in the forum from around the Middle East," he said. The two-day forum will discuss the most important topics in the Arab and international community, especially under the exceptional circumstances of the global COVID-19 pandemic. Enditem BUCARAMANGA, Colombia (AP) Colombian President Ivan Duque on Friday announced the deployment of military forces to the city of Cali after at least three people died in increasingly violent protests and talks to end the social uprising stalled. Duque repeated his assertion that the protests, which have been raging for a month, are infiltrated by illegal armed groups and promised to deploy "all intelligence capabilities to demonstrate this. This deployment will almost triple our capacity throughout the province in less than 24 hours, ensuring assistance in nerve centers where we have seen acts of vandalism, violence and low-intensity urban terrorism, said the president, speaking from Cali, the city in southwest Colombia that has become the epicenter of the nationwide antigovernment protests. The deployment comes after Attorney General Francisco Barbosa said an agent with the his institution was allegedly killed by civilians after opening fire. According to the information collected so far, he shot several people causing the death of civilians ... then he ended up dead at the hands of people at the scene, Barbosa said in a statement. Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, urged Duque to prohibit the use of firearms by state agents and said the organization had corroborated videos from Cali showing armed men in civilian clothing shooting. Juliette de Rivero, representative in Colombia of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called for an end to violence, also citing cases of civilians shooting in Cali. Protests were held Friday in to other parts of Colombia as the country marked a month since the start of the largest protests here in decades. More than 40 people have been killed and 2,200 civilians and police injured. The protests erupted when Duque proposed a wide-ranging tax increase, but continued even after he backed off, transformed into a general outcry against growing poverty and inequality in a country where the unemployment rate doubled over the past year of pandemic. The government and the National Strike Committee have not been able to establish the conditions to open negotiations. The protesters are demanding the government guarantee the right to social protest while Duque's administration won't budge from its demand that road blockades that have created widespread shortages be lifted. What we are seeing is a delaying action by the government which does not understand the complexity of the moment," said Francisco Maltes, president of the Central Workers Union, who blamed the Duque government for not signing a guarantee agreement and not responding to requests for a date to start talks. Sandra Borda, an analyst and expert on protests, said there is a crisis of representativeness in both the government, which has limited room for maneuver, and the National Strike Committee, which does not represent all the sectors that are demonstrating. We are facing a scenario that I do not think will be resolved soon, because the only thing the government can control with any level of effectiveness are state forces and therefore it continues to try to resolve the situation with a heavy hand. When the state forces are excessive there is more indignation, more anger and more fuel is added to the fire of the demonstrations, she said. ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) A former Army Green Beret sentenced to more than 15 years in prison for spying for Russia has filed paperwork seeking to withdraw his guilty plea. Peter Debbins of Gainesville, Virginia, filed the handwritten motion earlier this week from his jail cell in Alexandria. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) A California district attorney said in a court filing Friday that she wont seek a new death sentence against Scott Peterson, convicted in 2005 of murdering his pregnant wife. The Stanislaus County district attorneys office said it would drop efforts to restore the penalty thrown out last year by the state Supreme Court. The DA said the decision was made in consultation with Laci Petersons family. The California justices ruled the death sentence couldnt stand because potential jurors were excluded after saying they disagreed with the death penalty. The family has no doubt Peterson killed his wife and unborn son Conner and deserves the death penalty but doesnt want to pursue that punishment because this process is simply too painful to endure once again, District Attorney Birgit Fladager said her filing in San Mateo Superior Court. Peterson, now 48, was convicted in the San Mateo court after his trial was moved from Stanislaus County due to the massive pre-trial publicity that followed the Christmas Eve 2002 disappearance of 27-year-old Laci, who was eight months pregnant. Investigators say Peterson took the bodies from their Modesto home and dumped them from his fishing boat into San Francisco Bay, where they surfaced months later. Peterson maintains his innocence and a judge is considering whether to grant a new trial because a juror failed to disclose that she had sought a restraining order in 2000 against her boyfriends ex-girlfriend. She said in seeking the order that she feared for her unborn child. The judge must decide if that amounted to juror misconduct, and if so, whether it was so prejudicial that a new trial is warranted. If no new trial is granted, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. One of Petersons attorneys said the announcement is not a precursor to a plea deal and that his client will seek a new trial if a judge decides his first one was tainted by juror misconduct. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said she hopes to make a decision this year whether Peterson merits a new trial. Its not clear if prosecutors could again seek the death penalty if there is a new trial and he was again convicted, said defense attorney Pat Harris, who is handling the death sentence portion of the case. A different attorney, Andras Farkas, is representing Peterson on the issue of whether he gets a new trial. Farkas did not respond to an email requesting comment. Its not clear to me that theyre saying no matter what, were taking the death penalty off the table ... or theyre saying if we go back to trial were reserving the right to put the death penalty back up again, Harris said. It sounds like theyre kind of holding back that if the judge orders a new trial, they could put the death penalty back on the table. That could be cleared up at what was supposed to be procedural hearing on Tuesday, he said. The district attorney's office did not comment. Harris noted that prosecutors had earlier said the family supported again seeking the death penalty, and contended that their new motion is a gambit to avoid a new airing of the case. The truth of the matter is they have determined ... that the handwriting is on the wall and if we go back to trial were going to prove Scotts innocence, he said. He said he can prove that there was a nearby burglary the day Peterson disappeared, aiding the defenses contention that someone else killed her when she stumbled upon the crime. If prosecutors were to proceed with a new penalty phase, they would essentially have to retry the entire case before a new jury so that new evidence would come out even if jurors could not acquit him and could only recommend a sentence of death or life in prison, he said. The truth will have come out. Bottom line is people will know what happened even if he doesnt receive a new trial on his guilt or innocence, Harris said. Scott Petersons family and supporters made a similar argument in a Facebook post, that Harris request last week for evidence in the hands of prosecutors triggered their decision. We are grateful that Stanislaus County is no longer seeking to put Scott to death, but its #Time4aNewTrial, the post said. DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) Where is Sheikh Jaber? Kuwait was abuzz with the question as citizens on social media demanded to know the whereabouts of their 79-year-old former prime minister. He'd been ordered detained pending trial in an unprecedented move last month over the alleged embezzlement of millions of dollars from a military aid fund. When the scandal involving the sheikh and another royal family member erupted into public view nearly two years ago, it unleashed a rare wave of street protests. It prompted the Cabinet's resignation and forced a reckoning in the Gulf Arab state about endemic corruption that has entrapped ministers and stained the country's sprawling bureaucracy for generations. Activists believe corruption runs rampant through the region of oil-rich Gulf Arab sheikhdoms, but public criminal cases against senior officials and royal family members remain rare, typically playing out behind palace doors. That may be changing, however, with recent explosive feuds over money laundering in Kuwait, a major corruption sweep in Saudi Arabia and last week's arrest of Qatars powerful finance minister in an embezzlement probe. Now, Kuwait's justice system is testing government pledges to hold ministers accountable for $790 million gone missing from the Defense Ministry fund years ago. The ministerial court ordered two former ministers and royal family members, Sheikh Jaber al-Mubarak Al Sabah and his ally, former Defense and Interior Minister Sheikh Khalid al-Jarrah Al Sabah, detained last month in Kuwait's Central Prison over their suspected misuse of the ministry's funds. The court also sent lower-ranking officials to jail pending trial and imposed a travel ban on Sheikh Jaber, according to a statement widely published in Kuwaiti media. But Sheikh Jaber has not been spotted in public since the criminal prosecution began, and speculation has swirled about his fate. Many doubt the former prime minister is, in fact, languishing at the notorious prison on the dusty outskirts of Kuwait City riddled with reported coronavirus outbreaks. That doubt reveals the deep-rooted distrust among Kuwaitis that authorities are pursuing the case in earnest. Social media has been ablaze in rumors in recent weeks even after the court accepted the defense team's request to ban news and social media from publishing details about the trial sessions. Kuwaiti newspapers still reporting despite the court order said the defense team maintained the former prime minister's innocence during the most recent hearings. Sheikh Jabers legal team did not respond to repeated requests for comment amid the gag rule. Kuwait's Information Ministry declined to comment on the case, citing the court's secret investigation. Soon, WhatsApp groups crackled with leaks that while other officials remained in detention, Sheikh Jaber's version of state custody was a special hospital wing decorated like a palace with hotel service. A doctor at Kuwait's state-run al-Amiri Hospital confirmed to The Associated Press that Sheikh Jaber, who skipped the last court session due to reported health problems, was receiving treatment there. The doctor declined to give details and spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals, like most people interviewed. It wouldn't be the first time, a Kuwaiti anti-corruption activist said. We are waiting and watching to see if this case ends up like the rest. The case of the missing military money is one of several scandals that have surfaced in Kuwait in recent years, damaging public confidence in its political establishment. Parliament has since shot down a public debt law that would raise billions of dollars for the government to solve its worst liquidity crisis since the 1991 Gulf War, in part over corruption fears. In the fall of 2019, late defense minister Sheikh Nasser Sabah Al Sabah pressed for an investigation into the missing millions, triggering the downfall of the government when ministers refused to stand for questioning in parliament. Other schemes that later came to light have tainted Kuwait's reputation, including a massive scandal at Malaysia's state investment fund that ensnarled Sheikh Jabers son, now released on bail. Under pressure, the government created a new Anti-Corruption Authority and a dozen similar committees. The late emir, Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah, vowed on state TV at the time that no one, no matter his position, will escape punishment if convicted for public fund-related crimes. Yet modest hopes for accountability have dimmed, with various investigations stagnating over the years. In the nation flush with petrodollars, critics describe a culture of corruption extending from everyday wasta, or political connections, to bloated public works projects. Lawmakers have blamed that on Kuwait falling behind neighbors like Dubai in terms of development and foreign investment. Much more needs to be done to resolve Kuwaits problems. For one, the judicial system is in need of a major overhaul, said Bader al-Saif, an assistant professor of history at Kuwait University. Without all of the embezzled money returned and prison sentences given if those implicated are at fault, the corruption will continue." Others more optimistic say the pre-trial detention of such powerful officials marks a pivotal moment in Kuwait's drive to root out graft and note it already has borne fruit. Earlier this month, a leaked court document revealed that Sheikh Jaber had paid back 53.9 million Kuwaiti dinars ($180.7 million) to the state, which prosecutors had accused him personally of misappropriating. A lawyer at the court confirmed the authenticity of the receipt, calling it an important precedent. Former officials at court in jail clothes is not something you see often here, he said. ___ Follow Isabel DeBre on Twitter at www.twitter.com/isabeldebre. WASHINGTON (AP) Minority Republicans used a Senate filibuster to block a Democratic bill that would have launched a bipartisan probe of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It was the first time under President Joe Biden that the GOP used the tactic to derail major legislation. Yet the Republican victory Friday may prod Democrats closer to curbing or eliminating a legislative maneuver thats been the bane of Senate majorities since the Founding Fathers. Here's a look at the filibuster and the political storm over it. WHAT'S A FILIBUSTER? Unlike the House, the Senate places few constraints on lawmakers' right to speak. Senators can also use the chamber's rules to hinder or block votes. Collectively these procedural moves are called filibusters. Senate records say the term began appearing in the mid-19th century. The word comes from a Dutch term for freebooter and the Spanish filibusteros that were used to describe pirates. Filibusters were emblazoned in the public's mind in part by the 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Jimmy Stewart portrayed a senator who spoke on the chamber's floor until exhaustion. In a real-life version of that, Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., stood continuously by his desk for 24 hours and 18 minutes speaking against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the longest Senate speech by a single senator for which there are records of speaking length. Those days are mostly gone. Senators usually tell Senate leaders or announce publicly that they will filibuster a bill, with no lengthy speeches required. The impact usually flows not from delaying Senate business but from the need to get a supermajority of votes to halt them. HOW DO FILIBUSTERS END? Records from the first Congress in 1789 show senators complaining about long speeches blocking legislation. Frustration grew and in 1917, the Senate voted to let senators end filibusters with a two-thirds majority vote. In 1975, the Senate lowered that margin to the current three-fifths majority, which in the 100-member chamber means 60 votes are needed to end filibusters against nearly all types of legislation. Only simple majorities are required to end the delays against nominations, thanks to recent years' rules changes. WHATS THE PROBLEM? Democrats emerged from the 2020 elections controlling the White House, Senate and House. They had pent-up pressure to enact an agenda that includes spending trillions to bolster the economy and battle the pandemic, expanding voting rights and helping millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally become citizens. But Democrats have a slender House majority and control the 50-50 Senate only because of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. That means that to overcome a filibuster, Democrats need support from at least 10 Republicans, a heavy lift in a time of intense partisanship. That's frustrated progressive senators and outside liberal groups. They've pressured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to eliminate filibusters, even as their use has increased by whichever party is in the minority. According to Senate records dating back to World War I, the number of votes to end filibusters in any two-year Congress never reached 100 until the 2007-2008 sessions. It hit a high of 298 in the 2019-2020 Congress, mostly on then-President Donald Trump's appointees that majority Republicans were pushing to confirmation. In this year's first five months as of this week, there were already 41 votes to end filibusters, mostly on Biden's nominees. WHAT CAN DEMOCRATS DO? It would take a simple majority, 51 votes, for the Senate to eliminate or weaken filibusters. GOP support for retaining them is solid, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying Democrats want to end them in a quest for raw power. But with Democrats eager to enact their priorities before they lose their fragile majority, their support for discarding filibusters has grown. Biden, who's influential despite having no vote on the matter, has said the tactic is being abused in a gigantic way." Yet Democrats lack the votes to do that. Their two most conservative senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, have opposed a change, arguing the country is better served when Congress can find bipartisan solutions to its problems. WHAT IMPACT MIGHT THE JAN. 6 COMMISSION VOTE HAVE ON FILIBUSTERS? Democrats consider creating a commission to examine the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters one of many issues they're pushing that the public supports. Others include House-passed measures easing voting access, expanding citizenship opportunities for immigrants and curbing gun rights. So far, Schumer hasn't forced Senate votes on many such bills. But advocates of eliminating filibusters hope Friday's vote blocking creation of a Jan. 6 commission, a top Democratic priority, will build pressure on Schumer, Manchin and Sinema to eliminate the maneuver. Manchin called the GOPs derailment of the commission unconscionable in a statement that gave no indication that his support for retaining filibusters had changed. Schumer hasn't overtly tipped his hand on what he'll do but has kept the door open. The Senate spent much of this week debating a bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening the U.S.'s ability to compete economically with China, which some saw as demonstrating that Democrats work with Republicans when they can. We hope to move forward with Republicans, but were not going to let them saying no stand in our way," Schumer said this week. Democrats used special budget procedures to push Biden's COVID-19 relief package through the Senate with just a simple majority in March. They may try the same with Biden's huge infrastructure proposal, though Senate rules limit the ability to use that route. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect that South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat, not a Republican, when he spoke for more than 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. SOPA Images/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Gett TACOMA, Wash. (AP) A suspended Nigerian government official accused of stealing $350,000 from Washington state as part of a massive pandemic-related fraud also sought to bilk the Internal Revenue Service of nearly $1.6 million, federal prosecutors said Friday. Abidemi Rufai, 42, was arrested May 14 as he tried to travel from New York to Nigeria. He is accused of using stolen identities to take more than $350,000 from the Washington state Employment Security Department as it tried to rush unemployment benefits to people who lost work during the pandemic last year. BOZEMAN, Mont. (AP) Annekje Thompsons stint in Bozeman only lasted a year. The now 19-year-old moved to town from Roundup in April 2020 to work on a farm. That job came with housing, and she was later able to rent a room in a house while working two jobs, one at a Montessori school and another at a restaurant. She was working more than 40 hours a week, bringing in about $2,000 a month between the two jobs. But she needed to find new housing, and started looking for anything and everything in Bozeman this spring. Most places werent affordable, and listings she saw that were within her budget were snatched up quickly. After weeks of trying, Thompson gave up on Bozeman and moved back home. For people like me who are just starting out. they get good jobs and they want to stay there. They love the place, but cant afford to live there, Thompson told the Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Its really hard. And it doesnt make a lot of sense to me. Its very frustrating. Thompson, who is planning a move to Billings instead, is one of many people across the spectrum of age and income who are being shut out of the housing market in Bozeman. Rising housing costs and inadequate supply are forcing some Bozeman workers to bunk with an uncomfortable amount of roommates or try to make living in a hotel or camper work for a while. Some are simply leaving town, seeking out places where they can afford to live, and people applying for those vacant jobs in the city are turning them down after taking a glance at the housing costs. At the same time, labor shortages are hitting nearly every industry and every income level in the city. Some restaurants are reducing hours and considering cutting services. The city is cutting hours at the Bozeman Swim Center as positions go unfilled. Bozeman Health is having trouble filling vacancies. Some employers are increasing their wages. Others are tacking on hiring or moving bonuses, or directly trying to help their employees find housing. But business leaders say it isnt enough. Even people in senior level positions or those making a decent salary are getting caught in the housing crunch. The cost of living in the city of Bozeman is getting away from us, City Manager Jeff Mihelich said at a recent city commission meeting. The problem isnt new housing costs have been rising in Bozeman for years. But most agree the problem has gotten much, much worse in the past year. Everything was pretty difficult before the pandemic, and its probably just gotten worse, said Tracy Menuez with the Human Resources Development Council. Business leaders say the countys housing crisis has become a labor crisis. The problem is evident in the ubiquitous hiring signs popping up around the city. You can drive downtown Main Street and you can see pretty much every bar, restaurant, store is hiring. You can go down 19th and look at all the big box stores and theyre all looking for employees, and youre seeing these huge signs that are announcing how much theyre paying and that you can start immediately, Bozeman City Commissioner Christopher Coburn said. And we didnt see that two or three years ago. Businesses across the country and state are reporting similar issues in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Montana Department of Labor and Industry, the statewide labor force has shrunk by 10,000 or more workers compared to pre-pandemic numbers. An information sheet from the department notes this is in despite an influx of new residents from out of state. While the nationwide unemployment rate was 6% in March, it was 3.8% in Montana and 3% in Gallatin County. According to department data, just over 2,000 people in Gallatin County were unemployed in March. It was as high as 12.6% in April 2020, and largely hovered between 2% and 3% for most of 2019. Even as the unemployment rate nears pre-pandemic levels, some local employers who had to lay off employees in the early days of the pandemic say hiring back a full workforce as COVID-19 restrictions start to ease has been difficult. Kelly Wiseman, general manager of the Community Food Co-Op, said some of the roughly 40 employees the business laid off last year left the area and havent come back. Other employees left their jobs because they were fed up with run-ins with anti-maskers, Wiseman said. There were a lot of very belligerent, angry people walking around acting like toddlers, in my opinion, Wiseman said. I think a lot of workers got sick of it. Dawn Brown, human resources director at Montana Ale Works, said it seems all the restaurants in town are trying to hire from the same shrunken pool of workers. Ale Works is trying to hire about 30 more people, Brown said, as they anticipate business picking up as the pandemics hold weakens. Theyre getting some applications, Brown said, but not nearly enough. While some are blaming the federal unemployment benefits, and the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has made returning to work difficult for some, Brown and others pointed to increasing housing costs as the primary culprit. Everybody else is hiring for the same positions, and theres only so many people who want to work in those jobs. Im sure COVID has scared a lot of people away from wanting to work in the public, and the fact that its hard to find child care in Bozeman is making it difficult for people who have kids, Brown said. I think the fact that its so expensive to live here and there isnt very much housing is definitely playing into it. Several employers reported that housing costs have been an increasingly prominent barrier in the last few months, causing some employees to leave their jobs and making it difficult to fill vacant positions. When once keeping an employee around for a year was the standard at Ale Works, Brown said its now an accomplishment to keep employees for three months. The problem extends beyond service industry businesses: Anna Rosenberry, assistant city manager for Bozeman, said the city has seen employees leave their jobs after considering Bozemans housing market and deciding moving somewhere else was the best option. (Its) really heartbreaking too, because theyre great workers whove done a great job, theyre members of the Bozeman community. But they just dont see their future here with housing prices the way they are, Rosenberry said. At the same time, candidates who may be able to fill vacancies are more commonly turning down job offers after doing the math on their offered salary and prices for renting or buying a home. The issue is hitting across the spectrum, from the service industry to employers offering well over $30 an hour. Paul Reichert, executive director of Prospera Business Network, an economic development nonprofit in Bozeman, said hes hearing it from all sectors. Pretty high level, senior positions are going unfilled, as well as folks looking for seasonal workforce in accommodations or retail businesses, Reichard siad. You can go out there and ask an employer or business owner and theres not one that cant tell a story of, We havent been able to hire. People turned down job offers. Gallatin County has more open jobs than normal, county administrator Jim Doar said, and there were 75 positions open with the city of Bozeman earlier this month, including some short-term positions. Rosenberry said its hitting the city at all levels. Where once a job might have been filled in one recruitment cycle which involves job postings, application reviews and interviews Rosenberry said it now takes two or three. The city withstood almost the entire pandemic without a human resources department director because it took so long to fill the position. At Bozeman Health, Edie Willey, chief people officer, said there has been trouble filling positions across the health system, including nurses, nutritionists and non-clinical staff in the IT or legal departments. It seems like on a weekly basis, Im hearing candidates having either turning it down or asking for a sign-on bonus, asking for moving location bonus to help offset some of the costs of coming here, or theyre not moving here, Willey said. Some travel nurses, who work on short-term contracts to fill gaps in health care workforces, are also turning down assignments in Bozeman because they cant find a place to live, Willey said. The city was an attraction for job candidates in the early years of Bridger Aerospace, which opened in 2014, said founder Tim Sheehy. Now, the opposite is true. I think weve had over a dozen rejections of job offers in the last few weeks along with people saying, Listen, I love the company. Id love to work for you, but I cant rationalize moving my family out of a four-bedroom home on two acres into a two-bedroom condo for the same price, Sheehy said. Some places struggling with hiring are cutting back on operations. Some restaurants have cut hours or are considering scaling back menu options to make it easier for a smaller kitchen staff to handle the work. The Co-Op may have to delay reopening the food services it shut down at the beginning of the pandemic, and the city recently announced it is closing the aquatics center on Saturdays with 21 of the 32 lifeguard positions vacant. Sheehy, who acknowledged his 250-person staff in the Bozeman area may have helped contribute to the high demand for housing themselves, said they are looking to grow their staff by another few dozen employees. The housing market will make that difficult, Sheehy said. Housing is now at a point where its constraining our economic growth, said Brit Fontenot, the citys economic development director. Its going to constrain our ability to attract employers, its going to constrain our ability for businesses to grow and create more jobs. And so it really constricts our economy by not having places for people to live. Some employers are taking a look at their wages. The Co-Op recently raised its starting wage to $16 an hour, after running some numbers through a cost-of-living model that determines what pay a single worker would need to afford to live with a roommate and save some of their earnings. The model spit out the number of $15.80 for an hourly wage, Wiseman said. A few years ago, it was $12 an hour. Both the city and the county are looking at employee salaries, and Bozeman Health is often adding in hiring and moving bonuses to attract new employees. The health system set a minimum wage of $15 per hour in January 2020, which chief advancement officer Jason Smith said resulted in increased wages across the board and came with a $7 million price tag. But even increased wages arent filling many job vacancies, and employers and local officials say simply increasing wages is not a sustainable solution. Paying our employees a livable wage is the best way to help address this challenge, but keeping up with it continues to put us and I think every business in our community, under pressure, Smith said. Chamber of Commerce president Daryl Schliem noted businesses need to have a balance between revenue and wages. For Bozeman Brewing Co., increasing costs in the city arent netting the business any increase in sales, owner Todd Scott said. So if your sales are staying static and the wages need to go up in order to retain key employees, then its got to come from somewhere, Scott said. And it ultimately comes out of the bottom line. As housing costs remain far above pre-pandemic levels, some business owners are looking toward the future with concerns about how they can keep up. According to data from the Gallatin Association of Realtors, inventory of single-family homes was 68.1% lower in April 2021 than last April, and inventory for condos and townhouses was 82.9% lower. The median price for a single family home was $704,750 in March this year and $660,000 in April. Condos and townhomes sold at a median price of $430,000 in March and $385,000 in April. The reality is that housing is just so expensive here and our wages just cant keep up, Doar, with the county, said. I dont know that we will ever be able to pay people (enough) to buy a $700,000 house. Employers are finding other solutions. Bozeman Health is increasingly hiring remote workers for non-clinical roles, Willey said. Other employers are trying to recruit more aggressively locally, to find candidates who wont balk when they see what one-bedroom apartments are renting for, Reichert with Prospera Business Network said. Some employers are exploring other solutions beyond compensation, like buying homes for their employees or working with developers to build more housing. Gallatin County is exploring using some land near the rest home on Durston Road for an employee housing development, Doar said, and Bozeman Health is also considering whether getting involved in housing development is a viable option. But, like increasing wages, Willey said building homes directly for employees feels like a Band-Aid solution. I feel still like thats . and not necessarily getting at the bigger issue which is, I would love to see affordable housing here, Id love to see the community, the city, county, make some changes around that, Willey said. Most agree that the burden cannot fall solely on employers, but rather on local governments, private developers, and anyone in between. Even if the housing issues were solved, workers face a number of other challenges. Menuez, with HRDC, flagged a lack of accessible child care as a major factor contributing to the labor shortage. Schliem, the Chamber president, added workforce training and transportation as other key issues that need addressed. If we could solve the day care, housing and transportation issues I think we would have an adequate workforce, Schliem said. But without solving some of those issues, no, I dont think we have an adequate workforce to bring back. These issues, present before the pandemic, are no longer abstract for most in Bozeman. Some people cant find a place to live. Many of those who can are struggling to afford it. Even those who have a home they can afford are seeing the issue hit their friends and neighbors. The pandemic sort of helped clarify that despite the very prosperous veneer of the city of Bozeman, and the surrounding areas, there are certainly a lot of people who were struggling before, Menuez said. Some of those struggling are being forced to leave town. Ellie Wright, 23, moved here last year from New England and works at a preschool in Four Corners. She found a place to live with a handful of roommates in Bozeman, but needs to find new housing soon. Wright looked for weeks, but has been unable to find anything that works for her in Bozeman. As a result, she is planning a move to Livingston. She is excited about living there, but is wary of making a 45-minute commute from there to her current job, especially in the winter. Shes not sure if shell be able to stick with it. I think people feel pretty helpless these days because its pretty out of our control, Wright said. I think its just sad because I think (for) a lot of young people .... housing is pretty scarce and its just not accessible anymore. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) A rural southern Indiana county that was the epicenter of the states worst-ever HIV outbreak driven by intravenous drug use is poised to end its needle exchange program despite warnings that doing so could lead to increased disease risk. Health officials, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, have called Scott Countys program that started in 2015 a success in drastically reducing the spread of infectious diseases by providing IV users with clean syringes to discourage needle sharing. But the continuation of such programs there and elsewhere have faced opponents who argue they enable drug abuse and lead to more needles being left in public places. Those arguments have swayed Scott County Commissioner Randy Julian, who was elected in November to his first term on the three-member body, to side with commissioners President Mike Jones, a longtime opponent of the exchange. They could vote Wednesday against renewing the program, which would lose its authorization in May 2022. Julian said in an interview that six years after the HIV outbreak, the areas drug users are aware of the risks from sharing needles and it is time for them to take responsibility for their actions. Theres no end game to it, Julian told The Associated Press. It was brought in here and it did its job on what it should have done, but now its time to move on and fight it in a different way and get people off the addiction instead of handing them needles. That just doesnt do it. Scott Countys needle exchange began in 2015 after then-Gov. Mike Pence, amid mounting HIV cases driven by users of a liquefied form of the painkiller Opana, overcame his objections to such programs and authorized the states first-ever effort to provide addicts with clean needles. The areas HIV outbreak eventually grew to about 235 people infected with nearly 200 of them in 24,000-person Scott County and centered in the small town of Austin about 40 miles north of Louisville, Kentucky. State health department reports show Scott County had fewer than five new HIV cases during 2020 and that its rate of hepatitis C infections had fallen by about two-thirds since 2015, even though it remained the third highest among Indianas 92 counties during 2019. Indianas state health commissioner, Dr. Kristina Box, and her predecessor, Dr. Jerome Adams, who was U.S. surgeon general under President Donald Trump, attended a county commissioners meeting in early May to urge them to continue the program. Box said that jettisoning it would inevitably lead to rising HIV and hepatitis C cases. We may not see it immediately, but theres no question in my mind we would see increasing rates of hepatitis C, wed see increasing rates of HIV, wed see individuals coming back to the emergency room, Box told reporters at the meeting. Julian, the county commissioner, argued that the exchange programs treatment referrals, testing and overdose-reversal drugs should remain available. Julian conceded that HIV cases could rise again if the exchange ends, but he said if that happens, the program could be reinstated. Indiana began allowing the exchanges in 2015, but only with state approval, after Scott Countys HIV outbreak. State lawmakers in 2017 backed allowing counties and cities to create their own programs. Indianas authorization for the exchanges had been set to expire in 2022, but earlier this year legislators approved extending that permission until July 2026. Eight other counties now have needle programs, including Clark County just south of Scott County. Others are those with the cities of Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Lafayette, Bloomington, Anderson, Richmond and Connersville. Julian said the exchange has not ended needle sharing while Scott County had more than 70 opioid overdoses last year, including nearly two dozen fatal ones. He said hes troubled by the items that the program provides participants along with syringes, including what he said was a tourniquet, metal cooker, cotton balls and alcohol. Thats a little hard to swallow, Julian said. The people here are tired with it. Theyre tired of the needle exchange. ___ Reporter Tom Davies contributed. Indonesian Maritime Security Agency/AP JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) Indonesian authorities said Saturday that two oil tankers the Iranian-flagged MT Horse and Panamanian-flagged MT Freya were released after a four-month detention for illegally transferring oil in Indonesian waters. The two ships were freed on Friday, and their captains were allowed to leave despite being sentenced Tuesday to a year in prison for not complying with shipping channel regulations, said Wisnu Pramandita, a spokesman for Indonesia's Maritime Security Agency. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 21:38:17|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Kurdish students of Salahaddin University take a Chinese exam in Erbil, Iraq, on May 23, 2021. (Xinhua) BAGHDAD, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Bahman Mahmmod, a 21-year-old Kurd in Iraq, once thought of giving up learning Chinese, when he realized that he may have to quit school to support his family during the COVID-19 crisis. For many Kurdish students in Iraq like Mahmmod, the pandemic has placed them in a dilemma over whether to stay at school or take on part-time jobs in support of their families. However, students in Salahaddin University in Erbil, the capital city of Iraq's Kurdistan region, have demonstrated resilience and perseverance in learning Chinese during the pandemic. Established in 2019 as Iraq's first Chinese language institute for higher education, the Chinese department of Salahaddin University has adopted online teaching for its students since the outbreak of the pandemic. "Online study was understandably unable to replace studying face to face with teachers. Learning Chinese online is especially difficult for our students," noted Sanger Othman Ibrahim, dean of the Chinese department. But Mahmmod chose not to quit school following his teacher's advice. He said Chinese learning resources in Kurdish are limited, aspiring to compile a Kurdish-Chinese dictionary some day to help more Kurdish people learn Chinese language and culture. Two teachers from China, Hu Zhiwei and Li Hualai, have focused on teaching Kurdish students Chinese, despite the difficult circumstances of the pandemic. Hu, who teaches Chinese conversation, reading and writing, said the spread of the pandemic in Iraq has negatively affected his teaching. "Some students do not have the Internet at their homes, while the terrible economic situation has pushed them to squeeze time to work," Hu said. "Many people lost their jobs during the COVID-19. I have to work in a computer store after class to help my family," said Hewa Saadi Ali, another student in the Chinese department. "China has good relations with many other countries worldwide, and numerous foreigners cooperated with Chinese in trade or study in the country. Therefore, I chose to learn Chinese," Ali said, adding he would like to be a link between Iraqis and Chinese. The Kurdish student revealed his intention to go to China to get a master's degree in the Chinese language and become a Chinese language teacher in the department, believing that bilateral relations between the two countries will thrive in the future. Enditem TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Kansas Supreme Court staff stepped in this spring to oppose legislation meant to address issues surrounding drivers license suspensions for unpaid traffic fines, an issue pushed by activists for racial justice and the poor nationwide. Some measures to address the issue passed and became law. But other efforts to eliminate some fees and to replace some fines with community service stalled after a court official told lawmakers that collecting fewer dollars through reinstatement fees would threaten the courts ability to remain open and pay employees. Some advocates think that's the problem: The court system is overly reliant on impoverished and minority populations for funding. The system is formulated to thrive off the backs of poor people, said Sheila Officer, chairwoman of the Racial Profiling Advisory Board of Wichita. She said states including Washington and California have passed laws ending failure to pay fines as a reason for license suspension. The issue is part of a larger national conversation in which activists say fines and penalties for not paying them have the effect of criminalizing poverty. The ACLU and other groups are backing lawsuits and other efforts to keep poor people who cant afford to pay legal fees and fines from facing penalties. Kansas drivers can lose their license if they fail to pay traffic fines or appear in court. Drivers with a suspended license are charged $100 for each traffic violation to get it reinstated. Advocates for the poor and racial minorities say the system means that those with money can pay fines and avoid license suspensions, while those who cant afford the fines see their balances grow. Some Kansas advocates for racial equity backed a bill this year that would have ended those additional $100 payments, saying the reinstatement fees are causing drivers to violate more traffic laws and to be stuck in a debt cycle, unable to legally drive to work, school, or get children to daycare. Kansas Appleseed, a nonprofit that advocated for the measure, found last year that about 134,000 Kansans had suspended licenses due to unpaid fines and fees. Mike Fonkert, the groups campaign director, told The Associated Press that theres not enough evidence that suspending licenses compels people to pay off fines and fees. We believe that the only truly legitimate use of those suspensions is to keep dangerous drivers off the road, Fonkert said. Personnel costs made up about 91% of the state courts budget last fiscal year, according to Lisa Taylor, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Office of Judicial Administration. Shawn Jurgensen, special counsel to Kansas Supreme Court Chief Justice Marla Luckert, told lawmakers in February that the courts estimated that passing the measure to eliminate the compounding fees would have led to a roughly 44% drop in annual revenue beginning in the 2022 fiscal year. Until we can successfully get a separate, equal amount of replacement funding, it would jeopardize our ability to pay our employees, Jurgensen said in an interview. Jurgensen wouldnt speak to the issues of hardship advocates say debt-based license suspensions are creating. He said the courts would prefer to be entirely funded by state funds, but that's ultimately a decision for lawmakers. The Kansas courts also opposed another measure that would have created a statewide system for people to pay down court fees and fines in monthly installments, or through community service or court-approved classes to avoid long drivers license suspensions. Jurgensen said that the Kansas courts wouldnt be able to automatically track progress on payment plans until it sets up a new case management system, which he expects to be completed in 2022. Lawmakers did pass a bill to allow those charged fines and court costs for violating traffic laws to petition courts to waive all or some of the costs. The new law allows the courts to reduce or waive the payments if it determines that drivers or their close family members would face hardship by paying the full costs. House Judiciary Committee Chair Fred Patton, a Topeka Republican, said his committee heard testimony last year on a bill to end suspensions for failure to pay traffic tickets, but he didnt put it to a committee vote. Patton is concerned that ending debt-based license suspensions would mean no punishment for those who violate traffic laws. Still, he said he has discussed the issue with license suspension reform advocates, including conservative, small-government group Americans for Prosperity. This is one of those issues where you kind of have both ends of the political spectrum working on it, Patton said. If they can come up with something, then I could see it moving forward. ___ Andy Tsubasa Field is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. ____ On Twitter, follow Andy Tsubasa Field at https://twitter.com/AndyTsubasaF LAS VEGAS (AP) A mother and metro Las Vegas authorities misidentified an 8-year-old boy as a young homicide victim, police said Saturday after the boy, an older half-brother and their father were all found safe in Utah. The homicide victim, whose body was found Friday near a southern Nevada trailhead, remained unidentified, and the investigation into his death continued, homicide Lt. Ray Spencer told reporters during a late afternoon news conference outside police headquarters. During a Saturday morning news conference, Spencer had announced that the 8-year-old boy's panicked mother" contacted police early that morning to say she had seen news coverage of the homicide and believed the victim was her son, who had been picked up at his home by his father Thursday night. The homicide victim was identified as the 8-year-old boy, whose name was not released, by the mother and another relative, and the mother of the half-brother told police she also believed the 8-year-old was the the boy in a sketch made from a photo of the homicide victim, Spencer said during the afternoon news conference. The mother of the 8-year-old positively identified that child as being her son ... Spencer said, adding that she signed an identification affidavit. There is a very, very close resemblance when you look at those photos, the autopsy photos, and the 8-year-old child." Because the 11-year-old half-brother's location and well-being were unknown, police announced they were looking for him and the boys' father, 37-year-old Jose Montes-Herrera, Spencer said. We are going to do everything we can when the safety of a child is involved. That is exactly what we did," Spencer said. But it turned out that Montes-Herrera was with both boys in central Utah in an unspecified area without cellphone coverage, and the father was found with the help of Utah authorities, Spencer said. That produced confirmation the 8-year-old boy was alive and safe, Spencer said. We are still in the situation right now where we have not identified the child that was found out in Mountain Springs yesterday morning," Spencer said, referring to the area where the boy was found near a trailhead along State Route 160 between Las Vegas and Pahrump. We are still scouring hundreds of tips that we are receiving and we are continuing to work around the clock," he said. BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards on Friday asked President Joe Biden to declare a federal disaster for the state after severe weather and flash flooding caused damage to at least 2,000 homes. Edwards' request is for individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for five parishes Ascension, Calcasieu, East Baton Rouge, Iberville and Lafayette. Such help from FEMA includes housing and other needs. NEW ORLEANS (AP) For the first time in 208 years, a woman will take over as clerk of court at the Louisiana Supreme Court. Veronica Odinet Koclanes will replace John Olivier when he retires at the end of the year. Olivier has served in that post since 1996, The Advocate reported. I appreciate the trust and confidence placed in me by the justices of this Court, Koclanes said Thursday after the high court announced her appointment. I am honored to follow the exemplary service of John T. Olivier, who set a high standard over his 25 years as Clerk of Court. As was done by those who came before me, I look forward to serving the court and the public with dignity and respect and ensuring the clerks office meets the expectations of the court as well as all those parties whose matters come through this office." Supreme Court Chief Justice John L. Weimer said Koclanes is a well-respected attorney who has spent the last 23 years on the high court's staff. Her experience and knowledge of the court and its processes will serve her well as she takes on the responsibilities of Clerk of Court, he said. Koclanes served as a law clerk-research attorney for five justices at the state's highest court as well as a research attorney for the courts civil staff division. She also previously served as a law clerk for three judges on the state 4th Circuit Court of Appeal and a legislative clerk in the office of the Senate president for the state Legislature. From 1992 to 1995, she was an attorney at the New Orleans law firm of Milling, Benson, Woodward, and Hillyer. NEW YORK (AP) The man accused of shooting and injuring three people in Times Square earlier this the month has been charged after arriving in New York from Florida where he was arrested. Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, is charged with attempted murder and multiple counts of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal use of a firearm, the New York Police Department said on Friday. Muhammad has denied that he is responsible for the shooting on May 8 that wounded two women and a 4-year-old girl. The victims did not know each other. New York Police Department Chief of Detectives James Essig has said that Muhammad was identified as the gunman by his brother, who told officers he was the intended target of the shooting. U.S. Marshals arrested Muhammad near Jacksonville, Florida, four days after the shooting, along with a woman who authorities said traveled with him from New York. Muhammad spoke to WCJB-TV from county jail in Florida telling them that he had not been in New York at the time of the shooting. Police did not say when Muhammad arrived in New York. Information about an attorney for Muhammad was not immediately available in court records. A request was sent to the New York City's Department of Correction for information about when he arrived and where he was being held. Muhammad appeared before in court on May 13 in Starke, Florida, where a judge gave him several days to consult with a lawyer on whether he will waive a full extradition hearing and agree to return to New York. It was not immediately clear if a hearing had been held. CUMBERLAND, Md. (AP) A Maryland woman is accused of setting off a hospital fire alarm, which delayed treatment for dialysis patients, according to deputy state fire marshals. A news release from the office of the Maryland State Fire Marshal on Friday said Cumberland firefighters who responded to an automatic fire alarm on May 18 at UPMC Western Maryland determined the activation was an intentional false alarm. MIAMI (AP) Miami police were searching for a shooter who opened fire late Friday during an apparent drive-by shooting that killed one person and injured six others. Dozens of shots were sprayed into the night in Miami's Wynwood area, with some witnesses describing the scene as a war zone. The victims were rushed to nearby hospitals by friends or acquaintances. ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) A midshipman who had faced expulsion over social media posts critical of racial-justice protests has graduated from the Naval Academy and been commissioned as an ensign. Chase Standage graduated Friday in Annapolis as a member of the Class of 2021. RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) A burning ban covering 26 counties in North Carolina means fireworks and other pyrotechnic devices are prohibited in those areas for the Memorial Day weekend, a state agency said. The N.C. Department of Agriculture said in a news release on Friday that with nearly half the state in moderate drought status and little rain in the forecast, the N.C. Forest Service officials urges residents to avoid unnecessary risk with fire. NEW YORK (AP) Police were searching on Saturday for a man they say tried to mug a New York City subway passenger in what was being investigated as an anti-Asian hate crime. Police say the suspect was panhandling when he approached the Asian victim on Thursday afternoon while a train was approaching a midtown Manhattan station. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 22:44:15|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close The Long March-7 Y3 rocket, carrying the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft, blasts off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in south China's Hainan Province, May 29, 2021. China launched the cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-2 on Saturday, which is scheduled to dock with the space station core module Tianhe to deliver supplies, equipment and propellant. (Xinhua/Ju Zhenhua) WENCHANG, Hainan, May 29 (Xinhua) -- China launched the cargo spacecraft Tianzhou-2 on Saturday, which is scheduled to dock with the space station core module Tianhe to deliver supplies, equipment and propellant. The Long March-7 Y3 rocket, carrying Tianzhou-2, blasted off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site on the coast of the southern island province of Hainan at 8:55 p.m. (Beijing Time), according to the China Manned Space Agency (CMSA). After 604 seconds, Tianzhou-2 separated from the rocket and entered its designated orbit. At 9:17 p.m., the solar panels of Tianzhou-2 unfolded and began working properly. The launch was a complete success, the CMSA said. China launched its space station core module Tianhe on April 29. The country plans to complete the verification of key technologies and the in-orbit construction of the space station through multiple launches within two years. Saturday's launch was the first time that the space station cargo transportation system, composed of the Tianzhou spacecraft and Long March-7 rockets, was put into use. Measuring 10.6 meters in length and with a maximum diameter of 3.35 meters, the Tianzhou-2 cargo ship has a maximum takeoff weight of 13.5 tonnes and carries 6.8 tonnes of goods and materials. More than 160 large and small packages, including supplies for astronauts and space-science equipment, and two tonnes of propellant have been loaded into the cargo freighter, according to the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST). Lei Jianyu, a designer of Tianzhou-2 at the CAST, said that only two types of cargo spaceships currently in service globally have a maximum carrying capacity of more than 5 tonnes. "China's Tianzhou is one of them, and is at the world-leading level." After docking with Tianhe, Tianzhou-2 will replenish Tianhe's propellant and help test equipment for space application projects. The Tianzhou-2 cargo freighter is composed of cargo and propulsion compartments. Supplies are loaded inside the pressurized cargo section, and propellant in the propulsion section. The propellant used for the Tianzhou-2's flight and the propellant for refueling the Tianhe core module can be flexibly distributed according to demand. As the ancient Chinese said, to carry out an important task, supplies like rations and forage should go ahead of troops and horses. During the construction of the space station, cargo spaceships will always be launched ahead of crewed missions. "We will transport support materials, necessary spare parts and equipment first, and then our crew," said CMSA Director Hao Chun. Yang Hong, chief designer of the space station at the CAST, said that the launch missions of China's space station are closely coupled. Within 48 hours after Tianhe entered orbit, the core module underwent a status evaluation, and Tianzhou-2 then began its launch countdown preparations. Following Tianzhou-2's docking with Tianhe, the Shenzhou-12 crewed spaceship will enter its countdown preparations for launch. Three astronauts aboard Shenzhou-12, who will stay in orbit for three months, will unpack the goods stowed inside Tianzhou-2 to obtain their living and working materials. In addition to supplies for three astronauts, the gear delivered by Tianzhou-2 also includes two spacesuits for extra-vehicular activities, each weighing more than 100 kg. Tianzhou-2 is also delivering space food, dubbed "space deliveries" by Chinese engineers, including many traditional Chinese dishes. From staple foods to non-staples, from meat to vegetables, the menu design is of high quality and appetizing for astronauts. Famous stir-fried Chinese dishes like shredded pork with garlic sauce and Kung Pao chicken are both on the menu. Engineers have designed a special structure in the 18-cubic-meter cargo craft, dividing the interior into cargo compartments with honeycomb-like panels. Each compartment can hold several packages of different sizes, so that the packages can be efficiently placed in the compartments like building blocks. To improve the efficiency of loading, the research team has made 26 types of packages of different sizes, including some in trapezoidal and wedge shapes to adapt to the cylinder cabin structure of the craft. In addition, they have developed safety locks, similar to those of aircraft seats, to hold the packages in position while in space. The craft is also equipped with an information-management system. Each package has a label pasted onto it with a radio-frequency identification function, allowing the goods to be identified within a certain range. Yang Sheng, a designer of Tianzhou-2 at the CAST, said that China's space station has applied the country's advanced logistics-management technologies, enabling astronauts to obtain the cargo location and information by scanning QR codes. With intelligent positioning, the astronauts can find and access the packages quickly. The cargo craft will operate in orbit for one year. Its power supply capacity is not less than 2,700 watts. It can also carry out multiple in-orbit refueling missions. "China plans to build the space station into a state-level space lab supporting long astronaut stays and large-scale scientific, technological and application experiments," said Zhou Jianping, chief designer of China's manned space program. Enditem OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) Oklahomas departing attorney general dropped a bribery case Friday against the governors cabinet secretary. Attorney General Mike Hunter, whose last day in office is Tuesday, dropped the case against David Ostrowe, Gov. Kevin Stitts digital transformation and administration secretary. Hunter, whose assistants had obtained the indictment from a multicounty grand jury in December, said his office faced a potential conflict of interest in the prosecution. Hunters resignation means Stitt would name his replacement, allowing the governor to put an ally in the post. Stitt and Hunter, although both Republicans, have occasionally clashed on various matters, including over Stitts decision to renegotiate the states gaming compacts with Native American tribes. The indictment accused Ostrowe of attempted bribery by pressuring two Oklahoma Tax Commission members to drop penalties and late fees owed by an ex-state lawmakers business. Ostrowe denied any wrongdoing but has been on leave from his position since the indictment. Hunter's decision merely confirms Ostrowe's insistence that he was innocent, said Mack Martin, his attorney. Hunter announced his resignation Wednesday, saying some personal matters would become public that would become a distraction for the office. He recently filed for divorce against his wife of about 40 years. In a statement, Stitt said he was relieved to hear that the charges have been dropped against David Ostrowe and look forward to seeing the name and reputation of a good man and loyal public servant restored. LOS ANGELES (AP) Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered an independent investigation into the conviction of death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who says he was framed for the stabbing deaths of four people, including two children, at a suburban Los Angeles home in 1983. Cooper, 63, maintains he was framed and has been seeking gubernatorial clemency since 2016. In his executive order, Newsom said he takes no position" on Cooper's guilt or innocence or whether to grant him clemency. Newsom appointed a law firm to review court records and all facts and evidence in the case, including those that don't appear in trial and appellate records, along with the results of DNA tests previously ordered by the governor. The order said the tests had been completed, but Coopers lawyers and the San Bernardino County district attorneys office have starkly different views about whether they support Coopers claims. Cooper's attorney, Norman Hile, called the order gratifying. We are confident that a thorough review will demonstrate that Kevin Cooper is innocent and should be released from prison," he said. Cooper was convicted of a 1983 attack in Chino Hills, east of Los Angeles. Doug and Peggy Ryen, their 10-year-old daughter, Jessica and 8-year-old son, Joshua, were attacked in their sleep along with an 11-year-old neighbor, Christopher Hughes, who was a houseguest. Investigators said they were stabbed more than 140 times with an ice pick, knife and hatchet. Joshuas throat was slashed, but he survived. San Bernardino County prosecutors said previous DNA tests showed that Cooper, who had escaped from a prison two days before the slayings, was in the Ryens' home and smoked cigarettes in the Ryens' stolen station wagon, and that Coopers blood and the blood of at least one victim was on a T-shirt found by the side of a road leading away from the scene of the murders. Cooper claimed that investigators planted his blood on the T-shirt. He argued that trial evidence was manufactured, mishandled, planted, tampered with, or otherwise tainted by law enforcement," according to Newsom's order. Cooper's supporters have said other evidence, including untested hair samples, indicated there were multiple killers who were white or Hispanic. The case attracted national interest after New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris of California and reality television star Kim Kardashian urged officials to allow re-testing. In December 2018, then-Gov. Jerry Brown ordered DNA retesting for a T-shirt, towel, and a hatchet handle and sheath. Two months later, Newsom ordered additional DNA testing of hair samples collected from the victims hands and the crime scene, as well as two blood samples and a green button that investigators said linked Cooper to the crime and his attorney alleged was planted. According to Newsom's executive order, prosecutors argue that overwhelming evidence points to Cooper's guilt and contend that his conviction was affirmed by state and federal appeals courts after conducting exhaustive reviews" of the evidence and Cooper's misconduct claims. Messages seeking comment from the San Bernardino County district attorney's office weren't immediately returned after hours. Cooper had been scheduled for execution in 2004. But a federal appellate court stayed the execution pending further review. Both the California and U.S. supreme courts rejected his appeals. California hasn't executed anyone since 2006, and Newsom has imposed a moratorium. There are more than 700 men and women on the nation's largest death row. MONTEZUMA, Iowa (AP) Several hundred volunteers joined law enforcement officials in searching for a missing 10-year-old east-central Iowa boy. Xavior Harrelson was last seen around 11 a.m. Thursday on his bike near his home on the north end of Montezuma. Mitch Mortvedt with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation said areas around the familys home were being searched Sunday. About 375 volunteers joined 125 law enforcement officers and first responders in the search. Dena Bear, of Barnes City, is a single mom with two kids in their teens. Her son is related to Rita Janelle Papakee, who went missing in 2015 after leaving a Tama casino, Bear said. I couldnt sleep last night, Bear said. This is like a moms worst nightmare. So you dont sleep at night thinking about the mom, thinking about some poor child. Bill Ferdinand, 79, drove about 80 miles from Marion with his service dog to help search. He has three adult kids. When youve raised three children of your own and you havent had this problem, you realize how blessed you are, Ferdinand said. Certainly you look at the misery that the parents and family and friends are going through in this difficult time. When he disappeared, Harrelson was wearing a red shirt and blue pajama pants with black high-top shoes when he disappeared, authorities said. Police and family of the boy said it is out of the ordinary for him to be gone from home overnight with no contact. TORONTO - A mass grave containing the remains of 215 Indigenous children, including some as young as 3, has been found on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, a grim finding from one of the darkest chapters of Canadian history and one that an Indigenous leader called "an unthinkable loss." Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc said in a news release Thursday evening that the "stark truth" was unearthed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist who surveyed the site of what was once the Kamloops Indian Residential School. "We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify," Casimir said. "To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths." Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, said on Twitter that "while it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it's always crushing to have that chapter's wounds exposed." From 1883 to 1996, nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families, often by force, and sent to the government-funded, church-run schools in an attempt to assimilate them. There, many faced neglect and physical and sexual abuse. Speaking Indigenous languages and practicing their traditions were forbidden. For many, the schools have left lasting scars and trauma that has been passed down from one generation to the next. Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in its 2015 report that what happened at the schools constituted "cultural genocide." It also identified at least 3,200 students who died at the schools during that time - a rate that was far higher than for students elsewhere in Canada - though it said that the figure was probably greater and merited further investigation. It has since revised that number up to more than 4,100 children. Students at residential schools often died of illnesses such as tuberculosis, which spread quickly in cramped and unsanitary living quarters and because the children were often malnourished. Others died by suicide, in fires, in accidents while enduring hard labor or by freezing to death while trying to escape. Officials working to find the graves and to compile a register of the children who died at the schools told The Washington Post in 2018 that a lack of resources and missing documents was impeding progress, raising fears that unmarked graves could be destroyed. The 2015 report said that school records were often destroyed. In some cases, school officials failed to note the names of the students who died, the cause of death or to report the deaths to the parents. Those who died were sometimes buried on school grounds, in part because the schools were long distances from Indigenous communities. The Kamloops Indian Residential School, the largest in the residential school system overseen by the department of Indian Affairs, was set up in 1890 under the administration of the Roman Catholic Church. It operated for more than eight decades, shutting down in 1978. In 1927, a medical health officer visited the school at the request of the principal, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's report. He found that a recreation room for younger boys was "most unsanitary" and had contributed to "numerous infections, colds, bronchitis and pneumonia during the past winter." The outside toilets, the inspector said, were "a distinct menace to the health of the children" and should be destroyed. The commission also cited statements from George Manuel, a student at the school in the 1920s. He recalled being forced to speak English and having been called "a heathen" because of his grandfather. Manuel had one enduring memory. "Every Indian student smelled of hunger," he said. Two days after a gunman killed nine people in San Jose, Mayor Sam Liccardo said his city had learned the worst kind of lesson: That "no community is safe." In an interview with The Washington Post, Liccardo described the grim toll this latest mass shooting had taken. "We've done a fair amount of mourning throughout this pandemic, but this is a unique kind of pain," he said. Over the last few days, Liccardo and others have memorialized the nine victims - all employees of the Valley Transportation Authority light-rail facility where the attack took place. Many were immigrants, working an early-morning shift to provide for their families. The dead include Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose DeJesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; Lars Kepler Lane, 63; and Alex Ward Fritch, 49. Authorities described the suspected shooter, 57-year-old Samuel Cassidy, as "a highly disgruntled" VTA employee who had worked at the agency for more than a decade, according to family and Santa Clara County records. He died at the scene in an apparent suicide at the scene of the crime. "I've heard anecdotal bits of information from co-workers who believed [Cassidy] was isolated and that some questioned his mental health, but certainly nothing specific that would tell me someone should have done something at some time," Liccardo said, adding, "We're going got learn a lot over the next couple weeks." In a statement released Friday, the Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office said investigators had searched the shooter's residence, which was on fire the morning of the attack, and found a dozen firearms, about 22,000 rounds of ammunition, cans of gasoline and what they believed to be molotov cocktails. "It is believed that the suspect coordinated the destruction of his residence," the statement said. No explosives were found at the rail yard where the shooting occurred, officials added. Like the many mass shootings before it, this latest attack prompted calls from officials across the country for stricter gun control measures. Liccardo said there's a "sisterhood and brotherhood" of mayors who have experienced this kind of violence. Several of them reached out in recent days, he said, offering advice and tips on how to care for a community rocked by such a tragedy. "I'm not the first mayor in America to say after a mass shooting that we have very serious gaps in our delivery of mental health services and in our regulation of guns," Liccardo said. Many city officials are limited in their ability to enact gun control policies, but Liccardo said mayors nationwide are working on ways to get around constraints. "More than anything else, mayors around the country would love to see Congress either do something or get the hell out of the way," he said. The mayor is aiming to pass regulations to curb straw purchases of guns, when someone who is allowed to purchase a firearm buys it for someone who is not allowed. The council mandated video recording at gun stores, training for employees to spot straw purchases, and mental health and suicide prevention signage on gun stores, Liccardo said. The mayor said more proposed policy changes are on the horizon for San Jose in the wake of the attack. But right now, the community is living in its grief. At a vigil in downtown San Jose on Thursday night, hundreds gathered to mourn. The crowd was dotted with dozens of VTA employees in work attire, the San Jose Mercury News reported. "These aren't names to us. These are people we know and we love and we see every single day of our working lives. It really, really hurts down to the very core of our souls," John Courtney, president of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, which represents VTA workers, told the crowd. "So please, ATU, let's do what we do, stand for each other, by each other," he said, according to the Mercury News. "Let's love each other." - - - The Washington Post's Mark Berman contributed to this report. After a mass shooting left nine workers at a Valley Transportation Authority rail yard in San Jose, California, dead, authorities are trying to understand why and how the gunman committed the horrific attack. Evidence has painted a picture of the assailant, 57-year-old Samuel Cassidy, as a disgruntled VTA worker who hated his job. Authorities on Friday said an initial search of his house which was burned in a fire that coincided with Wednesdays shooting uncovered multiple cans of gasoline, suspected Molotov cocktails, 12 firearms and approximately 22,000 rounds of various types of ammunition. It is clear that this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could had sheriffs deputies not made entry to stop his rampage, Santa Clara County sheriffs spokesman Russell Davis said in a news release. Emerging reports Friday also indicated that Cassidy may have been facing a disciplinary hearing at the agency, where he worked as a maintenance worker for the last eight years. But representatives for VTA said he was not scheduled for a disciplinary hearing Wednesday or any other upcoming or prior date. He was scheduled to report for a regular shift the day of the shooting. The VTA is reviewing all records pertaining to Cassidy and whether he made other employees fearful or uneasy, the agency said. Some who worked with Cassidy described him as a loner at the agency. Sam was definitely outside the group, said Kirk Bertolet, 64, a 12-year VTA employee who was on duty at the time of the shooting. I never once saw him sitting at a table with co-workers talking or doing anything. He was always beside himself doing something, and never interacted. Bertolet said the workplace was composed of blue-collar workers who were sometimes tough on each other. Sometimes, if youre a little thin-skinned, maybe you dont fit in, he said. The nature of the attack was deliberate, methodical and targeted, the investigation has revealed. Witnesses have said Cassidy appeared to pass over some people while selecting others. Based on recent developments in the investigation, we can say that the suspect has been a highly disgruntled VTA employee for many years, which may have contributed to why he targeted VTA employees, Davis said Thursday. A source at the agency said Cassidy had gone off on managers in the Operations Control Center about three weeks before the shooting when they called on him to perform emergency maintenance work and that he had told them he wouldnt fix anything until they fixed his paychecks. The second building where he was headed before encountering sheriffs deputies housed the Operations Control Center, according to the source. Several agencies, including the San Jose police and fire departments, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, were assisting the Santa Clara County Sheriffs Office with the investigation at the crime scene and at Cassidys home on Angmar Court, where a fire ignited just minutes after the shooting began. Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith has said he likely used a detonator device to ignite the fire at the same time as the shooting. The VTA rail yard is eight miles from his home. It is believed that the suspect coordinated the destruction of his residence, sheriffs officials said Friday. He is believed to have acted alone. FBI officials on Friday morning confirmed that investigators also found intact Molotov cocktails inside Cassidys home and that bomb technicians will be working to make suspicious materials as safe as necessary so that investigators can continue to collect evidence. Erica Ray with the San Jose Fire Department said authorities also located a device at the home that they were going to render safe. Investigators later determined it was an inert box of batteries and wires. During a news briefing Friday, San Jose Police Department spokesman Steve Aponte described Cassidys home as cluttered and said it was a possible hoarder situation. It was a challenge for our officers to maneuver through, he said. Potential explosive materials were also found in Cassidys locker at the VTA rail yard in the hours after the shooting. On Friday, officials said they completed their search of the rail yard and found no explosives. Cassidy, who authorities said took his own life when deputies confronted him, was armed with three semiautomatic 9mm handguns and 32 high-capacity magazines loaded with additional ammunition. Officials said he fired 39 shots. Security video released by authorities showed Cassidy at the VTA rail yard walking calmly between the two buildings where the victims were shot Wednesday morning. A VTA clerical worker, who wished to remain anonymous because she was advised not to speak to the media, said the first building houses the ways, power and signal team and the second building includes operations and light rail maintenance. Based on the first buildings layout and exit locations, she said, the victims would have had nowhere to go. They didnt deserve this, she said through tears. They were just good guys who loved their families, who just wanted to go to work and go home every day. At a vigil Thursday evening, hundreds of people mourned for the victims, who ranged in age from 29 to 63. They have been identified as Paul Delacruz Megia, 42; Taptejdeep Singh, 36; Adrian Balleza, 29; Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35; Timothy Michael Romo, 49; Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40; Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63; Lars Kepler Lane, 63; and Alex Ward Fritch, 49. Karman Singh recalled how his brother, Taptejdeep, 36, would joke that he looked younger than Singh, despite being six years older. He often came to Taptejdeep for help, Singh said, describing how his brother shielded me from responsibilities of this world. Whatever trouble he was in, he was my first call, Singh said. Other families described similarly close relationships with the loved ones they lost. Audrey, the daughter of Timothy Michael Romo, 49, said her dad would often call her his favorite little girl, to which she would playfully respond, Im your only little girl. Romos son, Scott, said that his father had been everything I ever wanted to be as a man. He was my superman, and Ill never not miss him, he said. One victim, 49-year-old Alex Ward Fritch, died in a hospital after the attack. His wife, Terra Fritch, said she was by his side when died. We had one of those very special relationships that I think most people just dream of, she told the Los Angeles Times. We were never really apart. And if he was somewhere without me, it was definitely noticed. Like, where is the other half? The couple was supposed to renew their vows in Hawaii for their 20th wedding anniversary in September. Alex loved dirt bikes, tiki bars and most of all, luckily, he loved me, she said. During the vigil, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo read the victims names, pausing a few seconds before each one. He spoke about how healing would be a long and hard journey for many. Were here to share our pain, were here to share our love, to share our support for each other, he said. Were here to express a singular message in our community: We will heal, and we will heal together. Victims support funds have been set up through Working Partnership USA and the Amalgamated Transit Union. BOISE, Idaho (AP) A south-central Idaho man has been sentenced to 30 years in prison for distribution and possession of child pornography. Forty-seven-year-old Miles Patrick Barclay of Twin Falls received the sentence Friday in U.S. District Court in Boise. SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) A special congressional election is checking the political pulse of politics across the Albuquerque metro area and a few outlying rural communities in one of the few House campaigns since President Joe Biden took office. Four names are on the ballot in Tuesday's election to succeed Deb Haaland in Congress after her confirmation as secretary of the U.S. Interior Department. After weeks of early voting, polling locations are closed on Sunday and Monday before reopening on Election Day with allowances for same-day registration. New Mexico's 1st Congressional District has heavily favored Democratic candidates in recent years, shunning President Donald Trump with a gap of 23 percentage points in 2020 and reelecting Haaland with a margin of 16 percentage points as voter participation reached an all-time high. Those margins bode well for Democratic nominee and second-term state Rep. Melanie Stansbury, as she confronts Republican state Sen. Mark Moores. Republicans hope to erode the 219-211 Democratic majority in the U.S. House of Representatives ahead of midterm elections in 2022. Stansbury, a consultant on land use and water policy, has embraced Bidens core agenda for post-pandemic economic recovery, free universal preschool and infrastructure spending that modernizes energy and transportation sectors to address global warming. In recent debates, she has endorsed a $15 national minimum wage, reforms to address police misconduct and systemic racism, and a more humanitarian approach to immigration. Moores has emphasized the need for aggressive drug interdiction and immigration enforcement along the U.S. border with Mexico and uninterrupted oil leasing on federal land as a crucial source of employment in New Mexico. His campaign has seized on concerns about public safety and crime as a core issue, backing more federal dollars for police body cameras that are required in New Mexico and voicing support for police officers. A hardline approach to crime by Trump in 2020 fell flat with Albuquerque-area voters after he sent federal agents to bolster local law enforcement efforts. Still, crime remains an issue for the city. Two additional candidates are vying for untethered voters in a state with strong currents of libertarian politics. Independent contender Aubrey Dunn Jr., a former Republican elected to statewide office as land commissioner who didn't seek reelection in 2018, has cast himself as a staunch defender of gun rights and an experienced steward of public lands. Libertarian nominee Chris Manning, who lives far outside the 1st District in Farmington, is campaigning on an unorthodox plan to reduce health care costs by eliminating employer-based coverage and insurance requirements. The potential for low turnout in the vacancy election adds an element of uncertainty and a sense of rare opportunity among Republicans, who account for 31% of registered voters across the 1st Congressional District. The voting district encompasses Albuquerque, rural Torrance County and other outlying areas that include the Indigenous community of Sandia Pueblo. Registered Democrats dominated early voting, casting roughly twice as ballots as registered Republicans as of Friday. Political science professor Lonna Atkeson, of the University of New Mexico, notes that both major-party candidates have delved into attack ads and negative campaigning a sign that neither campaign is confident. Nobodys felt confident enough that they can just ride it out in a positive way. So theyre both feeling a little stressed, Atkeson said. I mean, we never saw Deb Haaland do a negative ad. The Democratic National Committee brought Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, to New Mexico on Thursday to campaign on Stansburys behalf. At a rally with labor unions and other supporters, Emhoff acknowledged the thin margin Democrats have in Congress and said electing Stansbury would help to ensure the party's legislative initiatives make it to the president's desk. Moores has repeatedly sought to link Stansbury to the so-called BREATHE Act proposal from the Movement for Black Lives that would divest taxpayer spending from traditional policing agencies and invest in alternative approaches to public safety. And he says Stansbury voted in 2019 for a bill that benefitted her consulting client. Stansbury said she has stood by law enforcement in coordinating spending on police infrastructure and initiatives at the state Legislature. She has bashed Moores for opposing some pandemic relief measures while accepting $1.8 million in federal aid at his medical testing business. Moores frequently invokes Latino family ties that date back to the region's Spanish colonial era, in a state where Hispanic pride is an enduring staple of politics. Atkeson sees that as an overt push by Moores to win over socially conservative Latinos who might otherwise vote Democrat. The 1st Congressional District has been controlled by Democrats since 2009. The seat has consistently been a stepping stone to higher office for Republican and Democratic politicians, including now-deceased Interior Secretary Manuel Lujan Jr., former U.S. Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich and Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham. OMAHA, Neb. (AP) A town southwest of Omaha is poised to double in size and add nearly 3,000 people after the Nebraska Supreme Court ruled in its favor in an annexation dispute with its home county. The high court ruled Friday that a lower court failed to consider future development plans in the area that Gretna sought to annex, the Omaha World-Herald reported. HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) With Pennsylvania's wide-open races for governor and U.S. Senate taking shape, Republican candidates with strong ties to Donald Trump are running and considered strong contenders for the party's nominations a powerful sign of the former president's enduring popularity within the GOP. Within a few days of each other, Sean Parnell entered the race for U.S. Senate and Lou Barletta entered the race for governor.. Trump had urged both men to run in prior bids for public office. Barletta explained the calculus for running under the Republican banner. Donald Trump is still the leader of the Republican Party and anybody who believes otherwise, they dont know what theyre talking about, and especially in Pennsylvania, Barletta told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon on Bannon's podcast, War Room. Parnell and Barletta have ties to Trump that go deep. Barletta was co-chair of Trump's 2016 presidential campaign in Pennsylvania and a loyal ally on Capitol Hill when he was in Congress. He was Trump's endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate in 2018 and watched the Super Bowl that year with the then-president. He was one of Trump's hand-picked presidential electors in Pennsylvania last year and has hired veterans of Trump's campaign to run his own. Parnell, a regular guest on Fox News programs, got numerous Twitter and campaign stump shoutouts from Trump to boost his unsuccessful bid for U.S. House last year and landed a coveted speaking slot at the Republican National Convention. Parnell counts Donald Trump Jr. as a friend, and drew his praise on Twitter the day he announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate. If Trump is toxic for Republicans , as some in the party believe, it isn't showing, even after Trump's long and baseless campaign to discredit his 2020 election loss as a fraud and his role in whipping up supporters before they attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a stunning attempt to overturn the presidential election. Republican voters seem unaffected in their support for Trump-backed candidates, said Jim Lee, president of Susquehanna Polling and Research, whose polls include voter surveys and polls for Republican candidates. But Lee also described opposition among independent voters to Trump-aligned candidates as a brick wall with a couple layers of thickness to it. Whats an asset in a primary could potentially be a liability in the fall, Lee said. It was no mistake, perhaps, that the first attack Parnell faced from GOP rival Jeff Bartos was to try to fray his ties to Trump. The Bartos campaign quickly spooled out a Parnell missive on Twitter from 2016, when he criticized Trumps refusal to release his taxes. Asked about it, Parnell said he thought Trump could inoculate himself from that line of attack if he had. Parnell had campaigned for U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida in the presidential primary that year, but his criticism didn't stop when Rubio dropped out. For instance, Parnell retweeted a headline saying Trump wouldn't disavow support from David Duke or the KKK. Parnell commented, I suppose I should be surprised but I'm not." In another, he criticized Trump's embrace of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Im a guy that I call it like I see it, Parnell said in an interview about his criticism of Trump back then. You know, I do everything I can to call balls and strikes. I stand up to my party when I think that theyre wrong. And Im not afraid to stand up for what I believe. Trump's policies, by and large, were good for the country, Parnell said, and he grew to support what Trump represented after he saw Trump's popularity in Pennsylvania that year. Parnell and Barletta both say they want Trump's endorsement, but aren't necessarily making their campaigns strictly about Trump: Their introductory campaign videos never mention him. Meanwhile, state Sen. Doug Mastriano who has all but declared his candidacy for governor is dangling himself as Trump's preferred candidate. A Trump adviser has stressed that Trump has made no endorsement. Some Republican Party officials doubt Trump will make an endorsement in a contested primary if it isn't clear who will ultimately win it. No politician wants to back a loser, they say. Still, an endorsement-free primary might be fine for Republican candidates who hope to capitalize in areas where Trump is less popular. Take southeastern Pennsylvania, where a critical mass of Republicans voted against Trump, helping Joe Biden to victory in November. In southeastern Pennsylvania, Donald Trump's endorsement would probably hurt a candidate as much as help them, said Jackie Kulback, chair of the Cambria County GOP. I mean, Pennsylvania is like two different worlds. Another headache for Republicans is getting many of Trump's voters to vote in elections when Trump isn't on the ballot. That is a worry in 2022, and even party officials who support Trump acknowledge that attracting Pennsylvania's moderate voters will be critical to general election victories. You can be the meanest, most hardcore, go-get-'em Make America Great Again, radical Republican, and you can win a primary," said Dave Ball, Washington County's GOP chair. "But you can't win a general election because you cant pull in the center. ... I dont care how you cut it. You need votes. ___ Follow Marc Levy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/timelywriter. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 23:06:20|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BEIJING, May 29 (Xinhua) -- The following are the updates on the global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. - - - - ADDIS ABABA -- The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa reached 4,802,687 as of Friday evening, the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) said. The Africa CDC, the specialized healthcare agency of the 55-member African Union, said the death toll from the pandemic stands at 129,753 while 4,343,800 patients across the continent have recovered from the disease. - - - - MOSCOW -- Russia reported 9,289 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 5,053,748, the official monitoring and response center said Saturday. The national COVID-19 death toll rose by 401 to 120,807 in the past day, while the number of recoveries grew by 9,250 to 4,670,484. - - - - ULAN BATOR -- More than 1,025,300 people, or 49.6 percent of Mongolian adults, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the health ministry said Saturday. More than 1,847,200 people, or 89 percent of the adult population nationwide, have so far received their first vaccine dose, the ministry said. - - - - TAIPEI -- Taiwan on Saturday reported 320 new local COVID-19 infections and 166 backlogged local cases, including 21 deaths, the local disease monitoring agency said. It is the 14th consecutive day that new local infections have exceeded 200 on the island. Enditem LONDON (AP) Anti-immigration demonstrators protesting the rising numbers of people attempting to reach the U.K. by crossing the English Channel in small boats blocked trucks traveling to a cargo terminal in Dover on Saturday. Carrying the England flag and chanting English streets,'' about 50 demonstrators disrupted travel into the busy port. A heavy police presence was in the area as authorities anticipated protests over the long holiday weekend that marks the unofficial start of summer. CHRISTIANSBURG, Va. (AP) A Virginia woman is accused of abducting a 2-year-old from a church, and a prosecutor said she tried to mislead investigators by giving them false tips. Nancy Renee Fridley is charged in Giles County with abduction and child abuse or neglect, The Roanoke Times reported Friday. Fridley also faces a methamphetamine charge in Alleghany County, where Noah Gabriel Trout was located by Virginia State Police and the FBI. According to investigators, Fridley was sending the fake tips to them with the intent of directing the search for the child into Tennessee instead of into Alleghany County. The toddler was taken from a nursery during Sunday services at Riverview Baptist Church in Ripplemead. During the 25 hours that Fridley allegedly had Noah, she and her boyfriend shaved the childs head and introduced him to neighbors as Bobby Jr., saying he was the son of Fridleys boyfriend Bobby Lee Taylor, the prosecutor said. Fridley seemed to be planning to abduct another child as well besides Noah, she seemed to be seeking a younger boy, Giles County Commonwealths Attorney Bobby Lilly said during Thursdays bond hearing. Fridley was seeking a bond to be released from jail, where she has been held since her arrest on May 4, the day after Noah was taken from the church. Judge Robert Viar in Montgomery County Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court declined to set a bond. I cant think of anything that would guarantee the safety of the public at this point." The prosecutor said Fridley seemed to be working to create circumstances where she could take two children. She told neighbors that she was getting back custody of her two boys, one with an age of about 2 and one younger, Lilly said. Officers found two fully set-up beds for children in the mobile home that she and Taylor shared in Clifton Forge, Lilly said. She had bought childrens sippy cups, and officers found a childs onesie that was too small for Noah, Lilly said. Lilly said there was evidence that in March or April, Fridley visited a church in Narrows. She returned to the Narrows church on May 3 and went to its child care area, where she gave a false name for herself and said that Larry was sick and had asked her to pick up a child, Lilly said. But church members questioned Fridley and when she gave a name for the child she was looking for, they said it was not the name of anyone there and turned her away, Lilly said. Investigators determined that Fridley then went to another Narrows church, across the street from the first, and again said she was there to pick up a child, Lilly said. She was turned away there as well. Fridley went on to Ripplemead and Riverview Baptist Church, where she talked to nursery workers, and pointed to Noah, saying he was the boy she was supposed to take, Lilly said. When a state police SWAT team moved in on Fridley and Taylors residence May 4, they found Fridley in a vehicle with Noah, having enlisted a neighbor to take them to a different location, Lilly said. Though the bond hearing was held in Montgomery County, Viar said that a preliminary hearing for Fridley, now scheduled for Aug. 16, will be back in Giles County. KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) A year after Mount Everest was closed to climbers as the pandemic swept across the globe, hundreds are making the final push to the summit with only a few more days left in the season, saying they are undeterred by a coronavirus outbreak in base camp. Three expedition teams to Everest canceled their climb this month following reports of people getting sick. But the remaining 41 teams decided to continue with hundreds of climbers and their guides scaling the 8,849-meter (29,032-foot) top in the season that ends in May, before bad weather sets in. Even though the coronavirus has reached the Everest base camp, it has not made any huge effect like what is being believed outside of the mountain, said Mingma Sherpa of Seven Summit Treks, the biggest expedition operator on Everest. No one has really fallen seriously sick because of COVID or died like the rumors that have been spreading. With 122 clients from 10 teams on Everest, the company led the biggest group but there were no serious illnesses among them, he said. Nepalese officials have downplayed reports of coronavirus cases on Mount Everest, apparently out of concern of creating chaos and confusion in the base camp. After a gap year of no income from climbers, Nepal has been eager to cash in on this year's season. Many people made it to the base camp and it is possible that the people who went there from here could have been infected," Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli said. But that does not mean that it (coronavirus) has reached the entire mountain, maybe a part of the base camp or the area below that. In April, a Norwegian climber became the first to test positive at the Everest base camp. He was flown by helicopter to Kathmandu, where he was treated and later returned home. Prominent guide Lukas Furtenbach of Austria decided to halt his expedition this month and pull out his clients because of an outbreak among team members. After returning from the mountain, Furtenbach estimated more than 100 climbers and support staff have been infected. He said in an interview last week that it was obvious there were many cases at the base camp because he could see people were sick and could hear them coughing in their tents. I think with all the confirmed cases we know now confirmed from (rescue) pilots, from insurance, from doctors, from expedition leaders I have the positive tests so we can prove this, Furtenbach told The Associated Press. China last week canceled climbing from its side of Everest due to fears the virus could spread from Nepal. The climbing season was accompanied by a devastating surge in coronavirus cases in Nepal, with record numbers of daily infections and deaths. On Friday, Nepal reported 6,951 new confirmed cases and 96 deaths, bringing the nations totals since the pandemic began to more than 549,111 infections and 7,047 deaths. Another expedition, by the Telluride, Colorado-based company Mountain Trip, also announced it was pulling out of Everest. While its a difficult decision to make when considering all of the work, years of preparation, sacrifice and resources that have went into the expedition, its the only sensible outcome from a risk management standpoint," a statement by the company said. Six Sherpa guides working for the company have been evacuated to Kathmandu with COVID-19 symptoms, it said. A total of 408 foreign climbers were issued permits to climb Everest this season, aided by several hundred Sherpas and support staff who have been stationed at base camp since April. Since Everest was first conquered on May 29, 1953, thousands of people have scaled the peak and many Nepalese Sherpas have done it multiple times. Veteran Sherpa guide Kami Rita scaled the summit a record 25th time this month. CAMPTON, N.H. (AP) Visitors to the White Mountain National Forest this Memorial Day weekend are being encouraged to check the weather, stay safe, and pack food and other items responsibly as to not leave trash or attract bears. Forest staff say hikers should check the website https://hikesafe.com before venturing out for safety information and tips. MINNEAPOLIS (AP) A White Bear Lake woman has been charged with two counts of stalking after she allegedly harassed real estate agents and prospective buyers who came to look at a property next door that recently was put up for sale. The Star Tribune reports Lori E. Christensen, 57, took photos of and videotaped clients, put up No Trespassing signs facing the home for sale and loudly made disparaging comments about the house and the people who had lived there. MARTINSBURG, W.Va. (AP) A West Virginia state trooper was shot and a suspect was found dead after a standoff Friday, police said. State police and members of the Berkeley County Sheriff's Office were trying to locate a suspect in a murder case, state police Capt. Shallon R. Oglesby said in an email. The trooper, who was wearing a ballistic vest, was shot while inside a Martinsburg residence and was taken for medical evaluation, Oglesby said. The suspect barricaded himself inside the home, Oglesby said. Officers entered the residence after an exchange of gunfire and found the suspect deceased. Neither the suspect nor the trooper was identified. BERKELEY (BCN) Imagine placing an image of Nobel prize-winning research on your wall. That's what science enthusiasts could do with a digital image of documents that will be put up for auction as soon as Wednesday by UC Berkeley. The university will auction off an image showing the initial research findings of Jim Allison's work on cancer immunotherapy at UC Berkeley. Allison's documents show what was "the very first step in the patenting process," said Rich Lyons, UC Berkeley's chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer. The images were the world's first glimpse of the pathbreaking research, Lyons said. The highest bidder will receive a nonfungible token, also known as an NFT, which represents ownership in a unique item, like research documents. Lyons said the idea for selling the token for the research documents germinated two weeks ago. Recent UC Berkeley graduates were recruited to help with the process. "Nobody's done this," Lyons said. NFTs have been used to sell other things such as more traditional artwork as well as Edward Snowden's fundraiser for Freedom of the Press Foundation. To be auctioned off later is a token for Jennifer Doudna's work on CRISPR-Cas9 gene editing. Doudna won the Nobel prize for her work and is a professor at UC Berkeley while Allison is now at the University of Texas' MD Anderson Cancer Center. Proceeds from the auctions will be used to fund more research at UC Berkeley. What's more, the university will enhance its reputation, which may result in, among other things, greater philanthropic gifts to the university. Lyons said the enhancement to UC Berkeley's reputation will likely be more lucrative. Non-fungible tokens can be resold, providing more money for the university and for the auction site Foundation, which is helping to sell Allison's work. In the initial sale of the work, UC Berkeley will obtain 85 percent of the proceeds and Foundation 15 percent. "I'd be surprised if it went for less than $100,000," Lyons said of Allison's work. "I'd be surprised and happy if it went for more than $1 million." Non-fungible tokens can be resold because they are unique to the person who buys them. Of course, someone could take a photo of Allison's or Doudna's work and put the photo online. But the owner of the token has the right to tell the photographer to take the photo down. Any future sale of the tokens and Berkeley will get 10 percent of the proceeds while Foundation will get 5 percent. "Someone might ask, 'Why would I want a digital version of some internal university form?' Lyons said in a statement. "Because it represents something magnificent. "There are people who recognize and care about symbols of great science, and even if they never intend to resell the NFT, they want to own it and they want resources to go back to Berkeley, where the basic research behind these Nobel Prizes came from, to support further research." UC Berkeley will keep the patent for Doudna's work. The patent has expired on Allison's work. Allison's research documents were minted Thursday and part of the proceeds from the sale of the token will go toward offsetting the carbon used to create the energy to mint them. Allison's work has led to the treatment of 15 types of cancer using therapies based on his technique and spawned additional immunotherapies. Allison has described immunotherapy as the fourth pillar of cancer treatments. The three other pillars are radiation, chemotherapy, and additional gene-targeting treatments. Copyright 2021 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area. Copyright 2021 by Bay City News, Inc. Republication, Rebroadcast or any other Reuse without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited. CHICAGO (AP) Illinois stands on the cusp of expanding voting and civics education to young people incarcerated at the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice who are older than 17 and within a year of their release date. Senate Bill 2116, which has cleared both chambers of the Illinois General Assembly, would ensure that incarcerated youths have access to voter registration, information on how to vote, and opportunities to co-facilitate the civics education curriculum with their peers in state juvenile facilities. Supporters of the bill said the idea behind the legislation is to help ensure that, before their release, incarcerated youths know the process for voter registration and are equipped to engage meaningfully in civics life as they reintegrate into society. ___ The nonprofit news outlet Injustice Watch provided this article to The Associated Press through a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News. ___ This bill is about restoring the individual, rather than putting up roadblocks, even after you serve your time, said Illinois House Rep. Maurice West, D-Rockford, one of the bills House sponsors. If we want to decrease recidivism, then we need to invest in the individual. The youths curriculum is broken down into three 90-minute workshops led by peer educators who are incarcerated residents of the facility. One of the co-facilitators of the curriculum will be a resident of the facility, trained in voting rights education by a nonpartisan civics organization, while the other will be a member of said organization. Workshops will be offered to residents 12 months before their release as part of their standard exit process. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is expected to sign the bill into law, which would go into effect in January 2022 and amend the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act passed in 2019 that created a civics education curriculum and increased access to voter registration across all Illinois prisons. That 2019 law was a product of a collaboration between students at the Stateville Correctional Center, Chicago Votes, and the Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. The same groups later worked with state juvenile justice officials to negotiate the latest amendment with the help of Illinois State Sen. Robert Peters, D-Chicago. Being a person who was affected by the (criminal) justice system, youre told youre never going to be able to vote again, said Javier Reyes, a formerly incarcerated organizer with Chicago Votes. So when these bills get passed, now youre able to give people the correct information. Youre able to empower them. Christina Rivers, an associate professor of political science at DePaul University, and her students, played critical roles in getting the 2019 bill drafted. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Rivers taught a class every other year at the Stateville Correctional Center in Crest Hill, Illinois, on law and politics attended by incarcerated people and DePaul students. During Rivers first year teaching the course in 2016, her students decided to focus on felony disenfranchisement for a group project and subsequently wrote the initial drafts for the legislation. They partnered with Chicago Votes and Chicago Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights to write a legislative proposal. Three years later, it was signed into law as the Re-Entering Citizens Civics Education Act. Its the first such bill that we know of in this country, Rivers said. Were thrilled that we were able to write it in that setting with that team. "As our 32-foot power catamaran speeds along Kauais North Shore and Napali Coast, Im struck anew by the beauty of this islands green mountains and soaring cliffs and the potential deadliness of the sandy beaches and sparkling waters below." In between sharing the regions rich cultural and natural history, North Shore Charters tour guide and Kilauea native Mattie Geimer is pointing out the beaches and natural features where many visitors and some residents have drowned over the years to Jeanne Cooper. A total of 392 visitors and 320 residents drowned across Hawaii in 2009-2018, and Californians accounted for 22% of those fatalities, or 87 victims which may not be surprising, given that they made up about 25% of all visitors in 2019. And with a surge of travelers expected, Geimer and others are educating visitors about how to stay safe while enjoying the islands. More: After five months, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano stops erupting - at least for now. It has paused following weeks of dwindling lava supply. Read more. Going to Maui? It could soon cost more as mayor suggests more fees for visitors. Residents would be exempt from fees. Read more. 'Mind your own business': Florida men assault Hawaii resident after reminder to wear masks. "I let them know again, You have to have a mask; youre in Hawaii." Read more. Last week's top story: How Kona coffee became one of Hawaii's most recognizable products. The Kona Coffee Belt is just 30 miles long and 2 miles wide, but it produces about 2.7 million pounds of processed coffee a year. Read more. On Hawaii is curated by Jasmine Garnett and Fiona Lee. Email Garnett at Jasmine.Garnett@sfgate.com and Lee at Fiona.Lee@sfgate.com. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 23:19:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ABUJA -- Nigerian troops on Friday killed 10 Boko Haram militants while thwarting an attempted attack on a military base in the northeastern state of Borno, a spokesman for the army said on Saturday. Mohammed Yerima, the spokesman for the army, said in a statement that the militants came in their numbers, mounted on gun trucks, and attempted to infiltrate the main entrance of Rann, a town in the northern state, with a heavy presence of troops. (Nigeria-Boko Haram) - - - - MOGADISHU -- The Somali National Army (SNA) said Saturday its forces killed 37 al-Shabab militants in Middle Shabelle region on Friday night amid the ongoing military operations to flush out the extremists in the southern part of the country. "The Somali National Army (SNA) last night carried out a planned operation in the Galka-Harare area of Middle Shabelle where the militants were based, killing 37 al-Shabab militants and capturing two others," SNA said in a statement issued in Mogadishu. (Somalia-Army) - - - - CHARIKAR, Afghanistan -- At least four people were killed and 11 others wounded after a roadside bomb hit a university bus in Afghanistan's eastern Parwan province on Saturday, an Interior Ministry official said. (Afghanistan-Roadside Bomb-University Bus) - - - - QALA-E-NAW, Afghanistan, May 29 (Xinhua) -- A father and his son were killed in a security forces' gunfire in Afghanistan's western Badghis province, a local official confirmed on Saturday. The incident happened late on Friday night when the victims walking through a district road ignored signals from security forces in the restive Ab Kamari district, district chief Khudadad Tayeb told Xinhua. (Afghanistan-Civilans-Shooting) - - - - NEW DELHI -- The death toll in the toxic liquor consumption incident in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh has risen to 22, officials said Saturday. The incident took place in Aligarh district, about 416 km northwest of Lucknow, the capital city of Uttar Pradesh. "So far 22 people have died after consuming toxic liquor here," an official at district magistrate office Aligarh said. "Some of the people who have been hospitalized after complaining illness following consumption of the liquor are undergoing treatment." Enditem Sharon, PA (16146) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 61F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Sharon, PA (16146) Today A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 62F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 62F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Islamabad, May 29 (IANS) At least nine people were killed and 16 others injured after a passenger van fell into a ditch in Pakistan's Muzaffarabad city, local media reported on Saturday morning. Police told the media that the victims included three children, and the injured have been shifted to the hospital, reports Xinhua news agency. By Shalini Bhardwaj New Delhi [India], May 28 (ANI): Administering two different COVID-19 vaccines, specially those with similar underlying platform, is still under research and supply constraints have to be resolved so that people can take their vaccine doses on time, experts have said. A "vaccine goof up" was recently reported from Siddharthnagar in Uttar Pradesh in which some people were given Covishield in the first dose and Covaxin in the other. Experts said that of such goof up having happened at a few other places cannot be ruled out. An investigation is taking place over the incident in Siddharthnagar and officials have said it is a case of negligence. Dr Rajib Dasgupta, chairperson of the Centre of Social Medicine and Community Health at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said that mixing of vaccines or a combination of vaccines and is currently under study now. "The combination of vaccines is still under investigation and research. The potential mixing of what we call a homologous boost ...homologous combination boost are vaccines that have similar mechanisms or similar platforms. Only one or two initial results are available from the trials across the world but those are interim results and not final results," he said. "There is a supply problem all across the world at present. The mixing of vaccines is not authorised in India and certainly not Covaxin or Covishield," added Dr Dasgupta, who is also a member of the national committee that tracks adverse events following immunization. Delhi government is expected to receive around 91,960 doses of Covaxin in June which will only be available for those who have taken their first dose. Dr VK Paul, NITI Aayog member (Health) had said that as per protocol, the vaccination centres should stick to the same dose of vaccines, but if a mix-up has happened, "there are unlikely to be any adverse effects." "On mixing of Covishield and Covaxin we do not have any studies in India, but some countries are doing research," he added. According to the central government's vaccination protocol, the interval between first and second doses of Covaxin, manufactured by Bharat Biotech, should be at least four weeks and that for Covishield, manufactured by Serum Institute of India, should be at least 12 weeks. (ANI) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 23:56:05|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Sri Lankan security personnel load up a truck with debris from the X-Press Pearl ship in Colombo, Sri Lanka, on May 29, 2021. Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday made an inspection visit to the coastal area in Uswetakeiyawa on the outskirts of capital Colombo which is affected by the debris washed up from the fire-ravaged container ship X-Press Pearl, the Prime Minister's Office said. During the inspection visit, the prime minister issued directives to the officials to expedite the provision of relief to the fishermen affected by the situation, a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said. (Photo by Ajith Perera/Xinhua) COLOMBO, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa on Saturday made an inspection visit to the coastal area in Uswetakeiyawa on the outskirts of capital Colombo which is affected by the debris washed up from the fire-ravaged container ship X-Press Pearl, the Prime Minister's Office said. During the inspection visit, the prime minister issued directives to the officials to expedite the provision of relief to the fishermen affected by the situation, a statement from the Prime Minister's Office said. Further, the prime minister also instructed the Marine Environment Protection Authority (MEPA) to take all necessary measures to protect the marine environment. An official from the Sri Lanka Navy told Xinhua that teams from the Sri Lanka Navy are still on the site to put out the fire in the vessel which is now confined to the stern area of the vessel. The official said heavy smoke is still emanating from the vessel and an explosion from the vessel was reported early on Saturday morning. The vessel is registered under the flag of Singapore and was carrying 1,486 containers with 25 tons of Nitric Acid and several other chemicals and cosmetics from the port of Hazira, India on May 15. The vessel sent out a distress call while being close to the Colombo Port on May 20, and caught fire soon after that. The Sri Lankan Navy immediately dispatched vessels to bring the fire under control. Sri Lanka's MEPA said on Friday that a major environmental disaster was expected following the burning of the vessel and the impact was being assessed. General Manager of MEPA Terney Pradeep said the coastal line from the south along the west coast had debris washed ashore and the public had been strongly advised not to touch any of the debris as it could contain hazardous material. State Minister of Urban Development, Coast Conservation, Waste Disposal and Public Sanitation Nalaka Godahewa told the media on Friday that a large amount of marine life had been killed as a result of the pollution from the ship. He said that fish, turtles and other marine life had been killed and more such loss of life was expected over the next few days. The Sri Lankan government has decided to pay a certain amount of compensation for the fishing community which has to suspend fishing activities and those who are involved in related industries. Enditem Shahidullah told IANS: "Hridoy has a gang comprising some people from the southeastern districts of Bangladesh and some others from Indian states." The gang has contact with some hotel chains in India, where girls are trafficked, Md Shahidullah, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Tejgaon Division, disclosed this at a media briefing here on Saturday. Recently, Hridoy was in the news after a video of his alleged involvement in the gang-rape and brutal torture of a Bangladeshi girl in India's Bengaluru went viral on social media. Assam police had shared clips from the video that was circulating on social media to trace the accused, following which the Bengaluru city police arrested four men and two women in connection with the case. The Bangladesh police later identified Hridoy from Dhaka's Maghbazar as one of the perpetrators of the crime. The rape victim's father later filed a case with the Hatirjheel police station under the Human Trafficking and Pornography Act on Thursday night. The victim's mother said they were unaware that their daughter had been trafficked to another country. She appealed to the police, "Bring back my daughter right away. I can't imagine her being so far away, in another country." The victim, who had studied up to grade three, had married a man from Chandpur seven years ago. The couple with their three-year-old daughter used to live in Moghbazar. Her husband is a migrant worker who went to Kuwait three years back, and the woman used to regularly visit her parents. "A little over a year ago, she met her husband's friend Hridoy in Moghbazar and told me that he would help her find work abroad with her husband. I tried to stop her, but she went anyway," the victim's father said. He alleged that his daughter might have been coerced into going to India. He could not keep in touch with her as he fell ill following the outbreak of Covid-19. All five Bangladeshis arrested in connection with the incident in India went there illegally, and none of them had passports or visas. They used to traffic school and college girls by conning them with TikTok related promises, Shahidullah said, adding: "India will investigate the case in its own way and we will probe the matter in our own way. However, since the perpetrators are Bangladeshis, efforts are being made to bring them back to the country through coordination between the two countries. Efforts to bring the survivor back are also being made." --IANS sumi/sdr The judgment gives Goita, who is also the Vice President, the power to lead the interim government and "lead the transition process to its conclusion". Mali's Constitutional Court published a judgement late Friday declaring that Goita would assume the presidency, reports dpa news agency. Bamako, May 29 (IANS) Colonel Assimi Goita, who led a military coup in the West African nation of Mali this week, has been named the interim President. Goita also asked the opposition coalition movement M5-RFP to name a candidate for Prime Minister. The coalition was key in mobilising demonstrations that led to a coup last year. The group announced politician Choguel Kokalla Maiga as their candidate in a Friday evening press briefing. The court judgement noted "the vacancy of the presidency of the transition following the resignation of Bah N'Daw, president of the transition, head of state". N'Daw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane were forced to resign from their positions after being detained for several days this week in a coup staged by Goita. On Tuesday, Goita announced that they had been deposed and promised new elections in 2022. The trigger was the military's anger over a cabinet reshuffle that saw two senior military officers stripped of their positions. Last August, those two military officers were part of a coup that ousted president Ibrahim Boubacar Keita from office after nearly seven years. That power grab nine months ago was also led by Goita. It resulted in an interim government headed by Transitional President N'Daw, who had served as Defence Minister from 2014 to 2015 and held several other military positions, with Goita assuming the Vice Presidency. The regional alliance ECOWAS will hold a summit to discuss the political turmoil in Mali on Sunday. --IANS ksk/ Babu and his associates are members of a human trafficking syndicate and they all are Bangladeshi nationals, said Shahidullah. However, Bangladesh police are trying to bring back the victim and her assaulter, the official added. Confirming the development, Md. Shahidullah, Deputy Commissioner of Police of Tejgaon Division, told IANS that among the accused, Rifatul Islam Hridoy alias TikTok Hridoy Babu is a resident of Dhaka's Hatirjheel area. Shahidullah also said they came to know about the arrest after contacting the Kerala police. The law enforcers managed to identify Babu from his Facebook profile. Later, his parents confirmed the matter and said they drove him away from home for his unruly behaviour, and he has no contact with them since then. Earlier, a video of rape and horrific torture of the 22-year-old woman went viral on social media in which four men and two women could be seen brutally assaulting the victim. Thereafter, the Assam police had shared screenshots of the video to identify the accused. Within hours, the Bengaluru police managed to nab four of the accused. All four were taken to Karegowda Layout, K. Channasandra, where they stayed in a rented house. Early Friday, two of them, Hridoy Babu, 25, and Sagar, 23, attacked the policemen and tried to flee. The police opened fire in self-defence. "Both were shot at their knees before they were nabbed and are now being treated at a government hospital," the police said. Meanwhile, the victim's father has identified his daughter who went missing for a year and filed a case with Hatirjheel Police under the Prevention of Human Trafficking Act. Another case has been filed under Pornography Control Act. As per information, all of them are part of the same group from Bangladesh. Due to financial issues, the culprits brutalised the victim who is also said to be a Bangladeshi, trafficked to India by the human trafficking racket. --IANS sumi/int/rs To continue, please log in, or sign up for a new account. We offer one free story view per month. If you register for an account, you will get two additional story views. After those three total views, we ask that you support us with a subscription. A subscription to our digital content is so much more than just access to our valuable content. It means youre helping to support a local community institution that has, from its very start, supported the betterment of our society. Thank you very much! Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 00:01:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close CHARIKAR, Afghanistan -- At least four people were killed and 11 others wounded after a roadside bomb hit a university bus in Afghanistan's eastern Parwan province on Saturday, a spokesman of the Interior Ministry said. "The explosion occurred in Police District 7 of provincial capital Charikar city roughly at 4:15 p.m. local time. The bodies and the wounded were transported by provincial police and the rescue team to hospitals in the city," Tariq Arian told Xinhua. All the affected people were aboard the bus carrying lecturers and students of Alberuni University, he said, adding that the bus was damaged by the force of the blast. (Afghansitan-Roadside Bomb-University Bus) - - - - HONG KONG -- Carrie Lam, chief executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), on Saturday signed in accordance with the HKSAR Basic Law the Improving Electoral System (Consolidated Amendments) Ordinance 2021 passed by the Legislative Council (LegCo). The ordinance will come into immediate effect after it is published in the gazette on Monday. "Signing bills passed by the LegCo and promulgating laws is one of the Chief Executive's constitutional powers and functions. I have exercised this power and discharged this function in respect of four legal instruments within a year, which are essential to upholding the principle of 'one country, two systems' in the HKSAR and ensuring its full and faithful implementation. It is indeed a significant responsibility," Lam said. (HKSAR Chief Executive-Ordinance-Signing) - - - - NEW DELHI -- India's federal civil aviation ministry has reduced the seating capacity of domestic flights to 50 percent from next month, officials said Saturday. The decision to reduce the seating capacity from June 1 was taken in view of the spike in COVID-19 cases across the country. "This decision has been taken in view of the sudden surge in the number of active COVID-19 cases across the country, decrease in passenger traffic and passenger load factor (occupancy rate)," read an order from the ministry quoted in local media. (India-Seating Capacity cutting-Domestic Flights) - - - - DHAKA -- With the support of the Bangladeshi government, China's "Spring Sprout" vaccine program was launched here Saturday to inoculate Chinese nationals living in Bangladesh. With the joint efforts by the Bangladeshi government and the Chinese Embassy to Bangladesh, official vaccination sites have been set up to provide free COVID-19 vaccines for Chinese nationals in the country. Under the program, Chinese nationals in Bangladesh will be provided with two doses of Sinopharm vaccine which was approved by Bangladesh's drug regulator late in April for emergency use. (Bangladesh-China-Vaccine Program) - - - - HONG KONG -- Andrew Cheung Kui-nung, chief justice of the Court of Final Appeal of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) said on Saturday that the judicial power is exercised independently by the courts, not subject to any interference. Cheung said at the Ceremony for the Admission of the New Senior Counsel that in Hong Kong, judges administer justice strictly in accordance with the law, without fear or favor, self-interest or deceit. Repeated and gratuitous questioning of the Judiciary's independence, whether local or from abroad, which is based on nothing but disagreement with court decisions, is damaging the rule of law and maintenance of public confidence in the courts, he said. (China's Hong Kong-Judicial Power) - - - - PHNOM PENH -- China is viewed as Cambodia's best international partner in fields including foreign diplomacy, economy, trade and infrastructure, a recent survey showed. The survey, entitled "What do Cambodians think? Insights and attitudes towards society and politics in Cambodia," was jointly conducted by German political foundation Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung and global data, insights and consulting company Kantar. It interviewed 1,015 Cambodian citizens aged between 16 and 64 years old across five main geographical locations, including capital Phnom Penh, plain, mountain, Tonle Sap Lake and coastal regions in October 2020. (Cambodia-China-ties) Enditem Charitable fashion designer and former girl about town Edwina Horseman died of a suspected heart failure on Monday. Emerald City was informed of Horsemans passing as news circulated throughout the eastern suburbs that the mother-of-three had been found dead in her bed by her house cleaner. Friends told Emerald City the 36-year-old had a pre-existing heart condition and in recent weeks had been admitted to hospital for respiratory-related issues. Edwina Horseman (left) and sister-in-law Kristy Dahdah were both Silver Committee members in 2014. The Ascham alumnus sat on the 2014 Silver Ball committee alongside friend Harriet Waugh, Mode Sportif founder Deborah Symond ONeil and jewellery designer Alina Barlow. In more recent years she had shied away from the limelight. The Princess of Wales in Sydney during her 1996 visit. Credit:Getty If she were still alive today, Diana, Princess of Wales, would be preparing to mark her 60th birthday on July 1. Even 24 years after her death, Diana remains one of the most talked and written about people in the world. Indeed, an entire industry worth hundreds of millions of dollars has ballooned around her legacy. Type the words Princess Diana into a Google news search and the evidence is clear. Visiting the world of Friends again felt like burrowing under the doona, a small comfort that is easily achieved. Yes, it was kind of awkward. The show cut between interviews with the creators David Crane and Marta Kaufmann, round-the-couch chats with cast members, an on-set quiz with the stars about details from the show, and free-flowing reminiscences between the cast as they wandered around the old set. It really did feel like visiting a beloved old home, knowing you could never move back in, and never have those times back. Friends: The Reunion ... James Corden with Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Matthew Perry, Lisa Kudrow, David Schwimmer and Matt LeBlanc. Credit:Warner Bros The stars themselves had either aged or showed the confronting signs of their extreme efforts not to age. But once again, thats Hollywood. There was no mention of the darker stuff thats transpired since the show ended the divorces and the drug addictions. As Crane said, Friends is about that time in your life when your friends were your family. Nobody wants to see what happens after, when grown-up problems and the compromises of mid-life steal onto the empty stage. Watching the show I was struck anew by the completeness of the world it created. It was mostly shot between three sets (Monicas apartment, Chandler and Joeys apartment, the Central Perk cafe) which were obviously built on a soundstage in Los Angeles, thousands of kilometres from the New York the show sought to portray. There were rarely any street scenes. Loading Unlike its fellow 90s-to-noughties nostalgia piece Sex and the City, Friends was a show pretending to be set in New York, rather than a show where the city became an extra character, directing storylines. Perhaps thats what gave Friends its universality and its innate friendliness it was a place where nothing too bad ever happened, and where no one ever tried to make you think, but they did make you laugh consistently. The physical comedy of the show was of the best American tradition, feel-good laughs with no edge to them. One of the funniest scenes of the old show excerpted was of Ross, Chandler and Rachel trying to get a large couch up a poky stairwell, with Ross shouting increasingly frantic instructions. Anyone who has ever moved out of home has experienced some version of this scene. Watching with 2021 eyes, the lack of cast diversity is as glaring as it is in Sex and the City, which, viewed with 2021 eyes, is about over-privileged white women obsessed with men, who speak about sex constantly but are horrified when one of their number (Miranda) breastfeeds openly. Loading The Friends reunion attempts to redress its anglo-centricity obliquely, by airing interviews with fans from Zambia and India, who earnestly talk about how Friends helped them through bereavement and loneliness. Even Nobel Peace Prize winner Malala Yousafzai appears to talk about how she watches it happily with her bestie. This is truly the American dream, and I mean that sincerely the Taliban tried to kill her for attending school; now she snuggles in her PJs with a girlfriend, watching one of Americas most popular exports. Yes, its all a little Oprah-esque and sappy, but its believable. Light, comic television can soothe like little else, when the time is right. What are we to make of this noughties nostalgia? Sex and the City will be back soon, in a dramatised form, and given the abject egregiousness of the second Sex and the City movie, we can have no great hopes for it. Yet still, many of us will watch it. Loading Heartbreak High is being remade in Australia. In the US, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air is getting rebooted. The Office and ER have filmed reunion episodes. Alongside the nostalgia is a flowering of television as an art form, powered by disruptive streaming services. The new generation of television is gloriously diverse in race, gender and sexuality, and sometimes more political in its themes. Much of the best of it still comes from the US. It is the only country that could pull off a scene in which Lady Gaga covers Smelly Cat, the ridiculous original song that Phoebe sings as she busks in the subway, accompanied by Lisa Kudrow (who played Phoebe), and jazzed up by the arrival of a gospel choir which appears on set. For no apparent reason except: because its possible. Long may it prosper. Twitter: @JacquelineMaley Save Log in , register or subscribe to save articles for later. Normal text size Larger text size Very large text size Camilla Franks, the high-profile fashion designer dubbed Australias kaftan queen, doesnt really do regrets. Still, reflecting on her three-year health struggle, which began with a breast cancer diagnosis in 2018 and this month required the removal of her ovaries, Franks, 45, wishes she had frozen her eggs years earlier. Camilla Franks: Had I known I had the [BRCA2] gene all those years ago, I could have had [a preventative] double mastectomy, I could have frozen eggs. Credit:Kate Geraghty I went to the meetings, and then didnt do it [egg freezing] because I was busy with work, she says. If I had my time again, I would have prioritised that [it was a] big mistake, I really regret it now. Launched in 2004, Franks brand, Camilla, has become one of Australias most successful fashion exports through its bold, printed resort pieces that are also loved by celebrity fans including Beyonce and Oprah Winfrey. But amid her commercial acclaim and fame, Franks always yearned for a child. In January 2018, Franks gave birth to her daughter, Luna, now three, who she shares with her fiance, Welsh musician JP Jones. But in April that year, she was diagnosed with breast cancer and found to carry a harmful variant of the breast cancer gene BRCA2, putting her at high risk of developing ovarian cancer, fallopian tube cancer, and other diseases. And while egg-freezing carries no guarantees, Franks says it could have at least raised her odds of having more children. Daughter Luna, now three, was born a few months before Franks cancer diagnosis, in 2018. Credit:Kate Geraghty Advertisement Had I known I had the [BRCA2] gene all those years ago, I could have had [a preventative] double mastectomy, I could have frozen eggs, I could have done those things to make my life a little less challenging, she says. After a double mastectomy in late 2018, Franks was determined to try for a second baby. But after five unsuccessful rounds of IVF, in late 2020 she had her fallopian tubes removed and, three weeks ago, her ovaries, effectively forcing her body into early menopause. I kept putting off this lifesaving surgery in the hope I could pull off another little miracle, she told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. My doctors said, You fought to live, and we cant afford to lose you. I wanted to carry another baby and have a tribe but I have to accept I will have the one biological child, and I am so blessed to have her. Camilla Franks and her fiance, JP Jones. Credit:Getty Franks and Jones are now investigating adoption or surrogacy, either in Australia or the UK both countries only allow altruistic surrogacy, meaning the surrogate cannot be paid. Advertisement Seeing supermodel and humanitarian activist Naomi Campbell, 50, having her first child, reportedly via a surrogate though Campbell is yet to speak publicly on the matter, has inspired Franks in recent weeks. Loading More women need to talk about [surrogacy] because its becoming more common, she says. It needs to be more accessible for women in this country. As she and Jones explore the options for expanding their family, Franks remains committed to spreading cancer awareness beyond her customer base, which is what led her to sign on to appear on the reality series, Celebrity Apprentice, which is currently on Nine, owner of this masthead. Fashion week: five events to watch Monday: The late Carla Zampatti will be honoured with a space at Carriageworks to bear her name. Tuesday: Sydney-based Bassike is one of the brands holding a consumer show this year, a new initiative to throw the once industry-only event open to the public somewhat. Wednesday: Several brands including Beare Park, Rumer and Auteur make their fashion week debut in 2021. Thursday: On the anniversary of the Mabo native title decision, an Indigenous fashion showcase, presented by David Jones, will have an all First Nations line-up of models, too. Friday: The week will close with a consumer-facing group show to mark 25 years of Australian Fashion Week. The show will feature Cue, Camilla and Marc and more. Fashion week runs from May 31-June 4. australianfashionweek.com After all, the shows filming last October couldnt have come at a worse time. Franks was midway through IVF, solo mum-ing while Jones was in the UK (after returning for the Australian summer, he is back there, awaiting Franks and Luna to join him in June). The day before shooting began, she had a cluster of eggs harvested, only to find out a few days later they hadnt survived. After going through breast cancer and [seeing] people you love die ... youll do anything it takes ... to drive change to make sure no one has to go through this hideous journey, says Franks, whose prizemoney on the show is supporting the National Breast Cancer Foundation. Advertisement Another wrote: This is not the life I wanted My toddler son is a tornado of destruction and will break/tear/rip anything he can get his hands on, no matter how much I do to wear him out. And the baby predictably is needy because she is a baby. I feel tricked into wanting them by biological urges and the romanticised version of kids that isnt close to reality. Loading And another: I love my kids, but I also regret them deeply, every one of them. I never wanted any of them; circumstances explain pretty much why I went through with them all. Imagine the guilt and mental weight of having a bunch of kids you love but never intended or wanted. James* is a 47-year-old advertising professional who never wanted kids. His girlfriend did, though, and James says he felt pressured by her, his family and society in general to follow suit. He tells Sunday Life: When I turned 40, people kept asking me when I was going to settle down and have kids. People couldnt believe I was 40 and Id never had kids or been married, so I thought maybe there was something wrong with me. I never liked kids, but everyone kept saying you will feel different when its your child, or having kids will be the best thing that ever happens to you. So, we had a little girl and then we separated and now I have her 50/50 with my ex. I feel like my old life stopped when she was born, and I miss it. I used to see bands, go to the theatre, read books, travel and visit bars. I used to have conversations about art, politics and music; now its all about schools, lawns and swimming classes. Im lucky if I get a couple of hours a week to myself. People say how blessed they are to have kids and how they love them. But once you have kids and complain, everybody agrees with you. Why do they wait to tell you how bad it is after the fact? James says he feels as though he was tricked into having children. People say how blessed they are to have kids and how they love them. But once you have kids and complain about school lunches, listening to the Wiggles and the lack of sleep, everybody agrees with you. Why do they wait to tell you how bad it is after the fact? I can honestly say its harder than I ever imagined and if I had my time again, I would never have done it. Tracey*, a 32-year-old single mum to a 14-year-old, says she joined the I Regret Having Children Facebook page because she was surprised there were other people who felt the same. Loading She realised she wasnt alone after reading a book, Regretting Motherhood, by the Israeli writer Orna Donath, recommended in an online forum. That was the first time I found out people felt the same as me. When she fell pregnant, Tracey says she thought seriously about adoption. I figured that in the long run, that would be worse for my son, she says. If I could go back and change everything, Id never have a child. My son has no idea how I feel I wouldnt want to hurt his feelings. Tracey struggles with the perception of being constantly judged. As a parent you can never do anything right. If you have a child, youre selfish. If you dont have a child, youre selfish. Everything you do is judged, there really are no positives, she says. As a woman, if you give the baby up, youre a monster; if you have an abortion, youre a monster; if you have a child and you dont like it, youre a monster. The worst part is, I cant tell anyone how I feel. Its a long time to keep a secret to yourself you feel very isolated. Although Tracey has regrets about becoming a parent, she still feels a bond with her child. I dont want my son to ever feel I hate him. I dont hate him at all, I actually like him as a person. I just dont enjoy raising him. As a woman, if you give the baby up, youre a monster; if you have an abortion, youre a monster; if you have a child and you dont like it, youre a monster. Perinatal relationship counsellor Elly Taylor, the author of Becoming Us, explains that most parents have mixed feelings about having a baby, citing the loss of lifestyle, the loss of spontaneity and the loss of having control of your life as significant factors. Regret can range from looking at each other and thinking what the hell have we done? to people whose relationships have broken down because they didnt have enough support during parenthood. Loading Research shows that almost all couples 92 per cent experience increased conflict in their first year of parenthood, with the most divisive issue being the division of workload. And two-thirds report that their relationships suffered during the first three years of having a child. Taylor says she often counsels parents who feel guilty about wanting to leave and being unable to cope with day-to-day challenges. They regret having kids and wish that they never did, and its very hard for them to admit that. A lot of parents dont anticipate how significant the changes to their lives will be. Its something they are not sufficiently prepared for. Some people expect being a parent to make their life happier, or make them more in love with their partner, and we know from research that is not the case. From counselling I know that when a parent can understand the reasons for their feelings and have those reasons validated, its almost as if those feelings clear up. We are paying the price for having behaved like white Australians for so long, our whole lives really. So think many of my friends who, like me, are of Indian origin. Nobody has reached out. Nobody has offered their condolences. Nobody worries that maybe our families are not OK while this incalculable human disaster makes its way across India, leaving hundreds of thousands of mourning families in its wake. At its recent peak, India was reporting more than 400,000 cases of COVID-19 daily. Thats more than the population of Canberra. Serological studies from last years first wave, however, have estimated there were actually between 26 and 32 infections for every reported case of the virus. Deaths were similarly misreported. Complacency and overconfidence about Indias initial relative success during the first surge, left the country exposed to the catastrophe that followed. Just three months ago, the governing political party was holding rallies in the streets, where thousands gathered to hail their achievements. [India] has saved humanity from a big disaster by containing corona effectively, claimed PM Narendra Modi in January. India is home to 1.4 billion people, a sixth of the worlds population. Many are dying at home without access to healthcare. Funeral pyres fill car parks in New Delhi, with crematoriums unable to handle the number of bodies. Some jurisdictions have authorised the cutting down of trees on public land because families have run out of firewood to burn their dead. Professor McLaws said all Australian supplies of Pfizer that are not needed for priority groups should be sent to Melbourne. She argued that health authorities had got their focus wrong it was now younger people who needed to be prioritised for the vaccine. People in their 20s and 30s should be given the vaccine first, she said, because they were most likely to catch and spread the disease as previous outbreaks had illustrated. The elderly will be protected with AstraZeneca; by all means continue to do their AstraZeneca, but donate every single Pfizer dose down in Melbourne, Professor McLaws said. Victoria Police scuffle with anti-vaccine protestors in Victoria Street, North Melbourne. Credit:Chris Hopkins Professor Nancy Baxter, the head of the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, said if vaccination was to be expanded to younger groups it should target essential workers such as delivery drivers, who are unable to work from home during Victorias lockdown. The clinical epidemiologist said coronavirus would continue to circulate in places like distribution centres, abattoirs and grocery stores that could not shut down, and she suggested outreach vaccination teams may be deployed to essential workplaces. If we think their work is essential enough that they need to keep on going to work, no matter how bad things get, they deserve to be vaccinated, she said. However, senior federal government sources said it was unlikely such a major change to the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine would be recommended nor was a shift to allow people in their 40s to receive the AstraZeneca jab likely though the rollout was under constant review. The Victorian government received 71,000 Pfizer doses from the federal government on Friday and had held back significant inventory, which had allowed it to open up the jab to people aged 40-49 last week. Professor James McCaw of the University of Melbourne said the next few days would be crucial in containing the states outbreak and determining whether lockdown would be extended beyond one week. What we will need to see is the cases that arise in people who have been in quarantine at least two or three days before showing symptoms, that would mean they havent passed it on to someone else, he said. We might know that in the next week. That would let the government consider lifting the lockdown. You would still have some cases around, they would be just known and managed. However, Professor McCaw cautioned it may be necessary to have a two-week lockdown to be completely confident. Loading Victorian Health Minister Martin Foley said it remained a day-by-day proposition whether Victorias seven-day lockdown would end as planned. It is too early to make that announcement. Today is the second day of seven days, he said on Saturday. COVID-19 logistics chief Jeroen Weimar said contact tracers had identified about 3000 primary close contacts of confirmed cases, almost double Fridays number. Of those 3000, 62 per cent had returned negative tests by Saturday, with the remainder awaiting results. He said an online booking portal for vaccine appointments was still weeks away, despite the Health Department testing its online booking system on Saturday. Amid debate about the rollout, the co-chair of Australias vaccine expert group Allen Cheng confirmed on Saturday that the Australian Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation was considering whether to double the number of Australians receiving the Pfizer vaccine. This would be done by giving more people a first dose of the vaccine and delaying the second dose until supplies of the vaccine improved. A single dose of both Pfizer and AstraZeneca still gives moderate protection not as good of course as two doses but still reasonable protection, explained University of Queensland infectious diseases physician Associate Professor Paul Griffin. Depending on the study its at least 60 per cent. Professor Griffin said this compared to about 80 or 90 per cent after the second dose, which both offer almost complete protection from serious disease and death. Professor Cheng said delaying the second shot of Pfizer meant a trade-off between having more people partially protected or fewer people fully protected, though he said it could be complicated. Its under discussion, he said. My general feeling is that it would probably be a bit confusing because we would have to cancel everyones second doses. I dont think that in the situation we are in at the moment that theres a lot of bang for that buck. Loading The Pfizer vaccine is the preferred vaccine for all adult Australians aged under 50, due to a higher risk of a rare clotting disorder in younger people following an AstraZeneca vaccine, but supplies are constrained with about 350,000 doses currently arriving each week. Last week, Health Minister Greg Hunt said Australia was expected to receive about 600,000 doses per week from Pfizer from July 1, and that would ramp up to two million doses per week from October 1. Police and protesters clashed in Melbourne on Saturday, as about 150 people rallied against lockdown and coronavirus vaccinations. Fourteen people were arrested, two officers and a protester were injured and 55 were issued with penalty notices for breaching CHO directions. Last year hundreds of businesses contacted Australias Small Business Ombudsmans office warning they would have to close if insurance did not become available to them. Ombudsman Bruce Billson said he was aware of instances where that had now come to pass. Weve had pubs that have been operating for a century in a vicinity of a national park being told thats not something people want to insure any more, he said. Some accommodation providers that offer the idyllic location as part of the appeal ... are being told it might be idyllic but the risks are too high. Concerns have also been raised by BIG4, which runs a network of 180 holiday parks around Australia, the Victorian Caravan Parks Association and the body representing tourism operators in the Margaret River wine region. The Woodbine Park Eco Cabins near Merimbula offer the quintessential Australian holiday experience, within a eucalypt forest where eastern grey kangaroos and cockatoos outnumber guests. Owner Julie Pennefather has been unable to obtain insurance on the property for the first time in 35 years. Woodbine Park Holiday Cabins. The owner has been unable to obtain insurance for the property even though it has never been the subject of an insurance claim. Credit:Angi High We probably would have paid threefold but we couldnt even get an offer, she said, adding the property was unaffected by the recent bushfires and had never been the subject of an insurance claim. Nearby, premiums have soared for Michael Britten, the owner of boutique guesthouse Robyns Nest. He felt insurance companies had become too fixated on shareholder returns. [They are] losing sight of their prime objective to be in business, he said. David Maclachlan co-owns the upmarket Marramarra Lodge, where boats ferry guests to their five-star bungalows on the banks of the Hawkesbury River. We do have insurance, but it was really difficult to get and I know of a lot of people who cant get it at all, Mr Maclachlan said. Marramarra Lodge on the Hawkesbury River. Credit: He said the business typically cost around $12,000 to insure before the bushfires, but was now being quoted premiums of just under a million dollars. Mr Maclachlan suspected the problem was being triggered by postcode moratoriums adopted by insurers. The issue would act as a major barrier to new players entering the tourism market, he warned, because most relied on bank finance - with insurance being a mandatory requirement. If you want a bush backdrop in aesthetically beautiful areas, thats going to be a difficult thing for Australia, he said. Coonawarra Farm Resort. Credit: Businesses across regional Victoria have been similarly afflicted, including the Coonawarra Farm Resort where school camps are run on a 140-hectare bushland site. Manager Krystal Ciaglia said the business had been unable to get insurance this year, even with bushfire cover excluded. She said if her business closed it would have a cascading effect on East Gippslands local economy because they were a significant employer and sourced supplies from local businesses. A multitude of businesses are just going to disappear and its like taking away a part of our culture, she said. This deserves attention now. Victorias Department of Education relies on the camp to provide students unique outdoor learning experiences. You cant say were not going to do climbing walls and flying foxes and bushwalks, instead were going to the museum, Ms Ciaglia said. Last year then Small Business Ombudsman Kate Carnell called for government intervention. She recommended the expansion of the federal government-underwritten reinsurer, the Australian Reinsurance Pool Corporation, to cover significant natural events. In the May budget, a $10 billion government reinsurance pool was announced to cover cyclone and flood damage in north Queensland. Mr Billson, who succeeded Ms Carnell, said it was a very encouraging step, but noted 88 per cent of matters brought to his offices attention were not in that region. He was optimistic his offices recommendations were still being considered by the federal government. Macey Insurance Brokers operates offices across the Shoalhaven, Illawarra, Southern Highlands and Macarthur regions. Managing director Brendan Goddard wrote to Treasurer Josh Frydenberg in March after his clients began to experience significant premium hikes and some became uninsurable. Theyre just holding the can for it all and if something does happen they could lose millions, Mr Goddard said. When you go back 18 months it was a competitive market, they [insurers] were jumping over each other to get business. He said it was a global problem due to climate change, affecting communities across California, the UK and Asia. Mr Goddards letter was referred to assistant treasurer Michael Sukkar, who responded that the refusal of insurance was a commercial decision for an insurer to make. He noted that natural disasters in Australia in recent years had impacted on the cost and availability of insurance. Mr Sukkar told The Sun-Herald and The Sunday Age the government was committed to building the resilience of Australian communities to natural disasters, which would assist in putting downward pressure on insurance premiums. Loading He said $1.2 billion had been allocated to improve Australias capability to prepare for and respond to natural disasters, including establishing a National Recovery and Resilience Agency. Less is more? New take on machine learning helps us "scale up" phase transitions Tokyo, Japan - Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have enhanced "super-resolution" machine learning techniques to study phase transitions. They identified key features of how large arrays of interacting "particles" behave at different temperatures by simulating tiny arrays before using a convolutional neural network to generate a good estimate of what a larger array would look like using "correlation" configurations. The massive saving in computational cost may realize unique ways of understanding how materials behave. We are surrounded by different states or "phases" of matter i.e. gases, liquids, and solids. The study of phase transitions, how one phase transforms into another, lies at the heart of our understanding of matter in the universe, and remains a hot topic for physicists. In particular, the idea of universality, where wildly different materials behave in similar ways thanks to a few shared features, is a powerful one. That's why physicists study model systems, often simple grids of "particles" on an array that interact via simple rules. These models distill the essence of the common physics shared by materials and, amazingly, still exhibit many of the properties of real materials, like phase transitions. Due to their elegant simplicity, these rules can be encoded into simulations that tell us what materials look like under different conditions. However, like all simulations, the trouble starts when we want to look at lots of particles at the same time. The computation time required becomes particularly prohibitive near phase transitions, where dynamics slows down, and the "correlation length," a measure of how the state of one atom relates to the state of another some distance away, grows larger and larger. This is a real dilemma if we want to apply these findings to the real world: real materials generally always contain many more orders of magnitude of atoms and molecules than simulated matter. That's why a team led by Professors Yutaka Okabe and Hiroyuki Mori of Tokyo Metropolitan University, in collaboration with researchers in Shibaura Institute of Technology and Bioinformatics Institute of Singapore, have been studying how to reliably extrapolate smaller simulations to larger ones using a concept known as an inverse renormalization group (RG). The renormalization group is a fundamental concept in the understanding of phase transitions and led Wilson to be awarded the 1982 Nobel Prize in Physics. Recently, the field met a powerful ally in convolutional neural networks (CNN), the same machine learning tool helping computer vision identify objects and decipher handwriting. The idea would be to give an algorithm the state of a small array of particles and get it to "estimate" what a larger array would look like. There is a strong analogy to the idea of super-resolution images, where blocky, pixelated images are used to generate smoother images at a higher resolution. The team has been looking at how this is applied to "spin" models of matter, where particles interact with other nearby particles via the direction of their "spins." Previous attempts have particularly struggled to apply this to systems at temperatures above a phase transition, where configurations tend to look more random. Now, instead of using spin configurations i.e. simple snapshots of which direction the particle spins are pointing, they considered correlation configurations, where each particle is characterized by how similar its own spin is to that of other particles, specifically those which are very far away. It turns out correlation configurations contain more subtle queues about how particles are arranged, particularly at higher temperatures. Like all machine learning techniques, the key is to be able to generate a reliable "training set". The team developed a new algorithm called the block-cluster transformation for correlation configurations to reduce these down to smaller patterns. Applying an improved estimator technique to both the original and reduced patterns, they had pairs of configurations of different size based on the same information. All that's left is to train the CNN to convert the small patterns to larger ones. The group considered two systems, the 2D Ising model and the three-state Potts model, both key benchmarks for studies of condensed matter. For both, they found that their CNN could use a simulation of a very small array of points to reproduce how a measure of the correlation g(T) changed across a phase transition point in much larger systems. Comparing with direct simulations of larger systems, the same trends were reproduced for both systems, combined with a simple temperature rescaling based on data at an arbitrary system size. A successful implementation of inverse RG transformations promises to give scientists a glimpse of previously inaccessible system sizes, and help physicists understand the larger scale features of materials. The team now hopes to apply their method to other models which can map more complex features such as a continuous range of spins, as well as the study of quantum systems. ### This work was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a Research Fellowship for Young Scientists from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and the A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research) Research Attachment Programme of Singapore. This story has been published on: 2021-05-29. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 00:25:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ACCRA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Despite multiple challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Ghanaians' craze for the Chinese language continues, Chinese Director of the Confucius Institute at the University of Ghana Chu Beijuan told Xinhua Saturday. Speaking to Xinhua in an interview during a Chinese proficiency competition named "Chinese Bridge", Chu said the Ghanaian college students' active participation in the competition is a testament to the trend. "Ten students out of dozens stood out in the final competition, including some non-Chinese majors, and their language proficiency and understanding of Chinese culture have amazed all judges," Chu said. Michael Oduro, who was the champion of the competition, said his language-learning journey was not easy as a college student, and it has become even more difficult during the pandemic. "At the beginning, I found the Chinese characters were so hard to learn, so at a point of time, I wanted to drop the Chinese. But through the motivation and encouragement from my teachers, I had a chance to move on," he said. "Because of the pandemic, my school made a policy that only allows us to have classes online, and this makes teaching and learning more difficult for some of us, but we were able to go through it," Oduro added. Chu said that during the pandemic, the institute not only gave lectures to university students online but also rolled out a series of online courses for the public to cater to their increasing needs for learning the language. "We are excited to see the Chinese language is gaining more popularity here," Chu said. Enditem More than five years after a ban was placed on swimming at Barangaroo, the state government is considering allowing people to take a dip there after a campaign by locals. A group of residents has pushed the government to allow swimming at Marrinawi Cove, at the northern end of the headland park known as Barangaroo Reserve since last year. They believe the cove would be an ideal spot for swimming because it is a sheltered area in Sydney Harbour. Itching for a dip: Yasmina Bonnet, from left, Bernard Kelly, Caroline Pidcock, Jaz Stephens and Charley Kelly at Marrinawi Cove. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer Their campaign has prompted Infrastructure NSW, which is responsible for Barangaroo, to explore the opportunity for a swimming area. Different locations and formats for a swimming area are currently being explored as part of this review, the agency said. If the opportunity progresses to a feasibility study, Infrastructure NSW will consult with the community and stakeholders for their input. Greyhound trainer Charlie Bourke had it coming. That was what police said after his bullet-ridden body was discovered outside his Randwick home on February 10, 1964, with the key to the front door still in his hand. The coroner said he had been ruthlessly and viciously exterminated. It was one of the first professional executions in Sydney as a new type of criminal began to take over the citys illicit economy. A persistent rumour held that crime boss Lennie McPherson was responsible. Sydney underworld figure Lennie McPherson leaves court during an arson inquest in 1956. Credit:Archives But McPherson, also known as Mr Big, was not named as a person of interest and other accounts claimed baccarat operator John James Warren or standover man Raymond Ducky OConner were behind the murder. Bourke had also made enemies in the racing set after bookies paid him handsomely for inside information that one of his dogs, The Stripper, was not likely to win, only for the dog to win easily. The investigation fizzled out. The COVID-19 pandemic has not stopped the rich and famous from coming to Australia by private jet at least 113 private international flights have landed since April last year, mostly from the United States. Passengers on private jets include celebrities and other wealthy individuals, business executives on corporate trips and sporting teams such as the charter plane for contestants, families and staff in the World Surf League in March. Andrew Forrest and a private jet in Sydney in January. Credit: The figures from aviation data and analytics firm Cirium showed the US was the origin of 94 of the private flights, which landed all over Australia between April 1 last year and May 26, 2021. Sydney Airport was the destination for 13 private jet arrivals, making it the busiest of all the capital cities. While the arrivals of celebrities such as Ed Sheeran, Zac Efron and Nicole Kidman have been well publicised, the figures suggest arrivals by private jet are more common than previously reported. An investigation is under way after a young mother developed a rare flesh eating infection that threatened her life after she had a caesarean birth at a Brisbane hospital. The woman, who asked not to be named, gave birth to her daughter in January at the Mater Hospital after undergoing an emergency c-section. Brisbanes Mater hospital. Credit:Google Maps But the 33-year-old who was discharged the following day and sent home, developed severe abdominal pain as her stomach swelled. She contacted a midwife who was conducting in home check-ups and when raising her concerns both in person and over text message, the midwife allegedly told the mother, there was nothing to be concerned about and there was no need to waste hospital time. After three years in the Northern Territory, George moved to general practice in Sydney for four years, then to London to obtain a diploma in anaesthetics, before securing a clinical fellowship in Anaesthetics at the American University in Beirut. After 15 years, George returned to Melbourne and joined a medical practice servicing Frankston and Dandenong. He worked mostly in the Dandenong practice, ultimately establishing the first private, accredited, stand-alone, day surgical facility in Australia. The Dandenong Surgicentre opened in 1982, pioneering a major change in surgical and anaesthesia care. Visitors from all over Australia came to see what George and his colleagues had created, and they gladly shared their information. A second stand-alone facility opened in South Australia in 1984, followed by the first public-sector day surgery unit in the grounds of the Campbelltown Hospital in NSW. George continued to work and manage at the Surgicentre until he retired at the age of 71. He saw medicine as a wonderful profession for creating opportunity and better understanding the human condition. Reflecting on his years as a GP, George said it made him reflect more on the meaning of life and its destination. He saw as an exciting journey of discovery and was fascinated by other cultures, spiritual concepts and uncovering a purpose in life. This led him, with the support of the Rotary Club of Melbourne, to establish a variety of aid projects in Nepal, India, Vietnam and elsewhere in east Asia. He developed a philosophy of philanthropy centred on kindness, purpose and being effective, based on a lifetime of experience and questioning. Georges life was characterised by service to the community and good works. In the 1990s he joined the executive of the International Forum for Child Welfare. He served as president of the Medical Benevolent Association of Victoria for 10 years and represented the Association on the Victorian council of the AMA. He was also a 50-year member of the Society of Anaesthetists. He was elected a fellow of the AMA while serving for 10 years as its representative on the board of the Lord Mayors Fund. In 1990, Georges work was recognised with an AM, and in 1992, the service-above-self award from Rotary International. He received the Weary Dunlop Asia Medal in 1996. In his spare time, he indulged in his passion for engineering and mechanical things. He built 15 anaesthetic machines for his colleagues and, over the years, owned a variety of cars and motorcycles, rejuvenating several vintage models. His home workshop included a mechanics pit enabling him to service his vehicles. In his later years, George became a quiet student of meditation, especially in the yoga tradition of Kashmir Shaivism, an optimistic philosophy that sees everything as conscious energy, expressed in different ways as unity in diversity. Former Wesley College student David Kay has been burdened with a terrible secret for decades after he was sexually assaulted by two teachers in the 1970s in what he describes as a tag-team attack. Mr Kay was first abused by former outdoor activity teacher John McMillan as an 11-year-old at the Glen Waverley campus, before the schools long-serving counsellor, Stewart Heywood, preyed on him again at the Prahran campus. David Kay 58, a former Wesley College student, was abused by two teachers in the 1970s. Credit:Chris Hopkins Now 58, Mr Kay has decided to speak publicly about the ordeal that tarnished almost every aspect of my life. He wants Wesley College to be held to account and says he was inspired to speak out publicly by kick-arse, young women such as 2021 Australian of the Year and sexual assault survivor Grace Tame. Blow trumpets, send flowers - the Metro tunnel boring machine broke through slime and rock deep underneath Federation Square, completing the main engineering for a new underground railway link. When completed in a few more years, this project permanently transforms Melbourne. A quick reminder is worthwhile. John Brumby went to the people in 2010 offering a cross-city underground rail link. It was to join the south-eastern suburbs to those in the north-west, along the way linking the main hubs north of the city the hospital and university precinct in Parkville and the airport to the CBD and the south-eastern suburbs, whilst also providing a long-needed St Kilda Road rail connection. It was brilliantly conceived. The Metro tunnel construction at Arden station. Credit:Joe Armao Brumby narrowly lost that election, Ted Baillieu won and immediately set about re-imagining the shovel-ready project. Why? The Liberals wanted the alignment changed to provide for different stations, including one that connected the casino and convention centre to the underground network, even though it is but a two-minute walk to Southern Cross or Flinders Street stations. Planning started afresh, and for four years there was zero progress. Upon the Andrews team being elected in 2014, the Baillieu/Napthine version was scrapped, the original Brumby project revived and now it is more than half done. Metro tunnel construction. Credit:Joe Armao It is not just an engineering breakthrough that was celebrated last week. Alongside the tricky technical removal of rock and soil, there was the removal of a dispute over money. Major projects always cost more than is budgeted anyone who has ever renovated their home knows all too well how every tiny change has massive cost implications. Magnify that a million times and you can understand how easily government infrastructure projects get out of hand. The rail tunnel contractors had claimed a cost over-run with the state government of around $2 billion. The dispute was threatening to derail [sorry] the works. But with almost no publicity, and certainly no razzmatazz, it was quietly and commercially resolved, with the additional costs split 50/50 between the state and the builders. The 2021 state budget papers claim that across 164 Big Build infrastructure projects, there is overall a 3 per cent cost over-run. This needs to be closely scrutinised and will be, no doubt, when parliamentary committees get down into the detail. But if indeed it stands up to scrutiny, then it is nothing short of astonishing. The international benchmarks of the OECD show that typically large projects cost 28 per cent more than budgeted. Loading The negotiations with the Metro rail contractors have been closely watched by the disputants on the cost blowouts on the parallel Big Build West Gate road tunnel under the Yarra River. The project is stuck in a dispute about the cost of removing soil contaminated with fire retardant. The government claim the additional cost of removing contaminated soil is not their problem, as the contractors accepted risk and ought look to the soil-testing engineers and their insurers if something has gone wrong. Needless to say, the contractors do not see it that way. Others suggest a violent encounter with a camp thief, or a run-in with a mountain recluse known as the Button Man, often seen in the Mansfield and Howitt Plains country searching for antlers to carve his wares from. In a region with a long history of missing persons, some believe the pair were mistakenly shot by hunters stalking deer or illegally spotlighting in one of the most remote parts of the state - the Wonnangatta Valley, 350 kilometres north-east of Melbourne. Carol Clay, a much-loved former leader of the Victorian Country Womens Association, made her way here on a trip with her lover, Alpine Valley regular Russell Hill, in March 2020. The pair, aged in their early 70s, hasnt been seen since. In one of its most remote corners are the charred leftovers from a burnt-out campsite, now strewn with the butchered remains of deer carcasses left behind by hunters. This macabre spot is at the centre of a case that has mystified Victorians and stumped police. Heavy fog lingers in the Wonnangatta Valley long into its autumn mornings. Hill, an avid camper, packed his white Toyota LandCruiser and left his Drouin home in West Gippsland on March 19, 2020, stopping to collect Clay from Pakenham on Melbournes outskirts before heading east. They stopped in the rural township of Licola before tackling the arduous Zeka Spur Track, which Hill had helped clear in his logging days. Wild dog numbers in the area have exploded in the past decade alongside sambar deer, an insatiable attraction for hunters from across Australia. Parks Victoria lists tracks into the valley as very difficult and its rocky, steep inclines, rugged bush and sodden clay descents can land drivers in serious trouble if not navigated with skill. Wonnangatta Station is as remote as it gets. Mountain cattlemen once mustered herds through the area from spring to autumn. Nowadays, only avid hunters and four-wheel-drive enthusiasts tackle its unforgiving territory. Youd have to say theres a third party involved, says Mountain Cattlemens Association stalwart Graeme Stoney. Though we may never know. The high country holds its secrets close. It was enough to drive you under your bed covers a bit more. On the other side of the valley a rival mob of dingoes then started to howl. It went on for an hour or more ... you could hear it for miles echoing back and forth. Its pretty magical. Probably the most endearing thought I have of Wonnangatta is a still night, bright moonlight, in the autumn and at about 3am while we were all in our swags, some dingoes started up on the ridge, he says. The former Liberal MP has ridden horses into Wonnangatta more times than he can remember and says its seclusion and beauty lures visitors back time and time again. Graeme Stoney, a cattle grazier from Howqua Hills, has spent his entire life working the rugged land around the valley. The walls of his home are filled with black-and-white photographs and paintings of his time in Snowy River territory. One told family they were camping alone; the other told friends they were off on a 10-day holiday. Many locals are critical of police, saying forensic teams didnt enter the valley until more than a week after Hill and Clay were last heard from. When it comes to the missing couple, Stoney says, the rumours are rife. People arent being deterred by it though. We dont jump at ghosts here. Only a few bush tracks lead into the Wonnangatta Valley: from Cheshunt to the north-west, Dargo to the east, Myrtleford to the north and Licola to the south. There is nowhere to call for help for miles and no phone service in the secluded valley, other than a clearing at Van Dammes, where East and West Buffalo roads meet before descending down the Wonnangatta Track between Mount Buller and Mount Hotham. The remoteness of the valley means there are no bone china dunnies or city luxuries, but campfire poetry and bush philosophy, he says, are alive and well in the Alpine region. Known to barrel around the Alpine country in an 80s red Toyota LandCruiser, the Button Man stops in for supplies in the town of Mansfield, recently trimming his long hair but remaining reclusive. But it is stories about encounters with the Button Man that are told more than any other and have exploded following the campers disappearance. Others whove disappeared from the area have shown up dead months or years after last making contact with loved ones. In June 2011, former Barwon Prison boss David Prideaux also vanished from the Alpine National Park. Tall tales are regularly told at the local pubs, as residents share mountain stories over beer. Theres the disappearance of hiker Niels Becker in October 2019 and much-loved husband Conrad Whitlock, who vanished near Mount Buller in August that same year. But none of these critics wish to be named. They know all too well that Hill and Clay arent the first to vanish from their Alpine backyard. Stoney has come across the Button Man too. And while he may spook some, most in the area are convinced hes harmless, if intriguing. The first mystery Few know more about the first murder in the valley than historian Keith Leydon. Historian Keith Leydon has investigated the first Wonnangatta Valley murders. Credit:Jason South Stacked safely inside cardboard boxes at his Mansfield home are years of painstaking research into the killing of Jim Barclay, shot with his own gun and buried in a sandy river bank 420 metres away from his Wonnangatta homestead. Barclays body, alongside that of his cook John Bamford, were found months apart in February and November 1918 - more than 100 years before Hill and Clays disappearance. Loading I dont think the police are looking for a person in the latest case. I think theyre looking for evidence, Leydon says. And I think they know who it was. These days long weekends such as Easter at Wonnangatta Valley, the historian says, are like Rosebud foreshore at Christmas. During the peak season dozens if not hundreds pour into the valley to try their luck at downing a deer or muddying their tyres. March 2020, though, was remarkably quiet. The pandemic was beginning to take hold in Australia and within weeks the valley, like most national parks, was closed to the public. Leydon says the most common theory among Alpine locals is that Hill and Clay were shot - perhaps mistakenly - by deer hunters, or following a scuffle with a camp thief rumoured to have been operating in the area. Large wombat holes, impenetrable cliffs and large drums buried by hunters during the winter offer sites to hide a body, he says. And the wild dogs, many say, can clean up remains at a campsite within minutes. Newcastle brothers Warren and Brian Atkins and their sons Shane and Nigel have been camping and hunting sambar deer at Wonnangatta Station for years and say theyre rarely alone in the valley. The Atkins family (from left) Brian, Shane, Nigel and Warren in the Wonnangatta Valley. Credit:Jason South All say they have heard the wild dogs. Members of the Australian Deer Association, they say illegal spotlighters are a real and growing problem in the remote area. We did have some spotlighters come in last time, says Brian. Wed hear the shots. We hate it. But what do you do - front them and then they threaten you? The search Musterer Lachlan Culican arrives at the Merrijig Motor Inn to chat in a black F350 pickup, a yellow-tailed black cockatoo feather adorning his Akubra. When word of the missing couple first began to spread, he was among volunteers on horseback called in to help police scour the thick bush. It looked unnatural: Lachlan Culican was part of the search party for the missing campers. Credit:Jason South He recalls not knowing what hed find or even who they were looking for. Riding into the burnt-out campsite on the afternoon of May 28, Culican says Hills locked LandCruiser - with cards and wallets strewn across the passenger footwell - made the search party suspicious. No one locks their cars in the country, Culican says. It just looked unnatural. Unorthodox. Everyone had a theory but every theory had a hole in it. No one had a fool-proof story of what could have happened. There was always something that didnt make sense. For three days the musterer and his fellow searchers scoured the valley. He says police searched everywhere Hill and Clay could have been and the horsemen everywhere they shouldnt have been. I was sure I was going to find them, he says. The leader and the adventurer Hill and Clay were well-respected individuals before disappearance threw their names together. Those close to her say Clay - armed with powerhouse ambition and a knack for details - was an inspirational leader during her time at the helm of the states CWA branch. Then state CWA president Carol Clay at a Federation Square exhibition in collaboration with the CSIRO in August 2011. Credit:Joe Armao Media interviews from the time paint a picture of a woman who made sure people understood that the organisation was about more than tea and scones. It is only a small part of what we do, she told The Wimmera Mail-Times in 2011. We focus on the contribution our members make to improving communities. The association is diverse, active and relevant and we continue to play a significant role in the fabric of Australian life. She spoke about improving the perception of agriculture and farm work for young people, fighting for higher internet speeds in rural areas and a ban on the sale of energy drinks to young children. Over black coffee and homemade fruit cake at the Stoneys sprawling Alpine acreage, Wendy Stoney recalls Clay as a formidable leader who put in decades of work. Carol was very good at what she did. Shed go on [ABC radios] Jon Faine and was able to express all kinds of changes that were occurring due to the work being done at the CWA. Her ability to explain the issues CWA lobbied for on behalf of women and children was done in an outgoing, inclusive but no nonsense way , says Stoney. She was highly regarded. I was shocked to learn it was her who went missing. In 2018, 17 years after she joined the organisation, Clay was inducted as a member of honour. One friend, who did not want to be identified due to CWA rules about speaking to the media, said some members were surprised when, in the months after her disappearance, her name disappeared from the honour list in the CWA magazine. She was a very lovely person and we find it really hard to think she liked camping. But then if you are with someone you want to be with, you do different things, the woman recalls. She worked 10 days at the Melbourne Show in high heels, thats the sort of person she was. Clay had told this friend about Hill, describing him as someone she had known before her marriage. She had stayed friends with him, she says. That doesnt happen very often. Theres no way she would run off and do this to everybody, its just not possible. Its too hard to do it these days. Thats not the scenario. Others, though, told The Age about the vitriol that arose when Clay invited Hill to stay at CWA headquarters years before they disappeared. They would see her as a scarlet woman. Thats not an exaggeration, one former CWA member says. She had devoted her life [to the CWA] ... [but then] she was publicly declared a pariah. As for Hill, longtime friend Rob Ashlin - the last person to speak to the 74-year-old - says he was a private man who loved the valley, visiting the area annually. A pretty protective sort of bloke: Russell Hill. A year before he vanished, Hill traded in his puddle jumper for a shiny new four-wheel-drive, decking it out with everything needed for camping deep in the bush. Its part of the reason Ashlin is convinced foul play is behind his friends disappearance. Russell was a pretty protective sort of bloke, says Ashlin, and if somebody comes doing the wrong thing and ruffled feathers he would have challenged them. He says Hills wife Robyn has had a year of anguish. Shes doing it hard. She wants to see answers and move on. I believe its only going to be a matter of time. Enough alcohol and somebody is going to open their mouth. The Wonnangatta Valley earlier this month. Credit:Jason South With a small but steady stream of convicted terrorists due for release in the coming years, Senator Cash said that being able to monitor convicted terrorists activities online and via ankle bracelets was critical to guarding against future terrorist incidents. The orders will allow police to monitor convicted terrorists who have served their time and been released from jail for up to three years, significantly more than the six months allowed for under the current system of continuing detention orders. Beefing up federal police powers to monitor convicted terrorists for longer is at top of Michaelia Cashs priority list, with the new Attorney-General hoping to introduce new extended supervision orders by the end of 2021. Extended supervision orders ... allows the court to actually impose conditions on high-risk terrorist offenders after their release from custody, Senator Cash said. They complement what we can already do, which is the presumption against parole and continuing detention orders, so keeping them behind bars. Loading Our priority as a government, when the world is hit with a global pandemic that closes down the economy or parts of the economy, has to be on ensuring businesses are kept in business. People are kept in jobs but also ensuring the health of Australians, that has to be our fundamental priority, but at the same time, it does not mean that you take your eye off the ball when it comes to keeping Australians safe from the evolving terrorist threat. Senator Cash said that since 2014, 133 people have been charged as a result of 61 counter-terrorism operations around Australia. There have been nine attacks, 21 major counter-terrorism disruption operations and around 120 Australians and former Australians have travelled to Syria or Iraq and are believed to have died; about 45 people have returned to Australia after travelling to Syria or Iraq. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 01:07:50|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WINDHOEK, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Namibia's hospitals are full to capacity, the health ministry said on Saturday as the southern African nation battles a surge in COVID-19 cases. "The numbers of new cases are progressively increasing on a daily basis especially in Windhoek residential areas," a statement from the ministry said as the country recorded 391 new cases, the highest number of new infections in a week. "Residents of these areas are visibly not complying to public health measures. Hospitals are now full," the ministry added. The African nation has 166 high care and ICU beds countrywide for all patients, according to the ministry figures. Namibia now has close to 55,000 confirmed cases and more than 800 deaths. Enditem London: Prince Harry was told the news of his grandfathers death by Santa Barbara police, after officers were called to his California home in the middle of the night. Prince Philip, 99, died at Windsor Castle on the morning of April 9, prompting a series of urgent calls across the Atlantic shortly before 3am US time, 11am in the UK. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, appears in a scene from The Me You Cant See on Apple TV. Credit:AP Buckingham Palace aides contacted the US embassy in London, which in turn called the Santa Barbara sheriffs office. An officer was then dispatched to the home of Harry and his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, in Montecito, 16 kilometres away, to break the news. Prince Harry, 36, is understood to have been asleep at the time. The Israeli foreign ministry has described what is happening in Sheikh Jarrah as a real estate dispute. Four Palestinian households are facing immediate eviction (there are at least 27 families in similar battles) to make way for the right-wing settler group Lahav Shomron, which acquired the land from Jewish trusts that bought it in the Ottoman era, a provenance that has been upheld by Israeli courts. The settlers say they are replacing Arab squatters; the Palestinians were settled in the area as refugees in 1957, when it was under Jordanian control. The matter has been making its way through the Israeli legal system for years and on Monday, May 10, the Supreme Court was slated to issue its verdict. Palestinians dismiss the term squatting as ludicrous. The only way to explain events on the ground, they say, is as settler-colonialism: Israel is dispossessing indigenous Palestinians of houses they have lived in for generations. Palestinians dispute the ownership claims of the settler groups, arguing that Israeli courts have no jurisdiction over occupied territory according to international law a plausible claim, as the seizure of property and transfer of populations by an occupying power is a war crime under the Rome Statute. Israels Supreme Court is implicated in the states expansionist project. BTselem, the leading Israeli human rights organisation, argued in 2019 that the high court bears responsibility for home demolitions and the dispossession of Palestinians, calling their proceedings fake justice that gives state crimes a veneer of legitimacy. The Palestinian families slated for expulsion from Sheikh Jarrah say the Israeli courts offered them no way to contest the Jewish settlers claims to their land, to which they too have deeds. ~ Asks what Knops specifically wants with PJIA ~ PHILIPSBURG:--- Independent Member of Parliament Christophe Emmanuel on Friday said that while he can empathize with the position the Prime Minister finds herself in after the Kingdom Council of Ministers decided to hold off on releasing liquidity support, it is, unfortunately, a reflection of her weakness as a leader, no cohesion in the coalition and the results of her government playing dangerous games with the Dutch. I have warned this government to be direct, to be forthcoming, to be honest. They chose to lie and deflect, the MP said. MP Emmanuel said he takes no pleasure in telling the government I told you so and does not minimize the financial obligations that the government has to meet, but going to Holland to grovel had the expected results after the government itself showed the world that they have no clue how to solve the countrys problems, on top of months of lying and playing games with the Dutch. When you tell the world that there is no plan B, no alternative other than depending on the Dutch for liquidity support, you place yourself in a position of weakness to be taken advantage of. And this is exactly what State Secretary Knops has done, Emmanuel said. Moreover, he continued, by admitting you have no plans, you admit that the people should not expect any solutions from their government whom they elected to govern the country and provide them with a decent way of life. This means you are admitting your incompetence as a government, eroding any confidence the people had in you, he said. Emmanuel said while the Prime Minister mentioned corporate governance at the airport as the sticking point with the Dutch, she did not mention what specifically the Dutch wanted to be done with the airport. He said decades of dealing with the Dutch have taught him that they never leave out what they specifically want in any situation. As such, the Prime Minister of St. Maarten, he said, has to come clean. Tell us what the Dutch really want with PJIA. In our last Parliament meeting on the subject I specifically asked what is Knops definition of good corporate governance, because while government thinks it means getting rid of Dexter Doncher, Knops obviously wants much more than that. So what is it? Does he want binding decisions to be made only by the supervisory board of the airport (PJIAE)? Taking the holding board out of the picture? What is it? The Prime Minister is obliged to inform Parliament and the people what Knops wants with their property and must be very, very careful not to give up our airport in order to get Naf 39 million that we have to pay back, the MP said. He said the Prime Minister has already secured her legacy of signing away St. Maartens autonomy by signing for country packages and supporting COHO and should be careful not to set a precedent of giving forgetting. Today it is the airport. When the 39 is done in about a month, the demand will be the harbor when you go begging for money again. Remember, you told them you had no plan b. So you gave them all of the leverage to ask for what they want, the MP said, adding that any agreement involving PJIA without the knowledge of Parliament should also result in a motion of no confidence against the government as the sole shareholder of the airport. MP Emmanuel also re-iterated that State Secretary Knops is also a boldface liar that completely lacks integrity and should never utter the words that he cares about St. Maarten people again. He said government has to find its spine and lend the money it needs. What are they going to do if you do what you have to, to support your people and run your country? Why is it ok for them to break the law and break agreements by not providing liquidity support after St. Maarten did everything it was asked to do, but St. Maarten cant and should not do the same? We met all conditions. Yet they are allowed to walk all over us and we shouldnt do anything for ourselves. I have called for us to stand with one voice against these unconscionable tactics by the Dutch. As long as we are divided, their behavior will never change. Instead of taking up my call, government said I was fear-mongering. The MP said the public should not forget that while government said it had exhausted all funding options, it has never disclosed what exactly these options were that it exhausted. He said nobody could ever determine what government did to save itself other than continuously accept conditions and demands from the Dutch, which included cutting the income of workers. This government has not been serious about doing about making real sacrifices to tide the country over and save from within. They kept hiring people right after cutting the income of current civil servants, they did not make serious internal operational cuts but accepted brand new cars, which means more gasoline bond sect, the spending never stopped. Why? because the government became dependent and never truly worked on getting the country out of the crisis. The Dutch, being the Dutch, understood desperation when they saw it and are now using the situation to get their hands on St. Maartens assets, Emmanuel said. He continued: This government acts cowardly. The only thing they are good for is destroying their own people. Cut the income of your workers, suspend Dexter Doncher for which we still have no explanation, defend foreign nationals being placed in positions over your own. This government can put down their people but refuse to stand up to the Dutch and be bold and assertive with the mandate the people gave to them. We not only have a democratic deficit to contend with, but we also have an intellectual deficit with this government when they go up against the Dutch. We have clearly lost that battle on all fronts. SABA:--- On Saturday, May 29, a total of 12 members of Dutch Defense, stationed in Curacao, will be arriving on Saba via St. Eustatius by boat for the annual HUREX hurricane training exercise. During their visit, they will help to clean Spring Bay. On Saturday afternoon, the Defense group will assist Saba residents with the clean-up of Spring Bay as part of the community event Saba DOET. They will help to collect and carry up plastics and other items that have washed ashore in Spring Bay, and which will be carried up the steep hill of Kelbeys Ridge by volunteers through a human chain. Other activities of the Defense group while on the island will include the installation of communications equipment, carrying out a HUREX training exercise, meet with local disaster management authorities in preparation of the hurricane season, getting acquainted with the island, and hiking to the top of Mt. Scenery to conduct a terrain orientation. The Navy ship Pelikaan will arrive and dock on Saba on Monday, May 31 to drop off rations for Dutch Defense personnel in case the men have to assist during this hurricane season and to let the crew experience docking into the Saba harbor. The Pelikaan goes to Statia afterward for the same event. The Pelikaan will be back on Wednesday morning, June 2 to pick up the group. The ship will stay outside the harbor and the pickup will be executed by the Fast Intervention boat (FRISC). The entire Defense group has been vaccinated twice and has done a PCR test prior to their departure for Saba from Curacao. Somerset, KY (42501) Today Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 63F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Partly cloudy skies after midnight. Low 63F. Winds NE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Support local journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by making a contribution. Contribute The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts. The Conversation is wholly responsible for the content. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 01:37:06|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BAGHDAD, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi held meetings with Iraqi leaders on Saturday during his official visit to Baghdad to strengthen bilateral ties in various fields. Iraqi President Barham Salih met with Qureshi, and the two sides discussed bilateral relations and stressed the importance of cooperation in combating terrorism and extremism to stabilize the region and the world, said a statement by the media office of the presidency. "The world and the region, in particular, are facing the challenges of terrorism, extremism, and the escalation of tensions that affect global security and stability," Salih said. "Iraq's close relations with the Arab world, Islamic neighboring countries, and its relations with the international community are a cornerstone of security, stability, and development in the region," the statement quoted Salih as saying. For his part, Qureshi affirmed "his country's commitment to supporting Iraq's security and sovereignty and expressed aspiration towards consolidating bilateral relations and cooperation in various fields with Iraq," according to the statement. Qureshi also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, as the two discussed ways to enhance cooperation between Baghdad and Islamabad in the security, economic and military fields. They also discussed the file of religious visits as Pakistan wants to facilitate visa procedures for Pakistani visitors to Iraq, the statement said. Moreover, Qureshi conveyed an invitation from the Pakistani leadership for al-Kadhimi to visit Pakistan, the statement added. During his visit, Qureshi met with his Iraqi counterpart Fuad Hussein, who said during a press conference after the meeting that he discussed with Qureshi "the export of Iraqi oil to the Pakistani market, cooperation in the agricultural and industrial fields, in addition to encouraging religious tourism between the two countries." For his part, Qureshi told reporters that his country is looking forward to more cooperation with Iraq in the fields of combating terrorism and religious tourism, stressing Pakistan's commitment to supporting Iraq in all fields. Qureshi arrived at Baghdad airport on Friday and was received by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Salih al-Tamimi, according to a statement issued by the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Enditem In their own words: Three Black Minnesota officers reflect on race and policing A state government shutdown this year wouldnt just be pretty bad. It would be very, very, very bad. Paris Saint-Germain and Mauricio Pochettino reportedly hold "decisive talks" amid demand for the Argentine's services from Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur. With Daniel Levy's efforts to find a successor to Jose Mourinho so far proving futile, reports emerged earlier this week claiming that the Lilywhites could elect to bring Pochettino back to the club 18 months after sacking him. However, the Argentine has also been linked with the vacancy at Real Madrid after Zinedine Zidane's departure, with rumoured Los Blancos target Massimiliano Allegri instead returning to Juventus. Now, The Mirror reports that Pochettino and PSG have cleared the air and centred recent discussions on the 2021-22 campaign, where Les Parisiens are aiming to dethrone Lille as Ligue 1 champions. With Pochettino only taking the reins in January following the sacking of Thomas Tuchel, the capital giants are thought to be surprised at the sudden demand for his services. The Argentine's PSG deal does expire at the end of the 2021-22 season, though, and he has won 24 of his 34 games at the helm so far. Brussels (Belgium), 29 May 2021, (SPS) - An international videoconference on security and stability in the North African Sahel region, entitled "the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic: Guaranteeing stability and security in the region", was held yesterday with the participation of experts, political scientists, professors and politicians from various countries, organised by the Conference of Support and Solidarity with the Struggle of the Sahrawi People (EUCOCO) in partnership with the Franco-Sahraoui Study and Documentation Center, Ahmed Baba MISKE. Solidarity comrades from the Russian Federation also took part in the conference, among them comrade Artem Krasim, representing the Moscow Communist Interbrigades, who welcomed the participants, expressing full support for the struggle of the people of Western Sahara. Artem Krasim said in his greeting: "On behalf of the Moscow Communist Interbrigades, I would like to thank you for an interesting and informative international webinar. Of course, we want to express our solidarity with the people of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR). The principle of self-determination called for by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin cannot be forgotten, and every lover of freedom must support and defend the rights of the Sahrawi people." "Since the problem of Western Sahara is inevitably a problem of colonialism and its legacy, Western countries with a colonial past must never ignore these evil deeds of theirs and guarantee support and just retribution to all the victims of the conflict," added the representative of the Moscow Communist Interbrigades. "The Moscow Communist Interbrigades are ready to assist in informing Russian comrades about the situation in the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic", expressing the readiness "to spread information about the struggle of the people of Western Sahara to all Russian comrades", concluded the representative of the Moscow Communist Interbrigades. (SPS) 062/090/T Artists often work in isolation, holing up in their studios for hours on end, but a new project mounted by New Havens Yale Schwarzman Center (YSC) proves that art made off the grid during a pandemic can create bonds between participants. Available for online viewing through the end of the summer possibly longer is a virtual gallery called off the grid: projects for the moment, featuring eight works by 30 people, some working in collaboration. The exhibit includes pieces from students across Yale University, including the Divinity School, School of Medicine and School of Music/Institute of Sacred Music. We really wanted to see how this project would emerge and did not really have an end goal in sight when we started it, but once we reviewed all the work, we thought this is an incredible retrospective looking back on the year of the pandemic, said Carl Holvick, the centers associate director of stakeholder engagement. We reached out to all of the artists and thanked them for their work, they reached back and we started conversations from there. The center had posted a prompt on its website asking students and the schools community members to submit art and media that explores how they navigated the social isolation during the pandemic, addressing issues like COVID-19, change, social injustice and the nations racial reckoning. What resulted was a wide diversity of art and storytelling forms from spoken word and poetry to opera, dance, video and photography. Holvick was most struck by the far-ranging nature of the mediums represented. That diversity of disciplines was one of the most exciting aspects of it, he said. The pieces in this exhibit are inspired, reflective, hopeful and thought-provoking in ways that are uniquely personal and deeply relatable at the same time. One of the artists is Noah Humphrey also known as Knowa Know who created a video artwork called Picket Fences: Black Covid-19 Recollections. A Yale Divinity School student who attends school virtually from Hawaii, Humphrey homed in on themes of social injustice and racism, using the metaphor of a white picket fence as a blank canvas on which people see each other (across the fence) and tell their stories. Humphrey said he was inspired by the deaths of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Iremamber Sykap a 16-year-old boy who was fatally shot by police in Honolulu in April and a friend who died from COVID-19 at age 21. What I wanted to target with these interactions that happened within my life was a center in which I could recollect and also build back, he said. The video Humphrey narrates deals with seeing people and the importance of knowing everyones stories instead of judging them by the color of their skin. As we go through this time of COVID, it isnt only an isolation of the physical health but also an isolation of humanity, he said. I want new ways to talk about these issues: new ways to say Hey, how am I going to talk to that police officer today, how am I going to talk to that Black Lives Matter protester today, how am I going to talk to that All Lives Matter protester? Being able to reach across or through a fence to know the person on the other side and to see what they have to offer is a motif in his video. By the end, he has painted his white fence black, and then a vibrant rainbow. You paint the narratives you want on your fence, but dont forget to look on the other side as well. Themes of accountability, reliability and sustainability persist in Humphreys work. The accountability is knowing that there is another side; the reliability is knowing that you can be relied on, that your narrative is going to be heard in some way ... and sustainability is about having a story that lasts... having something that stands on the page, being able to not be rooted out by any source, he said. Andrea Valluzzo is a freelance writer. STAMFORD The citys Memorial Day parade, ceremony and Gold Star Family monument unveiling were postponed due to looming inclement weather. Officials posted the announcement to the city website Saturday afternoon indicating a new time and date would be announced shortly. We are disappointed. One pillar of Mayor David Martins platform is safety and tomorrows weather forecast poses concerns Mark McGrath, Stamfords Director of Operations said. The decision to postpone was made by the events organizers the Stamford Veterans Park Partnership, Veterans Council and Patriotic and Special Events Commission. Patricia Parry, the Gold Star Mother of Navy SEAL Brian Bill, said its disappointing for all of us, but that safety comes first. We want to be sure the event provides the best opportunity for everyone to join together to honor and remember those men and women who paid the ultimate sacrifice for our freedom, and due to the weather, tomorrow is not that day, she said. COLLEGE PARK, Md. (AP) A retired Southwest Airlines pilot was sentenced to probation Friday after pleading guilty to exposing his genitals to a female first officer and watching pornography on a laptop during a flight from Philadelphia to Florida last year. Michael Haak, 60, apologized and expressed remorse for his actions before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Mark Coulson sentenced him to one year of unsupervised probation and a $5,000 fine. It started as a consensual prank between me and the other pilot. I never imagined it would turn into this in a thousand years, Haak said during a remote hearing. Federal prosecutors said in a news release that Haak had never met the first officer before that flight bound for Orlando on Aug. 10, 2020. After the plane reached its cruising altitude, Haak got out of the pilots seat, disrobed and began watching pornographic material on a laptop computer in the cockpit, prosecutors said. As the plane continued its flight, Haak further engaged in inappropriate conduct in the cockpit, as the first officer continued to perform her duties as an assigned aircrew member, the statement says. The first officer submitted a statement to the court but didnt speak during Friday's hearing. The judge told Haak that his actions had a traumatic effect on the co-pilot and could have impacted the safety of passengers and other co-workers. Haak had a duty to comport himself in a much more responsible manner, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Cunningham said. This is not the kind of aberrant behavior that anyone should accept, the prosecutor added. Cunningham said the first officer unfortunately suffered some consequences as a result of the incident that Haak didnt have anything to do with, but he didnt elaborate. She had a right not to be subjected to this kind of behavior, regardless of what may have motivated it or prompted it, the prosecutor said. Haak was charged in April with intentionally committing a lewd, indecent or obscene act in a public place, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 90 days in jail. He was charged in Maryland because it was one of the states that the aircraft passed over that day. Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of probation without requiring Haak to register as a sex offender. The judge wasn't bound by that recommendation. Haak, a resident of Longwood, Florida, was a Southwest Airlines pilot for 27 years until his retirement. His last flight for the Dallas-based airline was on Aug. 31, 2020, three weeks after the incident that led to the criminal charge. Southwest spokesperson Chris Mainz said in a statement that the airline does not tolerate behavior of this nature and will take prompt action if such conduct is substantiated. Southwest only learned of Haak's behavior after he voluntarily left the airline, according to Mainz. Nonetheless, Southwest did investigate the matter and as a result, ceased paying Mr. Haak any benefits he was entitled to receive as a result of his separation from (the airline), Mainz said. Defense attorney Michael Salnick said Haak had a sterling career as a commercial pilot and received numerous accolades and supportive letters from passengers and colleagues, including one from Southwest chairman and CEO Gary Kelly on the day of Haak's retirement. We are blessed that Southwest has been your home for so many years," Kelly wrote. Haak accepts responsibility for his conduct and "offers no excuses, his lawyer said in a court filing. Salnick argued that Haak deserves a lenient sentence given his lifetime of hard work and kindness. The embarrassment and resulting publicity of this incident has in and of itself been humbling to Michael Haak and has served as punishment in many ways, he wrote. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 05:13:41|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ABUJA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian police on Saturday confirmed the release of 14 university students and staff kidnapped last month by gunmen in the country's northwestern state of Kaduna. About 20 people including students and two staff of the privately-owned Greenfield University in Kaduna were kidnapped by unknown gunmen in the Chikun local government area of the state on April 20. Mohammed Jalige, a spokesman for the police in Kaduna, told reporters that the students were found after being released by their abductors on Saturday afternoon, at a location along the Kaduna-Abuja expressway. According to Samuel Aruwan, a commissioner for internal security and home affairs in the state, the two staff of the university were among those released by the gunmen. "Fourteen persons were released in total, comprising students and staff," Aruwan said in a terse statement. Police authorities in Nigeria confirmed the abduction on April 21, saying the gunmen infiltrated the university in large numbers and abducted the students and two staff, while killing one member of staff. On April 23, the gunmen killed three students in their captivity. The bodies of the students were found at a location close to the school. This was followed by the gruesome killing of two more students of the university on April 26. On May 1, one of the abducted students was released by the gunmen after his parents paid an undisclosed ransom, according to local media reports. Enditem MANCHESTER Jessica Edwards was just weeks away from earning her respiratory care degree before she died. On Thursday, her sister accepted a degree on her behalf from Manchester Community College. The school shared a photo of Yanique Edwards wearing a blue cap and gown receiving the diploma in a Facebook post Friday. An MCC spokesperson said Yanique Edwards accepted the degree during a private presentation when she met with the schools chief executive officer, Nicole Esposito. MCC acknowledges that Jessica completed all the requirements for her associate degree in respiratory care and so the degree was awarded posthumously, the spokesperson said. The school is also posting a video honoring Jessica Edwards on the MCC commencement page of the schools website. The school expects the video to be on the site on June 10. Jessica Edwards, the 30-year-old mother to a 7-month-old son, was reported missing by her family after being last seen leaving her South Windsor condominium the morning of May 10. Her family pleaded for her to come home safely on social media as police investigated. Im not going to give up, Yanique Edwards said in a Facebook post. I will search the world for you Jessica. She was found dead in a wooded area of East Hartford on the morning of May 21. The police investigation led to her husband Tahj Hutchinson, who provided a confession to police the day Edwards body was found. The arrest affidavit showed Hutchinson and Jessica Edwards had been arguing in the days leading up to her disappearance, and escalated into a physical altercation twice including on the day she was last seen. In his confession, Hutchinson told investigators that Edwards allegedly hit him in the head with a laptop and grabbed a knife when they argued at her South Windsor condo on May 10. He claimed the two wrestled over the knife, he pinned her down and flipped her on her stomach and knelt on her neck and back until she stopped moving. He told police he didnt immediately realize she was dead. Hutchinson, who was charged with manslaughter, was arraigned at Superior Court in Manchester on May 24 and a judge increased his bond to $1.5 million. The case was transferred to a Hartford Superior Court, where more serious felonies are heard. The In Memoriam monument listing Stamfords war dead in Veterans Memorial Park has never told the whole story. Tony Pavia cant see me smile as he continues his stream of consciousness history lesson about the citys exceptional contributions during wartime. Heres something I just thought of, but Im going to throw this at you. Im seeing what sticks against the wall, he says. At heart, Pavia is a history teacher. Hes also a writer. In this case hes not bothering to present history in the form of a lesson plan or as a linear narrative. Hes leaving that to me. Which makes me the wall. I smile because he repeats the phrase a few times during our chat without ever acknowledging that the subject of this discourse is indeed a wall. Its an exceptional monolith, listing Stamford citizens who died in service to the nation. Pavias book, An American Town Goes to War, related the contribution the city made to the World War II effort, when about one in six residents served. When the monument was dedicated in the downtown park in 1977, it listed the names of those who were killed in action in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. The only name added in all this time has been that of U.S. Navy SEAL Brian Bill, who was killed in Afghanistan in 2011. The wall itself, though, starts late in Stamfords story. Absent were names of Stamford residents who died in earlier conflicts. Those names now adorn the back side of the wall. For anyone attending Sundays Memorial Day ceremonies, or just looking to honor the spirit of the holiday, its a fitting place for reflection. Its a reminder of Stamfords considerable sacrifice during World War I, when about 10 percent of residents served. But painstaking research also added those who wore uniforms in the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, the Civil War, and the lone documented loss in the Spanish American War (Joseph F. Bunnell). As we talk on the phone, Pavia estimates the list is now 500 names strong. I neglected to count when I visited it Thursday evening, but its time well spent to pause and consider the names. The history teacher has done exactly that. He looks at the early entries and recognizes surnames of the citys settlers, names such as Davenport and Scofield. Two families during the Revolutionary War lost two sons. A Civil War family lost three. Pavia is throwing quickly at his wall now. It all sticks. The Revolutionary deaths were on legendary battlefields such as Saratoga and Yorktown. Gold Star Parade Sunday Stamford's Memorial Day Parade will begin at Latham Park at 11:30 a.m. Sunday and conclude with ceremonies in Veterans Memorial Park. The event will also be live-streamed at https://events.locallive.tv/events/53593 See More Collapse In the Civil War they died in every major campaign, Pavia says. When he mentions Fort Wagner he notes it was the setting of the 1989 movie Glory. When he shifts to Gettysburg he says nothing more, because nothing more needs to be said. Pavia also notes that many soldiers died in early campaigns not from artillery wounds, but from the consequences of diseases such as Yellow Fever and dysentery. Then theres the War of 1812. Connecticuts legislature at the time voted not to join the campaign. Some Stamford residents signed up anyway. As America grew up, so did Stamford. By World War II, the children of immigrants enlisted, some 200 finding their way to the wall. Stamford was still an industrial town, with the likes of Pitney Bowes and American Cyanimid putting many residents to work to help end the war. The 10,000 people who signed up in what was then a city of 60,000 includes a few thousand women. Stamford was absolutely in the center of the war effort, says Pavia, whose career included stints as principal of Stamford, New Canaan and Trinity Catholic high schools. Stamford residents on the front lines died in every single major battle. Pavias voice lilts as he repeats that unfathomable history lesson. Five killed at Iwo Jima. Six or seven at Okinawa. Guys killed in D-Day ... Through Korea and Vietnam, Stamfords military demographics continued to mirror that of the nation. The city would not suffer another military death until Brian Bills four decades later. Much of the recent rehabilitation of Veterans Memorial Park is a credit to the leadership of Bills mother, Pat Parry. When the procession of Stamfords Memorial Day parade arrives Sunday at the park, the primary focus will be the dedication of a new Gold Star monument honoring residents who died in battle, and feature a unique gathering of family members. That Gold Star monument was surrounded by scaffolding in recent days as engravers worked to finish it. But the names on the In Memoriam wall bearing the updated list was already visible. The people who joined Pavia in doing the relentless (he calls it weird) research to find missing names are themselves worthy of being credited somewhere in stone. Long before this wall, there was a Service Roll in what was then Stamfords Central Park. It was vanquished in the 1970s by weather and urban renewal. Names hand-painted on wooden placards were unceremoniously trashed. In the shadow of an unpopular war, the city scrapped its own history. Its a story Pavia has revisited often, but this time the idea sparks an original notion that Im going to throw at you. One might argue the Stamford Advocate was the father of that park, he posits. It was the Advocate that sponsored the service roll. Aside from boosting community war drives and the like, the newspaper routinely documented the names of every soldier who enlisted. Recollecting names from newspaper archives and things such as pension records is an inexact science, so the wall is surely missing names. Its not 100 percent accurate, Pavia concedes, but its representative of the sacrifice Stamford made and of the changing face of the country. And it makes you proud of Stamford, it really does. John Breunig is editorial page editor. jbreunig@scni.com; twitter.com/johnbreunig. STAMFORD Former Stamford High School students Lizet Garcia and Rithin Armstrong sure know how to get an idea off the ground. The two recent graduates created an experiment in 2019 through a NASA-sponsored program that was chosen to be flown to the International Space Station in 2020. That flight didnt happen due to COVID-19, but the experiment is now set to launch on Thursday. If that sounds like an amazing accomplishment for a pair of high school students, thats because it is. This is definitely not something everybody gets to say they did, Garcia said. Armstrong and Garcia were in a pool of roughly 16,000 students who submitted just over 3,000 proposals to the Student Spaceflight Experiment Program, which Stamford has participated in in recent years thanks to the work of Stamford High science teacher Sue Dougherty. Ultimately, the proposal from the pair of Stamford seniors was one of just 33 experiments to be selected. So what is the experiment exactly? The title probably doesnt clarify things for most people. The Effect of Microgravity on the Ability of Galloflavin, in the Absence of Membrane Based Cellular Signaling Pathways, to Inhibit the Enzymatic Activity of Lactate Dehydrogenase A is a mouthful, but in essence, its a test to see if a cancer-friendly enzyme is affected by the trip to space. It could be data that scientists use for either a cancer vaccine or a cure for cancer, said Dougherty, the Stamford High School teacher facilitator for the experiment program. Dougherty said two review boards judged the experiment, including one scientist doing research on cancer who was impressed with the idea. You never get feedback above the scoring sheet and the feedback from that scientist to the Student Spaceflight Experiments people was just amazing, Dougherty said. She said a little over 600 students at Stamford High signed up for the experiments program. Those students generally split into teams of two-to-five students. Garcia and Armstrong decided to work together since they were in the same biology class. There are a lot of programs like this out there and competitions for students, but what I find about this one is that it definitely impacted student achievement and excitement about STEM, Dougherty said. The program is a national science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) initiative of the National Center for Earth and Space Science Education and Dougherty is the community program director for Stamford. In addition to Armstrong and Garcia, two additional SHS student teams submissions were among the small number of proposals considered and recognized. The science teacher said students who participated also found themselves better positioned to be accepted into prestigious universities. Two students got into Columbia University, she said, and one was accepted to Johns Hopkins University, among other top educational institutions. Armstrong is currently attending college at the University of Connecticut at Storrs, where he is studying to be a chemical engineer. Garcia is at the University of Richmond, pursuing a double major chemistry and health care studies and a minor in business administration. Stamford High took part in the spaceflight program for the first time in 2018, and an experiment from the school was chosen for a trip to space that year as well. The Student Spaceflight Experiments Program was launched in June 2010 with the intention of giving students from grades 5 to 12, and undergraduates at college, a chance to design and propose microgravity experiments to fly in low Earth orbit. Back in January of 2020, NCESSE selected the experiment proposal developed by Armstrong and Garcia, seniors at the high school at the time, as one of the very few to travel to the International Space Station. Their experiment was set to fly to space on Mission 14 in June of last year. But due to COVID-19, that mission never left the ground. Armstrong thought that was the end of the road for the experiment, but was thrilled to find out it would happen this year, aboard Mission 15. Once the experiment is back on Earth, Garcia said she and Armstrong hope to do something with it, perhaps publish a report of the findings. Its a once in a lifetime opportunity, Armstrong said. ignacio.laguarda@stamfordadvocate.com Greg Zyla writes we ekly for More Content Now and Gannett Co., Inc. He welcomes reader questions on auto nostalgia, old-time motorsports and collector cars at 303 Roosevelt St., Sayre, PA 18840 or email at greg@gregzyla.com. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-30 06:10:18|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close WASHINGTON, May 29 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Joe Biden's 6-trillion-U.S.-dollar budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 has drawn mixed reviews from lawmakers and budget watchers, setting the stage for potentially heated debate in Congress. The proposal, which included Biden's plan to increase investment in infrastructure, education, health care and beyond, would push federal spending to the highest sustained levels in decades. The budget unveiled Friday calls for total spending to run above 6 trillion dollars throughout the next decade, and rise to 8.2 trillion dollars by fiscal year 2031. Deficits, meanwhile, would stay above 1.3 trillion dollars in the next 10 years. "The budget invests directly in the American people and will strengthen our nation's economy and improve our long-run fiscal health," Biden said in his message to Congress. Biden argued that the budget plan reforms America's "broken tax code" to reward work instead of wealth, while also fully paying for the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan over 15 years, referring to the revised 1.7-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan and the 1.8-trillion-dollar spending proposal focusing on childcare and education. "It will help us build a recovery that is broad-based, inclusive, sustained, and strong," the president said. The White House's budget proposal sparked praise and criticism among lawmakers, whose views are largely divided along party lines. "President Biden's budget is an unequivocal declaration of the value that Democrats place on America's workers and middle class families, who are the foundation of our nation's strength and the key to Build Back Better," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement, noting that the Biden budget makes "historic" investments in the American workforce and economy. "Congressional Democrats look forward to working with the Biden-Harris Administration to enact this visionary budget, which will pave the path to opportunity and prosperity for our nation," said the Democratic leader. Richard Neal, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said committee Democrats will consider the administration's proposals carefully. Bernie Sanders, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, said the committee will soon be holding a hearing on the president's budget "as a first step." Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, lashed out at the budget plan, arguing that "Americans are already hurting from far-left economics that ignore reality." "So far the Biden Administration has recommended we spend 7 trillion additional dollars this year," the Republican leader said on Twitter. "That would be more than we spent during World War II." "Democrats need to get their runaway spending habits under control," McConnell said. Republican lawmakers have previously lashed out at Biden's multi-trillion-dollar spending proposals, calling them "liberal daydream," and arguing that the tax hikes would lower wages, kill jobs and shrink the U.S. economy. The budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 was released as recent negotiations over Biden's infrastructure plan failed to yield a deal. The White House last week lowered the overall price tag of Biden's 2.3-trillion-dollar infrastructure plan to 1.7 trillion dollars, but Senate Republicans then proposed a 928-billion-dollar counteroffer, just over half of Biden's revised figure. Outside Capitol Hill, the newly unveiled budget plan also prompted heated discussion. "Having followed Presidents' budgets for >40 years, I think it's fair to say that while I might modify some things in the new Biden budget, it would, if enacted, do more to reduce poverty and inequality than any other budget in modern US history," Bob Greenstein, founder of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, said on Twitter. "We are pleased that President Biden has put forward important details of his budget plan, that his economic assumptions are reasonable, and that he is proposing to offset new costs over time while modestly reducing long-term deficits," said the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a watchdog group. The group, however, argued that the budget adds "too much" to already record-level debt over the next decade and "does far too little" to address rising structural deficits over the long term. According to the group's estimation, U.S. debt would rise from 100 percent of GDP at the end of fiscal year 2020 and a record 110 percent at the end of 2021 to 117 percent by the end of fiscal year 2031. In nominal dollars, debt would grow by 17 trillion dollars, to over 39 trillion by the end of fiscal year 2031. The Peter G. Peterson Foundation, also a fiscal watchdog group, said in a statement that the administration proposes increasing revenues to cover the cost of their longer-term initiatives; "however, those costs would not be fully offset during the traditional 10-year window, rather over a 15-year period." "The underlying structural imbalance between revenues and spending that existed before the pandemic budget would remain, leaving an unsustainable fiscal outlook," the foundation said. Enditem This page requires Javascript. Javascript is required for you to be able to read premium content. Please enable it in your browser settings. Ashtabula, OH (44004) Today Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 62F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%.. Tonight Partly cloudy this evening followed by increasing clouds with showers developing after midnight. Low 62F. Winds E at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 40%. Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription, or activate your access, to continue reading. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 00:27:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close RABAT, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Morocco's COVID-19 tally rose to 518,458 on Friday as 336 new cases were registered during the past 24 hours. According to a statement by the Ministry of Health, the death toll rose to 9,135 with one new fatality during the last 24 hours, while 200 people are in intensive care units. The total number of recoveries from COVID-19 in Morocco increased to 506,443 after 235 new ones were added, the statement said. The COVID-19 fatality rate in Morocco stands at 1.8 percent while the recovery rate is 97.7 percent. Meanwhile, 8,434,323 people have received so far the first vaccine shot against COVID-19 in the country, and 5,216,171 people have received the second dose. The North African country launched a nationwide vaccination campaign on Jan. 28 after the arrival of the first shipment of China's Sinopharm vaccines. Enditem Frankfort, KY (40601) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds light and variable. Blog Archive Apr 2010 (22) May 2010 (25) Jun 2010 (8) Jul 2010 (12) Aug 2010 (18) Sep 2010 (19) Oct 2010 (29) Nov 2010 (30) Dec 2010 (18) Jan 2011 (13) Feb 2011 (21) Mar 2011 (23) Apr 2011 (19) May 2011 (31) Jun 2011 (36) Jul 2011 (46) Aug 2011 (26) Sep 2011 (12) Oct 2011 (15) Nov 2011 (17) Dec 2011 (7) Jan 2012 (18) Feb 2012 (4) Mar 2012 (12) Apr 2012 (18) May 2012 (10) Jun 2012 (21) Jul 2012 (8) Aug 2012 (15) Sep 2012 (7) Oct 2012 (17) Nov 2012 (20) Dec 2012 (10) Jan 2013 (58) Feb 2013 (59) Mar 2013 (60) Apr 2013 (98) May 2013 (135) Jun 2013 (204) Jul 2013 (293) Aug 2013 (351) Sep 2013 (363) Oct 2013 (348) Nov 2013 (374) Dec 2013 (442) Jan 2014 (547) Feb 2014 (476) Mar 2014 (526) Apr 2014 (527) May 2014 (469) Jun 2014 (408) Jul 2014 (472) Aug 2014 (522) Sep 2014 (443) Oct 2014 (472) Nov 2014 (497) Dec 2014 (536) Jan 2015 (539) Feb 2015 (520) Mar 2015 (582) Apr 2015 (658) May 2015 (679) Jun 2015 (673) Jul 2015 (728) Aug 2015 (803) Sep 2015 (923) Oct 2015 (924) Nov 2015 (802) Dec 2015 (791) Jan 2016 (782) Feb 2016 (835) Mar 2016 (929) Apr 2016 (866) May 2016 (947) Jun 2016 (1044) Jul 2016 (882) Aug 2016 (1035) Sep 2016 (967) Oct 2016 (918) Nov 2016 (854) Dec 2016 (885) Jan 2017 (881) Feb 2017 (777) Mar 2017 (897) Apr 2017 (872) May 2017 (851) Jun 2017 (851) Jul 2017 (971) Aug 2017 (1040) Sep 2017 (998) Oct 2017 (1144) Nov 2017 (1046) Dec 2017 (838) Jan 2018 (873) Feb 2018 (769) Mar 2018 (885) Apr 2018 (809) May 2018 (827) Jun 2018 (820) Jul 2018 (840) Aug 2018 (854) Sep 2018 (844) Oct 2018 (852) Nov 2018 (870) Dec 2018 (912) Jan 2019 (919) Feb 2019 (827) Mar 2019 (957) Apr 2019 (913) May 2019 (1007) Jun 2019 (935) Jul 2019 (950) Aug 2019 (936) Sep 2019 (910) Oct 2019 (920) Nov 2019 (874) Dec 2019 (908) Jan 2020 (942) Feb 2020 (849) Mar 2020 (898) Apr 2020 (848) May 2020 (822) Jun 2020 (789) Jul 2020 (819) Aug 2020 (858) Sep 2020 (841) Oct 2020 (873) Nov 2020 (812) Dec 2020 (780) Jan 2021 (765) Feb 2021 (716) Mar 2021 (819) Apr 2021 (805) May 2021 (815) Jun 2021 (336) Long pandemic lockdowns forced many older adults to become comfortable with video calls to stay connected with family. That in turn means that long-distance caregivers have a better way to see how their loved ones are faring. You cant tell on the phone that theyre wearing the same clothes every day, or theyre not bathing because theyre afraid theyll fall in the shower, says Amy Goyer, AARPs national family and caregiving expert and the author of Juggling Life, Work, and Caregiving. More than 1 in 10 caregivers look after family or friends from a distance, which can make the task much more difficult and expensive. A 2016 AARP survey found that caregivers in general incur an average of about $7,000 a year in out-of-pocket expenses. Long-distance caregivers those who live at least an hour away from the care recipient incur about $12,000 on average, according to the survey. Long-distance caregivers are more likely than local caregivers to hire help, take unpaid time off work and pay for travel, Goyer says. Yet many worry theyre not doing enough and that a preventable crisis will develop because they werent on hand to spot the red flags. As caregivers, guilt is our constant companion, Goyer says. When youre a long-distance caregiver, its even more so. St. Louis Shakespeare Festival will return to Forest Park and live, in-person performance with what promises to be a majestic production of one of the Bards greatest works: King Lear. That it will be the first time the company presents the tragic tale of the monarch whos an extremely poor judge of character would be reason enough to celebrate. But the casting of the title role is particular cause for applause. Lear will be played by Andre De Shields a living legend of American theater and a 2019 Tony Award winner for his supporting turn as Hermes in the hit musical Hadestown. His presence in the production, directed by Carl Cofield and featuring a cast of actors of color, has to be considered a coup for the festival. At 75, De Shields is experiencing a late-career renaissance, appearing in settings from the NBC medical drama New Amsterdam to NPRs Wait Wait Dont Tell Me! But he remains a man of the theater. We go to the theater to have questions answered, De Shields says. To have problems solved, to have crises resolved. Thats why the Greeks built large amphitheaters, because they thought that the gods were going to come down from Mount Olympus and speak to them. But who are the gods? Those of us who dedicate our lives to the profession of theater. We are the only gods we have left: the storytellers. We go out to the audience, and we say, We may challenge you, we may change you, but we will not harm you. Unquestionably, De Shields brings to King Lear a quality that makes the production all the more unmissable. You cant really do Lear until you have the actor whos ready to play it, says Tom Ridgely, producing artistic director of St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. And obviously, this time, we do. When Carl and I were talking about which plays we might like to do, we made a wish list of who we might like to see in the role of King Lear, Ridgely says. And Andre was at the very top of that list. Cofield, who has directed Shakespearean repertoire including Macbeth, The Tempest and Twelfth Night, says De Shields is essential to his vision of the play being set in a northern African country. I couldnt ask for a finer Lear, he says. And for those who may not be familiar, Andre is one of the only people to have the triple crown an Emmy, a Grammy and a Tony. If he were across the pond, he would have sir before his name. And he carries himself with a natural majesty to his core, hes an elegant man, Cofield says. He just moves through time and space with an ease and an elegance that is reminiscent of a monarch. De Shields is no newcomer to King Lear, having slipped into the characters gold sandals for the Classical Theatre of Harlem in 2006. The New York Times observed that the actor tears into this hugely challenging role with ferocious energy. I was marking my 60th birthday when I did that Lear, De Shields says. And I thought to myself, Id like to visit this character in another 10 years, when I have more life experience to invest in what research has agreed is the arc of his life. So this is 15 years later. And, of course, I do have more life experience, De Shields says. And its not lost on him that, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the social unrest prompted by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, America finds itself in a unique cultural moment. One of the results of the pandemic is that the playing field was leveled, he says, noting that the casting of a Black man as King Lear will encourage audiences to experience the play in a new way. The future looks like the BIPOC cast thats in Forest Park rehearsing King Lear, De Shields says, referencing Black, Indigenous and people of color. Its not exclusive; its inclusive. It looks like America, and thats happening across the board. Cofield says hes most excited about reimagining Shakespeare. How is it relevant to a 21st-century audience? And how is it possible to present Shakespeare in a way that is fresh, that is alive, and that can compete with the other media that are vying for their attention? King Lear holds particular interest for him because its a family drama at its heart, but its set on a political landscape. And to me, thats an interesting calibration. For our production, were putting the family drama on full display, first and foremost, he says. And the political landscape looming in the background is this inevitable war coming. With De Shields as Lear, some might assume that accounts for the casting of people of color in the other roles. But Ridgely says that although the idea was to present a world where people of color arent at the margins but are really at the center of power, it all came down to selecting the best actors available. In all honesty, we were open to seeing actors of any background and to there being white actors involved, he says. But thats just not how it worked out. As for the festivals return to in-person performances, Ridgely describes the experience as surreal. I think weve all learned to appreciate how important live performance is, he says. Not only to have a cultural experience, and how much weve missed that, but just the act of gathering. And how important that is not just for our quality of life, but for our well-being. The pandemic in 2020 forced the festival to postpone its 20th-anniversary Forest Park show, Much Ado About Nothing, until 2022. In its place was A Late Summer Nights Stroll, a socially distant walking experience with music, dance and visual art. Theres a way in which weve all been suffering over the last year, Ridgely says. And certainly, for people in the arts, that suffering has been acute. What St. Louis Shakespeare Festival: King Lear When June 2-3 (previews), then June 4-27; 8 p.m. nightly (excluding Mondays) Where Shakespeare Glen in Forest Park How much $300-$500 for limited VIP pods; free pods available, but reservations are required (check website for availability starting May 31) More info stlshakes.org If you go Tickets Reservations will be required to attend St. Louis Shakespeare Festival's limited-capacity performances of "King Lear" in Forest Park. Each 10-by-10-foot pod is spaced 6 feet apart and seats up to six guests. (Well-behaved leashed pets are welcome.) Prices vary for weekday and weekend performances. Premium Blanket pods ($50-$60; sold out) are in the front row center, nearest the stage; only blankets are allowed. Premium Seated pods ($120-$150; sold out) are directly behind the blankets-only section; six chairs are included. VIP pods ($300-$500) include VIP parking, six chairs and a Schlafly beer six-pack. Reservations for free pods will open at noon each Monday for the coming week's performances and are limited to one per household, starting May 31. Bring your own chairs and blankets. Arrival Check-in will be contactless. Guests should be prepared to show tickets on their smartphone. Masks are required for entry (ages 9 and up), regardless of vaccine status, and must be worn when guests are not in their pod. To limit contact among staff, artists and guests, there are no preshow entertainment activities at this year's festival. Food/drinks Guests are allowed to bring their own food and drinks. Accessibility Audio descriptions will be provided on June 10. ASL interpretation will be provided June 16. For more information or to request assistance, call 314-287-3348. Weather St. Louis Shakespeare Festival will provide updates at stlshakes.org and on social media. In the event of inclement weather, a performance may be delayed up to an hour. Refunds/exchanges will not be provided if a show continues after a delay. Stay up-to-date on what's happening Receive the latest in local entertainment news in your inbox weekly! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Europes seven-day rolling average for new cases per 100,000 people had been higher than any other region from mid-October through the beginning of December, ceding the unwanted top spot to the Americas over the new year before reclaiming it from early February through April, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University. Now, no European country is among the top 10 for new cases per 100,000 people. And only Georgia, Lithuania and Sweden are in the top 20. But the virus is spiking in Southeast Asia and much of Latin America and hitting the Maldives and Seychelles particularly hard this week. Dr. Michael Ryan, WHO's chief of emergencies, warned that with the global situation still fragile and volatile, Europe is by no means out of the woods. Relaxing measures prematurely has contributed to the surge we have seen throughout 2020 and during the first quarter of 2021, he warned. We must stay the course while striving to increase vaccination coverage. JEFFERSON COUNTY An hourslong shootout Friday night near Cedar Hill ended with a sheriffs deputy injured and a suspect related to a homicide investigation dead. The Jefferson County sheriffs department said deputies went to the 8000 block of Lake Drive to serve a search warrant related to an ongoing missing person investigation that detectives believe could be a homicide. After the shootout, a body was found inside the residence. Police said that person, who has not been identified, died before the exchange of gunfire. Police had been on scene for some time gathering intelligence before a man in the house, identified Saturday by police as Anthony Legens, 36, realized they were there. When he did, he immediately opened fire on them, Sheriff Dave Marshak said. This suspect is known to law enforcement, Marshak said in a video of a news conference Friday night. He has a lengthy history. This is not the first time hes encountered law enforcement. This suspect was actively trying to kill police officers this evening. His past encounters with law enforcement included domestic assault, burglary, DWI, weapons possession and drug charges. But on Tuesday, Burris sent a letter to advisory board members seeking advice and input on whether the county could enter an agreement with the city to help house jail overflow in either jurisdiction. He said that conversations with jail staff, with the county executive, and with colleagues elsewhere confirmed that the population challenges we face are present in jails around the country, including St. Louis. As good regional partners, it is incumbent upon us to identify potential solutions to this challenge with our colleagues in the city of St. Louis, Burris said. Advisory board member Tim McBride, who also sits on the St. Louis Joint Boards of Health and Hospitals, said Friday that he was open to the idea because of concerns he has heard from city officials about conditions at the workhouse. But he asked for more details about what the plan would look like to strike a balance between being good stewards of the county and good regional partners. The Rev. Philip Duvall, the board member who raised the initial concerns about taking on additional inmates, reiterated his position. And he asked the board to make sure their April 23 warning was reflected in the boards official minutes. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 00:38:51|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close JOHANNESBURG, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Biological invasions are the third-largest threat to South Africa's biodiversity, after cultivation and land degradation, and are responsible for 25 percent of all biodiversity loss, said a report released by the Ministry of Forestry and Fisheries and Environmental Affairs on Friday. Minister Barbara Creecy said the report, titled "Status of Biological Invasions and their Management in South Africa in 2019", found that the number of alien plant species in South Africa has increased by 15 percent, from 1,637 to 1,880, about a third of which are invasive. The invasive trees use up 3-5 percent of South Africa's surface water runoff each year, a serious problem in an already water-scarce country that is increasingly prone to drought. She stated that biological invasions affect biodiversity, economy, human health and well-being, and sustainable development in the country. "Current estimates suggest the ecological costs of invasive alien plants and animals to be more than R6.5 billion (over 473 million U.S. dollars) each year. The main costs associated with losses are a decline in ecosystem services such as water and grazing and agriculture crop loss as a result of invasive pests," said Creecy. She said if biological invasions on grazing land are not controlled, South Africa could lose up to 70 percent of this valuable natural asset. Enditem Worth the money? I think the issue is: Is ShotSpotter bringing the value that its costing? Mares asked. It could certainly be used to help with long-term strategy and crime analysis, but between the officer time and pricing, I think its overly expensive for what agencies get out of it. Despite the findings, both departments in the last year have doubled down on the program by requesting donations from the St. Louis Police Foundation to expand coverage to more areas. St. Louis police Maj. Shawn Dace says ShotSpotter is a way to confirm where shots were fired and a fact-check for witness and suspect accounts. Its an important starting point for an investigation, Dace said. Unfortunately there have been times where an individual may show up at a hospital and say he was shot at this location and weve been able to disprove that with ShotSpotter. The St. Louis Police Officers Association, the union representing most officers in the city, opposes an ongoing push from criminal justice activists to cut the technology. UPDATED at 11 a.m. Friday with additional details. ST. LOUIS A gunfight in the Covenant Blu-Grand Center neighborhood sprayed bullets into nearby residences early Friday, injuring three teenagers, including a 14-year-old girl when a bullet came through her bedroom window. St. Louis police have made no arrests and had no suspects in the shootings, which occurred before 1 a.m. Friday. The teens are all expected to recover. The 14-year-old girl was in her room in the 3300 block of Martin Luther King Drive when a bullet came through the window and hit her in the arm, police said. Another girl, 17, was in a nearby apartment when a bullet pierced the wall and grazed her hand. She declined medical treatment. While police detectives were investigating those shootings, a 16-year-old boy showed up at a hospital with a gunshot wound to his leg. Police believe he was hurt in the same shooting. He was stable at a hospital. Investigators found that the gunfire originated nearby, in the 1200 block of Josephine Baker Avenue. Police characterized the shooting as an argument involving several people in the neighborhood. Mitchell said back in the 1950s and 1960s, there were more Black officers, and that fostered the feeling of a partnership. It's different now in 2019, according to the departments annual report, 8.4% of employees were Black, compared to 15.1% of the citys overall population. When I was a child and raised up, most of the police officers looked like me, she said. They lived in the community, so the relationship of the Police Department and the community was one-on-one. They knew the children. They knew the schools they went to. Now, you dont have that. Robinson, who also is a board member for the Terence Crutcher Foundation, remains hopeful that change can occur. He believes it ideally would start with outreach from the police and local oversight and inclusion from the Black community. The fact that Franklin is from the neighborhood helps Robinson remain optimistic. I hope that through his tenure he can really begin to inject, gauge the community around the changes that we have been advocating for, Robinson said. So far, it hasnt happened, but certainly, he is somebody who grew up out north. He should understand it. And I would hope that he would be courageous enough to really include us and involve us. Republicans and grassroots activist groups have decried the process concluded without benefit of official U.S. Census numbers, which have been delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Democrats contend they must be completed by June 25, which is simply the date on which they lose complete control of the work. The people deserve better than bad data, fake deadlines and sham hearings, said Sen. Sue Rezin, a Morris Republican. During hastily called final hearings of the Redistricting Committees in both House and Senate, Republicans slammed the House redistricting leader, Rep. Elizabeth Lisa Hernandez of Chicago, after she acknowledged she didn't know until Thursday night all the sources of data that were used six days after the first version of the map was sprung on the public. Even then, she struggled to explain what numbers were mined or how, other than pointing to the Census' American Community Survey, an ongoing review of changes occurring in communities, which critics maintain are not suitable for drawing lines. She added that input from 50 public hearings and election results were sources but was unable to elaborate, and repeatedly said she did not have a list of individuals who put lines on paper. In the leadup to the November election, then-President Donald Trump ramped up the volume and sharpness of his attacks on China as the source of the coronavirus pandemic, derisively labeling it the China virus and repeating speculation about a government lab in Wuhan as the place where the global nightmare began. Trump never provided substantiation, and the public didnt buy his wild assertions about the lab, mainly because his antics came in the context of an election campaign in which his main goal was to distract Americans from his own miserable pandemic-response record. This newspaper joined others in openly challenging Trumps assertions about the lab. Had he presented even a reasonable measure of proof, that wouldve been a different story. New reporting, however, adds enough cause for concern about the pandemics potential origins that the entire lab issue deserves thorough reexamination and its not just because President Joe Biden has ordered U.S. intelligence agencies to take a closer look. Considering the magnitude of deaths and disruption this pandemic has caused, the world needs to know with certainty how, where and why it started so the next global outbreak can be prevented. Missouris House speaker, Rob Vescovo, started this year's legislative session by declaring education reform a top priority. He threatened his colleagues legislation should they not support his education reform efforts. Many education reform bills were filed open enrollment, diversion of public school funding to charter schools, expansion of charter schools and one big omnibus bill that wrapped them all up. Charter school advocates like the Missouri Public Charter School Association and multimillion-dollar organization the Opportunity Trust had big teams of registered lobbyists pushing these bills. Yet, in spite of Vescovos best efforts, only one bill, which received a significant funding reduction, sits on Gov. Mike Parsons desk. The failure of these efforts is a huge win for public school advocates. Organizations such as the Missouri School Board Association rallied rural, suburban and urban districts to fight the school choice agenda. Teachers unions such as the American Federation of Teachers Local 420 and 691, as well as the Missouri National Educators Association, led the charge against education reform and reducing standards for teacher certification. Parents and stakeholders all across the state contacted their legislators and explained the impact these bills would have on their children. Solidarity among public school districts, their teachers unions, and those who they serve won the legislative session. But for most travelers, the goal is a three- or six-hour wildlife cruise on Resurrection Bay, in the Kenai Fjords National Park. On an ordinary day youre likely to see whales, a couple of orcas, otters perhaps, porpoises, a bear, seals and sea lions. On a good day youll see all of them, swimming, puffing mist into the air, leaping out of the water or sunning on the rocks. Bald eagles perch in trees and auklets and puffins nest in rocky cliffs. The weather varies, so bring a warm, windproof coat and motion sickness pills. And now theres a new, short trip closer to Anchorage, the Glacier Discovery tour, taking passengers to five formerly hard-to-include destinations. Why take the Alaska Railroads other major route, the Denali Star? Because it goes to Denali National Park, 6 million acres, all unspoiled wilderness, one of the last of its kind. If youre even close, you shouldnt miss it. Book a room in one of the hotels or lodges near the entrance and sign up for one of the many guided bus tours that explore the park, the Tundra Wilderness Tour, or the Eielson Visitors Center Tour, for instance. The park has only one road, for tour and transit buses only. For more tours, comb through the details first, at Denali National Park. For over a decade the U.S. Marine Corps has been seeking to reorganize itself to be less than an elite infantry force that supplant U.S. Army troops. The marines want to be more of a seaborne special operations organization that is capable of handling a wide variety of tasks, from large scale amphibious operations down to squad-size teams operating like U.S. Special Forces A-Teams. Both these units consist of twelve highly-trained and experienced troops. The marines are not seeking to compete with the Special Forces or the British Royal Marine Commandos because the U.S. Marines have to deal with new forms of warfare using new technologies. This is not happening all of a sudden, but components of the new warfare began emerging as the 20th century was ending. One of the many new concepts this introduces is fundamental change in the composition of the marine squad. A recent reorganization has reduced its size from fourteen to twelve and is happening while the marines are introducing new weapons, gear and technologies. This means the squad must be composed of marines with more training, years of experience and the ability to quickly learn new techs and tactics. Unlike the army, whose infantry was mainly conscripts, the marines were able to rely on volunteers from 1940 to 1972, including World War Two, the 1950-53 Korean War and the 1964-72 Vietnam War. This included a huge expanding of the marines from a few regiments in 1940 to six division in 1945. Peacetime army conscription ended after the Vietnam War. The marines always sought the few who could learn quickly how to fight and win. That meant that all marines were trained to think like a leader. Some marines had more talent for that and willingness to accept leadership roles despite their youth, as in late teens to early 20s. With that the marines have been successful with E-4 (out of nine enlisted ranks) corporals leading infantry teams (4-5 men) and E-5 sergeants leading squads. The army has long had its teams of conscripts and volunteers led by E-5s and squads by E-6s. Now the marines are going that route because they need more experienced personnel, with a longer list of technical skills, to lead the squads of similar, but less experienced marines. The marines are doing this for the same reason the army Special Forces has A-teams led by an experienced junior officer (an O-3 captain) and composed of even more experienced troops, all NCOs E-6 or higher or warrant officers (sort of super NCOs). The marine squads will not be doing all the things Special Forces teams are trained to do, but they will have to master more skills, and gain some experience using them, than junior (under three years service) marines ever have. This means the marines need to change the composition of the force, going from the current model where 60 percent of marines are new and obliged to serve only four years. The marines only needed half of its new marines to reenlist to maintain the size of the force and provide suitable candidates for new officers and senior (E-5 and up) NCOs. The new model of a force with more marines who have already re-enlisted at least once means the marines will need fewer new recruits each year and a smaller percentage will be allowed to reenlist. The marines have always been more selective and this has paid off in combat. But combat has gone through a lot of fundamental changes since the 1990s and the marines want to make the most of it. The marines also accept that they will have to shrink their force in order to pay for the larger proportion of more experienced, higher-rank marines who get paid more than new recruits. In 2018 the U.S. Marine Corps went public with its new squad and platoon organization, which is based on its experience so far this century, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan. The new squad was just one of many changes for marine combat units. The new squad has twelve men organized into three fire teams with three men each plus an E-6 sergeant squad leader, an assistant squad leader (E-5 corporal) and a squad systems operator. Everyone will be armed with the new M27 IAR (Infantry Automatic Rifle). Each squad will have a quad-copter UAV, based on commercial models many marines are quite familiar with off duty. The systems operator will usually handle the UAV, although all marines in the squad who have quad-copter experience will be identified so there will also be additional operators available. The systems operator also handles the new digital radios that can also communicate with marine air support (helicopters or fighter-bombers). The systems operator is trained to deal with all the electronics in the squad, as well as apps used on smartphones or laptops. The system operator recognizes a trend developing since the 1990s as it became common for new (and veteran) marines to be familiar with computers, usually while off-duty. After 2001 it was noticed, in a combat zone, how numerous and useful these tech-savvy marines were. That tech capability grew with the growth of the Internet and the appearance of more electronic devices. Even before the systems operator position was established, marine commanders found it useful to identify the tech heads in their unit and put them to work as needed. In the last decade marine units, especially the infantry squad, has acquired (officially and unofficially) a lot more electronics like night vision, electronic scopes, GPS and laser rangefinder devices. The systems operator had already become an informal position throughout the marine battalion and now that work has been formally recognized and additional (and standardized) training is provided for those designated as geek marines. In addition to the squad systems operator, each platoon will have a UAV specialist and each marine infantry company will have a five-man counter-UAV team. Each marine battalion will have a three-man team to handle information warfare capabilities. Each marine company will now have a ground controller for air support. Previously there was one less ground controller per battalion and one infantry was always without one. Over the last three decades, the military has learned to play the personnel recruiting and retention game by the same rules the civilian world uses. While the snazzy uniform and high morale helps, it's sometimes about money as well. A marine with 20 years-service can retire on half pay, and often get a civilian job paying more than what they made while in uniform. If a marine is getting out partly because of money, then you can keep him if you match the offer. Patriotism also plays a role, but this pitch works better if preceded by some cash. For veteran marines you have to take into account family responsibilities and the need to do whatever can be done to keep veteran marines in the corps. In 2010, when the marines were again threatened with a sharp reduction in its size, marine commanders responded that they would prefer to be a smaller force, one that concentrates on its main mission; amphibious and other special operations. The marines were unhappy with the way they have been used as an army auxiliary since 2003. The marines consider themselves specialists, while the army are generalists and, for example, carried out more amphibious operations than the marines did during World War II. Because of generations of marine determination, the marines came to comprise a quarter of America's ground combat forces. That's active duty, when you count the much larger army reserve force, the marines were 18 percent of ground combat forces in 2010. The marines never wanted to be just another part of American ground combat forces. The current reorganization is another effort to return to their specialties. TORONTO, May 28, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cryptologic Corp. (CSE: CRY) (the Company) is pleased to announce that it has closed the previously announced acquisition (the Acquisition) of Copenhagen Minerals Inc. (Copenhagen) pursuant to the amended and restated share purchase agreement (the Amended and Restated SPA) dated May 21, 2021 with Greenland Resources Inc. (the Seller), Copenhagen, RSG Mining Corp. and certain other parties. Copenhagen owns 100% of a mineral exploration license known as the Stor Gold Project, located in Greenland. Amended and Restated SPA As part of the closing of the Acquisition, the Company issued an aggregate of 37,600,000 common shares of the Company at a deemed issue price of C$0.24 per share (the Consideration Shares) to the Seller and certain other parties. Please refer to the Companys news releases dated January 28, 2021, March 22, 2021, May 18, 2021, May 25, 2021, the Notice of Meeting and Information Circular of the Company dated March 12, 2021, the SPA and the Amended and Restated SPA, each of which is available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com, for additional information on the Acquisition. Further details about the Acquisition and the issuer resulting from the Acquisition (the Resulting Issuer) will be provided in a listing statement of the Company that is prepared and filed in respect of the Acquisition. Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in such listing statement, any information released or received with respect to the Acquisition or the Resulting Issuer may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Name Change and Change in Directors and Officers As a result of the of the closing of the Acquisition, the Company changed its name from Cryptologic Corp. to Greenhawk Resources Inc.. Dale Johnson and John FitzGerald resigned from their positions as directors of the Company and Mr. FitzGerald and Joshua Lebovic resigned from their positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer of the Company, respectively. Greg McKenzie was appointed Chief Executive Officer and Carmelo Marrelli was appointed Chief Financial Officer and Corporate Secretary. Mr. McKenzie was appointed to the board of directors of the Company along with Ruben Shiffman, William Randall and Dwayne Melrose. Tom English will continue to be a director of the Company. About Greenhawk Resources Inc. Greenhawk owns a 100% legal and beneficial interest in two mineral exploration licenses and one prospecting license in Greenland known as the Stor Gold Project. For information, please contact: Greg McKenzie Chief Executive Officer Phone: 416-504-2020 Email: gmk_55@outlook.com Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information Certain statements in this press release, including statements with respect to the Company filing the listing statement in respect of the Acquisition, contain forward-looking information which can be identified by the use of forward looking terminology such as "believes", "expects", "may", "desires", "will", "should", "projects", "estimates", "contemplates", "anticipates", "intends", or any negative such as "does not believe" or other variations thereof or comparable terminology. No assurance can be given that potential future results or circumstances described in the forward-looking statements will be achieved or will occur. By their nature, these forward-looking statements necessarily involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to significantly differ from those contemplated by these forward-looking statements. Such statements reflect the view of the Company with respect to future events and are based on information currently available to the Company and on assumptions, which it considers reasonable. Management cautions readers that the assumptions relative to the future events, several of which are beyond management's control, could prove to be incorrect, given that they are subject to certain risk and uncertainties, and that actual results may differ materially from those projected. Management disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Canadian Securities Exchange has not reviewed, approved or disapproved the content of this news release. Source: Cryptologic Corp. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 00:49:42|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NAIROBI, May 28 (Xinhua) -- When he recently went to buy an energy-saving cookstove that uses briquettes for his aging mother who lives in Busia, western Kenya, businessman Gilbert Wandera found the price had increased by about 1,000 Kenya shillings (9.3 U.S. dollars). He had bought a similar stove in 2019 at 28 dollars for his home use and now hoped to buy two more for his mother. "I dropped the idea of buying two and went for one because it turned out to be expensive," he told Xinhua in a recent interview. The predicament is shared by tens of Kenyan households as the cost of clean energy and energy-saving products rises in the East African nation. Among the items whose prices are on the rise are cookstoves, lamps and cookers that use bio-fuel and briquettes. Clean energy experts have blamed the current situation for the imposition of value-added tax on cooking gas that was initially zero-rated in the country. Kenya first imposed duty on products like briquettes cookstoves and bio-fuel stoves in 2018 as it sought to shore up its revenue amid struggling budget deficits. The East African nation is further set to impose a 16 percent value-added tax on liquefied petroleum gas from July 1, according to the Kenya Revenue Authority. The tax would see the cost of the cooking gas rise by at least 3.3 dollars from an average of the current 20 dollars for a 13kg cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas. Doris Nashipae, who works for Nairobi-based Koko Networks, a firm that sells bio-fuel items, noted that the taxation of clean energy items risks eroding gains made in the adoption of clean energy products. "This is not a long-term strategy as most of those expected to embrace clean energy are at the bottom segment of the society," she said. Nashipae observed that instead of firms passing the high costs to consumers, they have been forced to absorb them to stay in business, but this may not work for long. Jechoniah Kitala, chairman of Clean Cooking Association of Kenya, said they have seen a reduction in sales of products like cookstoves since they were removed from tax-exempted products. The proposed value-added tax would see the market shrink further, he noted. For liquefied petroleum gas sellers in Kenya, the anticipated taxation spells doom for the sector, which had seen slow uptake of the clean cooking fuel. The use of fuel in Kenya has been on the rise following a ban on logging that disrupted charcoal sale as well as the introduction of tax on kerosene, which pushed prices higher. Statistics show that Kenyans used 312,100 tons of cooking gas in 2019, up from 222,300 tons in 2018. "The higher price may see us shut down our businesses because consumers would switch to other fuels that they consider cheaper," said James Kyalo, a cooking gas seller in Kitengela, south of Nairobi. Julie Ipe, senior director for market strengthening at Clean Cooking Alliance, said increased taxation measures targeting clean energy products are pushing millions of households to unclean energy that include firewood, charcoal and kerosene. "And with the measures, attendant health losses offset gains made in taxes by the government due to increased respiratory diseases," Ipe said. She added that as the effects of the measures unfold, Kenya is also likely to lose carbon finance due to increased pollution and deforestation. "The best practice is to avoid taxing goods that come with social benefits. Kenya should promote use of underutilized fuels like liquefied petroleum gas, solar and bio-fuels," he said. Enditem TORONTO, May 27, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. (TSX-V: MON) (Montero or the Company) filed a request for arbitration with the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) on 8 January 2021. Subsequently on the 9 February 2021 the Secretary-General of the ICSID registered Monteros request for the institution of arbitration proceedings against the Government of Tanzania for the illegal expropriation and loss of its Wigu Hill rare earth element Project. Currently, ICSID is in the process of constitution of the arbitral tribunal. Montero and Tanzania (the Parties) have both appointed their respective arbitrator and now have to agree on a third arbitrator, who shall be the president of the tribunal at which point ICSID will then request the parties to make a deposit of US$150,000. Montero has initiated international arbitration proceedings through ICSID in accordance with the Bilateral Investment Treaty between Canada and the United Republic of Tanzania which protects investment rights. A multi-million compensation award is being sought by Montero for expropriation of the Wigu Hill Rare Earth Element Project by the Government of Tanzania. This is as a result of damages suffered by the Company as a result of Tanzanias Act and Omissions. Montero is not able to make any comment in relation to the potential quantum of any claim for compensation at this point. Montero has obtained third-party litigation funding from Omni Bridgeway, a leading global dispute funder. Montero has retained Mr Thierry Lauriol and his team at Jeantet AARPI, a highly experienced legal counsel in international arbitration with a track record of success for its clients in Africa. Most recently at ICSID representing GDF-Suez vs the Government of Togo with an award of 55 million. Montero has also retained the services of Dr Neal Rigby of SRK Denver to act as its independent technical expert for the valuation of Wigu Hill. Dr Rigby has acted in this capacity in many successful international mining litigations involving ICSID arbitrations. In Africa he was the independent technical expert in the US$136 million award to the previous shareholders of Africo Resources in the DRC. For further information see Montero press release (PR119 dated 8 January 2021) and from the ICSID website (https://icsid.worldbank.org/services/arbitration/convention/process/overview). Qualified Person's Statement This press release was reviewed and approved by Mr. Mike Evans, M.Sc. Pr.Sci.Nat. is a qualified person for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. This has also been reviewed by Mr Thierry Lauriol, avocat a la cour (Paris, France). About Montero Montero is a junior exploration company focused on finding, exploring, and advancing globally significant gold deposits in Latin America. The Company is in the process of relinquishing its portfolio of battery metal projects in Africa to focus on gold opportunities in Latin America. Monteros board of directors and management have an impressive track record of successfully discovering and advancing precious metal and copper projects. Montero trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol MON and has 38,647,485 shares outstanding. For more information, contact: Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. Dr. Tony Harwood, President and Chief Executive Officer E-mail: ir@monteromining.com Tel: +1 416 840 9197 | Fax: +1 866 688 4671 www.monteromining.com Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. CAUTIONARY STATEMENT REGARDING FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION: This news release includes certain "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Forward looking information includes, but is not limited to, statements, projections and estimates with respect to the Share Consolidation. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as plans, expects or does not expect, is expected, budget, scheduled, estimates, forecasts, intends, anticipates or does not anticipate, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken, occur or be achieved. Such information is based on information currently available to Montero and Montero provides no assurance that actual results will meet management's expectations. Forward-looking information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of Montero to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. Actual results relating to, among other things, completion of the agreement, results of exploration, project development, reclamation and capital costs of Monteros mineral properties, and financial condition and prospects, could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements for many reasons such as: an inability to complete the agreement on the terms as announced or at all; changes in general economic conditions and conditions in the financial markets; changes in demand and prices for minerals; litigation, legislative, environmental and other judicial, regulatory, political and competitive developments; technological and operational difficulties encountered in connection with Monteros activities; and other matters discussed in this news release and in filings made with securities regulators. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect any of Monteros forward-looking statements. These and other factors should be considered carefully and accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Montero does not undertake to update any forward-looking information, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Source: Montero Mining and Exploration Ltd. Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 28, 2021) - 2673954 Ontario Inc., a company beneficially owned and controlled by Mr. Chris Irwin, announces the filing of an early warning report (the "Report") announcing that, on May 28, 2021, Mr. Irwin indirectly disposed of an aggregate of 1,500,000 common shares ("Common Shares") in the capital of Crosswinds Holdings Inc. ("Crosswinds"). The disposition of the Common Shares was carried out pursuant to various private transactions. Prior to the disposition of the Common Shares, Mr. Irwin beneficially owned and controlled 5,884,008 Common Shares, representing approximately 61.31% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on an undiluted basis. Following the disposition of the Common Shares, Mr. Irwin beneficially owns and controls an aggregate of 4,384,008 Common Shares representing approximately 45.68% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares on an undiluted basis. Mr. Irwin received no consideration in connection with the disposition of the Common Shares which was completed in connection with the proposed transaction between the Crosswinds and Biomind Research Corp. for the purpose of increasing the distribution of the Common Shares. Mr. Irwin may, depending on market and other conditions, or as future circumstances may dictate, increase or decrease some or all of the existing or additional securities he holds or will hold, or may continue to hold his current position. This press release is being issued pursuant to National Instrument 62-103 - The Early Warning System and Related Take-Over Bids and Insider Reporting Issues in connection with the filing of the Report by Mr. Irwin. For further details relating to the disposition, please see the Report, a copy of which is available Crosswinds' profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. For more information, please contact: Chris Irwin, President 2673954 Ontario Inc. Tel: (416) 361-2516 To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/85753 Paid press release content from The Financial Capital. The StreetInsider.com news staff was not involved in its creation. BestBrandMerch, based in Spruce Grove, Alberta, now provides small businesses and social media influencers with pre-loaded, branded merchandise websites that come with a range of new features. Spruce Grove, Alberta-based provider of branded merchandising services BestBrandMerch has launched an updated range of ready-made, personalized web-store solutions for clients across Canada and the US and Worldwide. More details can be found at https://bestbrandmerch.com/index The recently expanded services provide clients with a preloaded, branded merchandising e-commerce website that utilizes proprietary GrooveKart (TM) shopping-cart software and a variety of payment options. Branded merchandising has seen a resurgence in recent years, owing to its popularity among social media influencers and small businesses. One study reported that the top 20 YouTube merchandise sellers made combined $29.9 million in sales in 2019. The updated service from BestBrandMerch is designed to provide a turnkey solution for small businesses and social media channels. It provides clients with affordable, professional web-stores that contain powerful features not available from other providers. The most noteworthy of the new features is the companys proprietary GrooveKart (TM) platform. The software is included with all packages and allows clients full control over their e-commerce site. Some functions that GrooveKart (TM) provides clients with include varying the size and colors of products, categorizing products, sales analytics and reporting, customer look-up, shipping features, and a built-in support desk. Clients also have access to the new Slingly (TM) merchandising platform, which provides them with over 30 different product types that can be added to their web-store. Clients branding is automatically added to merchandise, and for those businesses who do not have an existing logo, the design team at BestBrandMerch can now assist with the creation of marketing material. Businesses and influencers who wish to use the new service can choose from 3 available packages: starter, professional, or corporate. Each package provides access to the new features, but differs in terms of merchandising products available for sale. Once an appropriate package has been chosen, BestBrandMerch work with designers and partner fulfillment services to prepare the e-commerce store. On handover, the completed web-stores are ready for use by clients with minimal additional effort required. A company representative stated: Whether you have a brand or not, we go from design concept to full production. Our top-quality team of expert print designers and developers will re-imagine your industry vision with merchandise that speaks to your audience. Interested parties can find more information by visiting https://bestbrandmerch.com/index Contact Info: Name: Florence Arnold Email: Send Email Organization: BestBrandMerch Address: Spruce Grove, Spruce Grove, AB T7X 3T8, Canada Website: https://bestbrandmerch.com Release ID: 89020981 NEWARK, N.J., May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Rafael Holdings, Inc., (NYSE: RFL), today announced that, on May 27, 2021, it made a grant to Ameet Mallik, Rafael Holdings' Chief Executive Officer, of 908,497 restricted shares of the Company's Class B common stock in accordance with Mr. Mallik's employment agreement. The restricted shares of Class B common stock shall vest as follows: 227,124 on May 6, 2022; 18,927 every month commencing June 1, 2022 through April 1, 2025; and 18,928 on May 1, 2025. The restricted shares were granted under, and shall be subject to the terms of, Rafael's 2018 Equity Incentive Plan. The Plan was amended and restated to create an additional pool of 908,497 shares of Rafael's Class B common stock to be utilized exclusively for the grant of inducement awards in compliance with New York Stock Exchange Rule 303A.08 ("Rule 303A.08"). The restricted stock grant was approved by the Compensation Committee of the Board of Directors and was offered as a material inducement to Mr. Mallik's hiring as Chief Executive Officer of the Company in reliance on the employment inducement exemption under Rule 303A.08. Mr. Mallik joined the Company on May 1, 2021. About Rafael Holdings, Inc.:Rafael Holdings is focused on the development of novel cancer therapies. The Company is a significant investor in two clinical stage oncology companies-- Rafael Pharmaceuticals, Inc. and LipoMedix Pharmaceuticals Ltd. Through its wholly owned Barer Institute subsidiary, the Company is developing a pipeline of compounds focused on the regulation of cancer metabolism. For more information, visit www.rafaelholdings.com. View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rafael-holdings-announces-inducement-grant-under-nyse-rule-303a08-301301890.html SOURCE Rafael Holdings, Inc. FORT MYERS, Fla., May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The School District of Lee County is seeking a professional leadership search agency to identify a highly qualified superintendent for its growing school system. The agency should offer a broad range of expertise and services with a proven track record for successfully placing leaders in education. The consultant team's scope of work will include working with the School Board and engaging the community for input to develop and facilitate a local, regional and national search to fill the superintendent role. Located in Southwest Florida, The School District of Lee County is the ninth-largest district in Florida and the 33rd largest district in the U.S. with a growing enrollment of more than 95,000 students, 120 schools and 12,000 employees. "Engaging in a broad search for this critical position is key to the success of our District, our employees and our students," said Debbie Jordan, chair of the board of directors for The School District of Lee County. "We are looking for a consultant who will help us involve key stakeholders in identifying the right candidates for this permanent superintendent position." Interested agencies should provide a cover letter and firm executive profile to boardoffice@leeschools.net. Submissions are due by June 11. A search firm will be selected by June 21, 2021. To learn more about The School District of Lee County, visit www.LeeSchools.net/Leadership/School_Board/Superintendent_Search. About The School District of Lee County Lee County Public Schools is the ninth-largest district in Florida and the 33rd largest district in the United States. The District educates more than 95,000 students in grades K-12 and is a model for others in the state and around the nation. With approximately 12,000 full- and part-time employees, the District is one of the county's largest employers. View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/the-school-district-of-lee-county-florida-seeking-professional-leadership-search-agency-301301900.html SOURCE The School District of Lee County CEDAR PARK, Texas, May 27, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- VUV Analytics, Inc. announced today that ASTM has published a new test method, ASTM D8368, for use on the VUV Analyzer Platform for Fuels. This new method was developed for the Determination of Total Saturates, Aromatics, Polyaromatics, and Fatty Acid Methyl Esters (FAMEs) in diesel fuels, including conventional, renewable, synthetic and biodiesel up to B20. News Summary: Newly published test method for the measurement of saturate, aromatic, polyaromatic and fatty acid methyl esters (FAME) content of diesel fuel using gas chromatography with vacuum ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy detection (GC-VUV). The VUV Analyzer for Fuels running ASTM D8368 allows laboratories to analyze conventional, renewable, and synthetic diesel fuels, as well as biodiesel blends (up to B20). Using a single method, analysts can now gain better insight into both the aromatic and the FAME content in biodiesel blends, which previously required multiple methods and additional analytical instrumentation. D8368 is also suitable for a wide range of other middle distillate sample types, including low total aromatic streams like HVO and high aromatic products such as light cycle oils or specialty solvents. ASTM D8368 runs on the same VUV Analyzer Platform as ASTM D8071 (gasoline) and ASTM D8267 (Jet fuel) with no changes in hardware or setup -- resulting in increased productivity and reduced operating costs. "Adding the ability to analyze diesel fuels to the VUV Analyzer Platform for Fuels was a logical next step in our regulatory roadmap," said Mr. Dan Wispinski, Standards Development Manager at VUV Analytics. Mr. Wispinski further commented, "With ASTM D8368, we wanted to provide users with a comprehensive, versatile, robust, and precise method. Because of this vision, ASTM D8368 is able to provide users detailed information on total saturate, aromatic, polyaromatic (diaromatic and tri+ aromatic) and FAME content in conventional, renewable and synthetic diesel fuels. Traditionally, a laboratory looking to analyze and report against all of these properties would have to use multiple analytical techniques and methods. However, with ASTM D8368, laboratories can now analyze low total aromatic middle distillate streams such as HVOs, B1 to B20 biodiesel blends from many feedstock types and high aromatic products such as light cycle oils or specialty solvents using a single method." As with any new ASTM method, acceptance is enhanced with the completion of an Interlaboratory Study (ILS) that demonstrates the precision of the method. According to ASTM regulations, new methods must have a completed ILS within five years of initial publication. At the time of this release VUV Analytics also announced that they would be submitting an updated ballot to include the research report from an ILS that was recently completed. Sean Jameson, SVP of Business Development, noted, "An ILS is not a trivial undertaking, requiring a lot of planning and effort to get it done within the five-year window. With ASTM D8368, this challenge was magnified given the versatility that we wanted in this new method. However, because of our platform approach, existing users can easily add ASTM D8368 on the same hardware as ASTM D8071 or ASTM D8267 with no changes in setup. Since they are using the same platform, there is no additional training required, which accelerates our ability to complete an ILS earlier in the window and results in more confidence with our users." Mr. Clark Jernigan, CEO of VUV Analytics noted, "With the publication of ASTM D8368 users can now experience the full vision of the VUV Analyzer Platform for Fuels. In addition to reducing complexity and costs while improving operational efficiency, these methods support our customers' internal initiatives focused on carbon reduction. D8368 covers the most common renewable and biodiesel blends, D8071 is the most accurate and precise method for gasoline up to E15 ethanol content, and our D8267 jet fuel method scope covers most Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF). We look forward to supporting our customers' future regulatory compliance and lower carbon fuel needs with this highly flexible platform." ASTM D8368 is available on the ASTM website now. To learn more about the ASTM D8368 and the VUV Analyzer Platform for Fuels, please visit: https://vuvanalytics.com/vuv-analyzer-for-fuels/ or email info@vuvanalytics.com. About VUV AnalyticsThe vision of VUV Analytics is to develop novel solutions and streamlined processes by harnessing the unique capabilities of vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) technology. Virtually every compound absorbs in the vacuum ultraviolet spectrum, which is measured by VUV detectors. Universal VUV spectroscopic detectors provide a new dimension of chemical analysis. VUV detectors have been designed especially for gas chromatography and streaming gas applications. Learn more at www.vuvanalytics.com or contact VUV Analytics directly at (512) 333-0860. Media ContactsMr. Peter J. BolerVice President of Marketingpeter.boler@vuvanalytics.com View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/vuv-analytics-extends-the-vuv-analyzer-platform-for-fuels-with-the-publication-of-a-new-test-method-for-the-analysis-of-diesel-fuel-and-biodiesel-blends-301301031.html SOURCE VUV Analytics, Inc. Sailors man the rails on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz on Feb. 26, 2021. (Alison Hummel/U.S. Navy) WASHINGTON The Navy will not reach 300 ships for another year despite continued pressure for a bigger fleet as service officials make advanced capabilities such as unmanned vessels and hypersonic weapons a priority to remain competitive with China, according to its proposed budget for fiscal year 2022. The Navy does plan to procure eight new warships in 2022, though overall shipbuilding funds will drop by 3% from last year to $22.6 billion. Still, the service will add two ships to its total from the 2021 budget, bringing the fleet size to 296 the same size it was under the fiscal year 2020 budget. Eight ships a year is not going to get to a 355-ship Navy, Rear Adm. John Gumbleton, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, told reporters at the Pentagon on Friday. That said, were consistent with last years request of eight ships. The new ships include two Virginia-class, nuclear-powered attack submarines, two fleet ocean tugs, an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, a Constellation-class frigate, a John Lewis-class replenishment oiler, and an ocean surveillance ship, according to the proposed budget. At the same time, the service seeks to decommission two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, a dock landing ship, four littoral combat ships and 12 MK VI patrol boats from coastal riverine squadrons. Though the shipbuilding budget fell, the services overall budget of nearly $163.9 billion would increase $965 million from 2021. With a request of more than $22.6 billion for research, testing, development and evaluation up 12.4% from last year the Navys budget follows the theme of the Pentagons overall budget strategy, calling for increased focus on innovation and investing in next-generation weapons development. One key area of research and development investment is in unmanned vessels, with $375.6 million wanted for unmanned surface vessels and $290.6 million for unmanned undersea vehicles. In the air, the unmanned carrier-launched airborne surveillance and strike program is funded at $268.8 million. The Navys aircraft budget also took a hit, dipping more than 15% from last years budget to $16.5 billion. The request covers 107 aircraft, including 20 additional F-35C and 17 F-35B Lightning IIs, five E-2D Advanced Hawkeyes and six KC-130J Hercules transport aircraft. The move to prioritize other areas above building the fleet comes as China has rapidly grown its navy from 262 to 350 ships and prepares to launch its third aircraft carrier in 2023, the Navy said. The department continues to innovate in distributed maritime operations, enhanced by investments in platforms, hypersonic weapons and unmanned capabilities, Gumbleton said. The proposal diverts from a January shipbuilding plan by former President Donald Trumps administration, which called for a 4.1% budget increase to reach 355 ships within a decade. Congress in its 2018 National Defense Authorization Act required the Navy to achieve a 355-ship fleet as soon as practicable. Its all about not having a hollow force, making sure were ready today, modernizing for tomorrow and then the investment for the future, Gumbleton said. And with this topline allocated, this is the right blend to do that. doornbos.caitlin@stripes.com Twitter: @CaitlinDoornbos Chase Standage, shown here in an Oct. 2018 photo, filed a lawsuit in late 2020 against Naval Academy Superintendent Vice Adm. Sean Buck and Kenneth Braithwaite, who was serving as secretary of the Navy at the time of the lawsuit, after the academy moved to expel him for a series of 40 tweets that academy leadership criticized as inappropriate and, in some cases, racist. (Flickr) ANNAPOLIS, Md. (Tribune News Service) The midshipman who previously faced expulsion from the Naval Academy for a series of offensive tweets graduated Friday as a member of the Class of 2021. It is unclear if Chase Standage, who was listed as a member of the 14th company, commissioned. The graduation program did differentiate between graduating and commissioning midshipmen. But, Standage did walk on the stage after his name was called to accept his diploma and shake Vice President Kamala Harris hand. Of the 1,084 graduates, nine are not commissioning, according to the Naval Academy. An additional two midshipmen will have a delayed commissioning. A midshipman may graduate but not commission for various reasons, including being medically unfit to serve in the military. The Naval Academy did not comment on Standages status. His attorney Jeffrey McFadden did not return a call for comment. Standage, who majored in aerospace engineering, was also listed in the program as one of the members of the Voluntary Graduate Education Program Scholars. Standages ability to attend graduate school, starting in spring 2021, was in jeopardy if he was separated from the Naval Academy, according to his lawsuit against Superintendent Vice Adm. Sean Buck and Kenneth Braithwaite, who was serving as secretary of the Navy at the time of the lawsuit. Following the settlement of his lawsuit in February, Standages status at the Naval Academy was unclear. He had completed all of his educational work and was attending graduate school at the University of Maryland through the Voluntary Graduate Education Program at the time. He was told he would not receive a service assignment when his classmates did in November. Standage sued Buck and Braithwaite in order to block his separation in September after the academy moved to expel him for a series of 40 tweets from June that academy leadership criticized as inappropriate and, in some cases, racist. His lawsuit claimed Buck and Braithwaite violated his First and Fifth Amendment rights. Standages tweets, which were all responses to other tweets, included saying Breonna Taylor received justice when she was killed by police and that it only takes one drone strike when responding to a tweet about antifa. Federal Judge Ellen Hollander initially denied the case in December because Standage had not exhausted all of his administrative options. Once Braithwaite decided to separate Standage in January, the midshipman reopened his case. Prior to the settlement, Standage had appealed the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. ___ (c)2021 The Capital (Annapolis, Md.) Visit The Capital (Annapolis, Md.) at www.hometownannapolis.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Staff Sgt. David Diehl II, 436th Communications Squadron noncommissioned officer in charge of wing cybersecurity, displays his new United States Space Force tapes and service branch patch at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware, Feb. 12, 2021. (Mauricio Campino/U.S. Air Force) Space Force is requesting a $2 billion budget increase to continue its growth in fiscal year 2022, with funding primarily going to support research and development of capabilities needed to deter threats in space and protect assets. The 2022 spending proposal for Space Force, the militarys newest service branch that is entering its second year of existence, was presented Friday as part of the Air Force budget request. The Air Force included $17.4 billion for Space Force within its overall $173.7 billion proposal for fiscal year 2022. Thats up 13.1% from fiscal year 2021. Similar to last year, about 65% of the budget, or $11.3 billion, will go to research, development, testing and evaluation. Operations and management will get $3.4 billion, with the remaining $2.8 billion going to procurement. With the research budget up $725 million this year, the service will invest in protecting space assets, field new capabilities, protect the joint force from adversary use of space capabilities in conflict, and build combat-effective digital service. It also looks to fund the development of a resilient missile warning and missile tracking, effective protect and defend architecture, command and control systems, protected satellite communications, and precision, navigation, and timing systems that are more survivable against adversary threats. About $132 million would go toward the Next-Gen Overhead Persistent Infrared missile warning system. With procurement funds, the Space Force would use $341 million to buy five space launch vehicles. It would also purchase two GPS III space vehicles and increase technical support with $64 million. This would allow for enhanced on-orbit management. Remaining funds support the acquisition of spacecraft and terminals, ground control systems, launch services, and related communications security and training products. While the Defense Department has requested an overall reduction in troops, Space Force is the only military branch proposing an increase in service members. The service plans to grow from 6,434 guardians to 8,000 in 2022. Those additional troops could come from the other service branches. About $930 million from the Air Force appropriations would support Space Force guardians, according to the Air Force. About 6,000 guardians transferred into Space Force from the Air Force within the last year, Gen. David Thompson, Space Forces vice chief of space operations, said Wednesday during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committees subpanel on strategic forces. Space Force is in the process of accepting transfers from the Army and Navy, while also actively recruiting new members. It gained 114 new lieutenants from the Air Force Academys graduating class of 2021, the service academy said. About 6,000 Air Force civilian workers are assigned to Space Force, Thompson said. thayer.rose@stripes.com Twitter: @Rose_Lori Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:35:23|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ADDIS ABABA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese companies' participation in Ethiopia's industrial parks development injects essential momentum into the country's aspirations in manufacturing sector, an Ethiopian official has said. Daniel Teresa, deputy commissioner of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC), told Xinhua on Friday that as the East African country strives towards becoming a light manufacturing hub of Africa, Chinese companies are powering the ambitious goal of Ethiopia. According to figures from the EIC, with the help of Chinese companies, which built the majority of industrial parks, Ethiopia has attracted some 2 billion U.S. dollars in foreign direct investment during the first nine months of the current 2020-21 Ethiopian fiscal year that started on July 9, 2020. In March, the Ethiopian government announced that the country has earned 610 million U.S. dollars in export revenues from the 13 government-owned industrial parks. Figures from the Ethiopian Industrial Parks Development Corporation (IPDC) showed that the export revenue was earned from the exports of apparel and other products produced by companies operating across the 13 industrial parks targeting global markets in the United States, European countries and other global markets. "Chinese companies are the major players in Ethiopia's investment landscape, be it in the development of industrial parks as well as investing their capital and expertise inside these industrial parks," Teresa said. Chinese companies and investors, said the official, "are now the mainstay of our country's manufacturing drive through the development of industrial hubs and massive investment potential." One example is the Hawassa Industrial Park, which the Ethiopian government considers as its flagship industrial park and is located some 275-km south of the capital Addis Ababa. It was built and commissioned in July 2016 by China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), which also took part in the construction of Kombolcha Industrial Park. Presently, Ethiopia has 13 government-owned industrial parks, seven private industrial parks, and four integrated agro-industrial parks that are being built by regional governments across the country. These industrial parks are either operational, under construction or on an initial stage. The industrial parks have also created in excess of 89,000 jobs for Ethiopia's burgeoning youth population, the IPDC data showed. Enditem Supporters of Mali's armed forces gather at Independence square in Bamako on May 28, 202, to celebrate the recent coup led by the vice president of the transitional government Assimi Goita. (MICHELE CATTANI, AFP, Getty Images/TNS) (Tribune News Service) Military Vice President Assimi Goita was appointed president of Malis interim government despite widespread calls for a return to civilian rule. Goita will resume the functions of president for the duration of the transition period and until elections are held, the Constitutional Court said in a statement late on Friday. The decision came ahead of a high-level meeting of West African heads of states which is expected to decide on a way forward for Mali. Africas third-biggest gold producer is still reeling from the overthrow of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita in August. The political crisis threatens to further destabilize the West African nation thats seen as a linchpin in an international effort to contain a mushrooming insurgency by Islamist militants in the Sahel region. Goita, a 38-year-old military officer, was appointed vice president of Malis interim government after spearheading the Aug. 18 coup that saw the ouster of Keita. On Monday he ordered the arrest of Interim President Bah NDaw and Prime Minister Moctar Ouane, who were meant to oversee preparations for elections in February next year. NDaw and and Ouane resigned Wednesday while in military detention. They were later freed under pressure from the United Nations, France and regional authorities. The Economic Community of West African States, ECOWAS, has called for an extraordinary summit of regional leaders Sunday. The regional economic bloc has insisted that Malis interim government is headed by a civilian. The interim vice president shouldnt replace the interim president, ECOWAS said after lifting the sanctions imposed on Mali following the Aug. 18 coup. It wasnt clear whether Goita would attend Sundays meeting. Late on Friday, Goita in a statement on public broadcaster ORTM said he would pick a prime minister from the M5-RFP opposition coalition that led mass protests over the summer calling for Keita to resign. An opposition spokesman said Saturday it had picked former trade minister Choguel Maiga as its candidate. 2021 Bloomberg L.P. Visit at bloomberg.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC The National Veterans Memorial and Museum Gold Star Family Vigil was held at the museum on Friday, May 28, 2021. A procession of Gold Star families walks from the museum to the Memorial Grove during the ceremony. (Fred Squillante/Columbus Dispatch) COLUMBIS, Ohio (Tribune News Service) One by one the families stepped forward these moms and dads and widows and daughters and sons to gently place a white carnation into a wicker basket to memorialize and remember the ones they loved who gave all they had for the love of country. As they reached the edge of the reflecting pool in the Memorial Grove at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum , some crossed themselves. A few knelt. A couple of men saluted. Many wiped away tears. The solemn Gold Star Family Vigil at the museum on W. Broad Street Friday night was a reminder of what Memorial Day is really all about: Honoring the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military. These warriors will be forever missed Oh, how these warriors will be forever missed. We promise we will never forget you or your families, U.S. Army Reserve Chaplain Capt. David Kuntz said while giving the invocation to more than 50 people gathered for the hour-long ceremony. And then he asked for prayers for the families who have lost so much. Hold them in your arms until their tears stop and they can breathe again. Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic squelched in-person Memorial Day services, and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Ferriter, the president and CEO of the museum, told the families that it was good to gather together again. Gold Star family members hold electric candles and carnations during a solemn ceremony at the edge of the reflecting pool in the Memorial Grove at the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. (Fred Squillante/Columbus Dispatch) The National Veterans Memorial and Museum Gold Star Family Vigil was held at the museum on Friday, May 28, 2021. Gold Star families listen to speakers at the Memorial Grove during the ceremony. (Fred Squillante/Columbus Dispatch) Gold Star families memorialize and remember the ones they loved who gave all they had for the love of country at a ceremony at the Memorial Grove of the National Veterans Memorial and Museum. (Fred Squillante/Columbus Dispatch) The National Veterans Memorial and Museum Gold Star Family Vigil was held at the museum on Friday, May 28, 2021. A procession of Gold Star families walks from the museum to the Memorial Grove during the ceremony. (Fred Squillante/Columbus Dispatch) Ferriter, a career Army infantry officer and Special Forces combat veteran, generally opens his public speeches by saying its a good day to be a soldier. But as he looked out at those who huddled on a night where the air temperature felt near freezing and the 20 mph winds were strong enough to blow down the American Flag, he choked up. Not every day is a great day, Ferriter said. And thats why we do Gold Star family candlelight vigils. Those in attendance already knew, of course, about sacrifice. But Ferriter reminded everyone why their own stories are so important. Ceremonies like this allow us to continue sharing the stories of those who exhibited the most selfless act of serving, protecting our freedoms and giving their lives for our country, he said. Make sure your children know about your grandfather who served in World War II or your aunt, brother or cousin who fought in Vietnam, Korea, Iraq or Afghanistan. LaRose highlights the price for freedom And when he addressed the group, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, also an Army Special Forces combat veteran, carried on that theme of making sure younger generations understand the stories of those who came before them and the price they paid for everyones freedom. This weekend a grateful nation pauses to remember those who died in service to our country, LaRose said. Its about honoring their sacrifice. But its also about passing it on. There arent many things in this world truly worthy dying for. I would submit this country is. Silence fell over the grove But it was when Jim Groves walked to the podium and took the mic that silence really fell over the grove. Groves and his wife, Leslie, lost their son 37-year-old Army Chief Warrant Officer James Groves III when his helicopter went down in Afghanistan on March 16, 2013 . Memorial Day is not about the Memorial Day sales. Its not about the cookouts or the pools opening. It is not a happy day, Groves said. Gold Star parents are not different. But we do look at Memorial Day much different than most. To us, every day is Memorial Day. Then, as retired Army Col. William Butler, the museums chief of staff, read the names of 23 fallen soldiers, airmen and Marines, their loved ones left carnations by that basket at the reflecting pools edge in their memory. A lone bugler played taps and the whipping winds carried the notes far and wide. And finally, Chaplain Kuntz gave an emotional benediction. Whisper in the ears of our loves ones in heaven, he prayed, and give them the wishes of everyone here and tell them how much they loved them. hzachariah@dispatch.com (c)2021 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) Visit The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio) at www.dispatch.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. TULSA, Okla. A "Remember and Rise" concert organized by the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission was abruptly canceled. Oklahoma's governor was ousted from the commission for pushing limits on how racism is taught in schools. And some residents are planning to boycott the opening of Greenwood Rising, a new museum that construction workers are racing to finish in the heart of Black Wall Street. As Tulsa commemorates the 100th anniversary of the brutal 1921 race massacre, political tensions and racial divisions have erupted in a city still grappling with how to heal a century after one of the worst incidents of racial violence in U.S. history. The commission organizing the commemoration has been denounced by some community groups who are staging their own events in Greenwood focused on massacre survivors and descendants. Amid the strife, the city is braced for armed groups to march through Greenwood, including a Second Amendment demonstration Saturday evening by the New Black Panther Party. And President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit Tulsa on Tuesday, the day the city resumes its excavation of a mass grave in Oaklawn Cemetery that could be connected to the massacre. Much of the acrimony in Tulsa revolves around the issue of reparations for the violence unleashed by a white mob on May 31, 1921, which left as many as 300 dead and10,000 homeless and destroyed one of the most prosperous Black neighborhoods in the country. The centennial commission, chaired by Democratic Black state Sen. Kevin Matthews, raised $30 million for the commemoration, the construction of Greenwood Rising and other projects. One of the most highly anticipated events was the "Remember and Rise" gathering on Memorial Day at ONEOK Field, which featured a performance by John Legend and a keynote speech by voting rights activist Stacey Abrams. On Thursday, the concert was suddenly canceled "due to unexpected circumstances with entertainers and speakers," the commission said in a statement. But Tulsa activists and lawyers representing three of the last known massacre survivors Viola Fletcher, 107, her brother Hughes Van Ellis, 100, and Lessie Benningfield Randle, 106 said the celebrities pulled out after the commission failed to address requests that it use some of its funds to compensate survivors and descendants for what they lost during the rampage. Matthews told reporters Friday that the lawyers for the survivors had initially sought inclusion in "Remember and Rise" in return for $100,000 each and a $2 million donation to a reparations fund. After the commission agreed to those terms, Williams said, the request changed to $1 million for each survivor and $50 million for the fund. "We could not respond to those demands," he said. But his account was disputed by the attorneys representing the survivors in a reparations lawsuit filed last year against Tulsa, Tulsa County, the state and the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce. The legal team, it said in a statement, submitted a list of seven requests "to ensure the survivors participation with the commission's scheduled events. The list included pledging to raise money for a fund that would provide direct financial support to the survivors and descendants." "There was never a nonnegotiable demand for $50 million dollars. The nonnegotiable issues were that the fund would provide direct financial support to survivors and descendants and that the fund would be administered by descendants and North Tulsa community members, and the fund be held in a Black bank." In an interview, Matthews said he would not comment on why the celebrities pulled out of the concert. The commission's candlelight vigil, a ceremony scheduled for 10:30 p.m. Central time Monday to mark the time the first shot was fired in the 1921 massacre, will go on as planned. "It is disappointing the national folks who were going to come to ONEOK Field are not coming," Matthews said, "but that is not as important as the candlelight vigil, where we will honor those who have fallen and gone before." A number of activists said Matthews did not include survivors, descendants and Greenwood community activists in the initial stages of planning for the city's centennial events. "I'm speaking from experience," said Jamaal Dyer, senior pastor of Friendship Church in North Tulsa, who resigned from the Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission in 2019. "I was very vocal: 'If we are going to do this for the community, we need to allow them to be part of the decision-making body.' That was not welcomed. A year or two later, they went to them, but they had already started making decisions. They are still trying to control the narrative." Last week, Oklahoma Republican Gov. Kevin Stitt was ousted from the centennial commission after he signed a bill that would prohibit public school teachers from teaching about "critical race theory" or lessons about race and racism that would make some students uncomfortable. Carly Atchison, a spokeswoman for Stitt, said in a statement that the governor's role on the commission "has been purely ceremonial." Meanwhile, city officials have prepared for potential clashes between extremist groups, aware that Tulsa could be a target for white nationalists as well as the New Black Party demonstration scheduled for Saturday. "Black self-defense groups, and African-American gun clubs from all over America will be gathering by the hundreds (maybe thousands) to demonstrate," the party announced last month. "A national defense program for Blacks is coming into existence." Tulsa Republican Mayor G.T. Bynum said the city has been working with state and federal officials to make sure "people who want to participate in activities and mourn this event, the worst event in our city's history, feel comfortable being in public doing that with different groups coming to town." "It's the classic case of hope for the best and prepare for the worst," said Bynum, who reopened the investigation into whether there are mass graves from the massacre. On Friday, Greenwood bustled with speeches, parades, vendors and a concert headlined by gospel legend John P. Kee that were organized by the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival. "The Black Wall Street Legacy Festival is the only community-centered series led by survivors and descendants commemorating the 1921 Tulsa race massacre," said organizer Tiffany Crutcher, who testified before Congress on May 19 alongside the three massacre survivors to call for reparations. Her group arranged for a parade Friday morning that featured the survivors, Fletcher, Ellis and Randle, in a procession through Greenwood and down Black Wall Street. They rode in a white carriage, drawn by a white horse, as they waved to crowds. Last month Randle issued a cease-and-desist letter demanding the commission to halt using her name or likeness to promote the official commemoration. The survivors have accused the city of enriching itself by appropriating the massacre for "cultural tourism" that would benefit white developers. During the May 19 hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee, Damario Solomon-Simmons, the lead attorney in the reparations lawsuit , told Congress that the city and the centennial commission had not shared any of the $30 million raised for the commemoration with survivors. "As I speak the same perpetrators of the massacre the city, the county, the chamber, the state are utilizing a massacre to pad their own pockets," Solomon-Simmons testified. "Not one penny has been given to any of the survivors. Not one dime has been paid for any of the outstanding claims." Tulsa officials have said they cannot comment on the pending lawsuit. In Oklahoma City, the state capital, Democratic state Rep. Regina Goodwin fought to keep the word reparations in a resolution she introduced to commemorate the massacre, pointing out that the 2001 report by the Tulsa Race Riot Commission called for reparations a recommendation that was ignored. Republican lawmakers opposed to reparations urged her to remove the word "reparations" from the resolution. After much debate, the word was allowed to stay in the House resolution, but it was removed from a resolution introduced in the state Senate. When Biden arrives in Tulsa Tuesday, where he goes will be watched closely. Will he visit the long-established Greenwood Cultural Center or the new Greenwood Rising? Will he meet with the survivors? "Any president that comes to Tulsa to recognize the centennial of the Tulsa Race Massacre should be centering the survivors and descendants in every single aspect of their visit and should not lose sight of the fact they just came back from Washington pleading for their humanity to be recognized and that they not leave this earth without reparations," said Dreisen Heath, who wrote the Human Rights Watch report "The Case for Reparations in Tulsa." On Friday, Heath watched the unveiling of a new Black Wall Street memorial and the lighting of an eternal flame in Greenwood. "There can be no justice without reparations," Heath said. "Anything short of that has grand implications of the survivors lives, the descendants and broader Black community." The present-day struggles over a century-old massacre are unlikely to be settled anytime soon, said Michael Mason, a Tulsa journalist and founding member of the Center for Public Secrets, a counterculture arts center. When Archbishop Desmond Tutu visited this city in 2004, "he called Tulsa a powder keg," Mason said. "That is more true now than it was before because of unresolved tensions surrounding the massacre." Viola Fletcher, 107, a survivor of the Tulsa race massacre, is shown here in a screen capture from video as she testifies before Congress. (The Washington Post) Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 20:38:24|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Dire Dawa City Mayor Ahmed Mohamed Bouh speaks at the launching ceremony of the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) Dire Dawa Industrial Park in Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, May 28, 2021. The CCECC on Friday launched the construction of the CCECC Dire Dawa Industrial Park in eastern Ethiopia. The first-phase construction of the Park is to be on 370 hectares of land on the outskirts of Ethiopia's second-largest city Dire Dawa. (Xinhua) ADDIS ABABA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Chinese construction giant - China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC) on Friday launched the construction of the CCECC Dire Dawa Industrial Park in eastern Ethiopia. The first-phase construction of the Park is to be on 370 hectares of land on the outskirts of Ethiopia's second-largest city Dire Dawa. It will have various clusters for export, development, and service-oriented businesses and is expected to attract potential export-oriented investors into sectors including textile and clothing, food and beverage, leather and leather processing, construction building materials, metal products, machinery manufacture, modern logistics, international trade, financing, and cultural tourism. Ahmed Mohamed Bouh, Dire Dawa City Mayor, told at the launching event that the park will attract world-class investors into Dire Dawa, which will eventually inject much-needed momentum into the East African country's export sector. "We would like to thank you for coming here and investing your capital in Dire Dawa as this will help the local community in technology transfer as well as job opportunities for the youngsters and actually developing the Dire Dawa city administration," the mayor said. The Park will be built along the 752.7-km Ethiopia-Djibouti standard gauge railway and is expected to enjoy ease of access to the international market. Ethiopia's neighboring Djibouti port presently handles about 90 percent of Ethiopia's overall export-import trade. "CCECC is participating in various mega projects in our country. The company is developing the majority of industrial parks in our country, in which the just launched CCECC Dire Dawa Industrial Park is one of them," Daniel Teresa, Deputy Commissioner of the Ethiopian Investment Commission (EIC) told Xinhua. "The industrial park will ultimately support the export sector, create abundant job opportunities, and facilitate investment opportunities," he added. The industrial park will eventually expand to 1,000 hectares of land when operating at its full capacity, according to the CCECC. Li Minggang, Deputy General Manager of CCECC Ethiopia Construction plc, on his part said the industrial park, as the pioneer industrial park of the Dire Dawa Special Economic Zone, is aiming to become a demonstration platform for the cooperation between China and Ethiopia. Li said the industrial park aspires to promoting local employment, improving the living environment, and optimizing logistics supporting facilities in the area and beyond. Ethiopia currently has 13 operational industrial parks, with several more under construction expected to be commissioned during the current Ethiopian Fiscal Year 2020/2021. Chinese companies are the major players in Ethiopia's ambitious industrial parks development, which form part of the country's broad economic strategy to make it into a light manufacturing hub in Africa by 2025. The Ethiopian government in March this year announced that it has earned some 610 million U.S. dollars in export revenue from industrial parks during the first nine months of the current 2020-21 Ethiopian fiscal year that started on July 9, 2020. According to figures from the Ethiopian Industrial Park Development Corporation (IPDC), the revenue was earned from the exports of apparel and other products by companies operating across 13 industrial parks targeting global markets including the United States and Europe. The industrial parks have also created in excess of 89,000 employment opportunities for Ethiopia's burgeoning youth population, the IPDC said. Enditem Judge James Martin is pictured in front of the Dona Ana County Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. (Nathan J Fish/Sun-News) LAS CRUCES You may have heard of treatment courts, but what exactly is a Veterans Treatment Court? The Third Judicial District Court in Las Cruces has several treatment courts, including Adult Drug Court, Juvenile Drug Court, Family Reunification Court and the Dona Ana County Magistrate Court operates the DWI Drug Court. Veterans Treatment Court also addresses addiction and mental health issues, but specific to veterans. Oftentimes addiction problems stem from dealing with a situation associated with their time in the military. The Las Cruces VTC joins more than 400 VTCs throughout the country; studies show that veterans who have completed the program are more likely to reside in their own housing and less likely to experience a new incarceration. The VTC program officially began in 2018 and operates out of Third Judicial District Court Judge James Martins courtroom. The program itself is a rigorous 12-step program different from a traditional Alcoholics Anonymous program. When a person is arrested, they are asked if they are a veteran. If they reply in the affirmative, their name and case are flagged for VTC consideration. People who did not receive an honorable discharge also qualify for the program the requirement is that time was spent in the military. If their case elevates to district court, judges might recommend them for the VTC program and they undergo a screening process. Victor Sanchez, VTC coordinator, explained that applicants are screened on several points, including depression. Those accepted into the program are generally determined to be high-risk, high-need offenders. Mixing lower-risk or lower-need offenders with those in higher categories is not practiced, because it can potentially lead to people taking on the more severe behaviors. Reducing recidivism The program involves aggressive accountability, counseling and frequent court appearances. Martin explained that the 12 steps are part of five phases four active phases and one phase of aftercare. At the start, one of the first goals is helping the veteran admit they have a problem and need help; people have to be honest with themselves. Martin explained they need to buy into the program. Otherwise, they wont be successful or get what they need out of VTC. The ultimate goal is to reduce recidivism, or repeat offenses. Each program participant is assigned a mentor who is a fellow veteran. A surveillance team checks in on participants several times a week for random drug tests and to ensure they meet curfew. If a participant fails to comply with the requirements, they may get sanctioned by the judge. This can mean extra community service hours or, possibly, time spent in the county detention center. The VTC currently has nine participants and has, to date, graduated 13 veterans. They expect to increase those numbers going forward. Generally, the program takes 12 to 14 months to complete, but it is completely self-paced and unique to the needs of each veteran. Hardcore accountability One male graduate, a member of the Marine Corps, took 12 months to complete the program. Client privacy is of high importance to the court, and participants will not be named. He explained that he ended up in legal trouble due to charges of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He said he tried various programs before, but they were ineffective for him. The judge recommended him to VTC, and he said he found it to be hardcore. He had to learn to trust himself. The extreme accountability of the (tests) three, four times a week for a year was enough to hold me still while the program worked on me, he said. He said he started out homeless and riding a bike but ended up getting a job and eventually gaining an apartment and truck. He graduated in March and has remained sober. Sanchez said it is rare that women are clients of the VTC program, but one female graduate, a U.S. Army Nurse, also agreed to share her story. She told the Sun-News she lost her husband in a plane accident in 2004. She had a hard time processing and coping with the loss and racked up five DUIs in six years. It was totally unlike me, she said. Partnerships matter But the programs structure allowed her to make progress. VTC partners with Mesilla Valley Community of Hope, Esperanza Guidance Services and the Veterans Justice Outreach Program all of which she gave kudos to, as well as the probation and parole officers involved. She said the program structure provided the discipline needed to complete the steps. It took her about 11 months to complete the program with one sanction from Martin requiring extra community service and she graduated in July 2020. Both graduates still have several years of probation to complete. Mesilla Valley Community of Hope is an organization that provides help with food security, housing, finding health care providers and general case management. Esperanza Guidance Services is the treatment provider the VTC partners with. She explained that the treatment allows veterans to rebuild moral and ethical values that were tossed aside in favor of the spirit of addiction. She said all involved with the VTC program can be tough and no-nonsense, but they ultimately want to see the veterans succeed. Veterans Justice Outreach Program, part of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, helps homeless veterans find housing, medical and mental health assistance. It also helps veterans find and prepare for employment. No longer a skeptic Martin said he was not always so trusting in drug treatment courts, but he has since seen the benefit they have on people who are struggling. VTC is not a replacement for serving time, but is usually a condition of probation. One or two participants generally graduate per quarter, and only one participant since the beginning of the program has flunked. I run into people regularly in the community that are thankful that I took an interest in their life, Martin said. And the fact that the drug court program overall works that way, Im a convert. It works, I believe in it. I was a skeptic to begin with, but I am convinced that its worthwhile. Leah Romero is the trending reporter at the Las Cruces Sun-News. lromero@lcsun-news.com (c)2021 the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) Visit the Las Cruces Sun-News (Las Cruces, N.M.) at www.lcsun-news.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. Mathew Z. Rosiere, 37, of Fond du Lac, unexpectedly passed away on Friday, June 4, 2021. He was born on May 18, 1984, in Pawnee, OK, the son of Michael Z. Rosiere and Sandra K. Kennedy. While he was in high school, he was active in football and wrestling. Mathew loved hard rock music, played Changes to the SunCommercial's back end processing means the e-edition is getting a facelift. The biggest change is the e-edition, by default, is now presented in Text view. The country's environment watchdog has delayed by more than a year a deadline that could effectively mean a ban on the use of a toxic gas used to treat logs for export. In October 2010, the Environmental Protection Authority - EPA - told industry it had ten years to get the tech in place to stop allowing the significantly ozone-depleting gas methyl bromide from wafting into the atmosphere. But, under pressure from industry, the agency has granted a number of extensions - most recently last month - leaving environmentalists and some living near ports furious. Industry says full recapture is "impossible" and it is also annoyed at the EPA, saying it has been waiting years for approval from the agency for a cleaner product that could replace methyl bromide. Methyl bromide kills insects and other pests, but is also toxic to humans and damages the ozone layer. It is pumped under tarpaulin-covered stacks of logs - bound for export to India and China - then released into the air. New Zealand is the world's six-highest user of the product, but international agreements require it to be phased out, and an Environmental Protection Authority decision in 2010 set a 10-year deadline for exporters to recapture 100 percent of the gas. Joel Ngatuere is the Environment spokesperson for Whareroa marae, which is about one kilometre from the port in Mount Maunganui where the substance is regularly used. He says locals feared it was making them sick and it was ridiculous that industry still had not got its act together. "To have no action in place, to me it either shows complete incompetence or arrogance to have total disregard for our community... in terms of the impact that it is having on ourselves and also the ozone and climate change." Joel says he was worried the EPA was too cozy with industry. "I don't have faith they've got the ability to make an independent decision because they're dragging their feet when the evidence is clear that methyl bromide is an outdated practice." Image: Google Maps. Former Green Party MP and environmental activist Steffan Browning says the EPA should really be called the "Economic Protection Authority". "Industry's had a long time to get it together. There is a recapture [technology] available. It just is that they have to dig into their pockets, out of the massive profits, and pay for it." Environment lawyer Kate Barry-Piceno, who works with the Tauranga Moana Fumigant Action Group, says New Zealand was lowering its environmental standards to meet India's export requirements. She says the EPA needed to stop bowing to industry, allowing exporters to weigh in every time a report did not favour its position. "So this is just an endless ongoing attempt to delay the process and stagger it out, to provide comment upon comment upon comment on every environmental report that criticises the information that they provided." Don Hammond from log and timber exporters industry group STIMBR, the Stakeholders In Methyl Bromide Reduction incorporated, says that when the process started back in 2010 they thought they would be able to come up with a solution, but now know compliance was "impossible". He says the recapture process also created large amounts of toxic waste and was still no way to treat or recycle it. "The only solution that's been given to us is bury it in the landfill. "Well I'm sure you can see that it's not really a solution, it's just hiding it for the next generation to deal with." Hammond says STIMBR has spent up to $40 million trying to comply, or investing in an alternative fumigant called EDN. He says the substance - used in Australia - is less toxic, and an EPA document states it does not deplete ozone. Hammond says STIMBR applied to the EPA to use the product nearly four years ago and was still waiting for a decision. RNZ asked Hammond how he felt about the EPA's delay. "Let me turn that around and say, would you be happy if you applied for something and waited four years and still had no visibility over what was going to happen? "Look, I don't think it's any secret that we're very frustrated with the ... way this is playing out. And we've repeatedly offered to do whatever we can to assist the EPA." Three-quarters of a billion dollars worth of export logs were treated with methyl bromide in 2019, about a quarter of the total amount sent abroad. Hammond says if industry was forced to comply come November, it could destroy a growing market and unless, EDN got the go-ahead soon, it would apply for another extension. In a statement the EPA said staff were assessing new information on EDN and a report would go to the decision-making committee within months. It said STIMBR asked for and was granted the extensions to keep using methyl bromide in order to "provide export certainty for the timber industry". It said it could not go into detail while a decision on methyl bromide was pending. Meanwhile the gas continues to be released into the environment. Hamish Cardwell/RNZ Anyone flying to New Zealand from Australia will have to get a pre-departure Covid test if they were in Victoria on or after May 20. Covid-19 Response Minister Chris Hipkins announced the move on Friday, saying it was "prudent" given the continuing rise in case numbers in the state. The requirement will come into force at 11.59pm on Monday, and does not include children aged under two. The Government is introducing the Covid-19 pre-departure testing for anyone who was in Victoria in the days leading up to Melbournes lockdown. Anyone who has been in Victoria since 8pm on May 25, cannot fly to New Zealand at all due to the travel pause in place, Hipkins said. In Auckland on Friday, Covid testing centres were swamped, partly in reaction to the situation in Melbourne. Another reason for the increase in demand was thought to be a seasonal rise in cold and flu symptoms. About 60 cars were waiting in a queue at a testing centre in Balmoral and people were having to wait up to 45 minutes to get tested. On Friday, the Ministry of Health was still trying to contact about 500 of the 5000 people asked to get a test and self-isolate, after arriving from Melbourne since Covid started spreading in that city. The people still to be contacted could not be reached by email and were being followed up with phone calls and texts, the Ministry of Health says. Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield says some public health measures related to the Covid pandemic might remain in place for three to five years. He thought that, even with wide vaccination, as New Zealand opened its borders there would need to be a level of baseline measures covering such things as gatherings, scanning, contact tracing, isolation and testing. Queenstown Chamber of Commerce chief executive Ruth Stokes says the loss of a Super Rugby Trans-Tasman game, that was to have been played in Queenstown on Sunday, due to the Victorian Covid outbreak, was "gutting". While public health was the main priority, she was also concerned the latest interruption to the trans-Tasman bubble could make Australians cautious about booking too far in advance. Airline Qantas is considering offering travel perks for Covid-vaccinated flyers in an effort to boost vaccination rates in Australia. The company is selling tickets to some overseas destinations, such as the US, Britain and Japan, from late December, although the Australian government has indicated it could well be into 2022 before borders reopen. Japan extended a coronavirus state of emergency in Tokyo and some other areas for 20 more days, as the country prepares to host the Olympic Games, which start in 55 days. While Covid cases are declining in the country, some hospitals remain under pressure. Global toll More than 169 million confirmed Covid-19 cases, and more than 3.51 million deaths, had been reported worldwide by Saturday morning, Johns Hopkins University reported. The country with the highest number of deaths attributed to Covid was the US with more than 593,700, followed by Brazil with nearly 456,700, then India with nearly 318,900. The US topped the case count with 33.2 million, followed by India with 27.6 million, then Brazil with 16.3 million. What should I do? Anyone who wants to get tested can find their local testing centres by visiting the Ministry of Health website. If you are sick, call your GP before you visit, or Healthline on 0800 358 5453. To avoid contracting and spreading the virus, wash your hands properly, cough and sneeze into the crook of your elbow and throw tissues away immediately. Reach out, find support from people who care, connect with your community or help a neighbour in need. We demand action now! is the catch cry of protesters blocking access to Ballance Agri-Nutrients company headquarters at Mount Maunganui. Despite the rain, the Western Sahara Solidarity Aotearoa stood protesting about the rights of indigenous people in Western Sahara by timing their blockade today following reports of a shipment of phosphate due to arrive at the Port of Tauranga. The IVS Crimson Creek is scheduled to arrive on Monday May 31, weather permitting. We are here at Ballance in Tauranga and have officially shut it down, says Western Sahara Solidarity Aotearoa spokesperson Josie Butler, who has travelled up from Christchurch to be involved in the protest. We have people on tripods who are blocking the entranceway and today we are standing up to Ballance for their crimes against indigenous peoples. Whareroa marae which is around the corner is being poisoned daily by Ballance and right now a shipment of stolen blood phosphate from the people of Western Sahara is on its way to the Port of Tauranga, says Josie. The protesters are urging the company to stop importing the phosphate rock they contend is plundered by Morocco. They say that according to the UN, Western Sahara is the last colony in Africa. When the coloniser of the territory, Spain, left in 1975, the Sahrawi people were promised a referendum to decide their own future. This never happened, says a Western Sahara Campaign NZ spokesperson. The moment Spain's control ebbed, the neighbouring country Morocco invaded and to this day continues to occupy Western Sahara. The Western Sahara Campaign NZ is working with the Sahrawi people to generate political support in order to advance their right to self-determination and to promote their human rights. What's the link to New Zealand? New Zealand is one of the biggest importers of phosphate rock from Western Sahara. The phosphate is plundered from the territory by Morocco. The Sahrawi people object to the trade and receive nothing for the plunder of their resource. Today, in blocking access to Ballance, the Western Sahara Solidarity Aotearoa group is raising what they feel is the issue of Ballance Agri-Nutrients using the Moroccan occupation of its neighbour Western Sahara to import phosphate rock that they say Morocco plunders from the occupied colony. Since November 2020, after Morocco broke the lengthy ceasefire with Western Sahara, the war has been rekindled. This however has not stopped Ballance Agri-Nutrients from continuing to import plundered phosphate rock, says Western Sahara Campaign NZ representative Mike Barton. The protesters are seeking an agreement with Ballance Agri-Nutrients chair Duncan Coull and CEO Mark Wynne that they will accept an invitation to sit down with representatives of the people of Western Sahara to discuss the matter. Balance Agri-Nutrients, which is a commercial company not a political organisation, is unlikely to meet with political lobbyists, and state on their website that we are operating within UN expectations and we are comfortable both legally and ethically sourcing phosphate rock from PhosBoucraa owned by OCP, approximately 2 per cent of OCPs managed reserves are in Western Sahara and that economic development of the region boosted by trade has a direct positive impact on the local population [of Western Sahara]. The Western Sahara Solidarity Aotearoa has a different perspective. Today we are standing up and saying this is enough, says Josie. We call on Nanaia Mahuta, Minister for Foreign Affairs to take action for indigenous people. Maori are being poisoned and the indigenous population in Western Sahara is suffering war crimes because of her inaction. We demand action now. Some of the protesters chained themselves to the main gate and used bamboo to make tripods to perch on in an attempt to block access to the headquarters of Balance from Hewletts Rd. Signs held by the protesters carried messages such as Ban Blood Phosphate and Blood on your hands Ballance while the group chanted Freedom for Western Sahara. Balance Agri-Nutrients Head of Communications Aimee Driscoll says they were concerned about safety around the protest. We did everything that we could to look after the health and safety of the protesters, our contractors and staff and onlookers, says Aimee. We were shocked and dismayed by the unsafe behaviour of the protesters who were putting themselves and others at risk. Police say they were called by the management of Ballance to the site. A small group was obstructing the road and standing in a dangerous position, says a Police spokesperson. Police spoke with them and advised them that where they were standing was unsafe and posed a risk, and asked them to move somewhere safer. One of the protesters Sam Murphy says that the Ballance site manager agreed to send a message to the CEO Mark Wynne asking for a meeting between Ballance representatives and representatives of Western Sahara. Following this the protesters ended their blockade.  Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 22:23:54|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close TUNIS, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Tunisian President Kais Saied met on Saturday with visiting President of the Libyan Presidency Council Mohamed Menfi to discuss ways to enhance bilateral cooperation. Saied and Menfi affirmed the congruence of views between the two countries on bilateral, regional and international issues of common interest during a joint press conference held at Carthage Presidential Palace in the capital Tunis. The Tunisian and Libyan people are "one people and one family with a shared future," Saied noted. For his part, Menfi said the relations between the two countries are historical and lasting, adding he discussed with Saied over many common issues between the two countries. "Our consultations were characterized by a spirit of brotherhood and friendship ... We discussed all issues of common interest, reviewed views on several local and international issues and discussed bilateral cooperation in several areas, including economic and social fields," he said. Enditem A lucky Lotto player from Mount Maunganui will be feeling on top of the world after winning $1 million with Lotto First Division in last nights live Lotto draw. The winning ticket was sold at Bayfair Lotto in Mount Maunganui. Powerball was not struck last night and has rolled over to Wednesday night, where the jackpot will be $14 million. Strike Four was also won on Saturday night by a player from Auckland who took home $400,000. The winning Strike ticket was sold at Sunnybrae Superette in Auckland. Ten Lotto players will be popping the champagne after each winning $30,420 with Lotto Second Division in tonights live Lotto draw. One lucky player also won Powerball Second Division, taking their total winnings to $50,200. The winning Powerball Second Division ticket was sold on MyLotto to a player from Waikato. The winning Second Division tickets were sold at New World Kerikeri Kerikeri, Countdown Westgate Auckland, Countdown Manukau Auckland, MyLotto (x 2) (+PB) Waikato, MyLotto Manawatu Whanganui, Countdown Petone - Lower Hutt, Stellin Street Store - Lower Hutt, Countdown Redwoodtown Blenheim, and Pak N Save Riccarton Christchurch. The heart-warming new Kiwi film, Poppy, is in cinemas now and it was 100 per cent funded by Lotto NZ players through the NZ Film Commissions 125 Fund. Poppy tells the story of a young woman with Down syndrome who refuses to be defined by her disability as she takes control of her own future. Read more on MyLotto: https://mylotto.co.nz/community-winners/kiwis-helping-kiwis-poppy Each year 100 per cent of Lotto NZs profits support thousands of great causes - like the NZ Film Commission. So, every time you play a Lotto NZ game, youre a Kiwi helping empower women in film. Anyone who bought their ticket from one of these stores should write their name on the back of the ticket and check it at any Lotto NZ outlet, online at mylotto.co.nz or through the Lotto NZ App. New Zealand is currently at Alert Level 1. Lotto NZ counters across the country are open and will continue to follow the Governments health and safety guidelines. For more information, please visit: https://mylotto.co.nz/covid-19.  Current Print Subscribers will be prompted to either login to their current site user account or to create a new one. A confirmation email will be sent when a new user account is created, which must be confirmed within three days in order to provide uninterrupted online access through your Print Subscription. Once the email address is confirmed please provide your Account Number to activate your Print Subscription Service. The Taos News delivered to your Taos County address every week for a full year! We offer our lowest mail rates to zip codes in the county. Click Here to See if you Qualify. Plan includes unlimited website access and e-edition print replica online. Your auto pay plan will be conveniently renewed at the end of the subscription period. You may cancel at anytime. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 23:04:48|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ABUJA, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Nigerian troops on Friday killed 10 Boko Haram militants while thwarting an attempted attack on a military base in the northeastern state of Borno, a spokesman for the army said on Saturday. Mohammed Yerima, the spokesman for the army, said in a statement that the militants came in their numbers, mounted on gun trucks, and attempted to infiltrate the main entrance of Rann, a town in the northern state, with a heavy presence of troops. The troops were right on hand to counter the move and inflicted a "humiliating defeat on the terrorists who abandoned their evil mission and took to their heels," Yerima said. He said the troops thereafter chased the fleeing Boko Haram members and ensured there was no further threat to the town and the residents. One of the gun trucks of the militants was successfully destroyed, he said, adding the troops also recovered multiple weapons, including one anti-aircraft gun, two machine guns, and eight AK-47 rifles from them. Boko Haram has been trying to establish an Islamist state in northeastern Nigeria since 2009. The terror group has also extended its attacks to other countries in the Lake Chad Basin. Enditem Our Top 5 Magazines + Digital We get it. You live by the Ski Valleys snow report even when youre hours away. You follow every Taos post on Instagram. Our small town occupies a BIG part of your heart. Keep in touch with all things Taos when you subscribe to FIVE of our national award-winning magazines, plus access to the website and e-edition for a full year at the special low rate of just $55. Seminole, FL (33772) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High 91F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 78F. Winds W at 10 to 15 mph. Florida Department of Health has ended its daily reports of COVID-19 activity and has shuttered its dashboard that had provided a visual account of cases, deaths, testing and other information since March 2020. Thank you for Reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and Purchase a Subscription to continue reading. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 12:17:12|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ISLAMABAD, May 29 (Xinhua) -- At least nine people were killed and 16 others injured after a passenger van fell into a ditch in Muzaffarabad of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, local media reported on Saturday morning. Police told media that the dead, including three children, and the injured have been shifted to the hospital. The ill-fated van was heading towards Chakothi sector of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir from Rawalpindi district of Pakistan's eastern Punjab province, according to the reports. Road accidents are quite frequent in Pakistan mainly due to poor roads, badly maintained vehicles and unprofessional driving. Enditem RahulNagaraj BHPian Join Date: Mar 2021 Location: Bangalore Posts: 160 Thanked: 1,724 Times USA: EV owners to pay up to $ 400 annually to support vehicle infrastructure development In line with this, the state of Texas could soon introduce an annual fee for EV owners as a replacement to the gas tax they are exempt from. According to reports, Texas could soon collect an annual fee of up to $ 400 from owners of electric vehicles. As per the proposed bill, owners will be asked to pay an annual EV fee between $ 190 and $ 240. There will also be an additional charge of $ 150 for owners who drive their EVs more than 9,000 miles in a year and an annual surcharge of $ 10 to fund an advisory council for charging infrastructure. Reports suggest that if the bill is passed, it would be implemented in the state from September 1, 2021. The fees would apply to over 300,000 vehicles, raising $ 37.8 million for the State Highway Fund (SHF) in FY2022. Other states are also looking to implement a similar annual fee for EV owners. However, an EV advocacy group found that many states also have a registration fee for electric vehicles, ranging between $50 - $200. This, when added with the proposed annual fee for EVs, ends up being a higher amount than what conventional vehicle owners pay to support infrastructure development. As an alternate, EV advocates suggested the states look at Road Usage Charges (RUC) instead - a way to charge vehicle owners for the actual miles they drive in a given year. A few states in the USA are said to be currently running pilot programmes and conducting research to check if collecting RUC works for them. Source: Link to Team-BHP news USA's road and vehicle infrastructure projects are said to be partly funded by collecting gas tax from vehicle owners. However, with many people now shifting to EVs, state legislators are now working on ways to integrate electric vehicles and alternate fuel vehicles into their funding structure.In line with this, the state of Texas could soon introduce an annual fee for EV owners as a replacement to the gas tax they are exempt from. According to reports, Texas could soon collect an annual fee of up to $ 400 from owners of electric vehicles.As per the proposed bill, owners will be asked to pay an annual EV fee between $ 190 and $ 240. There will also be an additional charge of $ 150 for owners who drive their EVs more than 9,000 miles in a year and an annual surcharge of $ 10 to fund an advisory council for charging infrastructure.Reports suggest that if the bill is passed, it would be implemented in the state from September 1, 2021. The fees would apply to over 300,000 vehicles, raising $ 37.8 million for the State Highway Fund (SHF) in FY2022. Other states are also looking to implement a similar annual fee for EV owners.However, an EV advocacy group found that many states also have a registration fee for electric vehicles, ranging between $50 - $200. This, when added with the proposed annual fee for EVs, ends up being a higher amount than what conventional vehicle owners pay to support infrastructure development.As an alternate, EV advocates suggested the states look at Road Usage Charges (RUC) instead - a way to charge vehicle owners for the actual miles they drive in a given year. A few states in the USA are said to be currently running pilot programmes and conducting research to check if collecting RUC works for them.Source: caranddriver Raghu M BHPian Join Date: Jul 2020 Location: Hyderbad Posts: 270 Thanked: 791 Times re: Vaccine tourism! Agencies offer trips to Russia for vaccination Sounds interesting but this is something we should be wary of. With wave after wave of the pandemic, nothing is certain. Say you pay the money upfront (which in all likelihood is the deal), and there is a travel ban to certain areas/countries because of the outbreak, what would you do? The agency will not reimburse the money. Also, you can get the Sputnik vaccine in Apollo chains, why worry about tourism now? It's a good deal given the package but what kind of hotels will we be checked into is something no one knows. If it is just mentioned as 3 star, it can't be treated as 3 star. It's really difficult to believe the itinerary. I think we just have to wait for things to settle down and take it easy. If someone gets infected during the trip, we can only hope God will help. With the kind of infrastructure required for severe symptoms, it's wise to stay home right now. My opinion honestly. (Photo : Screenshot From Pexels Official Website) Google Pixel 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra | What Do They Have In Common? Google Pixel 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra specs reveal the two phones to have similarities. Even more details about the alleged upcoming Google Pixel 6 and the Google Pixel 6 "Pro" have started to emerge. This now provides a better idea regarding the chipset and even the new possibility of what the new device displays could look like. Google Pixel 6 vs. Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra According to the story in an article by AndroidCentral, Google's brand new GS101 Whitechapel chipset is now rumored to power the device that will reportedly not match that of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 when it comes to its power. Two leakers namely Yogesh and Max Weinback notedly stated that it will be built on a brand new 5nm process and that its power will be much closer to that of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 870. Google will now apparently lean on its AI power and machine learning for its upcoming flagship smartphones which reportedly has been quite largely expected of the rumored Google Silicon. Google Pixel 6 Chipset Mali-G78 GPU There are also rumors going around as of the moment of Samsung building the chip itself. So far, everything points towards the new Google Pixel 6 chipset which would feature a Mali-G78 GPU, the same GPU could be found in devices like the new Exynos variant of the popular Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra. XDA Developers noted that another leaker actually found certain "evidence" of the new GPU on the official Google Issue Tracker. The Google Issue Tracker points towards a new P21 device as well as the Mali-G78 GPU, although the core count and even the clock speed are currently unknown. Yogesh has also stated that the brand new GPU actually "performs well under pressure" although during early comparisons, it may even distribute that particular claim. Read Also: Google Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro Whitechapel Chip Features Leaked, What Can It Do? Google Pixel 6 XL Yogesh has also noted that the new GPU actually performs quite well under pressure. The early comparisons, however, might dispute those types of claims. As far as the display itself goes, the new Google Pixel 6 has now been said to feature a brand new 6-inch display along with Weinbach, according to WorldPodcasts, stated that this week that will then be filled with the new FHD120Hz panel. He also notes that the device's 6.4-inch display on the Google Pixel 6 XL could be equipped with the QHD 120Hz panel in order to match a number of the best Android phones on the market. The much larger Pixel will also reportedly come along with a decent 5,000 mAh battery. A release date for the upcoming devices is quite unclear as of the moment. Weinbach, however, expects that the brand new Google Pixel 6 smartphones will launch sometime around October or November. This would still depend on the effects of the current chip shortage. They are now also expected to launch alongside the long rumored Google Pixel Watch. Related Article: Google Pixel 6 Pro's Leaked Renders Reveal New Physical Design and Third Rear Camera This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Urian B. 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It seems that the heart-shaped like button of Twitter will no longer be alone for a long time. The social media giant is working on a Facebook-like emoji reaction, an app researcher leaks. However, there seems to be a missing emoji in comparison to Facebook. Jane Manchun Wong, a reverse engineering expert, first tweeted about what Twitter is covertly working on. Facebook launched its multi-emoji reaction buttons in 2016. It has enabled its users to provide a more accurate response to the posts on the platform -- instead of a mere generic "like" option. Before that, the social media conglomerate only had a "like" button. Since then, it has added a "love," "wow," "sad," "haha," and "angry." It is contrary to the request of its users back then -- a "dislike" button. Facebook had that feature in development for a year, The Verge reported. In 2017, comments on Facebook also had the same emoji reactions. Another way to further improve communication responses. Twitter Emoji Reactions On the other hand, Twitter is now also trying to develop a similar approach to add to its heart-shaped reaction button. According to Wong, the social media giant will have emojis similar to Facebook's, except for the other two. Aside from the like, users could expect a "sad," a "haha," and, the other two that seem to be a Twitter-original, a "cheer," and "hmm." However, the "cheer," and "sad" options, in the leak, still do not use an actual emoji -- a "heart" emoji is used as a placeholder instead. Wong said that: "The icons for the Cheer and Sad reactions are WIP and shown as the generic heart one at the moment." Missing Emoji Reaction Based on the leak provided by Wong, the "wow," and "angry" emojis will not join the new set of reactions on Twitter. And there seems to be no alternative provided for "angry." According to The Verge, Twitter users may not even need an angry reaction as rage is rather expressed with such conviction on reply and quote retweet features. For the "wow," Twitter will instead use a more celebratory "cheer" emoji. The other option is the "hmm" emoji that expresses a thinking or curious sentiment -- what Facebook does not have. Read Also: Twitter Spaces' Desktop, Mobile Browser Availability: You Can Join But Can't Host Rooms-Here's Its First Look Twitter Survey In March, Twitter must have been getting insight into the development of its newest feature. Twitter survey some of its users about their preferred emoji reaction. Tech Crunch wrote in a report that the questionnaire included a "fire," which means "awesome," and "raised hands," to extend support, emojis. Related Article: Twitter Verification Pauses New Applications from Users Due to Submissions-What Does it Take to Get It? This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Teejay Boris 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Venmo privacy controls have been updated. The company has added new privacy controls for friend lists following a shocking incident where the Venmo account of President Joe Biden was tracked down because of the app's poor privacy controls. Jane Manchun Wong, an app researcher, discovered on May 28 that Venmo was working on new controls. Venmo Privacy Controls Update According to The Verge, Venmo's spokesperson said that they are consistently evolving and strengthening the Venmo platform of all of their customers. As part of their ongoing efforts, they are enhancing their in-app controls, providing customers an option to select a public, friends-only, or private setting for their friends list. In order to find the new controls, just tap the hamburger icon while on the main feed, then tap Settings, Privacy, and then Friends List. In the new menu, you can choose if you want your friends list to be public, visible to friends, or private. You can also toggle whether or not you want to appear in others users' friends list, according to CNET. Also Read: Venmo New Feature: Users Could Now Invest in Four Cryptocurrencies Starting with $1 as a Minimum Requirement Venmo Leak On May 14, the Venmo accounts for President Joe Biden and Dr. Jill Biden were removed after it was discovered that it can be easily found on the payment app, a discovery that is said to raise national security questions. The website went looking for President Biden's account after it was mentioned in a New York Times report on White House conditions and working practices. The NY Times reported lengthy policy debates, angry outbursts at advisers and officials, and plenty of time spent with grandchildren. The story said that they have been know to show their grandfather apps like TikTok. One adviser stated that he had sent the grandchildren money using Venmo. The previous administration tried to take down the popularity of TikTok, an app for sharing short videos, over its ownership by a Chinese company, ByteDance. Venmo, which is owned by PayPal, enables simple payments between contacts. The transactions are public by default. They can be made private, but contact lists remain visible. President Biden's payments were private. Reporters commonly scan Venmo for leads. The scandal engulfing the Congressman Matt Gaetz has included reporting on payments to women made by a former associate. Furthermore, Reporters added that it took less than 10 minutes to find President Biden's account, using only a combination of the app's built-in search tool, and public friends feature. In the process, it found almost a dozen Biden family members and mapped out a social web that encompasses not only the first family but a wide network of people around them, including the president's children, grandchildren, senior White House officials, and all of their contacts on Venmo. The White House did not comment, but a Venmo spokesman said that the safety and privacy of all Venmo users and their information is always a top priority, and that they take this responsibility very seriously. The spokesperson added that customers always have the ability to make their transactions private, and determine their own privacy settings in the app. They are consistently evolving and strengthening the privacy measures for all Venmo users to continue to provide a safe, secure place to send and spend money. Related Article: Venmo Joe Biden Trace: Security Flaw Leads to POTUS Account Tracing in Minutes, Here's How Hackers Do It This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Sophie Webster 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Twitch creators have been warned by the platform. The apps copyright problem won't go away and may have more issues in the future. Esports consultant Rod Breslau shared an email and stated that the company warned the creators that it recently received a batch of approximately 1,000 individual DMCA takedown notices. Twitch Creators Hit with Copyright According to Engadget, all of the claims involve archived broadcasts, with most featuring streamers listening to music in the background while playing a game, or talking to their viewers. In the same message, Twitch says it believed publishers used automated tools to generate the requests, suggesting more are on the way. A Twitch spokesperson stated that they recently received a batch of Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA takedown notifications with about 1,000 individual claims from music publishers. Also Read: TommyInnit 'Technoblade' Twitch Comeback Prank: Twitter Users Fall Victim of Early 'April Fool's Day' All of the claims are against VODs, and the vast majority of claims target streamers listening to background music while playing video games or IRL streaming. They want to ensure their creator community is aware that the only way to protect themselves from DMCA notifications is to not stream music, or other copyrighted material, they do not have rights to. DMCA takedowns have been an ongoing headache for the Twitch community. It all started in 2020 when the company said it saw a sudden influx of takedown notifications. As with this latest episode, most of those involved clips that have been up on the website for several years. Twitch has tried to address the problem first by expanding the amount of free-to-use songs it offers to streamers. It then published a blog post explicitly urging them not to use copyrighted music. As each notice represents a potential strike against an account, another wave of bans could be on the horizon. Ban Twitch Creators Last month, Dexerto reported DMCA takedowns on Twitch, with record labels and others cracking down on what gets used on the platform. However, a streamer getting struck twice for the same clip is unheard of. That is reportedly what happened to OmegaPro though, a variety streamer who broadcasts everything from "GTA" RP to JRPGs. After serving a two-day ban for a DMCA strike, OmegaPro was struck immediately with a new ban after going live on May 12. The second ban in just a week led to Twitch terminating his account permanently. The fist takedown was when he was playing "Persona 5," and the second one was when he covered "The Vampire Diaries." OmegaPro, who has 33,000 followers on the platform and 100,000 YouTube subscribers, relies on the platform as his main source of income. After filing an appeal, his channel is now back online, and OmegaPro now wants to work with Twitch and other parties to try and improve their DMCA processes for other streamers. OmegaPro said on Twitter that he would love to see Twitch change up how they handle DMCA. He thinks that an amazing place to start would be to wipe the strikes after a 90 day period, similar to how YouTube recently handles it, and how Twitch handles other TOS violations. The Twitch streamer also stated that although he understands the DMCA issues, he does not see a reason why DMCA violations should be a permanent mark on a creator's channel. Related Article: Twitch Streamer GeorgeNotFound Banned for Two Days For this Unusual Reason - His Username! This article is owned by Tech Times Written by Sophie Webster 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 13:27:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Photo taken on May 30, 2021 shows an empty classroom of a school after it was closed by government to curb COVID-19 spread in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. Afghanistan closed schools in 16 out of the country's 34 provinces from Saturday in the latest measure to further contain the spread of COVID-19, Afghan Public Health Ministry confirmed. (Photo by Sayed Mominzadah/Xinhua) KABUL, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan closed schools in 16 out of the country's 34 provinces from Saturday in the latest measure to further contain the spread of COVID-19, Afghan Public Health Ministry confirmed. The measure, which will be reviewed in two weeks upon health assessment, applies to all universities and schools, both public and private in Ghazni, Helmand, Kandahar, Logar, Nangarhar, Paktia, Parwan, Wardak, Panjshir, Balkh, Laghman, Badakhshan, Kapisa, Kunduz, Nimroz provinces, as well as Kabul province where the national capital Kabul city is located, the ministry said in a statement. The country has recently seen a spike in COVID-19 cases. On Friday, the number of COVID-19 national tally soared to 70,107 after 977 new cases were recorded, the highest number of daily cases since the disease outbreak in February last year. Meanwhile, 157 people recovered, taking the overall number of recoveries to 57,119 while 18 deaths were reported, raising the death toll to 2,899 during the cited period, according to ministry's figures. On Thursday, the ministry ordered the wedding halls to shut down operation by early June. The statement urged Afghan citizens to wear face masks in crowded places, practice physical distancing and keep personnel hygiene. Enditem Madisonville, KY (42431) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 95F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 71F. Winds light and variable. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 13:33:46|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close PHNOM PENH, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Cambodian Prime Minister Samdech Techo Hun Sen vowed on Saturday to provide COVID-19 vaccines to 10 million out of the country's 16 million population by early next year. The Southeast Asian nation launched a COVID-19 vaccination drive on Feb. 10, with China being the main vaccine supplier. To date, more than 2.46 million people have already been vaccinated, Hun Sen said, adding that for the Phnom Penh municipal dwellers, some 60 percent of them have already been inoculated. "We will do our best to achieve the goal of vaccinating our 10 million targeted population by the end of this year or the latest in early next year," he said in an audio message released publicly. The prime minister said some 4.5 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines will be arriving in Cambodia in June. The country on Saturday registered 588 new COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours, pushing the national case tally to 28,825, the health ministry said in a statement. Another seven new fatalities were confirmed, taking the overall death toll to 203, the ministry said, adding that another 415 patients recovered, bringing the total number of recoveries to 21,315. Enditem Leaders of the Baton Rouge Police Department affirmed Friday that officers violated internal policies when they entered an apartment uninvited, guns drawn to carry out a warrantless search. The raid came to light earlier this year after a federal judge slammed the officers for their actions, saying they could be charged with criminal trespassing. The judge also condemned a questionable traffic stop that preceded the search and excoriated Sgt. Ken Camallo, the lead officer in the case. A few months later, the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council awarded Clarence Green $35,000 in taxpayer money. He had sued the department, claiming the police encounter which landed him in jail on gun and drug charges for five months during the pandemic violated his constitutional rights. After federal judge calls bad BRPD bust 'foul' against justice system, city pays $35,000 settlement After a federal judge excoriated a Baton Rouge police officer for conducting a questionable traffic stop and warrantless search, the East Bato Prosecutors later dismissed the charges. The case received renewed attention this week following local and national media reports about the $35,000 settlement and public comments from the Baton Rouge mayor. "While the involved individuals have received a civil remedy in this matter, the officers involved must be held accountable," Mayor Sharon Weston Broome said in a statement Wednesday. "We take all actions of this sort very seriously. We cannot go down a path that continues to tear at the fabric of trust between law enforcement and citizens." Baton Rouge Police Chief Murphy Paul called a Friday press conference in response to the recent publicity, which largely focused on another controversial piece of the case. That is, when Camallo searched Green and his teenage brother after the traffic stop by looking in their underwear and groping their genitals in public view, according to the Green family attorney who released an edited version of the bodycam footage that caught those moments on video. Police say they found a fully loaded gun in Green's underwear. They say his brother also had a bag of marijuana hidden in his groin area. During Friday's press conference, Paul said those searches did not violate BRPD policy. Officials say the officers noticed both Green and his brother were moving in a way that suggested they were hiding something. Then, Camallo patted down Green and felt the gun in his pants, which the officer carefully removed for his own safety, officials said. Police later booked Green into jail, but the officers decided to release his younger brother to their mom. That's when the case became even more problematic. Camallo and another officer arrived at her apartment, but no one would answer the door or help them find her, officials said. After waiting outside for about 15 minutes, and having heard voices suggesting people were home, the cops let themselves in with guns drawn. Bodycam footage captured their forced entrance. Top stories in Baton Rouge in your inbox Twice daily we'll send you the day's biggest headlines. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up Officials said Friday that Camallo later claimed he was conducting a welfare check, making sure everyone inside was all right. Federal judge voids gun charge, calls bad BRPD bust a 'foul' against justice system Almost a year after the January 2020 traffic stop that landed Clarence Green in jail on a gun possession charge, federal prosecutors in Baton A complete version of bodycam footage from the case, which The Advocate obtained earlier this year, shows Camallo walking through various rooms with his weapon out, peering into closets using a light attached to the gun. After less than a minute, a woman appears from a back room and starts talking to the officers. The recording remains muted and the conversation inaudible for much of the interaction. Camallo testified in federal court that he meant to unmute his camera sooner. When it finally comes on, he's heard telling the woman he wants to search the room where Green and his brother sleep to make sure there was nothing "that could get them in trouble later." She first declines to consent to the search, but Camallo persists; the woman relents, leading him upstairs while insisting the officer would find nothing. He wound up spotting a rifle and shotgun inside the room, according to police reports. But prosecutors never charged Green or anyone else for the weapons. The warrantless search, along with the earlier traffic stop conducted "on the thinnest pretext," drew ire from the Baton Rouge judge. Chief District Judge Brian Jackson called the arrest and prosecution of Green "emblematic of precisely the type of foul blows universally condemned by our jurisprudence." His scathing opinion prompted BRPD leaders to launch an internal investigation against the officers involved. That led investigators to discover two other instances in which Camallo was involved in conducting inappropriate warrantless searches. One was in 2017 another case dismissed by a federal judge who deemed the search illegal and the second in 2019, officials said Friday. Camallo was found to have violated BRPD policies in all three cases. But officials said a discipline decision has yet to be made. Two other officers face ongoing internal investigations stemming from the same case, officials said. Their names were not released. During his remarks Friday, the police chief bemoaned the negative publicity his department has received since the edited bodycam footage was released this week. "I understand that tensions are high right now in America," he said. "Misinformation and half-truths do a disservice to everyone in our community. I understand that you want the information right now. But we want the information right. We have to get it right." State leaders are seeking federal support in the aftermath of severe rainfall and flooding that devastated many parts of South Louisiana, damaging at least 2,000 homes. In separate letters this past week, Gov. John Bel Edwards and U.S. Rep. Garret Graves, R-Baton Rouge, asked President Joe Biden to issue a disaster declaration for the state following the intense rainfall and flash flooding that recently swept across parts of Louisiana still struggling to recover from recent weather events. A presidential declaration would unlock federal recovery aid. Edwards declared a state emergency for the disaster on May 17, and the rainfall continued for four days. Some regions saw more than a foot of rain in 24 hours, Graves said in his letter. +7 'We're stuck': Floodwaters could take weeks to recede from this Ascension Parish community Houses stood as islands along an Ascension Parish community Monday as ibises and other waterfowl amassed in flooded yards, while residents shu The severe weather that quickly affected Louisiana in mid-May caused flash flooding and at least one tornado, Edwards wrote. "Five people died, thousands were without power and many businesses and schools were forced to close. The governor noted that "at least 2,000 homes" were damaged in the storm, but his Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness "anticipates that damage levels exceed the actual damage reported." Data gathered from the public through a government website tallied 1,729 houses damaged 640 with major damage and 1,084 with minor damage. Almost 700 reports of storm damage made in Baton Rouge and more might be coming Nearly 700 homes and businesses in East Baton Rouge Parish have reported flood and wind from last week when more than a foot of rain fell in j The damage caused by this rainstorm will have long-lasting effects on the people of South Louisiana and federal assistance is badly needed to jump start the recovery process, Graves said. Both Edwards and Graves emphasized that these communities in recent years have faced compounded tragedies, which, under federal law, lends more weight to consideration of a presidential disaster declaration. 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 Last year was the most active hurricane season in American history, and six different storms threatened Louisianas homeowners, Graves wrote in his May 25 letter. Every single parish in Louisiana was hit by at least one named storm in 2020, stressing emergency response resources that were already strained by the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, I requested that @POTUS declare a federal disaster declaration for Louisiana following severe weather and flash flooding earlier in May, which caused damage to at least 2,000 homes. Read about it here: https://t.co/MvVtlzp1VQ. #lagov #lawx John Bel Edwards (@LouisianaGov) May 28, 2021 In Calcasieu Parish, Edwards noted, many people affected by this months rainfall were still recovering from hurricanes Laura and Delta last year, and affected areas in the capital region had faced catastrophic flooding in 2016. We are coming off of an incredibly active hurricane season, an ongoing pandemic and facing down the next hurricane season in just a few days, the governor said. I am hopeful the president will grant this disaster declaration to assist our people with their rebuilding process. He requested FEMA Individual Assistance for Ascension, Calcasieu, East Baton Rouge, Iberville and Lafayette parishes, which includes aid for housing and other needs. Graves, who said he personally surveyed some of the devastation, urged Biden to instruct the administrator of FEMA to investigate the flooding and assess whether a presidential disaster declaration is needed. +4 Debris removal begins for hundreds of Baton Rouge homes damaged by May flood Moldy furniture, floorboards, carpet and other items from inside gutted homes lined the streets of the Morning Glen subdivision Thursday after "Having observed inundation in parts of Baton Rouge and Lake Charles that rival the historic destruction of the Louisiana Floods of 2016 and Hurricane Laura in 2020, Graves said, individual assistance and other federal aid is clearly necessary for homeowners to return to their homes. Graves also asked that a supplemental state request for aid include additional parishes, such as Lafourche, St. Charles and St. John the Baptist. Purchases made via links on our site may earn us an affiliate commission Demand for the Pfizer vaccine was outstripping that for AstraZeneca at the Sydney Olympic Park vaccination centre, according to those queueing up on Saturday. On a day when midday temperatures hovered around 15 centigrade, about 500 people lined up and many were under-50s seeking and receiving the Pfizer jab, having registered their interest with NSW Health. Monique Bennett and son Stefan at the NSW Health Vaccinination Centre at Sydney Olympic Park on Saturday. Credit:Cole Bennetts Monique Bennett, 59, and son Stefan, 23, from Mona Vale went for the Pfizer vaccine for Stefan, and Ms Bennett praised the running of the operation. It was a really positive experience, she said. I didnt get a jab because I am not in the age range and I will be waiting until I can possibly have the Pfizer. They were asking if anyone wanted the AstraZeneca, but I dont think there was a queue for that one. A victim of notorious paedophile Kevin Lynch who abused more than 130 children at a Brisbane school is raising funds to sue the institution for about $30 million. David Welsh when he was a boy at Brisbane Grammar. David Welsh said he was sexually abused by Lynch when he was 15 years old in 1985 while he attended Brisbane Grammar School in Spring Hill. The Royal Commission into child sexual abuse in 2017 examined allegations of abuse at Brisbane Grammar School and St Pauls School in Bald Hills, hearing evidence that school counsellor Lynch had sexually abused a large number of students during his employment at the school from 1973 to 1988. A number of former students gave evidence at the public hearing, detailing the devastating effect the abuse had on them. Healthline states that new research suggests children can transmit the virus even if they never show symptoms. Its time for a vaccine rollout for the workers in the early-childhood sector. Liz Harrison, Caulfield South They make it difficult Two recent articles highlight issues with sperm donation (Donation fears in sperm drought and Facebook not the best place to find a father, The Sunday Age, 23/5). Nobody ever seems to wonder why there is such a shortage of sperm donors, but I was about to donate when the Victorian government removed the option of anonymity. Not wanting to have additional children in my life, my interest in donating immediately disappeared. Outrageously, the government went further, removing anonymity retrospectively for donors who had relied upon it. Who is to say that future donor-conceived children couldnt claim child support or inheritances on the basis of their rights? With this level of risk Im amazed there are any sperm donors at all. Name withheld Consider the alternative Professor Fiona Russell questions the need for blanket school closures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 in communities, saying that schools should be opened or locked down based on their proximity to community cases (School closures come under fire, The Age, 28/5). Is Professor Russell aware of the considerable distance that many students (not to mention teachers) have to travel, often beyond the five-kilometre lockdown limit, to get to their schools? Any schools that remain open during a lockdown are an invitation for students/parents and teachers to be travelling all over the wider community, possibly infecting others in the process, in order to get to and from the places of learning. Is this really worth the risk? Furthermore, if Professor Russell considers a seven-day lockdown to be anxiety-provoking for children, then she also must acknowledge that a longer lockdown caused by a failure to get on top of this current outbreak now would have a considerably worse impact on the anxiety levels of school students both now and into the future. Justin Shaw, Ringwood East This is why we use Airbnb Ben Groundwater, the reason we stay in Airbnb-type accommodation is precisely because they are not hotels (Airbnb hosts clean up on fees, The Age, 28/5). We get free Wi-Fi, washing machines, sofas to lie on, windows that open and glorious space. We can get a sense of living like a local. For that, we pay a cleaning fee and behave respectfully by leaving the place as we found it. If this is too much to ask then I suggest that you stick to hotels and leave the rest of us to holiday as we choose. Jo Wilson, South Melbourne This is bound to fail Ross Gittins is correct (Reform of human services sectors another example of magical thinking, Business, 29/5). The privatisation of human services formerly provided by the public sector is bound to fail. It is the same with private prisons, private hospitals, private healthcare and private disability services. At the end of the day, the only way to increase ones profit is by cutting services to the people youre supposed to be caring for. The privatisation of human services involves a contradiction. Tony Adami, Caulfield South The remains of 215 indigenous children forcibly removed from their families have been found at a mass grave at a former residential school in Canada. The grave was found on the site of a school set up by the Roman Catholic church in 1890 and closed in 1977. It was part of a network of establishments across Canada set up to assimilate native children. The remains described as many, many years old included those of children as young as 3, The New York Times reported. A plaque is seen outside of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on Tkemlups te Secwepemc First Nation in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada. Credit:The Canadian Press/AP According to one estimate, more than 150,000 children were sent to the schools, where they were banned from speaking their own languages or following their cultural traditions. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 13:46:03|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Mongolia observed the International Day of UN Peacekeepers on Saturday, on which Mongolian President Khaltmaa Battulga conferred the Order of Genghis Khan, the country's highest state award, to the Mongolian Armed Forces. "On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Mongolian Armed Forces and the annual observance of the International Day of UN Peacekeepers, I am conferring the highest state honor to the total personnel of the Armed Forces of Mongolia for promoting the country's reputation in the world and helping to build peace across the globe," Battulga said at the award ceremony held in the central square of the country's capital Ulan Bator. Mongolia, with a population of 3.3 million, ranks 23rd country in the world with its significant contribution of peacekeepers to the United Nations. Since its dispatch of two military observers in 2002, Mongolia has sent more than 18,000 troops to UN peacekeeping operations around the globe. There are now 900 Mongolian peacekeepers in missions in Abyei, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, South Sudan, the Western Sahara and Yemen under the UN mandate to support and assist in creating a safe and secure environment in the conflict zones and protect civilians from violence, according to the UN. Enditem Conway, AR (72032) Today Sunshine and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 95F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 74F. Winds light and variable. Staff Reporter Nyamekye Daniel has been a journalist for five years. She was the managing editor for the South Florida Media Network and a staff writer for The Miami Times. Daniel's work has also appeared in the Sun-Sentinel, Miami Herald and The New York Times. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 14:10:02|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close ULAN BATOR, May 29 (Xinhua) -- More than 1,025,300 people, or 49.6 percent of Mongolian adults, have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19, the health ministry said Saturday. More than 1,847,200 people, or 89 percent of the adult population nationwide, have so far received their first vaccine dose, the ministry said. Under the motto "For COVID-free summer, let's get vaccinated," Mongolia launched a national vaccination campaign in late February, with the aim of vaccinating all the adult population in the country. As of Saturday, Mongolia has confirmed a total of 56,621 COVID-19 cases and 282 related deaths. Enditem Managing Editor Delphine Luneau is a veteran journalist with more than 20 years of experience. She was the editor of Suburban Life Media when its flagship was named best weekly in Illinois, and she has worked at papers in South Carolina, Indiana, Idaho and New York. Up for debate: Live legislation tracker Check out the latest developments on bills pending before state lawmakers in four key topics. We're always interested in hearing about news in our community. Let us know what's going on! Submit Here Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 15:48:39|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Maryam (1st R) and Fatima (2nd R) are seen in Kabul, Afghanistan, May 26, 2021. (Photo by Rahmatullah Alizadah/Xinhua) KABUL, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Many countries would be observing the International Children's Day on June 1 to highlight the rights of children, but in war-torn Afghanistan, children here are only looking forward to seeing the end of war in their country. "My earnest and utmost desire in my life is to see the war end and peace return in Afghanistan so as to enable the children to go to school free of fear and terrorist attacks," said 14-year-old Bibi Fatima, a grade nine student who survived a terrorist attack earlier this month. Over 80 people were killed and some 150 wounded after three consecutive explosions rocked outside Fatima's school, the Sayedul Shuhada School in western Kabul on May 8. "We were coming out from the school in the afternoon when a blast rocked the area and threw away the students. Seconds later, two more blasts shocked the area (again). I lost consciousness and found myself and my classmates in a hospital," Fatima recalled. Children's rights have been overlooked in Afghanistan, Fatima said. Afghan civilians including children have been bearing the brunt of the prolonged war in their homeland. A report of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) released in mid April confirmed the increase in civilian casualties, saying it documented 1,783 civilian casualties in the first three months of 2021. According to the UNAMA report, the casualties included 573 killed and 1,210 injured, with a 37-percent increase in women and 23-percent increase in child casualties compared with the first quarter of last year. "I was injured in the terrorist attack on our school. My eyes have yet to recover, although they have improved and can read books presently," Maryam, another victim of the school attack, told Xinhua. "If children had any rights in Afghanistan they would never have been harmed. No doubt, (Afghan) children have rights, and they should enjoy their rights like in other countries. I am calling on all Afghans to respect our rights and stop attacking us," Maryam said, wiping the tears in her eyes. "The war has deprived me of schooling. I hate the war and desire peace (in order) to get education," Rahmatullah, a nine-year-old displaced child in Kabul, told Xinhua. Rahmatullah's friend, eight-year-old Pasarlai who left the eastern Laghman province to escape the war, recalled that one day a mortar mine slammed into his residence, killing one person and forcing his father to move to Kabul. "Here we have no school. Let's stop the war and enable the children to get education," said Pasarlai, who now lives in a makeshift camp of Internally Displace People (IDP) in Kabul. To provide education for children, especially in the countryside, Afghansitan's Ministry for Education announced in April to hire 11,000 teachers. The government is also working to build 6,000 new schools across the country within a couple of years, according to the ministry's spokesperson Nooria Nazhat. The Afghan government and the United Nations Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) initiated a program last year to protect the poor and vulnerable children in Afghanistan, which includes providing education, banning exploitation and preventing hiring children by military units. If these plans could be implemented successfully, they would help improve the living conditions of Afghan children and offer hope for the future. Enditem This is the temporary subscription pass for users returning from the Vision Data subscription process. Your subscription will be updated within 24 hours, after your information is verified. Please click the button below to get your pass. RENSSELAER - Mary Ellen Murin, of Rensselaer, formerly of West Oneonta, passed away on Thursday, June 10, 2021. She was 88 years old. Mary Ellen was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. She graduated from Linden High School, Linden, New Jersey in 1950. She attended Trenton State Teachers College i FileFarms and rural areas not connected to high power poles had this as their only choice if they wanted electricity. While this ad appeared in the Oneonta Star of Sept. 28, 1917, rural electrification hadnt changed much locally into the early 1940s. Click the image to the left and log in to get your exclusive reader perks. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 17:36:11|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close BANGKOK, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Thailand on Saturday reported 4,803 new COVID-19 cases and 34 more fatalities as the country still grappled with its worst coronavirus outbreak since the pandemic began. The tally, the third highest on a single day after a record count of 9,635 on May 17 and 4,887 on May 13, raised the country's total caseload to 149,779, according to the Center for the COVID-19 Situation Administration (CCSA). The new fatalities brought the country's death toll to 988. The country's total cases have more than quadrupled since the beginning of April, when the third wave of outbreak started to spread from the capital Bangkok, with cumulative deaths up more than ninefold. The new infections reported Saturday included 2,702 found at prisons and 51 imported cases, CCSA spokesman Taweesin Visanuyothin told a daily briefing. By regions, Bangkok still led the list of new infections, with 1,054 new cases detected over the past 24 hours and 43 active clusters having been reported. Some 46,480 patients are under treatment at hospitals nationwide, with 1,221 in critical conditions, according to the CCSA. Thailand announced Friday that it has approved China's Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine for emergency use, following the approvals of AstraZeneca, Sinovac, Johnson & Johnson and Moderna vaccines. To help contain the outbreak, the Thai government plans to roll out a mass inoculation campaign next month and aims to vaccinate 70 percent of its nearly 70 million population by the end of this year. Enditem 2 College Students Meet by Chance on Bus, Discover They Once Lived in Same Orphanage in China A pair of Virginia college students thought they were strangers when they found themselves sitting beside each other on a campus bus. But after striking up a casual conversation, they found they had some incredible things in common: they were both adopted, and both came from the same orphanagein China. The two students say their meeting was nothing short of Gods will. It was Ally Cole, 21, who filled the empty seat beside Ruby Wierzbicki, 19, back in April. They swapped profiles of their hometownsAlly is from Maryland and Ruby, New Jersey. Ally Cole (L) and Ruby Wierzbicki. (Courtesy of Ruby Wierzbicki and Ally Cole) Then they learned theyd both been adopted from China to the United States. In a country of 1.44 billion people, the chances of them coming from the same place are practically nil. But they had. Both had been born in the city of Jinan. Moreover, the chances of them meeting on a swarming college campusLiberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginiawere even slimmer. Yet, scrolling for photos, the pair held their devices side by side and found proof. We realized that everything matched, and we knew that it had to be the same place, Ruby told Libertys news outlet. It turns out, theyd been adopted just a week apart, from the Jinan Social Welfare Institute 15 years ago. Ally was 6 at the time, while Ruby was 4. (Left) A photo shows Ruby (L) and Ally (R) together as children. (Courtesy of Ruby Wierzbicki and Ally Cole); (Right) Ally (L) and Ruby. (Courtesy of Ally Cole) They stepped off the campus bus and delved deeper into the incredible coincidence; the students even found photos of themselves standing next to each other, neither knowing who the other girl was at the time. Ruby had a lot of photos of me that Id never seen before and photos where we were together, said Ally. We even had a mutual friend from the orphanage, Emma, that we each had photos with. Ruby said the pair were in shock. (Left) Ruby in China; (Right) Ally at the same orphanage. (Courtesy of Ruby Wierzbicki and Ally Cole) Ally concurred, I think I was just in shock that I actually knew someone from my past. I think it didnt really hit me until after I went to class. The 21-year-old had already made peace with the blank space of her past, but embraced filling in some of the missing pieces with her new friend Ruby, calling the opportunity a blessing. Both students had also chosen other colleges initially before falling in love with Liberty, a private evangelical Christian university, during a College For A Weekend tour. Ruby studies exercise science; meanwhile, Ally studies graphic design. God really does have our lives according to His plan and in His control, Ruby reflected. (Left) (Courtesy of Liberty University); (Right) Ruby (R) and Ally reunited years later in the U.S. (Courtesy of Ally Cole) There are people Ive talked to about this and theyve said, What a coincidence, she continued. But we think that this is 100 percent God. Theres no way that two people who were in the same orphanage in a different country can somehow end up at the same school at the same time, and have it not be God. 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 Anti-Racism Consultation for American Schools Is Becoming a Lucrative Business In todays environment of political correctness, a new service is capitalizing on American schools growing demand for anti-racist education. Ethnic studies consultants are making a fortune in the diversity marketplace by providing their services to Americas schools and corporate workplaces. The training they offer, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, has become a lucrative industry in recent years. The trend is apparent on job search platform Indeed.com. One will find thousands of pages of hiring postings when conducting a search for DEI-related jobs. Elite Private Schools at the Forefront The Dalton School, in the Upper East Side New York City, where tuition runs to more than $54,000 a year, hit the headlines in mainstream media in December last year when dozens of faculty members signed an anti-racist manifesto. Listed as the first request of their wide-range of demands, they asked to hire 12 full-time diversity officers and multiple psychologists to support students coping with race-based traumatic stress. The appeal was met with backlash from the Dalton community. A group of alumni and parents posted an open letter online in late January asking, How else can we interpret a curriculum night where every single class, from science to social studies to physical education, must now be rewritten to embody anti-racism? When so many of Daltons extraordinary faculty sign a letter that shows little interest in the education of children, the joy of learning or the kids intellectual development? The authors specifically blamed Pollyanna, a leading DEI education consultancy in Manhattan, for its racial literacy curriculum, which has already permeated Dalton classes from social studies to science and contributed to some of the worst abuses this year, referring to incidents like a Jewish student being forced to play the racist cop in a science class, and the art class talking about decentering whiteness. Pollyanna, DEI Consultant for 78 Elite Private Schools The founder of Pollyanna, Casper Caldarola, had been a longtime trustee of the Dalton School, where she led the boards Community and Diversity Committee. In that same time period, she also worked as director of communications at Allen-Stevenson, a private boys school in New Yorks Upper East Side. She started Pollyanna in 2015 as a part-time project. By 2018, her business had grown tremendously, and Pollyanna became her full-time job. Currently, there are 78 top private schools across the country on Pollyannas client roster, including schools in Manhattan, Cambridge, Providence, San Francisco, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles, and Connecticut. These include the top schools in the country, such as Grace Church School, a Manhattan school that charges $57,000 a year, the Brearley School, a private all-girls school in the Upper East Side neighborhood of Manhattan, as well as NYCs Hunter College Elementary School, a very popular school among Chinese Americans. In March this year, an inclusive language guide from Grace Church School states that mom and dad should be replaced with words like grown-ups, folks, or family. When a school hires Pollyanna for a curriculum upgrade, teachers and staff participate in Pollyannas bespoke 360-degree review of the schools racism, such as being asked how white supremacy culture shows up in our practices and behaviors? A Highly Profitable Business Pollyannas revenue, according to the organizations latest tax filings, nearly doubled in 2019 to more than $410,000. Income from services provided was over $250,000, 5.6 times that of its 2018 figure. Caldarola is the only permanent employee of her company. It is not uncommon for DEI training services to get handsome payments for their work. An April 20 article from Tablet Magazine reported that a consultancy called Community Responsive Education Corp. billed $11,000 for teacher training at San Diego countys Poway Unified School District, $65,000 for a keynote address and a professional development workshop series for the leadership team of Chula Vista Elementary, and $40,000 to facilitate the development of Ethnic Studies units and lessons at the Jefferson Elementary School District, south of San Francisco. Notably, the consulting company is a leading trainer for a Boston consortium of educators, which Tablet noted is a project partly funded by the NoVo Foundation, which is co-chaired by Peter Buffett, the youngest son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Similarly, in early May, NYC Leadership Academy received $49,600 from Fairfax County Public Schools to draft and conduct an Anti-Racism, Anti-Bias Curriculum Policy Survey to promote the quasi-Marxist critical race theory (CRT), according to Parents Defending Education. Ineffective and Counterproductive In January, 35 Professors from 31 universities wrote a joint letter to California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond and President of California State Board of Education Linda Darling-Hammond, sharing their analysis results of research papers often cited to support CRT courses. After careful analysis of the four articles cited in support of the overarching and specific claims, we have found that none of these papers provides sufficient evidence for the claims that are attributed to it, the professors wrote, adding that the reported study was descriptive and non-empirical in nature. For instance, ethnic studies advocates incorrectly claimed that the program led to increases in both attendance and standardized test scores. In fact, neither student attendance, nor test performance were addressed in the study. Tablet quoted Southern Connecticut State University professor Corrine Blackmer, a signatory of the joint letter, who said, Theres no proof that any of this is efficacious, in any way, shape, or form. The contempt for fact and evidence can only be described as breathtaking. The report further pointed out that DEI training initiatives are frequently ineffective and even counterproductive, in that not only did they fail to reduce bias, improve morale, increase opportunity for minority groups, or boost productivity and workplace satisfaction, but often had the opposite effect. New York Assemblyman William Colton, who had previously worked as a public school teacher for eleven years, told The Epoch Times that he believes promoting CRT and DEI courses in schools will divide people and incite hatred in our society. I dont think that is a good idea. You kind of end up distorting everyones vision, Colton said. Everyone should be working together no matter what the color of someones skin, or where they came from, or what religion. Its a mistake just to focus on racism. We have to focus on the opposite of racism, which is love and working together. The more people we get doing that, the better off youre going to be to get rid of racism and hate. Left-leaning academics once championed ideological diversity, for that was the route to disseminate and legitimize their own views. Now that they have captured the university, viewpoint diversity is perceived as dangerous. (Spiroview Inc/Shutterstock) At University, Ideological Dissent Is Not Welcome Commentary Lisa Keogh, a law student at Abertay University in Dundee, Scotland, was attending an online class when she was asked to express her opinion. The question was, what is a woman? In a BBC interview on May 18, Keogh said that because of her answerthat women have female reproductive organsthe university is investigating her for discrimination. Depending upon the outcome, she may face disciplinary action. At modern universities, ideological dissent is unwelcome. In a study released in March, Eric Kaufmann, a politics professor at the University of London, quantified the intolerance. The academy, of course, overwhelmingly leans to the left. In some departments, the ideological spectrum spans from moderately progressive to over-the-cliff neo-Marxist critical race theorist. Kaufmann surveyed thousands of academics across North America and Britain and found that a significant proportion discriminate against conservatives in hiring, promotion, grants, and publications. Well over half of the relatively few right-leaning academics perceived a hostile work environment and acknowledged self-censoring in research and teaching. Particularly in social sciences and humanities, where political views are manifest in peoples work and there is a lopsided political skew, Kaufmann wrote, the result is a discriminatory effect against conservatives and other intellectual minorities. Universities once imagined that they were engaged in a search for truth. Variety in ideological and philosophical perspectives is essential to that mission. Discovery is possible when it is safe to question orthodoxy in an environment of open inquiry. Setting competing views against each other generates ideas and exposes errors. One of John Stuart Mills most revered passages reads, He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion . Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form. In 2016, Jonathan Haidt, a professor of psychology and ethics at New York Universitys Stern School of Business, argued that at many universities, the search for truth has been replaced by a quest for social justice. These two missions are incompatible, Haidt wrote: At Truth U, there is no such thing as blasphemy. Bad ideas get refuted, not punished. But at SJU, there are many blasphemy laws there are ideas, theories, facts, and authors that one cannot use. The patron saint of social justice universities, according to Haidt, is not John Stuart Mill but Karl Marx, who wrote, The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it. Our universities are now dedicated less to dispassionate investigation than to political activism. The previous year, Haidt and two colleagues, concerned that a lack of ideological diversity was having a negative impact on the quality of research in their disciplines, put together a website and blog, called Heterodox Academy, as a place for social science academics to discuss challenges inside their universities. HxA, as it is known, has since grown into an international, non-partisan organization of over 5,000 professors, administrators, and students whose mission is to promote viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement as the foundations of the academic enterprise. Its vision, as expressed on its website, is an academy eager to welcome professors, students, and speakers who approach problems and questions from different points of view. As its tagline says, Great minds dont always think alike. Modern universities rarely embrace this vision. Instead, their strategic plans and mission statements typically identify a set of political values and goals such as equity, diversity, and inclusion. Diversity means variation in skin colour, not in ideas. Ideological diversity is anathema to these causes. Left-leaning academics once championed ideological diversity, for that was the route to disseminate and legitimize their own views. Now that they have captured the university, viewpoint diversity is perceived as dangerous. At my law school, our faculty board recently rejected by a vote of 33 to 4 a proposal to add viewpoint diversity as a value and goal to its strategic plan. Viewpoint diversity, along with HxA itself, was said to be an alt-right ploy that might weaponize those who do not agree that society should be transformed in accordance with the values expressed in the plan. Viewpoint diversity is not the same thing as academic freedom. Academic freedom means that faculty members can express their views without interference or censure. Viewpoint diversity means that the institution aspires to variety in philosophical and ideological perspectives. Academic freedom does not produce viewpoint diversity if most academics are already singing the same song. Universities can safely endorse academic freedom as an important institutional value without endangering the status quo. Commitment to viewpoint diversity, on the other hand, threatens the prevailing consensus because it might oblige universities to hire new professors of conservative, classically liberal, and/or libertarian persuasions. The alternative to viewpoint diversity is an academic culture of homogeneity and conformity. Universities have become political institutions that prefer fidelity to the prevailing ideological view. Students who seek education rather than indoctrination should beware. Bruce Pardy is professor of law at Queens University, and a member of the Heterodox Academy. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks before signing Senate Bill 7072 into law at Florida International University in Miami on May 24, 2021. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times) Biden Administration Sides With Florida in Seeking to Dismiss Canadian Drug Import Lawsuit The Biden administration has filed a motion in federal court seeking to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a pharmaceutical lobby group against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) that aims to block prescription drug imports from Canada. With the motion to dismiss, the Biden administration is essentially siding with Florida and New Mexico, the only states that have applied for approval of Canadian drug imports. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference in Lakeland, Florida, on May 28 that importing prescription medicines from Canada would save Floridians $80 million to $150 million in drug costs within a year, according to ClickOrlando. Floridas application for HHS approval to import Canadian drugs has been under review for approximately six months. We were told that if it wasnt denied last week that we should assume its going to be approved, but you know we want to get that final approval, because once we do, then all this stuff goes in motion, DeSantis said. The Biden administrations motion, filed on May 28 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and obtained by The Epoch Times, calls for the suit to be dismissed on grounds of standing and ripeness, which is the idea that the lawsuit was brought too earlybefore the plaintiffs incurred any actual injury. Because Plaintiffs cannot establish standing or ripeness, the Court cannot decide the case, wrote attorneys James Harlow and Kimberly Stephens, arguing that since the case demonstrates neither fitness nor hardship, it is not ripe. The prudent and legally required course is to defer review. The motion relates to a lawsuit filed by Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), a trade group representing companies in the U.S. pharmaceutical industry. In November 2020, the group filed a complaint challenging a final rule issued by HHS and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that PhRMA claims allows pharmacists and wholesalers to import certain prescription drugs from Canada into the United States without drug manufacturers authorization or oversight, presenting significant safety risks. In issuing the rule, which went into effect in November of last year, the FDA said its aim was to achieve a significant reduction in the cost of covered products to the American consumer while posing no additional risk to the publics health and safety. The rule was to be implemented by time-limited Section 804 Importation Programs (SIP), with applicants having to specify the eligible drugs, which the FDA described as those that could be sold legally on either the Canadian market or the American market with appropriate labeling. It also required U.S. importers to conduct or arrange for testing of the eligible prescription drugs for authenticity and degradation, and to make sure they comply with existing specifications and standards. PhRMA argued in its complaint (pdf) that there were risks inherent in importation outside the drug manufacturers control and that it was likely such importation would yield little to no savings for American consumers. The group also argued that the rule violated manufacturers First Amendment rights and raise serious questions under the Fifth Amendment Takings Clause, which is the idea that private property may not be taken for public use without fair compensation. In its filing, attorneys representing the Biden administration provided a series of arguments in support of the safety measures inherent in SIP applications. They also argued that, since the rule has never been implemented, the plaintiffs have failed to show that their injury is actual or imminent, not conjectural or hypothetical. After the lawsuit was filed, PhRMA Executive Vice President and general counsel James Stansel argued that FDA resources were stretched thin in responding to the pandemic and that the administration was exposing Americans to risks. It is alarming that the administration chose to pursue a policy that threatens public health at the same time that we are fighting a global pandemic, Stansel said in a statement. FDA has noted it is struggling to keep up with approving medicines while working around the clock to support COVID-19 therapeutics and vaccine development. Despite this, the administration is willing to divert precious FDA resources away from these efforts and to expose Americans to the risks that come with drug importation schemes. Former President Donald Trump backed the Canadian drug import plan as a way to get cheaper medicines. DeSantis was the first state governor to submit a proposal under the plan. Long time VTA employee Samuel Cassidy, 57, the rail yard massacre gunman, killed nine people at San Jose Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) rail yard where he worked, on May 26, 2021. (VTA/Zuma Press/TNS) California Rail Yard Gunman Amassed Weapons Cache at Home He Torched The transit employee who fatally shot nine co-workers at a rail yard in San Jose, California, had amassed a collection of 12 firearms, multiple Molotov cocktails, and 22,000 rounds of ammunition at his home before setting it on fire, the local sheriff said on Friday. But an FBI official said the blaze that incinerated the house also likely destroyed evidence for determining the precise motive behind Wednesdays mass murder at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) light rail maintenance yard. Authorities say Samuel Cassidy, 57, was armed with three semi-automatic handguns when he opened fire after a morning union meeting at the commuter rail facility in the heart of Silicon Valley, south of San Francisco. Cassidy shot himself minutes later as police arriving on the scene closed in, according to the sheriffs account. Local NBC affiliate KNTV, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, reported that Cassidy had recently been accused of making inappropriate racial remarks to colleagues while on the job as a VTA station maintenance worker. This combo of images provided by the Valley Transportation Authority shows the nine victims of a shooting at a VTA rail yard in San Jose, Calif., on May 26, 2021. (T-L) Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, Adrian Balleza, Alex Fritch, Jesus Hernandez III. (B-L) Lars Lane, Paul Megia, Timothy Romo, Michael Rudometkin, and Taptejdeep Singh. (Valley Transportation Authority via AP) But the news outlet later rolled back on its report that Cassidy had faced a workplace pre-disciplinary hearing the day of the shooting, after the VTA issued a statement denying any such meeting was planned for Wednesday, or at any other time. The transit agency said Cassidy had been scheduled to report for a regular workday on Wednesday. As to questions about whether Cassidy ever said or did anything to make fellow employees fearful or uneasy, the VTA said it was reviewing its records and we are hopeful to be able to release more information as soon as we are able. Weapons, Signs of Discontent On Thursday, Santa Clara County Sheriff Laurie Smith said Cassidy was known to have been a highly disgruntled VTA employee for many years, which may have motivated his attack, the latest of at least nine U.S. mass shootings over the past three months that each claimed four or more lives. In her latest update on the investigation, Smith said on Friday that an initial search of Cassidys fire-gutted home uncovered multiple cans of gasoline, Molotov cocktails, a dozen guns, and some 22,000 rounds of various types of ammunition. Police respond to a shooting in San Jose, Calif., on May 26, 2021. (Courtesy of KGO) Law enforcement officers gather near the site of a reported shooting in San Jose, Calif., on May 26, 2021. (Courtesy of KGO) A sweep of the rail yard, prompted by the discovery of what police called suspicious objects on the property, ultimately turned up no explosives, Smith said. Still, the evidence showed this was a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could, the sheriff said in her statement. In an on-camera interview with KNTV, Smith said the gunman fired an estimated 39 shots. As the investigation progressed, signs of Cassidys discontent emerged on several fronts. His ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, told local media he had ranted about co-workers and bosses and would sometimes lash out at her. The Wall Street Journal, citing a Department of Homeland Security memo, reported that U.S. customs and border officers detained Cassidy in 2016 as he returned from the Philippines and found that he professed a hatred of his workplace. At the time Cassidy had in his possession books about terrorism and fear and manifestos as well as a black memo book filled with lots of notes about how he hates the VTA, the Journal quoted the memo as stating. Attempts to pin down a motive for the mass murder were hampered because electronic evidence was destroyed in the fire that gutted Cassidys house. Theres a high probability that we lost the ability to do exploitation of devices. The house was incinerated, the second floor collapsed, Craig Fair, special agent in charge of the FBIs field office in San Francisco, said on KNTV. Screenshot of a video taken on May 16, 2021, showing pastor Tim Stephens, of Fairview Baptist Church in Calgary, Alberta, hugging his children before he was taken away by the local police. Stephens was arrested for violating the provincial public health order limiting social gatherings amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. (Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms) Canadas Christian Foundations Crumbling Under COVID-19 Restrictions, Says Pastor Canadas Christian foundations are being eroded by restrictive COVID-19 regulations, says Alberta Pastor Tim Stephens, who was arrested in mid-May for defying the provinces public health orders. Our concern is that maybe this is just a small preview about what myself and other pastors will face in this country, as we continue to experience a change in the view of the world that is leaving behind our Christian heritage and roots, and really a view of the world now that sees Christian morality and ethics as hostile, as dangerous, Stephens told The Epoch Times. Stephens is the third Alberta pastor who has been arrested for defying the Alberta Health Services (AHS) public health orders over the past few months. Stephens was arrested after giving a Sunday sermon at the Fairview Baptist Church in Calgary on May 16 and was jailed for three days. About a week earlier, Calgary Pastor Artur Pawlowski and his brother, David Pawlowski, were arrested after holding a church service, and pastor James Coates of Edmontons GraceLife Church was detained in February. The AHS dropped its Contempt of Court Application against Stephens, meaning he will not be going to a hearing as previously scheduled in June, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, the non-profit legal organization representing Stephens, said on May 28. Stephens said that by imposing quarantine and lockdown measures, the government is taking away peoples ability to make decisions for themselves amid the pandemic, and that this is hurting the most vulnerable Canadians. Your freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, freedom of movement to go from one place to the nextthe government is explicitly removing those things, he said. Were seeing people languish and suffer under [the restrictions], because as a church we deal with people who are vulnerable, people who are struggling with addictions, and people who are low-income, poor. These are the people who are most hurt by these lockdowns and restrictions, not the politicians and doctors who are making those decisions. On May 6, the AHS obtained a court order in relation to Whistle Stop Cafe, a restaurant in the hamlet of Mirror that had opened against provincial orders. The order allowed police to arrest individuals for organizing an in-person gathering, including requesting, inciting or inviting others to attend an Illegal Public Gathering, which is defined as one that does not comply with masking, physical distancing, and limited gathering requirements ordered by the chief medical officer of health. Stephens was arrested under the same order. However, the Justice Centre was able to have the charges against the pastor dropped because the AHS hadnt served him with the court order he was accused of having violated. Separately, the Justice Centre successfully had the AHSs May 6 order amended on May 13, making it applicable only to the entities listed in the order rather than to all Albertans. Stephens described the COVID-19 measuresincluding travel limitations, lockdowns, and quarantineas a form of soft totalitarianism, which goes against Canadians Charter rights as well as Biblical teachings. They, in essence, see themselves as governors of every aspect of peoples lives, including in your home, who can go in your home or not, or how many can gather together for church or outside or indoors. Its really quite astounding that they think they have the duty or responsibility to do this, he said. Moving forward, Stephens said his church will continue to provide services to the community. This scanning electron microscope image, published on Feb. 13, 2020, shows SARS-CoV-2 (yellow)also known as the CCP virusthe virus that causes COVID-19, isolated from a patient in the U.S., emerging from the surface of cells (blue/pink) cultured in the lab. (Courtesy of NIAID-RML) CCP Virus Likely Came From Chinese Lab: Former State Department Contractor The virus that causes COVID-19 probably didnt originate in nature, according to a former State Department contractor. It came out of nowhere, and it was optimized for transmission between humans in a way that no bat-borne coronavirus ever had been. So whats up? A pangolin gets mated with a bat gets mated with a furin cleavage site of a human being? How does that happen? Its not probable, David Asher, who worked for the department during the Trump administration, said on Fox News The Story. The first cases of the illness, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, cropped up in China in late 2019; the origins of the virus arent known. The State Department had begun an investigation under former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, he previously confirmed. While reports indicated the probe was shut down by the new administration in recent weeks, the department disputed that claim. There has been incorrect reporting that the BidenHarris Administration shut down an investigation by the State Departments Bureau of Arms Control and Verification and Compliance (AVC) into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ned Price, a spokesperson for the agency, told The Epoch Times in an email. In February and March of 2021, the teams findings were briefed to AVC and Policy Planning policy staff in the new administration. With the report delivered, the work was ended. The contract continues, focused on other, arms-control-related work related to AVCs portfolio. All relevant parts of the Department continue to work with the interagency on this matter. The world continues to have serious questions about the earliest days of the COVID-19 pandemic, including its origins within the Peoples Republic of China. Asher said he led the probe into the virus origins and that the team found scant evidence that the virus came from an animal. Statistically, the chances the virus originated in nature was pegged by biostatisticians as 1 in 13 million to 1 in 13 billion, he said. Asher pointed to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level laboratory in the Chinese city where the first COVID-19 cases emerged. We had very definitive information, only a bit of which we put out publicly, that showed they were engaged in this classified, secret effort to develop these super viruses and that it appeared it had spilled out of that laboratory, he said on Fox. That was the only plausible information that we were presented. Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield has also supported the lab leak theory, telling CNN in March: I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human. And at that moment in time, the virus that came to the human became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission. Normally, when a pathogen goes from a zoonotic to human, it takes a while for it to figure out how to become more and more efficient in humans, human transmission. I just dont think this makes biological sense. A group of international researchers earlier in May pushed for a proper investigation into the origins of the CCP virus, after a World Health Organization-led probe ruled the possibility of laboratory origins unlikely. U.S. intelligence agencies dont know where, when, or how the CCP virus was transmitted initially, Amanda Schoch, assistant director of national intelligence for strategic communications, said last week. The intelligence community, which consists of more than a dozen agencies, has coalesced around two likely scenarios, she added: a natural emergency from humans coming into contact with infected animals, or a lab accident. President Joe Biden has said he supports a probe into the viruss origins. He said recently he ordered the intelligence community to report to him within 90 days about what theyve found. Biden told reporters on May 27 that he will release the report to the public unless theres something I am unaware of. Chicago Mayor Calls All Hands on Deck to Stem Summer Violence CHICAGOChicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday unveiled a whole-of-government safety plan where law enforcement, city services, and community organizations work together to stem a likely summer crime spike, especially in the neighborhoods plagued by gun violence. The announcement came the day before Memorial Day weekend, which has been the unofficial start of summer carnage in Chicago for decades. Last year, Chicago saw the deadliest Memorial Day weekend in five years, with nine people shot dead and 30 people injured. When I talk about a whole-of-government approach, Lightfoot, a Democrat, said at a press conference, [I] mean the fire department, the police department, the libraries, the parks, CPS (Chicago Public School system,) DFSS (Chicago Department of Family and Support Services,) and Chicago Department of Public Health. Nonprofit community organizations and faith leaders are also invited to join the efforts by providing young black men meaningful summer activities as an alternative to violent street life. We owe it to all of our residents, in every neighborhood, to bring peace and vibrancy back, Lightfoot said. Accomplishing this mission is not easy, nor can it be done alone. But we have an obligation to continue this fight, literally, for our residents lives. These efforts will be focused on the 15 most violent beats on the South and West Side, which account for over half of the violence in the city. Chicago is divided up into 22 police districts and about 280 police beats. As an effort to get more officers onto the streets over the Memorial Day weekend, Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown canceled police officers days off and extended their shifts to 12 hours. I want to thank all of our officers and their families for their sacrifice and their dedication, Brown said at the press conference. Have fun over the holiday but know that Chicago police officers will be serving you and this community with everything they have, risking all to protect. One police officer, who didnt disclose his name, told The Epoch Times that he wasnt bothered much by the canceled holidays. Its a part of the job, he said, Ive missed lots of holidays and birthdays. [It] comes with the territory. The demanding work schedule makes it difficult for officers to cope with life outside their job, such as taking care of their children, especially for families that have both parents employed at the police department, according to Eugene Roy, a former Chicago Police Department chief of detectives. He has rallied nearly 1,000 retired police officers to help their working peers with errands and house chores, like getting children off to school, going shopping, and picking up medication from the drug store. China in Focus: Beijing Firms Are Collecting American DNA: Report In this special report, we discuss Beijings ambition over one of the most sensitive types of dataDNA. The Chinese Communist Party is allegedly collecting DNA around the world through a state-linked company offering COVID-19 testing assistance to other countriesgranting it access to peoples biometric data. Bill Evanina, former director of the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center, said on CBS, They are the ultimate company that shows connectivity to both the communist state as well as the military apparatus. The company has been working with the Chinese military, as Beijing looks to weaponize artificial intelligence and gene-editing. And its not just for domestic control, but also to further its global ambitions. John Ratcliffe, sixth Director of National Intelligence, said on Fox Business last December, The Peoples Republic of China has two million strong in its military and its trying to make them stronger through gene editing. Wang Jian, founder of Beijing Genomics Institute, previously said, I hope that our actions can surpass the industrial age and allow China to lead the world in the next one hundred years. How far has China already gotten in building its genetic data trove? And what would its success mean for the world? We explore these questions and more in a new special report on Chinas DNA ambitions. Stay tuned for our newsletter so you wont miss out on our exclusive videos and private events. Subscribe to our YouTube channel for more first-hand news from China. For more news and videos, please visit our website and Twitter. Consumers Should Be Warned About Chinas Rebranded Hikvision Cameras Commentary A soldier, kneeling on a mountainside, tested a Hikvision drone-jamming rifle in March. Hikvisions website carried a report, based on a joint study with weapons experts and commanders of the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA), detailing how its technology could add functionality to Chinas tanks, missiles, and artillery. According to surveillance technology experts IP Video Market (IPVM), Hikvision advertised dozens of machine-learning jobs at a military police base in Xinjiang, which banned Uyghurs from applying. When The Wall Street Journal contacted Hikvision for comment recently, the report was taken down from Hikvisions website for several days this month, according to the Journal. A Hikvision spokesman told the Journal, Not now, and not ever, has Hikvision conducted research and development work for Chinese military applications. As should be clear from the above, thats a lie. And, the company is deeply linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and state apparatus, which is inextricably networked with its military. Hikvision, founded in 2001, has its headquarters in Hangzhou, China. It employs more than 42,000 people, has annual revenues of almost $10 billion, and a market capitalization of $96 billion. It grew from a Chinese government lab. Hikvisions largest shareholder is a subsidiary of China Electronics Technology Group Corp (CETC), a state-owned conglomerate. Some Hikvision cameras can see through fog and pollution, and have night vision, heat map, artificial intelligence, and license-, facial-, and behavior-recognition technologies. Some are explosion-proof, mounted on drones or the undercarriages of vehicles for their surveillance, or alert authorities to large crowds or protests. One is equipped with microphones to automatically zero in on noise in its vicinity. The Department of Homeland Security flagged Hikvision for a cybersecurity loophole in 2017 that made approximately 200 camera models easily accessible to hackers. Up to tens of millions were shipped, according to an estimate by IPVM. Yet, the United States is full of Hikvision products, including security cameras for use in businesses, residences, and by police departments. Hikvision sells its rebranded products through U.S. distributors, meaning that many buyers have no idea they are purchasing from an insecure Chinese company. Not only do Hikvision cameras surveil the United States and its allies, but the company hires Americans and Canadians for its research and development. Two such offices opened in Montreal and Silicon Valley in 2017. Local politicians trying to increase jobs in their communities probably didnt complain much when Hikvision dangled plans to hire 800 workers in North America by 2022. We sure do sell ourselves cheap. While the U.S. General Services Administration removed Hikvision from its $66 billion in procurement offerings to the U.S. government in 2017, and a U.S. military base removed Hikvision cameras from a Missouri military base recently, its unclear whether or not the cameras continue in other sensitive locations. The Memphis, Tennessee, police used them for street surveillance, and Hikvision cameras watched over electronics in the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, until IPVM discovered and published the U.S. procurement order. Apparently, government purchasers hadnt notified State Department security officials, and our Indymedia is doing a better job than the federal government of finding (and thus encouraging the stripping out of) Chinas wiring in our sensitive government installations. If the United States wants good cybersecurity against China, our government is going to have to step up its game. The same applies to our allies, as Hikvision is the worlds biggest supplier of video surveillance equipment globally. French airports, an Irish port, and sites in Iran and Brazil used Hikvision. In 2016, Hikvision purchased Britains Pyronix, an intrusion-alarm specialist, for just 16 million euros. Hikvisions global market share of surveillance equipment grew to 21.4 percent in 2016 from 8 percent in 2012. Picture of Hikvision cameras in an electronic mall in Beijing on May 24, 2019. (Fred Dufour/AFP via Getty Images) Hikvisions largest shareholder is Hong Kong billionaire Gong Hongjia, and some of its executives are Communist Party members whom CETC, Hikvisions main state-owned shareholder, also employs. Gong provided capital for Hikvisions founding, along with a government-backed lab that initially took a 51 percent controlling share. The company gets huge Chinese government contracts to surveil cities and events, including $1.2 billion worth of safe city contracts in Chongqing, population 31 million. Do you feel safer as a result? I dont. In 2017, Hikvisions Pu Shiliang held dual leadership positions as both the companys head of research and as a leader in a Hangzhou lab run by Chinas police force, the Ministry of Public Security. The goal of Chinas increasing surveillance state is to identify lawbreakers and influence behavior; Hikvision is its enabler. The U.S. Defense Department no longer purchases from Hikvision and designated the company on its military list, preventing Americans from investing in its securities. A 2018 law bars the U.S. government from purchasing goods and services from the company, and the Commerce Department blacklisted Hikvision and other Chinese AI companies in 2019. But as Hikvision products continue to creep into our homes and businesses through rebranding, these reforms dont go far enough. The 18th-century British philosopher Jeremy Bentham, who designed a panopticon in which a single guard could surveil an entire prison ranged in a circle around him, would have recognized present-day China as the dystopian development of his prison reform, applied to those outside the prison walls. China today is that reverse panopticon, in which the intellectual prison of the CCP surveils the world. If Hikvision can lie about its ties to the Chinese military, other conglomerates from China can, too. Huawei, Xiaomi, TikTok, Zoom, Alibaba, and State Grid are all China-linked technology companies that branch into our homes, businesses, and even government offices. As they can rebrand their products and components for sale in our public and private spaces, consumers and government procurement experts arent always aware that with their uninformed consumer choices, they may be opening the door to Chinas police state. That should change, with mandated warning labels on all technology products that include components or software from China. The U.S. and allied governments must take a tougher stand against Chinas Big Tech to ensure our privacy, cybersecurity, and the future of democracy. Anders Corr has a bachelors/masters in political science from Yale University (2001) and a doctorate in government from Harvard University (2008). He is a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, and has conducted extensive research in North America, Europe, and Asia. He authored The Concentration of Power (forthcoming in 2021) and No Trespassing, and edited Great Powers, Grand Strategies. Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:30:57|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close NEW DELHI, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Rapid urbanization and integrated city planning are catalysts for China's miracle growth, an Indian expert has said. "For the last several decades, the most remarkable facet of China's urbanization has been its unmatched speed," said Ramanath Jha, a research fellow focusing on urbanization at India's think tank Observer Research Foundation, in an article recently released by the foundation. "The country's demographic transition from an overwhelmingly rural population to a predominantly urban citizenry got pushed with unparalleled rapidity," the expert said. Noting the phenomenon can be better understood through a comparison between the United States, China and India, he said that the United States took two centuries to reach 80 percent urbanization from a base of 20 percent, while "India will most likely take two-and-a-half centuries and China a single century." Rapid economic growth coupled with urbanization at speed was also backed by an aggressive urban planning strategy in China, the Indian expert pointed out. A national plan, tightly regulated by the Ministry of Land and Resources, province by province, fixes an overall land use plan, he said. Once the geographic and demographic dimensions of urbanization are determined, urban planning policies kick in, the expert said. In the process of urbanization, Chinese cities have also managed to address "big city problem" and avoid unemployment and poverty by creating conditions for growth in income and employment, he added. Enditem Convenience Store Owner Finds Discarded $1 Million Lottery Ticket, Returns It to Customer A family-owned convenience store in Southwick, Massachusetts, recently returned a $1 million winning lottery ticket to a customer whod unwittingly discarded it. The customer, a frequent patron of Lucky Stop convenience store, had bought the ticket from Aruna Shah, the store owners wife. But the customer handed it back to be tossed out, assuming it was just another bust. (L-R) Abhi Shah with his parents, Aruna and Maunish Shah, who own Lucky Stop. (Courtesy of Abhi Shah) Ten days later, Abhi Shah, the owners son, went through the discarded tickets in the trash bin and noticed that the card had not been scratched. I scratched the number and it was one million dollars underneath the ticket, Abhi told WWLP. Upon realizing the customers mistake, Abhi found himself on the fence, unable to decide whether to keep the winnings or return the ticket to the customer. I mean, I had one million dollars in my hand, and on the other hand I wanted to do something good, Abhi admitted to the station. Lucky Stop in Southwick, Massachusetts. (Screenshot/Google Maps) Uncertain, he consulted his parents in making the tough choice. They sat down and deliberated on what to donot an easy decision with so much money. We didnt sleep two nights, said Maunish Shah, owner of Lucky Stop. Still unresolved, Abhi decided to consult his grandparents in India. He called my mom, grandparents in India, they said give it back we dont want that money, Maunish said. Lea Rose Fiega with her $1 million lottery winnings. (Courtesy of the Massachusetts State Lottery) The family, following the advice of their elders, handed the ticket back to customer Lea Rose Fiega when she returned to the store. When she was handed the ticket worth $1 million, she was in shock. As soon as she came in, I hand her 1 million dollar ticket and she freaked out and cried like a baby, Abhi said. She sat down on the floor right here. 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 Interior view of cafe and restaurant as seen at The Abbey 30th Anniversary Ceremony at The Abbey in West Hollywood, Calif., on May 23, 2021. (Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images) Just 6% of Small Businesses Have Fully Recovered Pandemic Losses, Poll Shows Just 6% of small businesses that were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic have fully recovered their losses, a Job Creators Network survey showed. The vast majority of U.S. small business owners continue to claw their way out of the hole caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the poll commissioned by small business advocacy group Job Creators Network (JCN) and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. While 6% of small business owners that suffered losses related to the pandemic said they have recovered, 43% believed they would be fully recovered within six months. The poll also showed that small business ownerswho listed taxes as a top overall concern moving forwardare worried about President Joe Bidens economic policies. More than half of respondents said they disapproved of the White Houses proposal to raise the corporate tax rate. Just 35% of those polled believe Bidens economic and tax policies will help small businesses. Forty-two percent said the presidents policies will hurt them. Most small businesses wont be able to fully recover until unemployment benefits go back to pre-pandemic levels, JCN Chief Communications Officer Elaine Parker told the DCNF in a statement Thursday. The overly-generous unemployment benefits that were included in the President Bidens $1.9 trillion spending bill are incentivizing people to stay home, instead of rejoining the workforce. A restaurant advertises that they are hiring in Annapolis, Md., on May 12, 2021. (Jim Watson/AFP via Getty Images) Parker added that the unemployment benefits may have made sense months ago, but are only preventing a stronger recovery now. The U.S. economy added a meager 266,000 new jobs last month, well under predictions, government data showed. Conservatives have blamed the federal $300 weekly unemployment bonus introduced by Democrats $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, arguing it incentives people not to look for work. There were a record 8.1 million job openings nationwide at the end of March, according to a recent Labor Department report. Now, as the economy returns to normal, Main Street is open for business, Scott Rasmussen, who conducted the survey for JCN alongside fellow pollster John McLaughlin, said in a statement. Fingers crossed that their concerns over Biden administration policies dont come to fruition. Rasmussen and McLaughlin surveyed 500 small business owners between May 1 and May 19 for the report. The JCN poll released Thursday was the inaugural JCN Monthly Monitor survey. The group will continue to regularly poll small business owners in an attempt to track the state of small businesses in the U.S. It will be interesting to track how small business perceptions change as the economy returns to normal, but at the same time, policies of concernsuch as tax hikesare pursued by the current White House, McLaughlin said in a statement. By Thomas Catenacci From The Daily Caller News Foundation Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. For Newsoms Recall Challengers, Communication Is Key A formidable task lies ahead for the ballooning number of candidates aiming to run against Gov. Gavin Newsom in Californias upcoming recall election: How do they reach the states 22 million voters as quickly and effectively as possible? One obvious answersocial mediais only part of the overall strategy. A recall election happens during a compressed period of time, giving candidates less time to get their message out and build a coalition, media consultant Matt Dobler told The Epoch Times. Dobler has worked on many campaigns, and is currently consulting for candidate Sam Gallucci, a pastor from Oxnard. The consultant said in an email that there would potentially be hundreds of candidates to fill Newsoms position. In a normal election, you have to get just over 50 percent of the vote to win, [but] in a special [election], you can win with significantly less than 50 percent, he said. The Epoch Times spoke with three campaign consultants and two candidates regarding the best ways to reach voters. They all acknowledged that outreach through social media platforms is important, but said connecting with voters in person is essential. Connecting Through Rallies Its [about] touching local people and shaking their hands, candidate Grover Coltharp told The Epoch Times. I think thats been most successful for me. Since the start of his campaign, Coltharp, a former police officer, has been traveling around the state in a large blue bus. Its funny, because now all these other [candidates] have buses, but Ive had this thing since the beginning. I bought it for my family, he said with a laugh. Coltharp, who helped collect petition signatures for the recall, estimates some of his most successful exposure has resulted from attending Make America Great Again, American Patriot, and boat rallies. Thats how I meet people and find out what theyre looking for, he said, noting that hed been up and down the state, from San Diego to Redding. Its been fun. Coltharp said he receives a number of messages through his website from folks who want yard signs or offer to volunteer. But hes still unsure how his name has managed to reach as many voters as it has. Its obviously working, he said, referring to his in-person approach. I just dont know how its working, but its working. Social Media: Pros and Cons Ryan McCormick is a publicist for candidate Major Williamss campaign. He recognizes that the absence of person-to-person connection is perhaps the most significant weakness of social media outreach. These platforms dont present a true picture of a candidate that you would get if you saw them in person, McCormick told The Epoch Times in an email. Major [Williams] is meeting people face-to-face every day by personally traveling all throughout the state. On the other hand, McCormick said social media campaigns allow candidates to rapidly engage with millions of people. In addition to attracting over 175,000 followers on Instagram, Williams has participated in interviews with local media outlets. Soon, hell launch a weekly podcast where he conducts a dialogue with Californians. Dobler agreed that social media is clearly a way to communicate with voters, and said it would be a large part of his candidates campaign. California has a unique population, he said. [Its] the most diverse state in the country, which means its difficult to reach Californians with a message meaningful to them. Dobler said that one of his candidates strengths is, as a pastor and businessman, he enters the race with a built-in audience to hear his solution to todays problems. More people get their news and information from social media now than ever before, Dobler said, noting that Instagram, in particular, is an ideal way for his candidate to demonstrate his experience. Tech Censorship? While social media outreach has some undeniable strengths, others claim that some platforms have posed a hindrance. Theres such disruption in that world right now because of the craziness and the censoring on different platforms with different messages, campaign consultant John Peschong told The Epoch Times. Theres gonna be a lot of real strong messaging online, but we still have probably four or five months before the recall. So give me three months, and Ill be able to tell you where were going, he said. Itll be interesting to see when you start to draw contrast where the censorship is. Coltharp, who is currently a consultant for former U.S. Rep. Doug Ose, said his campaigns biggest problem at the beginning actually was Facebook. Facebook shut off all political candidates. I had some professional videos made up and we couldnt even use them. They wouldnt let us advertise, he said. That changed in April, when the platform began allowing him to post his videos, Coltharp said. Candidate Diego Martinez said Facebook also limited his entries. The tech giant wouldnt allow him to create a page that included both his name and the year 2022. His current Facebook page reads Diego Martinez for Governor 2020 Unofficial, which the platform permitted. Martinez said his campaign relies on a hybrid approach. My stuffs been grassroots and internet, grassroots and internet. Thats how were getting my name out now, he told The Epoch Times. But what I realized is it wasnt about the followers. Its about the viewers. The people who are viewing you [are] most likely coming back and viewing you again. Martinez said he was shocked when his first interview on a podcast received more than 11,000 views over several weeks. Now Im on two or three podcasts a day, live, talking to different people, he said. Martinez has self-funded his campaign since it began last March. Like Coltharp, he attends as many rallies as possible to raise awareness about his candidacysometimes three or four in one day. I cant afford the big ads, he said. I cant afford to go on television. They charge you two grand. [Im] like, man, that two grand would last me two months to go up and down California. Exciting and Unpredictable While candidates have relatively similar approaches to reaching voters, campaign strategists say recall elections present unique challenges and contain an element of surprise. On a campaign like this, it would have been great if we had had two years heads-up to be able to organize, but its a scramble to organize. Were just coming off an election, and people feel tired, and volunteers feel like they gave it everything they had on the last cycle, Peschong said. He also noted that energizing people is going to be one of the toughest things. I think were gonna have the opportunity to really motivate people and try to keep them informed of whats going on with campaigns by talking about issues and ideas, he said. Recall elections can be exciting and unpredictable. They dont happen too often, and I personally think that they draw some peoples interest that normally wouldnt vote, McCormick said. Though the exact date of a recall election vote remains uncertain, it would likely take place in the fall, after the remaining required steps in the process are fulfilled. Georgia Governor Restricts School Mask Mandates Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, signed an executive order on May 28 that restricts the states public school districts from mandating masks. The order (pdf), in effect from May 31 through June 15, states that schools and school districts cant use public health state of emergency powers to compel staff or students to wear masks while on campus. As hospitalizations, cases, deaths, and percent positive tests all continue to declineand with vaccinations on the riseGeorgians deserve to fully return to normal, Kemp said in a statement. With safe and effective vaccines widely available and the public well-aware of all COVID-19 mitigation measures, mandates from state and local governments are no longer needed, Kemp said. The move comes days after Kemp told Fox News that a declining number of COVID-19 cases within the state would lead to fewer restrictions, particularly regarding children. The time for mandates is over. Our numbers have plummeted, he said. Were not going to have a mask mandate for our kids. Kemps decision drew backlash from some Democrats and school officials. Local school districts know better than Brian Kemp does, and his directive hampers their ability to make the best decisions for their schools, educators, and students, Jason Esteves, a member of the Democratic Party of Georgia who also chairs the Atlanta Public Schools board, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. This is nothing more than a political stunt at a time when Georgians deserve real leadership to help us emerge from the pandemic. Throughout the pandemic, Kemp rejected calls to force Georgia schools to impose statewide mask requirements, preferring to let local officials decide. Dozens of Georgia school districts have rolled back mask mandates since January, after initially requiring them. Kemps order also eliminates remaining COVID-19 restrictions for restaurants, bars, conventions, live performance venues, and child-care facilities. Local governments in counties reaching the threshold requirement of 100 or more positive cases per 100,000 people over the previous 14 days may impose a Local Option Face Covering Requirement, although they arent required to do so, according to the order. However, local governments that do choose to implement local masking requirements may not levy fines greater than $50 for violations, and they must first warn non-compliant individuals before issuing any citations. At the same time, local governments may continue to impose mask mandates on property owned or leased by them, regardless of whether the threshold requirement is met. The only exception is that no individual may be denied access to a polling location for failure to wear a mask. Pro-Palestine demonstrators hold placards as they gather to march in central London on May 22, 2021. (Justin Tallis/AFP via Getty Images) Growing Anti-Semitism in UK Schools Concerning: Education Chief There has been a concerning increase in anti-Semitic incidents in UK schools since the latest Israel-Palestinian conflict erupted, Britains Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has warned. The increased focus on the conflict in some schools has in some cases led to the expression of anti-Semitic views and bullying of Jewish students and teachers, Williamson said in a message sent to schools in England on Friday. He said schools should treat these incidents with due seriousness and urged headteachers to ensure political impartiality over the conflict. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson attends a Cabinet meeting of senior government ministers at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in London, on Sept. 1, 2020. (Toby Melville WPA Pool / Getty Images) Many young people have a strong personal interest in the issues around the conflict and in some cases that has led to political activity by older pupils, he wrote. Schools should ensure that political expression by senior pupils is conducted sensitively, avoiding disruption for other pupils and staff. It is unacceptable to allow some pupils to create an atmosphere of intimidation or fear for other students and teachers. Williamson reminded heads of their legal duties regarding political impartiality. School leaders and staff have a responsibility to ensure that they act appropriately, particularly in the political views they express. Pupils should be offered a balanced presentation of opposing views when political issues are raised, he said. Schools should not present materials in a politically biased or one-sided way and should always avoid working with organisations that promote anti-Semitic or discriminatory views. They should not work with, or use materials from, organisations that publicly reject Israels right to exist, he added. Jewish men walk along the street in the Stamford Hill area of north London on Jan. 19, 2011. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) British ministers say there has been an increase of anti-Semitic abuse since the latest Middle East conflict flared up earlier this month. In one incident, a rabbi suffered head wounds after he was attacked by two men near his synagogue in Chigwell in north London on Sunday afternoon. Two suspectsBrahimi, 25, and Souraka Djabouri, 18were charged with wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, robbery, and religiously aggravated criminal damage. In another incident, a video posted on Twitter on May 16 showed cars moving on a street with Palestinian flags on them. Slogans such as [expletive] the Jews, [expletive] their mothers, [expletive] their daughters and rape their daughters were heard through a loudspeaker. The Met traced one of the cars and four men were arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated public order offences but were subsequently released on bail. The incidents were condemned by politicians across the political spectrum. Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain will call out anti-Semitic behaviour at every stage, and will not let it take root, grow, and fester. Lily Zhou and PA contributed to this report. Hoping to Save Endangered Heritage Crafts in the UK The Heritage Crafts Association Red List of Endangered Crafts 2021 What does the making of glass eyes, ballet pointe shoes, and mouth-blown sheet glass have in common? They are three of twenty heritage crafts that have been newly classified as critically endangered in the UK, a classification which means that those craft skills could disappear in a generation. On May 24, a total of 130 endangered and critically endangered heritage crafts were announced, when an updated version of the 2019 HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts was published. The 2021 list is the third edition published by The Heritage Crafts Association (HCA). And this year, The Pilgrims Trust funded the research. The HCA is an independent UK charity set up by craftspeople and supporters of crafts as a direct response to a perceived lack of recognition and support for traditional craftsmanship in the UK. When we were set up in 2009, one of the things that we were so concerned about was to make sure that heritage crafts skills are passed on. They have been passed on through and down the generations to us and we are, our generation, the guardians of these crafts skills, HCA Chair Patricia Lovett said at the press launch, hosted on Zoom. Compass making is newly classified as a critically endangered craft in the UK. Yorkshire-based B. Cooke & Son Ltd. continues to make compasses by hand. (Glen Milner/B. Cooke & Son Ltd) Challenges for Heritage Crafts The research paints a complicated picture of heritage crafts practiced in the UK, which is hard to put into a coherent narrative, HCA operations director Daniel Carpenter said, at the Zoom event. What is clear is that the research brings a greater awareness of the types of crafts practiced in the UK and the specific challenges that each craft skill faces to survive. Interestingly, while the pandemic undoubtedly has put many craftspeople under considerable pressure, anecdotal signs suggest that the crisis has accelerated changes in society that could benefit heritage crafts, Carpenter said. For instance, people have been reevaluating the world of work and are looking for more fulfilling ways to earn a living. People are also choosing to support more local businesses. The heritage crafts industry also had to create new sources of revenue due to the UK lockdowns and the loss of traditional sources of income, and so online marketing, such as the number of online tutorials showing crafts, increased. But sadly, the stress of running a business during a pandemic has also meant that some skilled craftspeople decided to take early retirement. Some challenges are consistent across the board: Certain crafts have skilled makers who are approaching retirement and no one is interested in learning the craft. Additionally, the maker has little time or funding to pass on the craft skills to an apprentice. But the HCA is hopeful that there will be future funding for apprenticeships. The association is currently in talks with the Department for Education and the Institute of Apprenticeships & Technical Education. The HCAs Endangered Crafts manager, Mary Lewis, who researched and compiled this years list, emphasized that while some obstacles facing crafts require funding or policy change, change can also come from the craftspeople themselves. One of the things Ive learned while working with makers is that they have the best ideas about how to preserve their crafts. Its for this reason that we make sure we have makers represented at every level in our organization, she said, also at the press event on Zoom. The Makers The new Red List is a rich tapestry of heritage crafts practiced in the UK. Heritage crafts are not just dusty old handcrafted relics. And this [list] is not a bow to a misty-eyed vision of the past. This is about a wide variety of skilled people working today to create high-quality, beautiful, functional items that add value to our lives, Lewis said. The number of people focusing their energies on preserving and protecting these specialist skills is on the increase, she explained. For example, Devon stave basket making was virtually extinct when it was put on the Red List. But Lewis is happy to say that there are now five professional makers, another in training, and some courses on the crafts skill. These are small gains, but theyre significant, she said. Some heritage crafts may sound familiar, such as hat making, which is one of the newly endangered crafts. But some of the niche craft skills within that category are lesser-known. For instance, have you heard of bowed felt hats? View this post on Instagram A post shared by The Crafty Beggars (@thecrafty_beggars) Rachel Frost makes bowed felt hats and uses a seven-foot-long bow to prepare the fibers for felting. She described, on the Zoom event, how a bow is used to separate and fluff the wool fibers: Theres a gut string stretched along its length that when plucked with a wooden pin vibrates, and the vibration picks up the fibers and sends them flying magically across the table to land in a pile on the other end of the table. The fluffy fibers are then ready for the felting stage, which is done over a wood-burning stove with steam, hot water, and lots and lots of manipulation. Strikingly, diamond cutting is now critically endangered, with less than 10 skilled diamond cutters in the UK, largely due to competition from overseas diamond cutters, Lewis said. Kilt making is newly classified as an endangered craft in the UK. Kilt maker Amanda Moffet hand-sews a kilt at The Kiltmakery in Edinburgh, Scotland. (The Kiltmakery & ScotClans) Kilt making is now classified as an endangered craft. Makers of handsewn kilts are particularly hard hit due to companies producing machine-made kilts. But handsewn kilt makers have come to work together at The Kiltmakery & ScotClans in Edinburgh, Scotland, sometimes for overseas clients. Weve got a very large order from Florida for a huge band, and theyre really interested in explaining the story [of how the kilts were made] to their students and the kids in the band. So were able to actually make 200 handsewn kilts, kilt maker Amanda Moffet said at the same press launch. To find out more about The Heritage Crafts Association and the HCA Red List of Endangered Crafts, visit RedList.HeritageCrafts.org.uk Kilt makers work together at The Kiltmakery in Edinburgh, Scotland. (The Kiltmakery & ScotClans) Families and youth aged 12 and older line up for a COVID-19 vaccine at Gordon A. Brown Middle School in Toronto on May 19, 2021. (The Canadian Press/Nathan Denette) How Young Is Too Young? Todays Children Can Consent to a Range of Procedures Canadians as young as 12 can get birth control, abortion, cross-sex hormones, and COVID-19 vaccinations without parental consent if authorities deem them informed enough to decide, a situation that legal experts and advocates call into question. When it comes to vaccinations, Brian Giesbrecht, a retired judge who is a senior policy fellow for the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, says teen vaccination is inconsistent with other legal restrictions. Some parents have very strong objections to having their children vaccinated, but if the child can just go ahead and his consent is good enough for vaccinations, how can that be reconciled with the fact that he has to be a certain age to drive a car or to buy liquor? he said in an interview. On May 5, Health Canada approved the use of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children 12 to 15 years of age, making it the first COVID-19 vaccine authorized in Canada for use in children. In Toronto, youth in this age group dont need permission from a parent or guardian to be vaccinated, while other Ontario regions vary on whether consent is needed. The United States has also approved the Pfizer vaccine for children 12 and over, but the issue is still under deliberation in other jurisdictions, including Europe and Israel. Jorg Dotsch, the head of the German Society of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, is not in favour of rushing emergency approval for kids. It is always very important that a child is vaccinated or given medication only when there is a direct benefit to the child or adolescent, Dotsch told Deutche Welle. The hurdles are high, he added, because this is a vulnerable group that cannot always speak or decide for itself. In Israel, about 100 doctors asked in an open letter that the government wait until more is known about the impacts of the vaccine before extending it to children. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is currently investigating a few incidents of teenagers having heart problem after receiving the vaccines. Giesbrecht said keeping teens from getting behind the wheel but allowing them to attend clinics for abortions and gender transitions reminds him of authorities turning a blind eye to anti-Israel protests that defied health orders while end-the-lockdown protests or going to church was forbidden. The people on the left side of the argument are quite happy to have the age younger and younger for the things that they might [consider] desirable, but the ages stay the same for any cause that they dont like. B.C. family lawyer Carey Linde says he was able to get a court injunction to stop a 17-year-old from getting a double mastectomy that was scheduled to take place just days after the teens mom found out about it. However, he couldnt prevent another teen from getting testosterone treatments against the wish of the teens father. A school can counsel a child on gender transition and keep it a secret from their parents, Linde told The Epoch Times. The problem is when something is being physically done to a child without the knowledgenever mind the consentof a parent. Linde says courts in the United Kingdom have already determined teens cant give such consent. In Bell v. Tavistock, the court ruled in December 2020 that no one under 16 was competent to consent to puberty-blocking treatment. Kari Simpson of Culture Guard, a B.C.-based parental rights group, said the sterilization and cosmetic changes made by cross-gender interventions go against the Infants Act in B.C. Simpson provided The Epoch Times with a letter dated March 8, 1993, that she received from then-premier Mike Harcourt. Harcourt stated, As the courts have determined, minors cannot consent to procedures which are not in their best interest, such as aesthetic cosmetic surgery or sterilization. As well, minors cannot refuse treatment which is in their best interest, such as chemotherapy and immunization. It is not the governments intention that parents be excluded from consultation when a minor is receiving medical treatment, he wrote. [T]he exclusive consent of a minor to medical treatment will be sufficient only where the minor has attained a sufficient degree of maturity to live away from the parental home, or where health cannot otherwise be provided due to a capable minors insistence on confidentiality. Giesbrecht says major decisions should not fall to minors. My kids were certainly not able to give consent at 12 or 13. Good Lord, some of the things they would have decided if they could. No, I dont believe they can at all. I believe that parents should definitely make the basic decisions up until the time the child is no longer a child. Idaho Gov. Brad Little gestures during a press conference at the Statehouse in Boise, Idaho, on Oct. 1, 2020. (Darin Oswald/Idaho Statesman via AP) Idaho Governor Repeals Ban on Mask Mandates Enacted While He Was Out of State Idahos governor repealed a mask mandate ban on May 28 that was implemented while he was away on a trip. The states lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, a Republican who is running for governor, issued an executive order the day prior barring local governments from requiring that masks be worn. She did so with the authority she had as acting governor because Idaho Gov. Brad Little, a Republican, was out of state. Little quickly reversed the action with his own executive order repealing the ban. In a statement, Little said that he has always opposed a statewide mask mandate, but didnt want to undermine separately elected officials who, under Idaho law, are given authorities to take measures they believe will protect the health and safety of the people they serve. McGeachins order, he asserted, runs contrary to a basic conservative principlethe government closest to the people governs best. The executive order unilaterally and unlawfully takes away authorities given to the states mayors, local school board trustees, and others. Just like the states begrudge federal government mandates, local governments in Idaho resent the state doing the same thing. The executive order usurps legislative powers. It replicates a bill that was debated considerably in the Legislature but failed, making law with the stroke of a pen. The action that took place while I was traveling this week is not gubernatorial. The action that took place was an irresponsible, self-serving political stunt, Little said. McGeachin responded by accusing Little of neglecting a conservative solution that she noted has been implemented by Govs. Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, both of whom are Republicans. Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin speaks during a mask burning event at the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, Idaho on March 6, 2021. (Nathan Howard/Getty Images) I understand that protecting individual liberty means fighting against tyranny at all levels of governmentfederal, state, and local. It is your God-given right to make your own health decisions and no state, city, or school district ever has the authority to violate your unalienable rights, she said. McGeachin announced last week her campaign challenging Little from the right. The Idaho Democratic Party cheered Littles move, saying McGeachins order would only hurt our communities. The states Republican Party hasnt weighed in on the situation. 89-year-old runner Robert Kohler runs the virtual 2020 Dana Point Turkey Trot holding two large American Flags in Dana Point, Calif., on Nov. 21, 2020. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times) Korean War Vet, 90, Honors Fallen Military Members Robert Kohler, a 90-year-old Korean War veteran, is no stranger to honoring military heroes. Hes an avid long-distance runner who regularly carries a large American flag in each hand during races, including this years virtual 2020 Dana Point Turkey Trot. After picking up distance-running in the mid-1980s, Kohler has since run enough miles to circle the globe. He completed many of those races while carrying flags in honor of the nations military veterans. The Irvine local is active at the St. Thomas More Catholic Church in Irvine. On May 30, Memorial Day weekend, Kohler will continue to honor his fellow veterans at the 10 a.m. Mass, which will be livestreamed for those unable to attend in person. I will read a poem that I read in 2010 when we moved from an old location. Four stanzas of Just a Common Soldier, he told The Epoch Times. The poem was written by newspaper columnist and Canadian military veteran Lawrence Vaincourt in 1987. It has since been read in tribute by former military servicemen throughout the world. Kohler, the leader of his parishs veterans ministry, will also be honoring fellow veterans who have recently passed or were killed in action. I do this every Memorial Day where I show pictures of our deceased parish veterans, Kohler said. I have 53 this year. I started out with nine in 2011. Our parish is unique in that one of our young men was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2012. U.S Army Private First-Class Cale C. Miller, 23, was killed in action during Operation Enduring Freedom on May 12, 2012. He is among the dead I will be talking about. Kohler said. I hope I can hold my emotions in check when I show this picture of the boy who was killed. Those attending the service in person service at 51 Marketplace in Irvine are requested to observe the current COVID-19 protocols. A livestream of the event will be available on the churchs Facebook page at 10 a.m. [Its] a special event at my Catholic parish here in Irvine. Kohler shared. Someones gotta do it. Michigan Secretary of State Warns County Boards Against Ordering Audits Cheboygan County considering ordering an election review The office of the Michigan secretary of state has told two county clerks that they dont legally have to provide access to voting equipment maintained by their office if ordered to do so by county boards. The Board has no authority to require you or any municipal clerk to provide external access to voting equipment maintained by your offices, and neither you nor municipal clerks in Cheboygan County should provide this access, Jonathan Brater, director of the Michigan Bureau of Elections, told Cheboygan County clerk Karen Brewster in a May 20 letter obtained by The Epoch Times. Another official from the office of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, sent a similar letter on the same day to the clerk in Antrim County, conveying the view that the board of commissioners there has no authority to require an audit or compel the providing of election records. Commissioners can seek such records through a Freedom of Information Act request, Lori Bourbonais, director of the Elections Administration Division at the bureau, wrote. However, they have no authority to direct county or local clerks to provide this information, nor are any opinions they have about the manner in which local clerks conduct voting and registration transactions binding on local clerks in any way, she wrote. Brewster and Antrim County clerks also were advised not to grant access to voting equipment to firms not accredited by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission. Critics of an ongoing audit of ballots and machines in Arizonas largest county have noted that the company leading the audit, Cyber Ninjas, lacks accreditation from the commission. Antrim Countys Board of Commissioners and its county clerk were asked at a May 6 board meeting to look into whether, and how, an audit of the Nov. 3, 2020 election could be required or requested. The board worked with Antrim County Clerk Sheryl Guy to ask the Bureau of Elections for answers. Guy told commissioners during the meeting that voter registration rolls belong to the townships and alleged the board could not demand an audit because it lacked jurisdiction over the townships. Commissioner Dawn LaVanway, a Republican, moved two weeks later to have the board complete a forensic audit of the election. The motion failed. The county immediately after the election last year reported that Democrat Joe Biden received over 3,000 more votes in the county than then-President Donald Trump. However, the county twice updated the results, with Trump ultimately being shown ahead by nearly 4,000 votes. Guy initially pinned the issue on a combination of a software glitch and human error. She and Benson later attributed what happened solely to human error, specifically a failure to update election machine programming. A hand recount later found another difference in the count of about 10 votes. William Bailey, a voter, later sued the county, alleging the vote count was manipulated. Forensic auditors who examined Dominion Voting Systems machines on behalf of Bailey said the companys software was purposefully designed with inherent errors to create systemic fraud and influence election results. The audits findings were disputed by Michigan officials and Dominion. A judge earlier this month tossed Baileys case. In Cheboygan County, the Board of Commissioners tasked a subcommittee to explore the desire by some residents to have an audit of the 2020 presidential election. The subcommittee has been looking at different things and trying to collect more data, board Vice Chairman Richard Sangster told a meeting late last month. A worker with the Detroit Department of Elections helps stack empty boxes used to organize absentee ballots after nearing the end of the absentee ballot count at the Central Counting Board in the TCF Center in Detroit, on Nov. 4, 2020. (Elaine Cromie/Getty Images) A team including Matthew DePerno, who represented Bailey, offered to do a free audit in the county. Sangster said that in his view, nothing is free. Board Chairman John Wallace said the subcommittee will make a recommendation to the board after completing its exploration. Multiple residents spoke during the meeting, some in favor of ordering an audit and others against the idea. Wallace and Sangster didnt immediately respond to requests for comment on the letter from Bensons office. Dominion didnt return an inquiry. Guy didnt respond to a voicemail or an email. Meanwhile, Brewster declined to provide a copy of the letter, telling The Epoch Times in an email, Please request any information with a FOIA Request! When informed that the letter had been obtained, and asked for comment, she didnt respond. State law indicates that county boards lease, buy, or otherwise acquire electronic voting systems, including machines. That means the boards can order an audit, Beth Bridgman, leader of a group called the Cheboygan Freedom Fighters, which is advocating for an audit, told The Epoch Times. Our county paid for those machines, right? On behalf of the people, our commissioners did. And those machines are our physical property, she said. The funding for the audit, if it were ordered, would come from money donated to Baileys legal case and from fundraising, she said. It could be conducted by Cyber Ninjas, the firm running the audit in Maricopa County, Arizona. DePerno didnt immediately respond to requests for comment. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 19:27:22|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close MOSCOW, May 29 (Xinhua) -- Russia reported 9,289 new COVID-19 cases over the past 24 hours, taking the nationwide tally to 5,053,748, the official monitoring and response center said Saturday. The national COVID-19 death toll rose by 401 to 120,807 in the past day, while the number of recoveries grew by 9,250 to 4,670,484. Meanwhile, Moscow, Russia's capital and worst-hit area, registered 3,241 new cases, taking the city's total to 1,173,637. According to official data, 27,739,956 doses of COVID-19 vaccines had been administered in Russia as of Thursday. Enditem Air travelers wear face masks waiting to board a Southwest Airlines flight as the spread of COVID-19 continues, at Oakland International airport in Oakland, Calif., on April 9, 2020. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) No Alcohol on Plane for Southwest Airlines Passengers Till End of July Southwest Airlines Co said on Friday it will not resume alcohol services on board until the end of July, ditching its plans to restart next month, following a recent surge in in-flight disruptions by passengers. Given the recent uptick in industry-wide incidents of passenger disruptions inflight, we have made the decision to pause the previously announced re-start of alcohol service onboard June [Hawaii flights] and July, said Southwest spokesman Chris Mainz. After airlines resumed travel following the easing of COVID-19 led restrictions, they had mostly suspended in-flight services on domestic flights to avoid having passengers remove their masks while eating or drinking. Southwest Airlines decision comes following an incident where a passenger assaulted a flight attendant verbally and physically, during a flight from Sacramento to San Diego on Sunday. The passenger was later taken into custody by Law Enforcement Officials. We realize this decision may be disappointing for some customers, but we feel this is the right decision at this time in the interest of the safety and comfort of all customers and crew onboard, Mainz said. Earlier this month, Reuters reported that airlines have filed about 2,500 unruly-passenger reports with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration this year, including 1,900 reports of passengers not wearing mandatory face masks. Southwest Airlines said it will expand its selection of soft drinks and coffee. Children try to grab a giant soap bubble during the annual "Day in the Sun" end of summer camp at Eastside Park in Paterson, N.J., on Aug. 11, 2016. (Mitsu Yasukawa/The Record of Bergen County via AP) No Mask Requirement at Summer Camps If Everyone Is Fully-Vaccinated: CDC The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new guidance for summer camps on Friday, loosening requirements on masks and social distancing. Camps may return to full capacity without mask and physical distancing requirements if everyone is fully vaccinated before the start of the camp, unless federal, state, or local required otherwise, according to the new guidance. Its going to be a camp experience that is much more like (before the pandemic), said Erin Sauber-Schatz, who leads the CDC task force that prepares recommendations for Americans against COVID-19, the disease the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. For staff and children who are not fully vaccinated, they should keep a distance between 3 to 6 feet and wear masks indoors or outdoors, the CDC guidance states. Masked students wait in a socially distanced single file line before heading to the cafeteria at an elementary school in Louisville, Ky., on March 17, 2021. (Jon Cherry/Getty Images) The guidance also encouraged cohortingdividing children and staff into small groups that remain together as much as possible during the summer camp. When asked how to sort out who is vaccinated and who is not, Sauber-Schatz said those decisions would have to be made locally. The new guidance comes after the CDCs recommendation for fully vaccinated people released on May 13, which states that fully vaccinated Americans can stop wearing masks outdoors and in most indoor settings. The new guidance strongly encourages children to get COVID-19 vaccines, saying the vaccines are safe and effective and vaccination is the leading public health prevention strategy. The Food and Drug Administration expanded the emergency use authorization of Pfizers COVID-19 vaccine to children aged between 12 to 15 on May 10, saying the vaccine is safe and offers strong protection for younger teens. According to the CDC, over 98,600 children between the ages of 12 and 15 have been fully vaccinated as of May 28. About 2.66 million of the same age group have gotten at least one jab. Last week, a group of doctors and parents sued the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and its secretary, Xavier Becerra, in a federal court, seeking to block the expansion of the emergency use authorization to children under 16. They claimed the COVID-19 simply does not threaten kids, and they have never seen this level of side effect of this vaccine before. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Being proactive about end-of-life discussions can make the difference between emotional upheaval and peace between loved ones when a health crisis arrives. (Syda Productions/Shutterstock) On Living and Dying: Advice From a Doctor Who Deals With Terminally Ill Patients Learning to live with the inevitable in a post-COVID world The COVID-19 pandemic may finally be slowing, but it has shone a stark light on one human problem that well never escape. One day, books analyzing the pandemic will fill whole rows in libraries, but no analysis can dim the glaring human condition that we must facethe fact that were all going to die. A patient dying from ALS said it best, No one makes it out alive. Many of us have thought more about death this past year than ever before. Psychologist Ronnie Janoff-Bulman says, Once you know that catastrophe dwells next door and can strike anyone at any time, you interpret reality differently. As we reinterpret the reality of today in light of our future death, let us take a hard look at just exactly how were going to let loose of this earth. As a doctor who deals with terminally ill patients, I know four things are true: 1. Most of us assume we are going to live to a ripe old age. However, no one is guaranteed tomorrow. There is no time like the present for making preparations, regardless of age or health status. It can provide a surprising comfort to think through and write out your final wishes. Many online resources are available to guide you through the process. We plan for many life events with intensity, such as births, marriages, anniversaries, and birthdays. Its valuable to plan for our final crucial time of lifeand it is still life. In truth, I have seen so many living their best life once given a terminal diagnosis. 2. Those who wait until they get a grim prognosis to start pondering these matters often find the process more difficult. It is challenging to have end-of-life discussions in times of crisis when everyones emotions are more volatile. Ive been witness to so many families under stress becoming divided when opinions differ on what should be done as decision trees are presented by the medical team. In critical situations, if preparations have been done, families can focus more fully on the care and love of the patient rather than wondering what the patient would want. 3. Conversations about death and dying make most people uncomfortable. Even though the conversation itself doesnt increase our chances of dying, just having it can make us fearful or sad. But contemplating end-of-life issues within our control is not morbidits wise. Take two real-life examples. The first was my friend Lani. When she learned that she had less than two years to live, she fought hard, mostly for her family. I was amazed to learn that two years earlier, she had cleaned out her closets and attic. Get rid of that stuff, she told me personally. Your kids wont want it. She had prepared, so she was able to spend her last months enjoying life and enjoying her family. I remember her bedroom in her home as being a beautiful place of quiet and peace. Thats where she passed away, surrounded by her big family. The other example is a man named Ralph. He was far from an ideal father or husband. A robust man, he didnt seem anywhere near death, but a massive stroke brought him to the brink. Ironically, this father who had never done much for his family had prepared for his death by completing an online $5 directive known as Five Wishes. In his final months, as his children ministered to his needs according to his written directives, they got to know a dad who was vulnerable, and in his vulnerability, he became lovable. The last gift he gave his childrenhis planningwas the best gift he ever gave his children. And the last months of his life were the best months of his life. People ask me how to talk about death with younger children. A recent article in Parents Magazine emphasized the importance of talking with our children about death, even when theyre young, to avoid confusing and often terrifying feelings. I still remember how terrified I was as a child when I watched the animated film Bambi andspoiler alertthe death of Bambis mother. My grandson was terrified in The Lion King whenspoiler alertdeath claimed Mufasa. The reality is that most kids movies feature dying or death as a prominent theme. We need to talk openly with our children about those sad and scary scenes, listening more than we talk. 4. Most faith traditions offer spiritual (and even non-spiritual) guidance to their adherents who are dying and to those who love them. The Jewish faith, for example, has rituals that take into account the theological, practical, and emotional needs of the terminal patient. The rightness or wrongness of our beliefs will become evident after death, but the preparation that precedes that last breath is valuable and integral to the dying process. Those who do not prepare seem to suffer more. Families that are left to deal with an unexpected, sudden death seem to suffer the most. Once were comfortable with the concept of our own death and make a plan for how were going to die, we can join with those who make light of this inescapable human condition. We can laugh with Jerry Seinfeld who says, Make no mistake about why these babies are herethey are here to replace us. And we will leave earth with the confidence that were not burdening those babies, but actually blessing our families. Dr. Pamela Prince Pyle has practiced hospital-based medicine in the U.S. since 1992 and on mission since 2009 with Africa New Life Ministries in Rwanda. She is the author of A Good Death: Learning to Live Like You Were Dying. Security personnel keep watch outside the Wuhan Institute of Virology during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) Over 200 Republicans Press Pelosi to Back COVID-19 Origin Probe, Hold the CCP Accountable More than 200 House Republicans are putting pressure on their Democrat counterparts to get down to the COVID-19 origins and hold the Chinese regime accountable for the pandemic coverup. We request that you instruct the appropriate Democrat committee chairs to immediately join Republican calls to hold the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) accountable for its role in causing the global COVID-19 pandemic, stated a May 28 letter to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). The effort was led by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif), Minority Whip Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.), and Rep. Elise Stefanik, the chair of the House Republican Conference and joined by 209 House Republicans. The lawmakers said Pelosi had falsely claimed that questions about the CCPs liability were a diversionlikely referring to Pelosis remarks from last May describing then-President Donald Trumps blame on China as an interesting diversion. There is mounting evidence the pandemic started in a Chinese lab, and the CCP covered it up. If that is the case, the CCP is responsible for the deaths of almost 600,000 Americans and millions more worldwide, they stated in the letter. [E]very American family that lost someone deserves answers about the origin of this terrible virus, they continued, adding that House Democrats ongoing refusal to allocate investigative resources to get those answers is an affront to them. China cant get away with this. Americans deserve answers, Scalise wrote in a May 28 tweet. The Epoch Times has reached out to Pelosis office for comments. The lawmakers cited a growing pile of evidence that the virus may have escaped from a Wuhan lab, an idea that many media outlets and scientists had initially dismissed as a conspiracy theory. A State Department fact sheet, released during the final days of the Trump administration, suggested researchers with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in the vicinity of the seafood market initially thought to be the outbreaks origin, fell ill with COVID-19 like symptoms in autumn 2019. Recently, an undisclosed intelligence report also surfaced saying three WIV staff were sick enough to seek hospital care that November. The P4 laboratory of Wuhan Institute of Virology is seen behind a fence during the visit by the World Health Organization (WHO) team tasked with investigating the origins of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in Wuhan, Hubei province, China, on Feb. 3, 2021. (Thomas Peter/Reuters) Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Joe Bidens chief medical adviser, recently backed a deeper virus probe and said that a lab leak possibility certainly exists, reversing comments he made in May 2020. U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, while not mentioning China or Wuhan directly, has called for the World Health Organization (WHO) to launch a transparent, science-based phase 2 COVID origins study to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak. To hold the CCP accountable, the lawmakers said they need access to the full range of tools available to congressional investigators, including subpoenas for documents and the power to compel key witnesses to give testimony. To date, Democrat committee chairs throughout the House are refusing to allocate those resources for questioning about the origin of the COVID-19 virus, the letter stated. They also pointed to Beijings consistent refusal to share raw data and WIV lab records, which they said fit into the CCPs pattern of deception that includes expelling journalists to COVID-19 disinformation and silencing of whistleblowers. While the WHO-led mission in Wuhan ruled the lab accident theory as extremely unlikely, experts and world leaders alike have criticized the findings for lacking independence. Foreign experts on the panel requested original data and samples but were only supplied a summary from their Chinese counterparts. On Tuesday, a Chinese representative told the WHOs assembly that the China part of the origin-tracing has been completed, and suggested investigators look elsewhere. Pressure to find out how the pandemic began has nonetheless continued to mount despite the Chinese denial. Biden, in a rare statement on Wednesday, said he has ordered an intelligence inquiry regarding the virus origins and expected a report within 90 days. The U.S. Intelligence has coalesced around two likely scenarios but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question, he said. The Senate on Friday passed a bipartisan resolution calling for the WHO to act with extreme urgency and get to the bottom of the pandemic origin. The House Republican lawmakers, in their letter, said the Congress should take virus hunt effort into their own hands. It is clear that WHO failed to produce the final word on the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic and the CCPs liability. That task falls to us in Congress, the lawmakers wrote in the letter. Safari-Goer Spots Incredibly Rare Melanistic Serval Wildcat, and the Photos Are Amazing One of the worlds most elusive species of wildcat with a rare genetic trait has been snapped by a lucky photographer at the foot of Mount Kilimanjaro. Brahmanand Kori, 21, was able to photograph the melanistic serval while visiting Amboseli National Park in Kenya earlier this month. A wild serval with a rare genetic trait is shown with Mount Kilimanjaro in the background. (Caters News) The black serval walked onto a road, presenting Kori with a perfect photo opportunity. (Caters News) Melanism is a trait in animals characterized by an excess of the dark pigment melanin which causes animals fur and skin to appear darker. The photographer captured incredible moments of his encounter with the servalincluding the wildcat gingerly crossing through the grass with the snowy peaks of the dormant volcano as a backdrop; and a shot of the serval peaking through the grass, directly at the camera lens, despite their usual shyness. It is extremely rare to encounter serval cats in the wild due to their small size and ability to blend into their habitat. The rare wildcat looked into the camera as Kori snapped photos. (Caters News) The serval eventually returned into the tall grass. (Caters News) For Kori to have captured on camera one of the wildcats with the dark melanistic trait is all the more incredible, as theres only a 25 percent chance that a serval might inherit the trait from parents that both carry the recessive gene. The wildlife photographers hands even started to shake with excitement when he first saw the serval in the park, hardly believing his luck after his sisterwhom he was traveling withspotted a pair of tiny black ears. The photographer called the moment a scene Ill never forget. (Caters News) In a few minutes she came out and was walking towards the road, Kori said. It was the perfect opportunity to get a clear shot. The serval then went on to the other side of the road. After following her for some more time she gave us a clear view of her in the open and even looked straight at my lens. All that time we spent with the serval was in the presence of the mighty Mount Kilimanjaro in the backdrop. Finally, the serval started walking to the left of us and behind her was the mighty Kilimanjaro. Its a scene Ill never forget. The melanistic serval peers at the camera through the tall grass. (Caters News) Kori said he feels lucky and blessed to have been able to photograph the very rare cat. (Caters News) Eventually, the beautiful serval returned to the tall grass, popping its head up at times, then looking at the photographers lens one last time before departing for good. It was an incredible experience for Kori, who at one point got as close as 30 feet (10 meters) to the serval and got to spend 20 minutes documenting the wonderful moment. When asked how he felt afterwards, Kori said: I always want to experience a new challenge. Id never imagined that Id get a chance to photograph one of the rarest cats in the world. The most incredible element of a safari is luck. I feel incredibly lucky and blessed after I got to see and photograph this very rare cat. 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 Schumer to Force Senate Vote on Sweeping Election Reform Bill The Senate will vote next month on a bill that would dramatically change how elections are run, the bodys top Democrat said on May 28. S.1, also known as the For the People Act, will be voted on during the last full week in June, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told Democrat colleagues in a memorandum. Schumer called the bill, which mirrors a version the House of Representatives passed in March, legislation that is essential to defending our democracy, reducing the influence of dark money and powerful special interests, and stopping the wave of Republican voter suppression happening in states across the country. The act would federalize components of the election system, eliminating nearly all requirements such as photo identification. It would also require states to implement a system of automatic voter registration and to allow same-day registration on any day voting is allowed. Critics have promised to bring a flood of lawsuits if its passed by the Senate and signed into law by President Joe Biden. In my state in Oklahoma, we have great voting engagement. We want to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat. S.1 takes away a states ability to hold people accountable for cheating, Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.) told colleagues on the Senate floor this month. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) has described the bill as a massive federal takeover of elections. Democrats largely support the legislation. The freedom to vote is fundamental to all of our freedoms. It is how Americans control their government and hold their elected officials accountable, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) told a Senate Rules Committee hearing on May 11. The For the People Act is about setting basic national standards to make sure all Americans can vote safely in the way that works best for them, regardless of what state or zip code they live in. The For the People Act is about reducing the power of big money in our elections by ending secret spending by billionaires and special interests. And the For the People Act is about making anti-corruption reforms to ensure all politicians work for the people, not for themselves. Schumer told reporters on Capitol Hill that at two recent caucus lunches, it was made clear how important S.1 is to the country, to our Democratic majority, and to individual senators, and those discussions are ongoing, and I have a lot of faith in them. The Senate is currently divided in half, with 50 Republicans and 50 Democrats or nominal independents who regularly vote with Democrats. Passing a bill requires 60 votes. Schumer also plans to bring other pieces of legislation up for a vote when the Senate reconvenes on June 7, including the Paycheck Fairness Act, which would direct the Department of Labor to study pay disparities between men and women and make information on the disparities available to the public. Schumer held open the possibility that the upper chamber will consider gun control legislation as well. He also said he may force another vote on the bill that would establish a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol incident. The Senate rejected the measure on May 28. Senate Advances Bipartisan Tech Bill Taking Aim at China WASHINGTONThe U.S. Senate on Thursday advanced a sweeping package of legislation intended to boost the countrys ability to compete with Chinese technology, as Congress increasingly seeks to take a tough line against Beijing. Senators voted 68-30 to end debate on the $250 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act of 2021, or USICA, and move nearer to a final vote on the legislation. The desire for a hard line in dealings with China is one of the few truly bipartisan sentiments in the deeply divided U.S. Congress, which is narrowly controlled by President Joe Bidens fellow Democrats. Senate Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who co-wrote the USICA legislation, said the United States spends less than 1 percent of gross domestic product on basic scientific research, less than half of what China does. We have put ourselves in a very precarious position of potentially falling behind the rest of the world in the technologies and industries that will define the next century, he said in Senate remarks urging support for the bill. The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the legislation. The exact timing of a final Senate vote was not clear, as lawmakers continued to debate next steps behind closed doors on Thursday evening. Once it passes the Senate, the bill must also pass the House of Representatives to be sent to the White House for Biden to sign into law. The measure authorizes about $190 billion for provisions to strengthen U.S. technology in general, plus $54 billion specifically to increase production of semiconductors, microchips and telecommunication equipment. The legislation also seeks to counter Beijings growing global influence through diplomacy, by working with allies and increasing U.S. involvement in international organizations after former Republican President Donald Trump pulled Washington out as part of his America First agenda. As it considered the legislation, the Senate approved by 91-4 an amendment backed by Republican Senator Mike Crapo and Democratic Senator Ron Wyden to retaliate against what they consider Chinas anti-competitive trade practices and bar products determined to have been produced using forced labor. By Patricia Zengerle and David Shepardson An aerial view shows the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan, China, on April 17, 2020. (Hector Retamal/AFP via Getty Images) Senate Passes Resolution Urging Probe to Get to the Bottom of CCP Virus Origin The Senate passed a bipartisan resolution on May 28 that calls on the World Health Organization (WHO) to act with extreme urgency to investigate the origins of the CCP virus, demanding full and transparent access to records in China, which senators have accused of stonewalling and a cover-up. The resolution, introduced by Sens. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), seeks an immediate, comprehensive, and transparent investigation that would be mandated by the World Health Assembly (WHA), the governing body of the WHO, with access to all relevant records, samples, and personnel in China. The probe must fully explore all possible sources of the COVID-19 pandemic, including exclusively natural zoonosis in the wild, human contamination in an animal farm, and a research-related accident, the resolution states (pdf). It also demands the United States and its global allies and partners get involved if China continues on its path of cover-up and obfuscation, a joint statement from the senators reads. Its outrageous that a comprehensive investigation on the origins of COVID-19 has still not been carried out, Marshall said in a statement, which comes as the WHA convenes virtually for a series of meetings between May 24 and June 1. We must get a full investigation into the outbreak, Marshall said. If China continues on its path of cover-up, we must begin planning a full investigation, including with partners around the world. The Chinese must show us the data and be transparent with the worldand if they dont, we will fight to get to the bottom of this outbreak. Gillibrand doubled down on insisting that Beijings obstruction is completely unacceptable. Our resolution makes clear that the U.S. believes that the previous WHO investigation was flawed, that there must be accountability, and all potential origins of this virus, including a lab leak, must be investigated fully, Gillibrand said. The first WHO study into the origins of the CCP virus concluded with a report in March stating that the virus likely spread to people through an unknown animal, although WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the mission to study the origin of the virus didnt adequately analyze other theories. As far as WHO is concerned, all hypotheses remain on the table. We have not yet found the source of the virus, Ghebreyesus said at the time. On May 25, the United States urged the WHO to start a fresh investigation into the source of the CCP virus, highlighting the need for transparency. Phase 2 of the COVID origins study must be launched with terms of reference that are transparent, science-based, and give international experts the independence to fully assess the source of the virus and the early days of the outbreak, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said in remarks to the 74th World Health Assembly. Chinese virologist Shi Zhengli at the P4 laboratory in Wuhan, the capital of Chinas Hubei Province, on Feb. 23, 2017. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images) The United States and more than a dozen other nations have raised concerns about the phase one WHO study into the origin of the virus, pointing to the reports significant delay and Chinas refusal to share crucial raw data. President Joe Biden announced on May 26 that he has ordered a closer intelligence review of what he characterized as two equally plausible scenarios of the origins of the CCP virusone natural, the other a lab leak. The laboratory at the heart of the controversy is housed at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, in Wuhan, China. It has surged into the spotlight amid concern that the CCP virus may have originated there, rather than by making a natural jump from bats to humans. Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee argued in a May 19 report (pdf) that its more likely the virus escaped from the lab. The CCP has denied any connection between the viruss origin and the Wuhan lab, and has pushed the natural zoonotic hypothesisthat the virus was transmitted to humans from an animal host. However, Beijing has so far failed to identify the original animal species that supposedly passed the virus to humans. In addition, the Chinese regime has claimed that the virus originated outside of China. At a May 24 press briefing, Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian accused the United States of releasing the virus from the Fort Detrick military base in Maryland. Amid questions about the origins of the CCP virus, the Wuhan Institute of Virology has refused to share its raw data, safety logs, and lab records about its work on coronaviruses in bats. Suspect in Santa Ana Murder Case Surrenders to Police at Border A man suspected of killing a woman in Santa Ana last October turned himself into authorities May 27 at the Mexican border in San Diego. He was arrested in connection with the Oct. 26 slaying of 52-year-old Natalia Jamies. Her body was found inside a parked vehicle in the 600 block of Santa Anas West Russell Street. She had been reported missing from Lake Forest, where she lived, days prior. Detectives investigating the death identified Jose Valdez Jimenez, 59, as their top suspect, said Santa Ana Police Department spokesperson Anthony Bertagna. Jose Valdez Jimenez is facing a murder charge following the October, 2020, slaying of a woman whose body was found in Santa Ana, Calif. (Courtesy of the Santa Ana Police Department) The victim and suspect were in a dating relationship, Bertagna told The Epoch Times. We found out he went to Mexico right after the homicide, and through some friends of his, they reached out and [Jimenez] contacted one of the lead detectives, Bertagna said. The suspect and police officer eventually established a rapport, and the detective convinced Jimenez to turn himself in. After several conversations, he said he was ready and he wanted to turn himself in, Bertagna said. And they went to the border and he did just that. Jimenez, of Rancho Santa Margarita, was booked on murder charges and is being held at the Santa Ana jail. An instructor shows a holster at a gun concealed carry permit class put on by "USA Firearms Training" in Provo, Utah. on Dec. 19, 2015. (George Frey/Getty Images) Teacher Uses Concealed Gun to Stop Alleged Schoolyard Kidnapping of Utah Girl A school teacher in Ogden, Utah has been hailed a hero for preventing the alleged kidnapping of an 11-year-old girl from a school playground by using his concealed firearm. Lt. Brian Eynon of the Ogden City Police Department described the incident to ABC4. An employee was watching the kids from the inside and observed the suspect walk up to this 11-year-old girl [on the playground] and put his hands on her in an attempt to take her, Lt. Eynon said. He ran outside, the employee did, and confronted the suspect. At that same time, the girl had the ability to pull away from the suspect. According to ABC4, the teacher got all 20 students away from the playground and into the school, which the suspect then tried to force his way into. After approaching the building, the suspect, 41-year-old Ira Cox-Berry, punched on the window trying to get throughthats when the teacher reportedly produced a firearm and held the suspect off while calling 911. The teacher was a concealed carry permit holder. However, as of May 5, people over 21 who may legally possess a firearm are no longer required to have a concealed carry permit after the state legislature passed HB0060. Lt. Eynon thinks the actions of the heroic employee saved a life or at least prevented injury. This employee is protected under the Second Amendment, Lt. Eynon said. He followed all policy and procedure at the school, and in this particular case, did everything that he should have done to protect the innocent lives of the children at the school. Police took Cox-Berry, who they said was high on some type of narcotics, into custody after a brief struggle, ABC4 reported. Investigators say there is no link between Cox-Berry and the young girl. This teacher, in particular, was very prepared emotionally to confront a suspect he didnt know, that was most likely on drugs, could be dangerous, could have been armed, and he took it upon himself to protect and be a hero, frankly, for the children who were on scene there when this went down, Lt. Eynon said. Ogden School Districts Jer Bates told ABC4 the teacher was a hero for keeping the students and staff safe. A teacher intervened when there was a situation that threatened students safety, Bates said. This teacher, this school employee, is a hero. Yes, it was a very scary situation, something we take very seriously, but it came out with a good ending, meaning no students were physically harmed, no adults were physically harmed, that this was an incident where our emergency response protocols were acted out, he added. The school district has provided counselors to help the students deal with the trauma, and Bates said the 11-year-old girl was coping quite well considering the very traumatic experience that they endured. Cox-Berry is in Weber County Jail on one count of child kidnapping, a first-degree felony. Police say more charges are pending. Source: Xinhua| 2021-05-29 07:25:32|Editor: huaxia Video Player Close Children's shoes are placed on the staircase outside Vancouver Art Gallery during a memorial event for the 215 children whose remains have been found buried at a former Kamloops residential school in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, May 29, 2021. The reported discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops in western Canada has shocked Canadian people. In a press release on Friday, the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations said it is grieving the location of the 215 children. (Photo by Liang Sen/Xinhua) VANCOUVER, May 28 (Xinhua) -- The reported discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops in western Canada has shocked Canadian people. In a press release on Friday, the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations said it is grieving the location of the 215 children. "It is unknown how many children died and disappeared while attending residential schools in Canada with few known locations of their resting sites," the assembly said. "Indigenous peoples continue to deal and cope with the past genocidal policies and entrenched colonial system. The investigation at this burial site will continue and it is expected that the number of child graves will increase." "It is expected that thousands of unmarked graves exist across Canada of indigenous children who died at residential schools. Families who never saw their children return home experience never-ending grief and continue to live with deep scars," added the assembly in the release. On Thursday, the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in Kamloops city in British Columbia province announced that ground-penetrating radar uncovered the remains of 215 children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said on Thursday that the remains were confirmed last weekend with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist. Among the 215 children, some were three years old. The children were assumed to have been lost or runaway in Canada's residential school system. Casimir called the discovery an "unthinkable loss that was spoken about but never documented at the Kamloops Indian Residential School." The residential school was one of the largest residential schools from 1890 until 1969 when the federal government took over the school's administration before its closing in 1978. "The finding of these graves refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia as we remember the fear, horror and desperation experienced by families and communities as their children were forcibly taken away to residential schools," said Regional Chief Terry Teegee of British Columbia Assembly of First Nations. "It was a dreadful time of forced assimilation and genocide inflicted by the colonial Canadian state for over a hundred years. Finding these gravesites is urgent work as many families continue to mourn the loss of their missing children and seek information about their fates," he added. Perry Bellegarde, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, called the news painful. "While it is not new to find graves at former residential schools in Canada, it's always crushing to have that chapter's wounds exposed." British Columbia Premier John Horgan stated that he is horrified and heartbroken to learn that the burial site of 215 children had been confirmed. Marc Miller, Canada's Minister of Indigenous Services, said it was heartbreaking news and promised "to offer the full support of Indigenous Services Canada as the community, and surrounding communities, honor and mourn the loss of these children." An estimated 150,000 indigenous children across Canada were reportedly removed from their homes and forced to attend residential schools between 1890s and as recently as 1996. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada issued its final report on residential schools more than five years ago. The nearly 4,000-page account details the harsh mistreatment inflicted on indigenous children at the institutions, where at least 3,200 children died amid abuse and neglect. Enditem Three Venezuelan men speaking about their journey to Panama, in Dairen Gap, Panama on April 21, 2021. (Screenshot from video by Michael Yon/The Epoch Times) The Migrants Journey: Rape and Murder on the Way to Panama War Correspondent Michael Yon is traveling the journey of the migrants from South America to the United States, detailing their travails and travels, as well as remarkable encounters he has along the way. The Epoch Times presents excerpts from his ongoing account. Darien Gap, Panama April 21, 2021 Here in Darien Gap, Panama, I have heard so many stories about dying children, rape, murder, and death. Three Venezuelans journeyed north through Colombia to Panama. One of the three says their families are starving in Venezuela, and they want to make it to the United States. On video they tell of having seen 5 adults and two children dead on their journey to Panama. They say three young girls were raped. The three men in the video were robbed. They emphatically warn others not to make the trip through the jungle to Panama. On a trip to a remote village today I came across what appeared to be a dying pregnant lady. She seemed African. I tried to wake her up. The Panama border police saw her. There was nothing I could do. What a sickening feeling. There are many river and stream crossings and water claims its share through drowning and waterborne illness. I asked some people today how their babies are. Some have diarrhea. This is all sickening. Infants. Babies will die in one day from this, and many are doing so. Some people just cant swim and they must cross those streams. Ive been out there bathing in the streams and can confirm you can get swept down. Especially a lot of migrants are from African cities, or places with crocodiles in the rivers. And so they usually dont go in the water. No crocodiles in these rivers, but many migrants just cannot swim. Migrants leave Darien Gap at a village called Bajo Chaqita. When they arrive at the village, the first little store they come to has Money Gram and Western Union at 20 percent commission. Francisco the mayor, an Embera Indian, told me the village makes more than a million dollars per year on the migrants, and the village only has less than 300 Embera inhabitants. Adventurer Roddy Sanchez in Dairen Gap, Panama, on April 21, 2021. (MIchael Yon) Today at Bajo Chiquita, I met the most interesting migrant ever. Roddy Sanchez is from Ecuador and is in Panama only for adventure. We got along instantly. Francisco said he had never met someone like this. I had picked him out to talk with because he did not seem like the others. Something differentsuch as his electric hair. He said he is 28, and has a YouTube channel. He wants to walk to a hundred countrieshe said his dad did 35 countries. When he gets to America, he wants to walk around and then walk somewhere else. Panama was only his 10th but he highly recommends not doing Darien Gap. He saw two dead bodies in Darien. Many migrants tell those stories. Its like a war here. Roddy said that migrants left a trail of food and supplies in Colombia. When they got tired they just abandoned food and tons of gear. He said robbers with rifles took all his gear including his passport. He had a backpack that he said he found later, and found other abandoned gear. Often robbers just take everything including passports. Others, who pay coyotes enough to begin with, often can keep their phones and other gear. I have yet to work out the details on this. I know some make it through with phones and passports and some do not, and they are on the same route. My Embera translator said Roddy the adventurers eyes showed he was very excited to talk with me because most people would think he was crazy to do this, but I (Michael Yon), thought it was fantastic. Adopted from Michael Yons blog. Sign at small store in Bajo Chiquita,, Panama on April 21, 2021. (Michael Yon) Thousands of Migrants Biden Said Would Be Allowed to Enter the US Turned Back to Mexico Thousands of migrants ordered to remain in Mexico as their asylum cases were processed were returned to the country indefinitely despite the Biden administration admitting most of the remaining cases into the U.S., the Associated Press reported Wednesday. President Joe Biden ended former President Donald Trumps Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) requiring migrants to Remain in Mexico and has admitted thousands of the 26,000 migrants with active cases into the U.S., the AP reported. Judges have terminated proceedings in nearly 6,700 MPP cases, according to Syracuse Universitys Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Things have changed under the Biden administration and weve seen a little over 8,000 individuals previously in MPP have their cases transferred out of an MPP court, which suggests that they have been allowed into the US under the more standard asylum processing procedures, Syracuse University Assistant Research Professor Dr. Austin Kocher told the Daily Caller News Foundation Thursday. It doesnt appear that any of these cases have been decided yet, so none of them are eligible for deportation yet, Kocher added. The Biden administration allowed nearly 8,400 migrants waiting in Mexico with pending MPP cases admission to the U.S. as of April, according to TRAC. Just over 18,000 migrants with pending MPP cases remain in Mexico waiting to enter the U.S. [Case] terminations effectively end removal proceedings against an immigrant, Kocher told the DCNF. This may mean that the government no longer has grounds for seeking to deport someone, or it can mean that there was an underlying issue with starting the deportation process in the first place. Over 80% of the case terminations were decided in a San Diego, California, court where immigration judges questioned the legal legitimacy putting asylum seekers into removal proceedings in the first place, Kocher added. Two judges oversee the majority of MPP cases in the court including former immigrant advocate Lee OConnor who sometimes became angry while presiding over MPP cases, according to the AP. OConnor told a Homeland Security attorney who challenged him that his oath was to uphold U.S. law, not to acquiesce when they are flagrantly violated during an October 2019 hearing. Advocates said the more than 30,000 migrants who applied for asylum under the MPP and were denied or dismissed should get another chance, though the Biden administration has not commented on the issue, the AP reported. Some of the migrants who failed to appear in court claim they were kidnapped in Mexico while others said they were too sick or scared to cross the border in dangerous cities for their appointments. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officials reportedly issued some migrants whose cases were heard in San Diego immigration courts tear sheets with fake future court dates to return them to Mexico, according to the AP. San Diego attorney Bashir Ghazialam said around a dozen of his clients and others with different attorneys whose cases were dismissed were allegedly given fake court dates in late 2019. CBP officials told the AP the documents reportedly issued to the lawyers clients in late 2019 served as virtual check-ins for their cases, though the notice didnt say they would be held online or over the phone. Tear sheets are provided to indicate a date when the individual can check in with U.S. officials regarding the status of the appeal, a CBP spokesperson told The San Diego Union-Tribune in November 2019. Ghazialam then criticized the agencys statement as false and ridiculous, the Union-Tribune reported. He said the tear sheets dont match CBPs statement and the information they claim to include. By Kaylee Greenlee From The Daily Caller News Foundation Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org. The Pentagon building is seen in Washington in a file photograph. (AFP via Getty Images) Whistleblower Who Made UFO Reports Public Accuses Pentagon of Coordinated Campaign to Defame Him Lue Elizondo, a former Pentagon official who made UFO reports public, is claiming that the U.S. military, including a top official, coordinated a campaign to intimidate and defame him. Elizondo is the former head of the U.S. governments Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was disbanded in 2012. Five years later, he made three UAP (unexplained aerial phenomena) videos public, which were later confirmed to be true by the military and were under investigation. According to Politico, Elizondo filed a 64-page complaint on May 3 with the Defense Departments Inspector Generals Office (IG), accusing several people of trying to defame him, interfering with his ability to gain employment, and affecting his security clearance. What he is saying is there are certain individuals in the Defense Department who, in fact, were attacking him and lying about him publicly, using the color of authority of their offices to disparage him and discredit him, and were interfering in his ability to seek and obtain gainful employment out in the world, said Daniel Sheehan, Elizondos attorney. The complaint reportedly includes dozens of supporting documents and accuses individuals of malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal, and explicit threats perpetrated by certain senior-level Pentagon officials. According to Elizondos legal team, he has met with the IG several times and has evidentiary documents, including emails and public records, which suggests a coordinated effort to obfuscate the truth from the American people while impugning my reputation as a former intelligence officer at the Pentagon. Elizondo claims that in one instance shortly after leaving government service, a senior official gave him notice that he would tell people you are crazy, and it might impact your security clearance. I responded by telling him that he can take any action he thinks is prudently necessary, but that I was not mentally impaired, nor have I ever violated my security oath, Elizondo stated in the complaint. He didnt meet with the individual again, because Elizondo feared he would take retribution against me. The complaint further alleges that there was an apparent disinformation campaign involving internet bloggers who were told that Elizondo didnt have duties in the AATIP and that he didnt study UFOs. Several internet bloggers were notified that I had no duties regarding AATIP, and that AATIP did not involve the study of UAPs, Elizondo told the IG. As a result, the bloggers began to disseminate reporting, accusing me of being a fabricator. Pentagon officials didnt immediately return a request by The Epoch Times for comment. The Ryanair plane with registration number SP-RSM, carrying opposition figure Raman Pratasevich which was traveling from Athens to Vilnius and was diverted to Minsk after a bomb threat, lands at the International Airport outside Vilnius, Lithuania on May 23, 2021. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP Photo) US Airlines Should Be Extremely Cautious While Passing Belarus: FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) announced that U.S.-based airline companies should exercise extreme caution when flying over Belarus. The transportation agency and governmental body of the United States released a statement after authorities from the Eastern European country forced diversion of a Ryanair flight and arrested a dissident journalist last week. The FAAs Notice to Airmen says airlines should continue to exercise extreme caution until the agency can better assess Belarus actions surrounding the May 23 diversion of a passenger jet and the potential for Belarus to repeat similar actions in the future, the agency said. The FAA is working closely with other U.S. agencies to determine whether any additional measures may be necessary, and will evaluate an international investigation report to determine the risks for U.S. passenger airlines flying in that area. The FAAs notice does not apply to cargo carriers such as United Parcel Service and FedEx that fly over the nation. Late on Friday, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that the Biden administration will reimpose sanctions on Belarus on June 3, while also advising Americans against traveling to Belarus. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a daily press briefing on May 13, 2021. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) The sanctions will target nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises which had previously received sanctions relief. Americans will be prohibited from dealing with the entities beginning on Thursday. Psaki also said the Department of Justice and the FBI are investigating the plane diversion. According to Ryanair, the operator of the diverted flight, Belarusian flight controllers told the crew on May 23 there was a bomb threat against the plane as it was crossing through Belarus airspace and ordered it to land. A Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to escort the plane. Belarus authorities then arrested Raman Pratasevich, a 26-year-old activist, journalist, and prominent Lukashenko critic. Ivan Pentchoukov and Reuters contributed to this report. From NTD News US to Reimpose Sanctions on Belarus Over Flight Diversion The Biden administration will reimpose sanctions on Belarus on June 3 and has advised Americans against traveling to the landlocked European nation in response to the plane diversion orchestrated to detain an opposition activist. The measures are part of a package on steps announced by White House press secretary Jen Psaki on May 28. The sanctions target nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises which had previously received sanctions relief. Americans will be prohibited from dealing with the entities beginning June 3. Psaki said the United States is working with European allies to develop further sanctions associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23. In addition, the Treasury Department is developing an executive order that would allow the United States more leeway to impose sanctions on the elements of the authoritarian regime of Alexander Lukashenko, whose iron-fisted rule has earned him the title of Europes last dictator. Lukashenkos domestic, economic, and foreign policies are similar to socialist and communist dictatorships. A former director of a collective farm and member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Lukashenko has backed state ownership of key industries. He was the only member of the Belarusian Parliament to vote against the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Psaki said the Federal Aviation Administration has advised U.S. passenger carriers to exercise extreme caution when considering traveling over Belarus and that the United States will suspend the 2019 U.SBelarus Air Services Agreement. The Department of Justice and the FBI are investigating the plane diversion, Psaki said. We take these measures, together with our partners and Allies, to hold the regime accountable for its actions and to demonstrate our commitment to the aspirations of the people of Belarus, Psaki said in a statement. We call on Lukashenka to allow a credible international investigation into the events of May 23, immediately release all political prisoners, and enter into a comprehensive and genuine political dialogue with the leaders of the democratic opposition and civil society groups that leads to the conduct of free and fair Presidential elections under OSCE auspices and monitoring. According to Ryanair, the operator of the diverted flight, Belarusian flight controllers told the crew on May 23 there was a bomb threat against the plane as it was crossing through Belarus airspace and ordered it to land. A Belarusian MiG-29 fighter jet was scrambled to escort the plane. Belarus authorities then arrested Raman Pratasevich, a 26-year-old activist, journalist, and prominent Lukashenko critic. Veterans Speak About Memorial Day: Its Not About Us On Monday, May 31, Americans from sea to shining sea will observe Memorial Day. However, veterans are quick to remind you: Its not about us. Monday is not about us, Sergeant J.O. Batten, Commander of VFW Post 8713 in Brooksville, Florida told The Epoch Times. Its about the men on that wall out there. A lot of people dont realize that. Batten, a United States Marine, served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. The wall is a granite monument, which stands guard at the front door of VFW. It bears the names of a group of men known as The Brooksville Eight, men who were killed in action during the Vietnam War. They are: Capt. Denver Colburn, Lance Corporals Hercules Moore and Charles Keathly, Private First Class Danny Overton, and First Lieutenant Denis Vacenovsky of the United States Marine Corps; Sergeants Virgil Hamilton and Larry Kinder and Specialist Washington Langley of the United States Army. The Brooksville Eight monument stands guard at the front door of VFW Post 8713 in Brooksville, Florida. (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times) Memorial Day is not about veterans who are still alive, Ron McCombs told The Epoch Times, standing at attention before the wall as he looked at the names engraved into the stone. Its about those men, the ones who didnt make it. McCombs, now 73-years-old, was an E5 in the U.S. Army. He also served in Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. Batten said there arent many veterans left from the Vietnam war at his post, and those members who served in World War II and Korea have all passed away. Ron and I are the only ones left here from the Vietnam era, Batten said. Originally known as Decoration Day, Memorial Day originated in the years following the Civil War. However, it didnt become an official federal holiday until 1971. Still, in the 50 years that have passed, veterans have observed how the sacred meaning of Memorial Day is becoming diluted and lost. Batten lamented how even the hallowed ritual of lowering the American flag to half-mast has been diminished by politics and political correctness. While events like school shootings are tragic, these events do not meet the guidelines for lowering the flag, as set forth by the United States Department of Veterans Affairs. According to Public Law 94-344, known as the Federal Flag Code (pdf) the American flag should be flown on Memorial Day and lowered to half-mast until noon. The code further dictates it may be flown at half-staff to honor a newly deceased federal or state government official by order of the president or the governor, respectively. Billy Butts served his country as a soldier in the U.S. Army. His tours included such places as Iraq and Afghanistan. He noted a similar lessening in the meaning of medals, such as the Bronze Star. While Butts personally received one, he believes this medal is little more than a participation trophy. It doesnt have the V Device, Butts clarified, leaning forward as he held up two fingers in the shape of the letter. Thats the difference. As Butts explained, a regular Bronze Star can be awarded to someone for something like administrative excellence, which is little more than doing their job. However, a Bronze Star with a V Device is earned only for committing an act of valor during the heat of combat. Timothy Zarbo, who served six months in the Gulf War as a member of the United States Air Force, believes this era was the peak of Americas military prowess. While the war in Vietnam dragged on for nearly 20 years, Operation Desert Storm, was over in three days. Still, Zarbo is still humbled by those who fought in Vietnam. We were part of the era of volunteer military service, Zarbo asserted. Those who served in Vietnam didnt have a choice. They were drafted. Those who fought in the Gulf War were called heroes, and welcomed back with yellow ribbons and parades. Those who served in Vietnam were spit on and called baby killers. As with the others, Zarbo made it clear that Memorial Day isnt about him. Veterans Day is for those who survived and retired, Zarbo explained. Armed Forces Day is for those who are still serving. Memorial Day is reserved for those who never got to take off their uniform. Because of this, the act of stolen valor is a particular point of contention for most veterans. If I could speak for all veterans, I would say: We dont care if you didnt serve, McCombs said. Just dont say you did. Its a slap in the face to all who did, especially to those that never came home. We see it all the time. Batten spoke of how many who served in war returned home with the crippling effect of Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome. Morgan Schmitz of the U.S. Air Force spoke of the deadly diseases that are slowly claiming the lives of many who served with him in the Gulf Wars because they were exposed to the smoke from burn pits. Burn pits were used by the United States and military contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan to dispose of metal, rubber, chemicals, paint, medical waste, munitions and unexploded ordnance, petroleum products, human waste, plastics, and various other forms of waste. Many who were exposed to the toxic fumes from these burn pits have been diagnosed with such diseases as Leukemia, Non-Ischemic Cardiomyopathy, Intestinal Cancers, and Papillary Thyroid Carcinoma. But even with all of the things Americas veterans suffered, the men kept returning to one important message: Memorial day isnt about us. Its about the ones who gave the ultimate sacrifice. Ron McCombs, Billy Butts, Robert Romance, J.O. Batten, Tim Zarbo, and Morgan Schmitz at the Brooksville Eight monument at VFW Post 8713 in Brooksville, Florida. (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times) But there was one last thing Batten wanted to share with his fellow Americans to think about on Memorial Day, particularly with the younger generation, who either dont know or dont seem to care about the sacrifices made by the generations who went before them in order to defend the freedoms they have today. He iterated the sacred vow they all took when they were inducted into their respective branches of the military, how they raised their right hands and swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same so help me God. Just because we left the military, Batten said as his eyes glistened with emotion, we were not relieved of that vow. I dont care if weve been retired for five years, ten years or twenty, once we take that oath as a member of the military, we are forever obligated to defend the United States, and its Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, with up to and including our lives. For us, that promise we made to you never ends. A man crosses the normally busy intersection of Flinders street and Swanston streets in Melbourne, Australia on May 28, 2021. (Darrian Traynor/Getty Images) Victorian Outbreak Now at 35 Cases Amid Lockdown Aged care worker among 5 new cases Victoria has recorded five new locally acquired cases of COVID-19 as residents go into the second day of the states fourth lockdown. The cases were recorded by Victorias Department of Health on Friday from more than 56,000 testsa testing record for the state. With 45 active cases in the state, Victorians have been told not to leave home except to shop for food and essential items, to provide or receive care, for exercise, work or study, or to get vaccinated. Victorian residents must observe a five-kilometre travel limit for exercise and shopping, and wear masks both indoors and outdoors. These rules will remain in place in Victoria until at least next Friday. Most infections are linked to the City of Whittlesea cluster in Melbourne, with cases testing positive for the B1617 strain first identified in India. We absolutely have to recognise that there are thousands and thousands of close contacts that are still to go through the incubation period who could become symptomatic, chief health officer Brett Sutton said on Friday. Aged Care Worker A female aged care worker at a facility in Melbournes northwest is among the locally-acquired COVID-19 cases. Her case is currently unlinked to other COVID-19 cases. She has been commended for seeking virus testing as soon as she experienced respiratory symptoms. The woman worked at Arcare Maidstone and may have worked on two daysMay 26 and 27while infectious, according to authorities. The facility has been placed into lockdown and residents are self-isolating. We know of course that anybody who has family in aged care will be particularly concernedwe will be working closely with them, Victorian Department of Healths Jeroen Weimar told reporters on Sunday. Im concerned at this point we dont have an original acquisition source. My understanding is at this particular site half the residents were vaccinated and around a third of the staff were vaccinated, he added. Of the other four local COVID-19 cases diagnosed on Saturday, two were close virus contacts in quarantine and one is linked to a previously-announced exposure site. The final case is also under investigation. Contact Tracing More than 15,000 primary and secondary contacts to date have been told to self-isolate after coming into contact with a COVID case. The state government has also asked for 160 defence force personnel to help check on the thousands of people who have been told to isolate at home. The list of COVID-19 exposure sites had grown by Saturday to more than 150, including a flu vaccination centre in the suburb of Preston. Authorities are also urgently trying to track down people who attended five exposure sites: The Sporting Globe in Mordialloc, Three Monkeys and Somewhere Bar in Prahran, The Local in Port Melbourne, and The Palace Hotel in South Melbourne. Some 21,626 Victorians on Friday received a COVID-19 vaccine dose. The states coronavirus hotline was flooded with more than 77,000 calls in 15 minutes when it was announced on Thursday that eligibility for the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine would be expanded to people aged 40-49. Its estimated the lockdown will cost the states economy about $2.5 billion. Students attend an in-person English class at St. Anthony Catholic High School in Long Beach, Calif., on March 24, 2021. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images) Virginia Countys Schools Warned to Revoke Teachers Suspension for Opposing Using Students Preferred Pronouns Public school officials in Loudoun County, Virginia, were warned May 28 to revoke their suspension of a teacher for opposing the use of students preferred pronouns, or face further legal action. Tanner Cross, a teacher at Leesburg Elementary School, was suspended after speaking publicly May 26 during a school board meeting in opposition to the systems proposed policy that teachers must use the pronouns preferred by students rather than the pronouns consistent with their biological sex. Cross was informed on May 28 that he was being suspended pending an investigation of allegation that [he] engaged in conduct that had a disruptive impact on the operations of Leesburg Elementary School. On May 28, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel Tyson Langhofer told school officials in a letter that they must either revoke the suspension and excise all records of it from Crosss personnel file or he will take further legal action. The First Amendment prohibits retaliation against public employees for speaking on matters of public concern. A teachers exercise of his right to speak on issues of public importance may not furnish the basis for his dismissal from public employment. Pickering v. Bd. of Educ. of Twp. High Sch. Dist. 205,391 U.S. 563, 574 (1968), Langhofer wrote in the letter to school officials. Mr. Crosss expression during public comment time at an open school board meeting was undoubtedly expression in his private capacity on a matter of public concern. Id. (teachers public expression regarding school board actions is protected speech); Janus v. Am. Fedn of State, Cnty. & Mun. Emps., 138 S. Ct. 2448, 2476 (2018) (listing examples of matters of public concern); see also, Meriwether v. Hartop, 992 F.3d 492, 506-07 (6th Cir. 2021) (teachers use of pronouns is protected speech on a matter of public concern). Immediately suspending an employee and launching an investigation for engaging in First Amendment-protected expression, creates an atmosphere of fear and is intended to send a message to Mr. Cross and other teachers that they must toe the line or face the consequences. The First Amendment does not countenance such retaliation. We demand that you immediately (1) rescind the suspension, (2) reinstate Mr. Cross so that he can return to class on Tuesday, June 1, (3) remove the suspension letter from his file, and (4) refrain from any future retaliation against protected speech. Absent the complete revocation of this suspension, Mr. Cross will be forced to pursue other legal options to safeguard his rights. A spokesman for the school system couldnt be reached for comment. While suspended, Cross is barred from being on school property or participating in any school activities without obtaining prior permission. Hes also required to make himself available to school officials for conversation by telephone or in-person meetings during official business hours. Loudoun County is one of the nations most affluent counties and has been the focus of serious controversies in its education system as officials here have adopted extensive politically correct policies, educational materials, and programs that have sparked major public opposition, including those based on critical race theory (CRT). As The Epoch Times previously reported, Loudoun County parents began to organize in June 2020, asking for the reopening of schools that had been shuttered in response to the CCP virus pandemic. However, it was the remote learning the district put in place that allowed parents to learn more about what their children were being taught, which raised some red flags. Were seeing what our kids are learning, and our goal changes from opening schools to Oh, my gosh. What are we sending our children back to? one parent, who asked to remain anonymous because of concern about reprisals, told The Epoch Times. Basically, theyre categorizing children by race to determine the quality of education each will have, which is absolutely unacceptable, she said, adding that her children wont be returning to that school. Loudoun County Public Schools spokesman Wayde Byard denied that the schools are determining the quality, level, or resources for education based on skin color. Our goal is to ensure equity based on this definition as outlined by the Virginia Department of Education: Education Equity is achieved when we eliminate the predictability of student outcomes based on race, gender, zip code, ability, socioeconomic status or languages spoken at home, he told The Epoch Times in an email. With reporting by Petr Svab CHESHIRE A local private veterinary practice has been acquired by a national chain where the private practices owner first started her career more than a decade ago. Dr. Kristine Metz, owner of Animal Medical Care on Cornwall Avenue, told the owners of pets she treats that she will join the Cheshire location of VCA Animal Hospital next month. Metz will start seeing pets as a member of VCA Cheshire June 14, she told her clients in an email. To continue to meet our current demand and sustain our level of client satisfaction, we decided to move the AMC team and operations to VCA Cheshire Animal Hospital which has been a member of our community for many years, Metz wrote in the email to clients that was shared with Hearst Connecticut Media. She was not immediately available to comment on the decision to end her private practice. Metz started her Animal Medical Care veterinary practice 15 years ago. Prior to that, she began her career working for 15 years at Cheshire Veterinary Hospital, which later was acquired and became VCA Cheshire. It will be like coming home, Metz said of joining VCA Cheshire. I am looking forward to continuing to provide quality care for your pets in a state-of-the-art facility. VCA is one of the largest animal hospital chains in North America with more than 1,000 offices, 20 of them in Connecticut. Joseph Campbell, a VCA spokesman, said company officials are thrilled at the opportunity to welcome the Animal Medical Care team and their patients into the VCA family where we share Dr. Metzs commitment to providing excellent care for pets. All employees from the Animal Medical Care team have been invited to join VCA as part of this planned transition, Campbell said. Reaction to the news from clients whose pets are treated by Metz was mixed. Andres Arteaga has used both veterinary practices for his dog and cat, and said via social media that while he was disappointed by the news about Animal Medical Care, I understand the business reasoning. Animal Medical Care felt more high touch than VCA..., Arteaga said. Ron Briggs told the Register that he has taken his familys dogs and cats to Metz for about 15 years and she is hands down the best vet weve ever had. I think this will only expand her capabilities in providing the best care available, Briggs said when asked about Metz joining the VCA Cheshire practice. Other clients of Metzs said they will be looking for a new veterinary practice to treat their pets now that she will be closing hers. I do not believe I will follow them to VCA, said Eileen OConnell Turner. Theresa Burak said, Currently searching for a new vet. . luther.turmelle@hearstmediact.com Weather forecasts predict rain showers will continue through the rest of the holiday weekend. Residents across the state can expect to see anywhere from 1.5 to 3 inches of rain with more rain anticipated in Hartford, Windham and New London counties, according to the U.S. National Weather Service. Temperatures will be in the 40s and 50s with wind gusts potentially blowing as high as 35 miles per hour. Forecasts show Saturday and Sunday are likely to be rainy days, as is Monday, except for a small partly sunny window predicted to gleam with a high of 65 degrees Monday afternoon. According to the NWS, New Haven and Fairfield Counties should see rain Saturday, Sunday and into Monday. Both regions are expected to have light rain or drizzle on Memorial Day. Although skies wont be sunny most of the weekend, Connecticut residents can still look forward to a host of events happening across the state to commemorate Memorial Day. With many state parks and beaches open this weekend, expect a high volume of traffic. LJUBLJANA, Slovenia (AP) Thousands rallied in Slovenia's capital Friday against right-wing Prime Minister Janez Jansa, reflecting mounting pressure on the government weeks before the country takes over the European Unions rotating presidency. Some 20,000 people gathered at a central Ljubljana square to demand that the government step down and early elections be held. Several workers' unions and opposition parties joined the demonstration. Critics accuse Jansa of assuming increasingly authoritarian ways similar to those of his ally, Hungarys hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban. They claim that Jansas government has pressured Slovenian media and spurred hate speech, while mishandling the coronavirus crisis and curbing social dialogue in the traditionally moderate Alpine nation. Jansa, a veteran politician who has served twice in the past as prime minister, has dismissed the accusations as a leftist conspiracy. Earlier this week, he survived an impeachment motion filed by the opposition in parliament. Jansa came to power last year after the previous, liberal prime minister stepped down. He is also known for prematurely congratulating former U.S. President Donald Trump while vote count was still underway during the presidential election last November. The protesters on Friday shouted Elections now," waving Slovenian and labor union flags and banners. One banner read Death to Fascism, Freedom for all. Many participants wore face masks in line with pandemic rules. Pija Zorman said she came to Ljubljana for the protest from Kranj, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) away. The 29-year-old said she joined the rally because of "lack of perspective. We, the young people, are ignored, said Zorman. Slovenia is set to assume the presidency of the 27-member EU in July. Jansa has come under EU scrutiny over allegations of media pressure in the country, including abolishing state funding for Slovenia's only news agency, the STA. New coronavirus cases under 450 on Saturday, just ahead of Memorial Day A group of children got a chance to cast their cares away recently with a special invitation to participate in a fishing derby. The Woodhaven-Brownstown Rotary Club treated a group of children with special needs to a day of fun and fishing at Michigan Memorial Park. The event was organized and led by Rotarian Ed Smith. - Advertisement - The outing was held May 19 and members of the Brownstown Fire and Police departments volunteered to join in and help. They added a level of excitement to the festivities of the day assisting with the kids. Rotarians and volunteers were positioned around the pond and helped each participant try their luck at catching a fish. The event brought out fellow Rotarians, along with Brownstown Police Chief Jeff Watson and Lt. Andy Starzec. Their skills were tested during the day against those of ambitious firefighters as the units engaged in a friendly competition to see who could catch the most fish during the outing. The organizers agreed there was nothing more rewarding than watching the kids fish and actually seeing the excitement in their eyes each time one was caught. The club and first responders posted about the experience on their respective social media accounts, noting the fun they had seeing the children pull bluegills out the water. Once their fishing time was up, they all were taken to Thorn Park, where they met up with township Police Officer Toni Nowak and other Rotarians. Together, they cooked up a slew of hot dogs for everyone. Not only did the children get to fish and enjoy some traditional summer picnic foods, they also had a surprise visit from Captain Rotary. The energetic community-service minded character made a grand introduction and entertained the children as they played and finished their lunch. The Rotarians, police and firefighters received a good deal of praise from the community for spending their time and giving their undivided attention to the children. They all were thanked for their service and the things they do for the community. Sign up for our daily morning newsletter Click here and then look to the right side for the sign up to the morning newsletter for The News Herald, and you can get the top headlines de So special, said Brenda Watson Perry on the police departments social media page. Creating memories of a lifetime. It appears the jury is still out on determining who caught the most fish between the township's police and fire departments, as both believe they had the edge. All fish caught were returned to the pond. One thing they all agreed on was that it was the children who really won the day. Back the Blue rally set to send a message with walk down Hall Road in Woodhaven With seven active and retired members of law enforcement within her family, Shannon Fuller knows the courage it takes to put on a uniform an +3 Dearborn man charged with crushing, killing parakeet over $30 refund at Allen Park pet store The Wayne County Prosecutor's Office has charged a man in connection with the killing of a pet parakeet after a video surfaced showing the bir High numbers in freeway traffic sting, which included Taylor, Romulus, dub it unsuccessful The results are in, and it appears Operation Guardian Angel kept Michigan State Police and officers from various jurisdictions busier than the New selection process for Trenton varsity football job lands Indiana hall of fame coach For everything that went wrong in the first attempt to select a head varsity football coach in Trenton, school Supt. Douglas Mentzer said dist Listen to article NIgeria is a funny and strange country to live in and the lawmakers are even stranger making you think whether theyve lost touch with reality all together: recently the Senate is trying to push a Bill, the Terrorism Prevention(Amendment) Bill 2021, through that threatens to imprison anybody, for up to 15 years, if they pay a kidnappers ransom! Morally, paying a kidnappers ransom is wrong: it sends out the wrong signals as it not only encourages the kidnappers to abduct more people but encourages more people to become kidnappers because its lucrative. But in a country where there is a breakdown in law and order and there are no specialized police units to rescue abductees, the victims next-of-kin often have no choice but to pay - unless they dont want to see their loved ones again. Its been over 7 years since the Chibok girls were kidnapped by Boko Haram and Leah Sharibu has been missing for 3 years and to this day the Nigerian security forces dont know where they are or how to get them back. If the offer of a ransom being paid was on the table all of them would have been home by now. Senator Ezenwa Francis Onyewuchi, one of the sponsors of the Bill, reckons Nigeria should follow the example of countries like America and Britain who refuse to negotiate with kidnappers. Hes got his facts wrong. Very rarely in the UK or the US are people abducted off the streets and held for ransom. If such should happen and its mostly terrorists who kidnap, their specialized police hostage recovery teams will swing into action and do everything within their power to free those abducted without any money changing hands. The same governments, if their citizens are kidnapped abroad ,will send in Special Forces units, such as SAS or SEALS, to rescue them as weve seen recently in Niger, Nigeria and Kenya. In Nigeria no such a viable unit exists and in some cases our naughty police officers will even help the kidnappers broker a deal! Before proposing such a ludicrous bill the lawmakers need to take a good look at the kidnapping industry and how to stop it. I call it an industry because so many people are involved in it and their numbers are swelling every day and the police are powerless to stop it: it's an easy crime to commit, just grab someone off the street and hold them against their will until their family pays up and the police wont even be bothered to investigate; by the way is Evans the Kidnapper still in custody or has he bribed his way out? Mass unemployment has forced a lot of Nigerians to earn their daily bread through illegal means - kidnapping being one of them - and Nigeria is now one of the Top Ten countries in the world where you are most likely to be kidnapped and held for ransom. You cant maintain law and order in a country where people are hungry.Deal with the problem that forces people into crime in the first place! A citizen looks to their government for protection from their enemies and criminals, both internal and external, and if the police and army cant protect them they will be forced to take matters into their own hands. So what happens if your relative is kidnapped? You call the police, wait while they do nothing and fold your arms and wait and...and wait...until the kidnappers call you and tell you that your loved one is buried in a shallow grave or sold to a ritualist, in pieces. I wonder what one of the lawmakers would do if one of their next-of-kins was kidnapped, call the clueless police? Or would they get somebody to secretly negotiate with the kidnappers? The Bill they should be proposing should be to give the security forces more powers - and resources - to deal with kidnappers and the courts to sentence them to harsher sentences. You cant penalise a person for paying a ransom to free their loved ones when there is no other option. In trying to fight insecurity in the country you cant penalise the victim! Im on Twitter: @Archangel641 or visit http://www.archangel641.blogspot.co.uk FDA approves use of Sinopharm vaccine BANGKOK: The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved the Sinopharm coronvirus vaccine for emergency use in Thailand. COVID-19CoronavirusVaccine By Bangkok Post Saturday 29 May 2021, 09:05AM Dr Nithi Mahanonda (left), secretary-general of Chulabhorn Royal Academy, and Public Health Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, at a press conference on a plan to procure doses from Sinopharm. Photo: Chanat Katanyu / Bangkok Post The FDA on Friday (May 28) approved the registration application for Sinopharms COVID-19 vaccine submitted by Biogenetech Co. It is the fifth coronavirus vaccine approved so far in Thailand, FDA secretary-general Paisarn Dankum told a news conference. It is an inactivated vaccine, manufactured by Beijing Institute of Biological Product Co, and requires two doses with the recommended interval being 28 days. Sinopharm has already been approved by the World Health Organisation for emergency use listing, Dr Paisarn said. He said registration of COVID-19 vaccines in Thailand focused on safety and effectiveness of the vaccine. The FDA had examined documents submitted by the vaccine importer before approving it for emergency use. The approval shows that the FDA is not preventing the private sector applying for registration of COVID-19 vaccines, the FDA secretary-general said. On reports that Accap Assets Co would sell 20 million doses of the Chinese-made Sinopharm vaccine to the Chulabhorn Royal Academy, Dr Paisarn said an initial examination found that the firm had not received a permit to import medicines. It had not registered for COVID-19 vaccine with the FDA. Legally, those who wanted to import a vaccine must receive permission and must apply for registration of the vaccine with the FDA before importing it. In the case of the Sinopharm vaccine, the FDA had approved the registration of the vaccine to Biogenetech Co, which submitted documents and followed proper procedures, the FDA secretary-general said. Applications to register two other COVID-19 vaccines Sputnik V and Covaxin were in the process of submitting documents for approval. The Thai FDA earlier approved the vaccines made by AstraZeneca Thailand on Jan 20 this year, Sinovac Biotech imported by GPO on Feb 22, Johnson & Johnson on March 25, and Moderna on May 13. A spokesman for the royal academy chaired by Princess Chulabhorn confirmed on Friday that it would import one million doses of Sinopharms COVID-19 vaccine next month, Reuters reported. We want to help plug in the gaps for business, schools, so they can move forward," Nithi Mahanonda, secretary-general of the Chulabhorn Royal Academy told a news briefing. CRA to sell Chinese shots privately One million doses of COVID-19 vaccine from Chinese state-owned Sinopharm will arrive in June and be offered as a paid alternative for particular groups who dont want to wait, the Chulabhorn Royal Academy (CRA) announced on Friday. Dr Nithi Mahanonda, the CRA secretary-general, said that as the vaccine will be procured with the academys budget, it could not be offered free of charge. The private sector or any agencies which are at risk and want to speed up the process for their staff can contact the academy, Dr Nithi told a press conference. The price of the vaccine will not exceed B1,000 per shot, including insurance, said Dr Nithi. On Thursday, the CRA announced the plan to procure a supply from Sinopharm vaccine, manufactured by the Beijing Institute of Biological Product Co, as an alternative to the two formulas from Sinovac and AstraZeneca that are currently being relied on. The announcement received a warm welcome from many, particularly as the Sinovac shot has still not been granted emergency approval by the World Health Organization. However, most people assumed that the imports would be offered free of charge as an adjunct to the state vaccination programme. "As I have clarified, this is another choice. I do not think that members of the public can come to receive it or it may get mixed up with the state vaccines," said Dr Nithi. "This supply is being reserved to help alleviate current shortages among high-need groups and enable the Public Health Ministry to give some schools and private sector businesses another avenue to secure protection for their pupils and employees." A number of organisations have already made inquiries about buying doses of the vaccine, including the Federation of Thai Industries and PTT Plc, according to Dr Nithi. Phuket Governor calls for unity, July 1 a mission for all PHUKET: Phuket Governor Narong Woonciew has called on all sectors of the community to prepare for what he calls a mission to revive Phuket, to be healthy and bright, ready to welcome the July 1 opening of Phuket under the Phuket Tourism Sandbox plan. COVID-19Coronavirushealthtourismeconomics By The Phuket News Saturday 29 May 2021, 04:57PM Phukets mass vaccination campaign continued at the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket Phukets mass vaccination campaign continued at the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket Phukets mass vaccination campaign continued at the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket Phukets mass vaccination campaign continued at the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket Phukets mass vaccination campaign continued at the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket People queue to enter the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin to receive their state-provided COVID vaccination today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket People queue to enter the Indoor Sports Stadium at Saphan Hin to receive their state-provided COVID vaccination today (May 29). Photo: PR Phuket Speaking at Phuket Provincial Hall yesterday (May 28), Governor Narong stressed that all officials are to ready themselves, their offices and their areas for the reopening. Present to receive the message were heads of government services on the island, military representatives, leading police commanders, leaders of local government organisations (OrBorTor and municipalities) and officers from a host of other agencies. Every unit, prepare yourself to carry out a clear mission and allocate the budget required to jointly revive Phuket to be healthy and bright as a tourist city that is clean and beautiful, with both natural attractions and a good cultural identity. It is the destination and dream of both Thai and foreign tourists they want to travel, Governor Narong said. Therefore, preparation is required. Answer the question, What should the agency prepare that would be of the most benefit to Phuket? Efficient planning and execution are to be based on the interests of the people, the restoration of tourism and service businesses, including tourism in various communities to create more comprehensive income distribution among the people in the future, Governor Narong added. The Governors call for all people on the island to prepare for July 1 comes as the mass vaccination campaign continues at the five vaccination centres set up across Phuket under what the Governor calls COVID End Game: Provincial Vaccination Strategy. It also comes as Phuket officials recognise how hard hit business operators, and workers, have been by the ongoing economic crisis. Meanwhile, efforts to contain the number of infections on the island continue to result in single-digit daily numbers of new infections confirmed. The Phuket Provincial Public Health Office (PPHO) confirmed just three new cases confirmed yesterday (May 28), bringing the total number of infections on the island confirmed since Apr 3 to 647, not including six people infected elsewhere brought to Phuket for treatment. Of those, 593 people (91%) have already been discharged from medical care, while 59 people remain in hospital under medical care or supervision. The PPHO also released its updated map showing the locations of infections confirmed in Phuket, dated today (May 29) but marked accurate as of 6pm past night, as follows: Wichit 73 infections Patong 65 Phuket Town 64 (Talad Yai 36, Talad Neua 28) Rassada 57 Kathu 50* Cherng Talay 45* Chalong 42 Rawai 41 Thepkrasattri 33 Srisoonthorn 33 Kamala 33* Karon 29 Koh Kaew 24 Mai Khao 9 Sakhu 9 * Correction: Our apologies, correct figures according to the PPHO map are Kathu 50; Kamala 33; the area incorrectly identified as one of the Kamala entries was Cherng Talay 45. Phuket officials reach out to businesses hammered by COVID, denied loans PHUKET: Phuket officials are calling for all businesses on the island suffering heavily from the COVID economic crisis and previously denied support loans to register their details so the provincial government can draw up plans to restart the islands economy under B250 billion budget for Restoration Loans. COVID-19economicstourism By The Phuket News Saturday 29 May 2021, 03:02PM Phuket officials are asking business operators to provide details of their dire predicament so the information can be passed upwards to policy makers. Image: Screenshot The call for business operators to provide details of their dire predicament was posted online by the Phuket office of the Public Relations Department (PR Phuket) today (May 29), just over one month ahead of the planned July 1 reopening of the island to receiving fully vaccinated international tourists. Due to the Phuket Provincial Government plan to open the province on July 1, 2021 under the Phuket Sandbox model, which involves government and the private sector, we realise the importance of preparing all sectors for the opening of Phuket, said the announcement. It is known that many entrepreneurs are in need for funds to support the preparation for opening and continuing the business, and the government has released Restoration Loans via the Bank of Thailand to help small entrepreneurs affected by COVID-19. From joint public and private meetings we have been made aware of the problem of accessing the said measures by Phuket entrepreneurs, the announcement added. Phuket Province [the provincial government], therefore has worked with the private sector to collect data on the need for such rehabilitation loans. Including barriers to accessing credit in order to present to policy makers to urgently resolve access to recovery loans. We therefore ask for cooperation from all entrepreneurs to please provide detailed information for the team to be able to collect information and present to the relevant people, the announcement concluded. Businesses operators in need can provide their information via a Google Form now available online. The form, in Thai language but easily understandable via Google Translate, asks business operators to confirm what type of business they operate, such as tourism, transport etc, and the form ownership, such as a company, partnership or sole proprietorship. Business operators are also asked whether they have applied for financial support before, and why they were denied. Among the reasons being accepted for being denied loans to survive the COVID crisis are no bank statements to show income for the years 2020-2021; the debt burden is too high, making it impossible to apply for additional loans; no security; no license to operate according to the banks conditions; and business shutdown due to COVID-19 impact and/or shutdown under government orders due to COVID-19. Another reason accepted is that the bank refused without giving reasons. The survey also asks how much finance the business needs, and what the funds are to be spent on, such as to repair buildings, places, vehicles, for employment or even to pay taxes, duties, fees or permits. To view the online form, click here. Kevin Fisher, of Quincy, Mass., left, receives his second shot of Moderna COVID-19 vaccine from RN Katherine Francisco, of Avon, Mass., right, at a mass vaccination clinic, Wednesday, May 19, 2021, at Gillette Stadium, in Foxborough, Mass. A month after every adult in the U.S. became eligible for the vaccine, a distinct geographic pattern has emerged: The highest vaccination rates are concentrated in the Northeast, while the lowest ones are mostly in the South. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) Please note The Sun Chronicle is providing this story and all of our local coronavirus coverage for free so that all readers have access to this important information about the pandemic. Please visit our dedicated coronavirus coverage page for more stories. If you'd like to support our mission, please subscribe. MASCOUTAH Allegiant will begin a new nonstop route to Charleston International Airport in South Carolina from MidAmerica St. Louis Airport. To celebrate, the company is offering introductory one-way fares on the new route as low as $65. As restaurants, attractions and parks continue to open again, we know vacationers are looking ahead to summer travel with great excitement, said Allegiants Drew Wells, senior vice president of revenue and planning. More than ever, we think travelers will appreciate our brand of air travel: nonstop flights that take them directly to their destination, without the hassle of layovers or connections. The new nonstop route via MidAmerica St. Louis Airport will operate twice weekly. Flight days, times and the lowest fares can be found only at Allegiant.com. We are delighted to expand our nonstop service from MidAmerica St. Louis Airport with the addition of another great destination, said St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern. With Allegiants low-cost, nonstop service, and the hassle-free experience our airport offers, travelers will have easy, affordable access to the cities they want to visit. Allegiant offers a singular option to St. Louis-area travelers with low base airfare and savings on rental cars and hotels. Travelers can book their entire vacation with Allegiant for less. Allegiants continued investment at MidAmerica St. Louis Airport with their twelfth destination being Charleston, South Carolina, speaks to the communitys strong desire for additional leisure travel options, said MidAmerica St. Louis Airports Bryan Johnson, director. We appreciate Allegiants confidence in our market and contribution to our continued passenger growth. About the introductory one-way fares: More Information MASCOUTAH - MidAmerica St. Louis Airport has launched a new airport website designed to better meet the unique needs of the airport and its many users. The new website, at www.flymidamerica.com, addresses several issues that impacted the user experience on the original site, including flexibility for use on different devices and user accessibility, while also providing more robust information about the 12 destinations MidAmerica Airport serves with non-stop flights via Allegiant. "One of the airport's primary attributes is its easy ability to connect the St. Louis region to a variety of leisure destinations," said airport director Bryan Johnson. "The new website expands on that capability, and includes pages dedicated to inspiring travel to those nonstop destinations." The airport partnered with Aviatrix Communications, a Minority and Women-Owned Business website development and outreach firm that works exclusively with airports and aviation companies, to design and update the new site. Aviatrix Communications has built websites for airports across the country and is well versed in industry-specific best practices. Airport staff and Aviatrix Communications began developing the new website in fall 2020. "ADA compliance is a huge priority for the airport, and the new site has been built to specific industry standards to ensure that all users have equal access to the airport's information," said St. Clair County Chairman Mark Kern. As a continuation of the enhanced travel information and accessibility, the website features a revenue-generating booking engine where travelers can purchase airline tickets from a reputable travel agency. The site also shares details on low-fare options for trips both to and from MidAmerica and the many great destinations served. The style of the website is an extension of the airport's overall brand and aligns with the airport's existing vision and tone, including the colors, fonts and key messages. A new media center, updated terminal maps and travel tips round out the new, customer-friendly website. Built upon proven website development standards, the new website maintains the flexibility to easily add new functionality over time with minimal cost. The inclusion of a language translator widget will also allow the site to be responsive and display cleanly on all devices. See More Collapse Seats and dates are limited and fares are not available on all flights. Flights must be purchased by May 30 for travel by Aug. 16. Price displayed includes taxes, carrier charges and government fees. Fare rules, routes and schedules are subject to change without notice. Optional baggage charges and additional restrictions could apply. For more details, optional services and baggage fees, visit Allegiant.com. For more information, visit Allegiant.com. ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) President Joe Biden started the Memorial Day weekend by visiting a rock climbing gym in northern Virginia as the state lifted all COVID-19 distancing and capacity restrictions at private businesses and much of the nation pushes toward a greater sense of normalcy. Biden sought to use the stop on Friday at Sportrock Climbing Centers an 18,000-square-foot (1,670-square-meter) space of climbing and bouldering walls, a gym, and yoga studios to celebrate progress made as the country looks to turn the corner on the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 593,000 Americans and 3.5 million people worldwide. The president, who later paid tribute to the armed forces with an address at an Air Force base elsewhere in Virginia, used the day to thank Americans who have already received vaccinations about 51% of Americans are now fully vaccinated and again urged Americans who haven't to get their shot. All over the country weve gone from pain and stagnation of a long dark winter to an economy on the move, Biden said. He added, Americans of every party, race, creed have come together and rolled up their sleeves literally and done their part. This year, the long holiday weekend that marks the unofficial start to summer comes at a moment when the federal government and state governments are relaxing masking and social distancing rules now that a majority of Americans are vaccinated and more people are looking to return to their pre-pandemic routines. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam lifted coronavirus-related restrictions on capacity and social distancing in the state on Friday. He had already lifted Virginias indoor mask mandate for fully vaccinated people on May 15 for most indoor settings, though businesses can still require masks if they want to. Biden appeared enthralled by the Sportrock climbers, who seemed unfazed as the president watched them climb. Asked by a reporter if he'd like to give it a go, Biden responded that he would like to but suggested he start with one of the easier walls. "Im not gonna try the angle wall. Id try that wall, Biden said with a grin, pointing to a flatter climbing wall. The visit came as Biden is pressing Republican lawmakers to back a massive infrastructure bill to rebuild roadways and bridges, replace millions of lead waterpipes and more something that the White House is pitching as a salve for an economy as the U.S. turns the corner on the worst public health crisis in more than a century. "The American people are more ready to come together, I believe, than the Congress and the elected people, Biden said. Biden later traveled to Joint Base Langley Eustis, in the state's Tidewater region, to thank U.S. troops for their service. After beginning with an emotional remembrance of his late son Beau, a veteran, Biden acknowledged the unheralded sacrifices made by the service members and their families. You are the very best of what America has to offer," Biden said. Biden also underscored his recent decision to pull troops out of Afghanistan later this year, expressing gratitude to service members who took multiple tours of duty in America's longest war. My message for you is simple: Thank you, the president said, adding that they were 1% of the population defending 99% of the rest of us. You're incredible." The president was then scheduled to travel to his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he is expected to spend most of the holiday weekend. He was slated to participate in a Memorial Day event there on Sunday before returning to Washington and visiting Arlington National Cemetery on Monday. ___ Lemire reported from Hampton, Va. Associated Press writers Ben Finley in Norfolk, Va., and Aamer Madhani in Chicago contributed to this report. COVINGTON TWP. Seven North Pocono High school students became the first in the county to complete a unique Advanced Placement course, researching diverse topics such as social media impact on romantic relationships and the racial and gender makeup of local juries. Introducing the Advanced Placement Capstone, a distinct College Board program, was pitched to administration four years ago by English teacher Kaitlin G. Besko, Ed.D. Its the first district to offer it in the county and requires a two-year commitment from students. In year one, students take AP Seminar, an introduction to research, with social studies and AP teacher Cheri Gensel, who also helped bring the course to the district. In year two, the students design and conduct original research studies in AP Research with Besko. Weve all kind of gotten used to the way AP classes are supposed to work, mostly a lecture, some type of discussion and you sit down and take a test at the end of the year, said senior Brian Castrogiovanni. This was a very new approach to it that none of us had ever heard before. Besko worked with Dr. Ellen Newell, the chairwoman of Wilkes Universitys Institutional Review Board, so the students could submit their research to the board, which is required to give students the chance to publish their studies since some include human subjects. Four of the seven seniors Castrogiovanni, Alicia Goldenziel, Jordan Goetze and Morgan Steiner recalled Thursday the amount of work the class required, especially during the pandemic and more than a year of moving amongst virtual, hybrid and full in-person learning. They were grateful for the outstanding experience they received as the first cohort of North Pocono students to finish the challenging course, which launched in 2019-20. Im so glad I went through the course, as difficult as it was, I think it was worth every second of it, said Goldenziel. The students research focused on a wide variety of topics. Castrogiovanni, who will attend the University of Scranton in the fall and hopes to be a lawyer, investigated how Lackawanna County residents were represented in the 2019 jury pooling process. Using county and census data, he found gender was fairly represented but racial minorities were underrepresented. The course taught him a whole new way to approach learning. Its a very freeing experience to almost not be bound by an answer, to not be bound by the limits of what A, B, C and D are and you get to look for E or look for all of the above, he said. Goldenziel researched how incentives impact the behavior and work ethic of elementary school students by giving her test classroom students a prize for completing their work. While she found incentives could improve the students work ethic and behavior, she discovered how personal biases can impact research. During the course, the students wrote reflections during their research. They also went through ethics training. Surprised Besko took points off of her reflection on biases, Goldenziel, who will study in Susquehanna Universitys honors program to become a teacher, realized there were overlooked privileges in her own life bleeding into her research. I learned that a little eraser might be extremely exciting to a less privileged kid then it might be to someone who has it all at home, she said. Goetzes idea to research how Snapchat affects romantic relationships among people ages 18 to 29 came from a personal experience and those of her friends. Her research was inconclusive mostly because of the wide range of answers she received from the 100-plus Generation Z and millennials she polled, but overall she found that Snapchat does largely affect relationships. The research inspired her to log out of the social media app and take breaks from her phone. There was a lot of jealously, infidelity, negative perceptions, she said. But the biggest takeaway is that there needs to be more research. Pursing pre-med at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill next year, Goetze added a psychology minor because of the class. Steiner researched rural and urban Pennsylvanians attitudes towards wind turbines; David Alunni created a prosthetic hand to meet commercial standards using a low-cost 3-D printer; Elizabeth Schieber studied the impact of mindfulness on the stress of high school student athletes; and Allie Taffera researched the effectiveness of using audiobooks in second- and third-grade classes. While moments of the class came as no surprise to Besko, who found herself on Google Meets with the students while cooking dinner, what the students got out of the lengthy course was beyond her expectations. She prides herself on her rapport with her students; her AP Capstone kids became her family. I could never have imagined how much they persevered, how well theyve done, she said. It has been such a long road for these students, and has been such a particularly long year for all of us in education, to see all of their work come to fruition, it was wild. After two years of research, going through a grueling process to submit their projects to the IRB and defending their research to the college board, the students presented their projects to family and friends Thursday during a symposium in the high school auditorium. The students had to rely on each other, their peers and the entire Northeast Pennsylvania community, some of whom they never met, throughout the course. This whole process has not only been humbling but very eye-opening to not only what we are capable of as students but also the amount of, not just support, but connections weve garnered this year, said Castrogiovanni. Its been this really wonderful, transformative experience. May 29, 1956 Attempted jail break disclosed at federal courthouse in city The attempted escape of two federal prisoners from Lackawanna County Jail on May 25 was revealed during a sentencing hearing at the Federal Courthouse in Scranton. The two men, Charles Mowery and Oscar Lewis, were being held at the county lockup awaiting sentencing on a charge of stealing a car in Maryland and transporting it over state lines. The attempted escape was revealed to U.S. Judge John W. Murphy just moments before he was to sentence the pair for the car theft. Murphy then sentenced the pair to eight years in federal prison five years for the car theft and three years for the attempted prison break. The pair attempted to tunnel their way out of Lackawanna County Jail. Warden Patrick Manley said their attempt was immediately detected and the pair was split up. U.S. Marshal Oliver Metcalf told the court that two had escaped from a different jail in April. In April they successfully escaped from the York County Jail by forcing the warden to open the facilitys outer gate. The pair got away along with another man involved in the car theft, Raymond Heiser. The three were found three days later in Tennessee. Heiser was not involved in the local prison break attempt. Murphy sentenced him to five years for the car theft. Post office annex contract awarded to New York-based firm Scranton Postmaster Bernard Harding announced that P.O. Realty of White Plains, New York, was awarded the contract to construct the new South Scranton annex of the Scranton Post Office. The $300,000 project called for the construction of a 240-foot by 107-foot structure on a piece of property on the 500 block of Orchard Street between Pittston and Prospect avenues. The annex would be used to process parcel posts and as a distribution point for mail heading to Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Olyphant, Carbondale, Honesdale, Reading and Philadelphia. The construction on the building was expected to be completed by Nov. 1. When state Sen. John Blake announced his plans in February to resign, Scranton Mayor Paige Gebhardt Cognetti called his regional director the same day. On Friday, Cognetti announced Blakes top staffer, Larry West, will take over as the citys business administrator, replacing Carl Deeley, who will become the citys IT director, according to the announcement. West will earn $80,000 annually; Deeley will earn $64,000, said Morgan Fetsock, Cognettis executive assistant. The appointments are effective Tuesday, Fetsock said. West, whose last day with the Senate is Monday, said he and Cognetti spoke the night Blake announced his plans to join U.S. Rep Matt Cartwrights staff as district director. She asked me what my intentions were, and I told her I had given zero thought to it at that point, West said, adding that he was contemplating remaining in the public sector but also has received offers in the private sector. I just felt that with my experience and my time in the state, and my passion for the city to make things right here, (it) just drew me back in, West said. The mayor was eager to make sure that the city gets people in the city that care about it, and theyre proud of it. West earned $90,555 in his position with Blake, according to the state. As business administrator, Deeley earned $80,000, according to the citys 2021 budget. When asked whether searches were conducted for the posts, Fetsock said, The mayor has the ability to appoint department directors. As business administrator, West will focus on economic development, stormwater management, public health infrastructure and duties of the office of business administration, Cognetti said in the announcement. Deeley will continue managing operational improvements, including IT infrastructure, organizational development, costs of doing business, the budget process and financial monitoring, she said. He will also roll out OpenGov, a digital platform that will replace Scrantons antiquated IT systems. We need to continue to make sure that the right leadership team is in place to not only manage critical departments but to also share and support the vision our administration has for serving our community, keeping us safe and seeing our city grow and thrive, Cognetti said in a statement. Deeley lauded his successor. We needed somebody on board that could lead the city in the economic development kind of side of things, Deeley said. When Larry came available, it was really a no-brainer that we needed to get him. The IT director position had been vacant since the beginning of the year when former IT Director Frank Swietnicki was moved to network systems manager. Swietnicki resigned April 5. Although Swietnicki had the title of director, the city never really had a true IT director, Deeley said. Swietnicki, who Deeley emphasized did a great job, largely worked on the operational side of things, ensuring the citys network was running, he said. The IT director position entails managing the needs and strategic direction of the department, Deeley said, comparing it to being an internal consultant. For much of the past year since he was hired, Deeley said he handled those director responsibilities. The network system position, which has a salary of $61,100, according to the citys 2021 budget, is still vacant, Deeley said, explaining the position pays about 50% of what it needs to compared to the competitive job market. Last month, Cognetti declared an emergency to quickly secure third-party IT services, paying Jessup-based Bedrock Technology $12,750 per month. That arrangement will remain for the time being, Deeley said. We needed the immediate support, which we got, he said. Over the next 30 days, they will review their long-term needs and determine whether to solicit a request for qualifications, he said. Jim Lockwood, staff writer, contributed to this report. Brian Buglio must resign as West Hazleton's police chief and plead guilty to violating the civil rights of a citizen as part of an agreement reached with a federal prosecutor, according to court records. Buglio, 45, of Lattimer Mines, allegedly threatened a citizen with criminal charges in retaliation for social media posts the person created that were critical of Buglio and the West Hazleton Police Department, Bruce D. Brandler, acting United States Attorney for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, said Friday in a news release. Buglio was charged in a criminal information Thursday, the U.S. Attorney's Office said. The Scranton Federal Bureau of Investigation's Public Corruption Task Force, which includes members of the state police and Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office, and agents from the FBI and Internal Revenue Service investigated the case. The plea agreement that Buglio signed April 22 and Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip J. Caraballo signed Thursday gives Buglio 10 days from entry of the plea to resign as police chief if he had not already resigned in advance of the entry of the plea. Borough solicitor Chris Slusser said Friday that Buglio has indeed resigned as the chief of the borough. Slusser said that borough officials haven't made a decision who will oversee the force and said he could not comment further. According to court documents, Buglio agreed to plead guilty to deprivation of rights under color of law. The charge stems from a citizen who on several occasions posted content on social media in February 2020 critical of Buglio and the borough police force. On March 4, 2020, the citizen who posted the content was allegedly directed by Buglio to meet with him at the police department. During that meeting, Buglio allegedly threatened to pursue felony criminal charges against the individual in retaliation for the social media posts and to stifle the person's ability to exercise free speech, court records state. During the meeting, Brian Buglio acknowledged that the threatened felony charges lacked merit, the document reads. At the conclusion of the March 4 meeting, the citizen agreed to remove the social media posts, refrain from creating additional posts that are critical of Buglio and the borough police department. Brian Buglio confirmed that they had a 'deal' and shook hands at the conclusion of the meeting, court documents read. Caraballo alleges in court documents that on or about March 4, Buglio, while acting under the color of law, willfully deprived the resident of the right to engage in free speech, which includes the right to express critical opinions of law enforcement officials without being threatened with adverse action for exercising that right. Paul Delorenzo, who said he was the person who was threatened by Buglio, believes the resignation is warranted. "I think absolutely he should resign," Delorenzo said. Buglio could not be reached for comment Friday. He did not answer his cellphone, which relayed an automated message about a full voicemail box. All but one member of council could not be reached for comment about the acting U.S. Attorney's news release. Councilman Henry Kreisl II, the only member of council who answered a call Friday, directed questions about the allegation to borough solicitor Chris Slusser. Mayor John Chura also directed questions to Slusser. Buglio was promoted to chief by a unanimous vote of council in 2009 after Gerald Gallagher resigned from the post. Buglio was serving as sergeant at the time. He began his law enforcement career in Weatherly in 1995 and was hired by West Hazleton the following year. He remained with West Hazleton until he and most of the borough police force had been laid off while the borough was in the state's Act 47 program for financially-distressed municipalities in 2002. He was hired back to a full-time post with West Hazleton around 2006. The borough has since exited the Act 47 program. Lets start with state Sen.-elect Marty Flynn winning a pretty solid victory in the special election for the 22nd Senate District seat. As of Friday, with the results not yet official, Flynn, Democratic representative of the 113th House District, had 30,548, or 51.7% of the vote; Lackawanna County Commissioner Chris Chermak, Republican, 22,464, 38%; Marlene Sebastianelli, Green, 5,373, 9.1%; and Nathan Covington, a Libertarian, 698, 1.2%. This shows plenty of voter confidence in Flynn, even if he didnt match the districts 57% Democratic voter registration. Nonetheless, plenty of voters the 48.3% who voted for Chermak, Sebastianelli or Covington seem to have reservations about the newly elected senator. Maybe this is why. In March 2011, Flynn fell while jogging in West Scranton and suffered a bruised elbow and slightly separated shoulder. He didnt have health insurance and his medical bills piled up. He sued the owner of the property where he fell. The law says you have two years to sue, but Flynn waited until after he first won election as a state representative in November 2012. Strange, but not fatal. What happened on Oct. 14, 2014, could have turned fatal. Two robbers approached Flynn and another freshman Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Ryan Bizzarro of Erie, on a Harrisburg street and tried to rob them. After an exchange of words, one robber fired his gun at Bizzarro, but missed. Flynn pulled his gun, fired twice and missed. Harrisburg Police Chief Thomas Carter said Flynn acted in self-defense with a legally carried gun and praised him and Bizzarro. I take my hat off to Representatives Flynn and Bizzarro, Chief Carter said. They displayed bravery under circumstances of grave danger. Not their fault, but more strangeness and almost fatal. A year earlier, only six months after Flynn took office, The Times-Tribune reported on a Prospect Avenue apartment building that Flynn co-owned and that drew plenty of neighbors complaints and multiple police calls. Flynn actually blocked a city inspection of the property. After the city passed an ordinance requiring landlords to register rental properties, Flynn only did it after the newspaper reported mayoral candidate Bill Courtright failed to register one of his properties. He said he never got notice of the need to register. He also failed to list the Prospect Avenue property as a source of income on the financial interest statement he files as a legislator. He did it after that was pointed out to him. Lets tackle his October 2016 meeting with The Times-Tribune editorial board where he said sitting on the House Insurance Committee helps with campaign fundraising. What I like about insurance is, its a good fundraising committee, Flynn said. They keep you abreast on all the local issues. Its a good committee to fundraise from. Game and fish, theres not a lot of support. Flynn said the contributions didnt influence his votes, but what an odd thing to tell someone you want to endorse you. How about Flynn saying he wouldnt take the controversial per diem expense reimbursement payments when he ran against Rep. Kevin Murphy in 2012, then changing his mind and taking them? Flynn says he gives away a lot of per diem money to charity and that requiring his staff to fill out expense reports and compile receipts risks an IRS audit. Of course, dozens of lawmakers already submit expense reports and spending receipts, dont take per diems and dont get audited. How about Flynn telling businessmen who criticized him on Facebook last May that if they keep talking about how bad we Democrats are ... we will stop supporting your businesses! You want to make it personal and we will! He later apologized and called it juvenile to take anyones political criticism personal (sic). Then, theres Flynns unwillingness to say if hes for or against the Keystone Sanitary Landfill expansion. Considering the tens of thousands of dollars hes received in contributions from several members of the DeNaples family, members of which own the landfill, that undoubtedly induces uneasiness. Finally, take the Republican effort, led by Charlie Spano and Joe Albert, to get Flynn off the state Senate ballot by going to state Commonwealth Court. They said Flynn should have signed his financial interest statement, but his campaign manager signed instead. Flynn does not dispute that when he filed his financial interest statement for the race, his campaign manager, Luke Borwegen, signed it electronically. They filled out the form together and used Borwegens laptop to do it. They blamed the laptops autofill feature for inserting Borwegens name, but thats sloppy, and the hard copy filed a day later wasnt signed at all. Further sloppiness emerged in his financial interest statements. He failed to report car loans and a rental property mortgage on at least one financial interest statement until the failure was pointed out, as Commonwealth Court Judge Christine Fizzano Cannon noted in her ruling. The lawyer for Spano and Albert contrasted Flynns 2016 and 2017 financial interest statements, which listed car loans, with his 2019 form, which didnt. Why didnt you list the car loans in 2019, when you filled out that form? the lawyer asked. Because I didnt remember that I had to, Flynn replied. Amazingly, Flynn actually filed an amended financial interest statement during the Commonwealth Court hearing. Cannon allowed Flynn to stay on the ballot and said she doesnt think Flynn purposefully tried to hide something. She wasnt happy about the way he filled out the forms, either. These omissions instead represent the kind of error born of inattentive haste towards a task that should be properly addressed with greater care in the first instance, the judge wrote. That line embodies the reservations about Flynn. Talk to him about policy, and Flynn sounds well-versed. He understands and can talk about issues. Flynn even scored a big win in 2016 when he and a Republican legislator teamed up to reintroduce legal industrial hemp to Pennsylvania. Its just that hes regularly associated with odd behavior or events and failing to button things down or just follow rules he should know by heart. He gives off a lackadaisical aura that his Senate predecessor, John Blake, just never did. He has served as a representative in a seat he could always easily win, but now hes a senator who will represent four times as many people, who will look to him to lead. He can remain angry about his past treatment in this newspaper or by others and downplay his past mistakes or he can simply behave differently. Thats up to him. It always was. BORYS KRAWCZENIUK, The Times-Tribune politics reporter, writes Random Notes. State lawmakers have proposed a wide array of solutions over the past year, an astounding number of them for problems that dont exist. The House passed a measure last summer during the height of the COVID-19 public health emergency that precluded Gov. Tom Wolfs restrictions on crowd sizes from applying to churches. The governor already had exempted churches from the orders, but never mind. Republican lawmakers also have responded to an extraordinarily successful 2020 election, in which 6.9 million Pennsylvanians 70.93% of the voting-age population cast ballots despite the pandemic, by trying to make sure that never happens again. They have pressed an array of voting restrictions, even though they approved the mail-in balloting that produced the turnout. Those conservatives also embraced state discrimination against a small group of school-aged Pennsylvanians by trying to ban transgender students from participating in sports. This was on the theory that transgender students would dominate girls sports, even though they couldnt produce any evidence of such a problem. The latest initiative, borrowed from other Republican-majority legislatures and led by Republican state Reps. Russ Diamond of Lebanon County and Barb Gleim of Cumberland County the latter of whom led the charge against the transgender bogeyman is to bar critical race theory from Pennsylvania schools. Critical race theory is not taught in Pennsylvania schools, and is not even a course. It is, rather, a construct used by civil rights scholars, activists and others to examine legal, social, cultural, political structures and practices as they relate to race and racism. Diamond and Gleim hold that teachers try to interject race into what should be a colorblind educational system. Colorblind, like life on the streets and in the society outside the classroom? Heaven knows, the last thing this state or nation needs is an open and honest discussion about race. Far better to allow students to be as ignorant about the role of race in U.S. history and society as they, and too many of their parents and public officials, are about civics. Editor: Lets replace pandemonium with pundemonium. Its the creation of a sentence that may make you smile, or laugh. For example: Two hats were hanging on a hat rack. One said to the other: You stay here. Ill go on ahead. Favorites of mine include: Two fish swim into a concrete wall. One turns to the other and says, Dam. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana. She was only a whiskey maker, but he loved her still. A dog gave birth to puppies on the side of a road and was cited for littering. Two silk worms had a race. They ended up in a tie. The short fortune teller who escaped from prison was described as a small medium at large. Hope it cheered you up. TOM ZEKE DZIKI BLAKELY Editor: I want my grandson to grow up and not have to worry about going outside and facing all of the dangers in this cruel world we now experience. Life is a beautiful thing so why do so many violent people surround us? No matter what ethnicity you are, what race you are should never be an issue. We must stop this nonsensical violence and turmoil. No matter who you are, poor or wealthy, it should never be an issue. We all are human beings. Avoid those who bring trouble. If you can, walk away from danger and do not provoke it. God bless our United States, the land that I love and so should you. No other country allows the freedom we have, so protect it with common sense and compassion for one another. Stop being jealous of your neighbor. Remember, we all started with Adam and Eve, so with that in mind we are all related. ANTHONY WRIGHTSON JESSUP Editor: In the later years of the Roman Empire, in the time of the Caesars, there was an annual public ritual in which all citizens were expected to participate. It involved each individual offering a token pinch of incense to an image of Caesar, as an acknowledgement of the emperors claim that he was a god. For most people this did not present a problem since the majority of those in the empire believed in various pantheons anyway and including Caesar as one more god was not a difficulty. The Jews were exempt, as was Christianity as long as it was considered a sect of Judaism. Once Christians became a distinct faith, things got dicey. The point is that we seem to be witnessing a similar demand in the Republican Party. One cannot be a Republican without swearing fealty to Donald Trump, and pledging allegiance to his creed of the stolen election. We never have seen this sort of mania before in U.S. politics, ever. The closest example that comes to mind would be the followers of cult leader and politician Lyndon LaRouche back in the 1980s. This should be an alarming development to anyone who wishes to preserve constitutional democracy. It lends credence to the notion that Trumpism is indeed a type of cult. It certainly raises concerns about whether the Republican Party can be trusted to participate in free elections. JEFFREY M. McHALE OLYPHANT Editor: Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen gave a talk on television 50 years ago that was prophetic for our time. He said that our country was begun by revolution. Today, some want a revolution. However, to what purpose? Sheen asked. Would it be that we might govern ourselves as a people? as founder William Preston described in 1775, or for the futile purpose of violence and destruction? Sheen went on to tell of French revolutionary leader Louis Saint-Just and Thomas Jefferson, two very different people with opposing government views. Saint-Justs principle in governing was to use terror, violence, the confiscation of property and the destruction of rights and liberty. Jefferson fought against such ideas. He believed in self-government and helped found our democracy on the dignity of man. Jefferson investigated about where these rights including freedoms of speech, religion and assembly came from. He set it down in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Sheen suggested that we went through the same crisis as did Jefferson, and asked: So who are we going to follow today, Jefferson or Saint-Just? The violence we have witnessed in our streets is carried out by elitists who make noise and use it to try to force their will upon others. Like Saint-Just, theyre revolutionists without a program, those who only know what they are against and do not know what they are for. They scream down with the police or down with civilization. However, one can never build anything down. Sheen said, We must begin now to build up from violence, up, up to God. CHRISTOPHER CALORE WILKES-BARRE Editor: If we meditate while we medicate, are we able to make choices more clearly? To vaccinate or not vaccinate, that is the question. Should we be noble Republicans and pooh-pooh science or thoughtful Democrats and follow the science? Will the virus influence the vote or will the vote influence the virus? To mask up or not to mask up invites the same questions. BOB SINGER WILKES-BARRE MARISSA BERGEL, Wheeler softball, senior: Bergel hit a two-out, two-run single in the seventh inning to lift Wheeler past Holy Cross, 9-7, in the Class S state tournament. The hit was part of a five-run rally in the inning. JOEY GUARNIERI, Westerly track & field, senior: Guarnieri placed first in two sprints at the Southern Division championships. He won the 100 (11.19) and the 200 (22.73). JOSH MOONEY, Stonington track & field, sophomore: Mooney placed first in the 110 hurdles at the Class M state meet in 14.65. He also finished second in the 300 hurdles (39.87) and second in the javelin (160-0). MARGARET WEEDEN, Chariho track & field, junior: Weeden finished first in the high jump at the Southern Division championships. Weeden cleared 5-1 and also placed sixth in the triple jump at 31-5. Vote View Results This Thursday marks the second anniversary of the suspension of Woodford Equity Income, once popular with hundreds of thousands of investors looking to build long-term wealth, but a fund no more. A 3.7billion fund, destroyed by a toxic mix of gross investment mismanagement, inept supervision and a dollop of bad luck. It will be an anniversary that will not spark any ringing of church bells, though the main culprit in this sorry saga fund manager Neil Woodford may inwardly smile from his multi-million pound home in Salcombe, Devon, as he has yet to be held to account for his part in the crushing of so many retirement dreams. No justice: : Neil Woodford intends to launch a new fund For those 400,000 investors who had hard-earned money tied up in the fund, Thursday will merely remind them of the losses up to 50 per cent they suffered. After being suspended in June 2019, following a request from Kent County Council for its 263million stake back which the fund could not fulfil, Equity Income was broken up. This crystallised losses for investors. It was also the beginning of the end for Woodford Investment Management, the Oxfordshire-based business set up by Woodford, who throughout the early 2000s at investment house Invesco Perpetual seemed to possess a Midas touch. The anniversary will also remind investors of the huge injustice they have been dealt. An injustice perpetuated by a City regulator that has so far failed to hold anyone responsible for one of the biggest investment calamities in recent years. Not 61-year-old Woodford, who unbeknown to most investors had run Equity Income as a quasi-healthcare fund investing in risky assets. In the run-up to the fund's suspension, it had 40 per cent of its assets in illiquid investments. Not wealth manager Hargreaves Lansdown, which aggressively promoted Equity Income as a best-buy right up until its closure. And not those companies such as Link, which were paid handsomely to safeguard the interests of investors, but failed to do so by giving Woodford free rein over what he invested in. On Friday, in a letter to the Treasury Select Committee, the Financial Conduct Authority rubbed salt into the wounds of investors when it confirmed its two-year investigation into the events surrounding the suspension of Equity Income was still crawling along at the speed of a tortoise and would not be completed until the end of the year. Even then, it might not be until the end of 2022 that any disciplinary action is announced. One long-suffering investor told The Mail on Sunday: 'After two years, the FCA's enquiry into Woodford, Link and Hargreaves Lansdown has yet to result in it coming up with a single word of worthwhile comment or rebuke. 'As for Neil Woodford CBE, he remains free to set up another investment company.' In recent weeks Woodford representatives have been touting details of a new healthcare fund that Woodford intends to launch through his new business WCM Partners. The investor continued: 'It is important justice is done. Some 400,000 investors have lost and are still owed millions of pounds.' Alan Miller, co-founder of wealth manager SCM Direct, has done more than most to shine a light on the regulator's failure. He has called for an independent investigation along the lines of the one that led to the Government awarding 120million of compensation (yet to be paid) to victims of the London Capital and Finance mini-bond scandal. On Friday, he told The Mail on Sunday it was 'a gross dereliction of duty' that the regulator had yet to complete its investigation. He added: 'Investors have lost more than 1billion, yet no one has taken responsibility. Not a single person in any company or regulatory body who may have been culpable has been suspended or lost their job or had to pay a fine.' It's a view shared by Philip Case, an investment consultant from Bristol. He says the regulator 'missed more red warning flags about Woodford than are stored at Labour Party HQ'. This, he believes, explains why it has been so tardy with its investigation it doesn't want to admit culpability. Both Miller and Case believe all the parties involved in this investment wrong should be forced to contribute to an investor compensation fund. But they fear this is some way off because of the regulator's reluctance to lance the boil. So investors may have no choice but to put their faith in expensive litigation specialists. Several have already launched legal actions either against Link or Hargreaves Lansdown to recoup investor losses. 'The longer the Woodford debacle drags on, the greater the damage to the industry's reputation,' said Miller. Hospitality chiefs hailed the easing of lockdown restrictions as drinkers and diners flooded back to pubs and restaurants. Fulham Shore the owner of Franco Manca and The Real Greek restaurants said sales in the first week that indoor eating was allowed were 3 per cent higher than in the same period of 2019 before the pandemic struck. Tasty: The owner of Franco Manca and The Real Greek restaurants said sales in the first week that indoor eating was allowed were 3 per cent higher than in the same period of 2019 And Scottish drinks company AG Barr said trading has been brisk in pubs and restaurants that sell its drinks, which include Irn Bru, Tizer and cocktail range Funkin. 'As lockdown restrictions have eased, we have seen a positive impact on both our sales volume and mix, with a shift back towards 'drink now', hospitality and leisure,' a spokesman for the company said. The updates came amid fears that Boris Johnson may delay the end of lockdown due on June 21 amid a rise in coronavirus cases and the spread of the Indian variant. Business chiefs have urged the Prime Minister to stick to the roadmap, with William Lees-Jones, boss of brewery and pub chain JW Lees, saying: 'Don't steal our summer.' Hospitality bosses and investment bankers are predicting a takeover deals bonanza this summer as pub and restaurant sales rebound sharply after the pandemic. Mike Saul, head of hospitality and leisure at Barclays Corporate Banking, said he has around two dozen potential deals on the table, ranging from 10million to 250million, as investors race to inject millions into pandemic survivors set for rapid growth or buy them outright. Since the start of the year, Barclays has worked on the deal teams for ex-Greene King boss Rooney Anand's 200million pub acquisition spree, and investment giant Blackstone's multibillion takeover of Butlin's owner Bourne Leisure. Pub and restaurant sales have been rebounding sharply after the pandemic Saul said private equity firms are now 'running the rule' over further businesses, ranging from pubs to betting shops, casinos, hotels and caravan parks. He said: 'There is a general acquisitive atmosphere out there. Some people really want to try to grow quite quickly they see opportunity coming out of recession.' His prediction was echoed by an array of hospitality bosses, including Young's pub boss Patrick Dardis and former Patisserie Valerie chairman Luke Johnson. Last night, City takeover speculation focused on Franco Manca, the fast-growing sourdough pizza chain run by ex-Pizza Express boss David Page. One industry source claimed 68-year-old Page is keen to find a buyer for the chain after building it up through his Aim-listed Fulham Shore restaurant group over the past six years. Industry insiders said Franco Manca, which has 54 restaurants across the UK, could be a takeover target for The Restaurant Group, which owns Wagamama. Andy Hornby, the former HBOS banker who runs The Restaurant Group, said earlier this year that he was looking to expand Wagamama and the group's Brunning & Price gastropubs. Industry insiders said Franco Manca could be a takeover target for The Restaurant Group One source said: 'Page would definitely sell, and The Restaurant Group are looking to buy something as well. It would make perfect sense to me.' The Restaurant Group declined to comment and Page said no talks had taken place. 'Nobody has made an approach to us,' he told The Mail on Sunday. However, he added: 'I think there will be quite a lot of merger and acquisition activity in the sector. There is a lot of money out there chasing really good assets to help them expand. We hope the survivors who emerge fittest from the pandemic will command premium prices.' Meanwhile, Dardis, chief executive of Young's, is in the 'early stages' of selling his around 50 tenanted pubs and said further consolidation is 'inevitable'. Patrick Dardis, chief executive of Young's, is in the 'early stages' of selling his 50 tenanted pubs Before the pandemic, the pubs sector saw megadeals such as the 2.7billion takeover of Greene King by a Hong Kong fund backed by billionaire Li Ka-shing, and Dardis predicted a huge appetite for mergers and acquisitions over the next two years. He said: 'It's going to be very busy, and when it does happen it will be a very interesting space to be in. The word is: watch this space.' Entrepreneur Luke Johnson put his Gail's Bakery chain on the market this month and hopes to agree a sale by the autumn. 'We have had some calls and we are keeping our options open,' Johnson said. 'We are pretty confident that some kind of transaction will happen.' Page spent last Friday in Manchester looking at new sites for Franco Manca and its sister chain, The Real Greek. He plans to open 45 restaurants between this year and 2023, spending a total of 22.5million on new sites. He said he had 'deja vu' from 26 years ago, when he built up Pizza Express after the 1990s recession. 'The climate is the same,' he said. 'Cut-price sites and lots of opportunities from firms that have closed sites through company voluntary arrangements or administration.' Page has also been approached in recent weeks by two venture capital investors who are each raising between 10million and 20million to invest in pubs and restaurants. He said he is considering investing six-figure sums in the cash shells, which plan to list on the stock exchange within two years. 'Three or four years ago, I would have put them [the investment proposals] in the bin,' he said. 'But now I can see there are opportunities.' Deliveroo has severed ties with one of its key City advisory firms after last month's disastrous float. The Mail on Sunday can reveal the takeaway giant has severed links with Finsbury Glover Hering (FGH), a PR firm run by Remain campaigner Roland Rudd, just weeks after 2billion was wiped off its value on its stock market debut. The debacle saw the firm nicknamed 'Flopperoo' and sparked a flurry of finger-pointing. Deliveroo has severed links with Finsbury Glover Hering (FGH), a PR firm run by Roland Rudd The flop was all the more surprising because it came after a series of successful stock market listings, including personalised greeting card maker Moonpig and shoe manufacturer Dr Martens. Sources said FGH's contract for the initial public offering had concluded and the firm was no longer working for Deliveroo. Tulchan, a PR firm run by former Tory party chairman Lord Feldman of Elstree, will take on the financial PR work, with public affairs adviser Hanbury Strategy retained. The Mail on Sunday can also reveal Deliveroo has heeded calls from investors to withhold discretionary fees of about 18million to the banks that worked on the float: Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Citi, Numis and Jefferies. The delivery app slashed its valuation ahead of the listing from 8.8billion to 7.6billion after investors raised concerns over its hefty price tag, as The Mail on Sunday revealed. A wave of fund managers later voiced worries about both the float price and the way the company was run, before the price nose-dived on the day of the IPO. The float, which was endorsed by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, was one of the largest and most hotly-anticipated listings in a decade. Rudd, a former Financial Times journalist and brother of ex-Minister Amber Rudd, was chairman of the doomed People's Vote campaign for a second Brexit referendum. FGH was formed earlier this year as a merger of three firms. Deliveroo, which is backed by tech behemoth Amazon and boasts Next chief executive Lord Wolfson on its board, was founded by former investment banker Will Shu, who sold 26million of shares and retains a 5.1 per cent stake. The shares closed on Friday at 2.51, 36 per cent below their 3.90 float price. FGH, Deliveroo and Tulchan declined to comment. Britain's top loans watchdog has admitted he is 'disappointed' that the doorstep lending market is shrinking after Provident Financial said it was closing its business after 141 years. Sheldon Mills, executive director of consumers and competition at the Financial Conduct Authority, told The Mail on Sunday that he knew the value of doorstep lending because he 'personally benefited from home-collected credit'. However, he defended the regulator after the boss of Morses Club the second-largest doorstep lender after Provident alleged last week that the FCA was driving firms out of the market and inadvertently sending borrowers into the arms of illegal loan sharks. Sheldon Mills, executive director of consumers and competition at the FCA, said he 'personally benefited from home-collected credit' Mills said: 'My grandmother used home-collected credit, that's how we lived. So personally, I absolutely see and understand the need for this market. 'It's quite clear that the major banks do not participate for certain customers, so there is a need for firms which operate in this market.' But he added: 'Lending needs to be affordable. Quite a lot of our research has shown that some providers of high-cost, short-term credit have based their services on gaining lots of customers and then relending to them multiple times, and that's led those customers into unaffordable debt.' His comments come after The Mail on Sunday revealed last month that Provident was closing its doorstep lending business, where lenders turn up at borrowers' homes to collect repayments on high-interest, short-term loans. The rise of claims management firms submitting thousands of compensation claims for mis-selling was blamed for making 'the Provvy' unable to make a viable profit. Amigo Loans, which makes loans that require the signature of a guarantor, has also warned it faces insolvency after a compensation scheme for mis-selling victims was rejected last week by the courts. On the brink: Amigo Loans has warned it faces insolvency Morses Club boss Paul Smith, whose parents relied on Provident to pay for his school clothes and other necessities, warned that the exit of major doorstep lenders could push borrowers into the arms of loan sharks. But Mills hit back: 'We haven't seen any major increase in our detection of illegal money lending. The provision of products has shrunk a bit. We will know more at the end of the pandemic about precisely what's happening because people's reliance on credit has changed. 'In terms of where people can go, there are multiple providers still in the market for high-cost, short-term credit. And there are 420 credit unions offering loans with interest capped at 42.6 per cent.' A state-funded steel technology trial costing 10million has been suspended amid fears over Sanjeev Gupta's embattled metals empire. Trials of software to improve efficiency were to take place at two of Gupta's plants, but they are being put on hold, The Mail on Sunday understands. The scheme first tested so-called imaging tech at a mock-up plant at the Materials Processing Institute in Middlesbrough. The next phase would have involved Gupta's plants in Hartlepool and Stocksbridge near Sheffield. The tech trial would have taken place at Gupta's plants in Hartlepool and Stocksbridge However, Gupta's Liberty Steel last week put seven UK plants up for sale. Gupta is racing to refinance his conglomerate GFG Alliance after the collapse of Greensill Capital. GFG also faces a fraud probe. Through Government agency Innovate UK, five partners on the programme were awarded a combined 3.9million in grant funding. Innovate UK and GFG declined to comment. The corporate raider stalking GlaxoSmithKline has raised serious questions about the future of chief executive Emma Walmsley in private meetings with the drugs giant's shareholders, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. Secretive hedge fund Elliott Management is understood to have phoned major GSK investors to discuss whether Walmsley is the right choice to lead the FTSE 100 pharmaceutical firm in the long term. One top shareholder told The Mail on Sunday that in a private call Elliott had 'queried whether she was the best person for the job'. Elliott Management has raised serious questions about the future of boss Emma Walmsley The hostile comments are the clearest signal yet of the powerful activist investor's battle plan after it took a multi-billion pound stake in GSK last month. Elliott which has a feared reputation for breaking up and selling companies is still refusing to publicly declare its intentions and last night declined to comment. But multiple sources confirmed details of its calls with investors, which will now ramp up the pressure on Walmsley ahead of a crucial meeting with GSK shareholders on June 23 where she will lay out her growth plans for the 67.4billion pharma giant. Walmsley is expected to spell out in detail how she proposes to spin off the consumer healthcare arm with brands including Panadol paracetamol and Sensodyne toothpaste and leave the main GSK business focused purely on pharmaceutical and vaccines. But the revelation that Elliott could agitate to remove her throws doubt on how long Walmsley has left in the top job and whether she could even be replaced before her plan to split the company is completed next year. A source close to the board of GSK said splitting the business 'triggers a question over whether Emma is the right person to run it which is what investors and the board will be considering'. Quizzed over her experience earlier this year, Walmsley, a former L'Oreal executive who previously ran the consumer arm, said: 'I'm not a scientist, I'm a business leader.' One top 20 shareholder told The Mail on Sunday: 'I think what [Elliott] feels about Emma is that she's not in the weeds on the pharma and vaccine business, and it's not her background. They haven't got a problem with the way those businesses are being run. 'We're still some way away from the split, so we've got to see how it all pans out.' Another top shareholder said: 'My view is [Elliott] does want to change the leadership, and it wouldn't be surprising. Its view and the market's view is that both the consumer business has underperformed although it's improving now and the pharmaceutical business is underperforming. And Walmsley has been there for four years.' Walmsley will lay out her growth plans for GSK during meeting with shareholders on June 23 Shares in GSK have fallen 19 per cent since Walmsley became chief executive in early 2017. GSK, the world's largest vaccine maker, has been criticised for failing to develop a Covid-19 jab. It has instead worked with France's Sanofi on a vaccine that has yet to be launched. Samuel Johar, chairman of executive search firm Buchanan Harvey, said: 'It would be illogical for Emma to lead the pharmaceutical side of the business following the split.' He said Luke Miels, president of GSK's global pharmaceutical business, would be a 'credible internal candidate'. Alistair Campbell, an analyst at investment bank Liberum, said: 'I'm not convinced by the argument that GSK needs to be run by a scientist. 'That said, after the split up of the group it will be a biopharma company and Luke will effectively be in charge of that so there's an argument to say he could become CEO. 'The decision to split the business and spin off consumer health is the right thing to do. It's a bit of a frustration. It's going to take time, but that could be an impatient view.' Shares in GSK have fallen 19 per cent since Walmsley became chief executive in early 2017 Sources said Dr Hal Barron, the Silicon Valley-based chief scientific officer hired by Walmsley, could also be an internal candidate to replace her. GSK is understood to be arranging a number of meetings between large shareholders and chairman Sir Jonathan Symonds, who publicly came out in support of Walmsley at its annual general meeting last month. An investor due to meet Symonds said: 'They're doing a bit of a roadshow.' The Mail on Sunday revealed this month that top investors including BlackRock, Dodge & Cox and Royal London had contacted Symonds urging Glaxo not to be distracted by Elliott's arrival. Last week, it emerged that Elliott will not push for a sale of GSK's vaccines and pharmaceuticals businesses. It is understood Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng is supportive of Walmsley and her strategy, and has asked officials in the Government's Office for Life Sciences unit to monitor the situation. One investor questioned whether Walmsley could become distracted from her day job by her external role on the board of Microsoft. GSK and Elliott both declined to comment. Barre, VT (05641) Today Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 52F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies early will give way to cloudy skies late. Low 52F. Winds WSW at 5 to 10 mph. remaining of SUPPORT LOCAL JOURNALISM! On your next view you will be asked to log in to your subscriber account or create an account and subscribepurchase a subscription to continue reading. Dorothy Eleanor Mercer passed away on June 9, 2021 at Archbold Memorial Hospital. She was born on December 18, 1932, in Pavo to the late Early Byrd Wood and to the late Nellie Deen Wood. She was married to Eugene Mercer who precedes her in death. Survivors include her children, Leon David Mc What you need to know about Pennsylvania's new unemployment compensation system DA says armed man shot by JC police was threatening them, others ALBANY As Nauman Hussain awaits his next court appearance in the Schoharie limousine crash case, two of his rental properties are facing foreclosure by one of his lenders. The 31-year-old is under renewed financial pressure as the reopening of courts amid the tapering of coronavirus cases put his criminal case back on the docket in Schoharie County court. Mako International, a Menands company that makes loans to real estate investors and house flippers, filed a foreclosure action against Hussain in state Supreme Court in Albany over $249,924 in loans secured by property Hussain owns in Cohoes and Saratoga Springs. In court filings, Mako says Hussain owes $200,000 in principal on two loans he took out with the firm in 2017 and that the loans are secured by Hussain's Cohoes and Saratoga Springs properties, two of several that Hussain owns in the Capital Region. The additional money owed is interest and penalties. Hussain may be trying to work out a deal with Mako: A state Supreme Court judge filed an order earlier in May that asked the two side to try to reach a settlement. The Cohoes property was originally purchased by Nauman Hussain's brother Haris, who put the property in Nauman's name in 2016. Haris is not a party to the foreclosure suit, and although he has accompanied his younger brother at all of his court hearings in the criminal case, he had no involvement in the family's limo business. However, in April, Nauman put the deed in the name of a real estate entity called 23 Erie St LLC, which is associated with his brother. State records show that 23 Erie St LLC was created by Haris Hussain in April. Its address is listed with the state at a home on St. Joseph's Street in Troy. The Troy home was bought at auction from the city by Melissa Bell, a friend of Nauman Hussain's who accompanied him to court hearings in Schoharie. The home is now owned by HASY Properties, a company the Hussain brothers have used to acquire and own rental properties. It is unclear if the transfer of the Cohoes property to the new company is known to Mako or is part of the foreclosure settlement talks. A call to Mako's attorney, Robert McCarthy, about the transfer was not returned. Court records show that Nauman Hussain was served with the foreclosure papers at a home owned by Mako's chief financial officer. Nauman Hussain's civil attorney Marc Kaim, who is representing him in cases filed against him by the families of the crash victims, declined to discuss the Mako lawsuit when reached Thursday. "I cannot comment on any pending litigation," he said. Hussain is facing charges of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide after a stretch limo owned by his father crashed in Schoharie County on Oct. 6, 2018, killing all 18 people on board and two pedestrians outside the Apple Barrel Country Store. Hussain, who was running the limo business at the time and faces years in state prison if convicted, is scheduled to appear in Schoharie County Court on July 7. The 2-year-old case is resuming following a delay of more than a year that was prompted by the closure of New York courts due to the coronavirus pandemic. Prosecutors allege Hussain was responsible since he failed to properly maintain the limo, which has repeatedly been ordered off the road by state transportation officials. Hussain also faces a slew of civil lawsuits filed by the families of the victims of the crash. Ashby campaign TROY State Assemblyman Jake Ashby said the U.S. Veterans Administration should reverse its decision to close the Troy Community Based Outpatient Clinic at 295 River Street. The decision to close the Troy CBOC facility represents a tremendous error in judgment and a slap in the face to the thousands of veterans who rely on the VA for their medical coverage, Ashby, R-Schodack, said in a statement issued Friday. ALBANY The fire started on the rear part of a second-floor apartment at 346 Sheridan Ave. and quickly spread to the neighboring home. By the time it was extinguished, at around 6 p.m. last Sunday, both buildings were ruined beyond salvation. Significant fires are devastating, of course, and this one was hardly an exception. Thirteen people, including seven children, lost their home, said Albany Fire Chief Joseph Gregory. Thankfully, perhaps remarkably, nobody was hurt. This blaze, though, had an additional consequence that made it particularly troubling to those who care deeply about Albany's history. The second ruined building, at 344 Sheridan, was home to Albany historian John Wolcott and his treasure trove of books, documents, maps and research much of which was ruined beyond repair. "We're just grateful to be alive," Wolcott's wife, Linda Becker, told me, adding that she and her husband happened to be away on a rare vacation. "If we had been there, we might have been burned, too." Wolcott, now in his 80s, won't be a stranger to longtime readers of this newspaper. He has been mentioned over the years in dozens and dozens of Times Union articles, where he has variously been described as a "defender of Albany's historic past," an "environmental and archeological crusader," a "self-taught architectural expert," and "a longtime urban gadfly." In many of those stories, Wolcott is the quixotic defender of lost causes, as he unsuccessfully tries, again and again, to protect some structure or another from Albany's most dangerous enemies apathy and the wrecking ball. But Wolcott, honored by the Historic Albany Foundation with a Lifetime Achievement Award, also has significant successes to his name. He is, for example, a founder member of Save the Pine Bush, which did just that. His research and advocacy helped to protect 48 Hudson Ave., the downtown building considered Albany's oldest. In 2014, Wolcott received international media attention when he claimed to have pinpointed the location of Fort Nassau, the old Dutch trading post. "He's been at this for decades," said Tony Opalka, the city's historian. "I felt terrible that, in an instant, years of his research could go up in smoke." That block of Sheridan, between Lexington Avenue and Henry Johnson Boulevard, is no stranger to significant fires. In 2018, one just a few doors down resulted in the demolition of six buildings. It is now one more vacant lot. When smoke and fire returned to the street on Sunday, some panicked neighbors worried Wolcott and Becker might be trapped within their home. But William Terry, who lives across the street and has known John and Linda for decades, quickly reassured everyone the couple was away in Maine. "We all look out for each other," Terry said as we looked at the rubble across Sheridan. He added it was particularly painful to watch demolition crews rip down a tree which Wolcott had lovingly tended. "That tore me up," Terry said. "That was his baby." As news of the fire and impending demolition spread, longtime friends of Wolcott's, including many from Save the Pine Bush, arrived on Sheridan to rescue whatever could be saved before the home was razed. With help from firefighters, they retrieved books, photographs, documents, notebooks and files, but much was unsalvageable. "It was a huge loss to Albany's history," said Gregg Bell, also a founding Save the Pine Bush member. "We have no idea what percentage was lost, but it was a large percentage." Some of the material has been moved to an empty apartment on Morton Avenue. Where will it go next? Nobody is quite sure. It's a question that worries Wolcott, who when we last spoke didn't know what in his collection had been saved. He and Becker returned to Albany soon after the fire and have been staying at a hotel in Colonie. Both said they have been amazed by the outpouring of help and care they've received. Becker repeatedly described the kindness as a blessing. Even the fire, she said, felt like a blessing in a way, given that nobody was hurt and that she and Wolcott, with health issues that might have made an escape difficult, were not home. The couple has lived the house for 31 years and wanted to downsize. "You don't want it to happen," Becker said. "But this is kind of like God saying, 'This is it. You're going now.'" cchurchill@timesunion.com 518-454-5442 @chris_churchill ALBANY An Albany grand jury indicted a 33-year-old Colonie man for allegedly shooting and killing LaShon Turner of Albany a week ago on Central Avenue. The Albany County grand jury alleged that last Friday evening, Natural Wise Joseph intentionally caused the death of the 39-year-old Turner by shooting him with an illegally possessed gun. The indictment also alleges that when Albany police arrested Joseph on Tuesday, he was in possession of a quantity of cocaine, according to Albany District Attorney David Soares office. A formal arraignment date is expected to be scheduled next week in Albany City Court. On Friday, May 21, at about 6:25 p.m., officers responded to Central Avenue just west of Henry Johnson Boulevard for reports of a shooting. There they found Turner with a gunshot wound to the torso. Turner was treated at the scene and taken to Albany Medical Center Hospital where he was later pronounced dead. Turner's death was the second violent death in Albany on May 21, four hours after that of Sharf Addalim, who was killed during gunfire at First and Quail streets that also wounded several others. A Schenectady man, Jhajuan Sabb, has been charged with second-degree murder in that case. Related: Timeline: A deadly year in Albany, and it's only May From Carol Geary: While we had always hoped to adopt a dog into our family, it wasn't until we moved to Saratoga Springs that we had the perfect fenced in yard in home to make that a reality. I stopped by a H.O.P.E. adoption clinic at the Saratoga Civic Center five years ago, and met Mia, now ten and Bailey, now 13, there. I have always been shy with dogs but Mia came right over, and won my heart. We are so grateful for H.O.P.E. and their foster mom for bringing our wonderful Mia and Bailey into our home and family. From Linda Karins of Albany: This is our rescue, Michi, which means pretty girl in Japanese. She certainly is that. She was found wandering the streets in Houston, Texas, last year. She was pregnant and infected with heartworm. Thanks to a wonderful rescue group in Texas, we found her on the internet and decided to bring her home. After a long wait of 3 months, after she had her puppies, she was finally able to be transported in October. The heartworm treatment has been trying for a 2-year-old but she is finally free of them and can run and play. Thank you to all the rescue workers who took care of her. At no point in the sad decade-long history of the state Joint Commission on Public Ethics has anyone ever said that the major flaw in its structure was the fact that it can't directly sanction misbehaving members of the state Legislature. Until last week, that is, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo was asked if he supported a bill that would reform JCOPE's goofy appointment system, which grants state Senate Republicans the power to name three commissioners to the panel while the chamber's supermajority Democrats only get one appointee, and voting requirements that can stand in the way of investigations even when they're supported by a majority of commissioners. The governor never really answered the question, but instead opined that JCOPE's "fundamental flaw is a constitutional barrier" that prevents the panel from directly imposing sanctions on members of the Legislature. Instead, its investigative findings are handed off to the Legislative Ethics Commission, which formally imposes the punishment. JCOPE can, however, directly impose sanctions on members of the Executive Chamber not that it has ever done so for Team Cuomo, even in cases of egregious corruption such as former top aide Joe Percoco, who hung a for-sale sign on his official role and ran the governor's 2014 re-election campaign from Cuomo's taxpayer-funded office in midtown Manhattan. When that obvious violation of Public Officers Law was brought to light following Percoco's arrest by federal authorities, the governor claimed he had just assumed his confidant had been doing "transition work" as he eased between his public post and the campaign gig. It was a laugher, but apparently JCOPE didn't care it never launched an investigation. Cuomo's JCOPE diagnosis might carry more weight if the Legislative Ethics Commission was failing to mete out punishment according to JCOPE's findings, but that isn't the case. Though it takes far too long for JCOPE to do pretty much anything, it has handed down findings against bent lawmakers such as former Assembly members Vito Lopez, Dennis Gabryszak and Angela Wozniak and state Sen. Marc Panepinto. (All except for Lopez were former members of the Legislature when JCOPE finally got around to completing its investigations of their sexual misdeeds.) In each of those cases, the LEC and JCOPE acted in concert to impose penalties. If there was ever any friction between the two entities any case in which the LEC tried to lessen the punishment on a lawmaker it has never come to light. As far as I can tell, the governor has never brought up this supposed "fundamental flaw" in JCOPE before. I went back and read the news release from Dec. 11, 2011, that overflowed with encomiums from Cuomo as well as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (busted for corruption in 2015), Senate Republican majority leader Dean Skelos (same), Senate Democratic Conference Leader John Sampson (charged with embezzlement in 2013) and Assembly GOP leader Brian Kolb (who somehow managed to hang on until 2020, when he resigned his leadership post after a DWI arrest). JCOPE, Cuomo said in that release, "is an independent monitor that will aggressively investigate corruption and help maintain integrity in state government." It would be "the toughest ethics enforcer in our state's history." Instead, the panel largely sat on its hands as federal prosecutors, led by Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, conducted the most sweeping series of corruption prosecutions in decades maybe ever. The "toughest ethics enforcer in our state's history" has been a nullity. And its supposed "independence" is another laugher, as evidenced by the long line of former Cuomo aides who have served in its top staff ranks. The legislation that created JCOPE called for a report to assess its first few years of operation. That report, released in 2015, made no mention of any "fundamental flaw" standing in the way of the panel's sanctions against lawmakers. Instead, its major recommendations were that JCOPE should have fewer than 14 commissioners, and should scrap the aforementioned voting rules that throttle back the launching of investigations. The response from Cuomo and the legislative leaders who by 2015 had replaced Silver and Skelos was total inaction. And that's where the situation remained until last week, when the now Democratic-controlled Senate passed a reform bill that its backers said was a stopgap measure before the ethics panel could be overhauled through a constitutional amendment. It doesn't seem likely that the Assembly, led by frequent Cuomo enabler Carl Heastie, will take action on the reform legislation in the scant time remaining in the legislative session. The same day the Senate voted, JCOPE met and as per usual did nothing much at least not in public except deadlock on the question of whether it should issue a subpoena to the Executive Chamber to gather information about the "volunteers" tapped by Cuomo to assist in the state's COVID-19 response. Those included former gubernatorial aide Larry Schwartz, an airport concessions executive who was improbably tasked with serving as the state's vaccine czar, and used that post to whip up support for Cuomo from county executives desperate for vaccine stock. Cuomo issued an executive order last year that exempted Schwartz and the other pandemic volunteers from having to make the disclosures to JCOPE required of other public officials. Considering JCOPE's sorry record, one wonders why the governor even went to the trouble. cseiler@timesunion.com Farmington, WV (26555) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 65F. Winds light and variable. Signs of the Class of 2021 Titusville Area High School graduates line the edges of Scheide Park. The signs were purchased as a joint effort by the school district and City to show appreciation to the graduates. The signs will stay up until graduation. The debate over a new state budget now heads to a Legislative conference committee after the Massachusetts Senate this week passed its version of the $47.7 billion budget for the 2022 fiscal year beginning July 1 For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, The Morning Call. [May 28, 2021] DEADLINE ALERT: Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. Reminds Investors That a Class Action Lawsuit Has Been Filed Against SOS Limited and Encourages Investors to Contact the Firm Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C., a nationally recognized shareholder rights law firm, reminds investors that a class action lawsuit has been filed in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey on behalf of investors that purchased SOS (News - Alert) Limited (NYSE: SOS) American Depositary Shares ("ADSs") between July 22, 2020 and February 25, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). Investors have until June 1, 2021 to apply to the Court to be appointed as lead plaintiff in the lawsuit. Click here to participate in the action. When the Company went public in April 2017, it was known as "China Rapid Finance Limited" and claimed to focus on a peer-to-peer, micro-lending business. The Company later changed its name to "SOS Limited" in July 2020 and sold its peer-to-peer, micro-lending business in August 2020, rebranding itself into an emergency services business. In January 2021, the Company again shifted its business focus, this time to cryptocurrency mining. Critical to SOS's purportedly successful transition into a cryptocurrency mining business were the Company's claims to have entered into an agreement with HY International Group New York Inc. ("HY"), which calls itself the "world's largest mining machine matchmaker," to acquire 15,645 mining rigs-i.e., personal computing machines built specifically for cryptocurrency mining-for $20 million, and the Company's plans to purchase FXK Technology Corporation ("FXK"), a purported Canadian cryptocurrency technology firm. On February 26, 2021, Hindenburg Research ("Hindenburg") and Culper Research ("Culper") released commentary on SOS, claiming tht the Company was an intricate "pump and dump" scheme that used fake addresses and doctored photos of crypto mining rigs to create an illusion of success. The analysts noted, for example, that SOS's SEC (News - Alert) filings listed a hotel room as the Company's headquarters. The analysts also questioned whether SOS had actually purchased mining rigs that it claimed to own, as the entity from which SOS purportedly bought the mining rigs appeared to be a fake shell company. The analysts further alleged that the photos SOS had published of their purported "mining rigs" were phony. Culper noted that photographs of SOS's "miners" did not depict the A10 Pro machines that the Company claimed to own and instead appeared to show different devices altogether. Hindenburg, for its part, found that the original images from SOS's website actually belonged to another company. On this news, SOS's American depositary share price fell $1.27 per share, or 21.03%, to close at $4.77 per ADS on February 26, 2021. The complaint, filed on March 30, 2021, alleges that, throughout the Class Period defendants made materially false and misleading statements regarding the Company's business, operations, and compliance policies. Specifically, defendants made false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose that: (i) SOS had misrepresented the true nature, location, and/or existence of at least one of the principal executive offices listed in its SEC filings; (ii) HY and FXK were either undisclosed related parties and/or entities fabricated by the Company; (iii) the Company had misrepresented the type and/or existence of the mining rigs that it claimed to have purchased; and (iv) as a result, the Company's public statements were materially false and misleading at all relevant times. If you purchased SOS ADSs during the Class Period and suffered a loss, have information, would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Brandon Walker, Melissa Fortunato, or Marion Passmore by email at investigations@bespc.com, telephone at (212) 355-4648, or by filling out this contact form. There is no cost or obligation to you. About Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C.: Bragar Eagel & Squire, P.C. is a nationally recognized law firm with offices in New York, California, and South Carolina. The firm represents individual and institutional investors in commercial, securities, derivative, and other complex litigation in state and federal courts across the country. For more information about the firm, please visit www.bespc.com. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210528005450/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] NASHVILLE The U.S. Department of Agricultures Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has confirmed the presence of box tree moth, Cydalima perspectalis, in the United States and Tennessee is a state that may have received infested boxwood plants. The Tennessee Department of Agriculture (TDA) was notified today that boxwoods shipped to a distribution center in Memphis from Ontario, Canada between August 2020 and April 2021, may have been infested with box tree moths. APHIS believes six other states may be affected. We are monitoring the box tree moth with traps in the Memphis area, Commissioner Charlie Hatcher, D.V.M. said. Tennessee imports boxwoods from Canada and once the pest was detected in Canada last year, TDA placed traps in West Tennessee and in other high-risk areas. Fortunately, there have been no box tree moths detected since that time. Based on the latest information from APHIS, we will place additional traps in West Tennessee. The box tree moth feeds mostly on boxwoods and can defoliate and potentially kill boxwood plants if left unchecked. Once the leaves are gone, larvae consume the bark, leading to plant death. Signs of infestation include silky webbing and possibly caterpillars located deep inside of the plants. Box tree moth caterpillars are green and yellow with white, yellow, and black stripes and black spots. Adult box tree moth has two color patterns. The most common has white wings with dark brown borders, while the dark pattern has solid brown wings with a white streak or spot on each forewing. Both have a distinctive white dot or mark in the middle of each forewing. Boxwoods appear in many landscapes in Tennessee due to their year-round green foliage and adaptability to changing weather. TDA recommends anyone who purchased boxwood plants within the last few months to inspect their plants for signs of the pest. If you suspect your boxwood plant has been infested, contact TDAs Plant Certification Section at 615-837-5137. PHOTOS: Courtesy of Matteo Maspero and Andrea Tantardini, Centro MiRT - Fondazione Minoprio [IT]. and TDA image of Box Wood Moth Trap As usual, overnight we hear a great deal of gunfire and police sirens . . . Accordingly, here's a glimpse at police action, recent case and all manner of ALLEGED misdeeds . . . Read more: Hobo Burns Benton Blvd Man experiencing homelessness charged with arson of KCMO apartment building KANSAS CITY, Mo. - A man experiencing homelessness told investigators he set fire to an apartment building where he had stayed for two days. Rodney Boyles, 35, is charged in federal court for starting a fire Jan. 13, 2021, in the 1100 block of Benton Boulevard that injured several people. More Deets On Teen Girl Killed Woman shot and killed at Kansas City apartment building Kansas City, Missouri, police are investigating a deadly shooting at an apartment building Thursday morning.It happened around 12:45 a.m. at an apartment complex on East 42ndSt. near Pittman Road. Police responded to a sound-of-shots call and found a woman shot inside the apartment building. Investigation Contd In The Dotte Wyandotte County DA's office to allow outside review of CIU cases handled by fired members KANSAS CITY, KS (KCTV) --- The Wyandotte County District Attorney's Office will allow an outside agency to review cases handled by two terminated members of the Community Integrity Unit. The announcement Friday from the Wyandotte County DA's office comes following revelations of secretly recorded audio featuring the two terminated individuals having troubling workplace conversations. KCK Stray Bullet Kills Guest Man charged in connection to KCK shooting that killed innocent bystander in his home KANSAS CITY, Kan. - A 51-year-old man has been arrested and charged in connection to a March 31 shooting in Kansas City, Kansas that killed an innocent bystander who was hit by a stray bullet in his home. The Kansas City, Kansas Police Department announced Thursday that James Edward Merritt, Jr. Kansas Creeper Earns Hard Time Former School Resource Officer Gets Life in Prison for Repeatedly Raping a Young Child Mark Scheetz, 32, of Kansas was sentenced on Tuesday A former Kansas City, Kan., school resource officer has been sentenced to prison for repeatedly raping a child younger than 14. Mark Scheetz, 32, was sentenced on Tuesday in Norton County District Court to life in prison, the Kansas Attorney General's Office said in a news release. Insurrection Aftermath KC Proud Boy charged in Jan. 6 riots files motion to await trial while out of jail KANSAS CITY, Mo. - One of several Kansas City-area Proud Boys members charged in the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol says he shouldn't have to wait in jail until the outcome of his trial. Olathe resident William Chrestman, 47, was one of three Kansas City-area residents initially charged in connection to the capitol riots. Community Hopes To Thwart Crime Concert and car show aim to stop violence By Corbin SmithEditorial Assistant Coming up May 30, All Christians Serving Together, KC Restoration Church and Hope City will host a concert and car show drive out at the Northeast Athletic Field, 6500 St. John Ave., behind SuperFlea. From 11 a.m. Developing . . . From a now defunct Brit magazine we remember hottie Rosie & Holly frolicking and pillow fighting throughout the night and that inspires us to take a peek at pop culture, community news and top headlines to start the day . . . Check-it . . . Pain At The Pump Worsens Memorial Day weekend gas prices more than $1 more per gallon in Kansas City compared to last year If you're traveling by car for Memorial Day weekend you may want to budget a bit more money for gas. AAA reports the national average for a gallon of regular gas is about $3.04, and the average in Kansas and Missouri is about 20 cents cheaper. Chilly Swim Today?!?! These local swimming pools are opening across the Kansas City area on Memorial Day weekend KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Schools are out, summer is here and swimming pools are opening up this Memorial Day weekend across the Kansas City metro. But with lifeguard shortages and some cities still taking COVID-19 restrictions into consideration, not all city pools across the area are opening up. Local Labor Market Unguarded Lifeguard shortage could keep area pools closed ROELAND PARK, KS (KCTV) -- Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to summer with cookouts, family gatherings, and outdoor pools opening. But many outdoor pools may not open this year, because of problems finding staff. Roeland Park just finished up renovation of a new pool. In 2019, the city approved $1.5 million worth of updates. KANSAS CITY HELP WANTED!!! Now Hiring! Where are all the unemployed workers? Is it Boomers retiring in droves? Parents stuck at home with kids? Folks enjoying their COVID-19 unemployment benefits until the money ends in September? Other folks still too afraid of the pandemic to interact with the public? All of the above, say economists and business owners when asked why "help wanted" signs are popping up all over Kansas City. MAGA Tough Talk Questioned Marjorie Taylor Greene may be politically safe, but her conservative Georgia constituents have concerns about her tactics Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned herself into one of the most visible Republicans in the country -- stoking an endless stream of controversies that has caused headaches for a defeated party trying to find its footing while she rakes in campaign cash without fear of consequences. MSM Name Game Rebuked CNN, AP, Daily Beast headlines refer to illegal immigrant convicted in Mollie Tibbetts murder as 'farm worker' The media appeared to have downplayed the migrant status of the murderer who was convicted in the brutal 2018 killing of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts. Cristhian Bahena Rivera was found guilty of first-degree murder on Friday after a two-week trial in Davenport, in a case that drew national attention because of the suspect's immigration status. Former Prez Vs. Former Speaker A time for abusing: Trump nukes Paul Ryan's Reaganesque vision for GOP After Ryan suggested that the conservative movement was about more than fealty to the defeated president, Trump called the former House speaker a "RINO" and a loser. And then Trump, the rare Republican who has criticized Reagan himself, went after Fred Ryan, chair of the board of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. Snail Mail Sticks It To Customers Postal Service raises stamps to 58 cents as part of restructuring plan The U.S. Postal Service on Friday announced plans to raise the price of first-class stamps from 55 to 58 cents, the latest step in Postmaster General Louis DeJoy Louis DeJoy Lawmakers request investigation into Postal Service's covert operations program Postal Service sees chance to turn the page after tumultuous year Senators unveil Postal Service reform bill that could defeat filibuster MORE 's 10-year plan to make up for billions in financial losses within the agency. KANSAS CITY FASHION COMEBACK!!! Grab your tickets now for the much-anticipated West 18th St. Fashion Show West 18th Street Fashion Show. // Designed by Mark Serrano & Gabby DeFonso After a decidedly unfashionable year, the West 18th St. Fashion Show returns to Crossroads on Saturday, June 12. This year's theme is 'Summer Tableau'-the event marks Kansas City's first independent outdoor fashion production since 2020. Accelerating COVID Recovery Kansas Speedway offers laps at the track to those who get vaccinated, tested for COVID-19 The Kansas Speedway is offering laps on its track to people who take part in the Race to End COVID-19 event June 4-5.Speedway officials said fans who get a free COVID-19 test and/or COVID-19 vaccine on those days can enjoy an opportunity to drive two laps around the speedway. Royal Comeback Begins Offense finally backs Bubic in 8-3 win over Twins First off, let me start with this: it's always good to beat the Minnesota Twins. I typically give a little shtick in every Royals/Twins game I recap talking about the boring irrelevance of the Minnesota Twins. Joe Mauer got 251 hits in his career against the Royals and I cannot remember a single freaking one of them. Weekend Sorta Warms Up Sunshine in store for Saturday, afternoon showers possible Sunday Hide Transcript Show Transcript EVENTUALLY HAVE SUNSHINE, BUT I'VE GOT YOUR WEATHER ALREADY QUEUED UP IN THE NINEAY D FORECAST DON'T 'IVE UP ON IT YET. YOU'LL HAVE YOUR DAYS. WE HAVE GOT MOSTLY CLOUDY SKIES OVER THE CITY RIGHT NOW. Marshmello x Carnage - Back In Time is the song of the day and this is the OPEN THREAD for right now. Local law enforcement rescued the nation's First Lady and her very fashionable designer footwear during her recent visit. Deets regarding the adventure . . . The heel of her leopard print pumps became stuck in the pavement. The first lady was quickly assisted by one of her staffers, who bent down to free the shoe from the concrete crevice. The officer standing closest to her offered his hand for balance to Biden, who laughed off the incident. Read more . . . Whilst the plebs are outraged at Mayor Q, insiders blame the current police defund crisis on a longtime Kansas City power player. Let's not forget . . . As Finance, Governance & Public Safety Committee Chair and co-sponsor of the police defund ordinance . . . Council Lady Katy is first in line to feast on that 42-MILLION BUCKS worth of taxpayer cash. To wit . . . KANSAS CITY INSIDERS WARN AGAINST THE NEWFOUND POLICE POWER OF THE 4TH DISTRICT AT-LARGE COUNCIL LADY!!! Here's the word . . . "She basically orchestrated the whole thing. She put in a lot of time with Quinton and has his total confidence. What does she care? She's termed out and doesn't answer to anyone. However, at the moment, she's basically KC's de facto police boss with control over police purse strings. There's almost now real oversight of her power and at the moment. More than anyone else, this was a power move for Katheryn Shields and most residents don't even realize it." Like it or not, this victory brings Council lady Shields full circle as she suffered Fed indictment, beat the case and then danced in front of the courthouse. Now under the current haphazard KCMO law enforcement governance structure devised by Mayor Q and his cohorts . . . She's has more power of police purse strings than any other council member in local history. Developing . . . A progressive note put on blast across social media . . . Missouri and Kansas senators all voted to protect former Prez Trump and the majority of the GOP in opposing a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection To be fair, that's just one of many recent politically charged riots that didn't garner much investigation after the fact. Still, here's a consideration of the hot mess that is now just another aspect of the nation's tumultuous history . . . Kan., Mo. Senators vote to block Jan. 6 commission on Capitol attack WASHINGTON (AP) - Senate Republicans on Friday blocked creation of a bipartisan panel to study the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, turning aside the independent investigation in a show of party loyalty to former President Donald Trump and an effort to shift the political focus away from the violent insurrection by his GOP supporters. Republicans block 9/11-style congressional probe of Capitol riot Republicans in the US Senate have blocked a bill to establish a bipartisan 9/11-style commission to investigate the Capitol Hill riot. The measure - passed last week by the US House of Representatives - failed in the Senate by a vote of 54-35 after senators deployed a filibuster. 'The truth is hard': Senate Republicans block commission to study Capitol riot of Jan. 6 WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a bipartisan commission proposed to study the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6. The Senate voted 54-35 Friday on whether to debate the measure, which fell short of the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster, which blocks debate of the measure. In victory for Trump, Republicans block probe of U.S. Capitol riot Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Friday derailed a bipartisan inquiry into the deadly assault on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, despite a torrent of criticism they were playing down the violence. Democrats and some moderate Republicans had called for a commission to probe the events leading up to and on Jan. Girlfriend of officer Brian Sicknick who was killed in Capitol riot blasts GOP for blocking commission Read full article Oops! Please try again later. The girlfriend of fallen Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick is furious at Republicans for voting down a commission to investigate the 6 January attack, she told CNN. "I think it's all talk and no action," Sandra Garza told CNN's Jake Tapper. Why efforts to establish a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection failed For this divided Senate, this was close. The commission came within three votes of getting the 60 Senate votes in the support that it would need. Now, that is adding in some absent senators, because, as you say, it was a late night, and about a dozen senators left Washington before this vote because they thought it was a fait accompli. Republicans block Capitol riot commission Senate Republicans have blocked a bipartisan commission to investigate the Capitol insurrection, hoping to crush a probe into the violent assault before critical 2022 elections while GOP lawmakers manipulate a narrative around a riot inspired by persistent election myths. Developing . . . A quick preview of Missouri problems that will meet with the scrutiny of the Jeff City GOP Super Majority. Quote. . . "The calls from Missouri lawmakers for Gov. Mike Parson to reconvene the recently-adjourned legislature in special session are many and varied. And while there is no doubt that lawmakers will be returning to Jefferson City this year, exactly what may end up on the agenda and when they will gather remains unclear. Theres a lot of people whove reached out for special sessions, Parson said in a recent interview with KCMO radio this week, and its too early to talk about those things like that.Yet the list of issues lawmakers hope to tackle before the 2022 session convenes next January seems to grow by the day. Some things will absolutely require a special session, and topping that list is a tax on health care providers that makes up a huge chunk of the states Medicaid budget." Read more . . . Medicaid, critical race theory, election changes possible issues for special session By Jason Hancock A tax that funds $2 billion of Missouri's Medicaid program. A push to ban the teaching of critical race theory in public schools. An effort to undermine changes to Kansas City's police budget. And a litany of bills seeking to overhaul how Missouri conducts its elections. Trial date set after 3 moms sue Missouri over Medicaid expansion JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. - Three single moms are suing the state of Missouri after the governor decided not to expand Medicaid. But the lawsuit could impact thousands of Missourians. After the General Assembly voted not to fund Medicaid expansion earlier this month, Gov. Mike Parson said there was no way the state could expand. Developing . . . It was inevitable and just a matter of time since the sketchy ordinance was passed last week . . . Missouri files suit and sparks an expensive legal battle that might not change much for broke-ass plebs on Kansas City streets . . . Except to further deplete resources that should be going to public safety. By now you've seen the news but here's a round-up of how the issue was reported across the metro . . . Read more: Board of Police Commissioners urges mayor to withdraw KCPD reallocation ordinances KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City, Missouri, Board of Police Commissioners has requested that Mayor Quinton Lucas withdraw ordinances that reallocate $42 million from the police department. Bishop Mark Tolbert, BOPC president, said in a statement released Friday that the "unexpected" budget change could disrupt services, and if Lucas doesn't withdraw the measures, the board "will be forced to continue pursuing injunctive relief." Police board sues Kansas City, calls for Lucas to withdraw ordinances KANSAS CITY, MO (KCTV) -- The battle over the budget for the Kansas City Police Department is headed to court. A lawsuit has been filed challenging the plan to shift millions of dollars. It comes after another closed door meeting by the Board of Police Commissioners. Police board files lawsuit against Kansas City leaders in latest battle for control of KCPD budget The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners voted 4-1 Friday to file litigation after city hall budget changes reallocated $42 million from the Kansas City Police Department's budget.During a 35-minute meeting held in a closed session, the board voted to sue the city council, the city manager and Mayor Quinton Lucas "to enforce the board's rights, responsibilities, and authorities under Chapter 84 of the Revised Statutes of Missouri in such form as the litigation committee may deem appropriate." Kansas City police board sues mayor, city over budget reform KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners has filed suit against Kansas City, Missouri, Mayor Quinton Lucas, other city officials and KCMO itself over police budget ordinances recently passed. The ordinances reallocate more than $42 million from the Kansas City Police Department into a new, locally administered community services fund the police department could access. State on behalf of police board sues Mayor Lucas, Kansas City over police funding KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Litigation filed Friday by the state of Missouri on behalf of the Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners against Mayor Quinton Lucas, the city council and city manager requests that the city follow state statute for funding the police department. Kansas City Police Board Sues Mayor, City Council To Stop New Police Budget Plan The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners on Friday sued Mayor Quinton Lucas and the city council, seeking to quickly put a stop to Lucas's new police budget plan that the board says is a violation of state law and could harm police operations. Kansas City Police Board votes to sue Mayor Lucas and City Council Mayor Quinton Lucas. // Courtesy KC Government. The Kansas City Board of Police Commissioners has voted 4-1 to file a lawsuit against Mayor Quinton Lucas and the City Council in response to their decision to reallocate Police Funding to community efforts. Developing . . . Fayez Assad, DVM, medical director at Johnstown Veterinary Associates, was born and raised in Cairo, Egypt. In 1994, he graduated from the Cairo University School of Veterinary Medicine. In 1999, Dr. Assad moved to Johnstown and attended Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Massachusetts, where he obtained his degree. Dr. Assad is an active member of AVMA, PAVMA, AAFP and AAHA. He is also a USDA-accredited veterinarian. Image from wikipedia On 24 May, Monday afternoon, the last significant legislative hurdle for restoring Constitutional Carry to Texas was overcome. After years of toil, time and trouble, of betrayal and loyalty, of primaries and resignations, a significant Constitutional Carry bill has passed the Texas Legislature and is expected to be sent to Governor Abbott. HB1927, in its final form, passed the House 82-62, and reported privately to me, passed the Senate on a straight party line vote. Constitutional carry is a reasonable facsimile of the state of law about the carry of weapons when the Second Amendment was ratified, in 1791. At the time, no government permits were required to carry weapons, openly or concealed, by any State or the Federal government. That situation remained the state of law for about two generations. It is almost certain Texas will become a member of the Constitutional Carry club in 2021. It will make Texas the 21st state to join the club. There have not been any statistically significant ill effects from Constitutional Carry in any of the previous 20 states. ..... Terre Haute, IN (47803) Today Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy skies with scattered thunderstorms during the evening. Low 69F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%. Canton, GA (30114) Today A shower or two possible this evening with partly cloudy skies overnight. Low 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%.. Tonight A shower or two possible this evening with partly cloudy skies overnight. Low 68F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 30%. Canton, GA (30114) Today A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight A few clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 68F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. I have recently been hit with a barrage of offers . These could have been stolen company names or names of scam complies. All I have is what was sent. I have been playing to see whatever ones angle was. They get creative. Here is a list of who I have been dealing with....Thomas Cook wants me to pay fees for closing that I will get reimbursed for after closing, fee 10K, L and Associates wants tax fee, but first need to get temp visa from Mexico, fee 5500.00. Preferred Vacations fees before closing, to get refunded. My Life Travels, Advanced Closing Services, Closing Attorney Jodie Sullivan, and Alpha Rooms, each of these had something they wanted me to pay. I played with most of them to string them along and sent them proof from various websites to show I did not have to do what they wanted $ for and to see what the next obstacle was they wanted me to pay for. To tell the truth, I work full time it started taking up so much time I had to give it up. I hope these names help and please DO NOT SEND THESE PEOPLE MONEY! Hello Shannon. Spain is a big place and in a two week trip you are not going to fit a lot in if you are wanting to explore. Can you give us an idea of where you really want to go and what you really want to see? The must haves? Madrid, as you know, is not coastal so there will be no time at the coast for your daughter and I would not recommend your daughter walking around alone in many districts within Madrid. It is suggested that Spain will allow travel from all restricted countries from the 7th June including the US. Only for vaccinated persons reports say. Vaccines on the EU recommended list. But personally I would not risk a trip to Morocco you will be taking a trip to a country who may have a poor rate of covid with their citizens and therefore a risk of variants being in circulation. I would just stick to Spain on this occasion. Ittybits & Pieces May the road rise to meet you TRUMBULL A pair of childhood friends plan to rock Trumbulls Memorial Day parade with a display of kindness all along Main Street. The two women, Lori Fox and Ursula DeMartino, best friends since grade school, are the founders of the Facebook group Trumbull Rocks! The two, who are now mothers with grade school aged children of their own, have spent the last four years spreading smiles around town in the form of decorative, hand-painted rocks. The two have been busily painting and stockpiling patriotic and Americana-themed stones, and plan to scatter more than 200 of them along Main Street in time for Mondays parade. Those who find them are encouraged to visit the Facebook page and share a photo with their find. I was an art minor in college, and its really cathartic to create these positive messages and send them out, DeMartino said. Then, when people find them, knowing they brought a smile to someones face is the reward. The pair began their rock scattering about four years ago, when Fox returned from a trip to Georgia. It was right before Earth Day 2017, and my kids found this painted rock in a tree, Fox said. On the back it said Georgia Rocks with a Facebook address. So I went on and posted that I found it. Fox brought the idea back to Trumbull and the idea took off. The Trumbull Rocks! Facebook page currently has more than 1,200 members. Some hide rocks around town, leaving clues where they can be located. Others then go on rock hunts, and share photos on the site when they find them. Its just a fun thing to do, and I think it appeals to people in a few different ways, Fox said. If you like to be creative, you can paint. If youre active you can go out and hide them. It really makes everybody happy, and it encourages people to get outside. DeMartino said it has become especially gratifying to see her painted rocks leaving Connecticut. People go on vacation, and they take rocks with them and leave them, and other people from Trumbull look for them when theyre on vacation, she said. And people from other states have found them and posted their photos. People have also made requests through the site that a loved one was feeling down or was otherwise in need of a pick-me-up, DeMartino said. We try to be accommodating, when someone said, Hey, my kid would love to find one, I painted one that said, Youve been rocked and left it, she said. Another time my daughter had a Girl Scout event at Camp Teepee, and I spent the night before painting 60 Camp Teepee Rocks! for people. The rules for participating are simple. Rocks should be painted with outdoor safe, acrylic paint and sealed with an eco-friendly spray so the paint doesnt wash off. Then hide them, preferably some place where children at play will find them. Some of the other guidelines Fox encourages are to avoid removing rocks from the natural environment like streambeds, and dont take rocks from other peoples private property. We actually buy landscaping stones from Home Depot, so its almost like were adding to the environment, Fox said. Finally, rocks should be uplifting and family-friendly. Obscene or derogatory messages are against the spirit of Trumbull Rocks!, Fox said. Those who find a rock can either keep it or take a photo noting the location, and then place it somewhere else for someone to find. Im not looking for this to be a Flat Stanley thing, where it travels around the world, but its fun to see the photos of it moving from place to place, DeMartino said. Tucson, AZ (85741) Today Plentiful sunshine. Very hot. High near 110F. Winds NW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Clear to partly cloudy. Low 76F. Winds NNE at 5 to 10 mph. Writer and performer Kyle Hernandez of Trinidad is receiving death threats, following a performance he did on local television station WESN, where he seemed to insult not only Tobagonians but the national bird of the island. Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Andriy Yermak discussed the situation in eastern Ukraine and the activities of the OSCE SMM with OSCE Secretary General Helga Maria Schmid at a meeting in Kyiv on May 27. "The parties discussed the results of the meeting of advisers to the leaders of the Normandy format countries held through video conferencing on May 26, as well as the situation in Donbas and the activities of the OSCE SMM to Ukraine," the press service of the Presidents Office informs. Yermak also said that a Ukrainian serviceman had been killed by sniper fire in Donbas on May 27. "We have not yet managed to agree on a joint statement on a recommitment to the full ceasefire. I want to assure you that Ukraine will not stop for a single moment in continuing its work because it concerns the lives of our people and the security of our land," he said. The Head of the Presidents Office thanked the OSCE Mission for its efforts to restore peace in Ukraine. Yermak praised the support of Germany and France within the Normandy format talks. For her part, the OSCE Secretary General said that the SMM representatives were making every effort to achieve progress in resolving the situation in eastern Ukraine and thanked for appreciation of the Organization representatives activity. "I would like to underscore the need for the line of contact to never become a line of division or split. Every effort should be made to provide appropriate humanitarian support. I also mean pensions. Steps must be taken towards reconciliation. Of course, COVID-19 made its adjustments to reality the number of contact line crossings fell by 97%. I am very grateful to Ukraine for the fact that the entry-exit checkpoints remain open on your side," Schmid said. At the same time, she pointed out a significant restriction on the freedom of movement of the OSCE SMM. "More than 90% of these cases happen on the other side of the line of contact. There is also an alarming trend: an increase in the number of cases of suppression of drones, interference in the work of technical means of the Mission," said the OSCE Secretary General. Andriy Yermak informed that the Ukrainian side focused on those issues during the talks at all international platforms. He added that the possibilities of solving these problems would increase if the ceasefire was observed. "We will not stop because we have no other alternative, and we must stop this war and return our territories. Even if it is necessary to make a thousand attempts and only one of them will get a chance to achieve results," the Head of the President's Office stressed. ol Belarus is ready to restore the free trade regime with Ukraine if Kyiv reconsiders measures imposed on Belarusian goods. "We are ready to completely repeal all our decisions, we are ready to restore the free trade regime in full, but only when Ukraine reconsiders the measures imposed on the products of the Belarusian side which were de facto aimed at restricting competition created by Belarusian producers," First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Guryanov said, Ukrinform reports with reference to Radio Liberty. According to him, the imposition of individual licensing for the import of a number of Ukrainian goods by Belarus is not connected with the current aggravation of BelarusUkraine relations "on aviation issues and so on." "These are pure and simple trade talks, which should lead to the removal of barriers in mutual trade, for what I call my Ukrainian colleagues," Guryanov said. On May 23, the Belarusian authorities forced the Ryanair flight en route from Athens to Vilnius to land under the pretext of an alleged bomb threat. Opposition Belarusian journalist Raman Pratasevich was detained after the landing. The informal EU summit agreed to impose new sanctions on officials of Alexander Lukashenka's staff and a number of legal entities, as well as to restrict flights to Belarus. Ukraine suspended flights to Belarus since May 26. ol The U.S. Department of State requested $255 million from the U.S. budget in assistance to Ukraine. U.S. assistance will strengthen Ukraines ability to counter Russian aggression. Funding will accelerate reforms to address corruption, enhance transparency and accountability, including by expanding e-government initiatives, advance institutional reforms and training necessary for European integration, reads the Congressional Budget Justification submitted by the U.S. Department of State to the Congress for consideration. The United States also aims to support Ukraines energy security through the reform of NJSC Naftogaz of Ukraine and increase in energy efficiency. The budget funds are also expected to improve the business climate and enhance trade capacity, strengthen the agricultural sector, promote democratic and economic reforms. Moreover, the U.S. Department of State seeks to support the Organization for Security Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission (SMM) in Ukraine. Funds will also continue to support civil society, decentralization, access to unbiased information, and judicial reform, reads the document. As noted, the requested funds will also support efforts to combat COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and postpandemic response and preparedness. ol Slovakia provided EUR 600,000 in aid to Ukraine for the purchase of COVID-19 vaccines. The parties, in particular, discussed the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister of Ukraine thanked Slovakia for providing assistance in the amount of 600,000 for the purchase of vaccines. For his part, Eduard Heger noted that Slovakia was actively promoting the initiative to distribute vaccines to neighboring countries and will continue to do so in the future, the Government portal informed following the meeting between Prime Minister of Ukraine Denys Shmyhal and Prime Minister of Slovakia Eduard Heger on May 28. Shmyhal informed the Prime Minister of Slovakia that Ukraine was working on the creation of a national digital COVID-19 vaccine certificate. "It is critical to ensure its compatibility with the relevant certificate in the EU and WHO. We also need to work in synergy with the EU to create a legal framework for the implementation and mutual recognition of these certificates. We hope that Slovakia will also contribute to the mutual recognition of digital certificates and the creation of a mechanism for simplified border crossing with EU countries amid the pandemic," the Head of the Government of Ukraine said. As reported, Slovakia donated EUR 195,000 worth of personal protective equipment for COVID-19 to the Okhmatdyt children's hospital in Kyiv during Hegers visit on May 28. ol Thousands of Belarusians have moved to Ukraine since the protests in Belarus began. These are mostly young people who most often go to big cities: Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa. "I can say that we have cities that Belarusians love. These are mostly young people, they move to Lviv, Kharkiv, Kyiv, a small part goes to Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Odesa. They live there, and, as I understand it, if the current situation in Belarus continues, they can get the opportunity to live peacefully in a democratic country for a certain period of time," Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Oleksiy Danilov said on the air of Savik Shuster's Freedom of Speech TV program. When asked about the number of Belarusians who have already moved to Ukraine, Danilov said: "It is difficult to say whether it is a massive process because we do not track every citizen as we are a democratic country. However, I can say that thousands [have moved]." As reported, mass protests have been going on in Belarus against the falsification of the results of the presidential election, in which Alexander Lukashenko was declared the winner, since August 2020. The regime cracks down on protesters and arrests them en masse. The legitimacy of the Lukashenko regime has not been recognized by the EU, the United States, Ukraine and most democracies around the world. On May 23, the Belarusian authorities forced a Ryanair plane en route from Athens to Vilnius to land in Minsk under the pretext of an alleged bomb threat report. After the landing, activist and opposition journalist Raman Pratasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega were arrested. The EU and the US condemned the forced landing of the Ryanair plane in Minsk and demand to release Pratasevich. ol Dear UMass Dartmouth Staff and Faculty, As we head into Memorial Day weekend and transition to the summer, it has been heartening to see significant declines in COVID-19 cases across the Commonwealth and rising rates of vaccination. Accordingly, Massachusetts is lifting most of the restrictions that have been in place over the past year, and the university has revised its Fall 2021 Semester Plan to reflect these updates. Consonant with the new state guidance, I am pleased to let you know that, effective Saturday, May 29, UMass Dartmouth will no longer require the use of face coverings indoors or outdoors for fully vaccinated individuals. Fully vaccinated is defined as two weeks after the second dose in a two-dose vaccine or two weeks following a single-dose vaccine. Individuals will not be required to provide proof of vaccination status to forego a face covering indoors. As part of our efforts to keep the campus community safe, UMass Dartmouth strongly encourages and recommends that all faculty and staff be fully vaccinated before the start of the fall semester. Please visit our vaccination information website to learn more. While face coverings are no longer required for fully vaccinated individuals, you are certainly welcome to continue wearing one if you wish. It is important to note that there are some instances where face coverings are still necessary: Individuals who are not fully vaccinated are still required to wear face coverings indoors unless they are alone. Under Massachusetts public health guidance, face coverings are still required in certain settings, including on public transportation, in health care sites, and childcare centers. Students, faculty, and staff will be required to wear face coverings while using campus shuttles and when visiting Health Services and the Counseling Center. Also on May 29, UMass Dartmouth will lift all social distancing and density restrictions on campus per the Massachusetts reopening plan. Offices, classrooms, residential and dining halls, labs, and other campus buildings will return to full occupancy in preparation for the Fall 2021 semester. Human Resources will be reaching out to all staff and faculty with a timeline for returning to work on campus. Please visit our Returning to Campus website for more information and contact corona.virus@umassd.edu with any questions. As we all return to campus in the coming months, I look forward to meeting many of you in person. Thank you for all your creativity, flexibility, resourcefulness and determination to help our students continue their educations despite the challenges of the pandemic. Best, Mark A. Fuller, PhD Interim Chancellor Oregon, WI (53575) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High near 90F. Winds NNW at 10 to 15 mph.. Tonight Clear skies. Low around 60F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph. Register for a FREE account to keep reading! Register now for a FREE account to keep reading. No cost and no credit card required! Access up to 5 articles per month when you register, or get unlimited access to all of our content online starting at $1.99 now! Already registered? Click the log in link below Seema Mehdi, who lives in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, has family in India who cannot travel because of the COVID-19 epidemic hitting the country. (Armando L. Sanchez/Chicago Tribune/TNS) Workers work at a quick pace as customers line up for tacos at the Avenue 26 night market in Lincoln Heights on Friday, May 14, 2021 in Los Angeles, California. (Francine Orr/Los Angeles Times/TNS) For full access, please log in, register your subscription or subscribe. Try for 99 a month for two months, cancel or pause anytime. Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam on Saturday said that record production was observed in six major crops in the country, which are expected to boost the national economic growth ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th May, 2021 ) :Federal Minister for National food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam on Saturday said that record production was observed in six major crops in the country, which are expected to boost the national economic growth. "Modern research and innovation in the field of agriculture, especially research on the seeds of different major and minor crops by the agricultural experts can revolutionize the country's agriculture." "Quality research and intellect in the agriculture is need of hour to achieve the agenda of 'Food Security' in the Country", he added. As this time the government has provided the quality and cheap seeds to the farmers for major crops, which led to a record increase in the country's agricultural production, Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam said this while addressing a press conference here. Due to the excellent agricultural policy of the Pakistan Tehreek e- Insaf (PTI) government, supply of good quality seeds and favorable weather conditions, the production of wheat, rice, maize, potato, onion and groundnut has increased to a record level. Minister was of the view that excellent production and efficiency in the agricultural sector is due to the personal interest of Prime Minister Imran Khan in the agricultural sector, which has increased the confidence of the farmers. Syed Fakhar Imam said that the country's wheat production this time was 27.3 million tons, while last year's wheat production was 25.3 million tons, which was 2 million tons more than the previous year. Similarly, there was a record rise in the production of other major crops like maize, rice, groundnut, potato and production of onions. He said that agricultural sector was neglected in the past and, "we have to regain our lost ground in cotton production by using modern research and technology to recover our lost ground in cotton production. " Fakhar Imam said the government has a special focus on industrial activities in agricultural lands and agro- regions, especially housing societies developed by different quarters. In this regard, "I will talk to Prime Minister Imran Khan exclusively so that some policy can be formulated on this." Similarly, there was a record rise in the production of other major crops like maize, rice, groundnut, potato and production of onions. He said that maize production in this time remained at record 8.645 million tons, while last year's wheat production was 7.88 million tons, adding that the country's rice production also observed record increase at 8.41 million in this season. He said that the government is committed to introducing innovation in the agriculture sector for promoting the value addition culture to provide competitiveness to the local agriculture items in the global market. Now the government has supported the agriculture sector to achieve competitiveness for exporting the major fruits including mangoes and citrus in potential markets of European Union, Australia and United States (US), he said. Minister said that livestock has also emerged as a major component of the agriculture sector and now has achieved a growth rate of 3.1 percent. Replying to a question said that now the government has especially focused on the production of edible oil to decrease the biggest export bill in this commodity. He said that the government has also planned to promote the floriculture for promoting flower farming and also focusing on the organic farming for enhancing the country's export. Geneva, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th May, 2021 ) :The World Health Organization warned Friday that efforts to uncover the Covid-19 pandemic's origins were being hampered by politics, insisting scientists needed space to work on solving the mystery. "We would ask that we separate the science from the politics, and let us get on with finding the answers that we need in a proper, positive atmosphere," WHO emergencies chief Michael Ryan told reporters. "This whole process is being poisoned by politics," he warned. The UN health agency has been facing intensifying pressure for a new, more in-depth investigation of where Covid-19 came from, but so far there is no timeline for the next stage in the probe. US President Joe Biden this week ordered the US intelligence community to investigate whether the Covid-19 virus first emerged in China from an animal source or from a laboratory accident. The move hints at growing impatience with waiting for a conclusive WHO investigation into how the pandemic that has killed more than 3.5 million people worldwide began. During an ongoing meeting of WHO member states, European Union countries and a range of others also pressed for clarity on the next steps in the organisation's efforts to solve the mystery, seen as vital to averting future pandemics. - 'No timeline' - But the UN health agency said earlier Friday it was still waiting for recommendations from a team of WHO technical experts on how to move forward. "The technical team will prepare a proposal for the next studies that will need to be carried out and will present that to the director-general," spokeswoman Fadela Chaib told reporters. "He will then work with member states about the next steps," she said, acknowledging "there is no timeline". The WHO finally managed to send a team of independent, international experts to Wuhan in January, more than a year after Covid-19 first surfaced there in late 2019, to help probe the pandemic origins. But in their long-delayed report published in late March, the international team and their Chinese counterparts drew no firm conclusions, instead ranking a number of hypotheses according to how likely they believed they were. - 'Impossible position' - The report said the virus jumping from bats to humans via an intermediate animal was the most probable scenario, while a theory involving the virus leaking from a laboratory was "extremely unlikely". But the investigation and report have faced criticism for lacking transparency and access, and for not evaluating the lab-leak theory more deeply -- a mere 440 words of the report were dedicated to discussing and dismissing it. WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has also continued to insist that all theories remain on the table and further investigation is needed. Long dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory, and vehemently rejected by Beijing, the idea that Covid-19 emerged from a lab leak in Wuhan in China has been gaining increasing momentum in the United States. While not suggesting that a lab leak was necessarily the source, a number of prominent international scientists have said a deeper, more scientific look at the theory was needed. "Every country and every entity is free to pursue their own particular theories of origin... It's a free world," Ryan said. But he complained that the discourse around the origins search, and around WHO's role in it, was making it difficult to focus on the science. "Putting WHO in a position like it has been put in is very unfair to the science we're trying to carry out," he said. "It puts us, as an organisation, frankly in an impossible position to deliver the answers that the world wants." BAGHDAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th May, 2021 ) , May 29 (APP):Foreign Minister Makhdoom Shah Mahmood Qureshi Saturday reaffirmed Pakistan's long-standing and friendly ties with Iraq and expressed Pakistan's desire to further enhance existing bilateral ties in all spheres of cooperation. The foreign minister called on President of the Republic of Iraq Dr. Barham Salih, here. The foreign minister also reaffirmed Pakistan's support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, said a press release. Acknowledging the unyielding efforts and sacrifices of Iraq, and its people, in the fight against terrorism, the foreign minister wished peace, progress and prosperity for the brotherly people of Iraq. Foreign Minister Qureshi briefed the President on Pakistan's transformed vision centered around economic security, shifting focus from geo-politics to geo-economics. He outlined Pakistan's desire to offer itself as an economic hub through peace, development partnerships and connectivity. The president agreed that the two countries needed to strengthen bilateral cooperation in mutually beneficial areas. Appreciating Prime Minister Imran Khan's environmental initiatives, he hoped for greater cooperation in this field. The foreign minister and the president also discussed regional and global issues of mutual interest. Foreign Minister Qureshi briefed the president on the situation in South Asia, in particular Pakistan's approach towards the issues and disputes with India, Pakistan's consistent support for the Afghan Peace Process, and Pakistan's steadfast diplomatic support for the just cause of Palestine. He also highlighted Pakistan's efforts to promote solidarity among the Muslim Ummah. He offered Pakistan's support and cooperation for Iraq's efforts toward rebuilding and strengthening the country. The foreign minister conveyed warm wishes to President Salih from Pakistan's leadership. President Salih warmly welcomed the foreign minister and reciprocated the feelings expressed on behalf of Pakistan's leadership. He thanked the foreign minister for Pakistan's understanding and support. Foreign Minister Qureshi is undertaking a three-day bilateral visit to Iraq, at the invitation of his Iraqi counterpart. Federal Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam on Saturday said this time the country witnessed a record increase in agricultural production, including six major crops ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th May, 2021 ) :Federal Minister for National food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam on Saturday said this time the country witnessed a record increase in agricultural production, including six major crops. Due to the prudent agricultural policy of the incumbent government, supply of good quality seeds and favorable weather conditions, the production of wheat, rice, maize, potato, onion and groundnut has increased to a record level, Minister for National Food Security and Research, Syed Fakhar Imam said while addressing to press conference here. The Minister was of the view that excellent production and efficiency in the agricultural sector is due to the personal interest of Prime Minister Imran Khan in the agricultural sector, which has increased the confidence of the farmers. Imam said this year the wheat production in the country was recorded as 27.3 million tons, which was two million tons more than the last year production as 25.3 million tons produced then. Similarly, there was a record rise in the production of other major crops like maize, rice, groundnut, potato and production of onions, he said. BEIJING (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 29th May, 2021) The launch of the Tianzhou-2 cargo spacecraft to the base module of the Chinese orbital station, which was previously postponed due to technical reasons, is scheduled for 12:55 GMT Saturday, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMS) announced. "The Long March-7 Y3 carrier rocket is filled with propellant. China plans to launch Tianzhou-2 at around 20:55 p.m. [12:55 p.m. GMT] on May 29," the CMS said. The spaceship will take off from the Wenchang Spacecraft Launch Site in the southern province of Hainan. Initially, Tianzhou-2 was supposed to deliver the cargo to the base module of the Tiangong station on May 20, but the launch was postponed for technical reasons. On April 29, China successfully put into orbit the main module of its future orbital station Tiangong. Three taikonauts (Chinese astronauts) can be in the station at the same time. Alternatively, it can hold six people when the crews are switching shifts. (@FahadShabbir) Six people were killed, including a woman who was burned alive, during an attack blamed on the regional militia group ADF in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sources said Saturday Beni, DR Congo, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th May, 2021 ) :Six people were killed, including a woman who was burned alive, during an attack blamed on the regional militia group ADF in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, sources said Saturday. The Allied Democratic Forces were believed to have carried out the overnight attack on a road near the border with Uganda, where the group was founded. "ADF fighters attacked Kinyatsi, a village near the Virunga national park," said Donat Kibuana, local administrator for the Beni territory in North Kivu province. "We have counted six people killed, including a woman who was burned alive in her home," he told AFP. "Youths are angry with the security forces," the official added, without giving a reason. A humanitarian source who spoke on condition of anonymity said: "The toll of six dead is a provisional one. " The source added that "angry inhabitants of the villages of Lume and Kinyatsi are asking themselves questions about the attackers' identity, and have called on military authorities to identify which units operate in the zone." A military spokesman was not immediately available for comment. Kinyatsi lies on a key road between Beni and Kasindi that supplies the area and is used to export agricultural produce. This week, 39 people have been killed on it despite the deployment of DR Congo and UN troops. On Friday, the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a monitoring organisation that has experts in the region, said at least 1,228 civilians have been killed in the Beni territory since November 2019 during attacks attributed to the ADF. An alliance of European Catholic organizations and institutions who have joined forces to promote climate and social justice have renewed their commitment to work for ecological conversion and integral ecology. By Lisa Zengarini The European Laudato Si Alliance has renewed its commitment to Laudato si', saying Pope Francis' encyclical on the care of our common home drives radical change and the path to a just future. The move was the outcome of the fourth Laudato Si Reflection Day organized on 27 May by the alliance, known as ELSiA. The Catholic network includes COMECE the Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the EU; Caritas Europa, the Jesuit European Social Centre; CIDSE International family of Catholic social justice organizations; the Global Catholic Climate Movement; and, Justice and Peace Europe. The event marked the 6th anniversary of Pope Francis 2015 Encyclical. The Dream, the Plan, the Path Entitled The Dream, the Plan, the Path, the online event was attended by over 100 participants from various countries across the world. The event focused on the importance of long-term thinking and on the role of the Church and local communities in Europe towards a better care of creation and on building on the long-lasting impacts of Laudato si'. New path for humanity can be co-created Welcoming the participants was Luxemburg Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich S.J., President of COMECE and Honorary President of ELSiA. He spoke about the multifaceted crisis the world is going through and how change can be brought about, recalling that a new path for humanity can be co-created and that a "planetary community" that lives in harmony is possible. Need for inter-generational solidarity Speakers reiterated the need emphasized by Pope Francis for long-term thinking and inter-generational solidarity as opposed to short-termism, dominated by the tyranny of the present. This vision of the future, they said, implies new sustainable economic models that allow to thrive in equilibrium by creating a circular, no waste economy, instead of one in perpetual growth leading to exhaustion of natural resources. They also reflected on the importance of engaging both citizens and political leaders to make change happen. Concrete initiatives to implement Laudato si' principles The event furthermore offered an opportunity to learn about some concrete initiatives to implement the Laudato si' principles at a local level. These initiatives include grassroot projects and awareness programs encouraging Catholic communities to engage in ecological practices and showing the connection between ecology and Catholic social teachings. Ecological transition 'not at expense of the poor' In the second part of the Reflection Day, presentations from the Church and the European Union perspectives helped to identify transcendent goals and areas of cooperation for the planet. Fr. Augusto Zampini, Adjunct Secretary of the Vatican Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, highlighted the dangers of the globalisation of indifference. He reminded participants that, while policies must radically change, the much-needed transition should not be at the expense of the poor. Realizing the dream of a just future In the final remarks, Maria Nyman, Secretary General of Caritas Europa, one of the main partners in ELSi'A, stressed the importance of not being afraid of the changes that are needed, albeit radical. She noted that the Church now is not alone on this path and that a long-term plan is needed, so that the Dream outlined in the Laudato si does not remain one that is merely utopian. At least 205 priests and 210 nuns have died of Covid-19 in India, mostly in April and May. By Robin Gomes At least 400 priests and nuns have died in India due to Covid-19, the bulk of them in the height of the devastating second wave of infections in the country in April and May. The grim figure is provided by Capuchin priest Father Suresh Mathew, the editor of the Church-run Indian Currents magazine, who has been compiling the list of the countrys priests and nuns who have died in harness in the pandemic. According to the update as of Saturday, May 29, 205 priests and 210 nuns have died of Covid-19, bringing the total to 415. The number could be higher as some casualties are not reported. The list includes 3 bishops: retired Archbishop Antony Anandarayar of Pondicherry-Cuddalore and Bishop Basil Bhuriya of Jhabua died on May 3 and 5 respectively. Retired Bishop Joseph Pastor Neelankavil of Sagar of the Syro-Malabar rite, died on February 17, this year. Dying in harness The high rate of casualties among priests and nuns is due to them working in remote areas where medical facilities are rare, Fr. Mathew pointed out. Most of them risked their lives to serve the church and society. The nation lacks infrastructure in the health sector. They lived and worked in rural areas and died amidst them, he told Vatican News. The death toll involves 98 dioceses and 106 religious congregations. Despite the risk of infection, dioceses and religious congregations have been reaching out to ease the suffering of the people hit by the pandemic. Many dioceses and congregations have made their facilities available for the treatment of Covid-19 patients. Several othes have started free meal services for hospitalized Covid-19 patients, their families and those quarantined. Father Mathew solicits reports of deaths from Indias religious congregations and communities and the countrys 174 dioceses to compile his list. He said that the number of casualties has increased due to asymptotic conditions and late access to hospitals which resulted in late diagnosis. He said some of those infected went about doing their normal duties. Gatherings, retreats, meetings etc. he said, caused a huge number of infections. We should have set a model for others by avoiding unnecessary gathering of priests and religious, Father Mathew pointed out, adding the death toll would have been much lower had there been enough vaccines and a higher rate of inoculation. However, Father Mathew looks at the distressing numbers in the light of faith. We look at the Covid deaths and accept them as the will of God. Those who have died carrying out their mission are enjoying eternal bliss, he said. India's caseload India, the world's second-most populous country, currently has the worst caseload of the pandemic, leading in daily cases and deaths. The country on Saturday reported 173,790 new coronavirus infections, its lowest daily rise in 45 days, while deaths rose by 3,617. According to the Health Ministry, the total number of infections now stands at 27.7 million (second to the US), with the death toll at 322,512 (after the US and Brazil). India registered 4,529 deaths on May 19, the highest number on a single day in the history of Covid-19. This month, India recorded its highest Covid-19 death toll since the pandemic began last year. Only about 3% of the countrys 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated, the lowest rate among the 10 countries with the most cases. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been facing mounting criticism, both within the country and outside, for its negligence and failing to act promptly to secure Covid-19 vaccines for its people, despite the fact that the country is one of the world's biggest manufactures of vaccines. South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa (L) and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron fist bump during the launch of an initiative to support the vaccines production at the "Future Africa" campus in Pretoria, on May 28, 2021. French President Emmanuel Macron is on a two-day official visit to the country. Ludovic MARIN / AFP Macron arrived in South Africa Friday from a historic visit to Rwanda where he acknowledged French responsibility in the 1994 genocide. "It is a matter of duty," to support the poorest countries to access vaccines, he said after talks with Cyril Ramaphosa at Union Buildings, the seat of government. "We will very much put in place an investment strategy for the industry to produce more," particularly in Africa, he said. The two leaders discussed a temporary waiver of World Trade Organisation (WTO) property rights over coronavirus vaccines. The idea is being pushed by South Africa and India, which say the waiver will spur vaccine production in developing countries. There should be "no barrier to access to vaccines. Let's lift all these barriers and deliver concrete and efficient tech transfer", Macron said "Covid vaccines must be global public goods," he said. - 'Race to save lives' - At the University of Pretoria, Macron and the German health minister Jens Spahn announced investment deals to produce more vaccines in Africa, a project also backed by the European Union, the United States and the World Bank. "Together with France and the EU we want to support technology transfer and the establishment of regional manufacturing centres," said Spahn, pledging Germany would invest $50 million into the project. Ramaphosa said access was the "biggest and most dangerous challenge" for the continent with vaccines flooding into the developed world yet "trickling" into Africa. "We are in a race to save lives," said Ramaphosa. "We cannot continue to wait in the queue for life-saving vaccines. The longer we wait the more lives we put at risk," said Ramaphosa. Sub-Saharan Africa has lagged behind the rest of the world with vaccination -- less than two percent of its population has been immunised six months after the campaign started. Ramaphosa has sounded the alarm about what he called "vaccine apartheid" between rich countries and poor ones. Pharma companies oppose the waiver, saying it could sap incentives for future research and development. They also point out that manufacturing a vaccine requires know-how and technical resources -- something that cannot be acquired at the flip of a switch. Macron's approach is to push for a transfer of technology to enable production sites in poorer countries. He said while Africa has about 20 percent of vaccine needs, it only produced one percent. - Covid hit - South Africa is the continent's most industrialised economy but also its worst-hit by Covid. The country has recorded more than 1.6 million cases of Africa's 4.7 million infections and accounts for more than 40 percent of its nearly 130,000 fatalities. But just about one percent of its population of 59 million have been vaccinated -- most of them health workers and people aged 60 or above. The immunisation effort got off to a stuttering start when South Africa purchased AstraZeneca vaccines earlier this year and then sold them to other African countries following fears that they would be less effective against a local variant. Macron's trip was scheduled to have taken place more than a year ago but was postponed as the pandemic shifted into higher gear. The two leaders also discussed the security crisis in northern Mozambique, where a bloody jihadist insurgency is now in its fourth year. The French energy giant Total last month suspended work on a massive $20 billion gas project in Cabo Delgado province after jihadists attacked the nearby town of Palma. Macron pledged France would help with naval support in the fight against jihadist violence if requested, but any intervention should be channelled through southern Africa's regional bloc. Before flying home on Saturday, Macron will talk to members of the French community and, like many VIPs before him, visit the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The domestic partner is pressing Hong Kong partner Artkins Property Agency Ltd. through the lawsuit Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Court has recently resumed a lawsuit in which the Vietnamese party Science Technology Service and Production Corporation (PTC) claimed that the foreign partner in the joint venture Hong Kong-headquartered Artkins Property Agency Limited has failed to realise its commitments leading to project failure and had sold its entire stake to other local firms without getting approval from competent government agencies and having forged PTC's approval. In light of the lawsuit which was submitted in 2019, PTC said that after signing the joint venture contract and completing compensation payment, the Hong Kong partner failed to complete its obligation to contribute legal capital as well as its commitment to get the project off the drawing board. Before the lawsuit was submitted, Ho Chi Minh City People's Committee had twice issued a decision to terminate the joint venture and another decision on taking back the project site in September 2007 in order to reauction it for giving to a more capable investor. In its lawsuit, PTC also said that the project site is being occupied by several local firms and that it wants the court to return the site to PTC. Due to unsolved impediments between the two parties, the foreign JV has yet to complete liquidation procedures as of now. In November 1993, PTC, a unit of the Vietnam Union of Science and Technology Associations (VUSTA), signed a joint venture contract with Artkins Property Agency Limited to set up PTC-Artkins Joint Venture Company. According to the agreement, PTC would contribute 30 per cent of the total legal capital in the form of the land and housing valuewhile Artkins Limited would offset the remaining 70 per cent in the form of cash, associated equipment, and materials for project implementation at the land block at 464 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai in Ho Chi Minh Citys District 3. In September 1994, PTC-Arkins JV was established to carry out the project. After getting the investment certificate, to expand the project, PTC-Artkins JV had bought the nearby land block at 462 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, with a similar capital contribution obligation. In January 1996, the Ministry of Planning and Investment (MPI) enacted Decision No.979/GPDC1 allowing the JV partners to build an office tower for lease and provide office services at 462-464 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai in Ho Chi Minh Citys central business district with the total investment capital reaching $8 million, including $2.58 million of legal capital. According to the agreement, the Vietnamese partner contributed 30 per cent of the capital in form of the land value, whereas the foreign partner offset the remaining 70 per cent in cash and equipment. Also, in 1996, Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee issued several decisions on providing pink books, allowing the foreign JV to go ahead with the project. According to a report by the Government Inspectorate, in 1997, the JV did work on the project, designing and clearing the site at 464 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, yet doing no construction work at the 462-464 Nguyen Thi Minh Khai site. The Government Inspectorate also verified that the financial economic downturn in Asia during 1997-1998 had a big impact on businesses in Hong Kong, including Artkins. "The failed investment joint venture of PTC-Artkins was due to a combination of factors". To date, until 2005, Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee had twice approved the JV to temporarily halt project implementation. The project, however, has yet to lift off the drawing board. Due to this delay, the committee decided on terminating the operation of the PTC-Artkins JV via Decision No.09/QD-UB dated January 4, 2005. Shortly after the enactment of the decision, Chan Ming Chuen, chairman of the Board of Management at PTC-Artkins JVC, representing the foreign partner, lodged a petition at the MPI protesting the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee's decision to stop the JV. Later, in February 2006, via Decision No.179/QD-BKH on settling the claim, the MPI supported the decision of Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee to terminate the operation of PTC-Arkins JVC and establish a liquidation committee to work on business liquidation. Due to unsolved impediments, the foreign JV has yet to complete liquidation procedures. In fact, while waiting the MPI to settle the claim, Artkins Property Agency Limited had reportedly signed contracts to sell its entire stake in the JV to another local firm, Tan Thanh Co., Ltd. In its conclusion report in April 2016, the Government Inspectorate affirmed that Artkins capital transfer was unlawful as it took place after the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Committee issued the decision to terminate the operation of PTC-Artkins JVC and during the time the foreign partner representative was waiting the decision of Ho Chi Minh Citys Peoples Committee and the MPI. The Law on Foreign Investment 2000 and guiding decrees effective at that time rule that any capital transfer must be mutually agreed by the stakeholder parties and the foreign partner needs to register the capital transfer with the agency granting the investment certificate, as well as submit a resolution issued by the JV Board of Management on the capital transfer. In addition, the PTC petition to the Ho Chi Minh City Peoples Court also shows evidence that besides selling the stake to Tan Thanh Co., Ltd., in January 2004, Artkins also signed another contract on capital transfer to another local firm Thien Gia Dinh Co., Ltd. at a value of about $1.28 million. Right after learning of the case, the PTC sent a document to Artkins, requesting it to transfer the capital to PTC instead (giving priority to the JV partner), but was refused. PTC claims that in both cases of capital transfer, Artkins had forged their approval when signing the contracts. Vietnams Ministry of Health had an online meeting with Zuellig Pharma on May 28 Minister of Health Nguyen Thanh Long proposed Zuellig Pharma to supply Vietnam with the vaccine as soon as possible at the most reasonable price to enable the country to timely and effectively prevent and fight against the pandemic. In return, Zuellig Pharma promised to soon discuss Vietnam's proposal with Moderna. On the same day, the minister also had a meeting with representatives from the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam, the Embassy of South Korea in Vietnam, and from foreign business associations from India, Europe, the UK, and Japan, and foreign businesses like Samsung Vietnam, SK, LG, and others to discuss the supply of COVID-19 vaccines for Vietnam, as well as the inoculation of workers at factories at industrial zones. The meeting with representatives from embassies, foreign business associations, and foreign-invested enterprises Minister Long affirmed that ensuring vaccine access is one of the priorities of the country and that the government is doing its best to increase access as fast as possible to increase vaccine coverage. Despite the short supply of vaccines, Vietnam has been controlling the pandemic well and has been hit less heavily than most others around the globe. While this is a positive outcome, it has restricted Vietnam's access to COVID-19 vaccines as suppliers give priority to higher-risk areas. During the meeting, the sides discussed different approaches to COVID-19 control; direct imports of COVID-19 vaccines by foreign businesses to vaccinate their workers; cost-sharing mechanisms to secure vaccine supply, and many others. The participants have shown strong inclination to support the cost-sharing mechanism to help ease the financial burden on the Vietnamese government and people. At the meeting, Minister Long said that the COVAX Facility pledged to provide 38.9 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines for Vietnam and that Vietnam also proposed the facility to supply 10 million additional doses under a cost-sharing scheme. The minister also expressed hope that the embassies and businesses of the sponsoring countries of the COVAX Facility will support Vietnam in securing more vaccines. European tourists fill up forms upon their arrival upon their arrival at Enfidha-Hammamet International Airport near the Mediterranean town of Sousse on May 22, 2021. With its economy hit hard by the pandemic, Tunisia is counting on Russians and eastern Europeans to salvage its tourist sector whose employees fear hunger more than COVID-19. Fethi Belaid / AFP Perhaps the world's most high-profile bubble opened between Australia and New Zealand on April 19, leading to emotional scenes as families split when borders closed almost 400 days earlier were reunited. Since then, New Zealand has ordered partial shutdowns on four occasions due to virus scares in Australian states, the most serious of which forced Melbourne into a snap lockdown this week. A spike of Covid-19 cases in Taiwan burst its bubble with the tiny Pacific nation of Palau last week, while Hong Kong and Singapore have been struggling to stand up a quarantine-free travel arrangement for six months. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison will take advantage of the trans-Tasman bubble this weekend, when he travels to New Zealand for the first time since the pandemic hit for talks with Kiwi counterpart Jacinda Ardern. The pair will meet in the South Island mountain resort of Queenstown, where Ardern has vowed to show him the sights, including adventure activities and glacier-fed lakes. - Shot in the arm - Like tourist centres everywhere, the so-called "adrenaline capital of the world" struggled without overseas travellers, and Queenstown restaurateur Alex Boyes said the trans-Tasman bubble had not proved a panacea. Boyes had hoped the bubble would lift his business to about 70 percent of its pre-pandemic level but that has not yet happened. "Any foreigners we see is something new to us at the moment but this is a time when Queenstown's traditionally been quite quiet," he told AFP. "So we haven't been swamped by Australians, so to speak, but future bookings through the winter are looking healthy." While strong domestic tourism figures in Australia and New Zealand show holidaymakers remain keen to take a break in troubled times, the data also shows many remain wary of using the international travel bubble. Bookings to Australia from New Zealand in the six week from the bubble's announcement on April 6 to May 18 were less than a quarter of the numbers during the same period in 2019, data from travel analyst ForwardKeys showed. ForwardKeys' Olivier Ponti said bookings the other way were stronger but still less than 60 percent of what would be considered normal. "Since the two-way trans-Tasman bubble opened last month, bookings have generally been stronger out of Australia than New Zealand -- we're seeing that Kiwis need a bit of encouragement," a Qantas spokeswoman told AFP. - 'Hunker down' - The reason for the caution became apparent this week when New Zealand suspended the bubble with Victoria state and officials in Wellington made it clear that Kiwis stranded in Melbourne's lockdown were on their own. "Hunker down and follow the rules," New Zealand's Covid-19 response minister Chris Hipkins advised. "We acknowledge this as a difficult time. It's disruptive and it's probably expensive if you're staying in paid accommodation -- that's one of the realities of travelling in the era of Covid." Tourism New Zealand acknowledged such a scare would cause temporary disruption and lead to a "wait-and-see" approach among potential passengers. But it said Australian market arrivals had recovered to 50 percent, describing it as "a great result and strong contribution". "Generally speaking, we have seen a large increase in interest," said general manager in Australia Andrew Waddel. "A number of individuals are taking up the offer and booking flights to New Zealand." Palau President Surangel Whipps was also taking a glass-half-full approach after the bubble with Taiwan lasted just seven weeks and resulted in fewer than 300 tourists visiting the island nation. Whipps has described such bubbles as a symbolic "ray of light" in a pandemic-hit world and vowed to reopen the travel corridor with Taiwan as soon as practicable. "The purpose of the bubble was, of course, to help get our economy get back," he said. "I believe it was a success because any tourist, more than one, is a success." The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. Some veteran Hollywood actors say a law intended to help gig economy workers has the unintended consequence of threatening nonprofit theaters. Mike OSullivan has the story from Los Angeles. U.N. aid agencies say residents of Goma in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo are fleeing the city in fear of further volcanic eruptions from Mount Nyiragongo. Barely one week has passed since thousands of people in eastern Congo fled to neighboring Rwanda to escape lava flowing down on their towns. Most who returned soon after are on the move again, following orders by local authorities to evacuate the area. The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reports more than 30 people were killed, dozens reported missing, and 20,000 rendered homeless in the first volcanic eruption on May 22. OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke says the number of people who already have left Goma is not known, but some 400,000 potentially are affected by an evacuation order issued by local authorities. He says many people are fleeing east into neighboring Rwanda, while others are going north toward the town of Rutshuru or south toward Bukavu. "Large traffic jams were observed yesterday on the main exit roads from Goma," Laerke said. "People are moving in all directions mostly on foot, carrying what they can, but also in cars, and on boats. Strong tremors continued yesterday, one of them of magnitude 4.9 on the Richter scale. Such tremors could cause more lava to escape from the many cracks in the mountain. The U.N. refugee agency reports an estimated 4,000 people from DRC had arrived in Rwanda as of late Thursday. UNHCR spokesman Babar Baloch says more displaced people are arriving as Goma is being evacuated. "UNHCR, the U.N. refugee agency is working closely with the Rwandan authorities at the national and local level to assist them and provide emergency assistance," Baloch said. "We are grateful to Rwanda for opening its borders to the people in need of safety. OCHA reports it plans to expand its humanitarian aid beyond people directly affected by the volcanic eruption in Goma. It says people who have fled to Rutshuru, Bukavu and other relocation areas also will be assisted. The World Food Program reports it has been providing food aid in Rwanda since May 25 to people who fled the first volcanic eruption and will extend this assistance to the new arrivals as well. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) says Zimbabwean authorities should immediately release New York Times freelancer Jeffrey Moyo and drop baseless charges against him. In a statement, CPJ quoted its Africa program coordinator, Angela Quintal, as saying Moyos detention is illegal. Quintal said, Zimbabwean authorities must immediately release journalist Jeffrey Moyo, who should never have been detained, let alone charged. The fact that he was arrested, and his New York Times colleagues forced to leave the country, shows that Zimbabwe continues to violate the right to press freedom and the publics right to know. Moyo is facing charges of violating some provisions of the Immigration Act. The state claims that he allegedly falsified information about the accreditation of two foreign journalists - Christina Goldbaum and Joao Silva. CPJ quoted Moyos lawyer, Douglas Coltart, as saying his client was transferred on Thursday from Harare to the countrys second largest city, Bulawayo. Goldbaum and Joao Silva arrived in Zimbabwe from South Africa on May 5 and were deported three days later. The Zimbabwe Media Commission accredits local and foreign journalists. Coltart further told CPJ that Moyo, who also freelances for Canadas Globe and Mail newspaper and Norways Bistandsaktuelt, appeared in court Friday and denied the charges being laid against him together with a Zimbabwe Media Commission official, Thabang Manhika. Coltart has applied for Moyos bail and indications are that the case will be heard before a High Court judge on Monday. In the states request for remand presented to the court and viewed by CPJ, prosecutors allege that the accreditation was fake. Contacted by phone Thursday, Zimbabwe police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi asked CPJ to forward an email so that a statement could be sent. CPJ did not receive a statement by the time of publication. Zimbabwe has been facing a shortage of COVID-19 vaccine for more than a week, despite a government push to inoculate at least 60 percent of the country's estimated 14 million by year's end. That shortage means Wilkins Hospital - the country's main vaccination center - is forced to turn people away. "I had a struggle when I wanted to get my second dose of Sinovac vaccine," said a 28-year-old man who chose to be identified by his middle name, Farayi. "When I wanted to take the second one, I could not access it because there were a lot of people at Wilkins. I thought of going to Poly clinic. They said they had run out of vaccines. From there I went to Parirenyatwa Group of Hospitals, I was told that they had run out of vaccines. I also saw a lot of people who were turned away especially those that wanted to get their first doses." Another person who was turned away is a 26-year-old woman who asked to be identified as Marriam. "I went to Parirenyatwa hospital on Monday and Harare hospital, and I was told they do not have vaccinations for first doses. I intended to have first doses that day. They also said they were not sure when they would have the vaccines," she said. Since February, Zimbabwe has received batches of COVID-19 vaccine from China, Russia and India. Zimbabwean officials refused to comment on the shortages. Information Minister Monica Mutsvangwa said this week the government was still on course to achieve the required herd immunity in order to control the spread of the global pandemic. "Regarding vaccine procurement, the public is informed that delivery of the 500,000 Sinopharm vaccine doses which were ordered from China is expected in June 2021," Mutsvangwa said. Zimbabwe is not alone in dealing with vaccine shortages. This week, Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the World Health Organization's regional director for Africa, said there was a need for a rapid roll out of vaccine on the continent to curtain a potential third wave of COVID-19. "At a minimum, Africa needs at least 20 million AstraZeneca vaccines to deliver second doses for everyone who received their first shots." Moeti said. "Africa needs vaccines now. Any pause in our vaccination campaigns will lead to lost lives and lost hope. Another 200 million doses are needed so that the continent can vaccinate 10 percent of its population by September this year." Zimbabwe has 38,854 confirmed coronavirus infections and 1,592 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University, which tracks the global outbreak. As of Friday, just under 650,000 Zimbabweans had received their first dose of vaccine. About 305,000 had received their second shots. User reports estimate the perceived ground shaking intensity according to the MMI (Modified Mercalli Intensity) scale Contribute: Leave a comment if you find a particular report interesting or want to add to it. Flag as inappropriate. Mark as helpful or interesting. Send your own user report! Sylhet city (26.6 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s : Within half an hour there was 4 times happened .....couple of second long and the shaking was not strong but everyone around felt it....I was sitting down on a couch in the middle of sylhet city in my house | 6 users found this interesting. Sylhet khasdobir (35.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : It happened first but felt uneasy and braced for aftershock, with the next 2 aftershocks as of writing this, we had 3 quakes in total. I'm in a terrified state right now and trying to brace as hard as I can. Sylhet (34.7 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 2-5 s : we literally felt it 4 times since 11am! Like, the last one half an hour ago was literally a big one. But it was too short! I was about to fall cz of the sudden jolt. It was scary | 2 users found this interesting. Uposhohor sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I believe it happened atleast 2 consecutive times in a matter 10/15 minutes | 2 users found this interesting. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / complex rolling (tilting in multiple directions) / 1-2 s : There was 9 earthquakes in sylhet from around 11am-2pm... Out of 9, 2 were comparatively strong, whole building shaked a lot..Other 7 were light waves Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short : I felt the earthquake. If felt like someone was pulling me from sideways. But the duration of it wasn't too long. But it happened 5 times today in a row Chest Disease Hospital / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : We are in CDH Sylhet which is a old building and we have heard a sound with shaking and we felt it five times. Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) : Total 4 time I fell the quake . | One user found this interesting. It's true. it happens fifths now / Weak shaking (MMI III) 34.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s (reported through our app / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s 38.2 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet (18 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s 39.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating 35.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 37 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 10-15 s 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s sylhet (17.8 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Sylhet (25.7 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s 36.5 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / very short Housing estate (36.5 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : 4 times within 1 hours in bangladesh, sylhet time 10:37am , 10:51am , 11: 27am , 11:31am 33.2 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 1-2 s 37.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s : Scary Sylhet (35.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / 2-5 s : I was in home. We felt it 4 times within an hour. Second one was after 10 minutes. Sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s 50 Evergreen, sylhet (35.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s : 3 particular times moves Sylhet (33.6 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s Sylhet (26.6 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 35.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s 37.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet (34.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : It occured twice within a gap of 5-7 minutes Sylhet (41.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) : 1 shake, but it felt very noticeable. Srimongol / not felt Zindabazar, Sylhet. / Very weak shaking (MMI II) Uposhahor, Sylhet. / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 5-10 s : Today 30.05.2021 at 4.35 am I felt vibration. Shahjalal Uposhohor, Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : I felt like our roof were broken then. Shahi eidgah / Weak shaking (MMI III) Sylhet town / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short : It just happened again, local time 4.37am Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) maulavi bazar sylhet (8.9 km W of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : Its happened for 4/5 times so all of we people living in sylhet , Bangladesh are worried Jaganthpur / not felt : I was asleep Sylhet (7.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet (37.2 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet, home. / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : Literally turned on my laptop and the well..I felt the earthquake Sylhet Amberkhana / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet (37.3 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / very short Sylhet city / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : 8 times happened..1st one at around 10 o'clock..last one around 2 o'clock..the one before the last was quite strong. 37.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : 6 to 7 times shake lasting 1 to 2 second maximum within few hours. 36.3 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet Cadet College / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I live in Payra, Dorgam Moholla,Sylhet,Bangladesh. / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vibration and rolling / 1-2 s : A sudden quake took place in the morning. I was not much serious about that but within half an hour another quake took place. Then we could feel another one.We went out of the building. Thinking the situation has become normal we and other neighbours of our came back. Then another two took place. And I could feel the last one,it was so shocking that I started crying. I could feel 6 in total. Some of my neighbours are saying that there were 7 quakes in total. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / very short 168.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / not felt 16.1 km S of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s baluchor, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 20-30 s Dhaka / not felt sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 37.4 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s Sylhet Amberkhana / Light shaking (MMI IV) Yasir Ahmed Nahid Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Jagannathpur, Sylhet / not felt : I felt nothing sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating 37 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Amborkhana Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short Sylhet city (35.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : The city shakedown for 8 times within 3 hours. Sylhet amborkhana (35.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Mirabazar, Sylhet (36.3 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short Shahjalal Dargah Gate (37 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 15-20 s Uposhohor / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet (35.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Yes At my flat top of 5th floor / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump : I was in my flat. Still now on my flat My is 5th. I was sitting on my bed and suddenly a little shake and after 5minutes again little but 3rd one was moderate shake. My mom and I was scared Sylhet,subid-bazar (37.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) 111.6 km S of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : It was horrible Sylhet (3.9 km SE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : It was weak shaking ... dont feel safe dont know why Sylhet, Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : It was a sec but very hard. Though at the moment I was on 40feet up(in my room). Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) : I'm very scared Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) : It was shaking the ground. Sylhet amberkhana / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Nayasarak / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 34.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s 91 km NW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) 7.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating : Today 20/05/2021. At 10:37 am,10:47 am,at 11:05 am, 11:33 am and now 2:03 pm i felt earthquake in sylhet. First 4th time was normal earthquake however last time at 2:03 am was dangerous. During that time i was sat in my sofa i felt it vibrating enormously.me & my family wre running and turned out from our plot.may Allah save sylhet, save Bangladesh. Sylhet City / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : The building shook with a booming noise. Ground floor. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Shibgonj, Sylhet, Bangladesh / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s : Floor was shakes suddenly Sylhet, Bangladesh / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 34.9 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet city / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet (37.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Shylet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s : Felt my apartment shaking slightly 37.4 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 5-10 s Eidgha / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating : It feels very sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Sylhet (35.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s sylhet / not felt Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Sylhet (37.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 10-15 s : Last one was 12.05 AM EST LOCAL TIME 2.05 PM and I was shaked twice for few seconds 31.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / very short Sitting / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / very short Sylhet (39.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s 11.2 km NE of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet, Bangladesh / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : My apartment is on the 9th floor, felt pretty strong horizontal shaking. Panchagarh (360.6 km WNW of epicenter) [ Map ] / not felt Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short 37.2 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump 35.5 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Dhaka / not felt Sylhet / not felt Sylhet sadar,neharipara / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Tv gate, Shahi Eidgah, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s sylhet zindabazar / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I was in my bed when the earthquake came.i felt worried. Within 10 minute i had experienced two earthquake. Then may be after 15 minute i felt another one. Really this was freaking me out. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Chittagong / not felt Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet town / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet City / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Was sleeping, woke me up. I thought someone was shaking my bed. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / very short : it was like a jump. no frequent shaking. Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : It felt like heavy shake. 5 times in total in 1 hour sylhet , Bangladesh / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s Sylhet city / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : 1 big earthquake followed by 4 jolts. Total 5 Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / very short Amborkhana, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : There were 4 short time earth quakes in a short period of time. Sylhet Arambagh / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / vibration and rolling / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 5-10 s : 4 times in a row in one hour Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : 4 times in a row Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 15-20 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Mia fazil chist / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / 2-5 s Syhlet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : Earthquake 35.3 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet / not felt / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : 5 earthquake in a row 36 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet,West Sheikghat / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : Our beds r shaking. 38.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s 33.9 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 5-10 s sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s SYLHET / Weak shaking (MMI III) / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s : fear sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 5-10 s 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Felt the building jolt and heard a noise too. It happened 3 times within 20 minutes. sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : Strong but short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / very short on my pc / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s sylhet,sador / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 38.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s : 3/4 bumps at first strike followed by another weaker strike after 10 min Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Upashahar, Sylhet City / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s : the quake happened 2 times Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 36.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) Contribute: Leave a comment if you find a particular report interesting or want to add to it. Flag as inappropriate. Mark as helpful or interesting. Send your own user report! Sylhet city (26.6 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s : Within half an hour there was 4 times happened .....couple of second long and the shaking was not strong but everyone around felt it....I was sitting down on a couch in the middle of sylhet city in my house | 6 users found this interesting. Sylhet khasdobir (35.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : It happened first but felt uneasy and braced for aftershock, with the next 2 aftershocks as of writing this, we had 3 quakes in total. I'm in a terrified state right now and trying to brace as hard as I can. Sylhet (34.7 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 2-5 s : we literally felt it 4 times since 11am! Like, the last one half an hour ago was literally a big one. But it was too short! I was about to fall cz of the sudden jolt. It was scary | 2 users found this interesting. Uposhohor sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I believe it happened atleast 2 consecutive times in a matter 10/15 minutes | 2 users found this interesting. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / complex rolling (tilting in multiple directions) / 1-2 s : There was 9 earthquakes in sylhet from around 11am-2pm... Out of 9, 2 were comparatively strong, whole building shaked a lot..Other 7 were light waves Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short : I felt the earthquake. If felt like someone was pulling me from sideways. But the duration of it wasn't too long. But it happened 5 times today in a row Chest Disease Hospital / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : We are in CDH Sylhet which is a old building and we have heard a sound with shaking and we felt it five times. Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) : Total 4 time I fell the quake . | One user found this interesting. It's true. it happens fifths now / Weak shaking (MMI III) 34.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s (reported through our app / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s 38.2 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet (18 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s 39.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating 35.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 37 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 10-15 s 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s sylhet (17.8 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Sylhet (25.7 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s 36.5 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / very short Housing estate (36.5 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : 4 times within 1 hours in bangladesh, sylhet time 10:37am , 10:51am , 11: 27am , 11:31am 33.2 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 1-2 s 37.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s : Scary Sylhet (35.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / 2-5 s : I was in home. We felt it 4 times within an hour. Second one was after 10 minutes. Sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s 50 Evergreen, sylhet (35.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s : 3 particular times moves Sylhet (33.6 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s Sylhet (26.6 km SSE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 35.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s 37.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet (34.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : It occured twice within a gap of 5-7 minutes Sylhet (41.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) : 1 shake, but it felt very noticeable. Srimongol / not felt Zindabazar, Sylhet. / Very weak shaking (MMI II) Uposhahor, Sylhet. / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 5-10 s : Today 30.05.2021 at 4.35 am I felt vibration. Shahjalal Uposhohor, Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : I felt like our roof were broken then. Shahi eidgah / Weak shaking (MMI III) Sylhet town / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short : It just happened again, local time 4.37am Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) maulavi bazar sylhet (8.9 km W of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : Its happened for 4/5 times so all of we people living in sylhet , Bangladesh are worried Jaganthpur / not felt : I was asleep Sylhet (7.8 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet (37.2 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet, home. / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : Literally turned on my laptop and the well..I felt the earthquake Sylhet Amberkhana / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet (37.3 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / very short Sylhet city / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : 8 times happened..1st one at around 10 o'clock..last one around 2 o'clock..the one before the last was quite strong. 37.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : 6 to 7 times shake lasting 1 to 2 second maximum within few hours. 36.3 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet Cadet College / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I live in Payra, Dorgam Moholla,Sylhet,Bangladesh. / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vibration and rolling / 1-2 s : A sudden quake took place in the morning. I was not much serious about that but within half an hour another quake took place. Then we could feel another one.We went out of the building. Thinking the situation has become normal we and other neighbours of our came back. Then another two took place. And I could feel the last one,it was so shocking that I started crying. I could feel 6 in total. Some of my neighbours are saying that there were 7 quakes in total. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / very short 168.7 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / not felt 16.1 km S of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s baluchor, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 20-30 s Dhaka / not felt sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 37.4 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s Sylhet Amberkhana / Light shaking (MMI IV) Yasir Ahmed Nahid Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Jagannathpur, Sylhet / not felt : I felt nothing sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating 37 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Amborkhana Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short Sylhet city (35.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : The city shakedown for 8 times within 3 hours. Sylhet amborkhana (35.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) 36.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Mirabazar, Sylhet (36.3 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short Shahjalal Dargah Gate (37 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 15-20 s Uposhohor / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet (35.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Yes At my flat top of 5th floor / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump : I was in my flat. Still now on my flat My is 5th. I was sitting on my bed and suddenly a little shake and after 5minutes again little but 3rd one was moderate shake. My mom and I was scared Sylhet,subid-bazar (37.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) 111.6 km S of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : It was horrible Sylhet (3.9 km SE of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : It was weak shaking ... dont feel safe dont know why Sylhet, Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : It was a sec but very hard. Though at the moment I was on 40feet up(in my room). Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) : I'm very scared Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) : It was shaking the ground. Sylhet amberkhana / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Nayasarak / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 34.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s 91 km NW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) 7.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating : Today 20/05/2021. At 10:37 am,10:47 am,at 11:05 am, 11:33 am and now 2:03 pm i felt earthquake in sylhet. First 4th time was normal earthquake however last time at 2:03 am was dangerous. During that time i was sat in my sofa i felt it vibrating enormously.me & my family wre running and turned out from our plot.may Allah save sylhet, save Bangladesh. Sylhet City / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s : The building shook with a booming noise. Ground floor. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Shibgonj, Sylhet, Bangladesh / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s : Floor was shakes suddenly Sylhet, Bangladesh / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s 34.9 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet city / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet (37.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Shylet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s : Felt my apartment shaking slightly 37.4 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 5-10 s Eidgha / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating : It feels very sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Sylhet (35.4 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s sylhet / not felt Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Sylhet (37.9 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 10-15 s : Last one was 12.05 AM EST LOCAL TIME 2.05 PM and I was shaked twice for few seconds 31.8 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / very short Sitting / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / very short Sylhet (39.1 km WSW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s 11.2 km NE of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet, Bangladesh / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : My apartment is on the 9th floor, felt pretty strong horizontal shaking. Panchagarh (360.6 km WNW of epicenter) [ Map ] / not felt Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / very short 37.2 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / very short Sylhet, Bangladesh / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump 35.5 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Dhaka / not felt Sylhet / not felt Sylhet sadar,neharipara / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 1-2 s Tv gate, Shahi Eidgah, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / complex motion difficult to describe / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s sylhet zindabazar / Weak shaking (MMI III) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : I was in my bed when the earthquake came.i felt worried. Within 10 minute i had experienced two earthquake. Then may be after 15 minute i felt another one. Really this was freaking me out. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Chittagong / not felt Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet town / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet City / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Was sleeping, woke me up. I thought someone was shaking my bed. Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / very short : it was like a jump. no frequent shaking. Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : It felt like heavy shake. 5 times in total in 1 hour sylhet , Bangladesh / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s Sylhet city / Light shaking (MMI IV) / both vertical and horizontal swinging / 2-5 s : 1 big earthquake followed by 4 jolts. Total 5 Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / very short Amborkhana, Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 1-2 s sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : There were 4 short time earth quakes in a short period of time. Sylhet Arambagh / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / vibration and rolling / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 5-10 s : 4 times in a row in one hour Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : 4 times in a row Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 10-15 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 15-20 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Mia fazil chist / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / 2-5 s Syhlet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s : Earthquake 35.3 km WSW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 1-2 s Sylhet / not felt / single lateral shake / 1-2 s : 5 earthquake in a row 36 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / 2-5 s Sylhet,West Sheikghat / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vibration and rolling / 2-5 s : Our beds r shaking. 38.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 2-5 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s 33.9 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 5-10 s sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s SYLHET / Weak shaking (MMI III) / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) sylhet (37.5 km SW of epicenter) [ Map ] / Light shaking (MMI IV) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s : fear sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 5-10 s 37.3 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / vertical swinging (up and down) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s : Felt the building jolt and heard a noise too. It happened 3 times within 20 minutes. sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s : Strong but short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Very weak shaking (MMI II) / very short on my pc / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 2-5 s sylhet,sador / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 38.1 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s : 3/4 bumps at first strike followed by another weaker strike after 10 min Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single vertical bump / 1-2 s Upashahar, Sylhet City / Weak shaking (MMI III) / horizontal (sideways) swinging / 5-10 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s : the quake happened 2 times Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / rattling, vibrating / 2-5 s 36.6 km SW of epicenter [ Map ] / Weak shaking (MMI III) Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vibration and rolling / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / single lateral shake / very short Sylhet / Moderate shaking (MMI V) / rattling, vibrating / 5-10 s Sylhet / Weak shaking (MMI III) / 1-2 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) / vertical swinging (up and down) / 2-5 s Sylhet / Light shaking (MMI IV) We have re-opened our newspaper office to the public in Stowe. Our South Burlington and Morrisville offices remain closed, except by appointment. Face masks are mandatory, and appropriate social distancing must be practiced, at all locations. Please email or call us with questions, news or updates; and read our local coronavirus coverage. Read News Photo: Studio Canal Knowing Paddington, hed probably just nod and treat himself to some more delicious marmalade, but were ready to bear-knuckle brawl in defense of that tiny Peruvian sweetheart and his even tinier coat. That was our first reaction, anyway, to finding out that Paddington 2 has lost its perfect 100 percent Rotten Tomatoes score, three and a half years past the films initial theatrical release in the United Kingdom, after the site factored in a less-than-glowing review. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Paddington 2s critical score slipped to a measly 99 percent with the addition of a review from Film Authoritys Eddie Harrison. Interestingly, Citizen Kane similarly lost its 100 percent rating last month following the discovery of a negative 1941 review. This change inspired debate, as it placed Paddington 2 at the pinnacle of cinematic achievement (or, at the very least, at the top of the heap of well-reviewed films) until now. I reviewed Paddington 2 negatively for BBC radio on release in 2017, and on multiple occasions after that, and I stand by every word of my criticism, writes Harrison, per THR. And in case youre thinking, Okay, so he gave Paddington 2 a B- or some such. Thats not so bad, in the grand tradition of the great critic Jay Sherman, he actually thinks Paddington 2 stinks. Paddington is voiced by Ben Whishaw and sounds like a member of some indie-pop band coming down from an agonizing ketamine high, and thats just the start of whats wrong in Paul Kings film, he writes, finding the films version of Paddington overconfident, snide, and sullen, to name just a few flaws. Declares Harrison, This is not my Paddington Bear, but a sinister, malevolent imposter who should be shot into space, or nuked from space at the first opportunity. How dare actually, you know what? If Paddington gets shot into space isnt a perfect Paddington 3 plot, well eat his little hat. Hey, it worked for F9. A Lawrence County teacher is on administrative leave after being charged with having sex with minors. 44-year-old, Leslie Gillespie is an English teacher at R. A. Hubbard High School. Leslie Buttram Gillespie Leslie Buttram Gillespie Thursday, she was arrested for rape, sodomy and "school employee involved in sex with student" charges. WAAY-31 spoke with people in the community about how they're feeling after hearing the news. Gillespie was in custody at the Lawrence County jail, but bonded out Thursday. Folks who live near the high school told us this news comes as a complete shock for the small town. "This can't be real. It's just shock, amazement, astonishment that this is going on in such a small community," said one woman. This woman didn't want to be named or shown on television but, this was the common response we got from several people who live near R.A. Hubbard. Gillespie is an English teacher at the high school and in September of 2020, she allegedly had sex with a 15 and 16-year-old. The students met her after school hours and that's when investigators say, the sex crimes took place. Some people say just knowing it's a woman who did this, makes it even worse. "You hear more of a male not a female. It's a rarity and just astonishing and with two students at such a small school... It's crazy," said one woman. Gillespie's bond was set at $60,000 and she posted bail Thursday. As hurt as people may be by the shocking news, some say they will get through this together. "I know we'll band together and get through this. This is Courtland," said one woman. The Lawrence County Sheriff's Office says this is an ongoing investigation and is asking for anyone with any information to speak with them immediately. Decatur, IL (62521) Today Thunderstorms likely. High near 95F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. Decatur, IL (62521) Today Thunderstorms. High around 95F. Winds NW at 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70%.. Tonight Some passing clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 69F. Winds N at 5 to 10 mph. A royal expert has claimed Prince William is "embracing" royal life and is "modeling himself" on The Queen. The Duke of Cambridge's younger brother, Prince Harry, claimed that his sibling is "trapped" in the royal family and will never be able to leave. Speaking in his bombshell televised interview with Oprah Winfrey on 'CBS This Morning' earlier this year, Harry said that quitting senior royal life hurt because he was part of the system with them, I always have been. He continued But Im very aware of this my brother cant leave that system. But I have." However, royal biographer, Penny Junior, has suggested the 38-year-old royal - who is second in the line of succession to the British throne - is preparing himself to become King one day and "absolutely gets" that being the monarch is his "destiny". The writer told The Sun: I think he absolutely gets what his destiny is and he is embracing it. He is modeling himself on his grandmother the Queen. Despite Harry's bold claims, also told Oprah: But I will always be there for him I will always be there for my family." Penny's comments come after another royal expert recently claimed William was "shocked" by Harry's recent about the royal family. After the 36-year-old prince spoke candidly about his family's private problems, when he likened being a royal to "living in a zoo", his brother was said to be in a state of shock over the remarks. Nick Bullen said: "[Prince William] is very shocked by the amount of things that his brother has said over the last few weeks." Support Local Journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by making a contribution. Contribute William is determined to repair the relationship with Harry, but Nick observed that their dynamic has changed markedly over recent years. He also suggested that their relationship has been affected by their wives not always seeing eye-to-eye. He said: "In every family, when [one] sister ges for slightly more [confrontation] with [the] other, then that doesnt help the husbands in the middle." Nick thinks that, for the time being, the royal family would welcome a period of silence. He explained: "Im sure the royal family and the various royal households just want a moment of calm and [are saying], Lets not have any more headlines. Lets just have a period when no ones speaking.'" Harry had also accused the royal family of "total neglect". The Duke of Sussex recently claimed he was desperate for help and support from his relatives after his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex "struggled" with her new role. Speaking to Oprah on 'The Me You Can't See', he said: "I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect. "We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling." Brian Gregory Robling of Washington, 23, passed away Monday, June 7, 2021. Brian was born July 11, 1997, in Washington, to Amber (Robling) Whiteman and Michael Bernard. He graduated from Washington High School in 2016. Brian is survived by his parents; his son, Zyler Mehrer of Washington; da Janet Williams recently retired as executive editor of TheStatehouseFile.com at Franklin College. She formerly worked in corporate communications for Cummins and as a reporter and editor at The Indianapolis Star. Bill Theobald is a veteran Washington, D.C.,-based journalist who most recently worked in the USA TODAY Washington Bureau and for the nonprofit news website The Fulcrum, which focuses on democracy reform efforts. He was a reporter and editor for The Indianapolis Star from 1990 to 2005. This article was published by TheStatehouseFile.com through a partnership with The Indiana Citizen (indianacitizen.org), a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed, engaged Hoosier citizens. To an extent, this echoes how the digital giants approached Australias media bargaining code: Google fought the laws hard, but Pichais talks with the government were widely considered constructive. And after securing the concessions it moved quickly to strike deals with a range of publishers (including Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead). In contrast, Facebook continued to fight, and even turned off news completely in Australia. That step inadvertently resulted in it blocking pages operated by public health agencies and emergency departments during the middle of a global pandemic. It led to widespread condemnation of the social media giant. As things stand Google has signed binding contracts with News Corp Australia (owner of The Australian, The Daily Telegraph and The Herald Sun) and Seven West Media, as well as letters of intent with Nine, Guardian Australia and the ABC. Whether the Australian laws, which force Google and Facebook into negotiations with media companies for use of their content, do end up being copied in other markets remains to be seen. But surprisingly, Pichai seems relatively comfortable with that. Its important for us that we do this around the world, and different countries have different aspects they get concerned about and they have different regulatory approaches, he said. There is definitely complexity we see but we are committed to finding a solution, and we are working around the world. Breaking the mould on WFH Yet regulation is far from the only thing on Pichais mind at the moment. Running a company with 135,000 staff in more than 100 countries during a global pandemic is no easy task. Particularly for a company like Google, which has forged such a distinctive internal culture. While some technology companies (most notably Australias Atlassian) are going all in on remote work, Pichai has made no secret of his desire to see staff return to offices where possible, and indicates Google will settle on more of a hybrid model. He expects about 60 per cent of the companys workforce to continue to work in their existing offices about three days a week. Another 20 per cent, he expects, will move to new locations for lifestyle reasons but still come into their nearest offices on a regular basis. That leaves it with 20 per cent of staff who will work remotely. Its a lower proportion than other tech companies, but pretty high when you consider how much effort Google has put into its physical offices, which famously feature extensive facilities and perks. We definitely valued over the past 20 years creating a strong workplace where people come. Its creative, fun, creates a sense of community and helps people collaborate to achieve impact, he says. We value that and I think that will be an integral part in the future too, but I would say it will be more purposeful. Loading We are redoing our campuses with that model in mind. We are fortunate as a company to be present in over 100 countries so I think we can give people more choice and locations. It gives us a chance in terms of tapping into a more diverse workforce over time, you know, gaining access to pools of talent around the world, which is otherwise difficult to do. And, and so I view it as an opportunity, and Im excited by it. Pichai also downplayed suggestions Google unfairly dominates the internet. People dont think of using search. They are thinking I want to buy something - they may come to Google, they may go to Amazon or any other site. Users choose Google because they know we built a product of value and we also see how much it benefits the economy. Joel Fitzgibbon is trying to walk both sides of the street on coal and climate. As everyone knows you cant. This week the Labor member for the federal seat of Hunter asked whether his party had the agility to appeal to residents of progressive inner Sydney and Melbourne suburbs and resource-rich regions. Two-faced politics rarely succeeds, certainly not over time and on issues as serious as climate change. Coal mining is in decline and its days are numbered. Pretending otherwise will not help miners and their families. Credit:Rob Homer Presumably in a demonstration of this agility, Fitzgibbons prescription is to tell coal miners and their families in the Hunter that their industry is critical to Australias economic fortunes, it has unqualified support and that we will fight to keep it alive and well. Given where the world is going on climate transition, this is snake oil. The curtain is closing on coal. Economics is against it, given renewable energy is a cheaper build for new power across the world. Sentiment is against it, not least because of its major role in 7 million deaths a year from air pollution. The climate is against it, literally. Our children beseech us not to burn it. More than 60 per cent of the global economy is now committed to net zero emissions by 2050, meaning the curtain will fall more rapidly on coal than thought even a few years ago. Underlining the point, the International Energy Agency advocates no new coal mining from now a position unthinkable for that organisation in the recent past. Macquarie Group has announced it will end its investments in coal. Neither can be dismissed as the excessive or radical progressives against coal who Fitzgibbon derides. To watch the Friends reunion on Thursday was, for us geriatric millennials and spritely Gen Xers, an exercise in confronting our own mortality. There they were, some of popular cultures most prolific icons, now all in their 50s, their bodies and faces, altered by the passing of time though some were more altered than others. And the two who appeared most different - Jennifer Aniston and Courteney Cox - are also the ones who have enjoyed the greatest success after the show finished. Is it a co-incidence that the thinnest cast members with the fullest cheeks are the most high-profile? What would happen if these women let themselves look old? Would they be vilified? Hollywood has always liked beautiful people, regardless of gender, says Dr Lauren Rosewarne, an associate professor at Melbourne University. But, she notes, that its usually women who are judged for procedures and called different or vain if what they've had done appears too obvious. David Schwimmer as Ross Geller, Jennifer Aniston as Rachel Green, Courteney Cox as Monica Geller, Matthew Perry as Chandler Bing, Lisa Kudrow as Phoebe Buffay, Matt LeBlanc as Joey Tribbiani. Credit:Warner Bros. Although, Matthew Perry still copped scathing commentary from tabloids and social media alike about his appearance. It didnt seem to matter that the actor, who has battled panic attacks and addiction, and who appeared pensive throughout the special, might be making a Herculean effort just to turn up. Twitter demanded to know what happened to him, because for some, his face was smoother, for others, it was older, while still other headlines asked if his slight slurring of one or two words meant that his widely publicised battle with sobriety was over. A spokesperson for Perry denied this, explaining that the 51 year-old actor had undergone a dental procedure. Still, what Perry suffered is not the same as what Aniston and Cox have endured over the last three decades. The year before she landed Friends, for example, Jennifer Aniston was told to lose 30 pounds, (15 kilograms) by her agent if she wanted to make it in Hollywood. On chilly mornings in the wintry fog, Deborah Kemp can picture Ned Kelly emerging from the bushland at Glenrowan through the hail of bullets as he battled with police at his final stand. Just imagine that clunky armour, she said. When we get those misty mornings you can just see it. The statue of Ned Kelly at Glenrowan Credit:Joe Armao In 1880 Ned Kelly tried unsuccessfully to sabotage the train tracks running through Glenrowan before the siege that ended with his capture. Now the train line is the subject of a new fight over the bushrangers legacy, centring on a proposed railway bridge set to tower over Glenrowan. Another priority location for contact tracers is Mount Ridley College in Craigieburn, in Melbournes north, after a student who was one of Saturdays new cases attended the school for two days while infectious this week. Mr Foley said the entire school community had not been asked to self-isolate and the Health and Education departments, with the help of the school, were instead reaching out to those who had been in contact with the student. Mount Ridley College in Craigieburn. Credit:Nine News My message to that community is that the Department of Health will contact you if there are any actions that you need to take unless you have symptoms, in which case, as for everyone in the state of Victoria, please get tested, he said, Mr Foley said the school had really good records of student movement. Victorias Deputy Chief Health Officer Allen Cheng said while it was concerning that some people with coronavirus may have been in the community while infectious, there were yet to be any mystery cases identified. What has been reassuring to date is that all the people that were diagnosing are people that we know about, so they are contacts, he said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Mr Weimar also said 62 per cent of the 3000 primary and close contacts in the contact tracing system had returned an initial negative test. In the past five days, over 170,000 tests have been completed ... and we now have 3000 primary and close contacts in the system who are now isolating, he said. Mr Weimar said no other workers from the Port Melbourne workplace linked to the City of Whittlesea cluster had tested positive aside from the 13 Stratton Finance employees who had already been diagnosed. The five nightclubs and bars of concern (Three Monkeys in Prahran, the Somewhere Bar in Prahran, the Sporting Globe in Mordialloc, the Palace Hotel in South Melbourne and the Local in Port Melbourne) have produced 500 close contacts, and Mr Weimar said just under 20 per cent of those had returned a negative result so far. Authorities believe one of the states newest cases contracted the virus at The Sporting Globe in Mordialloc. Credit:Simon Schluter The new cases announced on Saturday morning take the total number of active cases in the state to 45, with two additional cases in hotel quarantine. There were 56,624 test results received on Friday the highest single number of tests completed in a day in Victoria since the pandemic began. Victorias Chief Health Officer Brett Sutton put out a tweet on Saturday morning thanking people for visiting testing sites. Thank you, thank you, thank you all testing sites, path labs and everyone who stepped up to test. Remember, you can still test during this lockdown, he wrote on Twitter. Loading Professor Sutton also encouraged anyone with the mildest of symptoms to get tested. Professor Cheng said there was no way the Victorian system could have coped with more than 50,000 tests in a day last year and that more than 99 per cent of these tests were still being returned within a day. Another key change has been the policy to introduce a second ring of contact tracing, he said, where contacts of contacts of confirmed cases are also sent into isolation an achievement made possible by improved contact tracing being led by local public health units. Faults at some of Melbournes mass vaccination centres on Saturday morning that saw delayed starts and people turned away have been remedied, according to Mr Weimar. The vaccine hub at the Royal Exhibition Building was initially unable to accept walk-ins as a result of an IT failure. St Vincents Hospital, which runs the hub, said they experienced a delayed opening due to technical difficulties with the booking system. Hundreds of Victorians trying to get vaccinated at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre hub, which is run by the Royal Melbourne Hospital, were also told they would need to wait more than six hours, as administration staff had to revert to paper files. Royal Melbourne Hospital was encouraging people to book via the vaccine hotline before arriving at the convention centre due to significant delays. We did have a bit of a problem logging on at [the convention centre] and the Exhibition Building ... the other sites were unaffected, Mr Weimar said. Two of our sites had problems logging on this morning, those technical faults were remedied by 10.30am, and we were vaccinating people throughout that time. Lines snake around the Royal Exhibition Building in Carlton as people wait for their COVID-19 vaccinations. Credit:Chris Hopkins Mr Weimar apologised to anyone caught up in the delays, and said anyone who wanted to have a walk-up appointment for the AstraZeneca vaccine today is welcome to do so. It came after Victoria completed more than 21,000 vaccinations on Friday. Mr Weimar said health authorities would be able to sustain around 20,000 vaccines a day for the next few weeks at least based on the current supply. We are of course keen to get as many people vaccinated, but we can only go as fast as the supply allows us. Please, bear with us and if you are trying to get through to book your spot, we are booking slots every single day. He said on online booking portal for vaccine appointments is still weeks away. We will launch the online portal when we are confident it will be a good option for people to use, he said when asked about the timeline for its introduction. Mr Weimar said the work to get the online portal had been brought forward due to the outbreak and the increase in demand. We were standing here a week ago with low levels of demand for vaccination across the network, he said. Asked if it would be weeks or months, Mr Weimar responded weeks. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video Earlier this week the state government lowered the age at which people qualified for a coronavirus vaccine, triggering enough demand from those aged 40-49 to overrun the phone booking system. There are now 15,000 Victorians in isolation after potentially being exposed to coronavirus and the federal government has agreed to Victorias request for 160 Australian Defence Force personnel to assist with door-knocking as part of contact tracing efforts. Berlin: Germany has officially recognised that its colonial forces committed genocide in Namibia in the early 20th century for the first time, and pledged 1.1 billion ($1.74 billion) of development aid in atonement. Foreign Minister Heiko Maas late on Friday acknowledged the systematic murder of tens of thousands of men, women and children and the attempted extermination of the Herero and Nama peoples. In light of Germanys historical and moral responsibility, we will ask Namibia and the descendants of the victims for forgiveness, he said. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas announces the Namibia agreement at the Foreign Ministry in Berlin Credit:AP He pledged the development program as a gesture to recognise the immense suffering inflicted on the victims. LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Louisville Metro Police officers are accused of violating a Louisville womans constitutional rights and police policy when they executed a midnight raid in May 2019 over a drug investigation into her then-boyfriend, according to a lawsuit filed this week in Jefferson Circuit Court. The officers searched Keesha Boyds home, detaining her children and destroying her furniture before seizing more than $30,000 in cash, her attorney claims in the court filing. Boyd wasnt charged with a crime in connection with the search. Her attorneys allege that the search was unlawful, and the warrant was based on false information. The suit, filed against nine LMPD officers, alleges they unlawfully broke into Boyds home and took her property and seeks punitive damages. The circumstances of the case bear striking similarities to the investigation and subsequent raid that resulted in the police killing of Breonna Taylor including some of the officers involved. Former Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, and former detectives Myles Cosgrove and Brett Hankison were among the 16 officers that executed warrants at the homes of Keesha Boyd and her then-boyfriend Anthony Bonner, according to court records and police documents. LMPD officers involved in Breonna Taylor shooting From left: Former Louisville Metro Police Department Det. Myles Cosgrove, former Det. Brett Hankison and former Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly. The warrants were based on claims provided by a confidential informant and obtained by narcotics detective Brian Bailey, who is currently on administrative reassignment pending an investigation into allegations in three lawsuits that he sexually abused multiple women whom he forced to work as confidential informants. The police officers had absolutely no reason to be there, legal or otherwise, attorney Patrick C.M. Hoerter said in a statement. Their actions constitute a violation of her clearly established rights. We believe the warrant was issued based on false information provided by a confidential informant who was coerced by Bailey. Keesha is one of the many victims in this community of Brian Baileys illegal warrants and illegal forfeiture practices. Boyd declined to comment for this report. Bonner could not be reached. A spokesperson for LMPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The warrants obtained by Bailey for Boyd and Bonners homes are nearly identical. Attorneys have criticized Baileys use of confidential informants and accused him in court of relying on boilerplate affidavits and, in some cases, making up information. He was also the subject of a recent investigation by KyCIR and WDRB News that found he obtained more residential search warrants than any other LMPD officer between January 2019 and June 2020. All but one of the warrants reviewed by KyCIR and WDRB was based, at least in part, on the word of confidential informants. Brian Bailey Louisville Metro Police narcotics detective Brian Bailey (LMPD photo) In seeking the search warrant for Boyds house, Bailey said in an affidavit that Bonner would come and go from her house, and on multiple occasions staying for hours or spending the night. Bailey also alleged that a confidential informant had purchased heroin from Bonner at Boyds house, though he didnt present any evidence of a controlled buy, what experts consider best practice for drug cases involving informants. Bailey offered no evidence that Boyd, herself, was involved in criminal activity. It is common for drug traffickers to have two separate locations for drugs and money to avoid law enforcement detection, Bailey wrote in his affidavit, which was signed by Jefferson District Judge Jessica A. Moore about seven hours before police burst into Boyds home with a battering ram as she slept, according to the lawsuit. Inside Boyds home, police found the money, three guns, and less than an eighth of an ounce of marijuana, according to court documents and police records. As Mattingly and seven other officers searched Boyds house in Shively, Hankison, Bailey and Cosgrove were among the eight officers searching Bonners home about four miles away in Parkland. There, with a no-knock warrant, they found more money, a few guns, and an array of drugs. Bonner was charged with multiple drug trafficking crimes and pled guilty in November 2020 to amended charges in a one-year felony diversion agreement. A day later, Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Susan Schultz Gibson approved the LMPDs seizure that totaled more than $46,000 in cash. Boyd claims the $30,000 seized from her house has no connection to drug dealing. This story follows reporting done in a collaboration between KyCIR and WDRB News. Our previous stories: - Which Louisville judge let police raid your house? Most signatures are unreadable - PODCAST | Louisville judges' handling of search warrants under scrutiny - Kentucky issued a search warrant reform. Louisville police arent on board yet - Louisville police change warrant form, improve transparency - LMPDs top warrant cop accused of sexual abuse, questionable tactics - PODCAST | The story behind WDRB-KyCIR's latest search warrants investigation - LMPD cleared top warrant detective of sexual misconduct. Then, more women came forward. - Lawsuit: LMPD conducting biased, shoddy investigation into detective accused of sexually abusing confidential informants Louisville, KY (40203) Today Sunny to partly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Tonight Thunderstorms, some heavy this evening, then skies turning partly cloudy after midnight. Low around 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 80%. Bill Burt and George Bremer discuss the NFL schedule and Tom Brady's return to New England; Elton Hayes and Kevin Brockway reflect on Coach K's retirement; and Clay Horning breaks down the worst defensive play in baseball in recent memory. Help us understand what you value in community conversations so we can make our digital offerings more useful. This survey will only take a few minutes to complete. By taking the survey, you'll be entered into a drawing for one of three $100 gift cards to your choice of the following businesses: Hooked on Toys and Sporting Goods, Safeway/Albertsons, FredMeyer and Target. Click here to take survey Today Mostly cloudy but some breaks of sun developing; mainly dry but a spotty shower or thunderstorm in the afternoon. Tonight Partly to mostly cloudy with an evening shower or rumble of thunder possible. Tomorrow Clouds, some sun, and a few showers or a thunderstorm possible later in the day and overnight; much of the day remains dry. The views expressed by public comments are not those of this company or its affiliated companies. Please note by clicking on "Post" you acknowledge that you have read the TERMS OF USE and the comment you are posting is in compliance with such terms. Your comments may be used on air. Be polite. Inappropriate posts or posts containing offsite links, images, GIFs, inappropriate language, or memes may be removed by the moderator. Job listings and similar posts are likely automated SPAM messages from Facebook and are not placed by WFMZ-TV. WINDSOR LOCKS, CT (WFSB) - Police remained at the scene of a murder-suicide in Windsor Locks Saturday morning, more than 24 hours later. Authorities are still looking into what led up to the apparent murder-suicide shooting Friday morning. It happened just before 1 a.m. at 24 Lownds Dr. One victim has been identified as 18-year-old Lauren "Lela" Leslie, of Bloomfield. Her family said she was visiting her girlfriend at the home when the shooting happened. She was beautiful, talkative, very calm, soft spoken. You can't find people like her often. She's very delicate, soft, you know she was herself, said her brother Dondre Leslie. Police said they were called to the scene after reports of screaming and yelling coming from the home. When they arrived at the scene early Friday morning, they found three people dead at the scene. A fourth was also shot multiple times and was taken to a hospital. So far, police only identified the people who died as a man and two women. Leslie's family said she was one of the victims. Police said the man and the other woman were a couple. The fourth victim is a woman, and at last check, she was in critical but stable condition. A teenaged male was also inside the home at the time. He was not injured and not considered a suspect. The assailant is believed to be among the deceased. Police said a handgun was recovered from the scene. Investigators said they believe the incident was domestic in nature. According to Lauren's family, they believe the relationship between Lauren and her girlfriend may have played a role in what happened. "She is my little sister. She is a proud black, lesbian woman and I feel like it's not fair she had to go through this," said Jhavier Leslie. The Connecticut State Police Major Crimes unit is assisting Windsor Locks police with this investigation. A former FBI agent has been charged with fraud for allegedly conning a Texas woman out $800,000 by convincing her she was on "secret probation. 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. For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, Daily News-Record. For copyright information, check with the distributor of this item, The Roanoke Times. Viewed of Take Five - This is your final free article during this 30 day period.Stay in touch with all of the news from Winchester, Frederick and Clarke. Sign up today for complete digital access to The Winchester Star. Sitting in a sun-dappled, ninth-floor corner boardroom of his downtown Winnipeg law offices, Gordon Pullan hoists up his necktie for a curious visitor to examine. Sitting in a sun-dappled, ninth-floor corner boardroom of his downtown Winnipeg law offices, Gordon Pullan hoists up his necktie for a curious visitor to examine. "I dont come dressed like this every day," Pullan declares with an impish grin. "But my daughter Heather told me I had to dress like a lawyer today." Dressing like a lawyer is something Pullan knows more than a little bit about hes been doing it almost every day for the past seven decades. RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Longtime lawyer Gordan Pullan, 95, is Manitobas oldest practising lawyer. At the age of 95 hell turn 96 on June 16 he is now the oldest and longest practising lawyer in Manitoba, and likely in all of Canada. After graduating law school, Pullan was called to the bar on May 9, 1951, meaning he has been practising law in this province longer than the vast majority of lawyers throughout the country have been alive. The Free Press learned of this remarkable legal milestone in a heartfelt email from Tom Frohlinger, who is not only the managing director of PKF Lawyers, but Pullans son-in-law of more than 40 years. A life of service Heres a look at some of the organizations Manitobas longest practising lawyer, Gordon Pullan, has served in his 70 years in the profession click to read more Heres a look at some of the organizations Manitobas longest practising lawyer, Gordon Pullan, has served in his 70 years in the profession: Pullan is present or past honorary counsel to: Mount Carmel Clinic; Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra; Jewish Public Library; Greater Winnipeg Social Welfare Planning Council; Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada; The Ukrainian, Jewish, Mennonite Conference; and Jewish Radio Productions Inc. He is present or past member of the following boards of directors: Greater Winnipeg Community Welfare Council; Ramah Hebrew School; Sharon Home; Bnai Abraham Synagogue; Winnipeg Jewish Community Council; Jewish Foundation of Manitoba; Chesed Shel Emes; Mount Carmel Clinic; Asper Jewish Community Campus Planning Committee; Bnai Brith Lodge 650; Anne Ross Health Resources Centre Inc.; and the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. Present and past offices held include: President of Jewish Foundation of Manitoba; president of the Sharon Home; chairman of Volunteers Bureau; and western regional vice-president of United Israel Appeal. Present and past member of the following organizations: Various fundraising committees of Israel-based organizations; canvasser for Combined Jewish Appeal; pledge redemption committee Combined Jewish Appeal; Environment Commission of Manitoba; Convention Chairman; Manitoba Bar Association (co-opted rather than elected member); and the University Community Liaison Committee. Pullen was awarded the prestigious Sol Kanee Distinguished Community Service Medal in 1998. This is the highest recognition the Jewish community bestows on any person. Areas of Practice Business planning and corporate organization Commercial real estate and construction Corporate and commercial law, mergers and acquisitions Wills, estates, trusts and Elder Law Source: PKF Lawyers Close "Wonderful, wonderful father-in-law. I look on him as a father more than a father-in-law," Frohlinger says over a socially distanced cup of coffee at the boardroom table equipped with Plexiglas protective screens. "Hes opinionated, he says his piece, and then he moves on. Some would say hes the curmudgeon of the firm, some would say hes the soul of the firm," says Frohlinger, 75, who is married to Pullans eldest daughter, Heather. "It doesnt matter whether its a senior lawyer or a junior lawyer, hes always constructive, hes always kind and his overarching singular attribute is hes genuinely interested in people "I think the fact hes practised longer than most lawyers in Manitoba have been alive is a phenomenal accomplishment. I got my call to the bar in 1981. In order to get to his level, Id have to make it to age 105." RUTH BONNEVILLE RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS When he hasnt been working, Pullan has become famous for sitting on boards and raising funds for local Jewish organizations. Over the course of an interview last week, Pullan reflected on the joys and tribulations of spending 70 years working for clients in Winnipeg, displaying a level of energy and mental acuity that belies his age, and an irreverent sense of humour more common among standup comedians than lawyers. Asked when he plans on retiring, Pullan doesnt miss a beat: "When I get old! Ive been asked that many times." Told he doesnt look like a man poised to celebrate his 96th birthday, his grin widens and he replies: "How does one look 96? I dont feel my age, if thats a feeling one gets. "At the beginning of the pandemic, I took three months of isolation, and after working for over 70 years, I just couldnt sit at home. Im so used to getting up and coming to the office. The practice of law is one of challenges sitting around the house, the big challenge is to wash your dishes." Legal longevity When it comes to famously long and distinguished legal careers, Gordon Pullan of Winnipegs PKF Lawyers is in excellent company. click to read more When it comes to famously long and distinguished legal careers, Gordon Pullan of Winnipegs PKF Lawyers is in excellent company. Here are just two examples: At 97 years old and with 71 years of service under his belt, Winnipegs Harry Walsh was Canadas oldest practising lawyer when he died in February 2011. Before a stint in hospital for complications stemming from a fall, Walsh had come to work every day since being called to the Manitoba Bar in 1937. Walsh, who helped create Manitobas Legal Aid system, considered his work helping to abolish the death penalty in Canada his crowning achievement. I was responsible for that and I want to take credit for that, he once told the . I never had a hanging in any case where I was the senior lawyer. We have no right to take the life of anybody. In British Columbia, trailblazing lawyer Constance Dora Isherwood was still working two hours before she died this past January at the age of 101. She worked that day and was very, very worried about closing real estate deals by the end of the day. She didnt want to put anybody else out, and passed away at 6 p.m., her son George Isherwood told earlier this year. B.C.s oldest practising lawyer, who had turned 101 on Jan. 19, Isherwood spent seven decades clocking billable hours and paved the way for generations of female lawyers. When the centenarian was interviewed in 2020 on CBC Radios , she credited her longevity to her intrigue with the law. So that keeps you interested, and of course, going to work keeps your body active and mind active, which is a good thing at any age, Isherwood told host Carol Off. Close Pressed to reveal the secret to his longevity in a notoriously stress-filled profession, he flashes another mischievous grin. "I dont know if you should tell everybody, but my main secret is you must be extremely careful in the choice of your parents. I think the genes have something to do with it. "I didnt prepare for this. I didnt prepare to get old. I remember wondering in my youth if Id make it to the year 2000. I lived every day as it came. Whatever happened in any given day didnt affect the way I was going to live the next day." What about exercise? What about eating healthy? "I would say its basically fate, luck or, if youre religious, Gods will," the soft-spoken Pullan reflects. "I did nothing special to get to where I am today. "But Im fortunate to have eating habits that were beneficial. If you were to ask me my preferred meal, Id say a good salad." Whatever hes done, its worked. Appointed a Queens Counsel in 1982, this nonagenarian is marking his 70th year in practice by doing what hes always done going to the office. The only real difference is that a lot of his clients now are third generation. "He comes in usually Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He likes Saturdays because no one bothers him and he can get his work done. The staff just love him. Hes everybodys grandfather and great-grandfather," Frohlinger explains. "He comes in at nine and I usually take him home at six. Hes given up driving so Im now his chauffeur. His major complaints are his eyes are going and his hearing is going, so he needs some assistance," he says, adding that Pullan is still doing estates, real estate, corporate and commercial work, though he no longer litigates. "He just did a fairly major transaction involving the sale of shares in an IT company in Winnipeg." RUTH BONNEVILLE RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS At the beginning, Pullan did criminal work. But there were often days when he wouldnt get a single phone, nor receive a single letter. When he hasnt been working, Pullan has become famous for sitting on boards and raising funds for local Jewish organizations. He was awarded the prestigious Sol Kanee Distinguished Community Service Medal in 1998, the highest honour in Winnipegs Jewish community. It would be difficult to name an organization in the Jewish community that has not benefited from his time and legal advice, though he also served other organizations, including the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. "My family knew one thing I wont be home for supper because Im either at the office or in a meeting," Pullan recalls. Looking back on his career, Pullan insists there are no crowning achievements to brag about. His decades of service have been fuelled as much by a love of people as they were by a passion for the law. "I just enjoy being with people. Then Im a very curious person. I dont know if you want to put this in your notes, but I maintain I love to stick my nose into everybodys business and then they pay me. Can you find a better life than that?" Pullan says. "Its a profession where you learn something new every day. The law is a very fluid thing; its not static, its continuously changing and adapting. It covers every aspect of your everyday life. Theres a never-ending flow of interesting situations." Pressed again to reveal a highlight from his long career, he sticks to his guns. "No real highlight. I havent been a leading lawyer of anything. Theres always been guys smarter than me around so I had a bigger challenge," he insists. The main thing is Ive gone through 70 years of practice and never been called to appear before a disciplinary committee." Gordon Pullan, Manitoba's oldest practicing lawyer "The main thing is Ive gone through 70 years of practice and never been called to appear before a disciplinary committee, which is very difficult. Its so easy to do something that you shouldnt do," he says. Which is when son-in-law Frohlinger chimes in about a precedent-setting construction case in which Pullan was the lead lawyer. "You made law," he gently reminds Pullan. "Its the leading case in builders liens. I taught the case for 31 years. It involved the security taken by a mortgage lender in a new construction project that ultimately fell on hard times. The question was whether the mortgage lender had priority over the workers for its money. "The outcome was the mortgage lender had priority over some of its money but not all because of the timing of the liens versus the timing of the advances. Its a complicated case. Its still cited today." Pullan began piling up memories the day he hung out his shingle 70 years ago this month. Three weeks after being called to the bar, he opened a one-man practice. In those days, all that was required was a desk, chairs, a typewriter and a telehone. Today, he notes, hes a major business investment. RUTH BONNEVILLE RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Photo of the first printed sign that was on Pullan's office door when he opened his first office in late 1950's. "I took on a student who remained with me. And we took on other students who remained. And we had other people join us. But we werent anywhere near the size we are now. I made one mistake I let my son-in-law come in and gave him an office, and guess who I work for now? I have security in my job now because to fire me he has to get my daughters approval." At the beginning, Pullan did criminal work. But there were often days when he wouldnt get a single phone call, nor receive a single letter. "I used to say my highlight was Thursday, because thats when Time magazine came in and I had something to do I read it." He handled criminal cases for about two years, but it wasnt his cup of tea. He started to get a lot of real estate work during the housing boom of the early 1950s. If he has a crowning achievement, its his four children, nine grandchildren and the 68 years he was married to his high school sweetheart, Esther, who died last summer, leaving Pullan rattling around the five-bedroom home he had built in River Heights in 1959. Pullan has survived more than his fair share of challenges mumps, measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, not to mention the Great Depression, the Second World War, and seeing his law offices burn to the ground twice. The youngest of three brothers, he was born in St. Boniface Hospital in 1925. "Thats my life story. I was in an orphanage at age three," he recalls. "My mother went to the hospital for a gallstone operation, a simple thing. Unfortunately, she developed a blood clot and she died, leaving my father with three boys, ages 3, 9 and 13. My father and my oldest brother moved in with an uncle. My middle brother and I went to the Jewish orphanage. I was in that orphanage for a year. "My father made it known in the community he was desperate for a wife to help him raise his boys. He didnt want to break up the family. He got remarried, rented a house across from the orphanage and we all moved into that house. We were all reunited." In Grade 12, he went into basic training with the army, then spent almost two years training in the airforce, then finally came a stint with the navy. "I got basic training in the army, I got basic training in the airforce, and I got basic training in the navy. I never went overseas," he says. I started with nothing, I grew up in the Depression. My father would be laid off in the winter. My mother had to feed five of us on a pound of hamburger sort of thing When I was a kid playing on the street, I never had a store-bought toy in my life." Gordon Pullan, Manitoba's oldest practicing lawyer If hes learned anything in the last 70 years, its how to take things in stride, including huge fires that razed his offices in the Time Building on Portage Avenue in 1954, and a 2003 fire that destroyed a former funeral home on Kennedy street that was being renovated to house his growing firm. "It was just another issue in my life, another source of stories. I have to tell you, I started with nothing, I grew up in the Depression. My father would be laid off in the winter. My mother had to feed five of us on a pound of hamburger sort of thing When I was a kid playing on the street, I never had a store-bought toy in my life. "That was the beginning of what my life was. We learned to live with life as it came along, and you made the best of whatever was available. Tom (Frohlinger) came along and married my daughter and I had to accept him." As for the future, Pullan insists hell continue dealing calmly with whatever life dishes up. "At this point in life, Im immune to everything," he jokes, flashing his trademark wit. "The future of my life is not a worry. I bought a 10-year passport because it was a good deal. Now thats optimism!" doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca Michelle Bailey has always called herself a writer, first and foremost. Its what she knew how to do best. And its why she jumped at any opportunity she could find for more than three decades to get her words out for the world to read even if that meant joining "the dark, yet well-paid side" of corporate communications, she says with a laugh. From working for the City of Winnipeg to large not-for-profits and local magazines or broadcast news outlets, Bailey has done it all. She graduated from the Creative Communications program at Red River College in the early 90s. But after her last contract ended in early 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, she struggled to land stable work. Try as she might, the 51-year-old couldnt land a regular job as a writer or a communicator no matter where she applied. Even the freelance gigs she would take from time to time dried up. She drained her savings and eventually took out all the money she could from her locked-in retirement account. She even sold her condo. "Thats when I knew I had to make changes," Bailey told the Free Press. "COVID forced me to redefine my career and what I thought I was going to do for the rest of my life, so that I could financially survive and put food on the table for me and my high-school-aged son." At first, Bailey became a seasonal employee at Bath & Body Works back in October. "It wasnt at all like the lucrative jobs I had over the years, but it was something I was still very proud of because I was able to pay my bills," she said. By Christmas, however, when coronavirus cases kept piling up in Manitoba and forced most businesses to close, Bailey was laid off along with most of the other seasonal staff. By the time slow reopening measures were put forward in February, the lack of foot traffic at retailers meant she wasnt asked to return to her job. "There were a lot of tears, a lot of sleepless nights and tough decisions packed with anxiety," she said. "All I did was just turn to any money I had saved up at all, whatsoever, and taking it all out. It was terrifying." In April, Bailey "got lucky," when a friend referred her to a job. Now, the Winnipegger works for Boulevard Meats and Deli at the Southdale Shopping Centre where she cooks meals such as lasagna, cleans the family-owned store when shes asked to, and is at the counter helping customers on most days of the week. "Its a big switch for me. Really big because Im still getting used to it," she said. "But what are you supposed to do when theres just no jobs in your field for you to get anymore?" Bailey isnt the only one who has faced this reality, and been forced to switch careers. According to Statistics Canada, more than three million Canadians were affected by job losses or reduced hours in March 2020, when pandemic restrictions first began. Since then, while many businesses have begun to recover and start hiring back staff, others have not been so lucky. Economists call this phenomenon the K-shaped recovery where one segment of the economy climbs back up while another segment continues to suffer. Part of this phenomenon is the competition created or accelerated for fewer jobs in certain industries as others have ample opportunities. The third wave of the pandemic has not helped, either. A recent poll commissioned by Express Employment Professionals in Winnipeg found 38 per cent of Canadian respondents have been unemployed for six months or less. The survey also found that 62 per cent of a sample-sized group of 1,000 unemployed Canadian adults have been unable to find work for more than six months. Its why Bailey counts herself as one of the lucky ones, because shes not only found a job that pays her bills, but one that shes growing to love and enjoy every day. "Of course, it hasnt been all rainbows and butterflies either," she said. "While my daughter and son are really proud of me, and they often say how much stress-free I seem since I started this job compared to my communications jobs, theres been lots of side-eyes and taunts from many other people." Bailey has had people spew lots of mean-spirited comments her way, calling her job at the deli "shallow and not real work because of what I did before," she said. "Its been eye-opening to hear what peoples perspectives are for certain kinds of jobs. These are folks Ive known forever. But you know what? I dont want to live in my car and not pay my bills, waiting for a job when I could be doing something with myself that gets things done." Bailey isnt sure when shell get back to writing full time, though she does take on any freelance work she gets including a recent gig at the monthly Neighbours of Island Lakes magazine. "At the end of the day, this is my story and this is my pivot. It might look a bit messy now, but thats life, you know," she said. "For now, Im just a happy trooper whos happy to be working anywhere at all." temur.durrani@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @temurdur OTTAWA - A senator from Prince Edward Island is pushing for a change to the government's sweeping budget bill that she says would entrench an unfair situation on the island that the Trudeau Liberals have long promised to address. Sen. Diane Griffin attends a news conference in Ottawa, Tuesday December 11, 2018. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld OTTAWA - A senator from Prince Edward Island is pushing for a change to the government's sweeping budget bill that she says would entrench an unfair situation on the island that the Trudeau Liberals have long promised to address. Deep in the Liberals' sweeping budget bill are provisions that would set two zones on P.E.I. for calculating and accessing employment insurance benefits. There are similar provisions for areas of Quebec, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador and Yukon in the bill currently in the House of Commons. The government says it needs to put the zones into law to make sure seasonal workers can continue to more easily qualify for EI benefits during a two-year consultation on the future of the decades-old social safety net. The concern from Sen. Diane Griffin is that the boundaries would become impossible to change if embedded in an act approved by Parliament. "They're trying to say, 'Oh, well, you know, things can be changed by regulation,'" she said in an interview, describing the response she has received from government officials. "It will be entrenched in legislation for two years, and there's no way regulation is going to supersede the statute." Griffin is pushing the four Liberal MPs from the province to remove the reference to P.E.I. while the bill is in the House of Commons, but plans to push for it herself if the clause remains once the legislation lands in the Senate. EI zones make benefits more generous and easier to access in parts of the country where it is harder to get work. Rules are based on residency, not where jobs are, meaning two people laid off from the same company at the same time could have different benefit entitlements because they live on opposite sides of a boundary. The non-partisan EI commission regularly reviews the boundaries and was supposed to make recommendations last fall on possible changes, but got delayed by the pandemic. Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough hinted at a Senate committee Wednesday night that delay may soon be over. Any cabinet-approved changes to the boundaries would likely take two years to implement. A review of the different EI zones produced by federal officials in September 2019, and obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act, suggested that there was very little difference in labour market conditions across P.E.I. The previous Conservative government split the island into two zones in 2014, with the boundary line drawn in a way that benefited the lone Conservative riding in the province at the time on the western edge of the island. The Liberals promised to reverse the decision, but have yet to do so. "We're one island, we're one province, and we're one zone," Charlottetown Mayor Philip Brown told a Senate committee during a recent appearance to talk about the budget bill. Brown added that he was asking the province's parliamentarians to change the C-30, and pushed against the idea that this was a local issue: "It is a national issue because EI is a national program, and maybe the other economic regions are not speaking up." The problem from the government's perspective is the law itself, the Employment Insurance Act. The act limits to three years the time a pilot project can run under the EI program. Such a pilot has ran since 2019 in places like P.E.I. to help seasonal workers access benefits during the "black hole" period between when EI benefits max out and a seasonal job starts. The provisions expire in October 2022 before the end of consultations on the future of the EI system, which the government says requires it to tuck the zones into federal law so the extra help doesn't just stop. Echoing what Griffin described, officials say the government could still redraw boundary lines or remove zones despite the legal change, even while the wider consultations are underway. "The most important fundamental opportunity here is as we move into our consultations to modernize the EI system, really digging in on the boundary and zone issue," Qualtrough told senators this week. She said that will include "what, if any, changes we could and should be making to the boundary and zone issue, seeing if it's the way to go in the future, and what, if any, changes we could and should be making to the system." This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 29, 2021. Rob Stone didnt intend to make any waves when he randomly tweeted out his thoughts as he watched the storm clouds brewing over his Davidson, Sask., farm earlier this month. Rob Stone didnt intend to make any waves when he randomly tweeted out his thoughts as he watched the storm clouds brewing over his Davidson, Sask., farm earlier this month. Sure, there was rain in the forecast, but it wouldnt be the first time a promising forecast evaporated. Still, he was hopeful enough that he wanted to share the joy. Farmers across the Prairies this spring had to gamble that some badly needed rains would come as they poured hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of seed and fertilizer into the ground. Stone, who grows canola, lentils, wheat and barley in the south-central part of the province, was trying to remain optimistic. "But it was becoming a bit more alarming this year. We havent seen any sort of significant rain since last July," he said during a Zoom interview. It wouldnt be long before they were in big trouble. "As seeding progressed, it became a bit more of a thing." As he pondered how much he had riding on that rain, another thought came to mind. "It was a pretty simple little thing. I was just driving down the road in my old truck, and youve got a pallet of canola seed in the back and youre thinking about the things that youve got to do today, and the wind is picking up, and youre thinking Ha, we should do something about this." Farming is a lifestyle that comes with a lot of solitude. Twitter has become a community of sorts for farmers as they work the land; a place in real time to share experiences, frustrations, ideas and feelings. Stone issued a challenge. He pledged that if he received an inch of moisture, he was going to donate $1,000 to charity and he openly wondered if others would do the same. The idea took off like a Prairie windstorm. Before long, his Twitter feed was filled with farmers matching his pledge and by the time we talked, his pledge had been viewed 250,000 times. "It wasnt intended to be any type of a great campaign or anything else," he said. "But a person would be lying if they didnt smile a little bit. It was sort of a dumb little idea that kind of took hold and I think its done a lot of good, so I think thats great." While it remains to be seen how many pledges are fulfilled, his story shines a light on the hunger for connection among farmers at a time when getting together isnt possible. In pre-pandemic times, a rainy day was a boon for local eating establishments and businesses in town as people forced to pause fieldwork enjoyed a day or evening out. His idea also tapped the farming communitys inherent generosity. That didnt surprise him so much as the enthusiasm. "It really caught some traction with people who said, Lets do this People are very willing, and want to share their good fortunes in every way that they can, and celebrate some of our successes," It speaks volumes about another reality for rural Canada. Many of the "charities" farmers were pledging to support, organizations such as STARS air ambulance, local day cares and health-care facilities, provide necessary services urban Canadians take for granted. The moisture did come in varying amounts. His came in part as snow. Stones chosen charity is 4-H, noting the public speaking he learned as part of that youth-development program is at least partly responsible for "my ability to sit here and have a chat with you." With seeding nearing completion, the injection of moisture is enough to get crops growing. Now farmers in many parts of the Prairies are evaluating the impact of three nights of frost this week. While some reseeding may take place, they will be carefully sizing up the odds. A late-seeded crop automatically yields less, plus it risks frost damage in the fall. And its still dry. "They do say seed into dust and the bins will bust, so weve done our part. Hopefully, Nature will continue to provide for us," Stone said. Laura Rance is vice-president of content for Glacier FarmMedia. She can be reached at lrance@farmmedia.com LAS VEGAS (AP) A federal appeals court said Friday the nations largest private prison corporation can be held liable for negligence by a man who spent almost a year in solitary confinement at a southern Nevada facility without ever seeing a judge on marijuana-related charges. LAS VEGAS (AP) A federal appeals court said Friday the nations largest private prison corporation can be held liable for negligence by a man who spent almost a year in solitary confinement at a southern Nevada facility without ever seeing a judge on marijuana-related charges. The 9th U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said a jury can hear Rudy Riveras lawsuit claiming that CoreCivic Inc. employees failed to tell the U.S. Marshals Service while Rivera languished in custody from November 2015 to October 2016 at the Nevada Southern Detention Center outside Las Vegas. A reasonable jury could find that CoreCivic caused plaintiffs prolonged detention by failing to notify the Marshals of his continued detention without a hearing and by discouraging and preventing him from seeking outside help, a panel of three judges said. A CoreCivic official said the company is confident a jury will find CoreCivic wasn't responsible for Rivera's prolonged detention without a court appearance. CoreCivic does not have legal custody of detainees and is not responsible for the arraignment or tracking the arraignment of detainees, Ryan Gustin, company public affairs manager, said in a statement. Rivera had numerous resources at his disposal to challenge his legal custody, the statement said, including telephones that he used to call family members, mail, attorney visits and legal reference materials. Rivera also "never submitted any verbal or written grievance about this issue, Gustin said. The resurrected case now returns to U.S. District Court in Las Vegas, where a judge in 2017 dismissed it saying that because Rivera was in U.S. Marshals Service custody, the company wasn't responsible for Riveras 355-day detention. They were basically taking the position that, Eh, what were we supposed to do? Not our fault, said Riveras attorney, Mitchell Bisson. He said damages for negligence, intentional infliction emotional distress and civil and constitutional rights violations could amount to much more than $1 million. Rivera, 42, lives in Stockton, California. He said the ruling gave him reason to hope the broken system we are in now will be torn down and that no one else will have to go through what I did. The year I spent in there trying to plead my way out was the hardest time of my life, and Im still struggling with the effects it had on me and my family, he said in an email through his attorney. I hope CoreCivic now realizes that they cant just point their finger in the other direction and avoid the consequences of their actions and inactions. Rivera was arrested in California in October 2015 and appeared before a federal judge there before he was transferred in custody to Nevada on an indictment charging him with marijuana-related offenses. The charges were eventually dropped, after a deputy federal public defender, reached by letter, informed a judge who ordered Rivera brought to court the next business day. The judge declared Rivera's prolonged detention extreme and egregious and ordered his immediate release, the appeals court order noted. Rivera had been separated from other detainees and inmates at the 1,000-bed prison due to a previous gang affiliation, according to court documents. Jailers were nearly the only people he encountered. During his detention, Rivera repeatedly told CoreCivic employees ... that he had not been to court and did not have (a lawyer), the judges said in Fridays ruling. But CoreCivic employees neither informed the Marshals of Riveras plight nor took any other steps to remedy the situation. Rivera testified he was told to just sit there and wait. The court noted the Marshals Service contracts with state, local and private facilities to house about 85% of the 160,000 people in federal custody nationwide, and is the primary customer at eight of CoreCivics 47 facilities around the country. CoreCivic, which is publicly traded and was formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America, secured its first federal contract in 1983. Nearly $400 million worth of U.S. Marshals Service business accounted for 21% of company revenues in 2020, according to the companys annual Securities and Exchange Commission report. The appellate judges said the Marshals Service is the primary customer at the 1,000-bed prison. The medium-security facility opened in 2010, about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) west of Las Vegas. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) The Biden administration is urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that could stand in the way of Florida and other states importing prescription drugs from Canada. TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) The Biden administration is urging a federal court to dismiss a lawsuit that could stand in the way of Florida and other states importing prescription drugs from Canada. In a legal brief filed Friday, the White House argues that the lawsuit filed last year on behalf of U.S. pharmaceutical companies was premature because the federal government has yet to approve any importation programs. The administrations legal filing came on the same day Florida's Republican governor, who is considering a run for the White House in 2024, called on the Biden administration to approve its drug importation application. Florida and New Mexico are the only two states thus far to formally ask the U.S. government to allow federally approved drugs to be imported from Canada, arguing that doing so would save Americans millions of dollars. Other states are poised to follow, despite a lawsuit raising concerns over safety and costs that was filed by the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America, the trade group that represents U.S. drug producers. In its legal filing, President Joe Biden's administration argues that drug companies pre-emptively launched this wholesale attack on a program that has yet to be implemented. Although two proposals have been submitted to FDA, no timeline exists for the agency to make a decision, the governments motion states. During a Friday news conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Floridians could save as much as $150 million in drug costs in the program's first year. DeSantis signed a bill in 2019 allowing prescription drugs to be imported from the neighboring country, but the plan awaits federal approval. In November, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under then-President Donald Trump issued a ruling, which DeSantis said was based largely on Florida's plan, further opening the door for states to pursue importing prescription drugs. That same month, the trade group filed its lawsuit. The governors office on Friday issued a statement asserting that the current government's legal filing puts the Biden Administration on the record in support of the FDA rule. The Florida governor has increasingly taken a combative tone against the Biden administration as he positions himself as one of his party's leading critics of the current White House. It is disappointing that the FDA appears to have no timeline to review any state importation proposals as referenced in todays filing, the governor's statement said. Floridians have been waiting long enough for lower drug prices, and there is no good reason to keep them waiting." Some consumers have long crossed into Mexico and Canada to buy medicine that sells for far less than in the United States. But it's against federal law to import drugs. The lawsuit filed by the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America accuses the federal government of failing to demonstrate the safety of importing medicine and any actual cost savings. DeSantis and others have dismissed those concerns, saying that Canada, like the United States, has stringent pharmaceutical guidelines, and "we obviously would have our process to ensure quality. DeSantis said his state is ready to act swiftly to put its program into place should the federal government approve its request to launch a drug importation program. A priest who has been separated from his family in Zimbabwe for more than three years is getting help from the Anglican Diocese of Ruperts Land. A priest who has been separated from his family in Zimbabwe for more than three years is getting help from the Anglican Diocese of Ruperts Land. Geoff Woodcroft, bishop of Ruperts Land, wrote a letter to Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino on May 26, to ask him to speed up the process of reuniting Naboth Manzongo with his wife and two children. Manzongo was called by the diocese, which covers southern Manitoba and northwestern Ontario, to serve at St. Lukes Anglican Church in Dryden, Ont. in October 2018. Immediately after his arrival, he began the process of bringing his wife, Thelma, and two children to Canada. The requirements for them to immigrate were completed at the end of 2019. Since then, hes heard nothing from Immigration Canada except that things are in process. In his letter to the minister, Woodcroft noted that Manzongo "has dutifully engaged and completed every task set out by your department successfully in a timely fashion, yet here we are three years later with no significant results from the Government of Canada." Woodcroft went on to say he understands these things take time, and that there is a large volume of requests backlogged due to the pandemic. But given the time that has passed, "we have little, if any, confidence that Naboths case is indeed moving forward," he said. The Manzongo family, he said, has been "waiting to reunite for an excruciating and prolonged period. I am asking you to move expeditiously with Naboths case to reunite him with his family, so they might prosper in Canada." Woodcroft said it is "unacceptable" for Manzongo to have waited this long. "He has been called by God to be in this part of the world, and St. Lukes is head-over-heels happy to have him," he said. "I dont want to lose this amazing priest." Manzongo welcomes the support from his bishop. "He has really gone out of his way to help," he said, adding "he is more than a bishop. He is a friend. I really appreciate him sending the letter." Manzongo, who has been a priest for 14 years, said his church of about 120 people has been very supportive. "They are loving and caring," he said. He copes with the separation from his family by staying busy, including taking online theological courses. But its hard to watch his children grow up without him his youngest was five months old when he left. Although his situation is difficult, he doesnt regret coming to Canada. "Life in Canada is good," he said, noting he could have gone to the U.S. but chose this country because it is highly regarded around the world. "Dryden is a good city to raise a family," he said. The main thing keeping him going now "is hope. I just keep working one day at a time," he said. In a response, the press secretary for the immigration minister said the pandemic has had an effect on the immigration system, and that it is doing everything possible to reduce wait times to reunite spouses and family members. faith@freepress.mb.ca CARIN Munro recently realized her wardrobe was lacking. "I had no summer clothes Id guess its an update," she said Friday as she smoked a cigarette outside Polo Park shopping centre while waiting for a cab. Two bags of fresh summer duds from Aeropostale sat on the concrete planter beside her. Premier Brian Pallister has insisted Manitoba has exceptionally strong COVID-19 restrictions, but the province is an outlier by allowing malls to stay open during a time of such high spread. Chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin has said people shouldnt be buying non-essentials, but has refused to close stores in malls that dont sell any essential goods. "If you have to go shopping, it should be for essential reasons, going in and going out," Roussin said Thursday. "These malls are not allowed to tolerate gathering within them." The following day, Polo Park was mostly deserted, and those inside seemed to respect the no-gathering rule by opting against speaking with a Free Press reporter. One man who declined to give his name said he was there to renew his drivers licence. "Essential, right," he said, before rushing off. Cleaning staff and security guards roamed the long mall walkways empty of any pre-pandemic seating areas. Floor stickers directed foot-traffic to the few who ventured out for boutique body soaps and the latest fashions or, like the young boy with the ball cap pulled over his eyes, a few new Lego sets. The Apple Store and pretzel stand did brisk business, though. Two men with clipboards and vests that read "compliance officer" spoke to the lone worker at a cellphone accessory kiosk. In the food court, the tables and chairs were stacked. "For your safety and comfort, the food court is currently open for take-out only," the sign read. Three people were queued outside Famous Wok just before noon, while construction workers clutched bags of A&W. The entrances to some stores were cordoned off and clerks posted nearby to remind customers only one person per family was allowed in. The rules involving retail operations have generated controversy in other provinces. Shortly before Christmas, Quebec ordered malls to close after they became one of the few places for people to gather as Montreal went into code red restrictions. "They joke that if you want to see your whole family, go to Costco or Ikea. But its kind of true," one shopper told La Presse last October. In Calgary, hordes of families and teenagers at the Chinook Centre mall on Black Friday weekend in November caused an uproar, especially after police say they had to conduct a "quasi-evacuation" due to "unruly customers." A month later, a document leaked to media showed mall owner Cadillac Fairview had discovered staff in 18 stores had COVID-19. In Ontario, malls have been closed since early April, despite lower case counts. Winnipegs active case rate is more than five times that of Ottawa, and 2.5 times the rate in Toronto. Winnipeg epidemiologist Cynthia Carr said malls arent high-risk settings if people stay on the move and dont socialize with members of other households. "It gives the retailers a chance to stay open to some extent, but with much fewer people," said Carr, who noted that malls dont loom large in national data on outbreaks and infection clusters. "A key risk place in a mall would be the food court, and theyre not open," Carr said. "But obviously theres potential there, always." She said ramping up security and enforcing a rule that only one person per household can go shopping should help prevent customers from using malls as a loophole to socialize. "Theyre trying to keep businesses able to function in the safest manner possible. Theres no zero risk, but this is the lowest-risk situation... as long as people keep moving." Some shopping malls are fairly well ventilated; Torontos public health officials have used some that are closed to operate vaccination clinics. Back at Polo Park, a clerk at a high-end skin care store offered hand cream, squirted on the bottom of a plastic takeout cup, then beckoned a passerby inside to try a facial peeling scrub made with "real diamonds" but only on his forearm. She applied it with a wooden stick, but then rubbed it in with her hand, gently chiding her subjects hand-washing skills as the dirt peeled away. The $200 cream was on sale for half-price, with some extra hand lotion thrown in, today only. She insisted the cream works a lot better on the face, clearing away blackheads and dirt, but couldnt demonstrate because of COVID-19, she said, sounding disappointed. erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca OTTAWA The military has touched down in Winnipeg, and is ready to start helping transfer COVID-19 patients out of the province. OTTAWA The military has touched down in Winnipeg, and is ready to start helping transfer COVID-19 patients out of the province. "It will be a gradual rollout, as further support details are determined," Canadian Armed Forces spokeswoman Jessica Lamirande wrote Friday. A large military plane arrived Thursday at CFB Winnipeg in the city's west end. The grey CC-130H Hercules is outfitted with a special isolation unit, which is a sealed room with two beds and seats for six medical specialists, as well as four aircrew. Formally called an aeromedical bio-containment evacuation system, the unit is ready to transport ICU patients as early as Friday. Critical care nurses will be sent to two alternative isolation accommodation sites in Winnipeg chosen by Shared Health, which is withholding the locations, citing patient confidentiality. Three medical laboratory technologists will help with COVID-19 testing at Health Sciences Centre, Grace Hospital and St. Boniface Hospital. Military officials were still doing reconnaissance Friday, but said they have can assign troops as needed, based on instructions from the province, Public Safety Canada or the Public Health Agency of Canada. Meanwhile, six Red Cross nurses have begun their orientation at HSC, to work in the emergency department and surgery units. More nurses should arrive next week, Shared Health said. As of Thursday morning, 28 ICU patients had already been transported to Ontario and Saskatchewan hospitals; of which, one had returned to Manitoba after improved health. dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca As more lower-income Manitobans land in hospital with COVID-19, a class divide is becoming clear. As more lower-income Manitobans land in hospital with COVID-19, a class divide is becoming clear. During Manitoba's third wave, the novel coronavirus is disproportionately hitting people who can't work from home, many of whom are not white. New race-based data was released this week, showing Manitobans who identify as South and Southeast Asian, African and Filipino are suffering the worst COVID-19 infection rates. Local doctors are noticing many of the sickest patients who need to be admitted to hospital are marginalized in some way, either because of race or socioeconomic status. His work in a COVID ward at St. Boniface Hospital has shown Dr. Anthony Battad a common theme: many of the third-wave patients he sees are young workers who are Black, Indigenous, or people of colour. Like him, many are Filipino. Dr. Anthony Battad, an internal medicine physician who has been working in COVID wards off and on during the pandemic, has noticed a common theme: many of the third-wave patients he sees are young workers who are Black, Indigenous, or people of colour. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Winnipeg Free Press) "A lot of them take their best guesses as to where they got it from, and we hear a lot of, 'Well, I must have gotten it from work or public transportation,'" the internal medicine specialist said. Manitoba doesn't yet have good data on workplace transmission of COVID-19, but public health officials have said they're working on analyzing and releasing reliable figures. About 10 per cent of cases spread at work, chief provincial public health officer Dr. Brent Roussin said Thursday. Under updated orders that take effect Saturday morning, if at least two employees working at the same location contract COVID-19, employers must notify public health. Employees must work from home "unless the specific nature of an employee's duties requires them" to show up in person. Asked how the rule will be enforced, deputy chief provincial public health officer Dr. Jazz Atwal said: "We are trusting employers... Most employers are good people, and I think everyone's going to do the right thing to make sure that they follow that order." Atwal didn't directly answer when asked during Friday's news conference if public health officials can recommend Manitoba implement paid sick leave for all employees. Earlier this month, the province announced it would legislate three paid hours, so Manitobans could leave work to get vaccinated. Battad said he believes extended paid sick leave is necessary, based on the number of patients he sees who are under pressure to continue working in front-line jobs, some so they can send money to family in the Philippines or other countries. Even when race isn't a factor, paycheques still are, he said. Battad said he recently cared for a hospitalized COVID-19 patient in their early 20s, whose employer kept calling to find out when they'd be back at work. The patient believed they had tested positive after a workplace exposure. "I think the biggest challenge, to be perfectly honest, is money. If you don't have paid sick leave, even temporary paid sick leave while we deal with this public health emergency, people are going to continue to go to work because that's their reality." Dr. Anand Kumar, an attending ICU physician in Winnipeg, said he's seen a similar trend in intensive care, and it's a stark difference from pre-pandemic times. "I haven't seen formal numbers on it, but it's pretty obvious on the ground. Most of those that are coming in these days are what you'd consider essential workers, and Indigenous people. People that are working in grocery stores and other really essential services," Kumar said. "People that have to work with their hands." Last week, provincial officials said 70 per cent of Manitoba's COVID-19 hospital patients were unvaccinated, and some had not been tested for the virus prior to showing up at hospital. Battad has been doing outreach in the Filipino community to encourage vaccine uptake and explain public health orders. He said the idea the majority of hospital patients are choosing not to get vaccinated or large proportions are refusing to get tested is a "gross oversimplification" that doesn't get to the root of why certain groups are being more severely impacted. A lot of times, they don't feel like the public health orders are relevant because they don't have the luxury of staying home, he said. "We come from humble beginnings, and I know what it's like to not have a choice but to go to work. I know what it's like to perhaps not be listened to," Battad said, adding the pandemic has exposed systemic inequalities that need to be addressed when it's over. "It's idealistic, but you know, with this tremendous loss and tremendous tragedy, there's also a tremendous opportunity to be better once we're out of this." katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay When construction of Stony Mountain Institution then known as Manitoba Penitentiary was completed in 1877, Queen Victoria was the reigning monarch of the British Empire. When construction of Stony Mountain Institution then known as Manitoba Penitentiary was completed in 1877, Queen Victoria was the reigning monarch of the British Empire. Canadian Confederation had taken place just a decade prior if the country had been a person, it would have been unable to legally drive, let alone vote or drink. And while Queen Victoria died 1901, and the British Empire crumbled in the post-Second World War era, Stony Mountain Institution remains. Prisoners have now been locked up behind its bars north of Winnipeg during three separate centuries. In recent years, there has been no shortage of critics from academics and advocates to political figures and former prisoners who have called for the aging facility to be shut down once and for all. TWITTER Robert Bonnefoy - warden of Stony Mountain Penitentiary In the wake of the shuttering of Kingston Penitentiary in 2013 after 178 years, Stony Mountain took on the dubious distinction of being the oldest active federal prison in the country. And if you ask Robert Bonnefoy who, on May 19 celebrated his 12th anniversary of being named Stony Mountain's warden, he'll say he hopes the notorious prison remains open for decades to come. If the precedent set by Kingston Penitentiary holds, he may get his wish. "Stony Mountain Institution is the oldest facility in Canada, but the work that goes on in there is absolutely cutting-edge," Bonnefoy told the Free Press over the phone. "Its vital that it does stay open." Those comments came during a recent exclusive and wide-ranging interview in response to the Free Press investigation, Life and Death Behind Bars, which found that Stony Mountain is not just the oldest active federal prison in Canada, but also the deadliest. In the past 16 months, at least 13 inmates have died at Stony Mountain, including five deaths during the first 93 days of 2021 alone; in the past four years, the Correctional Service of Canada has reported the deaths of at least 23 inmates. The interview was out of the ordinary for CSC, a federal agency that has long been tight-lipped, preferring to communicate with the public through written statements and press releases. Stony Mountain Institution is Canada's oldest federal penitentiary, but also the country's deadliest Click to Expand JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Stony Mountain Penitentiary photographed Monday, April 19, 2021. The federal jail in rural Manitoba is rated as one of the most dangerous in the country. Posted: 7:00 PM Apr. 23, 2021 IT HAS BEEN 59 years since the Canadian state last slipped a noose around the neck of a prisoner, and more than four decades since the gallows were formally abolished in this country, yet death continues to lurk behind the bars of Stony Mountain Institution north of Winnipeg. (factBox)Stony Mountain is not just the oldest active federal prison in Canada it is also the deadliest. Read Full Story "The biggest thing is safety. We want to ensure that we have a safe institution for all our staff, all our offenders. That allows us to provide an environment that is conducive to rehabilitation and reintegration," Bonnefoy said. "That would be my No. 1 priority. There is no more important job than the care and custody of other human beings." But if safety is the main concern for Stony Mountain officials, then the institution is failing, said Justin Piche, a criminologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa, whose research focuses on Canadian imprisonment. "Why have so many people died at Stony Mountain then?" Piche said. "That would be my terse response." Whether by gang violence, suicide or "apparent natural causes" the vague term CSC uses in press releases for medical-related deaths bodies having been piling up at Stony Mountain in recent years with disturbing regularity. Despite the statistics, Bonnefoy is emphatic that prison officials do their best to separate rival gang members referred to as "incompatibles" from one another, while also fighting hard to roll back the rising tide of inmate suicide. "We dont house incompatibles together. A site like Stony Mountain Institution has a certain security threat group or gang profile. If we cant safely integrate an individual, or individuals, into that profile, we wont house them," Bonnefoy said. But according to multiple inside sources including both inmates and guards while that may be official policy, it simply isnt the front-line, day-to-day reality at the prison. There are at least seven major gangs at Stony Mountain, with dozens of smaller outfits that pass through in various numbers. Major gangs include multiple Hells Angels support clubs, such as the Zig Zag Crew and the Redlined. There is also the Indian Posse, the Manitoba Warriors, the Gangster Crips and the B-Side. Gangs with a smaller presence include the African Mafia, TFN, Native Syndicate, United Nations and the Terror Squad, among others. At times, there may be only a few members of these gangs inside the prison, or even none at all. The institution tracks the gangs through security intelligence efforts and by reviewing incident reports colour-coding them as green (compatible), yellow (uncertain) and red (incompatible). Those efforts result in a general guide for placing inmates in particular units. Aside from incompatibility between gangs, there are also personal beefs between inmates that must be considered, which further restricts staff when deciding where a prisoner can be safely housed. Hard time in hell: Inside Stony Click to Expand JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Stony Mountain Penitentiary photographed Monday, April 19, 2021. The federal jail in rural Manitoba is rated as one of the most dangerous in the country. Reporter: Thorpe Posted: 7:00 PM May. 14, 2021 Gangs are in control, inmates are armed and the threat of violence is omnipresent at Stony Mountain Institution. Read Full Story The situation results in a virtual house of cards at Stony Mountain, where one wrong move can have cascading effects that result in violence rippling out into various areas of the prison. "(The warden) may think we dont house incompatibles together, but thats just not the way it works. There are a lot of gangs that are incompatible with each other and they always end up in the same areas," one correctional officer said. "If we dont house incompatibles together, then what is the answer for all of the violence?.... Hes out of touch. I would like him to come in on an evening shift, come spend some time in the prison (outside) Monday to Friday, eight-to-five." As an example, the guard pointed to a recent episode of violence after an individual was transferred from the general population into a "structured intervention unit." In 2019, the federal government abolished the long-term housing of inmates in solitary confinement which has been classified as torture by the United Nations and replaced it with the new SIUs. But independent research from academics such as Anthony Doob, a University of Toronto criminologist, suggest the change was mostly a matter of semantics, and in many cases business has carried on as usual. "They throw him on the range without doing their proper homework. And within no time at all, the guy gets attacked and stabbed by gang members who are living on this structured intervention unit," the guard said. New in-custody death reports reveal nine Manitoba inmates committed suicide by hanging in 2019 and 2020 Click to Expand Stony Mountain Penitentiary (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press files) Posted: 7:00 PM May. 19, 2021 Three annual reports into suicides and homicides behind bars collected dust on the justice minister's desk, leaving Manitobans in the dark to the extent of deaths occurring in the province's correctional facilities. Each year, the chief medical examiner compiles a report on in-custody deaths for the minister by March 31. Within 15 days of receiving it or within 15 days of the start of the next legislative session the justice minister currently Progressive Conservative Cameron Friesen must table it. Read Full Story "It was the Five Star Bloods, one of those protective custody gangs. They attacked him to rob him. They stabbed him Im not sure how many times." Such episodes of violence stabbings or beatings that dont end in death are hardly, if ever, reported to the public. The Free Press investigation has determined that numerous inmate suicides in recent decades were happening in ways that Manitoba judges have long ruled preventable. Dating back to at least 2005, judges have repeatedly recommended in inquest reports that CSC needs to retrofit cells at Stony Mountain to remove easily accessible suspension points that can be used for hanging. John Hutton, the former executive director of the John Howard Society of Manitoba, said his old agency, alongside the Office of the Correctional Investigator the federal prison ombudsman has been calling on CSC to address "hard points" in cells for more than 20 years. Sources inside the prison say nothing has ever been done to address the issue. "Were actively, as a service, trying to review suspension points, and right now, its something thats being taken really seriously. Were developing a strategy so we can eliminate the risk," Bonnefoy said. Piche said he agrees with the wardens "general premise" that its not the age of Stony Mountain that is most important, but what "happens inside of it." But he said that isnt a good reason to "keep Stony Mountain open." "I think Stony Mountain should be closed. But it needs to be a part of a broader restructuring in our society that doesnt just involve replacing Stony Mountain with a new Stony Mountain," he said. "Stony Mountain exists because we havent figured out better ways of relating to each other and organizing our communities. When our imagination goes to die, we have Stony Mountains." While the medium-security wing of the prison was built in 1877, the minimum-security Rockwood Institution, which is located on nearby grounds, was constructed in the 1960s. The maximum-security wing was built in 2014. Piche said the construction of the maximum-security wing, which also saw the minimum-security unit expanded by 100 beds, was part of former prime minister Stephen Harpers $601-million expansion of the Canadian prison system. All told, the construction at Stony Mountain and Rockwood Institution cost $45 million. "Were the only federal male correctional facility in the province. We play a vital role in corrections not only in Manitoba, but in Canada. The work that goes on (here) thats the thing Im most proud of," Bonnefoy said. "We continue to update, to renovate to make changes and to modernize it." Stony Mountain Penitentiary in rural Manitoba is rated as one of the most dangerous federal jails in the country. (John Woods / Winnipeg Free Press files) But when it comes to the old medium-security wing, one correctional officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity said efforts to "modernize" are little more than futile attempts to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. And the archaic design of the medium-security wing, where cells have open bars as opposed to doors, resulted in it being the site of one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 at a federal prison in Canada, with roughly half the inmates testing positive for the deadly virus. "I dont know if maybe hes kept out of the loop, or what, but it is a constant occurrence these days that inmates are getting trapped in their cells. Our cell system is just not working," the guard said. "The inmates are yelling and screaming. Theyre pissed off because they cant get out of their cell. Even a lot of the contractors admit its just a Band-Aid solution and they cant fix it." The guard wonders if itll take a tragedy for something to finally be done. "What if one day there is a fire and Ive got to get a guy out of a cell? How do I explain that if I cant open the door? The inmates bring it up often. They say, What are you going to do if you cant open my door? I just tell them, Well get it open. Well get it open," he said. "But I cant guarantee that." ryan.thorpe@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @rk_thorpe A Winnipeg landlord who rents out low-income housing in the William Whyte neighbourhood says he could leave the area, due to skyrocketing insurance rates. A Winnipeg landlord who rents out low-income housing in the William Whyte neighbourhood says he could leave the area, due to skyrocketing insurance rates. Andy Hein owns three triplexes that rent for the median monthly rate or less. Hein said he struggled to find an insurer willing to cover the properties last year. The rate he eventually did find was far higher than what he paid the year before, he said. "Were looking at selling all of our properties. We cant (keep doing this) on the rent that we receive," said Hein. "We find ourselves going a little bit further in debt every month because of this." The property owner said the combined cost of insurance for his three properties was $3,697 in 2019. Last year, his broker told him at least eight agencies declined to insure the structures, while three offered coverage at a much higher price. Hein said he eventually paid more than $12,000 for annual insurance, providing the Free Press with letters and a past bill that match those figures. He recently sold one of the three buildings, a decision Hein links directly to the insurance cost. A Winnipeg insurance broker, who did not want his name published, said the risk of fire in some largely inner-city areas is driving up the costs of providing coverage, though individual increases vary widely. Some insurance companies could deplete their reserves and put their own businesses at risk if they keep offering coverage for properties in those areas, he said. One Winnipeg city councillor is now lobbying for a more affordable public insurance option for both residential and business properties to address the issue. Coun. Ross Eadie (Mynarski) said hes concerned multiple property owners facing steep insurance cost hikes could otherwise move out of core neighbourhoods. "Its very hard to find underwriters and, when they do, theyre charging way more money, I guess to minimize their losses There are people who dont even have house insurance in these areas," said Eadie. His motion, which is set for consideration at an executive policy committee meeting next month, calls for council to lobby the province to have Manitoba Public Insurance offer such coverage. Eadie said he feels it would offer a viable solution, since a Crown corporation wouldnt need to guarantee a profit. "Its in the public interest that we deal with this I dont know any other way to solve the problem." MPI spokesperson Brian Smiley said the corporation did insure properties decades ago, but stopped because it lost money doing so. He expects the option still wouldnt be feasible now. "We were in the property insurance business (and) we got out of it due to financial costs It would be not very likely we would give it consideration moving forward," said Smiley. In an emailed statement, a provincial government spokesperson said the change isnt being considered for its Crown corporation. "The legal and legislative framework of MPI is specific to automobile insurance. There are no considerations to change to include other insurance schemes. It is not in MPIs mandate, legal framework, or objectives to include home insurance, which is private in nature and currently has offerings across Canada," the spokesperson wrote. joyanne.pursaga@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @joyanne_pursaga Controversial anti-masker Chris Saccoccia cancelled a scheduled appearance at a Winnipeg protest rally Friday night following news provincial authorities had issued a warrant for his arrest. Controversial anti-masker Chris Saccoccia cancelled a scheduled appearance at a Winnipeg protest rally Friday night following news provincial authorities had issued a warrant for his arrest. "Due to all the arrest warrants out against me and the organizers, I was advised by multiple counsels not to go to Winnipeg today," Sky said in a social media post, adding he and a crew would head to Saskatoon, instead. Saccoccia, who goes by the name "Chris Sky," was one of six people targeted by arrest warrants issued Thursday under the Provincial Offences Act. Winnipeg police would not identify the other five targets, but confirmed one had been arrested. Church of God (Restoration) minister Tobias Tissen, an outspoken opponent of pandemic restrictions and one of several applicants in a court fight challenging limits on church gatherings, took to Twitter on Thursday to say he was wanted for arrest. "Ive just been informed theres a warrant out for me," he tweeted. "Im confident in the Lord!" The arrest warrants, issued by the provinces public safety investigation unit, were in the works for months and not connected to Fridays rally at The Forks, Winnipeg Police Service Insp. Nick Paulet told reporters Friday. "The warrants are stand-alone in relation to previous events," Paulet said. "There is no nexus between the rally tonight and the public safety investigation unit seeking those warrants. This is something that has been ongoing for a lengthy period of time." Saccoccias arrest warrant can only be executed in Manitoba, Paulet said. Paulet declined to detail the specific offences alleged in the six arrest warrants. "The offences dont stem from a particular rally. The offences stem from breaches of the (public) health order, so that could be a variety of things," he said. Paulet said city police and safety unit investigators would monitor Fridays rally, but he dismissed suggestions police should stop it before it starts. "Its not as simple as just going in and dispersing," he said. "That sounds like a simple solution, but the reality of our democracy in Canada and peoples right to gather in combination with a health order that is subject to interpretation its a much more difficult task to do that." Paulet said arrest warrants represent the next level of response after tickets and "attempts to educate" failed to deter people from breaching public health orders. "Theres an obligation on officials to increase their efforts in order to achieve the objective of the act," he said. "A warrant is a higher response than the issuance of a ticket, but it is mirrored by the actions of the individual on the receiving end." Saccoccia was released on $5,000 bail in Ontario last week after being arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot Premier Doug Ford and threatening to kill another man. He was released with the consent of the Crown on conditions he surrender all weapons, not drive a car and have the permission of his Markham, Ont., housemate and surety before spending the night elsewhere. Since his release, Saccoccia has continued to speak at anti-lockdown rallies across Western Canada, including stops in Kamloops, Kelowna and Edmonton. Dr. Jazz Atwal, Manitobas deputy chief public health officer, said protests ignore the reality that people are suffering. "Its potential for (a) super-spreader event. Its a potential to generate cases where, right now, we dont need to generate more cases," Atwal said. dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca BOTH Connor Hellebuyck and Brian Pallister exude public personas of extreme confidence. They are high achievers in their chosen fields and both seem allergic to self-criticism. Its as if theyre committed to the power of positive thinking and dont allow doubts to creep in and throw them off their game. Opinion BOTH Connor Hellebuyck and Brian Pallister exude public personas of extreme confidence. They are high achievers in their chosen fields and both seem allergic to self-criticism. Its as if theyre committed to the power of positive thinking and dont allow doubts to creep in and throw them off their game. Only rarely does the Jets goalie play poorly, but, when he does, sportswriters ask him what went wrong. He invariably replies something like, "I thought I played well," apparently oblivious to the replays that show him letting in soft goals. Jets fans first became aware of Helleybuycks unswerving commitment to confidence during the 2016-17 season after he had been pulled from a start when he let in five goals. "My games the best its ever been and if I continue to play this way, its going to be good enough," he said. "If I stick with that game, Im going to win a Stanley Cup and a Vezina one day." Three years later, as he predicted, he won the Vezina award as the NHLs best goalie. How about his prediction of a Stanley Cup? If he leads the Jets deep into the playoffs, no one will criticize him for thinking too highly of himself. Like Hellebuyck, Pallister seems to have blind faith in his own performance. Unfortunately for Manitobans, his self-confidence hasnt resulted in a winning leadership record during a pandemic. Manitoba suffered a bleak week as our medical facilities were overwhelmed to the point where some Manitobans who need critical care are being flown to other jurisdictions, and other Manitobans who need non-COVID treatment are being neglected. Please think about the seriousness of this. During this pandemic, Manitoba is the only province that has sunk to the point where were incapable of caring for our own. Senior physicians and medical school professors said the plight could have been avoided if the Pallister government listened to the experts and brought in strict public health measures last month. Pallisters response? Theres nothing wrong with his game. Instead, he blamed others. He blamed Manitobans who are in critical condition for not getting immunized, even though some got sick before they were eligible for vaccinations. He often blames the public for not following lockdown restrictions. He has previously blamed Ottawa for tardy shipments of vaccines even though Manitoba often has more vaccine supply than it is using. While many of us are disappointed in how Pallister plays the blame game instead of working collaboratively with other Manitoba leaders, perhaps we shouldnt be surprised. The leopard hasnt changed its spots. Until the pandemic, most Manitobans thought Pallister was a satisfactory premier. The veteran politician had promised on the 2016 and 2019 campaign trails to fix the soaring deficit allowed by the previous NDP government. Manitoba voters obviously liked what they heard and gave the PCs two healthy majority governments. Pallister was good to his word and was closing the books on a balanced budget just as COVID-19 hit Manitoba in March 2020. He achieved his target with an authoritative governing style, confident to the point of arrogance, combative when criticized. A telling indication of Pallisters style was his regular refusal to meet with people such as union leaders or Winnipegs mayor because they wanted more provincial funding, and Pallisters promise to the voters was to spend less, not more. Had it not been for the infernal virus, Pallister would have retired as a success, a premier who said what he would do and then did what he said. Pallister never signed up for a pandemic. Nothing in his long political career prepared him for this. He had the misfortune to be in the big chair when COVID-19 thrust Manitoba into turmoil on many fronts. The qualities that helped him succeed as an economic leader boundless confidence that makes him blind to the advice of others is proving to be a poor skill set for leadership in a pandemic. When Hellebuyck and Pallister express confidence, we dont have to take them at their word. Their performances are publicly measured. When Hellebuyck says his game is good, his claim is verified by scoresheets. When Pallister expresses confidence in his pandemic management, we weigh his claim with statistics that show Manitoba this week had the highest coronavirus infection rate in North America. As the saying goes, its not bragging if you can walk the talk. Hellebuycks confidence is earned. Pallisters confidence in his own leadership is shared by neither the evidence nor the majority of Manitobans. carl.degurse@freepress.mb.ca Carl DeGurse is a member of the Free Press editorial board. RESPIRATORY therapists and ICU nurses are waiting for help, as Manitobas health-care system struggles with increased COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions. RESPIRATORY therapists and ICU nurses are waiting for help, as Manitobas health-care system struggles with increased COVID-19 cases and hospital admissions. A week ago, Premier Brian Pallister announced he was asking the federal government to send critical care nurses and 20 respiratory therapists to assist Manitoba. On Friday, the union representing the specialists who keep ICU patients alive on breathing machines issued a news release, saying theres no word on when any such help may arrive. Meanwhile, nurses whove been without a contract for more than four years say they are overwhelmed and understaffed. News that military nurses and transport teams were to arrive Friday in Manitoba was welcomed by their union. "(However)... nurses are incredibly angry and incredibly frustrated with the lack of preparation, with the lack of planning with the lack of response to the fact that weve been heading into a critical nursing shortage for years with absolutely no acknowledgment by this government that we are in this position," said Manitoba Nurses Union president Darlene Jackson. Winnipeg lost 49 critical care nurse positions during the provinces health-care consolidation between 2019 and 2020, according to a freedom of information request by the NDP. In January 2019, there were 293 critical care nursing positions filled; dropping to 244 in January 2020. When the second wave of COVID-19 hit, officials pulled staff from other departments to fill 285 critical care positions in January 2021. During COVID-19, Manitoba has had to scramble to nearly double its ICU capacity and nursing staff. Its still not enough: highly infectious and hard-hitting variants have put more and younger patients in hospital needing critical care, public health officials have stated. The lack of available critical care has prompted the transfer of 28 ICU patients from Manitoba with COVID-19 to hospitals out of province, as of Friday. The strain of the pandemic has many of the highly-skilled nurses eyeing early retirement or less-demanding positions, said Jackson. Its also why recruitment and retention is a priority in contract talks, she said. Theyve been at the table for more than 25 days since October, and the negotiations are moving slowly, Jackson said. Nurses are included in the Essential Services Act and cant strike, but if contract talks reach an impasse, fed-up nurses are ready to act: "Just give us the word," according to Jackson. Acting health minister Kelvin Goertzen wasnt made available to comment Friday, but a spokesman for the province issued a statement saying: "Government wants all of our dedicated nurses to have the certainty and comfort of a new, long-term collective agreement, as soon as possible." The health-care bargaining unit restructuring process and necessary representation votes did not conclude until the end of 2019, the spokesman said. "Since bargaining actually became possible, the representative health authority and MNU have been very actively bargaining in good faith, despite the intervening COVID-19 pandemic." carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca WINNIPEG - The Manitoba government and Winnipeg police obtained arrest warrants Friday ahead of a planned protest against COVID-19 restrictions as case counts continued to strain hospitals. Anti-mask activist Chris Saccoccia, right, speaks to protesters at an anti-mask rally in Toronto on Saturday October 31, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn WINNIPEG - The Manitoba government and Winnipeg police obtained arrest warrants Friday ahead of a planned protest against COVID-19 restrictions as case counts continued to strain hospitals. The Winnipeg Police Service said a warrant hadbeen issued for Chris Saccoccia, an Ontario man who has been travelling across Canada to speak at rallies against public health orders. Saccoccia, who also uses the name Chris Sky, was recently charged in Toronto with threatening to shoot a member of the public as well as elected officials. Winnipeg police said they also arrested one other individual for repeated violations of health orders and had five warrants waiting to be executed. "The warrants ... are stand-alone in relation to previous events," Insp. Nick Paulet said. "This has been something that has been ongoing for a lengthy period of time and a lengthy series of investigations." A news release from the provincial government said the warrants were issued "to prevent further offences related to attending, participating and organizing public gatherings throughout the province in violation of public health orders." Saccoccia said in a livestream video that he was cancelling plans to speak at the protest and would avoid Manitoba so that he could remain free to go to a rally in Calgary on the weekend. Police would not name the subjects of the other arrest warrants. Tobias Tissen, pastor at a small church southeast of Winnipeg, has openly defied public health orders and spoken at anti-restriction protests. He posted on social media that he was told an arrest warrant had been issued for him. Dr. Jazz Atwal, deputy chief public health officer, said protests ignore the reality that people are suffering. "It's potential for (a) superspreader event. It's a potential to generate cases where, right now, we don't need to generate more cases," Atwal said. Health officials announced one of the biggest one-day jumps in COVID-19 numbers since the pandemic began. There were 497 new cases and no deaths. Four earlier cases were removed due to data correction for a net increase of 493. Hospital intensive care units continued to be pushed near the limit. More than two dozen patients have been sent to other provinces to free up beds. Under current public health orders, public gatherings are not permitted, indoors or out. The province is also dealing with a delay in supplies of the Moderna vaccine. The holdup will push back Manitoba's goal to have 70 per cent of people 12 and older vaccinated to the end of June. The original target was June 9. Premier Brian Pallister said he is still aiming to have provinces get vaccines directly from states south of the border. He said the premiers asked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a conference call Thursday to press United States President Joe Biden on the issue. Trudeau was noncommittal, Pallister said. The U.S., which has a surplus of vaccines in many areas, has sent doses to Canada on a country-to-country basis. The idea of direct state-to-province shipments was first raised earlier this month by premiers and governors in Atlantic Canada, Quebec and the U.S. Pallister is planning to announce incentives next week to encourage more Manitobans to get vaccinated. The province has floated several possibilities in an online survey, including grocery vouchers, free admission to sporting events and financial incentives of up to $100. "We need to encourage those that are kind of sitting on the fence, saying, 'I want to wait a few months just to be sure,' to step forward and get that vaccine as soon as possible," the premier said in an interview. "This idea about herd immunity (is) very, very hard to achieve when we don't have hundreds of thousands of people vaccinated at all." This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2021. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} After it closed last year, Gander said he missed the camaraderie. He and a group of other veterans started meeting for weekly outdoor get-togethers at Haskins Park in West Baraboo, usually numbering between five and 10, bringing their own coffee and junk food, they said. They continued through last summer and fall and picked it up again this spring when the weather warmed up. On May 21, they were back, sitting around tables in Festival Foods, a decorative American flag hanging above an unlit fireplace. Roughly 10 veterans visited with each other, their faces uncovered and most of them saying they had been vaccinated against COVID-19. Most said theyd been coming to the cafe regularly for about three years. It felt great to be back, said Jim Kremsreiter, an Air Force veteran. Others noted the loss of a year and several friends over that time. Prior to the pandemic, roughly 40 veterans would come to the cafe every week, according to Grossenbacher. It originally opened when Festival Foods took over the Baraboo store in 2017. Jack Meegan, who served six years in the Army, thanked Festival for showing appreciation to current and former service members. Air Force veteran John Meitmer said such recognition is relatively new. Its a great program. Were super thankful, she said. You know, when we talk to other districts, we obviously have an advantage having a campus right here in town for our kids to take advantage of, so we promote it pretty heavily because it is a great opportunity, especially for our seniors who have room in their schedules to be able to do it. Efforts to engage Michael Compton, UW-Baraboos interim dean, said recently the universitys academic outreach director has been holding listening sessions with school districts near its branch campuses, including Sauk Prairie, Baraboo and Ithaca. Part of the goal is to inform schools about dual-credit opportunities, because UW-Platteville will be expanding them, he said, but added that Platteville officials have learned a lot from the sessions, too. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Probably the most common message is, Its nice to hear from you. We havent heard from you in a while, and so its good to start to reinvigorate these relationships that we have, Compton told the UW-Baraboo Campus Commission on May 20. Mark Born, co-chair of the Joint Finance Committee, and other Republican Legislators denied 90,000 Wisconsin citizens health care by refusing to accept $1.6 billion in one-time federal aid over the next two years, which would be used to expand Medicaid. Born has taken the position that denying 90,000 Wisconsin citizens health care through Medicaid expansion is welfare. For context, 39 states have agreed to receive this money for obvious reasons, including many red states. Born and the Republican Legislators decided that 90,000 poor people in Wisconsin, who make between $12,880-$17,774 a year, should not have access to health care. This decision will cause people who need health care not to seek it, to get sick, and to die. It will also cause others who do seek health care to go bankrupt. If Borns decision to deny 90,000 people health care seems inexplicable to you, trust your instincts, it is. If Borns decision seems cruel and immoral, again, trust your instincts, it is. Born, this is not a policy decision, its a morality decision. Do the right thing, do the obvious thing, do the moral thing and accept the federal aid to expand Medicaid in Wisconsin. Kathie Berkvam, Beaver Dam Epic Systems Corp. employees will be required to work at the Verona headquarters, not remotely, at least part-time starting July 19 a transition by one of the Madison areas largest employers as the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs that follows complaints from some workers over the companys attempted back-to-work mandate last August. The electronic medical records company plans to resume its annual Users Group Meeting in person Aug. 23-25 for fully vaccinated attendees. Traditionally bringing in about 8,000 visitors, the event will be the first big meeting to be held at the campus since August 2019, as conferences have been conducted online because of COVID-19 restrictions. The companys new back-to-work plan, which was shared with employees Friday morning, will require workers to return to the office at least three days a week starting July 19, said Kristen Dresen, a member of Epics administration team. The U.S. Department of Education on Friday warned Wisconsin that Republicans proposed $350 million for the states rainy day fund wont help qualify it for $1.5 billion in federal stimulus funds for education the GOP budget already puts the state at risk of losing out on. Republican members of the Legislatures budget committee on Thursday voted to advance a K-12 education plan that would fund just 10%, or $128 million, of the $1.6 billion sought by Democratic Gov. Tony Evers. They also voted to put $350 million into the states budget stabilization fund to maintain education funding stability in the future, although that fund can be tapped for any purpose so theres no guarantee those dollars would end up going to schools. The GOP co-chairs of the budget committee said the warning so far changes nothing in their budget proposal. The $128 million increase alone likely isnt enough for the state to qualify for all of the $1.5 billion in education funding included in the latest federal coronavirus relief package. International AP Many in US have shots, will travel (copy) (copy) LM OTERO, ASSOCIATED PRESS A traveler is processed at a security checkpoint at Love Field airport Friday in Dallas. MATT SLOCUM, ASSOCIATED PRESS Holiday traffic travels on Interstate 476 ahead of the Memorial Day weekend Friday in Springfield, Pa. LM OTERO, ASSOCIATED PRESS Traveling with their grandmother and mothers, Karter Morrow, 2, stands with his cousin Gracie Jones, 3, as as they wait to check in for their flight to Long Beach from Love Field airport Friday in Dallas. According to the kids grandmother, this is their first trip since the pandemic began over a year ago. Americans hit the road in near-record numbers at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, as their eagerness to break free from coronavirus confinement overcame higher prices for flights, gasoline and hotels. More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports Thursday, and the daily number was widely expected to cross 2 million at least once over the long holiday weekend, which would be the highest mark since early March 2020. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned people to expect long lines at airports and appealed for travelers to be patient. The rise in travel appears to be fueled by an increase in COVID-19 vaccinations as well as an improving economy. The U.S. Commerce Department said consumer spending increased in April, although not as much as in March, showing how consumers are driving a recovery from last years pandemic recession. At Miami International Airport, officials expected crowds equal to pre-pandemic levels. It was a similar story in Orlando, where airport traffic has reached 90% of 2019 levels as tourists flocked to theme parks that have recently loosened restrictions. Along the Florida coasts and around Orlando, many hotels were booked solid through the weekend. We are going into off-season, and it has not slowed down, said Cathy Balestriere, general manager of Cranes Beach House, a boutique hotel in Delray Beach, Florida. Vacation destinations like Las Vegas, Hawaii and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, were among the top destinations for holiday revelers, according to AAA. Paula Twidale, a spokeswoman for the auto club and insurer, said the pickup in travel began in April as more Americans got vaccinated and the weather improved. People are just excited to get out, she said. Memorial Day coincides with some states eliminating their remaining pandemic restrictions as the number of new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths decline. Virginia, where President Joe Biden traveled to tout his administrations efforts to contain the virus, is easing all distancing and capacity restrictions Friday. A mask mandate in Massachusetts ends Saturday. AAA expects a 60% jump in travel over the 2020 Memorial Day weekend, with 37 million Americans traveling at least 50 miles from home, most of them in cars. Thats despite gasoline prices being at their highest levels in seven years: The national average is above $3 a gallon for regular. Prices for rental cars are up sharply, too if you can find one after companies culled their fleets to survive last years deep slump in travel. My mother-in-law called me on a vacation and said, Hey, can you get me a rental car? I said, No, said Jordan Staab, president of SmarterTravel Media. Demand is up 500% since January, and its tough to get a rental car right now, so plan ahead as much as you possibly can. Hotels and other lodging in beach and mountain areas are expecting bigger crowds than those in cities. Lou Carrier, the president of Distinctive Hospitality Group, said the companys two hotels in tourist towns in Connecticut have seen a jump in bookings since the state loosened its mask requirements two weeks ago, but occupancy is still only around 20% at its three hotels in Boston. Hotel room rates nationally jumped 9% in April after an 8% rise in March, and airfares soared 10% in April, according to the latest available figures from the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, Kids at summer camps can skip wearing masks outdoors, with some exceptions, federal health officials said Friday. Children who arent fully vaccinated should still wear masks outside when theyre in crowds or in sustained close contact with others and when they are inside, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Fully vaccinated kids need not wear masks indoors or outside, the agency said. The guidelines open the door to a more conventional camp experience and came out in the nick of time, just before camps start opening in some parts of the country, said Tom Rosenberg, president of the American Camp Association. The guidance is the first in a wave of updates that will incorporate the CDCs recent decisions on masks and social distancing. Earlier this month, the agency said Americans dont have to be as cautious about masks and distancing outdoors, and that fully vaccinated people dont need masks in most situations. Previously, the CDC advised that just about all people at camps should wear masks with only a few exceptions, like while they are eating, drinking or swimming. In other developments: The hackers behind one of the worst data breaches ever to hit the US government have launched a new global cyberattack on more than 150 government agencies, think tanks and other organizations, according to Microsoft. The group, which Microsoft calls "Nobelium," targeted 3,000 email accounts at various organizations this week most of which were in the United States, the company said in a blog post Thursday. It believes the hackers are part of the same Russian group behind last year's devastating attack on SolarWinds a software vendor that targeted at least nine US federal agencies and 100 companies. Cybersecurity has been a major focus for the US government following the revelations that hackers had put malicious code into a tool published by SolarWinds. A ransomware attack that shut down one of America's most important pieces of energy infrastructure the Colonial Pipeline earlier this month has only heightened the sense of alarm. That attack was carried out by a criminal group originating in Russia, according to the FBI. Microsoft said that at least a quarter of the targets of this week's attacks were involved in international development, humanitarian, and human rights work, across at least 24 countries. It said Nobelium launched the attack by gaining access to a Constant Contact email marketing account used by the US Agency for International Development (USAID). "These attacks appear to be a continuation of multiple efforts by Nobelium to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts," the company said. According to Microsoft, the latest campaign began in late January and was discovered in February. The hackers honed their techniques throughout March, April and early May before "significantly" escalating their attacks on May 25, when they used Constant Contact to "target around 3,000 individual accounts across more than 150 organizations." The hackers custom-tailored their attacks to each target, in an apparent effort to reduce the chances of being detected. USAID acting spokesperson Pooja Jhunjhunwala said Friday that the agency was aware of "potentially malicious email activity" from a compromised Constant Contact marketing account. A forensic investigation into the incident is ongoing, added Jhunjhunwala. The White House's National Security Council and the US Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) are both aware of the incident, according to spokespeople. CISA is "working with the FBI and USAID to better understand the extent of the compromise and assist potential victims," a spokesperson said. By gaining access to USAID's account, the hackers were able to send out phishing emails that Microsoft said "looked authentic but included a link that, when clicked, inserted a malicious file" that allowed the hackers to access computers through a backdoor. "This backdoor could enable a wide range of activities from stealing data to infecting other computers on a network," Microsoft said. One of the fake emails that appeared to originate from USAID included an authentic sender address. The email posed as a "special alert" that invited recipients to click on a link to "view documents" from former President Donald Trump on election fraud. Microsoft said that many of the attacks were blocked automatically. The company is notifying customers who were targeted, and said it has "no reason to believe these attacks involve any exploit against or vulnerability in Microsoft's products or services." A spokesperson for Constant Contact said the company is "aware that the account credentials of one of our customers were compromised," describing it as an "isolated" incident. "We have temporarily disabled the impacted accounts while we work in cooperation with our customer, who is working with law enforcement," the spokesperson added. At the time of the SolarWinds hack, US intelligence and law enforcement agencies said the group responsible "likely originated in Russia," adding that the attack was believed to be an act of espionage. Microsoft reiterated those suspected motivations in its Thursday blog post, saying that "when coupled with the attack on SolarWinds, it's clear that part of Nobelium's playbook is to gain access to trusted technology providers and infect their customers." "By piggybacking on software updates and now mass email providers, Nobelium increases the chances of collateral damage in espionage operations and undermines trust in the technology ecosystem," the company said. The fake USAID emails were not the only ways that the hackers sought to compromise their targets in the campaign, according to Mandiant, a cybersecurity firm that had also been tracking the same suspected Russian activity. The attackers "leveraged a variety of lures, including diplomatic notes and invitations from embassies," said John Hultquist, VP of analysis at Mandiant Threat Intelligence. "All of these operations have focused on government, think tanks, and related organizations that are traditionally targeted by [Russian foreign intelligence] operations." The latest disclosure shows how Russia has been undeterred by recent US efforts to hold the Kremlin accountable and bolster cybersecurity following the SolarWinds campaign, said James Lewis, a cybersecurity expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "The Russians have a campaign plan for massive attacks against US targets, for which they have no incentive to stop," Lewis said. "They aren't afraid of the US response. They are testing the new administration." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Friday refused to comment on the specifics of Microsoft's allegations. "To answer your question we first need to answer the following: which groups? Why are they linked to Russia? Who attacked what? What did this lead to? What was the attack itself? And how does Microsoft know about it? If all of these questions are answered, we can think about the response [to your question]," Peskov told CNN in a conference call with journalists. He added that he didn't think the allegations would affect the upcoming summit between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Anna Chernova, Zahra Ullah, Jennifer Hansler, Brian Fung and Alex Marquardt contributed to this article. Airplane seat designers have long been dreaming up innovative economy cabin concepts, looking for the ideal balance between squeezing in as many passengers in as possible, and keeping the experience relatively enjoyable for fliers. And while the stand-up airplane seats that have been floating around for the past few years have yet to see the light of day, and the airplane seat overhaul that looked to be on the horizon last year in the wake of the pandemic never quite materialized, there are still many designers working to revolutionize the airplane cabin. Always keeping an eye on the latest updates and innovations is the Crystal Cabin Awards, known for spotlighting the newest trends in airplane interiors. After the pandemic delayed the announcement of the 2020 award winners, this year the Crystal Cabin Awards has shrunk down its usual eight categories to two key awards that recognize where aviation is right now: the Judges' Choice category and Clean and Safe Air Travel award. From stretching out your legs on the bottom section of a multi-level economy seat cabin to curling up in a compartment built into the overheard locker, the nominees offer a glimpse into the potential future of flying. Dual level cabin One of the most intriguing concepts on the Judges' Choice shortlist is the Chaise Longue Economy Seat Project, which envisages a dual-level seat cabin, with each row alternating between on-floor seating, and seats elevated a few meters above ground. The design is credited to 21-year-old student Alejandro Nunez Vicente who hails from Spain but studies at TU Delft University in the Netherlands. Nunez Vicente tells CNN Travel that his experiences traveling across Europe in economy partly inspired the idea. Fed up with a lack of leg room, he realized elevating the seat row in front would solve the issue. His design eradicates the overhead luggage compartment, allowing for more space in the cabin for higher level seats. Instead, luggage is stored in compartments under the seat. Nunez Vicente reckons this design would work well in the Flying-V airplane, which is currently in development at TU Delft, but he says it could also be implemented in a Boeing 747, Airbus A330 or any other medium to large airplane. Nunez Vicente says he took ideas already being discussed by the team working on the Flying-V project and brought his own vision to the table. The goal was to create a multi-level cabin experience that offered something appealing for travelers seated on both levels. 'The lower row has the advantage of passengers having the lounge experience of a couch by stretching the legs, whilst the upper row provides an SUV experience, making it possible for instance to cross the legs due to the increased leg room and overall living space,' says Nunez Vicente. The seat design also offers more recline angles, and an adjustable back-rest and deployable neck-rest, to offer further comfort. 'The current economy class is often limited to a single or slightly reclined position that impedes the user from having a comfortable and relaxing flight experience,' says Nunez Vicente. The concept was already in the works pre-pandemic, but Nunez Vicente thinks the design lends itself to the current climate. 'As it gives more space between passengers, and positions them at different heights, it is more suitable for flights in pandemic times,' he says. Plus, the seat pieces are designed to be easily movable, allowing a commercial aircraft to be converted into cargo use. Nunez Vicente is now working to bring the design to life in partnership with his TU Delft professors, Dr. Peter Vink and Dr. Wolf Song. The next step is designing testable prototypes. 'At the moment, this is an internal student-led university project which still hasn't been formally presented to airlines. However, some companies in the aerospace sector have already shown interest in the Chaise Longue Economy Seat project, presenting possible chances for future collaborations,' says Nunez Vicente. Up in the clouds The Chaise Longue isn't the only design offering a double-decker seating configuration that's been recognized by this year's Crystal Cabin Awards. Also on the Judges' Choice shortlist is Toyota Boshoku's CLOUD CAPSULE concept, which imagines the area above the economy seat as an additional space for passengers to retreat to once the airplane reaches cruising altitude. According to a statement from the Japanese company, the design should 'make economy class travel safer, more enjoyable and more comfortable, while creating more revenue opportunities for the airlines.' The idea is passengers could buy a regular economy seat ticket, and then, as an add-on, purchase access to CLOUD CAPSULE, which Toyota Boshoku calls 'a multi-purpose room that matches the experience of a business class seat.' The capsule, which offers unexpected privacy in the crowded economy cabin, could also have its own heating and cooling settings. Another Judges' Choice nominee looking to reimagine economy -- although not by adding another level to the cabin -- is Interspace, a seat design idea from Universal Movement, a spin-off from London-based design company New Territory. The seat aims to make it easier for passengers to sleep in economy, using padded wings that fold out from behind both sides of the seat back -- allowing both for additional privacy and a cushioned spot to rest your head. CNN Travel tested out the seat when it premiered at the Aircraft Cabin Innovation summit in December 2019, commenting on the privacy and the comfort it offers. Universal Movement are now working with Safran Seats to make the concept a reality. The design caught the eye of the 27 Crystal Cabin Awards judges because it could be retrofitted to an existing airplane cabin. The Clean and Safe Air Travel category, meanwhile, recognizes designs including the UV Disinfection Wand from Boeing, which worked in collaboration with companies including Etihad Airways, to dream up a 'portable magic wand' that could clean an airplane cabin. Trendsetting concepts Crystal Cabin Awards representative Lukas Kaestner tells CNN Travel that over the past few years, the awards body has seen more and more innovative economy seat designs. 'Of course, the likelihood of, say, double-decker seats and capsules really taking flight in the next years is still slim,' says Kaestner. 'But we shouldn't underestimate the trend- and agenda-setting ability of such concepts for aviation as an industry.' The full list of this year's Crystal Cabin Awards nominees can be viewed here, with winners expected to be announced at this year's Aircraft Interiors Expo, which will take place virtually in September 2021. SYLVAN BEACH, N.Y. -- Oneida County Sheriff Rob Maciol confirms there is a search underway for a possible boat in distress on Oneida Lake. The call came into the Buffalo Coast Guard at 8:26 p.m. for a sinking boat but did not indicate a location on the lake. Oneida County Sheriff's, multiple water rescue crews, Coast Guard and other Sheriff's offices are involved in the search. The Buffalo Coast Guard is sent a helicopter to aid in the search. We're told that the helicopter arrived around 10:30 p.m. due to the poor weather conditions. Sylvan Beach Fire Chief Rick Johnson said they are trying to pinpoint the last location of the phone. NEWSChannel 2 will update this story with new information as soon as it becomes available. Weather Alert ...HEAT INDEX READINGS FROM 100 TO 105 EXPECTED TODAY... Air temperatures this afternoon are expected to reach the lower to mid 90s once again at most locations. This, combined with very steamy humidity levels, could push heat index values up into the 100 to 105 range at many locations. In addition, the high heat indices could last for several hours during the day. Those with outdoor plans should take along plenty of water or non alcoholic beverages to keep hydrated. Take frequent breaks from activities and try to seek shade when possible. Also, make sure outdoor pets have plenty of fresh water. NEVER LEAVE KIDS OR PETS UNATTENDED IN VEHICLES. LOOK BEFORE YOU LOCK!! On Friday, the Biden administration released its budget proposal for fiscal year 2022, which begins on October 1 of this year. At its center is the call for a record military budget of $753 billion, including a massive allocation of $24.7 billion for nuclear weapons modernization, a major expansion of US air and nuclear-capable naval forces, and the largest ever request for research and development$112 billion. The budget proposal is openly directed against China, in the first instance, followed by Russia, Iran and North Korea. Coming in the midst of the orchestrated revival of the scientifically baseless Wuhan lab conspiracy theory on the origins of the coronavirus by the Biden administration and the entire political and media establishment, aimed at creating a casus belli for war with China, the Pentagon budget is a stark warning to the American and international working class. US imperialism is seeking to extricate itself from its intractable global and domestic contradictions by preparing for military conflict against what it deems to be its most dangerous rival. President Joe Biden speaks at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton, Va., Friday, May 28, 2021. (AP Photo/Patrick Semansky) Since coming to office four months ago, Biden has stepped up the drumbeat of anti-China propaganda and military provocation against Beijing initiated by the Obama administration and escalated by Trump. He has gone further than any previous president in undermining the One China policy and related policy of strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan inaugurated under the Carter administration in 1978. He has opened discussions with Taiwan, Japan and South Korea on stationing offensive missiles on their territory directed against the Chinese mainland, a move that China has warned it would consider an act of war. The budget released yesterday allocates $5.4 billion toward the development of these plans, under the rubric of the Pacific Deterrence Initiative. The Biden administration and media outlets aligned with the Democratic Party are presenting the $6 trillion budget proposal as a turn toward liberal social reform, with total discretionary spending for fiscal year 2022 of $1.52 trillion. However, in the midst of an ongoing pandemic and social devastation for tens of millions of workers, the war budget accounts for half of the discretionary spending, and even the "domestic" half is geared to rebuilding Americas crumbling infrastructure and insourcing production of hi-tech components critical to a future war against a rising power such as China. The actual social reforms are at best half-measures that do not challenge the ever-rising fortunes or economic domination of the financial oligarchs. The budget announcement released Friday by the Defense Department bristles with anti-Chinese militarism. It begins with a statement by Bidens secretary of defense, Retired Gen. Lloyd Austin, which declares: The budget provides us the mix of capabilities we need most and stays true to our focus on the pacing challenge from the Peoples Republic of China, combating the damaging effects of climate change on our military installations, and modernizing our capabilities to meet the advanced threats of tomorrow. In testimony Thursday before the House Appropriations Committee Defense Subcommittee, Secretary of Defense Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made chilling remarks on the need for the US to upgrade and modernize its military to prepare for war against its strategic competitors, first and foremost, China. Austin declared: We must maintain and improve this advantage on land, at sea, in the air, and in emerging domains, including space and cyberspace. I am confident that the Presidents budget request helps us do that. The request is driven by our recognition that our competitorsespecially Chinacontinue to advance their capabilities. We must outpace those advances to remain a credible deterrent to conflict around the world. Austin stressed that the US military had to modernize its forces in line with technological advances in order to maintain the rules-based world order that we have helped foster for the past seven decades, (i.e., the rules determined by US imperialism after World War II). Expressing the increasingly desperate position of the US ruling class after decades of economic decline and financial parasitism, he warned: China has invested heavily in new technologies, with a stated intent to complete the modernization of its forces by 2035 and to field a world-class military by 2049. Russia has shown that it is not afraid to target the United States in contested domains like cyberspace and still shows a continued interest in regional hegemony. Iran continues to advance its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and to support destabilizing proxy groups in the Middle East in an effort to threaten its regional neighbors. We also face challenges from North Korea, a country with the ambition to be capable of striking the U.S. homeland. On the topic of regional challenges, Austin began with China and the Indo-Pacific region (focusing on North Korea and Iran), then moved to Europe (targeting Russia), the Western Hemisphere (alluding to Chinas growing economic influence in Latin America), and the US mainland. In that connection he noted positively the continued deployment of troops on the US-Mexico border and their role in imprisoning migrant children. He touched on virtually every inch of the global landmass as places that must be defended by the US military, including the Arctic. The remit also includes US military domination of outer space and cyberspace. Austin concluded by presenting as part of the necessary preparation for military conflict against strategic competitors the Biden Defense Departments efforts to root out sexual harassers and extremist elements and boasted of his guidance aimed at removing barriers to transgender people in the military. This reflects both serious concerns within the military brass over the potentially disruptive impact of far-right elements under pre-war conditions and the political need to offer a sop to the upper-middle class identity-obsessed constituency within the Democratic Party. Milley was, if anything, even more blunt in his remarks to the committee. China, he said, is our #1 geostrategic security challengeChina is challenging the peaceful status quo in the Pacific, and is intent on revising the global international order by mid-century. China is conducting large-scale exercises in the region with an emphasis on amphibious landing, joint fires, and maritime strike scenarios. These actions threaten our allies and partners autonomy, jeopardize freedom of navigation, overflight and other lawful uses of the sea, and compromise regional peace and stability. In short, China has and continues to develop significant nuclear, space, cyber, land, air, and maritime military capabilities. Milley stressed the vast changes in warfare since the end of World War II, stressing the need for the US military to intervene with massive forces far more quickly than in the past. The United States as a nation has always had the advantage and time to conduct a long build up prior to the beginning of hostilities. The operating environment of the future will likely not afford us the luxury of time to project force so having modernized forces in sufficient size and readiness will be the key to sustaining deterrence and maintaining the peace and if deterrence fails then fight and win, he stated. He concluded by blustering that the United States Joint Force is a flexible and adaptable force ready to deter, fight, and win our Nations wars. The PB22 budget request increases the readiness of the force by developing the Joint Force of the future Many enemies have grossly underestimated the United States and the American people in the past. Theyve underestimated our national resolve. Theyve underestimated our capability, our skill and our combat power, and each made a fatal choice which ended with their enrollment in the dustbin of history. New or expanded weapons systems listed in the Pentagon budget announcement include: B-21 Long Range Strike Bomber$3 billion Columbia Class Ballistic Missile Submarine$5 billion Long-Range Stand-Off (LRSO) Missile$609 million Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD)$2.6 billion Sea-Based Ballistic Missile Defense System (AEGIS BMD)$1 billion Ground-Based Midcourse (GMD) and Improved Homeland Defense/Next Generation Interceptors (NGI)$1.7 billion 85 F-35 Joint Strike Fighters$12 billion 14 KC-46 Tanker Replacements$2.5 billion 30 AH-64E Apache Attack Helicopters$825 million CVN-78 FORD Class Aircraft Carrier$2.9 billion 2 Virginia Class Submarines$6.9 billion 1 DDG-51 Arleigh Burke Destroyer$2.4 billion To partly offset the increased spending and shift the strategic orientation to more hi-tech weapons and communications systems, the budget calls for certain cuts in existing legacy military programs. This will undoubtedly provoke opposition from lawmakers who are on the take from defense contractors in their districts whose profit could be impacted. The immense danger of a war launched by the US against a nuclear-armed rival such as China or Russia can and must be averted by the only social force capable of disarming the imperialist war criminals: the international working class. The same crisis of world capitalism, intensified by the pandemic, that drives imperialism toward the madness of nuclear war also creates the conditions for its progressive resolution by means of world socialist revolution. On Friday, Senate Republicans blocked the establishment of a commission to investigate the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 by a fascist mob instigated by former President Donald Trump. In a 5435 vote, supporters of the bill to establish the commission fell short of the 60 senators needed to overturn a Republican filibuster and bring the measure to the floor for an up-or-down vote. Given that the Democrats control the evenly divided chamber, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to cast the deciding vote in the event of a tie, the bill would have passed even with no Republican support had the filibuster been broken. In the event, six Republicans voted along with all voting Democrats to establish a bipartisan, National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex. The six Republicans were senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Ben Sasse of Nebraska, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio. The defeat of the measure in the Senate was already a foregone conclusion following the passage of the bill by the House of Representatives in a 252 to 175 vote on May 19. The day before the House vote, ex-President Trump issued a statement denouncing the commission and demanding that congressional Republicans put a stop to it. Trump named both House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who had voted against the House measure, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who had said he was undecided, as among the ineffective and weak Republicans. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., walks to the chamber for final votes before the Memorial Day recess, at the Capitol in Washington, Friday, May 28, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite] The next morning, McConnell came out firmly against the commission. He reiterated his opposition two days ago, saying, I do not believe the additional, extraneous commission that Democratic leaders want would uncover crucial new facts or promote healing. Frankly, I do not believe it is even designed to do that. Eleven senators, including Democrats Patty Murray of Washington and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, did not participate in Fridays vote to overturn the Republican filibuster. Speaking from the floor following the Democrats failure to invoke cloture, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer of New York made a characteristically hand-wringing statement: Shame on the Republican Party for trying to sweep the horrors of that day under the rug because they are afraid of Donald Trump. The defeated January 6 commission bill already included major concessions ceded by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to earlier Republican demands, including an equal five-to-five split on the ten-member panel and effective veto power for the Republican appointees over the issuing of subpoenas and the overall operation of the panel. This was despite the fact that the Democrats won the presidential election by a wide margin and controlled both houses of Congress. Moreover, the claim of Democratic congressional leaders and the Biden administration that only a bipartisan panel could carry out an objective investigation and present the American people with a true account of the seizure of the Capitol building by a fascist mob, incited and backed by Trump, for the purpose of blocking congressional certification of the electoral vote and maintaining Trump in power, was absurd on its face. Virtually the whole of the Republican Party and its top leadership in both houses of Congress, including McCarthy and McConnell, were complicit in the conspiracy to overturn the election. They sought to legitimize Trumps baseless claims of a stolen election and downplayed his repeated refusals to agree to a peaceful transition of power. A bipartisan panel meant a joint investigation with the co-conspirators and accomplices to the crime to be investigated. Moreover, once Biden made clear that there would be no consequences for Trumps accomplices within the Republican Party as well as the military, police and intelligence establishmentby repeatedly pleading for unity and declaring his commitment to a strong Republican PartyMcConnell and company lined up in defense of the former president and his openly fascistic allies both within and outside the Republican Party. This has enabled Trump to emerge as the de facto leader of a party that is increasingly assuming a fascistic character. The model cited by the Democrats and anti-Trump Republicans for a bipartisan investigation into the January 6 insurrection is the 9/11 Commission. As explained here on the World Socialist Web Site on May 20, holding up as a model the bipartisan commission that delivered the official narrative of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 exposes the fact that the neither party intends to present the truth about the violent coup attempt that came within seconds of succeeding on January 6. The 9/11 Commission was an official coverup of the connections between American intelligence and the Al Qaeda hijackers, who were known to the CIA and FBI but were permitted to enter the US, train as pilots, coordinate their terrorist assault, hijack four jetliners and turn them into flying bombs, resulting in the death of 2,977 people. That terror attack was then utilized by the ruling class as a casus belli to implement a previously developed plan for neo-colonial wars to seize control of oil-rich Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries, in the name of the war on terror. In promoting their failed January 6 commission proposal, the Democrats repeatedly sought to attack the Republicans from the right, denouncing them for failing to defend the US Capitol police who were attacked, wounded and in some cases killed by Trumps fascist insurrectionists. Prominent Democratic House members also attacked the Republicans for dividing the nation instead of uniting against China. The feckless and two-faced position of the Democrats is rooted in the fact that the Democratic Party is a party of the American corporate-financial oligarchy. As Bidens rush to reopen the economy and the schools, putting corporate profits before the health and the very lives of the working population, has clearly shown, he is continuing the same homicidal herd immunity policy that was pursued by Trump. This is fueling a growing mood of anger and opposition in the working class. The Democrats are desperate to cover up the reality of January 6 and preserve the political monopoly of two right-wing capitalist parties for fear of an uncontrolled eruption of class struggle that could take a conscious socialist and revolutionary form. Significantly, on Thursday, even as Senate Democrats were appealing to the conscience of their Republican colleagues in relation to the January 6 commission bill, Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, an outright fascist, anti-Semite and QAnon conspiracy adherent, was holding a joint America First rally with fellow far-right Trump acolyte Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida in Greenes home district of Dalton, Georgia. As reported previously here, the charge by Greene that Democratic New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a supporter of terrorism amounts to a death threat aimed at mobilizing the same fascistic forces involved in the January 6 assault against targeted Democrats. At the Dalton, Georgia rally, Greene and Gaetz declared they were waging a civil war within the Republican Party in behalf of Trump. Greene doubled down on her remarks of last week, when she equated the requirement that people wear masks during the pandemic, including in the chamber of the House of Representatives, with the Nazis requirement that Jews wear a gold Star of David to mark them for persecution and death in Hitlers gas chambers. At the Dalton rally, she equated the National Socialist Nazi Party in Germany with what she called the National Socialist Democratic Party in the US. This is precisely the type of incitement used by far-right militia members in 2020 to target Democratic governors in Michigan and Virginia who had imposed social distancing measures to be kidnapped and executed. Those plots proved to be the precursors for the attack on the US Capitol on January 6. In politics there are incidents that reveal a great deal about the mechanisms through which the capitalist parties suppress the class struggle. The violent assault carried out on May 22 by United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) executives against podcasters associated with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) is one such event. During the assault, which took place at a public fundraiser for 1,100 striking Warrior Met coal miners in Brookwood, Alabama, UMWA Region 20 Vice President Larry Spencer (salary= $141,000) and Region 20 Representative James Blankenship (salary=$101,000) made death threats against two podcasters, ignoring their attempts to explain they came to support the strike, which is currently in its third month. Both Spencer and Blankenship are also members of the executive board of the Alabama AFL-CIO. Striking miners (Source: UMWA) Using openly racist language, Blankenship threatened to kill one of the podcasters, who is black, shouting Ill beat your mother f*cking brains out, boy. A video recording of the incident has now been viewed thousands of times. The UMWA leaders attacked the podcasters under the mistaken belief they were members of the Socialist Equality Party and writers for the World Socialist Web Site. On Facebook pages used by workers in the region, striking miners and local residents expressed shame and anger over the thuggery and backwardness of the UMWA leadership. Before the strike, opposition to the UMWA already ran deep among miners as a result of decades of sellout contracts, including a 2016 contract that resulted in a $6 per hour pay cut for miners. In April, the miners voted 1,006 to 45 against a contract promoted by the UMWA. UMWA bureaucrats have been receiving full salaries, and the massive strike fund sits largely untapped while strikers subsist on starvation-wage strike pay. Saturdays incident only deepened workers disdain for the UMWA leaders. One local worker wrote on Facebook, These are the idiots leading them! They ought to be ashamed of how they treated people that were fundraising for them! Get rid of these men and you may get somewhere with your strike. Another denounced the UMWA leadership as arrogant and racist, saying, If this is the UMWA leadership acting like this...... he is a total embarrassment and is not what the union needs as its representative!!!!! A third commenter said, This was Larry Spencer and James Grape Blankenship. The Vice President and District Rep!!!! The FRIGGIN leaders!! Statement by DSA organizer blames striking coal miners for assault Many workers also expressed the fear that the UMWA leaders actions would cause supporters of the strike worldwide to assume it was the workers themselves who were racist, thereby further isolating the strikers and weakening their fight against the company. This is precisely the narrative now being promoted by DSA member Jacob Morrison, who is also North Alabama AFL-CIO Treasury Secretary and recent Programs Director for the Alabama College Democrats. Morrison and the show he hosts, the Valley Labor Report, organized Saturdays fundraiser in consultation with Alabama AFL-CIO President and Democratic Party leader Bren Riley. Following the incident, the Valley Labor Report issued a statement falsifying what took place: Today we became aware through video evidence that yesterday at the rally, a misunderstanding by a handful of UMWA members about the identity of two members of the Montgomery podcast Dixieland of the Proletariat, who had been invited to the rally, quickly spun out into racially charged violent threats made by at least one of the white UMWA members against a Black member of the podcast. The statement continues: We stand completely and irrevocably against white-supremacy and anti-Blackness, period. The language used and threats made in this video are completely unjustifiable, and we urge members of the UMWA locals currently on strike to ensure that this type of ideology is rooted out of their locals and district. It is not a handful of UMWA members who are to blame for Saturdays assault, but top UMWA and AFL-CIO officers who were caught in the act on video. There is no evidence whatsoever that any actual miners were involved in the attack. The attempt to blame strikers for the violence and racism of the AFL-CIO officers is a cynical and dishonest act. It severely undermines the strike and weakens the miners in the eyes of the working class on a national and international scale, playing off the false stereotype that all southern workers are backwards and racist. The aim of the AFL-CIO and UMWA is not only to protect its own leaders from criminal prosecution for assault, battery and criminal threats, but also to use the workers as a scapegoat, inject racial divisions into the strike, demoralize strikers and pave the way for the strikes capitulation to Warrior Met on terms similar to those presented by the UMWA in their first proposed contract. The response of the trade union to Saturdays event confirms that these organizations are totally hostile to the interests of the working class. DSA says criticism of UMWA endangers Black and Brown folks As opposition to the UMWA grows among miners, the DSA works even more intensely to defend the trade unions and justify the suppression of left-wing criticism to the bureaucracy. This task is made complicated by the blatantly racist character of the UMWA thugs assault on a black podcaster. The DSA is dedicated to the promotion of middle class racial and gender politics, and so it must unload the responsibility of this racist attack from its allies in the UMWA leadership, which is filled with fascist types like Spencer and Blankenship. The DSA therefore blames the striking workers and the World Socialist Web Site for the racist actions of the UMWA bureaucrats. Alongside the Valley Labor Report statement falsely blaming white UMWA members for the assault, Nicole Watkins, co-chair of the DSAs chapter in Birmingham, tweeted that the DSA is tired of watching Black and Brown folks in Alabama be endangered by so-called socialists hell-bent on ruining labor organizing in our state, a reference to the WSWS and SEP. Watkins also blamed the WSWS for its role in the harm perpetuated upon Black comrades. The official account of the Birmingham DSA tweeted that the attack was the product of the harm certain anti-union socialists have done. For all the middle classs obsession with identity politics, when their allies in the trade union bureaucracy are exposed as racist thugs, the pseudo-left covers for the culprits. By blaming the WSWS and Socialist Equality Party for what took place, the DSA argues that the WSWS deserves to be attacked because it publishes exposures of the bureaucracy. It thereby accepts the premise that the bureaucracy has the right to use violence to intimidate and silence working class opposition. One leader of the Birmingham DSA retweeted a post by Joshua Armstead, DSA member and Vice President of UNITE HERE Local 23, which reads, It is a shame that this happened, is a result of WSWS f*cking around and agitating workers on the strike line, on pickets and in print. In other words, militant workers who agitate against the bureaucracy deserve to be beatenor worseif they criticize the bureaucracy to fellow workers on the picket line or on social media. This tweet was also liked by several DSA members and the Twitter account of Morrisons Valley Labor Report. The DSA supports the trade union executives not despite their anti-democratic behavior, but because of it. The UMWA and DSA are lashing out because the World Socialist Web Site has been conducting regular work among the miners, providing workers with information and details of the sellout the UMWA attempted to force through. These exposures contributed to a massive rejection of the contract by a vote of 1006 to 45. In the course of the strike, the WSWS has won a substantial following among miners. WSWS articles have been read by tens of thousands of people, including many thousands in the towns populated by striking miners and their families. The fascist gangsters were provoked by the wide readership of WSWS articles supporting workers and opposing the betrayals by the UMWA. The DSA-associated Jacobin magazine has published only one article on the Warrior Met strike, an article authored by Morrison which presents the Republicans as the sole enemies of striking workers. The WSWSs readership among miners is doubtless an order of magnitude higher than any publication associated with the DSA, which is oriented entirely to the middle class. The DSA leaders blaming the WSWS for Saturdays incident have no experience in the social struggles of the working class. Violence in the labor movement The history of the mineworkers over the last half century is one of desperate struggle by miners against the leadership of the UMWA. The UMWA bureaucracy has used violence to suppress any effort to reform the organization since its degeneration in the later years of John L. Lewiss tenure as president. In 1969, UMWA President Tony Boyle, Lewiss hand-picked successor, murdered reform leader Joseph Jock Yablonski in the most horrific way, breaking into his home and also killing his wife and 25-year-old daughter. The murder came in the midst of a years-long fight by the bureaucracy to suppress opposition to the increasingly conservative business unionism of the UMWA leadership. Boyle was an autocrat who ran the union on behalf of the mine owners and allowed workers grievances to wither on the vine. Wildcat strikes of UMWA locals grew increasingly common throughout the 1960s. To crush this opposition, Boyle ended elections for district presidents and granted himself the power of appointment. In 1969, Yablonski challenged Boyle for UMWA president, pledging democracy for miners and an end to the pro-management orientation of the Boyle machine. Boyle used a combination of fraud and violence to defeat Yablonski, and on December 31, 1969, thugs paid by Boyle killed Yablonski and his family in their home. Within hours of the discovery of Yablonskis body, tens of thousands of miners began walking off the job in a massive strike in protest of the Boyle leadership. In the aftermath of overwhelming miner opposition to Boyles involvement in the crime, the Miners for Democracy reform caucus emerged and its candidate, Arnold Miller, defeated Boyle for UMWA president in 1972. In the years that followed, the Democratic Party was engaged in a constant fight to control Miners for Democracy and suppress the class struggle. Nevertheless, the 1970s were a period of ongoing and intensive social struggle among miners as frustration grew among workers over the slow pace of democratization promised by the Miners for Democracy leadership. The miners were the forefront of a wave of labor struggles taking place across the United States and internationally. The Bulletin, the newspaper predecessor of the World Socialist Web Site, actively covered and intervened in all of the militant miners strikes of the 1970s. A strike took place in 1973-74 among miners at the Brookside Mine in Harlan County, Kentucky, followed by a national strike by miners later that year. In 1974, UMWA District 20 President Sam Littlefield, a leader of the reform wing of the union, was shot and killed under suspicious circumstances in a Holiday Inn in Washington D.C. in what many believed was a hit by the UMWA leadership. In order to win re-election as UMWA president in 1977, Arnold Miller was forced to support the demand that a right to strike over local grievances be introduced into the 1977 national coal wage agreement, the national contract that bound all miners employed by companies in the Bituminous Coal Operators Association. In 1977-78, miners launched a 110-day strike that paralyzed the coal operators. Then-President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, invoked the Taft-Hartley Act and attempted to use a federal court injunction to force the miners back to work. Miners defied this order and rendered it unenforceable. In March 1978, the UMWA leadership ordered and carried out a brutal attack against members of the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, leading to the hospitalization of Bulletin reporters. News of the assault rapidly spread through the mines and caused shock and outrage among striking miners. In 1981, the incoming administration led by Ronald Reagan decided to avoid a direct confrontation with the miners during a 72-day strike involving 160,000 miners, fearing they were too militant and would stifle plans for a national union-busting effort. That same year, Richard Trumka was brought into UMWA leadership. In 1982, he became president of the union, and launched a ruthless campaign to break the back of rank-and-file miners opposition. Control over locals was reasserted through violence, victimization and strikebreaking. The tradition of no contract, no work whereby miners would strike nationally in solidarity with local strikes, was ended and replaced with selective strikes. The UMWA forcibly attempted to put an end to wildcats. The efforts to reform the unions were unsuccessful as workers confronted an entrenched bureaucracy, allied with the state and the Democratic Party, and prepared to use violence to crush dissent. As a result, the membership of the UMWA was reduced from 100,000 at the time Trumka took over to 35,000 today. The social conditions in mining areas are deplorable, with unemployment rampant. Hatred for the Democratic Party in these regions is so deep that once solidly blue counties now vote overwhelmingly for the Republican Party. Trumka was rewarded for crushing opposition in the UMWA by his selection as president of the AFL-CIO. He turned leadership of the UMWA over to his crony Cecil Roberts, another autocratic president for life. By legitimizing the use of violence against opponents of the bureaucracy today, the DSA endorses the decades-long efforts by the bureaucracy to stifle reform in the UMWA and suppress the class struggle through force. Oppose UMWA slanders against the miners! Defend the Warrior Met strike! The assault took place because the union executives are sensitive to the growing social discontent among Warrior Met strikers to forty years of betrayal by the UMWA and AFL-CIO. In the last several weeks, workers in critical industries have begun to fight against corporate exploitation and the massive levels of wealth accumulated by the capitalist class during a pandemic that has left over 3 million dead worldwide. Autoworkers at Volvo in Virginia, nurses in Massachusetts, home care workers in Connecticut and auto parts workers at Nexteer in Michigan have initiated strikes or authorized strike action, as have autoworkers in India, where the deadly coronavirus is spreading through the factories like wildfire. In each case, the workers are constrained by the trade unions, whose job it is to isolate these struggles and prevent them from coalescing in a common movement of working people against the corporations. The UMWAs thuggishness is a prime example of a universal phenomenon. The efforts by the UMWA and DSA to blame striking Alabama coal miners for the racist assault of the bureaucracy is part of the bureaucracys plan to break these struggles, isolate the strikers and end the strike on the companys terms. For this reason, coalminers everywhere and workers across industries must oppose the UMWA and its allies efforts to slander Warrior Met strikers as guilty of the crimes carried out by the bureaucracy. Workers in all industries must mobilize in defense of the Warrior Met strikers before the UMWA is able to break the strike and ram through another sellout contract. This requires the formation of rank-and-file committeesorganizational structures run democratically by the workers themselves to carry forward these struggles outside the control of gangsters in the UMWA leadership. These committees are based on the principle that workers must have organizational control over the conduct of their own struggles. This task is necessary in order to spread the strike, popularize its message and build an independent movement of the international working class for social equality. The Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) is holding an online meetingThe COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a socialist strategythis Sunday, May 30, at 6:00 p.m. Indian Standard Time. The meeting will be conducted in English and Tamil. It will be addressed by leaders of the SEP (Sri Lanka) and the International Committee of the Fourth International, including Joe Kishore, the national secretary of the US SEP. India has become the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic with the highest daily cases of any country in the world. The virus is raging uncontrolled throughout the country, with terrible consequences for millions of people. Izhaar Hussain Shaikh, left, an ambulance driver who works for HelpNow, and others pick up a COVID-19 patient from his home in Mumbai, India May 28, 2020. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) According to the official tallies, which grossly understate the number of COVID cases and deaths, in the eight weeks since April 1, total infections have more than doubled, rising from 12.1 million to 27.5 million. Deaths, meanwhile, have increased by more than 90 percent to a total of 318,895 as of yesterday morning. Indias chronically underfunded health care system has been overwhelmed. Shocking media reports show desperately ill people in major cities unable to gain admittance to health care facilities and patients dying from asphyxiation after their hospital ran out of medical oxygen. In rural areas, where public health care facilities are rudimentary, the catastrophe is greater still. The vaccination campaign is in a shambles with little more than 10 percent of the population having received the first shot and just 3.1 percent fully vaccinated. This massive human tragedy is the responsibility of the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the entire political establishment at the national and state levels. Like his counterparts internationally, Modi has pursued the criminal policy of opening the economy that puts the profits of big business over human lives. Even now, as the number of daily infections explodes, the government has refused to impose a national lockdown. While the wealth of Indias billionaires has nearly doubled over the past year, tens of millions of Indians have lost their livelihoods and been condemned to poverty. During the limited lockdowns that have taken place, virtually no support has been provided to those thrown out of work. Moreover, Modi is exploiting the pandemic to ram through a new round of pro-market measures that will further destroy jobs and conditions. The rapidly deepening social crisis is fueling opposition. Millions of workers joined two one-day strikes last year against the governments pro-market restructuring. Strikes and protests have taken place in many other sectors. Farmers have now been camped on the outskirts of Delhi for six months against the governments pro-agribusiness farm laws. The trade unions, in particular, those dominated by the two main Stalinist partiesthe Communist Party of India (Marxist), or CPM, and the Communist Party of India, or CPIhave confined the struggles of workers to futile attempts to pressure the Modi government, as well as appeals to the opposition Congress Party, the other main party of big business. To defend its most basic rights, including to health care and to life itself, the working class has to break free of the shackles of the trade unions and the Stalinists, which are defenders of capitalism, and establish new independent organisationsrank-and-file committeesthrough which it can fight to defend its class interests. This includes the immediate shutdown of all nonessential businesses and in-class education, the provision of full wages to all affected workers, and a vast expansion of the public health system. Such measures inevitably come into conflict with the demands of big business, underscoring the necessity of fighting on the basis of a socialist perspective. On May Day 2021, the International Committee of the Fourth International called for the formation of an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees to unify the struggles of workers around the world against the criminal response of the ruling classes internationally to the pandemic. We encourage all our readers, not only in South Asia but internationally, to support the ICFIs crucial initiative and to attend the online meeting. Deepal Jayasekera, assistant national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (SEP) in Sri Lanka, will be the main speaker. Date and Time: Sunday, May 30, 6:00 p.m. (Indian Standard Time) Languages: English and Tamil Please register to attend the meeting by clicking the following link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/4191651001271117581 South Korea has gone through the first half of this year experiencing a sharp growth of COVID-19 cases, including more contagious and dangerous variants from countries like the United Kingdom. Daily new cases have averaged around 500 to 700 for the past several weeks. However, the South Korean government of President Moon Jae-in has responded to the surge in cases with half-measures in order to reduce the impact on big business. People wearing face masks as a precaution against the coronavirus walk through a tunnel in Seoul, South Korea, Monday, May 24, 2021 [Credit: AP Photo/Lee Jin-man] As of Wednesday, there were a total of 137,682 cases in the country, including an additional 707 new cases from the previous day. Nearly 2,000 people have died from the virus, though the real number is likely far higher. The BMJ (British Medical Journal) reported this month that South Korea had 4,000 excess deaths in 2020, double the official death count from the virus. Seoul has decided that these numbers are acceptable. Rather than implementing measures to contain the outbreak, the central government has instead utilized a 5-level scheme designed to appear to be enforcing social distancing while largely allowing businesses to stay open and keeping workplaces like auto factories and distribution centers up and running. Even the limited measures currently in place have only been imposed in a reactive manner, with the government announcing new restrictions only after the COVID-19 virus had begun to spread. Currently, Seoul and the surrounding Gyeonggi-do Province are under Level 2 social distancing guidelines while the rest of the country is under Level 1.5. This includes a ban on gatherings of five or more people and a requirement for businesses like restaurants and bars to close by 10 p.m. Schools, which are a major source of transmission for the virus, remain open with students rotating between in-person and online classes. Even this half-measure for schools is now set to be scrapped. Seoul announced on May 12, that all schools would reopen to in-person classes without any online classes in Septemberthe second half of the school year. This is before the governments plan of achieving herd immunity by November through its vaccination program, meaning more students, teachers and their families will be put at risk. Underscoring the danger, the very next day, health authorities reported that at least 331 students had caught COVID-19 in that past week, an increase of more than two students per day over the previous week. Many students also continue to attend after-school academies for subjects like mathematics, English, and music, in contact with others from different schools and risking a broader transmission of the virus. Seouls disregard for public safety is despite the fact that the country has reported more than a thousand cases of the more contagious variants from Britain, South Africa, Brazil, and India. Over the past two weeks, the number of cases with unknown infection routes stood at 27.2 percent. Allowing daily new cases to stay in the hundreds without an effective response is inviting an even more explosive growth of the deadly virus. Despite this, the ruling Democratic Party (DP) suggested on May 24 that restrictions could be further relaxed for those who have been vaccinated, including exemptions from quarantine, the ban on gatherings of more than five people, and allowing them to patronize restaurants after 10 p.m. The DP is also considering loosening the mandated nationwide wearing of masks, which was implemented shortly after the pandemic began last year and has played a large role in preventing even wider outbreaks. These plans go against medical advice. There have been at least four breakthrough COVID cases of people who have caught the virus despite being vaccinated. The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency has stated that even if fully vaccinated, people still need to wear masks. This is in line with epidemiologists in the US who have sharply criticized the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention there for lifting mask restrictions on vaccinated people as it is still unclear if vaccinated people can spread COVID. Furthermore, while beginning in February, South Koreas vaccination program has largely been a failure, with only about 3.8 percent of the countrys 52 million people fully vaccinated. At the current rate, only about 11 percent of the population will be fully vaccinated by the governments November deadline. The Moon administration has instead acted to secure lucrative business deals for South Korean companies while aligning with Washingtons anti-China campaign. During Moons trip last week to Washington for a summit with President Joe Biden, Samsung Biologics signed a deal with Moderna to package the latters COVID-19 vaccine in South Korea. The companies have not released details of the deal. South Korean companies already have similar deals for the AstraZeneca, Novavax, and Sputnik V vaccines. Vice Health Minister Gang Do-tae stated, Through the cooperation between South Korea and the United States, we can significantly increase the production and supply of COVID-19 vaccines, which will eventually ease the supply shortages around the globe. However, increased production for US companies will allow Washington to continue hoarding vaccines, deepening so-called vaccine nationalism, not easing it. The anti-China perspective was on full display at the Biden-Moon summit, where the two leaders released a joint statement primarily targeting Beijing. The two called for reforming the World Health Organization (WHO), a jab at the body for failing to endorse Washingtons campaign blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic. Their statement went on to say, We will also support a transparent and independent evaluation and analysis of the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak and for investigating outbreaks of unknown origin in the future. This seemingly innocuous phrase is in fact another attack on China. While the WHO has ruled out the possibility of COVID-19 being released from a lab, first Donald Trump and now the Biden administration have propagated the lie that Beijing is responsible for unleashing the virus, whether on purpose or through an accident. The US-South Korea vaccine alliance, as Moon called it, is nothing more than the continuation of the US anti-China campaign and drive to war, not a genuine effort to eradicate COVID-19 or protect the global population. Directed by Steven Soderbergh; written by Deborah Eisenberg Let Them All Talk is the most recently released effort from prolific American filmmaker Steven Soderbergh. Alice Hughes (Meryl Streep), a prize-winning author, is at work on a new novel. She does not care to discuss or disclose its contents. Her publishers in New York hope it will be a sequel to one of her most well-received books. A prestigious literary award in the UK has been bestowed on her, but Hughes does not take airplanes. Her new, youthful literary agent, Karen (Gemma Chan), prevails upon her to take a ship instead, the transatlantic ocean liner Queen Mary 2. Lucas Hedges and Meryl Streep Alice somewhat reluctantly agrees, on the condition that she can bring two of her old college friends, Susan (Dianne Wiest) and Roberta (Candice Bergen), and her nephew, Tyler (Lucas Hedges), to whom she is particularly close. Unbeknownst to Hughes, Karen also books passage on the ship, hoping to learn something about the new work, on whose success or failure her job apparently depends. As well, Hughes is taking the opportunity of the trip to Britain to visit the grave of an obscure (fictional) late 19th century writer, whose work she vainly champions to her friends. Roberta, a frustrated divorcee from Texas, harbors a decades-long resentment against Alice because she believes her onetime friend used unflattering facts about her life in a novel, which had dramatic consequences for Robertas marriage. The latter spends much of her time during the ocean voyage trying to land a rich husband. Also on board is an immensely successful (and presumably wealthy) thriller writer, Kelvin Kranz (Daniel Algrant), at whom Alice tends to look down her nose, and a mysterious middle-aged man whom Tyler sees coming out of her room each morning. The distinguished African American man proves to be Alices personal physician, Dr. Mitchell (John Douglas Thompson). As its title would indicate, Soderberghs film, scripted by well-known American short-story writer Deborah Eisenberg, consists primarily of conversations and confrontations (or the avoidance of confrontations) between the various characters. Roberta complains bitterly to Susan about Hughes but manages to put off airing her grievances directly until the last moment. Karen befriends Tyler and asks him essentially to spy on his aunt and learn, if possible, the character of her new novel. Tyler enjoys the attractive Karens company and at a certain point makes a romantic advance on the woman, a dozen or so years olderand far more worldlythan he. During a lecture Alice delivers on board the ship, the commercial Kranz (his name perhaps meant to echo that of best-selling author Dean Koontz) proves to be an admirer of her work and a relatively astute literary analyst. Gemma Chan After the extended party disembarks in Southampton, Roberta proposes to Alice to reveal more details about her (Robertas) private life, thus supplying the novelist with material for a new work, in exchange for a healthy portion of the profits. After Alice laughingly dismisses the idea, Roberta observes, in one of the films more poignant moments, I loved you when you were Al. When tragedy unexpectedly strikes, various plans come to naught, and others begin to unfold. Unfortunately, Let Them All Talk does not have a strong purpose or make a strong impression. Soderbergh (born 1963) has now made dozens of films on a variety of subjects and in numerous genres and formats. After starting out as an independent filmmaker, working under Hollywoods radar, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he went on to direct a number of large-scale productions, including Oceans Eleven, Oceans Twelve and Oceans Thirteen (20012007). He made several movies featuring Julia Roberts. In 2008, Soderbergh released a two-part, four-and-a-half-hour film about Che Guevara. This was a pivotal project that offered the director the chance to make a strong statement about contemporary political and social life. Soderberghs noncommittal Che shed little light on either the Argentine political figures life and career or the directors attitude toward the Cuban revolution and related matters. The semi-ironic, semi-cynical, socially aloof, wait-and-see attitude that belongs to Soderbergh, the Coen brothers and many others has its roots in social circumstances, the suppression of the class struggle over the past four decades, the temporary absence of the working class as a politically independent force and the dissolution of the USSR and related matters (the end of history, the fall of socialism, etc.), but that doesnt make it any less harmful as an artistic-intellectual position. Left-wing French writer Andre Breton once referred to the phenomenon of the man with one hand resting on his hip, which he identified with the main enemy, fatalism, resignation in the face of great events. We have many such pitcher-men today. In any event, legitimately unhappy with the state of the film industry and the respect accorded only to the people who make a lot of money, Soderbergh announced his retirement from directing in 2013. He returned (after working in television during the meantime) with Logan Lucky in 2017 and Unsane in 2018. The Laundromat, a biting satire (with Streep) about shell companies and offshore accounts helping the filthy rich to accumulate even more wealth, inspired by the Panama Papers revelations, appeared in 2019. At the time of that films release, Soderbergh told an interviewer: Every serious problem that were facing right now as a species can be traced back to some form of corruption. And the trajectory of it is pretty alarming. In 2000, the top 50 financial elites owned a third of the worlds wealth. Now they own a half. Thats not sustainable Its either going to get rebuilt by agreement or its going to get rebuilt some other way thats not as pleasant. One would think such an alarming trajectory, along with the far-reaching political implications Soderbergh hints at, would not be dropped as subject matter after one work, but that gives some indication of our present cultural dilemmas. Let Them All Talk is a step backward. Let Them All Talk Soderbergh is a highly skilled individual, who often produces, directs, photographs and edits his own films. The new work, shot on board the Queen Mary 2 during an actual crossing, presented intriguing technical and logistical challenges. The Cunard Line, the director explains, hopes to get bookings as a result of the film. That seems a bit like small change to us, even granting that shooting took place before the pandemic. Although the performers are appealing enough, the narrative is not especially plausible. The script presents Alice Hughesis her first name a tribute to Canadian short story writer Alice Munro?as a serious author apparently swimming in cash, with a publisher desperate for a new work. Where is there such a figure in America today? Moreover, her high-flown, amorphous comments about life and literature are not compelling, nor is her admiration for the fictional Blodwyn Pugh especially convincing. (If this is satire, it falls short.) We never get a serious chance to see what Hughes own work is like. And her friends from half a century earlier? Susan, who works with female prisoners, seems possible, but the inclusion of Roberta, a mercenary lingerie saleswoman, without the slightest interest in Alices writings, is a character contrivance that makes no particular sense. Why would Alice go to the effort of having the two women accompany her only to largely ignore their presence? The various elements do not truly cohere. They stick out at odd angles, and not in a lifelike way. This does not appear to be Eisenberg at her best either. She has published five collections of short stories, Transactions in a Foreign Currency (1986), Under the 82nd Airborne (1992), All Around Atlantis (1997), Twilight of the Superheroes (2006), and Your Duck Is My Duck (2018). Eisenberg has taken principled stands. In April 2015, along with a number of other writers, she criticized PEN's decision to bestow its Freedom of Expression Courage Award to the French satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, calling the choice an opportunistic exploitation of the horrible murders in Paris to justify and glorify offensive material expressing anti-Islamic and nationalistic sentiments already widely shared in the Western world. In Twilight of the Superheroes title story, Eisenberg piercingly described the atmosphere that prevailed in the US following the 9/11 terror attacks. When the smoke lifted, she wrote, all kinds of other events, which had been prepared behind a curtain, too, were revealed. Flags waved in the brisk air of fear, files were demanded from libraries and hospitals, droning helicopters hung over the city, and heavily armed policemen patrolled the parks. Meanwhile, one read that executives had pocketed the savings of their investors and the pensions of their employees. Eisenberg continued, aptly: The wars in the East were hidden behind a thicket of language: patriotism, democracy, loyalty, freedomthe words bounced around, changing purpose, as if they were made out of some funny plastic. What did they actually refer to? It seemed that they all might refer to money. And later: New York had once been the threshold of an impregnable haven, then the city had become in an instant the countrys open wound, and now it was the occasionthe pretext!for killing and theft and legislative horrors all over the world. More of this oppositional spirit would have greatly strengthened Eisenbergs collaboration with Soderbergh. Let Them All Talk is essentially and unnecessarily an innocuous work. The World Socialist Web Site is publishing statements in support of the Pike River Families Committee, which represents 23 of the 29 families of the men who died in the 2010 Pike River coal mine disaster in New Zealand. The families are fighting to overturn the Labour Party-led governments decision to end an underground forensic investigation of the mine. The government aims to prevent the recovery and examination of evidence that could be used in criminal prosecutions of those responsible for the disaster. Installation near Pike River mine in 2017 symbolizing the 29 men who died [Credit: WSWS Media] More than a decade after the explosions at Pike River, no one has been brought to justice. Successive governments, union bureaucrats, and state agencies have protected the companys executives and managers, whose negligence turned the mine into a death trap. The WSWS urges readers around the world to read and share our statement, Justice for the 29 miners killed at New Zealands Pike River!, and send messages of support for this crucial fight. To read previously published statements from readers around the world, click here and here. Former miners in the UK have contributed statements here. Rachel Raue, New Zealand: I fully support the Pike River Families Committee in their demand for a thorough investigation into the disaster that killed their loved family members on November 19, 2010. Further to this I agree that the company leaders, found to be responsible for this gross and fatal negligence to secure the safety of their workers, must be prosecuted. Twenty-nine workers were killed, and yet over ten years have passed since the catastrophe, with no closure for families and communities. The Ardern Labour government has a responsibility to ensure the safety of all workers in New Zealand. Without transparency in this most important case, that will never be possible. Corporate greed will continue to see to it that the lives of workers are to put at risk to ensure profit margins are met. While the minister for the Pike River Recovery, Andrew Little, postures that the governments decision to cease a forensic investigation is due to prioritising the living, the details of the cover-up suggest, if not blatantly reveal, that this is really about protecting big business. Protecting the working class of New Zealand does not appear to be a priority. Neither is compassion or closure for all the victims of the Pike River disaster, either living or deceased. International mining experts are backing these New Zealand families. Yet, their own government is turning their back on them, denying the enforcement of justice while supporting the continued enactment of the capitalist agenda that puts profit over people and planet. Lynette Stevens, New Zealand: Our family completely supports Dean and Bernie and others who need justice! Our family lost our brother on a corporate farm in NZ exactly a year after the Pike disaster we know what the fight against corruption is like so our utmost respect to you all! Heather Christiansen, New Zealand: I support the Pike River families, at the very least they deserve a fair trial. This has been a joke on behalf of our government. Why enter and investigate now to get their hopes up, only to shut it down again before its even started? All that hard work, sweat and tears, has just put them through more turmoil and pain. These families need justice and at least a proper answer to put this to rest. They say its unsafe to enter, yet people put their life at risk to save other people every day. If someone wants to do it, let them. If it costs too much, why start it in the first place? The government wastes millions every year on silly things like referendums, for example John Key wanting to change the NZ flag. That is the least of our worries. Likewise, the cannabis and end of life referendums. These are all just to keep us distracted from whats really going on in our country. Im pleading for the investigation to continue, no one deserves to go to work to die and not to return home. Lisa, United States: We in the International Working Class demand this Pike Coal Mine remain open for continued investigation. This wasnt an accident. This occurred due to PRC putting their profits before the health and safety of workers who extract this coal. It was ruled by the Supreme Court as to the complicity of regulators with Whittall to keep the mine open when it clearly wasnt safe. The PRC, government regulators, union are responsible for the deaths of these workers and clearly need to be held accountable! Dont close the Pike River Mine! Amy Jesensek, New Zealand: The cause of this disaster should be identified. Too often the powerful people at the top get away with no consequences, while workers pay the ultimate price. If you have the power to make decisions, which can affect a workers life or death, and are paid handsomely for it, you need to be held responsible if your decisions lead to the deaths of workers. STOP THE COVERUP! EXPOSE THE CORPORATIONS! PROSECUTE THOSE RESPONSIBLE! JUSTICE FOR ALLNOT JUST AGAINST THE POOR! JACINDA WE ARE LOOKING AT YOUBACK UP YOUR PRETTY WORDS WITH REAL ACTION! Stan Mackowiak, New Zealand: There can be no retreat from the mine, scientific and forensic evidence must be collected. The families must be reunited with the remains of their loved ones, and criminal prosecution of corporate and individual entities must proceed. The culpability of Unions and governments of all stripes must be revealed. Neil Munro, New Zealand: This is obviously a HUGE coverup. The NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT has and is continuing to try and stop this, claiming it is too expensive or dangerous. World mining experts disagree. People need to be held accountable, and the real reasons for the disaster found out to stop a repeat in the future. Gina King, New Zealand: We need this investigation to continue. The men need to go home, answers to so many questions are not far. Labour promised the families and New Zealand they would get answers. Neville Hooker, New Zealand: Absolutely so wrong that the 29 lost miners families have had to go through such a long, drawn out, stressful, non-committal approach by the government and past governments to retrieve the families loved ones. So bad and wrong. Looking at evidence to date that this horrific tragedy even happened and even worse that these poor miners families have had to bear such a stressful happening without even being able to lay to rest their loved ones. Come on, government, get these brave miners back to their loved ones now! Tina-Marie, Australia/New Zealand: It is very sad that these men have not been returned to their families and the truth uncovered. I was born in Greymouth but have lived in Australia for many years now and it is deeply saddening to see that this tragedy has still not been resolved. Absolutely heartbreaking that the families are still fighting for the right thing to be done. Bring the men home, do the right thing!!!!! Hoani T McGregor, New Zealand They have gone this far, complete the bloody job. Someone is responsible for what happened. I want whoever it is to be brought to account. I am of modest means but am willing to make a contribution. If as many of us that are willing paid maybe 20 or 30 dollars we could get there. I do not want to let the Government off the hook, though. John Whyte, Australia: So close but so far. Surely the government can fund this to the end, hopefully we can still bring them home, most of the hard work is done. Late last month, 14 school bus drivers for Mississippis Greenville Public School District bravely staged a work stoppage, refusing to drive until concerns over reduced work hours, reduction in pay and unsafe working conditions were addressed. For two days, bus service to Greenvilles reopened schools was halted while school board officials scrambled to find a way to get drivers back to work. The 14 drivers, who organized the strike independently of any union or employee organization, reportedly sent out texts and made calls to the school transportation director saying they would not be coming into work. The move was the immediate response to the release of the 2021-22 school employee schedule, which showed a cutdown in working days for bus drivers who had already seen their hours cut for months prior. The revised schedule also included a provision stating that going forward, drivers and custodians will not only receive fewer workdays but will also only be paid for days worked, suggesting an end to paid holidays and paid sick days. Source: Greenville Public School District Twitter: @gpsd_district Speaking to Mississippi Today, driver Edwin Young described the new schedule as the final straw after years of underpayment and mistreatment, stating, Were not making anything We are certified drivers, we got CDLs [commercial drivers license] and were living at the poverty level. Young added that he is still missing payments for hours worked last October, revealing to board officials that he was only paid $16,000 for his work throughout all of last year. Another driver, Yolanda Lewis, reportedly tried to arrange a meeting with the school board but was denied. In addition to having her working hours cut, Lewis was forced to quarantine for 10 days following exposure to students who tested positive for COVID-19. During this time she received no pay and had already been forced to give up supplemental insurance due to the reduced hours. The strike action taken by these bus drivers could lead to serious consequences as a result of a little known Mississippi state law prohibiting public school employees from going on strike. The law was passed following the last Mississippi teachers strike held in 1985. That strike, which led to a marginal increase in teacher pay, spurred state lawmakers to pass one of the strictest anti-striking laws in the country. According to the statute, any action that constitutes a concerted failure to report for duty, a willful absence from ones position, the stoppage of work, a deliberate slowing down of work, or the withholding, in whole or in part, of the full, faithful and proper performance of the duties of employment, for the purpose of inducing, influencing or coercing a change in the conditions, compensation, rights, privileges or obligations of public employment can be considered a strike and is therefore unlawful. This reactionary law was first applied to public school teachers, but a second statute was drafted to essentially expand this language to all public school employees. According to the law, the striking drivers could not only be fired but also banned from working in any public school in the state ever again, in addition to possible fines and even jail time. At its latest meeting held Tuesday, the Greenville School Board voted unanimously to once again delay taking any action against the drivers who refused to work. These officials are evidently fearful that punishing the bus drivers could spark broader opposition among educators and other school staff that have gone through the most horrific experiences of their careers over the past year. The board has collected the names of the drivers who took part and are compelled under state law to submit the names to the state or face daily fines. At a board meeting last month, there was some deliberation over whether the action taken by the drivers could be called a strike in legal terms. Dorian Turner, an attorney for the Board of Trustees of the Greenville Public School District, reportedly said at the meeting, It looked to me that what we had was a situation where the bus drivers had gone on strike, and that was activity that was illegal. She continued, If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, youve probably got a duck on your hands. They may or may not have known that doing that was an illegal activity, but that was the effect of all those employees deciding not to come to work. Across the country, school districts face a shortage of bus drivers following mass layoffs last year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and proliferation of remote learning. As the back-to-school drive intensifies amid the widespread dropping of mask mandates, the need for transportation workers to return to work amid the pandemic is driving efforts among several public school districts to force drivers back onto the job. Many drivers, however, are unable to return to jobs that put them at such risk. In some cities, such as Pittsburgh and Denver, there were driver shortages even before the pandemic. Wages for such jobs, especially in Mississippi, have been stagnant for years, with most drivers forced to live on poverty wages while school boards across the nation cut services and funding across the board. Between May 20 and May 27, there have been 1,109 confirmed new COVID-19 cases in Mississippi and 26 deaths. Since the start of the pandemic, there have officially been 317,407 confirmed cases and 7,310 deaths. The governor of Mississippi, Tate Reeves, lifted the states mask mandate in early March. The fact that drivers, teachers and other school employees are prohibited by law to strike or take part in any work stoppage shows the desperate need to form new workers organizations in the state to secure workers right to fight for their livelihoods. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) has assisted educators and other workers form networks of rank-and-file committees across the US and globally, which are democratically run by workers themselves and independent of the corporatist unions and both big business parties. Kathy, a school bus driver from the Philadelphia area and a member of the Pennsylvania Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, sent the following message to Mississippi bus drivers in support of their struggle: As a bus driver, yes, we support all bus drivers everywhere. We are professionals. We have hours of training to receive a commercial drivers license (CDL), which we have to recertify every four years. We have to think about safety all the time for the students. Yet we are not treated as professionals by the unions, districts, or bus companies. They pay little, cut hours, and throw us under the bus as far as treatment. We provide a service to the public and are committed to make sure each child is safely transported to and from school and home two to three times each day. The companies keep cutting the hours, which cuts our pay. It is harder and harder to live. We went through outsourcing. We were going to have a letter writing campaign to send letters to all the parents. The day we were going to do it, the union told us not to. We lost our benefits, the only thing keeping us there is that our pay was grandfathered. Drivers need to have our own organization to fight. Mississippi school bus drivers and educators must form rank-and-file committees to unify their struggles across the state to fight for better wages and safer work environments. The social crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic must be met with the independent movement of the working class. Help build the growing network of Rank-and-File Safety Committees today! On May 26 workers at the main Opel Autos factory in Russelsheim took part in a protest against ongoing job cuts and a massive increase in work pressure. The German IG Metall trade union called for a rally at the end of the morning shift in an effort to allow workers to vent their anger. Currently, one part of the workforce is slaving away under great pressure, while others continue to work reduced hours (with reduced pay) in line with the governments coronavirus short-time working scheme. Since January, the Opel plants now belong to the new car giant Stellantis, the product of the merger of the PSA Group, to which Opel belongs, with Fiat-Chrysler (FCA). The merger has been accompanied by massive attacks on workers jobs and conditions. The new corporate giant is in the process of converting to electric-mobility and digital driving and is intent on cutting costs to maintain its position as the worlds third largest auto concern based on sales. The process of conversion to e-mobility involves the destruction of thousands of jobs. At the time of the merger in January, PSA boss Carlos Tavares announced, From day one, we will focus on exploiting synergies and increasing competitiveness. Opel plant in Russelsheim One of the first steps Stellantis has taken is to dissolve its entire network of authorised dealers and terminate all European dealership contracts as of May 31. Only Opel, Fiat, Peugeot or Vauxhall dealers who receive a so-called Letter of Intent (LoI) by mid-July will continue to be suppliedand only then under stricter conditions. Five billion euros are to be saved per year at the company, and no job is safe. At Opel, IG Metall has already agreed to eliminate 2,100 jobs by the end of this year and another 2,000 jobs by the end of the decade. This means that out of 19,000 employees employed in Opel factories when PSA took over in 2017, only 8,100 will remainless than half. The union patted itself on the back, claiming that the 2,100 jobs to be cut would be voluntary, via severance payments and early retirement. Under pandemic conditions, however, only 500 workers were persuaded to leave their jobs voluntarily. Consequently, the company executive and IG Metall set up a transfer company, which is invariably the prelude to compulsory redundancies. Although the Opel-Blitz model is to be retained, the Russelsheim factory will inevitably be downsized. The local newspaper Main-Spitze posed the question: Is Russelsheim to be downsized to the level of a token factory? Pressure on autoworkers is being sharply intensified and workers have undergone prolong periods of short-time working since the start of the pandemic. Currently, only one shift is operational and the reintroduction of a second shift, announced for this autumn, is by no means certain. What has already been imposed in American auto plants is now to be introduced in Russelsheim; increased flexibilisation of working time, which eliminates the eight-hour dayan important achievement in the last century. In addition, depending on demand, a six-day week will be reintroduced at Opels main factory. At the Stellantis plant in Sterling Heights near Detroit, a new working-time system for skilled tradesmen was introduced at the beginning of April that permits twelve-hour shifts and a seven-day week. The United Auto Workers (UAW) agreed to this murderous system. One half of the workforce is expected to be made redundant in the Opel departments of tooling and prototype construction, parts warehouses and design workshops. In these departments, workers are already being asked by their supervisors to apply internally for different posts, although they have not yet been laid off. Employment in the development department, which once employed 7,000, will be especially affected by job cuts. Two thousand jobs have already been eliminated during the last three years, and 750 workers were forced to switch to the French development service provider Segula, where Opel plans to cut at least another 600-800 jobs. Pressure is being exerted more and more openly by management, increasingly at the expense of established rights and protocols. For example, several employees were dismissed because they refused to transfer to Segula. The Hesse Labour Court recently ruled in favour of the eight dismissed employees and against Opel. The workers had sued against their dismissal, which has now been negated, although Opel may appeal at the Federal Labour Court. Recent developments at Segula demonstrate that the workers were right to refuse transfer. The development company, which took over the 750 ex-Opel employees with a job guarantee until 2023, now wants to get rid of 100 jobs and has no compunctions about imposing compulsory redundancies. The company works council had played its part in ensuring that more than 1,300 employees who did not want to switch to Segula lost their jobs at Opel via severance payments. When it comes to the conversion to electro-mobility and digital driving, the company is not motivated by preserving jobs. What counts is not the welfare and security of the employees or what is necessary for society or the climate. The only thing that matters are the portfolios of company shareholders and the banks, based on maximum profitability. To defend their jobs and health and create decent conditions for all, workers must take independent action and join the Network of Action Committees for Safe Workplaces. The World Socialist Web Site advocates the building of action committees to establish links between workers in different plants and countries. Stellantis has 25 production facilities in Europe alone and around 400,000 workers worldwide, all facing similar threats. The companys connections extend to Asia. To equip the cars digitally, Stellantis has not only signed a contract with Google, but has also set up a new company (Mobile Drive) with the Taiwanese tech group and mobile phone manufacturer Foxconn. This means that autoworkers and developers have the opportunity to connect with colleagues in the US, in Asia and around the world. The decisive factor is political perspective. The defence of jobs requires globally coordinated action by workers in different countries. It must be based on a socialist and international programme and resolutely reject the trade union policy of divide and rule. IG Metall has both feet planted in the camp of management and shareholders. Opel personnel manager Ralph Wangemann recently reaffirmed this. He told the Main-Spitze newspaper that Opel could not understand the purpose of the protest on May 26. He declared that the executive had implemented the imperative restructuring measures of the past years in line with the applicable contracts on a voluntary basis and the reduction of 2,100 jobs with the agreement of IG Metall. IG Metall is indispensable for Opel/Stellantis plans to impose further attacks on the workforce. With the help of the union, it has already succeeded in closing Opel plants in Antwerp and Bochum and slashing many thousands of jobs without triggering a social uprising. To forestall opposition time and again, IG Metall and its works councils have stirred up nationalism and played off workers at different plants against one another. One plant that may currently be facing closure, and which IG Metall completely ignores, is the Opel plant in Aspern, east of Vienna. The factory employed 3,000 workers in the 1990s. Today there are just 800. Half a year ago, engine production came to a halt and now the massive Opel hall, almost a kilometre long and one of the largest production halls in Europe, is up for sale. Over the past week, the US print and broadcast media, the Biden administration and the US intelligence agencies have launched a furious propaganda campaign aimed at resurrecting the narrative that COVID-19 originated in a Chinese laboratory. A view of the P4 lab inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology is seen after a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in Chinas Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan) This lie defies overwhelming scientific evidence and the findings of a World Health Organization (WHO) investigation released in late March. It will go down as one of the greatest falsehoods in human historya colossal untruth that eclipses even the Bush administrations perjured claims about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction. There is no factual or scientific foundation for the claim that the virus originated in a Chinese laboratory. To date, the only evidence presented by the White House, the US intelligence agencies and the media to support the claim is that employees at the Wuhan Institute of Virology became ill in late 2019 with symptoms that a State Department report acknowledged are consistent with common seasonal illnesses. The illnesses at the Wuhan institute had previously been cited by the Trump administration to claim that China was responsible for deliberately spreading the pandemicusing a weaponized virus to inflict mass death on populations throughout the world. It has now been picked up by major media outlets and legitimized by the Biden administration. On Thursday, the US Director of National Intelligence wrote that Americas intelligence community has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals, or it was a laboratory accident. If COVID-19 had not emerged naturally, the disease was, as the Trump State Department asserted in January, created through biological engineering. As the WHOs inquiry into the origins of COVID-19 made clear, countless viruses similar to COVID-19 have been identified in bats, including one, RaTG13, that is 96.2 percent similar to Sars-COV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Sars-COV-1 was a bat-derived coronavirus that caused the 20032004 SARS outbreak. In order for the claim that COVID-19 is biologically engineered to have any credibility, there would have to be something about the disease or its origins that is inconsistent with other naturally occurring viruses. But there is nothing to indicate this. As the WHO report on the origins of the disease stated, the deliberate bioengineering of COVID-19 has been ruled out following analyses of the genome. The promotion of the lab-origin theory is driven by political conditions and social interests, motivated by two interrelated purposes. First, it aims to divert attention from the actions of the US and other governments in implementing policies that led to deaths on a massive scale. As the public begins to recover from the overwhelming shock of the pandemic, there will be demands for explanations for why so many people died, along with accountability for those responsible. From the beginning, the governments of all the major capitalist powers subordinated the response to the pandemic to the profit interests of the corporations, the greed of the capitalist oligarchs and the geopolitical objectives of imperialism. The measures that all scientists and epidemiologists agreed were necessaryincluding the shutdown of nonessential production with financial assistance to all those affectedwere rejected because they threatened to undermine the financial markets and the interests of the rich. As a direct consequence, more than three million people have died throughout the world, according to official figures, including more than 600,000 in the United States alone. This weeks testimony by Dominic Cummings, the former advisor for the UK government of Boris Johnson, made clear that the government carried out a herd immunity strategy, with advisors advocating the holding of chicken pox parties to spread the disease throughout the public. The government calculated that this policy would lead to the deaths of as many as 800,000 people. In Brazil, Senate inquiries into the pandemic have further demonstrated that the government of Jair Bolsonaro deliberately pursued a policy of allowing the virus to spread without restraint, anticipating that the death toll could reach as high as 1.4 million (it is currently at 450,000). In the United States, after initial partial restraints in March of 2020 that were implemented following an upsurge of social unrest, the Trump administration spearheaded the campaign to get workers back to work under the slogan the cure cant be worse than the disease. While this homicidal policy was most clearly articulated by Trump, it received the support of the media and was implemented by state governments run by both Republicans and Democrats. The leaders of the capitalist governments have blood on their hands, and they are looking for a scapegoat: China. Second, the Wuhan lab lie seeks to drum up nationalist hatred to support the Biden administrations central strategic aim: the preparation for economic and potentially military conflict with China. Since coming into office, the Biden administration has declared that the United States is at an inflection point, and that it must carry out a struggle to win the 21st century against China. The US media has tried, unsuccessfully, to interest the public in the claim, stoked by the intelligence agencies, that China is carrying out genocide against its Uighur Muslim population. But the campaign has not had its intended effect to date. It is therefore necessary to concoct a far more visceral and dangerous lie, that China is responsible for a deadly pandemic that has killed so many people that nearly every American knows one of its victims. The most direct precedent for the promotion of the Wuhan laboratory lie is the Bush administrations fabricated claims that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, which served as the pretext for the invasion of Iraq. The method was exactly the same. Ambiguously worded findings from the US intelligence agencies, funneled through anonymous sources by the media, together with openly perjured statements by administration officials, concocted a pretext for a war that has killed over a million people. The structure and methods of the Wuhan lab conspiracy theory are highly similar to other conspiracy theories promoted for political purposes, with which the propagandists in Washington and other world capitals are very familiar. In December 2017, the New York Times published an article, Fingerprints of Russian Disinformation: From AIDS to Fake News, which claimed that Soviet and East German intelligence agencies manufactured a conspiracy theory about the origins of HIV. Called Operation Infektion by the East German foreign intelligence services, the Times wrote, the 1980s disinformation campaign seeded a conspiracy theory that the virus that causes AIDS was the product of biological weapons experiments conducted by the United States. In 1985, an Internal KGB document noted that the Soviet intelligence agency was seeking to spread the view that this disease is the result of secret experiments by the USAs secret services and the Pentagon with new types of biological weapons that have spun out of control. The KGB placed an article in an Indian newspaper titled AIDS May Invade India: Mystery Disease Caused by U.S. Experiments, claiming the disease originated in a US military laboratory in Fort Detrick, Maryland. As a result of this disinformation campaign, a 2005 study by the RAND Corporation and Oregon State University revealed that nearly 50 percent of African Americans thought AIDS was man-made. The prevalence of this conspiracy theory around the world made it more difficult to launch a scientific response to the AIDS epidemicincluding in the Soviet Union itself. The Times quotes historian Thomas Boghardt to explain the disinformation technique: Throw enough dirt, and some will stick. The Times, the Washington Post, and the other major media outlets, along with the Biden administration, are using this technique to spread the Wuhan Lab lie. While the Times article was intended to promote the fake news narrative of Russian meddling, the fact is that the American ruling class is now the biggest propagator of fake news. The legitimization of the Wuhan Lab lie will have incalculable political consequences within the United States. If the weaponized virus claim promoted by the extreme right is now legitimate, what about the other lies and conspiracies promoted by the Trump administration: Trumps birther claim that Obama was not an American citizen, the pizzagate conspiracy theory that high-level Democratic Party operatives were engaged in a child prostitution ring, and, above all, the claim that the 2020 election was stolen, which underlay the January 6 fascistic insurrection. Significantly, the media is now hailing the sophisticated fascist Tom Cotton, senator from Arkansas, as an important voice in the debate over the origins of the coronavirus. The history books will reward Cotton for promoting the Wuhan lab theory, declared the Washington Posts lead fact-checker Glenn Kessler. Cotton infamously published an op-ed in July 2020 calling on Trump to send in the troops to suppress mass protests against police violence. He is a leading proponent of the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election, and he objected to the certification of election votes on January 6 in coordination with the mob that stormed the Capitol. Domestically, this lie will have the effect of delegitimizing popular opposition and preparing the grounds for mass censorship, with all those who criticize government policy being painted as agents of China. Already, an article by the World Socialist Web Site exposing the Washington Posts promotion of the Wuhan Lab conspiracy theory was censored on Facebook for two months, leading to the suspension of the accounts that tried to share it. Facebook, meanwhile, has announced that it will no longer limit posts promoting the conspiracy theory that the virus was manufactured in a Chinese laboratory. Once this lie enters the political bloodstream of America, it will have poisonous and uncontrollable effects. It will trigger witch-hunts, threats and violent intimidation against scientists and all those who call for a scientific response to the raging pandemic. Already, incidents of anti-Asian violence are on the rise. The Chinese government, for its part, cannot but interpret the promotion of this lie as preparation for war, responding in a way that will make escalation more likely, creating a deadly cycle of militarization. A military conflict between the United States and Chinathe largest economies and militaries in the worldwould have catastrophic consequences for all of humanity. The World Socialist Web Site calls on all workers, scientists and intellectuals to oppose the colossal lie being propagated by the US government and media. Scientists have a duty to educate the public and oppose the xenophobic perversion of science. Journalists must seriously investigate and expose the efforts to promote and disseminate this lie. Working people must counter the lie of the capitalist oligarchs with the demand for true accountability. Those responsible for the herd immunity policy, along with the corporate executives who profited off of it, must be held to account. We call on workers to reject the efforts by the ruling classes to lay the blame for the crimes of American capitalism at the feet of China. If workers are to stop the pandemic that has killed so many, they must reject the capitalists efforts to incite nationalist hatred, ignorance and violence through the struggle to unite the worlds working class on the basis of a socialist perspective. Qantas, Australias largest carrier, is moving to axe hundreds more jobs and freeze wages, exploiting the COVID-19 pandemic to deepen the decades-long assault on airline workers. A section of a Qantas airplane [Credit: pxfuel.com] Qantas CEO Alan Joyce last week launched an expression of interest program to encourage international cabin crew to register for voluntary redundancies. He expected the program to generate several hundred applications. Joyce also announced a two-year wage freeze across all operations, to be imposed via new trade union enterprise agreements that are coming up for renewal. The freeze would be followed by 2 percent annual increasesanother real pay cut after years of wage suppression, including a two-year freeze inflicted in 2014. Qantas, like its global and domestic competitors, has ruthlessly utilised the pandemic to bring forward previously-prepared restructuring plans, loading the cost of the crisis on the backs of workers. The company has already slashed 8,500 jobs since the pandemic erupted in March 2020, restricting air travel. Joyce sought to justify further gutting the 29,000-strong workforce by declaring the company was heading for a loss of more than $2 billion this financial year. In reality, the restructuring measures implemented last year were designed to slash costs across the airlines operations by $15 billion over three years and then $1 billion annually after 2023. Qantas now expects to realise before interest, tax and depreciation earnings for the June half of around $450 million, and to be cash flow positive by the first half of 2022. This anticipated outcome is the result of Qantass aggressive drive to gain a competitive edge over its rivals in domestic travel, which has been its most profitable market since the Keating Labor government privatised it in the 1990s. According to Qantas, it is now well on the way to reach 95 percent of its pre-COVID domestic capacity by mid-2021, while its low-cost carrier Jetstar is expected to hit 120 percent of its pre-COVID capacity. The Qantas Group has added 38 new routes since the start of the pandemic, many more than it did in the previous 10 years. While it cries poor, Qantass bottom line has been bolstered by massive tax-payer funded subsidies handed to it by the Liberal-National federal government, with the support of the Labor Party opposition, even as the company axed thousands of jobs and gutted workers conditions. Qantas has been the majority recipient of government support to airlines during the pandemic, raking in $1.2 billion in direct payments, waived charges and underwritten flights during 2020. This included $726 million through the JobKeeper scheme, which was supposed to keep employees on the books by subsidising wages. The scheme allowed major companies like Qantas to slash their wages bills at public expense. Qantas also received 59.5 percent by value of the subsidies dished out under the governments so-called aviation relief package. Now it is tagged to get the biggest share of the $200 million new government international aviation support program and from an extension of the Domestic Aviation Network Support and Regional Airline Network Support programs. Transport Workers Unions (TWU) Michael Kaine decried the decision to freeze wages and destroy more jobs, declaring that management was acting like a dictator by using public resources to shore up its position, cut jobs and impose unilateral decisions on its workforce. Any condemnation by the TWU or any of the airline trade unions is empty blather designed to distract from their own decades-long role in suppressing workers opposition to the airlines ongoing assault on jobs and conditions. Kaines beef with Qantas is not over its vicious treatment of its workers but is generated out of fear that Qantas is tending toward sidelining the unions and moving to more direct means of imposing its demands. When Qantas last year announced the outsourcing 2,000 ground crew positions, the TWU only complained that it had not been brought into the consultation process, during which it would have undoubtedly offered to provide other cost-cutting alternatives, as it has in the past. The TWU then unsuccessfully attempted to convince Qantas to employ the union itself as the cheap labour contractor for its outsourcing operation. Just last month, the TWU and other airline unions pushed through new three-year enterprise agreements at Virgin Australia that featured 18-month to two-year pay freezes and stays on the payment of a range of allowances. The Virgin Independent Pilots Association (VIPA) is set to impose a similar outcome on its members. Such deals, always sold by the unions to workers as necessary to make their particular airline competitive, only serve to play workers off against each other, resulting in a never-ending downward spiral of conditions. The TWU has called on the federal government to take a part stake in Qantas, declaring we need level-headed management at the helm of our biggest airline to guide us through the difficult coming months. A part stake would actually maintain private ownership and funnel even more government funds into the airline. The reference for level-headed management smacks of an appeal by the TWU for the inclusion of union representatives in lucrative board of management positions, where they could collaborate even more closely to impose further restructuring. Airline workers need to draw lessons from the years of bitter experiences and union betrayals. The struggle to defend jobs and working conditions requires a definitive break with the unions and the construction of new genuine working-class organisations, including rank-and-file committees across the aviation industry in Australia and globally. That is why the International Committee of the Fourth International has called for the building of an International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC). This is based on a global socialist perspective that rejects the dictates of the financial elite. That means fighting for workers governments to place aviation and all essential industries under public ownership and the democratic control of the working class, to be used for social need, not private profit. Ricky Gervais has been left "shocked and appalled" after 'After Life' producer Charlie Hanson was accused by 11 women of misconduct. The British producer and director was suspended by BAFTA and removed as the producer of the Netflix series following the allegations of sexual assault, which he has profusely denied. In a letter addressed to BAFTA and the streaming giant published in The Times, the women alleged: "Charlie Hanson is a predator who uses his reputation, connections and standing in order to groom far younger, impressionable and sometimes vulnerable women into trusting him. At times he will promise them a starry career under his wing, and then exploits that trust in creepy and illegal ways. He then tries to diminish the seriousness of what hes done by telling these young women us that it wasnt as bad as it seemed, that it was somehow blameless. He does his best to convince himself and others that this method of operating is fine. But we know it is not fine. Gervais, who also worked with Hanson on 'Derek' and 'Extras', said: I am shocked and appalled to learn of the historical allegations made by a number of women against Charlie Hanson. The decision was made to immediately remove him from production and I am confident the matter is being handled thoroughly." Support Local Journalism Now, more than ever, the world needs trustworthy reportingbut good journalism isnt free. Please support us by making a contribution. Contribute A representative for Netflix commented: Whilst the allegations are unrelated to his time on the show, we immediately removed him from the production." Hanson's lawyers told the newspaper on his behalf: Our client is shocked and appalled by these historical and false allegations of improper conduct towards women. "He maintains that he has never acted inappropriately on any production, or at all, and has never had any complaints made about his conduct over the course of many decades in the media industry." Hanson said: I have been made aware of allegations made against me concerning improper conduct towards women dating back many years. "Based on the summaries that have been provided to me, I understand that many of these accusations are made anonymously and are demonstrably false. I have not had one complaint in decades of work in the media industry. "I categorically reject any wrongdoing on my part, and strongly refute the allegations that have been leveled at me. I have worked with and supported hundreds of men and women during my working life and will do what is necessary to protect and/or restore my reputation. I will also cooperate with any formal inquiries. The matter is now in the hands of my solicitors. A Committee for Public Education (CFPE) campaign team recently visited Shepparton in regional Victoria to speak to community members about the crisis triggered by the state Labor governments plan to amalgamate four public secondary schools into one super-school, enrolling 2,700 students. Greater Shepparton Secondary College [WSWS Media] Since the last report from the WSWS, the crisis has deepened. Outbreaks of violence between students have caused serious hospitalisations and forced school lockdowns involving security guards, paramedics and police. On the three campuses, Wanganui, Mooroopna and McGuire, that make up the Greater Shepparton Secondary College (GSSC), staff shortages continue to grow, including a lack of replacement teachers to cover teacher absences, with resignations and other educators taking extended stress leave. The super-school model has eliminated well-being programs, and disrupted teacher and student relationships, leading to rampant bullying (see: Teachers discuss educational disaster at Shepparton super-school). The schools, once regarded as safe and engaging places for students and teachers, have been turned upside down and transformed into dangerous holding pens for students, lacking much-needed resources such as welfare professionals, counsellors and psychologists. Parents are fearing for the safety of their children and opting to withdraw their children out of GSSC, seeking enrolment in private and independent schools. Some parents have even gone to the extent of baptising their children so they will be allowed into the Catholic school system. Every single community member spoken to by the CFPE campaign team expressed outright opposition to the so-called super-school. Jenny, a single mother with a secondary-aged son and tertiary-aged daughter, explained that the school amalgamations had led to terrible circumstances for her family. My son had a great relationship with one particular teacher two years ago, and was distressed when that teacher left at the end of that year, evidently to avoid the super-school, she said. He had already lost two close mates to other schools for the same reason, and grieved their loss. He feared going to Mooroopna, as did his mates, who had all heard worrying things and talked amongst themselves. They didnt want to go there and they stayed together as a group of close mates, not a gang, but to support and protect each other and feel safer. She continued: Teenage years are hard enough as it is, and relationships can be difficult. My son was then bullied by two kids from the start of the year at Mooroopna, which then triggered more fear, frustration, anger, disengagement and wagging school. Jenny explained that she would like to take her son out of the school but as a single mother, she cannot afford fees of at least $4,000 a year. Jenny also spoke about the difficult circumstance teachers confront, explaining: Unfortunately, the school didnt recognise the signs in my son of bullying or stress. Teachers were also stressed and under pressure. Who can blame any of them with all the upheaval? The teachers are being silenced and bullied by upper management, and there are enormous expectations on them to enforce the transition to GSSC. Thats why we see so many teachers under stress and leaving, further aggravated by violence at the school. It is like being put in a pressure cooker. As a parent I find it terrifying, as my child is now surrounded by all these problems. In such a toxic environment how do people learn, teach or help one another, and how can it possibly get better when all four schools merge on one site in 2022? Megan and Jeffrey are retail workers with school age children. Megan said: We have one child at the amalgamated schools and one whos left. My daughter left in Year 8 because she was being bullied and she nearly got jumped by a bunch of older girls with weapons who were waiting for her to leave the Wanganui campus. Jeffrey said: We have another kid at the McGuire campus. When he comes home and says he had a good day because there were no fights on campus, this is a rare occasion. McGuire Campus [WSWS Media] Asked why they thought the government has created the super school, Jeffrey said: The only building that they cant sell off is the Shepparton High site. It has a historical building that you cant modify and its in an industrial estate near the railway line and SPC, the large fruit cannery. They will sell all the other campuses that are in prime land for houses. I went to school at the Mooroopna campus and it was actually pretty good, but now the campus and the grounds have deteriorated. Asked if they knew anyone in favour of the super school, Megan and Jeffrey answered no in unison. Megan said: Everyones really worried about their kids, really, really worried. The only kids that are going to be left at that school are the kids that couldnt get into the other ones. Annie, a retired nurse, expressed relief that all her children have left school. She has friends who are teachers in the amalgamated school and explained: I know teachers cant speak for themselves. They are really scared. They are scared of the students and the physical and verbal abuse. They said it will be full of police and security guards. Its shocking. Annie added: I havent got much time for the government actuallythey always use Shepparton as a trial for everything. This is a reference to Sheppartons selection by the then federal Labor government in 2011 as a trial site for punitive welfare reform measures, including the forced quarantining of 50 percent of some welfare recipients incomes, with only pre-approved purchases permitted though a government-issued basics card. Jack lives on a farm out of town. He took his Year 7 son out of the super school and now sends him to a Catholic school where parents have to pay about $4,500 per year. Jack was concerned that the amalgamated public school would be too large and crowded for his son. Like everyone the CFPE asked, Jack said he did not know anyone who supports the super school. The biggest thing now is that you dont have the choice within the public system. The government is doing this to save money. They think they can have fewer teachers to teach the same children. They give money to the Catholic system, then they dont have to administer it from there on, he explained. Robert, a Year 12 student, commented on the recent fights among students. He said: Kids arent getting on. I get to finish before we are all put together on one school, but my brother whos in Year 10 will be going there next year. I reckon hes not going to be safe. Before the amalgamation it wasnt as bad because people werent moving around. My brother had to go to Mooroopna even though we live in Kialla, which is about six kilometres away. They made him move. Tania, a secondary student who lives in Shepparton, now attends school in Numurkah, a 30-minute drive away. She said: My experiences at the super school made me want to leave. At the end I was sad and depressed and didnt want to go to school anymore. I was put in a new class without any of my friends and was getting picked on by the other girls. There was a lot of fights and it was really rough. I couldnt learn in the classroom because it was too noisy. Kids were throwing chairs and just walking out of the classroom all the time and not going to class. We learned more at home when it was lockdown. I wanted to leave the school because there were so many kids. Moving to the new school next year really worried me a lot, because it is so big. At my new school the teachers know who I am and help me when I need it. I want to go to school now. Marg said one of her children is due to start high school next year, and her partner is getting a part-time job to afford the annual fees to send them to the Catholic secondary school. Marg explained: If GSSC was a normal high school, like McGuire or Wanganui, our kids would have gone there. But now theres way too many students in one school. When my children cant handle a classroom with 25 people, how are they going to handle a playground with over a thousand? Five of our kids have disabilities. I reckon Ill have to home school them. Another child has gone to live with her grandmother in Lakes Entrance, which is a six-hour drive away. She has autism and ADHD [Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder] and cant handle large groups. Marg described the stark choice her family was facing. We are going to have to look at moving as we cant afford to send them to private school and our kids will not survive in the super school. A lot of kids are already having trouble with mental health. You cant do one size fits all. Kids will get lost in the system. There will be a lot of kids that drop out as soon as theyre old enough to. Kids already have trouble with drugs and teen pregnancies and are dropping out early. This is going to make it a hundred times worse. Sri Lankan President Gotabhaya Rajapakse issued an extraordinary gazette on Thursday, declaring that most state sectors were essential services, effectively banning all industrial action. The aim of the draconian order is to suppress the rising popular anger and unrest over deteriorating living conditions and the escalating attacks on democratic rights as COVID-19 infections rapidly increase across the country. Gotabaya Rajapaksa [Credit: AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena] All ports, customs, petroleum, state railway and bus transport, administrative and welfare offices, state banking, including the Central Bank, and insurance services nationally, as well as waste management by local authorities, are now under Essential Public Services Act. Under this law, any employee of these institutions who does not attend work faces conviction, after summary trial before a Magistrate and liable to rigorous imprisonment of two to five years and/or a fine of between 2,000 and 5,000 rupees ($US11$US25) or both. The movable and immoveable property of anyone convicted can be seized by the state and his or her name removed from any register maintained for profession or vocation. In addition, it is an offence for an individual to incite, induce or encourage any other person not to attend work through a physical act or by any speech or writing. This means that anyone fighting to defend the democratic rights of those employees can be punished. The immediate reason for Rajapakses decision appears to be in order to ban a planned national strike on Thursday by 12,000 government village officers, who are demanding COVID-19 vaccinations. However, the governments draconian measure is to preempt strikes and protests over similar demands by broader sections of the working class. Last November, Rajapakse promulgated an essential service order on 15,000 port authority workers, after they began raising concerns and threatening industrial action over the danger of COVID-19 in their workplaces and the governments privatisation measures. The strike ban on port workers was allowed to lapse after three months, but only after the trade unions temporarily dissipated workers protests. Escalating COVID-19 infections, sharp price rises in food and other essentials, and the refusal of the government to provide adequate social relief or proper protection has seen the eruption of strikes and protests involving postal, railway, plantation, education, health and electricity workers in recent months. While Sri Lanka officially recorded 94,949 COVID-19 cases between March 15, 2020 until April 15, these numbers, however, have spiked by 80 percent, up by 76,328, since then. These figures are a serious underestimate of the real situation because of low testing numbers. The sudden rise in coronavirus infection numbers has shattered Rajapakses claims that the pandemic is under control and has heightened concerns by Sri Lankan workers, youth and the rural masses who are anxiously following the coronavirus disaster in India and globally. Medical specialists in Sri Lanka and internationally have publicly warned that the island faces an impending catastrophe and called on Colombo to lockdown all non-essential services and rapidly overhaul the countrys rundown health services. The government, which vehemently opposes any lockdown, has responded by imposing travel restrictions for two weeks, until June 7. President Rajapakse insists that the economy, and the export sector in particular, must remain open. Last week he banned health and other officials making media statements about the pandemic unless authorised by him, because it might panic people. Health workers, including attendants, nurses and doctors, are becoming increasingly angry over impossible workloads as hospitals are inundated with COVID-19 patients. Several health workers have died from the highly-infectious virus. Hundreds of infections have been reported in garment factories, in and outside the countrys free trade zones (FTZ), some employing as many as 5,000 workers. In recent weeks several plants were forced to close in response to angry concerns by workers and nearby residents over the lack of COVID-19 safety measures. Like every capitalist government around the world, the Rajapakse regime, which unwaveringly defends the profit interest of big business, insists that employees must keep working. On May 4, Nimal Siripala de Silva, the labour minister, declared that garment bosses could cut workers wages by 50 percent and terminate them if their companies faced problems created by the pandemic. Not a single opposition party or trade union has opposed Rajapakses draconian announcement on Thursday, a measure that directly affects the democratic rights of hundreds of thousands of state sector workers and anyone defending their right to take any industrial action. The same unions and political parties did not oppose the essential services order imposed on port workers last November. This is no accident. These organisations have no fundamental differences with the Rajapakse governments repressive measures and are dedicated to defending the profit system. Earlier this month Samagi Jana Balawegaya, the main opposition party, urged the government to call an all-party conference on the worsening pandemic. The Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna, declared that if the regime was not ready to work with the opposition a broad-based mechanism should be formed. Similar advice was offered by the Tamil National Alliance. Like the Rajapakse government, these parties are acutely nervous about the developing mass opposition of the working class and the poor. President Rajapakse has also reactivated its previously declared extraordinary gazette to mobilise Sri Lankas armed forces to maintain law and order in the countrys 25 districts. These forces and the police who are now patrolling the streets, will be mobilised against the working class and the poor as they come into struggle. The working class must take these developments seriously. The Rajapakse government, aided and abetted by the opposition parties and the trade unions, is intensively stepping up its preparations for all-out class war. The working class can only defend its democratic and social rights by breaking from the unions and independently mobilising its industrial and political strength against the government attacks. This requires building action committees in every workplace as part of the fight for a workers and peasants government based on socialist and internationalist policies. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) is the only organisation that fights for this perspective. All those that agree with this program should register and attend Sundays online public meeting The coronavirus pandemic in India and need for a socialist strategy at 6 p.m., Indian Standard Time, to discuss these vital issues. The Tamil-nationalist Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) came to power in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu this month, after the April 6 elections. Even as thousands of Indians die every day of COVID-19, however, it is continuing in all essentials to implement the policies of its defeated Tamil-nationalist rival, the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), that have led to impoverishment and mass death. The DMK of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin was the undeserving beneficiary of mass disillusionment and anger with the outgoing AIADMK and its ally, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modis Hindu-supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Poverty, unemployment, prices for fuel and other essential commodities, and police repression have all surged over the last 10 years of AIADMK rule. During the pandemic, the AIADMK implemented a herd immunity policy, allowing the virus to spread virtually unchecked, as workers were kept on the job in nonessential production. As a result, Tamil Nadu yesterday was the Indian state with the most confirmed infections, 28,798, bringing total cases so far to just under 2 million and total deaths to 22,000. Over 400 people are dying every day in Tamil Nadu, as India overall reported over 171,000 new cases and 3,563 deaths yesterdaythe most of any country in the world. It is widely expected, however, that the true numbers of infections and deaths are five to 10 times higher, as most of the sick cannot get care from Indias overloaded health system. Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam party chief M. K. Stalin displays his ink mark after casting his vote in the Tamil Nadu state assembly elections in Chennai, India, Tuesday, April 6, 2021. (AP Photo/R.Parthibhan) In the elections, the AIADMK formed a National Democratic Alliance with eight parties, including the BJP and caste-based parties. The AIADMK emerged as a breakaway faction of the DMK in 1972; the two parties, both longstanding tools of Indian capitalism, have alternated in office ever since the Indian Congress party lost control of the state in 1967. The DMK for its part formed a Secular Progressive Alliance with 13 parties to exploit growing opposition to the AIADMK and BJP. The coalition included the Stalinist Communist Party (CPI), the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI-M) and various caste-based parties. To call the DMK a secular party is hypocritical and false, however, as it formed an electoral alliance with the BJP in 1999, assuming three ministerial posts in the central government in 1999. Indeed, what its election victory shows is the bankruptcy of relying on the Stalinist parties, their national ally, the Congress Party, or their various regional and local allies to oppose the violently reactionary policies of the BJP. The DMK won after spending a massive 10 billion rupees (US$138 million) on its election campaign. It donated Rs S150 million (US$2.1 million) to the CPI, Rs 100 million to the CPI-M, for a total of Rs 400 million (US$5.4 million) in donations to all its coalition partners, according to the DMKs filings with the Election Commission. Reports suggest it may have quietly funneled tens of millions more to the Stalinist parties. The DMK also gave Rs 3.5 billion to the I-PAC (Indian Political Action Committee) to formulate the DMKs electoral strategy. After this massive election spending, the DMK felt compelled to set up a COVID-19 public relief fund. Stalin said, As the economy struggles to recover, our government needs to spend more resources to deal with this disaster. Stalin claimed the money will be used for hospital facilities and in order to fight COVID. Stalin also sought to raise financial assistance from private individuals in Tamil Nadu and in the Tamil diaspora abroad. This is only a cynical cover, however, for Stalins defense of the wealth of Tamil Nadus billionaires at the expense of the lives of working and toiling people. DMK leaders such as T.R. Balu, J. Jagathrakshakan, K.N. Nehru, Thuraimurugan, and M.K. Stalins son Uthayanithi (MLA), sister Kanimozhi (MP), nephew Dayanidhi Maran (MP), and son-in-law Sabrison are worth tens of billions of rupees. Jagathrakshakan invested vast sums in Sri Lanka, including $3.85 billion in refineries at Hambantota. Stalins nephew Kalanithi Maran (Dayanidhi Marans brother) has a net worth of US$2.4 billion. He is the 18th richest man in India. The assets of the 10 wealthiest billionaires in Tamil Nadu alone are worth more than US$50 billion. While the wealth of Indias billionaires has nearly doubled over the past year, tens of millions of Indians have lost their livelihoods and fallen into poverty, and hundreds of thousands have died. Before coming to power, Stalin promised to solve the problems faced by the people at his election campaign meetings within 100 days. He has now thrown these promises into the trash. While protecting the assets of the billionaires, Stalin declared a lockdown for the month of May but gave only a paltry 2,000 rupees (US$27) to families. This is not enough for a family for three days, let alone a month. This has pushed millions of working people into abject poverty and forced many to remain on the job, risking infection. Earlier this year, scientists, medical experts and epidemiologists had warned that the spread of coronavirus could wreak havoc in India. These warnings were contemptuously ignored by the BJP government and Indias state governments. The Modi government did not take any of the necessary steps to protect the people. On the contrary, Modis government held religious events like the Kumbh Mela festival to poison the political atmosphere and assembly elections to consolidate its power in the states. Hindu fanatics gathered last month in the Himalayan town of Haridwar to participate in the Kumbh Mela. Similarly, a DMK-organized election meeting in Trichy was attended by nearly 200,000 people in March, without any form of social distancing. All of these events doubtless massively spread the virus. As a result, the total toll from COVID-19 in India has risen to 315,235 deaths and 27,369,093 infections. The more infectious and lethal Indian variant of the coronavirus as well as deadly secondary infections of black fungus are both spreading rapidly. In India, more than over 800 million people face a severe shortage of public health and primary care facilities. Across Tamil Nadu, the shortage of hospitals, medical personnel including doctors and paramedics, beds, oxygen, vaccines, medical equipment and ambulances is desperate. In long queues, people are forced to wait for treatment in front of hospitals. crematoriums are overflowing with bodies of the dead who are to be burned. Many have died before receiving treatment. The DMK government is sacrificing workers to employers and companies in the name of improving the economy. Transnational companies in Oragadam Sriperumbudur in Chennai continued to operate during the lockdown, keeping more than 150,000 workers on the job there. Major companies elsewhere in Tamil Nadu also continue to operate. As the World Socialist Web Site has stated: The pandemic proves the necessity of the abolition of the capitalist nation-state system. To defend its most basic rights, including to health care and to life itself, the working class must break free of the shackles of the trade unions and the Stalinists, which are defenders of capitalism, and establish new independent organizationsrank-and-file committeesthrough which it can fight to defend its class interests. The Socialist Equality Party (Sri Lanka) will hold an online public meeting on The COVID-19 pandemic and the need for a socialist strategy on Sunday, May 30, at 6 p.m. Indian Standard Time. The meeting will be conducted in English and Tamil. All WSWS readers are urged to attend. The Texas Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee will meet this Sunday, May 30, at 1:00 p.m. Central. Register today and invite your coworkers and friends! On May 10, the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD) school board voted unanimously to fire Rachell Tucker, a dual language kindergarten teacher at Highland Park Elementary School. The firing took place after Tucker had advocated for increased safety measures and the halting of in-person learning at her school amid the COVID-19 pandemic. According to La Prensa, two other teachers were fired at the same board meeting for unspecified reasons. Before the school board took their vote, Tucker appealed forcefully to be retained, which can be read in full here. She stated in part: My name, my career and my livelihood are all being defamed by my administration. The request for termination is the culmination of a campaign of harassment that started only after I advocated for the safety of my students, fellow teachers and my community The district made promises to staff, students, parents and the community to get students to come in person. It is now clear there was no intent to adhere to those promises. One example includes the safety measure to close schools if outbreak was rampant. They defined this as a 10 percent test positivity rate. When that number was reached, schools did not close. When it went as high as 26 percent positivity, schools did not close. Instead, you changed your safety plan and pursued the narrative that the community, not schools, were the source of outbreak. What are schools to you, if not part of our community? Spread happens at our schoolsnot acknowledging that simple fact illustrates your deception and culpability Why is it so wrong to ask questions of the institutions that we all trust to teach and keep the next generation safe? Why am I being terminated, defamed and disrespected for standing up for myself and my community? Why did people try to convince me to resign instead of stand before you today? Why do you say we have had a choice all along when that choice is to leave our professionour livelihood and passionif we do not feel safe? This is no choice at all. Why am I being held accountable for the failings of this district? Tucker was cut off mid-way through her remarks, but her prepared statement called for the board to retain her position without prejudice or retaliation, and to wipe clean any and all punitive measures, including negative evaluations. Following Tuckers remarks, numerous parents voiced their support for her, yet the board proceeded to make their unanimous decision behind closed doors. The following day, Tucker was marched out of her school while weeping in front of her kindergarten class. Highland Park Elementary School of San Antonio Independent School District (Credit: Highland Park Elementary School, SAISD Facebook page) The firing of Tucker and other teachers demanding stringent safety measures takes place as the political establishment in Texas and across the US, backed by the corporatist trade unions, rush to fully reopen schools and the broader economy in the pursuit of profits. Gregg Abbott, having previously ordered the homicidal reopening of schools and prematurely lifting mask mandates, has now explicitly forbade the issuing of mask mandates by local and county officials, including in K-12 schools where the vast majority of students remain unvaccinated. This socially murderous policy is set to go into effect in Texas schools on June 5 and was politically prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reversal of its guidance for vaccinated people to wear masks. The response of the unions has been to fully capitulate to these policies, as well as the broader attacks on the working class. The San Antonio Alliance of Teachers and Support Personnel, the local union of which Tucker is a member, has only issued statements of support and encouraged its members to call board members to demand Tuckers reinstatement. The National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), which the local is affiliated with, and all their state and local affiliates have not even acknowledged the firing, let alone issued statements or organized any resistance. Michael Hull, another victimized San Antonio teacher and member of the Texas Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee, commented: As a fellow San Antonio teacher, I extend my solidarity to Rachell Tucker who, like myself, was retaliated against for standing up for workplace safety. I had never had any disciplinary problems with my district until I started speaking up about the unsafe working conditions posed by opening schools during the pandemic. After I founded the group Teachers Against Dying to oppose the homicidal policies of governments and school boards, I was falsely accused of staging a walkout. Upon denying this hearsay, they wrote me up for simply abiding by their return to learn plan, which called upon teachers to set aside time to discuss Covid-19. Apparently, telling teenagers not to break the safety requirements due to the life and death consequences caused some distress. According to this backwards logic, honestly describing the risks of the situation was worse than subjecting them to it real life. After writing a rebuttal to these accusations, administrators frequently popped up in my classes, and suddenly, my grading procedures were called into question. The combination of safety concerns, coupled with the retaliation and scrutiny, became so unbearable that I resigned my position. These tactics are very effective at cowing dissent and discouraging whistleblowers. But, if more people like Tucker would stand up on behalf of their students and communities, there would be more fear on their part for unethical behavior than on our part for calling it out. I praise Tucker and everyone else who had the courage to speak truth to power during this unprecedented crisis. History will honor your brave stance. The experiences of Tucker and Hull demonstrate the need for the ruling class to stifle opposition wherever it breaks out, as masses of educators across Texas, the US and globally have become radicalized during the pandemic. As the school year comes to an end for most Texas teachers, the unavoidable reality is that the past year has been nothing short of a catastrophe. Over 2.5 million Texans have officially been infected with COVID-19 and over 51,600 have died, with both figures known to be significant undercounts. Out of those infected, approximately one third are expected to have long-term complications. According to a recent study by the University of Kentucky, 800 deaths and 43,000 infections in Texas were connected to the statewide reopening of schools during an eight-week period in the fall. These figures represented 12 percent of the states total COVID-19 cases and 17 percent of deaths during that time period. As a result of mounting deaths among teachers, the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) of Texas is months behind in paying benefits to current and former teachers who have died during the pandemic. Barbie Pearson, the Chief Benefits Officer at TRS of Texas, acknowledged the backlog in an April board meeting, stating that at one point the TRS queue had 2,000 deaths waiting to be acknowledged. According to Pearson, employees processed roughly 230-250 new deaths per week before the pandemic, with the system now averaging 350 deaths per week during the pandemic, with a record of more than 700 deaths coming in a single week. Suzan Falkner, a 7th grade science teacher whose sister Cathy died of COVID-19 on January 7, stated that after more than four months TRS still hasnt delivered death benefits owed to her sister and her surviving family. Cathy was a high school teacher in Killeen. Highlighting the unprecedented stress caused by the pandemic, a question recently posted on the Texas Teachers for Safe Reopening Facebook group revealed that at least 30 teachers, mostly women, have suffered significant hair loss as a combined result of COVID-19 infections and stress. One teacher stated, Mine has been falling out. I think its a combo of stress and a post COVID symptom. My hair stylist said shes been getting tons of clients coming in and hair just falling out in clumps. Another commented, Have mercy. My hair is falling out in clumps. Thinking it was hormonal. About to address it with doctor. Not glad we are all going bald but glad its not just me going insane. Across the state, attacks on teachers jobs have been carried out by numerous school districts, with nearly every major school district seeing teachers positions being eliminated. Throughout the past year, the unions have facilitated the resumption of in-person learning at the federal, state and local level and left teachers isolated as they have carried out dozens of protests and wildcat strikes since last fall. The despicable role played by the unions is epitomized by AFT President Randi Weingarten, who has orchestrated the school reopening campaign under Biden and recently stated, There is no doubt: Schools must be open. In person. Five days a week. The Texas Educators Rank-and-File Safety Committee was formed last September as part of a national and global effort to build new organizations of struggle, democratically controlled by rank-and-file workers and independent of the pro-corporate unions and big business parties. The pandemic is nowhere near over, and it is imperative that workers expand this network of committees to take matters into their own hands, in preparations for general strike action to close schools and nonessential workplace while providing full economic security to all workers affected. We urge all Texas educators, parents and students to sign up today to join and help build this committee, and to attend our next meeting this Sunday, May 30, at 1:00 pm Central. Three Tacoma, Washington police officers were charged Thursday in the killing of Manuel Ellis, 33, a black man who died while repeatedly telling officers I cant breathe as he was being restrained last year. During Ellis arrest, officers punched him, squeezed his neck, pressed on his back and placed a spit hood over his head, prosecutors said. Tacoma police officers Christopher Burbank, left, Matthew Collins, center, and Timothy Rankine Friday, May 28, 2021 [Credit: Tony Overman/The News Tribune via AP, Pool] The bloody assault came just three weeks before the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota sparked mass protests across the US and internationally demanding an end to police violence. Officers Christopher Burbank, 35, and Matthew Collins, 38, have been charged with second-degree murder and Timothy Rankine, 32, was charged with first-degree manslaughter, Washington States attorney general Bob Ferguson announced Thursday. According to court documents, Ellis was walking home March 3, 2020 after purchasing a snack at a 7-Eleven late at night when he saw Burbank and Collins sitting in their police car. Witnesses said Ellis stopped and spoke to the officers in a manner described as peaceful and respectful. Ellis then began walking away. According to witnesses, Burbank swung open the passenger door, hitting Ellis from behind and knocking him onto his knees. Prosecutors said that several officers on the scene recalled hearing Burbank and Collins claim they had seen Ellis trying to get into a car and then hit their police car. This has been contradicted by three witnesses, none of whom saw Ellis hit the car or officers at any point. Prosecutors said a combination of bystander videos, surveillance footage and dispatch radio traffic showed what happened next. Burbank wrapped his arms around Ellis, lifted him into the air and drove him down onto the pavement, hitting him with one of his fists. Collins, a 215-pound SWAT team member and Army veteran trained in martial arts, then moved toward Ellis and brought his weight down on him. He also began hitting Ellis, punching him four times as he screamed. Hey! Stop! one bystander is heard screaming. Oh my God, stop hitting him! Stop hitting him! Just arrest him. Collins then wrapped his arm around Ellis neck and applied what prosecutors called a lateral vascular neck restraint. Three witnesses stated Ellis was not fighting back and they never saw him hit the officers. While Collins was choking Ellis, Burbank fired a taser at Ellis and jolted him for five seconds. Ellis head fell towards the ground after Collins released his grip on his neck. Collins then pushed his arm onto the back of Elliss head or neck, pressing his face into the pavement, prosecutors said. The officers then held his arms behind his back and pressed down on his body. Burbank jolted Ellis again with the Taser causing him to thrash and yell out in pain. The officers responded by holding Ellis arms behind his back and pressing him in the ground before jolting him again with the Taser. In a video captured by a doorbell camera on a house across the street, Ellis can be heard saying cant breathe, sir. Cant breathe! Less than 15 seconds later, he can again be heard pleading with the officers, again mentioning that he could not breathe. Rankine arrived with another group of officers who responded as backup. Court documents stated Rankine also started pressing onto Ellis back in a way that looked as if he were in a seated position. Ellis again told officers he could not breathe. According to prosecutors, Rankine later recalled Ellis say in a very calm, normal voice that he could not breathe and responding that if youre talking to me, you can breathe just fine. Ellis was hogtied on his stomach, with Rankine on top of him, and another officer put a spit hood on his head. Prosecutors explained the brand of spit hood officers used included a warning that it should not be used on anyone having difficulty breathing. Police kept Ellis under Rankine, hogtied and face down, for six to nine minutes until the Fire Department arrived. He was pronounced dead at the scene. Pierce County medical examiner Dr. Thomas Clark determined Ellis cause of death was hypoxia due to physical restraint. The Tacoma Police Union defended the officers, saying, We are disappointed that facts were ignored in favor of what appears to be a politically motivated witch hunt. We look forward to trial, the union said. An unbiased jury will find that the officers broke no laws and, in fact, acted in accordance with the law, their training, and Tacoma Police Department policies. An unbiased jury will not allow these fine public servants to be sacrificed at the altar of public sentiment. Ellis, the father of an 11-year-old son and an 18-month-old daughter, was known as a talented musician at his church and had played drums with the worship band earlier on the night he was killed. Green Party leader Robert Habeck advocates supplying Ukraine with German weapons and providing it with more military support. This demand by the co-chair of the Green Party was not a lapse resulting from foreign policy inexperience, as some media commentaries claim, rather, the Greens are deliberately intensifying the war policy against Russia that they have been pursuing for a long time. Last weekend, amid a tense situation, Green Party leader Robert Habeck travelled to Ukraine at the invitation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Selenskyj. Kiev is intensifying its military confrontation with Russia, and NATO is conducting its largest manoeuvres since the end of the Cold War directly on the Russian border, under the name Defender Europe 2021. They will last until mid-June. Robert Habeck (Photo: Stephan Rohl / CC BY-SA 2.0) Also in Habecks delegation were Manuel Sarrazin, a Bundestag (federal parliament) deputy who sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee for the Greens, and the Green Member of the European Parliament Viola von Cramon-Taubadel, who is a member of the EU Committee on Foreign Affairs and has already made multiple visits to Ukraine, where she is in charge of German and European economic projects there. After talks with Selenskyj and deputy military chief Major General Eduard Moskaljow, who was in charge of the delegation, Habeck stated that he considered Ukraines wish for arms deliveries justified given the war in the east of the country. So-called defensive weapons would be difficult to deny the country, he said. Habeck added that the Greens were, of course, a party that came from pacifism. Every military conflict was a misery, he said, and when people die, that is always bad. But if you look into the conflict between the pro-Russian rebels and the Ukrainian army a little bit, you cannot block Kiev from at least trying to defend itself. When media representatives pointed out this contradicted the wording of the Green Partys programme, which rejects arms exports to war zones, and the current guidelines of the German government, Habeck replied that he had explicitly referred to defensive weapons for self-defence. To support his party leader, Green defence politician Tobias Lindner listed so-called defensive weapons systems. He wrote on Twitter: Lets discuss systems that are often used in types of operations such as defence or delay, i.e., anti-tank, anti-aircraft, and in addition, mine clearance, reconnaissance. On Deutschlandradio, whose reporter accompanied the Greens trip, Habeck repeated his demand the next day. He said he understood that Ukraine felt left alone. Armoured vehicles could be used to transport injured people or to clear mines and should therefore be delivered to Kiev. The visit to the front had been impressive, he said, but the statements about which the whole fuss has now arisen had not been a spontaneous reaction to the dire situation on the ground, but the result of a political analysis that had already been made before I started my trip. Germany was not taking adequate account of Ukraines security interests, was finishing the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and was trying to lift sanctions against Russia, he said. At the same time, he added, there was the Russian troop build-up against Ukraine. Crimea has been annexed. And Germany is not supplying medivacs, night vision equipment, explosive ordnance disposal, and I made that clear once. You just have to do something so your words dont just sound like mockery. Ukraine also defended Europes security, Habeck said in the Deutschlandradio interview. If the country were to lose the conflict over Crimea, he said, there was a danger that Russia could act in other regions in the same way as it had in Crimea. He said that Ukraines accession to NATO was desirable but not yet feasible in the current situation. NATO was not yet prepared for this, not sorted out enough, as Habeck put it. Habecks visit and his talks in Kiev are directly related to a new initiative by the Ukrainian government to reconquer the Crimean Peninsula. The so-called Strategy for the Recovery of Crimea is based on close cooperation with the US government. In early May, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Kiev for talks and assured President Selenskyj of the unwavering support of the United States. Blinken announced that the US governments extensive military assistance would be significantly expanded. Within the framework of a security partnership, $300 million per year are to flow from Washington to Kiev in future for the development of the military. Blinken was accompanied by Victoria Nuland, the State Department Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Nuland was one of the most aggressive supporters of the US- and EU-backed coup that toppled elected pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 and brought to power a far-right government opposed to Moscow. That same year, a recorded conversation between Nuland, who was deputy secretary of state at the time, and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, became public. The two bluntly discussed what composition of government they were calling for after the coup in Kiev. Today's Republican Party is building a political bomb -- and the ingredients for the explosive concoction are being mixed before our eyes. When it all blows up -- and it will, unless the party changes course soon -- the result will be not just rhetorical extremism but could well include real violence. If you thought the events of Jan. 6 were shocking, what comes next could be far worse. A chilling new poll by PRRI, the Pubic Religion Research Institute, found that nearly one in four Republicans (that's tens of millions of people) believe the QAnon mythology that "the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles." You might just shake your head and laugh at this nonsense, except that that they also believe that "because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country." This is no fringe cult. The number of people believing these and other outlandish QAnon conspiracies is enormous. There is a current of poison circulating in American society, threatening its cohesiveness and its social and political order. "If it were a religion," according to PRRI founder Robby Jones, "it would be as big as all white evangelicals Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants." Poll after poll has also found that a majority of Republicans, 61% according to the latest from Reuters/Ipsos, believe the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump. Inspiring these legions to keep their weapons handy for political purposes are the likes of Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who has taken to campaigning with that other GOP "luminary," Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. During a joint appearance with Greene in Georgia on Thursday, Gaetz declared that the Second Amendment is "not about hunting." Instead, he said, it's about "the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government if that becomes necessary." Then there's Greene, whose deranged comments about Jews and space lasers, and her offensive suggestion of an equivalence between mask wearing requirements to protect against coronavirus and the targeting of Jews in the Holocaust, drew much attention -- along with the rarest rebuke from some GOP leaders. Greene first emerged as a fringe candidate, a QAnon supporter, dismissed by Republican leaders. But when Trump extolled her as a "future Republican star," many party leaders became hesitant to criticize her. Her Holocaust comments finally forced their hand. But perhaps more pernicious is what she said from that stage on Thursday. "You know, Nazis were the National Socialist Party," she explained, "just like the Democrats are now a national socialist party." So, let's take a step back and look at how this bomb construction is going. Countless Republican leaders either spread or refuse to deny the Big Lie, the claim that the election was stolen. Tens of millions of Republicans erroneously believe Trump won. Almost one-quarter of Republicans believe it may become necessary to use violence to "save the country." Then they are told by Republican outrage peddlers that the US Constitution protects their right to own firearms for the purpose of rising up against the government. And then -- the match to start lighting the fuse -- they are told that Democrats are similar to Nazis. If that's not the recipe for disaster -- not just for Republicans but for the entire country -- tell me what it is. As Republicans pave the way for another insurrection, this one potentially much better attended than the Jan. 6 disaster, the leaders of the party, the "grownups," have abandoned their responsibility to the country, focusing instead on winning the next election. America may blow up, but at least they'll try to eke out a majority in Congress -- even if it means blocking an investigation of the Jan. 6 assault on the US Capitol by enraged Trump supporters. A smattering of principled Republicans are speaking out. Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska fulminated against the GOP leadership and against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell's personal push to block the commission, calling it "a decision for the short-term political gain," ignoring the imperative to defend principles of democracy -- including a peaceful transition of power. "I kind of want that to endure beyond just one election," she said grimly. Some may view these maneuvers about the Jan. 6 commission, the reluctance to declare the legitimacy of the election and the implications of the increasingly extreme rhetoric as just a sign of a more polarized political system. This thinking fails to grasp the seriousness of what is building. And unless GOP leaders wake up to the danger, the US may soon face something far more dangerous than over-the-top rhetoric and a disputed election. Charleston, WV (25301) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 66F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Morgantown, WV (26505) Today Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Partly cloudy skies. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low around 65F. Winds ESE at 5 to 10 mph. Charleston, WV (25311) Today Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low 64F. Winds ENE at 5 to 10 mph. Police blotter is a list of recent arrests compiled from public records in Laramie County. All people listed here are innocent until proven guilty. Anyone listed who has a charge dismissed or is acquitted of the charge may bring or mail a court document proving such to the WTE editor, 702 W. Lincolnway, Cheyenne, WY 82001. {span}Members of the House of Representatives converse in the waning hours of the May 2020 special session. Another special session is planned to discuss what to do with incoming federal funding.{/span} Hong Kong film censors issued a warning to the citys hospital workers union on Thursday evening over the screening two films related to the 1989 June 4 Tiananmen Square crackdown. I Have Graduated is a 1992 documentary about the last batch of university students who experienced the 1989 Beijing protests, and was produced by a collective of filmmakers known as SWYC. Conjugation is a 2001 fictional feature revolving around the challenges faced by a young couple in the post-Tiananmen era, directed by Emily Tang. The film was banned in mainland China.Neither film has a rating in Hong Kong. More from Variety Discussion of Tiananmen is effectively prohibited in mainland China, and as Hong Kong comes increasingly to resemble the Peoples Republic it is becoming less clear whether Tiananmen has also now become taboo in the Special Administrative Region. Hong Kongers have in the past had lively discussions of the subject and held large, annual memorial events in public parks. The National Security Law, introduced on June 30 last year may have changed that. This week, the Hong Kong Police banned a planned Tiananmen vigil in a public park for the second year in a row. Public health grounds were cited for the ban. A letter from the Office for Film, Newspaper and Article Administration (OFNAA), posted on the Hospital Authority Employees Alliances Facebook, wrote that that the union has screened I Have Graduated to its members at the unions premises on May 22, but the film was not rated by the film censors. All films shown in Hong Kong must be submitted to local film censors and be approved by the censorship board before they can be screened, OFNAA said in the letter. That includes public places and member-only venues. OFNAA also questioned if the union has sought approval from the censors over the screening of Conjugation on Saturday. It warned that a letter of approval must be shown at the screening venue, and said that any violation would lead to a penalty of HK$10,000 ($1,290). Story continues The union said that officers from OFNAA also paid a visit to the unions premises on Thursday evening without prior notice. Representatives of the union questioned whether the move was related to political suppression. OFNAA told Radio Television Hong Kong that officers visited the unions office for inspection after receiving an enquiry about the legality of the screenings from members of the public. For the past two days Hong Kong has reported no new coronavirus cases, either from local sources or from imported ones. The past 14 days have seen just five local cases and 15 imported cases. Best of Variety Sign up for Varietys Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Nearly three years after her death, jurors handed down a guilty verdict in the murder trial of University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts on Friday. In an exclusive interview with "Good Morning America," jury foreman Robert "Bo" Reed described that moment. "I felt my heart was gonna pound through my chest, to be honest with you -- it became very real for me because this is it now," Reed said. "We went through two weeks of this trial and it came down to this. So it was very, very, very emotional at that point." PHOTO: Bo Reed, foreman juror in the trial of Cristhian Bahena Rivera for the murder of Mollie Tibbetts, speaks with Good Morning America via video conferencing on May 29, 2021. (Good Morning America) After seven days of testimony, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, a 26-year-old undocumented immigrant from Mexico, was found guilty of first-degree murder -- killing Tibbetts, 20, and hiding her body in a cornfield in the rural city of Brooklyn, Iowa, in July 2018. MORE: Guilty verdict in murder of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts Reed said he and his fellow jurors put their emotions aside while they made their final decision given the gravity of the sentence for first-degree murder in Iowa -- life in prison without the possibility of parole. The jury deliberated for seven hours over Thursday and Friday. In the end, they were all in agreement on the verdict. "It was a very long process, that's for sure. But we wanted to make sure we took the time that was necessary to make sure that we came to a unanimous decision," Reed said. "Even when we went through deliberation, we were all very understanding and willing to listen to each other to make sure that we were all on the same page." PHOTO: Cristhian Bahena Rivera watches as the jury enters the courtroom before announcing the verdict in his trial, May 28, 2021. (Charlie Neibergall/AP) Reed said he was very impressed with and proud of the jurors in the high-profile case, which drew national attention after Tibbetts disappeared while out on a jog on July 18, 2018. "I think we all did a very, very great job," he said. "I believe that we all made the right decision." The jurors heard wildly contrasting theories as to what happened to Tibbetts, whom prosecutors said was stabbed up to a dozen times and found about 500 feet down a row of tall corn, covered in leaves, a month after she went missing. Story continues In a shocking twist, Bahena Rivera, who speaks little English, testified in his own defense Wednesday, claiming he was kidnapped by two masked and armed men who forced him to drive to where Tibbetts was jogging and one of them killed her and put her body in his car's trunk. PHOTO: FMollie Tibbetts poses for a picture during homecoming festivities at BGM High School in her hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa, Sept. 2016. (Kim Calderwood via AP) But that story didn't match statements he allegedly told investigators during an Aug. 20, 2018, interview. Spanish-speaking police officer Pamela Romero, who was present for that interview, testified in the trial that Bahena Rivera confessed that he did see Tibbetts that day, claiming he followed her, stopped his car and began jogging alongside her. Romero testified that after 11 hours of questioning, Bahena Rivera led investigators to the cornfield, where they found Tibbetts' badly decomposed body. MORE: Jury gets case after hearing contrasting claims of how Mollie Tibbetts was killed During closing arguments, prosecutor Scott Brown dismissed Bahena Rivera's testimony as a "figment of his imagination," pointing to evidence including surveillance video of Bahena Rivera's black Chevrolet Malibu circling the area where Tibbetts was running, her DNA found in the trunk of his car and his earlier confession. Defense attorney Chad Frese alleged that Romero and other investigators forced a "false confession" from Bahena Rivera. Frese argued that investigators "cherry-picked facts" to fit their theory due to intense pressure to solve the case. Bahena Rivera's sentencing will be at 9:30 a.m. on July 15 in Poweshiek County. He was granted no bond pending sentencing. ABC News' Bill Hutchinson and Marlene Lenthang contributed to this report. Juror in Mollie Tibbetts murder trial describes guilty verdict as 'emotional' moment originally appeared on abcnews.go.com A nurse prepares to swab a patient at a COVID-19 testing center on July 7, 2020, in Texas. Sergio Flores/Getty Images Vietnam has detected a new coronavirus variant, officials said Saturday. The variant carries traces of strains from both the United Kingdom and India. Variants can spread more easily, make people sicker, escape immune responses, evade tests, or render treatments ineffective. See more stories on Insider's business page. Health officials in Vietnam have detected a new variant of the coronavirus that's highly contagious. The Vietnamese Health Ministry announced on Saturday that scientists have determined the new variant has traces of strains from both the United Kingdom and India, VnExpress reported. Because the virus has mutations of strains from both countries, it is particularly susceptible to transmission. Officials believe the UK variant is more easily transmissible than other strains. The variant, B.1.1.7, is between 30% to 50% more effective at spreading from person to person than other coronavirus variants, according to UK scientists. The Indian variant, on the other hand, might make the virus more infectious or may help it avoid the antibody response. This means variants can spread more easily, make people sicker, escape immune responses, evade tests, or render treatments ineffective, according to experts. The new variant is able to be transmitted quickly through the air, VnExpress, an international news outlet, reported. At least four people infected with the coronavirus are carrying the hybrid variant in Vietnam, the outlet reported. News of the variant comes as India continues to struggle to curb the spread of the coronavirus. The situation is dire in India as the country continues to report large surges in positive cases. Crematoriums across India have been overwhelmed with bodies and people died as hospitals ran out of oxygen. India has been reporting hundreds of thousands of new cases a week, reaching record highs that are globally unmatched. Despite the staggering numbers, experts believe the death toll numbers are likely much higher. Story continues Dozens of hospital workers recently told Bloomberg that they feel burnt out and exhausted from treating patients under the grim circumstances. The situation has led to US officials promising to intervene. Last month, for example, President Joe Biden promised the US would send help to India in the form of "oxygen-related supplies, vaccine materials, and therapeutics." And Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, has urged other countries to also step up to help India curb the spread of the virus. Insider's Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce contributed to this report. Read the original article on Business Insider Congress Methane Emissions (Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.) The use of massive "chillers" to prevent Alaskan permafrost for oil drilling operations has resulted in criticism of Joe Biden's White House after his administration defended the move. The US Department of Justice under Mr Biden's administration defended a Trump-era decision to allow the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska's north slope, saying it was "reasonable and consistent" with the law. The department's defence means the Biden administration is standing against a lawsuit brought by environmental groups that wanted to halt the drilling over concerns that it would have a negative impact on wildlife and increase emissions in the region. Though Mr Biden paused all new drilling leases affecting public lands, he is allowing the Alaskan project to continue. The Guardian reported that the project, which is called Willow, is being directed by ConocoPhillips, an oil company, and is slated to extract more than 100,000 barrels of oil every day for the next 30 years. Activists opposed to the drilling said the administration's support of the project flies in the face of his vows to combat climate change and reduce US emissions. Kristen Monsell, and attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity, expressed her disappointment with the decision to The Guardian. Its incredibly disappointing to see the Biden administration defending this environmentally disastrous project, she said. President Biden promised climate action and our climate cant afford more huge new oil-drilling projects. In order to drill for oil in an environment that is rapidly heating the Arctic is heating three times faster than the rest of the planet ConocoPhillips has to resort to using "chillers" injected into the Alaskan permafrost to stop extensive melting while it drills. Ms Monsell said the need for such tactics "highlights the ridiculousness of drilling in the Arctic." The Willow project requires up to 250 wells and infrastructure to support them, which includes a processing facility, hundreds of miles of pipelines, roads and an airstrip. Story continues The Trump administration green-lit the project in the last months of his presidency, and activists hoped Mr Biden would reverse his decision. In addition to environmental activists' opposition, Native Alaskan groups have also complained about the project, saying it could hurt the area's wildlife, like polar bears, fish and caribou. This project is in the important fall migration for Nuiqsut, Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, a resident of nearby Nuiqsut, told The Guardian. It should not happen. The village spoke in opposition and the greed for profit should not be allowed over our village. Read More Watch live as Biden delivers remarks on the economy in Ohio More states ease lingering virus rules as vaccine rates rise Its wrong and un-American: Biden condemns Texas bill to restrict voting rights Virus Outbreak Idaho Mask Mandate Ban (Idaho Statesman) The governor of Idaho nixed an executive order a day after his lieutenant governor placed a ban on coronavirus mask mandates, describing her actions as a tyrannical abuse of power and a "self-serving political stunt." Governor Brad Little of Idaho reversed the order of Republican Lieutenant Governor Janice McGeachin, who took action against mask mandates, even though Idaho never had a statewide one, while the governor was out of town attending the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville. Ms McGeachin has far-right views and has worked to undermine Mr Little's handling of the coronavirus pandemic. On Thursday, she issued an executive order ending local mask mandates in schools and public buildings. Though Mr Little never issued a state mask mandate, he has encouraged widespread mask usage. On the local level, counties, cities and schools have enacted their own mask mandates, and many have been lifted as the number of vaccinated people in Idaho increases. There are two counties and 10 cities that still have mask orders in place. Mr Little explained his reasons for reversing Ms McGeachin's order on Friday. I have opposed a statewide mask mandate all along because I dont think top-down mandates change behavior the way personal choice does, Mr Little said in a statement. He said he opposed the move because it stripped the agency of local officials to govern their counties and cities as they deemed necessary. But, as your Governor, when it came to masks, I also didnt undermine separately elected officials who, under Idaho law, are given authorities to take measures they believe will protect the health and safety of the people they serve, he said. Ms McGeachin did not notify the governor of her plans to rescind the mask orders. The governor condemned her order. Taking the earliest opportunity to act solitarily on a highly politicized, polarizing issue without conferring with local jurisdictions, legislators, and the sitting Governor is, simply put, an abuse of power, Mr Little said. This kind of over-the-top executive action amounts to tyranny something we all oppose. How ironic that the action comes from a person who has groused about tyranny, executive overreach, and balance of power for months. Story continues Ms McGeachin shot back in a Twitter post defending her actions. I understand that protecting individual liberty means fighting against tyranny at ALL levels of government federal, state, and local, she wrote. It is your God-given right to make your own health decisions, and no state, city, or school district ever has the authority to violate your unalienable rights. The governor pointed out that had her order remained in place, it could have put vulnerable people at risk of contracting the coronavirus. "This is why you do your homework, Lt. Governor," he said. Mr Little has been a target for far-right lawmakers criticising his handling of the coronavirus. The governor issued a temporary stay-at-home order in March 2020 when the state's hospitals were overwhelmed with coronavirus patients. The lockdown helped health care facilities get a handle on the influx of patients and bought them time to obtain necessary PPE to protect their staff. Despite this, conservative lawmakers in the state attempted to pass a mask mandate ban, but failed in their efforts. I am always reluctant to engage in political ploys, especially when I have been steadfast in meeting the simultaneous goals of protecting both lives and livelihoods, Mr Little said. I do not like petty politics. I do not like political stunts over the rule of law. However, the significant consequences of the Lt. Governors flimsy executive order require me to clean up a mess. Read More Watch live as Joe Biden and Virginia governor discuss progress fighting Covid Texas bans reality television crews from teaming up with the police to film officers on duty Ammon Bundy enters Idaho governor race The Green Party are calling on Labour to collaborate for the common good (PA) Democracy relies on trust. In order for people to be able to have their say, they need to know confidently who they are voting for and what their preferred candidate or party stands for. That is why disinformation in politics is such a dangerous game. Attempts to warp reality in order to serve a distinct group will inevitably disenfranchise whole sections of society and make people feel powerless to bring about change. Unfortunately, our two-party system breeds exactly this kind of behaviour. If you cant win support for your own vision, you can always misrepresent your opponents in the hope that if you sling enough mud, voters will pick you as the least reprehensible option. Ultimately, we all end up losing. We need a new politics, one that values cooperation over conflict and collaboration over isolation. After all, we have more in common than that which divides us. We have known it for decades, and invariably, every new leader promises this sense of togetherness. But every new leader also gets quickly ground down by the system, and reverts to type. In a two-party system, a cooperative approach to politics is the road less travelled. Any suggestion you might wish to work with others is portrayed by opponents as an admission that you cant win on your own. And old habits die hard. The older, bigger parties will always feel entitled to govern. It was with very mixed feelings that I watched the aftermath of the recent local election results. Our system is fragmenting, with more and more people voting for an increased variety of different parties. The world has changed, and the new politics is a politics of plurality. But our two party system will always be in denial. It will stifle attempts to work together. Success, however, did come in places like Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Stroud where parties came together for the common good. They still recognise, of course, that they are different. They stand on different manifestos. They have different values. But they also realise that their communities have elected not one party, but many. Story continues Their duty was to collaborate for the common good, and without this kind of cooperation, communities up and down the country are going to suffer the worst effects of an unassailable Conservative government, and our democratic rights will be trampled in the process. It was with a very heavy heart that I watched too as relations broke down in places like London and Lancaster, giving birth to a worrying campaign from the Labour Party to spread misinformation. Parties wont always be able to agree of course, and thats OK. But when we disagree, it makes sense to disagree well. Not revert to the old politics from which we must all move away if we are to have the hope of a better future. It is worth looking at what happened in both London and Lancaster, because if we are to make the new politics work, we need to learn as we go along. On the London Assembly, which is actually a scrutiny body rather than an administration, Labour chose not to take any committee chairs after they had been shared around proportionally, as is the custom. This is a shame. Now, all of us have been left worse off, because a proportion of those who were elected have not taken their rightful seats chairing the assemblys committees. Likewise, the Green Partys proposal to continue to work alongside Labour in Lancaster under a Green leader was originally rejected. Councillors from four groups, including independents who had left Labour over its perceived shift to the right, subsequently voted for a Green leader of the council. It was a great sadness to see these examples being portrayed as anti-Labour alliances. They werent. There is a major realignment of politics underway, not just in Britain but across the world just look to Germany where a Green Chancellor could be elected this year. It involves negotiation and collaboration. We wont always get our way. And when we dont, it is not acceptable to misrepresent others. If there is to be an end to Conservative rule, progressive parties must come together. When they do, they will need to win votes from people who have formerly voted Conservative. This is not getting into bed with the Tories. Nor is it a compromise. Its about showing that you are a credible alternative worth voting for, and will be able to govern well. Jonathan Bartley is the co-leader of the Green Party Read More Watch live as Boris Johnson faces Keir Starmer at PMQs Could the Democratic Unionist Partys mistakes pave the way for a united Ireland? Greater clarity is urgently needed on the governments international travel advice May 28BEMIDJI Bruce Ware was airborne for much of his 29 years in the United States Air Force, and led an incredible rescue of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh in the Philippines. These days the 83-year-old retired colonel stays mostly close to the ground. Ware and his wife, Janie, are visiting Bemidji this week at the end of a month-long motorhome trip that started in New Orleans and made its way up the Great River Road, along the Mississippi River to its source at Itasca State Park. Fourteen rolling homes pulled into Royal Oaks RV Park on Bemidji's south side on Wednesday, May 17, their 10th stop on the tour. It's an excursion led by Yankee RV Tours of Florida, which ends on Saturday, May 29, when the motorhomes head back to their respective homes. The Wares, who live in Nashville, Tenn., are completing their seventh trip with Yankee. The group did some sightseeing in the Bemidji area and made two trips to Itasca State Park. On Friday, they walked across the Mississippi at its source. Earlier this week the tour went through Little Falls, home of Charles Lindbergh. Memories of an April 12, 1972 rescue mission are never far from Bruce Ware's mind, and he was planning to visit Lindbergh's boyhood home, which is now a museum. Unfortunately, it has been closed during the pandemic and won't reopen until July 2. Ware still refers to the famous aviator as "Mr. Lindbergh." It was Easter Sunday in 1970 when Ware, then an Air Force major, was summoned from Clark Air Base in the Philippines to fly his Jolly Green Giant helicopter 600 miles south to a spot where Lindbergh and an entourage of 46 people were stranded. Lindbergh, then a 70-year-old retired Air Force Reserve Brigadier General, was with a television news team investigating reports of a lost tribe in the Tasaday mountains of Mindanao, but their helicopter was damaged and could not be flown. "I had my Easter Sunrise Service en route," Ware said. Story continues When Ware got to the ridgeline where the group was stranded, there was no place to land, "but I did have a place to hover. The first five we picked up were little female interpreters. Then we went back and got Mr. Lindbergh. We ended up making eight trips off the ridgeline. We took everybody back to their little province, . . . about a three-day walk up and down mountains. Mr. Lindbergh said he wouldn't have made it." The rescue is detailed on the "This Day in Aviation" website and includes a photo of Lindbergh next to a young Maj. Ware, who six days later was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroics. "That happened in less than a week," Ware said. "Normally that takes several months. But when you've got an international hero, it kind of gains some momentum." The Wares purchased their first motorhome in 1988, a year before Bruce retired from military service. Their first trip was a 10-month tour around the United States. He later worked for American Eagle airlines and did some charter flying part-time. "Then I quit flying altogether," he said, "and now I play golf a little more often and take trips in the motorhome." He will spend Memorial Day with an Air Force colleague in Woodbury, Minn., before heading home to Nashville, with memories of his Mississippi River trip, Lindbergh's hometown, Itasca State Park and Bemidji. Local centerpiece End of Watch: Motorcycle group roars into Yakima to honor fallen corrections officer Oaks Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Family members hold Joy Oaks, right, as she weeps Friday, May 28, 2021, after seeing a photograph of her husband, Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks, on a 41-foot trailer honoring fallen officers from the prior year at Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. The trailer is hauled by members of Beyond the Call of Duty for the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Bryanna Burkhart, center, holds 3-year-old Adelaide Burkhart as members of Beyond the Call of Duty visit the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash., honoring Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Members of Beyond the Call of Duty visit the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash., in honor of Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign. The campaign is a group of motorcycle riders from the state of Washington who are escorting a 41-foot trailer across the country to honor fallen officers from the prior year. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Family and friends honor Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks as members of Beyond the Call of Duty visit the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash., Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Joy Oaks signs a banner in honor of her husband, Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks, Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign at the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Steve Oaks signs a banner in honor of his brother, Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks, Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign at the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Corrections Officer Calva signs a banner in honor of Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks Friday, May 28, 2021, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign at the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Joy Oaks, right, stands near her family after receiving a plaque dedicated to her husband, Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks, Friday, May 28, 2021, at the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic Jagrut Shah, chairman of Beyond the Call of Duty, right, shakes hands with Jeremy Welch, Yakima County Department of Corrections chief, center, during the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign at the Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash., on Friday, May 28, 2021. Amanda Ray / Yakima Herald-Republic A photograph of Corrections Officer Daniel Glenn Oaks is seen Friday, May 28, 2021, on a 41-foot trailer honoring fallen officers from the prior year at Yakima County Department of Corrections in Yakima, Wash. The trailer is hauled by members of Beyond the Call of Duty for the End of Watch Ride to Remember campaign. A dozen motorcycles followed by two fifth-wheel trailers rumbled into the parking lot of Yakima Countys jail on Friday in honor of fallen corrections Officer Daniel Oaks. The procession, Beyond the Call of Duty End of Watch Ride to Remember, is traveling across the nation to honor all those who have died in the line of duty in 2020. Fridays stop in Yakima was in honor of Oaks, who spent 15 years as a corrections officer here before his life was cut short by COVID-19. He died Aug. 1, 2020, at age 58. Family, friends and co-workers more than 40 in all gathered in the jails parking lot as riders roared in and parked. One of the trailers was covered in photos of sheriffs deputies, police and corrections officers including Oaks. Those present gazed at the photos, taking pictures with cellphones. Oaks wife, children and brother combed over the trailer before stopping at his photo. Tears were shed and hugs were shared. Later, Jeremy Welch chief of security operations ushered the crowd into the jails foyer, where plaques noting Oaks service and sacrifice hang on a wall. Two are from the countys Department of Corrections and one the Medal of Honor is from the American Police Hall of Fame. Welch stood in front of the plaques as he addressed the crowd, his voice shaking at times as he held back tears. Officer Oaks was an amazing person, family man he did his job to protect us, family and community, Welch told the crowd. Now its our turn to protect his memory. Welch then presented Joy Oaks with a plaque a large wooden star noting his service and end of watch. Turning to the plaques on the wall, Welch said, These will be hanging here forever to make sure his memory isnt forgotten. Tears welled in Joy Oaks eyes as she recalled her 6-foot-4 husband as a gentle but protective giant who was understanding of others. Dan served God and people the best he could, she said. He tried to see each inmate as if he was just one decision away from them. He would always say that hes just one decision away from them. They were married 20 years. Losing him isnt easy, but God is able to take bad things and make them good so I trust that, Joy Oaks said. Steve Oaks, who stands 6 feet tall, paused as he reflected on his taller little brother. There was a time he was littler than me that didnt last long, though, he said with a smile Oaks two children, 16-year-old Jadon and Akari, 13, sat nearby sharing stories with those who worked with their late father. Jadon held the plaque that was presented to his mom. I think its pretty cool, he said gazing down at it. Joy Oaks was alarmed by the number of officers who perished in the line of duty last year. Theres way too many officers who have passed away thats way too many, she said. Its really hard for families. End of Watch Ride to Remember is a group of Washington riders escorting a 41-foot trailer across the country to honor fallen officers from the prior year. On Friday, the group began a a cross-country journey of more than 22,000 miles to visit cities and police departments in honor of men and women who died in the line of duty. Last year the group honored 146 fallen officers. This year they will honor 338 who died in 2020. Joy Oaks was happy the group stopped here. Its so nice raises awareness, she said. Its been a long year. A lot of change. 7 day print subscribers enjoy unlimited access to yakimaherald.com Enter the LAST NAME and the 7 DIGIT phone number on your print subscription account to connect your print subscription to your yakimaherald.com account. Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. WASHINGTON (AP) Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday became the first openly gay woman to deliver the White House press briefing and only the second Black woman in history to take on the role. Jean-Pierre, the White House principal deputy press secretary, had briefed reporters aboard Air Force One, but Wednesday marked her first time before the lectern for a televised briefing. "It's a real honor to be standing here today," Jean-Pierre told reporters, when asked about her historic turn. "Clearly the president believes that representation matters, and I appreciate him giving me this opportunity." Judy Smith, who served as deputy press secretary to President George H.W. Bush in 1991, was the first Black woman to take on the role. Jean-Pierre is seen as a potential successor to current White House press secretary Jen Psaki, who has publicly said she only intends to serve in the role for about a year, and Wednesday's appearance was seen as an audition of sorts for the job. Jean-Pierre fields press requests and makes frequent appearances for the Biden administration on cable news. New Delhi: Petrol and diesel prices have jumped again on Saturday (May 29) after a day of hiatus due to the rising prices of crude oil in the international market. In Delhi, the price of petrol has been increased by 26 paise, while the price of diesel has been increased by 28 paise. With the recent price hike, petrol is retailing at Rs 93.94 per litre and diesel at Rs 84.89 per litre in the national capital city. In Mumbai, the price of petrol has breached the Rs 100 mark. Petrol rates increased by 25 paise and diesels price jumped by 30 paise. With the hike, petrol and diesel are retailing at Rs 100.19 per litre and Rs 92.17 per litre, respectively, in the financial capital. Meanwhile, Petrol is retailing in Kolkata on May 29 at Rs 93.97 per litre and diesel at Rs 87.74 per litre. Petrol and diesel prices have been increased by a total of 16 times on 16 different days in May. However, there hasnt been a single deduction in the month so far. As a result, petrol and diesel prices are now selling at record highs in many cities across India. Since May 4, petrol prices have surged by Rs 3.59 per litre while diesel rates have increased by 4.13 per litre this month. How to check petrol, diesel prices in your Petrol and diesel prices in India are revised daily at 6 am. If you want to know the prices of petrol and diesel in your city then all you need to do is send an SMS to the mobile number 9224992249. Type RSP Petrol Pump Dealer Code and send to 9224992249. RSP code of your locality can be checked by visiting the official site of the petrol pump near you. New Delhi: The CICSE board has asked its affiliated schools to submit data including average of marks obtained by class 12 students in class 11 and during this session to evaluate the overall marks. The board had postponed class 12 exams which were scheduled from May 4 in light of the aggressive second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. A large section of students and parents have been demanding cancellation of the exams but the board has not announced any decision yet. The class 10 exams have already been cancelled by the Council for the Indian School Certificate Examinations (CICSE). "The CISCE is in the process of collating and collecting data from all our schools presenting candidates for class 12 examination. You are, therefore, requested to provide the requested information for class 12 candidates," CISCE Secretary Gerry Arathoon said in a letter to school principals marked as "strictly confidential". While there was no response from Arathoon about whether the exercise to collect data hints at possible cancellation of board exams and opting for alterative assessment methods, schools affiliated with the CICSE confirmed that they have received the letter. The information sought by the board includes the average marks of subjects scored by the candidates in class 11 (2019-20) and average marks of subjects scored in various tests and examinations conducted by the school during class 12 (2020-21). "The papers and subjects must be the same for which the candidates have been registered and confirmed for class 12 examination. The submission of the average marks of papers should be done online, through the internal assessment module on the CAREERS Portal," the letter added. The schools have also been asked to upload consolidated marksheet of class 11 and 12 to validate the uploaded marks. The deadline for completing the exercise has been set for June 7 by the board, reported news agency PTI. There has been no final call yet by the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) on class 12 board exams and the Ministry of Education is likely to announce a decision by June 1 in this regard. Live TV New Delhi: Actor Sonu Sood, whose efforts of extending help to people in dire need amid the second wave of deadly coronavirus pandemic is indeed commendable. The real-life hero took to social media and shared a video of his milkman named Guddu, who seems a little overwhelmed with all the SOS calls he is getting for help. Sonu Sood shared the video with the caption: He can't handle the pressure now. Everyone who wants to know how I do it, come and stay with me for a day The conversation between Sonu Sood and his milkman makes the actor making his staff understand that when people are in need, you too must extend help. But the milkman, who's wearing a mask shares his ordeal of getting calls at odd hours. In the video, he says, "Raat ko phone aata hai, subaha subah phone aane lagta hai. 6 baje uthe nahi raho to bhi phone karte hai. 4 baje phone kardete hai kabhi 1 baje phone kardete hai. Itna pareshaan hogaya ki kehne wali baat nahi." To this Sonu can be heard telling him, "Mereko bhi toh phone aate hai logo ke mai bhi toh sunta hun, tujhe kya problem hai." His Milkman responds saying, "Sir aapka alag dimag hai. Hamare paas itni capacity nahi hai na. Hum itna jhel nahi paate." In between this, again Guddu gets a call from someone who wants to meet Sonu Sood. The actor advises his milkman to quit his job and instead help people in need, get into social work. In 2020, when the deadly COVID-19 pandemic broke out, Sonu Sood helped the migrant workers get back home safely and amid the surge of cases in the second wave, he has yet again proved to be a 'hero'. Sonu Sood, who is active on social media and responds to fans seeking genuine help has been trying hard to arrange for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders for COVID-19 patients. The actor recovered from COVID-19 recently and is back at helping the distressed in these testing times. He also launched "Sanjeevani: A Shot of Life" - a vaccination drive campaign to create awareness. Some time back, the actor arranged for 10 oxygen generators for COVID-19 patients in Indore. Sonu Sood and his team are also in the process of setting up an oxygen plant at Kurnool Government Hospital which will be followed by setting the next one at District Hospital, Atmakur, Nellore, followed by other states. New Delhi: A Uttar Pradesh Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader has alleged foul play in his son's death and said on Friday (May 28, 2021) that the police is not filing an FIR against the hospital. Rajkumar Aggarwal, an MLA from Sandila in the Hardoi district, said that his son died in a hospital in Kakori on April 26 and that he's been struggling to lodge a complaint against a private hospital's negligence for the past one month. The BJP leader stated that he has also complained to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and the state's health minister, but has not got any response. He informed that he also spoke to senior officials including the DGP and the Commissioner of Police but they paid no heed. He said that his son, Ashish, 35, was admitted to the hospital on April 22 due to the COVID-19 infection and that his oxygen level was 94 on April 25 morning. Aggarwal said that Ashish was eating properly and was also having a normal conversation. However, suddenly in the evening, doctors told him that his oxygen level was decreasing, following which, his family brought oxygen cylinders from the outside, but the doctors did not allow to use them. The BJP MLA alleged that the carelessness of the hospital led to the death of his son and that he is trying to file an FIR so that it does not happen to someone else. He said that the police is refusing to file a complaint without CMO's investigation report. Meanwhile, the COVID-19 death toll in Uttar Pradesh crossed 20,000 on Friday with 159 more people succumbing to the disease. The infection tally has also mounted to 16.86 lakh after the detection of 2,402 new infections. Live TV New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday (May 29, 2021) announced a number of welfare measures for children who lost their parents to COVID-19. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said in a statement that PM-CARES fund will contribute through a specially designed scheme to create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each of them when he or she reaches 18 years of age. The Prime Minister's Office in an official statement announced a slew of measures to support the children. Hundreds of minors have lost their parents in India due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Governments of various states across the country have announced schemes to ensure the safety and well-being of COVID-19 orphans. Heres a list of states, UTs who announced relief fund: New Delhi: In Delhi, Rs 2,500 per month will be given to all minor orphan children till the age of 25 and acommittee has also been formed to resolve issues faced by children during the pandemic. Maharashtra: Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday asked the Women and Child Development Department to frame a policy to provide assistance to the children orphaned due to COVID-19. As many as 2,290 children in the state have lost either one or both parents to the pandemic so far, as per official sources. The Maharashtra government has formed a task force to prevent COVID orphaned children being trafficked. This task force will provide care facilities for orphaned children and also assist in legal rights over their parents property. Punjab: The Punjab government will give Rs 1,500 per month to all kids orphaned by COVID-19 till the age of 21 years. The children will also be given free education in state-run institutes. Uttar Pradesh: The Adityanath government in the state announced to take responsibility for COVID orphaned minor children. A task force is being formed to identify these children in every district and facilitate their adoption. Assam: The state has agreed to grant Rs 10 lakh to each district for non-institutional care of minor COVID-19 orphans will also arrange institutional care for these kids. Chhattisgarh: Under the Mahtari Dular Yojna' the government will bear the expenses of orphaned kids. Children from Classes 1 to 8 will get a monthly stipend of Rs 500 and children from classes 9 to 12 will get Rs 1,000 per month. Himachal Pradesh: All minor children orphaned by Covid-19 will get Rs 2,500 per month until they turn 18. Karnataka: CM BS Yediyurappa announces Bal Seva Scheme for those children who don't have guardians. The scheme applies to different age group with different financial slabs. "Our Govt announces Bal Seva scheme, under which Rs 3500/month financial assistance will be given to guardians/caretakers. Children not having guardians will be put in child care institutions. For quality education they'll be admitted to model residential schools" he said. The state has Helpline 1098 for the protection of COVID orphaned children. Hospitals and COVID Care Centres have been set for infected children. Madhya Pradesh: In Madhya Pradesh, COVID orphaned children will get Rs 5,000 per month by the state. Free education and ration will also be provided. Rajasthan: Under the 'Palanhaar Yojana Rs 500 will be given to all COVID orphaned children below 18 years of age. An additional sum of Rs, 1000 will also be provided. Gujarat: Chief Minister Vijay Rupani announced that COVID-19 orphan children will be given Rs 4,000 monthly assistance till the child attains 18 years. If the beneficiary is between ages 21 to 24, then Rs 6,000 will be given. Advancement will be given in the benefits of other schemes like studies, hospital. Uttarakhand: Under Vatsalya Yojana Rs 3000 will be given per month to orphaned children. Their education expenses will be borne by the state till they turn 21 years. Reservation in state government jobs will also be provided. Andhra Pradesh: The KCR government announced Rs 10 lakh ex-gratia as fixed deposits for kids who have lost their parents due to COVID-19, the scheme is applicable for children below the age of 18 years. Kerala: Pinarayi Vijayan-led government announced a special package for children who were orphaned by the coronavirus. Under this scheme, all minor children in Kerala will get Rs 3 lakhs as a lump sum along with monthly monitory assistance of Rs 2,000 till they turn 18. Tamil Nadu: The Tamil Nadu government has announced Rs 5 lakh fixed deposit for minor children which will be given to them once they turn 18. The government will also bear the education expenses of these children till graduation. A monthly financial aid of Rs 3000 will also be given to the guardian of the children till the age of 18. A committee will be set to ensure the implementation of the schemes. As per reports collected from states and union territories from April 1 till May 25, as many as 577 children across the country were orphaned after their parents succumbed to COVID-19, Union mInister of Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani had declared earlier this week. Live TV New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday announced that all children who have been rendered orphan due to COVID-19 will be supported under the 'PM-CARES for Children scheme. "Children represent the future of the country and the country will do everything possible to support and protect the children so that they develop as strong citizens and have a bright future," Modi said. The measures were announced after a high-level review meeting chaired by PM Modi to discuss and deliberate the steps which can be taken to support children who have lost their parents due to COVID-19 pandemic. The Prime Minister's Office in an official statement announced a slew of measures to support the children, it says the children will get a monthly stipend from PM-CARES fund once they turn 18-years-old and a fund of Rs 10 lakh when they turn 23. The statement said that fixed deposits will be opened in the names of such children, and the PM-CARES fund will contribute through a specially designed scheme to create a corpus of Rs 10 lakh for each of them when he or she reaches 18 years of age. Other benefits announced: * Children to get a monthly stipend once they turn 18 and a fund of Rs 10 lakh when they turn 23 from PM CARES * Free education to be ensured for children who lost their parents to Covid * The children will be assisted to get an education loan for higher education and PM CARES will pay interest on the loan * The children will get free health insurance of Rs 5 lakh under Ayushman Bharat till 18 years and premium will be paid by PM CARES. As many as 577 children across the country were orphaned after their parents succumbed to COVID-19, Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani had said earlier this week citing reports of states and union territories from April 1 till May 25. New Delhi: Senior Aam Aadmi Party leader Atishi on Friday (May 28, 2021) said that even for the fifth consecutive day in Delhi, youth have not been administered the COVID-19 vaccine in government schools. She stated that vaccination is being done at expensive rates only in private hospitals and that the vaccine doses for the youth are not being supplied to state governments, including the Delhi government. Atishi said, "In Delhi, a lot of vaccination is being done only in private hospitals at expensive prices. If the dose of a vaccine is Rs 900 to 1350, then it means that any family will have to spend 10-15,000 to get their whole family vaccinated. After all, how many such families are there in Delhi who can invest 15,000 rupees only on the vaccination of their family? The answer to this big question has to be given by the central government, why is it that there is no shortage of expensive vaccines in private hospitals, while the state governments, which are immunizing people for free do not have a single dose." "Why is it that there is no shortage of vaccines in private hospitals administering vaccines at expensive prices, while the state governments which are immunizing people free do not have a single dose?" the Delhi MLA asked. She added that in the COVID-19 pandemic, the central government is scamming the people jointly with these vaccine companies and private hospitals together. "Covaxin is not available in Delhi for over 45 years of age category, only Covishiled is available," she informed. She said that it seems that the reason for the lack of coronavirus vaccine is not just mismanagement but a huge scam of the central government. "Due to lack of vaccines, only 39,020 people have been vaccinated in Delhi on May 27. Due to the better vaccination process in Delhi, the NCR youth including Noida, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon have also got vaccinated till a few weeks ago, in addition, 42% of people in the age group above 45 years have been vaccinated, but now the vaccines are not available. We would like to appeal to the Central Government to provide vaccines to the youth of Delhi at the earliest," Atishi said. Atishi said that the central government will also have to answer that a lot of vaccines in the world have been approved by the WHO. She said, "Pfizer's vaccine has been approved in 68 countries, Moderna's vaccine in 48 countries and Johnson & Johnson's vaccine in 41 countries. All three vaccines have also received approval from the WHO. "Whereas only two companies are manufacturing vaccines in India. In such a raging pandemic, the central government is scamming the people jointly with these vaccine companies and private hospitals together. Due to this, the vaccine is not available to our youth today. The vaccine is available only to people over 45 years of age in Delhi. Covaccine is also not available for them. if anyone wants to get the second dose of Covaxin today, it is not available." New Delhi: The Delhi government has floated a global expression of interest (EOI) for procurement of 10 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine. "The Health and Family Welfare Department of NCT of Delhi intends to procure SARS-Cov2 vaccine on an urgent basis to control and manage the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global Expression of Interest is hereby invited from international manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccine or their authorised agents or from direct importers with appropriate licence to import the vaccine in India, the document by the Delhi government read. The deadline for bidders to submit their offer or expression of interest through e-mail is by 5 pm on June 7, PTI reported. The bidders have also been asked to mention the quantity of the vaccine doses they can supply to the Central Procurement Agency of the Delhi government in the shortest time. The Central government has so far permitted the use of three COVID-19 vaccines in India- Covishield, Covaxin and Russia's Sputnik V. Delhi has so far received 47.44 lakh doses from the Centre for the healthcare, frontline workers and the above 45 age group. The national capital is likely to procure four lakh more doses for the 18-44 age group from the manufacturers in June. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 vaccination drive, 52.98 lakh doses have been administered in Delhi, the Kejriwal government informed Centre. On Friday (May 28), Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal announced that the city will gradually start to unlock as the number of new COVID-19 cases has been declining. The activities involving daily wagers, labourers and migrant workers will be given priority to resume. (With PTI inputs) Live TV New Delhi: A court in Dominica has extended the stay on the extradition of fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi from Dominica. The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) on Friday (May 28) restrained Dominican authorities from removing Choksi from the Commonwealth of Dominica until further notice. The court has set June 2 as the next date of hearing. The court, while hearing the diamantaires habeas corpus petition, put an injunction restraining the respondents whether by themselves, servants, agents and/or representatives from removing the applicant from the Commonwealth of Dominica until further hearing on the matter, ANI reported. Further, the court allowed the businessman to meet his legal counsel and be transported to a hospital for medical attention as well as get a COVID-19 test. Restricting media coverage of the matter, the court order read, There shall be no publication or discussion or notification of the press regarding this matter without leave or permission of the court." On Thursday, Choksis legal team had filed a habeas corpus petition in Dominica and claimed he was deprived of access to legal assistance there. Wayne Marsh, Choksi's lawyer in Dominica, alleged that his client was severely beaten and was abducted in Antigua and taken to Dominica. Further, he said they were denied access to their client and it was only on May 27 that he was allowed to speak to Choksi. Choksis lawyer Vijay Aggarwal claimed that the Gitanjali group chairman was picked up by various people, forced to get into a vessel from Antigua and then was taken to Dominica. He alleged there are marks of torture on Choksis body. Earlier, in an exclusive interview with WION on Wednesday (May 26), Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne had said that Mehul Choksi could be sent back to India in the next 48 hours from Dominica where he was captured while trying to flee. Live TV New Delhi: After Ramdev's defamatory remarks on allopathy and scientific medicine, the Indian Medical Association (IMA) Uttarakhand on Friday challenged the yoga guru for an open debate on a public platform. The President of IMA Uttarakhand chapter Dr Ajay Khanna wrote a letter to Ramdev and invited the latter to one-to-one discussion with a team of doctors of IMA UA. "This is to inform you that IMA UA State through its state office request you to constitute a team of qualified and duly registered Ayurvedacharyas from Patanjali Yogpeeth to have a one-to-one discussion with a team of doctors of IMA UA State which has already been constituted by the state office. This one-to-one panel discussion shall be closely supervised and recorded by the electronic and print media which shall also be invited in this panel discussion," IMA letter reads. Further, it said that Ramdev and his aide Balkrishna can also join the team of Ayurvedacharyas but only as spectators because they have not sent the qualification to the state office of the IMA. "The responsibility is on you to decide the date and time of the above proposed healthy discussion, however, the venue shall be decided by us," it said. The letter said that this activity shall ensure the harmony between Allopath and Ayurved to be restored again as it was in the past but was disturbed for these couple of days by your rash, irresponsible and selfish statement. On Wednesday, the medical body had reacted sharply against Ramdev's alleged "spearheading a misinformation campaign on COVID vaccination". They had appealed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take appropriate action under sedition and other charges against "At this juncture, we are pained to bring to your kind notice, two videos where Ramdev, owner of Patanjali Ayurved, is seen inter alia to be claiming that 10,000 doctors have died in spite of taking both the dose of vaccine and that lakhs of people have died due to allopathic medicine. He has also claimed that `Allopathy Ek stupid Aur Diwaliya Science Hai` and that thousands of people have died from taking allopathic medicines for the treatment of COVID-19 related symptoms. These videos are circulating virally on social media," IMA claimed in a letter to PM Modi. The IMA on last Saturday sent a legal notice to Ramdev over his alleged statements against allopathy and "defaming" scientific medicine. New Delhi: India has expressed its "strong opposition" to the comments made by United Nations General Assembly President Volkan Bozkir on Kashmir during his visit to Pakistan. Dismissing his "unwarranted references" on Jammu and Kashmir, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) in a strongly worded statement called the comments "unacceptable". The statement said, "when an incumbent President of the UN General Assembly makes misleading and prejudiced remarks, he does a great disservice to the office he occupies" adding, his "behaviour is truly regrettable and surely diminishes his standing on the global platform." India also dismissed equating of Palestine and J&K saying that there is no " basis for comparison to other global situations." During his Pakistan visit, the UNGA President equated Palestine with Jammu and Kashmir issue and said it's the "duty of Pakistan to bring this to UN Platform more strongly". Volkan Bozkr is a Turkish diplomat and politician and the first Turkish National to hold the post of President of the United Nations General Assembly. The term of the presidency of UNGA is for a year and he is expected to remain impartial. The comments will be seen as a violation of the code of ethics mentioned in Annex XI (a) for the President of the General Assembly as enshrined under resolution 70/305 of 13 September 2016. The Annex, para two says, "The President shall perform his or her duties and responsibilities in an impartial and equitable manner and in full honesty and good faith". Para three of the same Annex states that President "shall avoid any action" that "might result in or create the appearance of" giving "unwarranted preferential treatment to any State..", in this case, is Pakistan. Additionally, para five points out, "President shall avoid any situation involving a conflict between his or her own personal or private interest and the interests of the Presidency or the United Nations". His comments are perceived to be shadowed by the Turkish foreign policy, which has taken the Pakistani position on Jammu and Kashmir irking India. Live TV Kochi: The entire Opposition is opposing Lakshadweep reforms, as Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) on Saturday (May 29, 2021) organised a protest in front of the Lakshadweep Administration Office in Kochi against the regulations made by Administrator Praful Khoda Patel and submitted a memorandum to the administrator demanding to withdraw the new regulations. Talking to the media, ET Muhammad Basheer, Lok Sabha MP, and National Organising Secretary of IUML said the Lakshadweep administrator is challenging the country`s democratic system through anti-people and anti-Constitutional measures. "Muslim League will continue its strong agitation until the wrong policies of the islands administrator and the central government that supports him are correct. The Administrator is trying to make the island tense through anti-people measures. The life of the islanders, who were in a peaceful atmosphere, became very difficult when Praful Patel became the new administrator. The court itself had to express concern," the IUML leader said. He alleged that Patel is trying to implement the Central government`s policies in the Union Territory which could lead to "serious consequences". "Even those who protest against the brutal measures on social media are being prosecuted and arrested. Efforts are being made to invite monopolies to the island by reducing the rent of the land. The administrator is trying to implement Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s own policies by abolishing the panchayat raj system, banning beef, establishing bureaucratic sovereignty over the democratic system, and prosecuting innocent fishermen. Attempts are being made to privatize the air ambulance system, including Bangara Island," said Basheer. "This can lead to serious consequences. It is the responsibility of all who desire good, to stand with the people of the island. Everyone must stand together in this struggle," he added. Patel, who was appointed as the Administrator of Lakshadweep in December 2020, is facing opposition over policies introduced by him from the people of the union territory and politicians, both from within Lakshadweep and the neighbouring state of Kerala. Recently, many Congress leaders including Rahul Gandhi wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi urging him to ensure that the "anti-people policies" announced by Lakshadweep administrator Praful Khoda Patel are withdrawn. Live TV Srinagar: Two civilians were killed in firing by militants on Saturday (May 29) in Anantnag district of Jammu and Kashmir, police said. A police official said the two sustained injuries and were rushed to a hospital. The militants opened fire at the two civilians at Jablipora in Bijbehara area of the district, he said. The injured were identified as Sanjeed Ah Parray (19) and Shan Bhat (35), the official said, adding that they succumbed to injuries later. Suspected terrorists opened indiscriminate fire on two local civilians on Saturday evening in Jablipora village of Bijbehara in Anantnag district in Jammu and Kashmir. The civilians were seriously injured in the firing. Both the injured civilians were taken to the nearest hospital with immediate effect, but a young man died on the way. At the same time, the condition of one was serious and finally he also broke into the hospital. After shooting, the attackers escaped from the scene as soon as they got a chance. A senior official of the Kashmir Zone police said that unidentified gunmen opened fire on both, injuring them. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where one of them, Abdul Azim Parray's son Sanjeed Ahmed Parray (19), was declared dead, while Ghukalam Qadir Bhat's son Shaan Bhat was referred to SKIMS Hospital Srinagar, but his Has also died. Meanwhile, the entire area has been cordoned off to catch the attackers. Police has increased security in the area and is keeping an eye on every visitor. Live TV New Delhi: Karnataka will take a final call on the extension of lockdown in the state on June 5, Saturday, Chief Minister BS Yediyurappa asserted on Friday. He dismissed the rumours and clearly stated that there are no talks on lockdown extension as of now. A decision will be taken after a state Cabinet meeting and a call will be taken after that meeting which is scheduled on June 5. His statement comes as recoveries in the state shot up to 52,253 and new covid cases declined to 22,823 in last 24 hours, in a clear sign of breaking the chain across Karnataka. Positivity rate and case fatality rate also dipped to 16.42 per cent and 1.75 per cent respectively. On Thursday, the Yediyurappa-led government had eased some of the restrictions on e-commerce and home-delivery firms. The revised order allows e-tailers and delivery firms to scale their operations, as the state is among the top 5 markets for online shopping across the country. Delivery of all goods, including food, by e-commerce and home-delivery firms will be allowed from Friday, said state Revenue Secretary N Manjunath Prasad in a fresh order, withdrawing the May 9 order, restricting delivery of merchandise to curb movement of delivery personnel and vehicles. The state government had extended the lockdown till June 7 from May 24 to contain the virus spread, especially in Bengaluru. Live TV New Delhi: The Centre on Friday invited non-Muslims like Hindus, Sikhs, Jains and Buddhists belonging to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and residing in 13 districts of Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab to apply for Indian citizenship. The Union home ministry issued a notification in this effect for immediate implementation of the order under the Citizenship Act 1955 and Rules framed under the law in 2009. The fresh order is no way connected to the Citizenship Amendment Act enacted in 2019. The Rules under the CAA are yet to be framed by the government. When the CAA was enacted in 2019, there were widespread protests in different parts of the country and even riots took place in Delhi in early 2020 in the wake of these protests. According to the CAA, Indian citizenship will be given to non-Muslim persecuted minorities from Bangladesh, Pakistan and Afghanistan -- Hindu, Sikh, Jain, Buddhist, Parsi and Christian -- who had come to India till December 31, 2014. "In exercise of powers conferred under Section 16 of the Citizenship Act, 1955 (57 of 1955), the central government hereby directs that powers exercisable by it for registration as citizen of India under Section 5, or for grant of certificate of naturalisation under section 6 of the Citizenship Act 1955 in respect of any person belonging to minority community in Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan namely, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians, residing in the districts mentioned and the states mentioned below....," the notification said. People who are eligible to apply for Indian citizenship are those currently living in the districts of Morbi, Rajkot, Patan and Vadodara of Gujarat, Durg and Balodabazar in Chhattisgarh, Jalore, Udaipur, Pali, Barmer and Sirohi in Rajasthan, Faridabad in Haryana and Jalandhar in Punjab. "The application for registration as citizen of India or grant of certificate of naturalisation as citizen of India under the said rules (Citizenship Rules, 2009) shall be made by the applicant online," the notification said. The home ministry said the verification of the application is done simultaneously by collector or secretary (Home) of Haryana and Punjab as the case may be, at the district-level and the state-level and the application and the reports thereon shall be made accessible simultaneously to the Centre on online portal. The collector or the secretary, as the case may be, makes such inquiry as he considers necessary for ascertaining the suitability of the applicant and for that purpose forwards the application online to such agencies for verification and comments as may be required for completing such an inquiry and the instructions issued by the Centre from time-to-time in this regard shall be strictly complied with by state or union territory and district concerned, it said. The comments of the agencies referred to in clause (C) are uploaded online by such agencies and accessible to the collector or the secretary, as the case may be, and the central government. The collector or the secretary on being satisfied with the suitability of the applicant, will grant him the citizenship of India by registration or naturalisation and issue a certificate of registration or naturalisation, as the case may be, duly printed from online portal and signed by the collector or the secretary in the form as prescribed in the said rules, the notification said. The collector or the secretary shall maintain an online as well as physical register, in accordance with the said rules, containing the details of the person registered or naturalised as a citizen of India and furnish a copy thereof to the central government within seven days of such registration or naturalisation, it said. "This order shall come into force on the date of its publication in the official gazette and shall remain valid until further orders," the notification said. Live TV New Delhi: The Indian Medical Association (IMA) on Friday (May 28, 2021) said that it will consider taking back police complaints lodged against yoga guru Ramdev and also a defamation notice sent to him if he withdrew his remarks against COVID-19 vaccines and modern medicine. The IMA national chief Dr JA Jayalal said that by targeting the modern system of medicine vis-vis the pandemic and treatment for it, Ramdev was actually questioning the government. "We have nothing against yoga guru Baba Ramdev. His statements are against vaccination for COVID-19. We think his statements could confuse people, may divert them. This is our big concern as he has many followers," Dr Jayalal told the PTI news agency. "If the yoga guru came forward to withdraw such remarks in its entirety, the IMA will consider taking back complaints against him in police stations and also a defamation notice sent to him," Dr Jayalal added. This is to be noted that the IMA had served a defamation notice on Ramdev for alleged disparaging remarks against modern medicine and its practitioners. The notice also demanded an apology from him within 15 days, failing which it said would take appropriate action for Rs 1,000 crore compensation. Several complaints have also been filed against Baba Ramdev in Delhi besides other places and the association had also requested Prime Minister Narendra Modi to take action against him. Earlier on Sunday, Ramdev was forced to withdraw a statement questioning some of the drugs used to treat coronavirus and alleged "lakhs have died from taking allopathic medicines for COVID-19. Following the row, Ramdev had also said that 'no one has the courage to arrest him'. The yoga guru had also posed 25 questions to the IMA asking if modern medicine offered permanent relief for ailments such as hypertension. Co-founder of Patanjali Yogpeeth Haridwar Acharya Balkrishna backed Ramdev and said that the yoga guru and Ayurveda were being 'targeted' by allopathic practitioners under the IMA as part of a conspiracy. "As part of the conspiracy to convert the entire country into Christianity, Yoga and Ayurveda are being maligned by targeting Ramdev jee. Countrymen, wake up now from the deep slumber otherwise the generations to come will not forgive you," Balkrishna said. Meanwhile, the IMA Uttarakhand has challenged Yog Guru Ramdev for a debate and asked him to tell which allopathic hospitals have given Patanjali medicines for treatment. (With agency inputs) Live TV New Delhi: In an escalation of the ongoing face-off between the Centre and the West Bengal government, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Saturday slammed Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government accusing PMO of spreading fake and one-sided news in the media. The blowout was a result of tussle over a review meeting on Cyclone Yaas where the CM purportedly kept the Prime Minister waiting. Banerjee, in a virual press conference in the state capital, claimed that the PM's office was being used to tarnish her image. "They humiliated me by running one-sided information circulated by PMO. Please dont humiliate me, she said. On the issue of her decision to skip review meeting with Modi on cyclone Yaas devastation, she said, I had other meetings to attend, and I took PMs permission before leaving." "By the time were reached the place where the PM-CM meeting was to be held, we found out that the PM had already arrived and that there was a meeting going on. We were asked to wait outside, told that there will be no entry at the moment because a meeting is going on. We waited patiently for a while. Then, when we asked again, we were told that no one can enter for the next one hour," she said. Later when she reached the conference hall, the PM was in a meeting with the Honourable Governor, central leaders and even some MLAs of the opposition party, Banerjee said. "This was clearly against the brief. It was supposed to be only a PM-CM meeting. So, we decided to submit our report to the PM and then with the Prime Minister's permission we went to Digha. I sought the Prime Minister's permission three times," she said. Further, she said, "Bengal is my priority and I will never put it in danger. I will remain a security guard for the people here. If the Prime Minister asks me to touch his feet for the welfare of Bengal people, I am ready to do that; but I should not be insulted." She also appealed to PM Modi to end political vendetta and, withdraw the order recalling West Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandopadhyay and allow him to work for COVID-infected. The Centre on Friday night sought services of the Chief Secretary and asked the state government to relieve the officer immediately. The face-to-face encounter on Friday was the first between PM Modi and Banerjee since the April-May assembly election that the Chief Minister's Trinamool Congress party won, despite a no-holds-barred campaign marked by extensive poaching and coarse rhetoric. Live TV New Delhi: India and the United States on Friday (May 28, 2021) vowed to support each other amid the COVID-19 crisis during the second physical meet between External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Jaishankar standing alongside the US Secretary of State said, "Our relations have grown strong over the years and I am very confident that it will continue to do so." The External Affairs Minister also thanked the US for the 'strong support and solidarity at the moment of great difficulty' for India. Also focused on Indo-US vaccine partnership aimed at expanding access and ensuring supply. Appreciated strong solidarity expressed by US at this time. Today's talks have further solidified our strategic partnership and enlarged our agenda of cooperation. Dr. S. Jaishankar (@DrSJaishankar) May 28, 2021 Responding to this, the US Secretary of State said, "We know, we remember in the earlier days of COVID-19, India was there for the US, something we will never forget, and now we want to make sure that we are there for India." Calling EAM Jaishankar, friend and colleague, Blinken said, "The US and India are working together on so many of the most important challenges of our time, one those are having a profound impact on the lives of our citizens." He highlighted how both countries are 'united in confronting COVID-19' and the challenge posed by climate change even as they have partnered directly through the quad, other institutions like the UN and partnership between the US and India is vital, it is strong and increasingly productive. Productive discussion today with @DrSJaishankar on regional security and economic priorities to include U.S. COVID-19 relief efforts, India-China border situation, and our support for Afghanistan. As friends, we will work together to address these areas of shared concern. pic.twitter.com/BtoGJTUGEr Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) May 28, 2021 This is to be noted that amid the second wave of coronavirus in India, the US has sent assistance which included 20,000 courses of remdesivir, 1,500 oxygen cylinders, nearly 550 mobile oxygen concentrators, over 2.5 million N95 masks and a large-scale Deployable Oxygen Concentration System. Both sides have been engaging with each other on dealing with the crisis, especially under the Quad grouping of -- the US, India, Australia, and Japan. After the first virtual summit that took place earlier this year, it was decided that more COVID-19 vaccines will be manufactured under the Quad Covid Vaccine initiative. Both the foreign ministers had met earlier this year in London on the sidelines of the G7 Foreign minister meeting. Jaishankar is on a week-long visit to the US, during which he has so far held talks with the US defense secretary and USTR in Washington. Chandigarh: Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) President Sukhbir Singh Badal suggested that the state government should purchase vaccine doses worth Rs 1,000 crore to vaccinate the entire State in the next six months. He alleged that Punjabs chief minister Capt Amarinder Singh and his ministers had gone into hiding during a period of crisis. The SAD President Badal was talking with the media after inaugurating the tenth COVID Care centre at Khatunangal in the Amritsar district established by the SGPC. SADs Senior leader Bikram Singh Majithia, who was also there on the occasion, disclosed that besides the 25 bedded Covid Centre and creation of a separate Isolation ward for people who had been asked to isolate themselves, the party had also started Oxygen Sewa in the constituency with fifteen oxygen concentrators. Majithia informed that as many as 65 oxygen concentrators for the Covid Care centre and the Oxygen Sewa initiative had been donated by prominent citizens and NRIs including Dr Pushpant Singh Grewal of Patiala, Nikhil Kilachand of Dubai and Jay Sidhu and the Oxygen Sewa was being initiated with five concentrators each at Majithia, Kathunangal and Mattewal. Majithia said that the entire Sewa was being done by keeping politics aside. We have even offered help to Congress leader Ashwani Sekhri from the neighbouring constituency of Batala, he added. Speaking on the occasion, Badal said, it appears there is no government on the ground. While chief ministers in other States have made arrangements for vaccines, the Congress government is banking solely on the meagre supply of the central government which has also dried up. The government should allocate Rs 1,000 crore for purchasing vaccine doses to vaccinate the entire state population in the next six months. Badal said people had been left to their fate. Residents of border areas are suffering the most due to lack of medical facilities. He appealed to NGOs and social organizations to strengthen this movement further by ensuring more concentrators could be delivered to the people. SGPC president Bibi Jagir Kaur who was present at the occasion said while Vaccine Sewa had been initiated today, the Committee wanted to import Pfizer vaccine doses on a big scale from the United States. Live TV Lucknow: Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan is on oxygen support and his condition is critical, informed Medanta Hospital, Lucknow on Saturday (May 29, 2021). "Condition of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan is critical. He is on oxygen support," said Medanta Hospital, Lucknow. Azam Khan was shifted to Lucknows Medanta Hospital from Sitapur jail on May 9 where he is undergoing treatment for the coronavirus disease. His son Abdullah Khan was also shifted to the same hospital. "Condition of Samajwadi Party leader Azam Khan is critical. He is on oxygen support," says Medanta Hospital, Lucknow Khan had tested positive of #COVID19 on May 9 & was admitted to the hospital ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 29, 2021 The father-son duo was tested positive for COVID-19 on April 30. Azam Khans health suddenly deteriorated on May 9 following which he along with his son was sent to Lucknow by an ambulance. Earlier, on May 2, the jail administration reportedly tried to convince Azam Khan for treatment at Lucknow's King George's Medical University but the SP leader refused to move out of the jail. He was later convinced and officials confirmed in the evening that he along with his son were headed to Lucknow's Medanta Hospital. The Samajwadi Party leader has been lodged in Sitapur jail since February last year with more than a hundred cases registered against him. Additionally, his son, Abdullah Khan, has also been lodged in Sitapur jail in several cases filed against him. Live TV Amravati: Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Saturday (May 29) appealed to students to be the catalyst for the social and economic change in the 21st Century. "As the 21st Century belongs to India, all-out efforts should be made to bring about the social and economic change in the lives of the people," Gadkari said in his online address on the occasion of the 37th convocation ceremony of the Sant Gadge Baba Amravati University. He asked the varsity to use technological innovations to make all villages ideal. "The university should take up projects that would address the problems of the community around it. The varsity, its teachers and students should work together for value addition and contribution to the GDP of the region," the Nagpur MP said. Maharashtra Governor Bhagat Singh Koshyari appealed to students to make a resolve in life, which he said was necessary to become successful. "Success comes through a resolve. Work hard to achieve that goal," he said. On the occasion, Shankar Baba Papalkar was conferred the honorary D.Litt. By the varsity for his work in the fields of environment conservation and rehabilitation. (inputs from agency) Live TV New Delhi: The state-wide lockdown without any relaxations has been extended, by one more week, till June 7 to help break the chain of COVID-19 transmission, Chief Minister M K Stalin announced on Friday (May 28, 2021). Chief Minister M K Stalin said that the decision was taken considering public good to rein in the pandemic spread. The Chief Minister further appealed to the people to cooperate with the government and stay indoors. The extension announcement comes after Chief Ministers meetings with medical experts and senior ministers in the government and after assessing the COVID-19 situation in the state. "The provision stores are also allowed to receive orders either online or over the phone and deliver supplies at the customer's residence between 7 am and 6 pm," the Chief Minister added. Heres complete list of what is allowed, what's not: - The provision stores would be allowed to sell essential supplies through carts or vehicles with permission from local bodies. - People working in pharmacies can move in the state without restrictions. - No restrictions on medical services, pharmacies and vaccination. - Takeaways services from restaurants will be available. - All private offices and banks will continue to work. - E-commerce companies will be allowed to deliver orders. - The home delivery of groceries will be allowed between 7 am to 6 pm daily. - Tea shops are also not allowed to function. - E-registration must for inter-district medical travel in the state. Read the release here: The press release added that all the other restrictions currently in place will continue as well. Tamil Nadu CM Stalin also added that he has directed Cooperation and Consumer Protection Department to distribute a food kit containing 13 provision supplies to every rice ration cardholder through ration shops for the month of June. Meanwhile, on Friday Tamil Nadu recorded 31,079 new COVID-19 infections and 486 deaths. The total caseload breached the 20-lakh mark to reach 20,09,700 and the death mounted to 22,775 in the state. Live TV New Delhi: Tamil Nadu extended lockdown till June 7 in order to curb the transmission of COVID-19 infections. As restrictions continue, e-registration is still required for inter-district travel. Who requires e-pass to travel? People who make inter-district movement for medical reasons or to attend a funeral, e-registration is mandatory. For those traveling within district for medical purpose, an e-pass is not required. People travelling to Tamil Nadu during the lockdown will also require an e-pass. Check how to apply for e-pass: 1. Visit the official website- https://eregister.tnega.org/#/user/pass- to apply for an e-pass. 2. Register yourself on the portal. 3. After submitting the OTP received, select the type of e-pass required. 4. Fill in the necessary details including your name, address (home and destination), range of travel (inter-district/inter-state), duration of travel, number of passengers, vehicle details, ID proof, reason for travel etc. 5. Submit the required documents for travelling. After filling all details, submit the documents and ID proof chiefly Aadhar Card or Voter ID, PAN Card, address proof, vehicle license and employment ID to avail the e-pass. While announcing the extension, Chief Minister M K Stalin said a pack of 13 grocery items would be distributed to rice category ration card holders through Public Distribution System shops from next month. Tamil Nadu recorded 31,079 fresh COVID-19 infections and an all-time high of 486 deaths, the Health Department informed on Friday. The total caseload breached the 20-lakh mark to reach 20,09,700 and the death mounted to 22,775 in the state. (With PTI inputs) Live TV New Delhi: Union Minister G Kishan Reddy on Saturday (May 29) accused Twitter of maintaining double standards in India and said that Twitter and other foreign companies should not teach the largest democratic country about fundamental rights and human rights. When asked regarding Telegram, Facebook and Google are ready to comply With India`s new IT Rules but Twitter is yet to respond, MoS Home Affairs told ANI, "Twitter has been following the Rule of Land in the other countries but is maintaining double standards for India. Twitter is trying to teach India about fundamental rights. It does not need to teach us." "We need not learn about the fundamental rights and human rights from Twitter and other foreign companies. India is the largest democratic country. Our Constitution is our asset," Reddy said. Earlier on Thursday, Twitter had said that it was concerned by recent events regarding their employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression."Concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and potential threat to freedom of expression for people we serve. We have concerns with regards to intimidation police`s tactics in response to enforcement of global Terms of Service and core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson said. The Ministry of Electronics and IT (MeitY) on Friday had asked the microblogging company to "stop beating around the bush" and "comply with the laws of the land".In a statement on Thursday, MeitY asserted that India had a "glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices" and Twitter`s statements were an `attempt to dictate its terms to the world`s largest democracy. In a statement on Thursday, MeitY asserted that India had a "glorious tradition of free speech and democratic practices" and Twitter`s statements were an `attempt to dictate its terms to the world`s largest democracy. On May 24, the Delhi Police visited the Twitter India offices after it issued notice to Twitter seeking an explanation on what grounds it tagged BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra`s tweet on the alleged Congress toolkit designed to target the Central government as `manipulated media`.The Delhi Police Special Cell asked Twitter to explain the rationale and share all the information on how it described the toolkit as manipulated media. MoS G Kishan Reddy also slammed the West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for arriving late at a cyclone review meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and said that people should re-think about electing such Chief Minister."The people in West Bengal have been affected by Cyclone Yaas. The Prime Minister himself visited the state to provide confidence to the people. The Chief Minister should have come forward to help the Centre in rehabilitation and should not have politicised the matter," Reddy said."Politics will not help in the development of the state or the development of people. Mamata has no desire to develop infrastructure in the state or people. People should re-think about electing such CM," he added. Yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a review meeting at Kalaikunda in Paschim Medinipur district in West Bengal to take stock of the post cyclonic situation. Mamata Banerjee was supposed to attend the meeting. However, she arrived late by 30 minutes and handed him over reports of damage caused by the impact of Cyclone Yaas. Following this, she left for her pre-scheduled meeting at Digha. Banerjee asked for a Rs 20,000 crore relief package from the Centre after a cyclonic storm Yaas ravaged several parts of the state. Prime Minister Narendra Modi also conducted an aerial survey of the cyclone-affected areas in West Bengal and Odisha. Cyclone Yaas made its landfall in West Bengal on Wednesday. Several districts including Purba Medinipur, Paschim Medinipur, Bankura, South 24 Pargana and Jhargram suffered the impact in the last two days. The coastal areas like Digha and Sundarban were the worst affected. (inputs from agency) Live TV New Delhi: As Uttar Pradesh observes a declining trend in coronavirus infections in the state, reports on Friday (May 28, 2021) suggest that the partial corona curfew in the state is likely to be relaxed from the first week of June. As per a report in India.com, the unlocking process in Uttar Pradesh will be done in a phased manner with night curfews and weekend lockdowns in place. The report also suggested that numerous COVID-induced curbs will be relaxed and that the decision is likely to come within the next 24 hours. The report stated that the grocery shops selling vegetables and fruits will likely be allowed to open, restaurants will be allowed to operate at a capacity of 50 percent and construction activities may also be allowed, adding that shopping complexes, malls, theaters, salons will remain closed. The report also revealed that public, political, social and religious gatherings can remain ban in the state. Earlier, the Yogi Adityanath-led Uttar Pradesh government issued an order on May 22, claiming that there were positive results of the statewide partial corona curfew and the efforts made to break the 'chain of transmission' was successful, adding that, for the welfare of the people, the authorities have decided to extend the curfew by another week, till May 31. "The Government of Uttar Pradesh is committed to safeguarding the life and livelihood of the people of the State. In this spirit, we have adopted a partial coronavirus curfew policy in this second wave of COVID. Positive results of the statewide partial coronavirus curfew are being seen. This is helping in breaking the transition chain," it said. Meanwhile, Uttar Pradesh reported 2,402 new cases on Friday, taking active cases in the state to 52,244. The state also reported 159 COVID-related deaths on Friday. Live TV New Delhi: Indian Army has invited applications for Short Service Commission (SSC) Officers to fill up 191 posts. Unmarried men and women, as well as widows of defence personnel can apply for the vacancies at the official site of Join Indian Army on joinindianarmy.nic.in. The application process, which commenced on May 25, is open till June 23, 2021. Eligibility: Candidates who have graduated with an Engineering Degree or are in their final year of the Engineering Degree course are eligible to apply for the SSC (Tech). The candidates studying in the final year of Degree will be required to submit the proof of passing Degree exam by Oct 1, 2021 to the Directorate General of Recruiting, failing which will lead to cancellation of candidature. Age limit: The age limit should be 20 to 27 years of age. For widows of the defence personnel, the maximum age to apply is 35. Vacancy details: Men 175 posts Women 14 posts Widows 2 posts The course is scheduled to commence in Oct 2021 at Officers Training Academy (OTA) in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. For more details, candidates are advised to visit the official website. Live TV Mumbai/New Delhi: A day after Delhi Police arrested two people in connection with brutally beating and killing a stray dog, Bollywood actor John Abraham took a moment to appreciate the force for taking quick action against them and also urged the Prime Minister's Office to raise a voice against animal brutality. On Thursday, South East Delhi DCP R.P. Meena said the police arrested two people for mercilessly thrashing a stray dog. The video of the dog being thrashed with a stick had gone viral on social media. He said that the Police had registered a case at the Okhla Industrial area Police station on the complaint of Gaurav Gupta, animal welfare officer of People for Animals, an NGO. Taking to Twitter, Abraham said, "Thank You DCP South East Delhi and your team for your swift action against this gruesome act. We need more officers like you to come together and implement stricter laws against animal cruelty. I urge Blue Cross of India and PMO India and others to rally together against violence of such kind. Brutality in any form should not be tolerated. Raise your voices against animal cruelty!" Thank You @DCPSEastDelhi @rpmeenaips & team for your swift action against this gruesome act. We need more Officers like you to come together & implement stricter laws against animal cruelty. I urge @BlueCross_ @PMOIndia & others to rally together against violence of such kind https://t.co/OedflTOo6G John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) May 27, 2021 Meena also responded to the tweet of the Bollywood actor and said, "Thank you John Abraham for calling and appreciating efforts of DCP South East Delhi team for responding promptly and arresting the accused." Brutality in any form should not be tolerated. Raise your voices against animal cruelty! #ZeroTolerance #CompassionForAnimals #AnimalCruelty @BlueCross_ John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) May 27, 2021 On Friday, Bollywood actor Pooja Bhatt also thanked Delhi Police for taking swift action against the accused. Gratitude for the swift action taken! This will go a long way to ensure safety and compassion towards animals. Pooja Bhatt (@PoojaB1972) May 28, 2021 Thank you @DCPSEastDelhi This is much,much needed! Your swift action and stand on the same is truly appreciated! https://t.co/xd9h129IK8 Pooja Bhatt (@PoojaB1972) May 28, 2021 In a series of tweets, she said, "Gratitude for the swift action taken! This will go a long way to ensure safety and compassion towards animals." In another tweet she said, "Thank you DCP South East Delhi. This is much, much needed! Your swift action and stand on the same is truly appreciated." New Delhi: Actor Randeep Hooda has been removed as the ambassador of Convention for the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), United Nation's environmental treaty, following the controversy over his derogatory comments against Bahujan Samaj Party chief Mayawati. Hooda has been under fire since Wednesday when a nine-year-old video of him making a "joke", which social media users termed casteist and sexist, went viral online. The 43-second-clip from an event organised by a media house in 2012 resurfaced when a Twitter user shared it. The video has Hooda cracking a joke and then laughing along with the audience. In a statement posted on its website, CMS said the organisation finds the comments in the video to be "offensive" and Hooda will no longer serve as the ambassador for them. "The CMS Secretariat finds the comments made in the video to be offensive, and they do not reflect the values of the CMS Secretariat or the United Nations," the statement read. "Mr. Hooda no longer serves as a CMS ambassador," it added. The actor was appointed as the CMS Ambassador for Migratory Species in February 2020 for three years. While CMS is a treaty of the United Nations, the statement clarified that it is separate from both the UN Secretariat and the UN Environment Programme and the only entity for which Hooda served as a brand ambassador was CMS. The 44-year-old actor is facing a lot of criticism, both on and off internet, with many asking him to apologies for his remarks against the former chief minister of Uttar Pradesh. On Friday, #ArrestRandeepHooda was trending as Twitter users demanded for legal action against the "Radhe" actor. Mumbai: Actor Vivek Oberoi has taken it upon himself to extend help to underprivileged children. The actor has joined hands with the Cancer Patient's Aid Association (CPAA) and its food bank aimed at providing food to over 3000 cancer patients and their families for the next 3 months. The actor took to social media, urging people from all walks of life to come forward and contribute as much as possible to his fundraiser. Vivek Oberoi sponsored free heart surgeries for underprivileged kids and has managed to save over 2.5 lakh children from the deadly Cancer. He was instrumental in saving 2200 little girls from child prostitution, of whom over 50 are studying abroad today on scholarships. As part of his humanitarian work, the actor donated an amount from his first movie Company towards the heart surgery of an underprivileged young girl. In the video, Vivek Oberoi can b seen urging people to donate to Cancer-stricken kids, he shared how parents of these kids have been starving for over 3 days just so they can provide maximum nutrition and immunity possible for their kid fighting cancer. As the human bodys immunity is low after the Chemotherapy sessions, a child needs proper nutrition to recover. Vivek concludes by sharing a very important message. "These people are already fighting cancer, lets ensure that they dont have to fight hunger. Lets all come together and help each other out in these trying times." New Delhi: In the crazy cryptocurrency world, we often hear the news of a digital coin rising either sharply without strong fundamentals. In one such case, a newly launched cryptocurrency named Dubaicoin jumped over 1000% on crypto exchanges within 24 hours of its launch. Dubaicoin falsely positioned itself as the de facto cryptocurrency of Dubai. However, investors realised the reality after investing in the digital coin with blind trust in the name of Dubai. Who is behind Dubaicoin? Dubaicoin was launched by Arabianchain Technology on May 24. The cryptocurrency startup falsely claimed that Dubaicoin is the official cryptocurrency of the West Asian city. In a press release that was allegedly shared by Arabianchain, the company had claimed that the coin has been named the official digital currency of Dubai. Many reputed media portals reported the news of the cryptocurrencys surge. The false news spread like wildfire in the crypto industry, leading to a majestic surge in the price of the coin. Dubai denies Dubaicoin connection On Friday (May 28), Dubai denied all claims saying that the cryptocurrency was the citys official cryptocurrency. In its official statement, Dubai said, Dubai Coin cryptocurrency was never approved by any official authority. The website promoting the coin is an elaborate phishing campaign that is designed to steal personal information from its visitors. ArabianChains clarification ArabianChain has walked away with the controversy by denying the company wasnt behind the fake announcement. We haven't made such an announcement, please be cautious. Also this website : http://dub-pay.com/en/ is fake and a scam. Please be careful, ArabianChain clarified in a tweet. Live TV #mute New Delhi: 7 social media platforms have complied with some of the rules under the new IT rules that came into effect earlier this week. Koo, Sharechat, Telegram, LinkedIn, Google, Facebook, WhatsApp have shared the list of their Chief Compliance Officer, Nodal Contact Person, and Grievance Officer as envisaged under the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021 with India's Information Technology(IT) ministry. IT ministry is the main nodal ministry that deals with the matter. The rules were notified in February, and 3-month time period was given to social media platforms to implement them. Other key issues like traceability remain--that is the first origin of any message, the details of which have to be shared with the authorities under the new rules. Whatsapp has gone to the Delhi High Court over that rule, saying that it will mean a breach of the fundamental right to privacy and violates its end-to-end encryption. The Indian govt has dismissed that saying no fundamental right is absolute and the rules are "reasonable restrictions." Meanwhile, Twitter is yet to follow the rule and told the Indian govt that it is nominating a lawyer as its Nodal Contact Person and Grievance Officer. According to the rules, the officers should be employees of the company and residents in India. Interestingly, Twitter sent the communication to the Indian govt late last night, a day which saw the Indian govt slamming twitter over non-implementation of new IT rules. The Indian govt statement said, "Twitter needs to stop beating around the bush and comply with the laws of the land" and reminded it that". The statement added, "Law making and policy formulations is the sole prerogative of the sovereign and Twitter is just a social media platform and it has no locus in dictating what Indias legal policy framework should be." Also, Twitter is yet to send out the details of the Chief Compliance Officer to the government as mentioned in the IT rules. Amid this entire fiasco between microblogging platform Twitter and the government of India over the recent raid by Delhi Police after issuing a notice to Twitter, theres one homegrown company called Koo, a Twitter clone that has got the maximum benefits. Reportedly, the app downloads and engagements on the platform have surged about five times in the last three days. Koo has seen a strong surge in user base over the past few months amid clarion calls for expanding the ecosystem of homegrown digital platforms. "Our intent is to ensure every user has a safe experience on Koo. We have processes to get back on any complaints that users have and were able to identify people who were confident of delivering on the promise of safety and a great environment to the users," Aprameya Radhakrishna, co-founder of Koo, told PTI. Koo said it has raised $30 million (about Rs 218 crore) in a funding round led by Tiger Global. Existing investors Accel Partners, Kalaari Capital, 3one4 Capital, Blume Ventures and Dream Incubator also took part in the latest funding round. IIFL and Mirae Assets are other new investors who have come on board the cap table with this round. Koo was founded by serial entrepreneurs Aprameya Radhakrishna, founder of TaxiForSure and Mayank Bidawatka who previously founded companies like MediaAnt and Goodbox. Its popularity peaked amid clarion calls for expanding the ecosystem of homegrown digital platforms. Koo has close to 60 lakh users, making it a major social media intermediary under the new guidelines. On May 24, the Delhi Police visited the Twitter India offices after it issued notice to Twitter seeking an explanation on what grounds it tagged BJP spokesperson Sambit Patra`s tweet on the alleged Congress toolkit designed to target the Central government as `manipulated media`.The Delhi Police Special Cell asked Twitter to explain the rationale and share all the information on how it described the toolkit as manipulated media. Twitter had said that it was concerned by recent events regarding their employees in India and the potential threat to freedom of expression."Concerned by recent events regarding our employees in India and potential threat to freedom of expression for people we serve. We have concerns with regards to intimidation police`s tactics in response to enforcement of global Terms of Service and core elements of the new IT Rules," a Twitter spokesperson said. Live TV #mute New Delhi: After multiple complaints filed against Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah actress Munmun Dutta, famous for playing Babita Ji on the show, for using a 'casteist' slur' in her social media video, the first FIR has been registered in Mumbai. After a fortnight an FIR has been lodged in Mumbai against television star Munmun Dutta. On May 10, 2021, the actress through her verified Instagram handle shared a video in which she allegedly used a 'casteist slur'. Activist Vinod Kajaniya from Mulund, also an office-bearer of Valmiki Vikas Sangh, had filed a complaint with Goregaon police station on May 12, 2021, requesting the filing of an FIR against Dutta. The police station then forwarded the complaint to Amboli police station under whose jurisdiction the actress resides. On May 26, 2021, an FIR was registered by police under various sections of The Scheduled Castes & Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 2015 along with section 295 of IPC by the complainant, and office bearer of Valmiki Vikas Sangh, Reshampal Bohit. There have been multiple FIRs in other states against Munmun Dutta's remark but this is the only FIR registred in Maharashtra. Activists are now demanding the immediate arrest of Munmun Dutta. However, the Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah actress had already apologised for unintentionally hurting the sentiments of a community on her social media handle. "Once I was made aware of its meaning, I immediately took the part down. I have the utmost respect for every single person from every caste, creed or gender and acknowledge their immense contribution to our society or nation," she wrote. "I sincerely would like to apologize to every single person who has been unintentionally hurt by the usage of the word and I sincerely regret the same," she added. New Delhi: A video of ship radar showing over 14 unidentified flying objects (UFOs) is doing rounds on social media platforms. The video was shared by filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who had released another footage earlier, and claims that both the footages are from the same incident that happened in July 2019. The filmmaker claims that the visuals were recorded almost two years ago when the US Navy ship, namely, USS Ohama, was near the coast of San Diego. As per the post on social media by Jeremy Corbell, the speed of the UFOs was between 70 to 250 kilometers per hour. While sharing the footage on social media platforms, including Twitter and Instagram, Jeremy Corbell wrote, This footage was filmed in the Combat Information Center of the USS Omaha on July 15, 2019 in a warning area off San Diego. This RADAR data release shows four clips; multiple unknown targets. Some of the unknown targets drop off RADAR in this footage. At the height of the contacts - there were at least fourteen unknowns observed at one time. The event series reached a crescendo with one of the unknown targets entering the water at 11 pm. No wreckage found. None of the unidentified craft was recovered. This is corroborative sensor data demonstrating a significant UFO event series - where unknowns were swarming US Navy warships. This type of cross-platform information verification is both unique and rare in the pursuit of the UFO mystery, the post added. Meanwhile, earlier this month, the US Department of Defense had confirmed that the previous footage released by Corbell was real and the authorities are investigating the UFO sightings. Live TV MELBOURNE: Australia's Victoria state reported five new local COVID-19 cases on Saturday amid a strict lockdown, as people rushed to vaccination centres, causing long lines and technological glitches. The infections bring the latest cluster to 35, but the number of exposure sites visited by the infected people has expanded to more than 150, putting thousands at risk. Victoria went into the weeklong lockdown on Thursday night, the state`s fourth in the pandemic, forcing residents to remain at home. "We are taking this outbreak day by day," Victoria`s commander of its COVID-19 response, Jeroen Weimar, told a news briefing. The outbreak was caused by a traveller who left hotel quarantine in South Australia state after testing negative but later tested positive in Melbourne. People lined up for several hours at vaccination centres on Saturday, trying to book a shot or get one on a walk-in basis. A designated state hotline for booking has crashed continually since Thursday. This week, Victoria became the first state or territory in Australia to administer more than 40,000 vaccine doses in a day. On Friday, there were a record of nearly 43,500 doses administered. SPORADIC PROTESTS AND ARRESTS Police said they had arrested 14 people on Saturday at various anti-lockdown and vaccination protests across Melbourne. Two police members sustained minor injuries during one of the arrests and one of the alleged offenders was also injured, the police said in a statement. About 150 people protested in the city`s centre and 55 fines were issued. All public gatherings are banned under Victoria`s lockdown restrictions. "The virus does not respond to protests," Victoria`s Health Minister Martin Foley said. "Protesting against a virus is not going to work. And if you do, you are breaching the public health orders." Getting a coronavirus vaccination is one of the five reasons for which Victorians may leave their houses. The others are essential work, healthcare, grocery shopping and exercise. Shopping and exercise are limited to two hours per day. Australia has struggled with a slow vaccine roll out and rising vaccine hesitancy because of the country`s success in virtually eliminating the virus. The country has reported zero local cases for 94 days this year, while numbers have remained in the low single digits on most other days. Australia has effectively contained all past outbreaks through speedy contact tracing, snap lockdowns and strict regional border controls, helping keep its COVID-19 numbers relatively low, with just over 30,070 cases and 910 deaths. Finlands police announced that they would be investigating Prime Minister Sanna Marins breakfast bills after reports alleged that they were illegally subsidized using taxpayers money. The tabloid Iltalehti reported that the Prime Minister has been claiming back about 300 euros (Rs 26,479) per month for her family's breakfasts while living at her official residence, Kesaranta. Accused PM Marin claimed that this privilege was made available to her predecessors and took to Twitter to say that she did not ask for it. As prime minister I have not asked for this benefit nor been involved in deciding on it," she said. According to the law in Finland, using taxpayers money to pay for the Prime Ministers morning meals may be illegal and the police have decided to look into the matter. "The prime minister has been reimbursed for some meals, even though the wording of the law on ministerial remuneration does not appear to permit this," police said in a statement. Prime Minister Marin made it clear that she welcomes the investigation and tweeted that she is happy to learn the proper procedure under the law. She also clarified that all purchases were not made personally but were done by the Prime Ministers Office and related staff. The purchases have been stopped for the duration of the Police investigation into the matter. Live TV Press Release May 29, 2021 Sen. Leila M. de Lima on US President Biden's order to investigate COVID origin What a big step for US President Biden to order a deeper probe into the true origin of the COVID-19 virus, and the right one. Truth is always an imperative of the highest order. This generation, and the next, would not want a farcical narrative written in the world history books about this unprecedented catastrophe that killed our loved ones. ### https://twitter.com/SenLeiladeLima/status/1398485481973706758 Villanueva welcomes vaccination roll out for economic frontliners in June Senator Joel Villanueva thanked the government for heeding his call to expand the A4 vaccination priority list to include economic frontliners, who are set to be vaccinated in June. In a statement, Villanueva, chair of the Senate labor committee, said the workers in the A4 priority list, where economic frontliners will be lumped together with essential workers, could continue on with their jobs while mitigating the risk of contracting severe or critical symptoms of COVID-19 once they get vaccinated. "Araw-araw pong nakikipagsapalaran ang ating mga manggagawa, tulad ng economic frontliners at essential workers, upang ipagpatuloy ang kanilang mga trabaho. Ngayong mababakunahan na po sila, mababawasan po ang kanilang alinlangan sa pagpasok sa trabaho dahil may kaukulan na silang proteksyon laban sa COVID-19," Villanueva said. "Sa mga kamay ng ating manggagawa nakasalalay ang muling pagbangon ng ating bayan. Salamat po sa ating IATF, lalo na po kay Secretary Vince Dizon, na ating nakaagapay sa pagsulong ng pagbabakuna sa mga essential workers at economic frontliners, including workers in the formal and informal sectors," he continued. Villanueva issued the statement after Dizon announced during the inauguration of the Joni Villanueva Memorial Hospital in Bocaue on Thursday afternoon that the vaccination of workers would start in June. Dizon credited Villanueva for relentlessly advocating for the vaccination of essential workers, such as security guards, market vendors, delivery riders, public utility drivers, supermarket staff, sanitation workers, and media workers, among others. In January, Villanueva campaigned for the inclusion of essential workers at the Senate Committee of the Whole hearing into the COVID-19 vaccination program of the country. The testing czar, a resource person at the committee hearing, confirmed the IATF's commitment to include essential workers in the vaccination priority list. The lawmaker pointed out that the only way to boost the confidence of workers to go to their jobs daily was through vaccination. Citing government data, Villanueva said the unemployment rate last year reached double digits--10.3 percent or about 4.5 million workers. Villar thanks President Duterte after declaring Davao City as "Chocolate Capital" of the PH Senator Cynthia A. Villar commends the signing into law Republic Act No. 11547 which declared Davao City as "Chocolate Capital" and Davao Region as "Cacao Capital" of the Philippines. President Duterte signed RA 11547 in recognition of the country's biggest producer of cacao and its vital contribution in making the Philippines world renowned and sought after by chocolate makers from the U.S., Japan and Europe. The new law recognizes the importance of cacao that provides livelihood to farmers in the countryside. It also mandates the state to promote the industrialization and full employment based on sound agricultural development and agrarian reform. Sen.Villar who pushed the passing of the law said that the law guarantee the sustainability of the country's cacao industry for the benefit of farmers and other stakeholders. She also hopes that these places would inspire other local government units to spur agricultural growth. Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) record showed that approximately 78.76% of annual production of cacao in the Philippines came from the Davao region composed of Davao del Sur, Davao City, Davao del Norte, Davao Oriental, and Davao de Oro and Davao Occidental. Home > 2021 > Bengal is witnessing a class war between centrist and rightist forces | (...) by Arun Srivastava Some intellectuals and academics have been urging the leaders of the farmers movement to heed the message that intensification of protest would aggravate pandemic and in view of this they should call off their agitation. These people symbolising the middle class liberal cultural sensibility and concern are right. Of course fears outright could not be dismissed that some farmers would succumb to the corona virus. But once they withdraw the movement thousands of them would turn beggars and die of hunger with none to take care of them. These intellectuals mostly from the Indian middle class are not to be blamed for their recapitulated approach and views. They carry the legacy of feudalism which prevents them from taking to a new uncharted path. Why these conscience keepers do not rise against the demagogue rulers and ask them to perform or perish is really intriguing? Their concern for preserving the societal ethics has badly got exposed in their inability to raise their voice against the extortionist and exploitative mechanism of the rulers and political leadership. It is an open secret that the corona patients are getting exploited, charged many times more than the prevailing market rate, but shamelessly these intellectuals have been behaving like passive spectators to this dirty game. Why are they not resorting to direct action against their political idols and force them to curb these mal practices. They cannot do it. They lack that moral guts, the commitment. They can shit on the pages of the newspapers but cannot dare to hit the streets as it erode their image of being the intellectuals. Politically they claim to be centrist, liberal and democrat. But it is really a matter of shame that they have not been raising their voice against the rightist forces and exposing their designs. Let us take two latest incidents to understand their attitude. The farmers have been on satyagrah for last six months. Only once some of them wrote a letter to Narendra Modi to look into the demands of the farmers. They refrained from making this agenda. During the Bolshevik struggle or even during Chinas fight, the intellectuals had hit the streets. But what we notice in India, the intelligentsia shrugs of his broader responsibility by simply coming out with an appeal or a statement. It is a paradox that they have been reluctant to open their mouth and raise their voice even after being pushed out of the frame by the intellectuals enjoying the patronage of the Rightist forces. The Rightist forces on the mission to vanquish them. These intellectuals should have visited the agitation sites where lakhs of farmers are sitting leaving their families behind at their native villages. They could have interacted with them and shared their emotions, sensibilities and sorrows. This would have boosted the morals of the farmers. The farmers began camping in the outskirts of Delhi when the first wave of the pandemic was past its peak. They are still sitting at the same place when the second wave of the pandemic has reached a critical stage and ravaging the country. They are undeterred of the consequences. Like a middle class individual the farmer could have preferred to hide in a corner of his house. The farmers under the leadership of their Samyukta Kisan Morcha (SKM), the umbrella body of farmers unions, are rearing to re-launch and revive their agitation. The SKM relaunched the struggle with observing the national day of protest on May 26. In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it admits to being deeply conscious of the risks of the pandemic. These intellectuals and experts are often heard of expressing apprehension about the longevity of the agitation. They hold the notion that it is losing support and crowd. Obviously for judging the nature of the sustainability they must have some parameter. One would expect that these lackgentlemen should make their parameters. Let the farmers and agitator know what they lack. Unfortunately instead of helping the farmers and their leaders they have been pushing this negative idea and thought amongst them. In the political history of India, during the past 72 years, never such sustained and disciplined struggle was witnessed. Almost all the struggles, particularly led and participated by the middle class people, had disintegrated after a certain time. But this has not been happening in the case of the farmers notwithstanding attempts being made out by the top BJP leaders, including Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to finish it. What is that element that motivates the farmers to keep alive the struggle and not to get trapped in any conspiratorial plan. The second most important incident has been the conspiracy being hatched out by the RSS and Modi government to dismiss the Mamata government. The fight between Modi-Shah combine and Mamata may appear to purely political. But this has wider implication. These intellectuals and academic should take pains to explain why the BJP-RSS has singled out Bengal and used its entire energy and resources to ensure the defeat of Mamata. Was it for the simple reason to win the election? Or, was there anything more relevant and important which evades our perception and eyes. The determination of the RSS to throw Mamata out of power was so captivating that Modi addressed 22 public rallies even after country was being ravaged by the corona. Amit Shah had rented a flat. He has turned a sort of permanent resident. Importance of election could be gauged from the simple fact that he used the land of a foreign country, in this case Bangladesh, to reach out to the backward castes residing in Bengal. He went to Bangladesh to persuade the religious leader of the Matua sect to issue a dictate to vote for him. This underlines the importance of Bengal election for RSS and BJP. Unfortunately they miserably lost the election. Modi met with waterloo in the battle field of Bengal. Losing the election did not make them patient. On the contrary they turned more vindictive. Modi-Shah opted to use Central Bureau of Investigation to destabilise Mamata government and malign her image. At the direction of Amit Shah the CBI framed four senior TMC leaders including three ministers in Narada scam. They were already charge sheeted but CBI tried to arrest them and take them in custody. There is no ambiguity about the nature and character of the legal war that has been going on in Calcutta High Court. So far it appeared to be a war of attrition between the CBI and Mamata Banerjee on the arrest of TMC ministers and leaders. But now it has no inhibition; it is a class war, a battle between two ideologies. It manifests the deep rooted conspiracy hatched out by the Rightist forces led by the RSS and BJP to smash the centrist and liberal forces and make them subjugate to their diktats. RSS is aware that with the traditional Left forces losing their relevance and sting in the prevailing political scenario, the onus to fight the right forces lies on the centrist forces. If they somehow succeed in their mission to denigrate the centrist forces then in that backdrop they can aspire to have complete hegemony on the political system and institution of India. It has become imperative for their survival. The Rightist forces true to their political philosophy have been consistently raising two issues; who after Modi and which party. They have succeeded to a large extent that there is no leader who can challenge Modi. But the water loo of the BJP in Bengal election has exposed the hollowness of this political line. Notwithstanding their systematic vilification campaign and striving to polarise the Hindus, the centrist forces outright rejected the fascist design of the Rightist forces. The authoritative manner in which Amit Shah and Modi claimed of wresting the state from Mamata, had unnerved the centrist and liberal forces. Obviously this defeat was unpalatable for Modi and Shah. That is the reason that RSS and BJP have been resorting to all modes of war strategy to beat the centrist forces, which in the current situation are symbolised by Mamata. The CBI has been showing utter contempt for law. Though the TMC leaders have already been charge sheeted, the CBI sought their custody. This was purely an attempt to scare and demoralise the centrist forces. The CBI even resorted to lies. It blamed Mamata for creating hurdles for CBI. The most glaring has been its argument to transfer the case of granting the bail to the arrested TMC leader as the atmosphere was not congenial in Bengal though the High Court did not agree to it. The CBI even filed case before Supreme Court. But after excruciating grilling by the division bench it decided to withdraw the request. It could not justify its allegation to the court that a fair trial could not take place in Calcutta. They resorted to lies to mislead the apex court. One thing is absolutely clear that RSS must not have resorted to this nature of hysterical action, if it was sure that this would not adversely affect the future of the B JP at the national level. Some political analyst wrote that RSS felt happy and enjoyed Mamatas Bengal win. This is absolutely a wrong narrative. The fact is otherwise. Victory of Mamata has been the reason for more worry to RSS than the BJP. The fact of the matter is RSS had more stake in the Bengal election than BJP. These experts cite Mamata reciting chandipath as the sign of victory for the RSS. It is a misnomer. Till May 2, the day of counting of votes, as usual RSS was willing to perform the task of prompter from the wings. But after BJP met with waterloo RSS refused to play second fiddle to Modi-Shah and took the charge to spearhead the fight against her. It was not thrust on the RSS. The RSS leadership had come to realise that any complacency in checking the Mamata omen would see the gains made during the seven years of Modi rule going down in the drain. The RSS leaders had seized that Mamatas victory would embolden the centrist, liberal and democratic forces to stage a comeback. Though the BJP vigilante and other outfits of Sangh parivar during these years had resorted to all kinds of machination to finish them, they could not accomplish in the right earnest as the power of resilience of the centrist forces has been quite robust. The RSS ideologue knew that resurgence of these forces and their projecting Mamata Banerjee as the alternative to Modi will sound a death knell for the rightist forces. During Modis tenure the rightist forces have been trying to occupy the centre stage of the political system and institution. They have succeeded to a major extent. The democratic and parliamentary institutions have been systematically weakened and torn apart. Nonetheless they could not check the centrist, liberal and democratic resistance. Under Modi though BJP had won the elections of 2014 and 2019, the fact remained that the centrist and liberal forces continued to be overriding and still articulate the perception of more than 70 per cent of the people. It is worth mentioning that even in 2019 Lok Sabh election which crowned Modi as the creator of New Modern India, these forces had tried to assert their existence. Since Rahul Gandhi could not fit in their ideological and political frame, they made a tactical retreat. The Congress could not make them rally behind. Still the Congress had managed to get 3 seats more than what it had won in 2014. During last couple of years these forces have once again started asserting and the results are before us. BJP under the same Narendra Modi has lost almost all the elections, across India, whether it was of assembly or panchayats in UP. The art of politics is to make the people think new in the new situation. This is the political artistry. The successive defeats should have made the RSS and BJP realise that fascist ideas and jargons which it has pursuing for years have turned reduntant. They may seduce some saffron worshippers and blind followers, they are no more liked by the people. They could not override the centrist, liberal and democratic forces beyond a certain point. It is a known fact that RSS has been spearheading the campaign against Mamata and the BJP was playing the second fiddle though it pretended to be the public face of the saffron parivar. Mohan Bhagwat, Narendra Modi and Amit Shah committed the biggest crime by resorting the politics of terror and hatred. They failed to read the mood and psychology of the people of not only Bengal but of India. They misunderstood their acceptance by a section of the urban middle class as the approval of their politics by the Indian across the country In fact a peep into the past actions of RSS would reveal that they had always targeted Mamata, as they had come to realise that she was the only force which could pose a serious challenge to the Sanghs hegemony. In 2017, RSS had passed a resolution in its pratinidhi sabha, the highest decision-making body, against the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress governments alleged failure to stop political violence. RSS had set a Mission Bengal in 2016 itself. In March 2017, the RSS passed a formal resolution to this effect. Since then, the task to win Bengal has been its priority. In its March 2017 resolution the RSS even expressed concerns over the rise of jihadi elements in West Bengal, and encouragement to the anti-national elements by the state government due to its Muslim vote bank politics and declining Hindu population in the state. It criticised Mamata Banerjee for her appeasement politics, and urged the citizens to create awareness against this Jehadi violence. The RSSs top-decision making body had also urged the Central government to take firm action against these anti national Jehadi elements of the state. The memberships had witnessed a sharp surge after the former president of India Pranab Mukherjee visited the RSS headquarters in Nagpur in 2018. Following the visit, professionals such as doctors, designers, and teachers began showing interest in joining the Sangh in West Bengal. There are 1,700 shakhas, 800 milan units and 300 mandalis in the state. On an average, nearly 4,000 swayamsevaks work in each of 294 constituencies of the state. The RSS work in Bengal can be divided into three phases: first, from 1939 and 1953, an uneven period; second, from 1953 to 2008, when it anchored in the state and the third, beginning from 2009. This was the most favourable situation for it. Based on the gains the RSS cadres and leaders had started dreaming that 2021 election would see the first ever chance of Hindu BJP coming to power. We tend to read too much from the previous statistics and figures. We tend to ignore the fact that politics does not have permanent features. The economic changes bring about variations in the politics. While analysing the election trends we often refer to the old figures which seldom provides us the correct insight. During the last ten years the people of Bengal, like the people of any other state, chose new priorities and narratives. Obviously it is not correct to express surprise at BJP gaining ground in the state. With Congress and CPI(M) turning irrelevant the people who once constituted its support base, eventually shifted their loyalty to some other party. There is nothing astonishing in it. RSS general secretary Dattatreya Hosabale in a statement also alleged that there was a conspiracy behind the violence. He used the word conspiracy to malign Mamata. This has a planned implication. He wanted to tell the people of the country that Mamata, who the centrist andliberal forces plan to project as the challenger to Modis hegemony was not a competent and honest politician. This was primarily aimed at creating confusion in the minds of the people and even some of the opposition parties who might prefer to throw their weight behind her. However a closer look at the nature of the violence would reveal that the RSS and BJP had planned the violence. During their electioneering the senior BJP leaders would warn the TMC cadres to get ready to face their assault. The tapes carrying these threats had become viral. These are in the public domain. RSS accused the state administrative machinery of being mute spectators. Neither the rioters seemed to be afraid of anything nor is there any initiative by the state police and administration to control the violence, it alleged. The RSS has always conspired to use the word violence to vilify Mamata and her government. As has happened this time the RSS has been using the element of violence to send the message that her government is anti-people and had failed in its task. In 2017 RSS said The first and foremost responsibility of the ruling administration, whoever or whichever party may be in power, is to establish peace and safety in the society by maintaining law and order, to instil fear of law in the minds of the anti-social elements, and to punish those involved in violent activities. Electoral victory belongs to political parties, but the elected government is accountable to the entire society. It has urged the West Bengal government to effectively establish rule of law by immediately containing violence and to initiate legal action against culprits by arresting them without further delay. A sustained effort is being made to hide the real face of the RSS and present it as a transformed modern social group. The goal is to avoid it as being described as a demagogue. A new RSS will certainly not carry the obsolete ideological baggage of yester years. It is being said only to create confusion and blunt the opposition attack. A new organisation needs a new kind of treatment. Interestingly the RSS is trying to create this cultural hegemony through the Hindu religion, spirituality and culture. This is yet another shrewd strategy to undermine the old language of secularism. Though the RSS decries secularism, it is however aware of the fact that secularism continues to the defining political ethics. Indians are basically secular in their approach. After Modi became the prime minister in 2014, the RSS started giving a shape to its expansion programme in Bengal. In 2017 districts after districts were taken over by men wearing saffron bandanas. They wielded swords and trishuls, tridents. Asansol and Birbhum became the prime centres for the expansion. RSS initiated the worship of Ram. In a state where Durga Puja is considered to be the biggest cultural-religious function, such fanfare around Ramnavami was unprecedented. RSS used its all might to make it a success. The RSSs organisational strength increased. Mamata used police to frustrate their activities. As a result they had to abandon their programme of Shastra Puja. They stopped the aggressive expansion of the programme. Several of its leaders were including the BJP state president, Dilip Ghosh, were booked under the Arms Act for brandishing weapons. The BJP gradually emerged as the primary political opponent of TMC. The CPI(M) was further relegated to the background. The left could not build its movement against the RSS as it was in a state of confusion whom to treat as its main enemy. RSS used the worst performance of the BJP to strengthen it at the grass root level. According to RSS functionaries, nearly 800 to 1,200 such Jan Jagran meetings were held in each of 294 constituencies. As per their estimate, for every thousand meetings, nearly 8,000 RSS workers and sympathisers were mobilised. Through these meetings, the RSSs campaign reached to the booth level. The target was to also increase the voter turnout, RSS officials said. Hong Kong: Public urged to get COVID-19 jabs Hong Kong has achieved the target of having zero COVID-19 cases for 28 consecutive days but the public needs to prepare for the next wave of infections by getting vaccinated early. Hong Kong University Chair of Infectious Disease Prof Yuen Kwok-yung made the remarks at a press briefing today. Prior to the briefing, the professor held a meeting with the Centre for Health Protection to review the epidemiological investigation progress of some recent COVID-19 confirmed cases involving a four-year-old boy, a nurse working at a community vaccination centre in Jordan and another five patients. He said these cases did not affect the target of achieving 28 consecutive days of zero cases. From all the available evidence that I presented today, including the four-year-old child, the nurse who was contaminated at the vaccination centre and the patients of the five cases who all have a negative IgM (Immunoglobulin M) in the serum while testing for COVID-19, while they have a positive IgG (Immunoglobulin G) at admission with very low viral load, we have a reason to believe that all these cases are not really affecting our target of achieving 28 consecutive days of zero cases. I do think that we actually have achieved it. Prof Yuen emphasised that the community needs to stay vigilant as a new wave of coronavirus infections cannot be ruled out. But remember, the virus is able to penetrate every hole that is left behind. So it's, perhaps, just a matter of time that the fifth wave will come. "So the emphasis is not just to say that we have achieved 28 consecutive days of zero cases, but more importantly, it is the time for us to prepare for the next wave to come. And by preparation I mean that we must achieve a high vaccination rate. This story has been published on: 2021-05-29. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article. Egypt is targeting between $6 billion and $9 billion in tourism revenues in 2021 as the country reports a rise in arrivals of Eastern European and Gulf holidaymakers, tourism minister Khaled El Anany has indicated, Bloomberg reports. Late last month, Deputy Minister Ghada Shalaby said the Arab Republic is expecting to generate between $6 billion and $7 billion in terms of tourism revenues this year as direct flights between the Arab republic and Russia are set to resume soon. Shalaby also indicated that the country envisions to attract this around 60 per cent of the number of visitors who visited the Arab country in 2019. In 2019, 13.1 million people visited Egypt, generating a total revenue estimated at $13.03 billion. Anany, Bloomberg notes, indicated that the number of visitors has risen to about 500,000 a month this year and Egypt is expecting total of more than 6 million tourists this year. The tourism revenues dropped down in 2020 to about $4 billion due to the pandemic. Shalaby also said Egypt is counting on Russian holidaymakers. More than one million Russian tourists are expected to visit Egypt this year. Both Egypt and Russia, Cairo said early this week, have agreed to resume all flights between the two countries. Russia has suspended flights to Egypts resort destinations Sharm al-Sheikh and Hurghada after a Russian passenger jet was brought down in October 2015, in the Sinai, with 224 people onboard. The Islamic state group claimed responsibility for the attack. The kingdom of Morocco has emerged as one of the leading international investors in Africa with foreign direct investment (FDI) valued at about $4 billion according a report by the Moroccan Agency for Development of Investment and export (AMDIE) and France-based consulting firm, Mazars. The report, dubbed Analyse de linvestissement en Afrique en 2020 [Analysis of Investment in Africa in 2020] released on Africa Day, looked into four criteria namely global attractiveness of the African continent, investment in Africa, foreign direct investment on the continent and intra-African foreign direct investment. Per the report, the African continent, despite the pandemic and political uncertainties, remains very attractive. The continent, reports also stressed, boasts huge business development potential for several key and mature sectors of the Moroccan national economy. The analysis highlighted that the North African country signed close to 1,000 trade agreements with 28 African countries friendly with the Rabat. In the area of investment, Morocco, reports said, invested between 2003 and 2017 MAD37 billion (about $4 billion) in 30 African countries. The investment portfolio positions the kingdom among leading investors on the continent. Majority of the investment went to West African countries who make up the largest chunk of Moroccos club of friends. Kingdoms emergence in Africa is driven by the countrys industrialization program spearheaded by sectors such as automotive, aerospace and electronics, under the Industrial Acceleration Plan. Morocco ranked last year 53rd on World Bank Doing Business index and features among the continent top 3 most reforming economies in Africa, right behind Mauritius and Rwanda. Mazars, according to its website, is a leading international audit, tax and advisory firm. It operates in 90 countries around the world through member firms. The event is set to take place at the National University of San Agustin (UNSA) in the southern city of Arequipa this Sunday. Likewise, the electoral institution indicated that the debate will begin at 7 p.m. (local time) and be broadcast on TVPeru, JNE's official channel, and UNSA's social networks. Furthermore, JNE Chairman Jorge Luis Salas met with UNSA Dean Rohel Sanchez in order to express gratitude for aiding in the organization of the debate. The event will be divided in six sections: ??Falta 1 dia para el #DebatePresidencialJNE ??Manana domingo, a las 7:00 p.m., sera el debate entre los candidatos Pedro Castillo Terrones, de Peru Libre, y Keiko Fujimori Higuchi, de Fuerza Popular.#TuVotoSeRespetaJNE pic.twitter.com/kWH2M1XUeH Via social networks, Mindef reaffirmed its fight against narco-terrorism and its commitment to holding free, transparent, and orderly elections. In a tweet, the ministry issued a statement from the Joint Command of the Armed Forces (CCFFAA), which blames a faction of the terrorist group Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), led by Victor Quispe Palomino, alias Comrade Jose, for this abominable act. The document stated that, in a genocidal act on the night of May 23, this terrorist group murdered 14 unidentified people, including two children, who were found burned and unrecognizable. According to the statement, the massacre took place on the banks of Chimpinchariato stream, near San Miguel del Ene population center. The CCFFAA remarked that the killing was carried out with firearms and that the terrorist organization calls it "social cleansing." Moreover, some pamphlets were found in the crime scene, which ordered the population not to participate in the 2021 electoral process. On Monday, local authorities reported the incident to the police station in Natividad, a population center located in the district of Pichari of La Convencion Province in Cusco region, near the place where the events occurred. Armed Forces members are patrolling the area, while conducting reconnaissance and combat operations. (END) CVC/RMB 09:00 | Lima, May. 27. These measures will provide support especially to the most vulnerable people, at a time when the Peruvian economy improves and employment gradually recovers The economy resumed positive growth in March, and the recovery path is likely to continue in the coming months, as a result of the economic measures taken last year which were strengthened this year the relaxation of restrictions on economic activities , and the positive statistical effect. To consolidate this trend, the Executive Branch will implement a set of measures covering four dimensions: I. Management of the Emergency (S/388 million or US$101.2 million) Health insurance for all through the SIS scheme (S/250 million or US$65.2 million) Investments in the health field (S/138 million or US$36 million) Eight investment projects will be financed by regional and local governments, as well as the Ministry of Health (Minsa) , to improve the supply of health services. II. Support to families (S/218 million or US$56.8 million) Temporary intervention of "Juntos Program" (S/48 million or US$12.5 million) The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Development (Midis) , through Juntos Program , will implement a basic package of health services (rotavirus and pneumococcal vaccination, as well as iron supplementation) for children under 24 months, which will go to 155,000 households. YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. Biden Administration proposes $24,005,000, from which Foreign Aid amounts to $23,405,000, and Military Aid - $600,000, ARMENPRESS was informed from the Armenian National Committee of America. A broad, bipartisan coalition of U.S. Senators and Representatives has repeatedly called upon the Administration to provide at least $100,000,000 in U.S. aid to Armenia and Artsakh. (The Presidents budget makes no mention of Artsakh.) President Bidens business-as-usual budget for Armenia proposed amid a humanitarian crisis across Artsakh and Armenia created by Azerbaijans aggression falls far short of the desperate needs faced by tens of thousands of Armenians displaced by Bakus ethnic-cleansing said Aram Hamparian, Executive Director of the ANCA. Our government has found the funds to ship $120,000,000 in U.S. military aid to oil-rich Azerbaijan, yet is proposing just a fraction of this amount for the Artsakh families destroyed and displaced by the Azerbaijani army. The Congress needs to set this right zeroing out all U.S. arms and aid to Baku and sending a robust U.S. assistance package to Artsakh and Armenia. A separate line item in the budget calls for $6,050,000 in International Narcotics and Law Enforcement spending in Armenia. YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan referred to the situation on Armenia-Azerbaijan border and the steps to solve the situation, ARMENPRESS reports Pashinyan referred to the issue in a meeting with his supporters. ''I want all of us to focus on the statement issued yesterday by the OSCE Minsk Group. I want to say that I welcome that statement and the logic of steps presented in it is accaptaple for us'', Pashinyan said. He noted that the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs called for urgent steps to reduce border tensions. It was suggested that the parties withdraw their troops and that border adjustment work be carried out with the support of the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs. ''The Armenian government is determined to go that way, we are ready to start the withdrawal of troops, we expect the OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs to reach a relevant agreement with Azerbaijan to start the withdrawal of troops at the same time'', Pashinyan said, adding that he Armenian side fully accepts the proposals in the statement issued y the OSCE Minsk Group Co-chairs on May 28. Pashinyan reminded that the propsals are about withdrawing the troops from the area where the tensions have escalated, and international observers are deployed there, after which border demarcation negotiations will start. YEREVAN, MAY 29, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of the Republic of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan is of the opinion that the industrialization of Armenia is deeply connected with the opening of regional communications, ARMENPRESS reports Pashinyan said in a meeting with his supporters. ''In this regard, the statements of the Azerbaijani leadership are rather strange. Why are they strange? Because we aadopted the well-known declaration of November 9, where there is a point about the opening of communications, and in the Moscow statement of January 19, which has been published, we actually commented on how to implement those points on opening the communications'', Pashinyan said, adding that the Armenian side has no problems with open roads, but the word ''corridor'' does not exist in either of the statements. ''Therefore, I want to clearly say once again, we have never formally or non-formally discussed anything about corridors or exchange of territories, I mean Meghri, which is much discussed topic'', Pashinyan said. Nikol Pashinyan highlighted the opening of communications in the context of Armenia's industrialization process. ''It's extremely important for us that Armenia gets an operating railway connection with Iran and Russia'', Pashinyan emphasized. Fitbit has offered sleep-tracking on its devices since 2017. Since the start, that functionality has mostly focused on measuring your heart rate and movement to provide you with a breakdown of your sleep cycles. However, Fitbit could soon measure how well you sleep from another angle. Conducting an APK teardown of the latest version of the companys Android app, 9to5Google found evidence of a nearly complete snore and noise detection feature. The tool, as the name suggests, allows you to use the microphone on your tracker or smartwatch to measure how much of the night you spent snoring. It will translate the total amount of time into a percentage, further grouping that into one of three categories. For example, if you spent 10 to 40 percent of the night snoring, it will be classified as a moderate case. Fitbit admits the feature cant differentiate between people. So if your partner snores as well, it will include their contribution in the detection mix. Fitbit snore and noise detect You can also use the tool to measure the ambient noise in your bedroom. Fitbit will tell you how loud it is in your sleeping environment on a scale between very quiet, which the company classifies as a consistent 30 dBA or less, and very loud, which falls in the 90 dBA and above range. As you might imagine, leaving your Fitbits microphone on all night is one way to quickly drain its battery. The company recommends charging the device to at least 40 percent before you go to bed. It also warns youll need to plug it into the power more frequently should you decide to use the feature consistently. Judging by the fact 9to5 could pull screenshots where Fitbit details how the feature works, the sleep and noise detect tool looks like its nearly ready for rollout. As with most of Fitbits tracking features, the data only goes so far if you dont do something with it. Losing weight, for instance, can help with consistent snoring, but thats a lifestyle change you have to make on your own. A mere eight days after announcing the restart to its long-paused Bluecheck verification process, Twitter announced on Friday that sorry, it's been swamped with requests and will temporarily ignore new applications from users until the backlog has been addressed. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Until this past respite, Twitter hadn't allowed members of the public to apply for site-wide verification since the start of the Trump administration (after they went and verified an actual Nazi). In December, the company implemented new rules for who can be verified and what Twitter's verification process will look like. Journalists, brands, government officials, activists and other publicly recognizable internet personalities were to be fast-tracked for approval assuming they could provide evidence in the form of a government ID, company masthead or professional profile referencing their social handle that they were what we thought they were. There is no word from the company yet as to when the process might reopen to new applicants though we do have a legally-binding pinky swear that it will eventually happen. Mohamed el-Menfi, the President of the Libyan Constitutional Council, PC, will visit Tunisia May 29-31 at the invitation of President Kais Saied as part of both countries efforts to strengthen historical and brotherly ties. The office of President Saied announced Thursday the planned Menfi visit, Webdo Tunis reports say, adding that it provides an opportunity to discuss bilateral cooperation issues and ways to raise them to the level of the aspirations of the two brotherly nations. The visit will also allow for further consultation and coordination on regional and international issues of common interest, the office added in a statement. Menfis visit followed that of Saied in March to Libya to underline Tunisias support for the PC and the unity government of interim Prime Minister Abdelhamid Dbeibah tasked to lead the oil-rich African country towards general elections in December this year. Tunisia is keen on playing a key in Libyas reconstruction. Tunisian Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi who visited Libya last week stressed the need for both countries to develop cooperation agreements and open new horizons for economic transactions to include promising areas of joint cooperation, through much anticipated high-level visits aimed at strengthening cooperation. In 1842, the 24-year-old Douglass was quickly developing and honing his skills as a captivating speaker. But on this tour, he had second billing on the speakers rostrum; the headliner was Abby Kelley, a fierce abolitionist and suffragist from Massachusetts, renowned for her passionate oration and radical dedication to the end of slavery and for the expansion of womens rights. Filing a report in the Oct. 13, 1842, issue of the National Anti-Slavery Standard, J.T. Tucker, a local minister and abolitionist, provided a detailed account of the Port Byron rally. Advance notice was given that Kelley and Douglass were to speak at the Presbyterian meeting house on Sunday evening. Five-hundred attendees arrived, but according to Tucker, The house had become so holy and sanctified through the day under the labors of a pro-slavery priest ... that she (Kelley) was refused the use of the sacred desk. Subsequently, the entourage moved to a local schoolhouse built and occupied by our friend W. O. Duvall. Duvall was an ardent abolitionist whose farm at Howland Point near Port Byron was a haven for freedom seekers. But Duvalls schoolhouse proved too small for the crowd; half of the ladies could not get into it, and given the cold, damp evening it was deemed imprudent to stand in the open air. Tesla is wading through stormy waters in China, the world's largest automobile market, and a shoreline remains beyond sight. With suspicions that on-board cameras in Tesla vehicles may capture sensitive data at key installations and send these out beyond China, the US-based EV maker has come under increased scrutiny despite CEO Elon Musk's assurances. And although Tesla has set up a China site to store data locally, it hasn't been enough for some local governments in the country to review vehicle ownership among staff members. (Also read: As China cracks whip, car makers scurry with plans to store car data locally) Bloomberg has reported that officials in Zhejiang and Guangxi provinces have told government bodies to look into employees who may have bought a Tesla vehicle. In some extreme cases, it is reported that staff members have been instructed to not drive their Tesla vehicles to certain designated areas which are deemed sensitive zones. A Tesla owner, wearing a t-shirt that reads Brake Lost Control, was dragged away from the venue and detained for five days for her protest during the Shanghai Auto Show. It is further reported that the China Meteorological Administration, with its HQ in Beijing, has appealed to staff members not to buy Tesla vehicles. Those who may already have one have been told to transfer ownership to someone else. (Also read: Tesla China demand slumps, adding to headaches after protest) In a country and automobile market where options are galore when it comes to battery-powered cars, these developments are likely to detrimentally impact Tesla's prospects. Tesla does have quite a fan following in China and enjoys solid sales volumes despite the presence of major local and global players. That said, the heat is clearly on. While Tesla hasn't specifically reacted to reports of employees being requested/warned/prohibited against their vehicles, it has repeatedly held that not only do its cars not collect any sensitive data, these are also safe to drive. The safety aspect is another key issue as a number of crashes involving Tesla vehicles, apart from quality concerns, have been brought to the spotlight in recent weeks and months. China is an absolutely crucial market for global auto giants and specially for Tesla, a company that opened its first plant outside of the US, in Shanghai, in 2019 and this facility manufactures models not just for Chinese buyers but for several European markets as well. Many plant species have not been documented in decades because they are found in areas that are difficult to access, are very small and hard to see, or they can be difficult to identify. Looking for the 10 Arizona Flora Finder plant species can require climbing to the top of the San Francisco Peaks or scrambling over rocky hillsides. But for the right person, the hunt and the challenging terrain are part of the fun. In 2020, Arizona Flora Finder volunteers were able to find 14 localities of five rare plant species for a total of 57 individual plants. They also did not find four rare plant species in nine different locations -- information that is just as useful. One volunteer, Wendy McBride, was able to find a species of moonwort, a type of fern that was thought to be extinct in Arizona. It was last collected in 1973 near Mount Baldy in the White Mountains and had not been documented since then. In the Middle Ages, moonworts were collected by moonlight and used by necromancers to raise the dead. Arizona Flora Finder volunteers also found a rare fern on Mount Elden that was last collected 34 years ago, when MNA researchers were evaluating the species. At that time, they recommended that the populations be revisited every three to five years. They hadn't been revisited since. The only place in Arizona that this species of fern has been found is on Mount Elden and it is considered critically imperiled in Arizona. School district records show that a Flagstaff High School teacher resigned this week following accusations of public sexual indecency earlier this year. Walter Halaberda, a longtime English instructor, allegedly touched himself in a sexual manner during a Zoom class on Jan. 4, according to police records. He has not currently been charged with crimes connected to an ongoing police investigation. Halaberdas resignation has been effective since Tuesday, according to information from Flagstaff Unified School District. Police records indicate that Halaberda has been placed on home assignment by school officials since at least May 6, when the police investigation began. Police used student demographic information to determine that potential victims in the case were all older than the age of 15. A student captured a video of the incident that eventually surfaced online and was reported to the school by a parent on Jan. 6. The video allegedly shows quick back and forth motions of Halaberdas right arm, according to police records. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} The Flagstaff Police Department is actively conducting the investigation into the incident and has obtained copies of the video recording in question. The department declined to release the video to the Arizona Daily Sun. Ducey said that with just a month remaining until the start of the new fiscal year, Arizonans deserve to see the budget enacted. The $12.8 billion plan includes a massive income tax cut and new spending on roads and other improvements, plus new tax cuts for veterans and business property. "On the table is a budget agreement that makes responsible and significant investments in K-12 education, higher education, infrastructure and local communities, all while delivering historic tax relief to working families and small businesses, Ducey said in a statement. Republican House Speaker Rusty Bowers said he knew the governor has made similar moves in the past and said it would have been foolish of me not to think Ducey would do it again. Still, the vetoes mean a whole series of bills will have to move back through the system in both chambers very late in the session, or die. It hurts. It means more time for us. It means late introductions, it means the whole rigmarole, all over again, Bowers said. But weve been working and trying to work through each of our recalcitrant members and holdouts to have a budget. And next week were going to be trying to put one together and hopefully we can move. PHOENIX (AP) The Arizona Senate on Thursday pulled the plug on a plan to vote on a budget and instead adjourned until June 10 unless they break the impasse earlier on the $12.8 billion spending plan. Republican Senate President Karen Fann announced Thursday afternoon that her hopes of getting all 16 Republican members to back the deal she reached with House Speaker Rusty Bowers and Gov. Doug Ducey had fallen though. Some members complained about too much spending while others worry the tax cuts are too large. The House reached the same conclusion Wednesday, adjourning until June 10 unless they can reach a deal with their members sooner. With only a one-vote majority in each chamber and no Democratic support for the budget deal that includes a massive tax cut, Republicans could only lose one vote. We thought we were really, really close to getting a budget done today, heads up or heads down, whichever, Fann told the assembled senators. And over the last less than 12 hours were further apart now than we were. A lot of new requests, a lot of new demands." So it would be futile for us to try and put this up, she said. We obviously need to get things back together again and figure out where were going to go from here. The total attendees for these events in 2020 was 32,438, with 5,290 job offers extended to participants. So far in 2021, DAV has held another 30 job fairs, all of them virtual, Villanueva said. Winkel said the challenge of virtual job-hunting has had an upside for some vets, opening up opportunities for networking and career preparation that were not there before. It has also introduced employers to the benefits of remote work, which is ideally suited to many military spouses, he said. Some veterans have become more proactive in seeking out educational opportunities like certifications and credentialing to improve, or upskill, their career potential, Winkel said. There are still challenges. While national veteran unemployment went from 3.1% in 2019 to 6.5% in 2020, the veteran jobless rate in Arizona for the same period went from 4.9% to 9.6%. Amy Bolton of the Arizona Coalition for Military Families said the coalition views the issue of veteran unemployment in Arizona as well-managed, but added that, We dont reach every veteran, so were not going to stop until we do. Birthday wishes Call 281-422-8302 or email david.bloom@baytownsun.com to wish someone a happy birthday. We will print your birthday wish on Page 2 of The Sun. Happy Birthday Wishes Non Banking Finance Company Sundaram Finance and TVS Group companies,including Brakes India, Wheels India, Sundaram Home Finance and Royal Sundaram General Insurance have contributed Rs eight crore towards the Tamil Nadu government's COVID-19 relief efforts. The contribution includes Rs 2.50 crore to the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund, Rs 2.50 crore to the Tamil Nadu State Disaster Management Authority and Rs three crore towards import of oxygen concentrators, oxygen flow meters, a press release said here on Saturday Wheels India managing director Srivats Ram handed over the cheques for Rs eight crore to Chief Minister M K Stalin at the Secretariat on Saturday, it added. Also read: COVID-19 vaccine: Delhi to get 5.5 lakh doses for 18-44 age group in June, says Manish Sisodia Darin McMurray, operations project manager for the Corps at Fort Peck, said his agency has not seen a request from Montana State Parks regarding the transition to the Little Shell. Yet he said if the tribe is willing to accept the conditions of the state lease, as it is written, the Corps should be able to approve the Little Shell as the parks operator. That happened when other marinas were sold at Fort Peck, he said. The situation at Hell Creek could be similar, McMurry added. Under that scenario, when the states lease expires in two years the tribe will have to apply to renew the lease. This would trigger another review, likely for a longer term lease, and with new conditions since the tribe plans to operate the park for profit. In the past a tribal spokesman suggested a 30-year lease. On, off Montana State Parks on-again, off-again relationship with Hell Creek has frustrated users of the park. The goal of a previous park director was to abandon Hell Creek unless a partnership could be found to make the money-losing site less of a financial burden. Under the current director, Beth Shumate, the agency first said it was not leaving Hell Creek, but that changed after Gov. Greg Gianforte was elected last year. I plan to keep driving it for as long as I can, or as long as my wife lets me, Idstrom said. Organizer Pam Figg said the rally will be a great way to see people, especially older folks who havent been able to travel due to COVID-19. She added there will likely be a boost to the local economy. These people will be staying in Billings, shopping in Billings, and eating out around town too, she said. It is important after a hard year. The meet started with a welcome party Friday night. Saturday will be in full swing with a "show and shine" at MetraPark from 8 a.m. to noon. This is where drivers will clean and detail their cars ahead of an inspection. In the afternoon a road rally will move out around Billings. Drivers will be put to another test here: a 50 question test to gauge their Corvette knowledge. There will be Corvettes everywhere. it will be awesome, Fitchtner said. On Sunday, there will be a low-speed race in MetraPark's upper parking lot. Racers must pass an inspection in order to compete. Trump was booted from Twitter and Facebook after those platforms concluded Trumps false, seditious remarks about being the victim of a stolen election presented too big a risk. Hes been dispatching emails concerning the election through his super PAC regularly. After the House vote, Trump attacked the 35 Republicans supporting the commission. See, 35 wayward Republicans they just cant help themselves. We have much better policy and are much better for the Country, but the Democrats stick together, the Republicans dont. They dont have the Romneys, Little Ben Sasses, and Cheneys of the world. Unfortunately, we do. Sometimes there are consequences to being ineffective and weak. The voters understand! Trump said in email May 20. Montana Sen. Steve Daines, a Republican, didnt support the commission because he considered it redundant, said Katie Schoettler, a Daines adviser and communications director. Theres going to be a joint bipartisan report, from two committees, expected to come out the week after next with at least 40 recommendations, were hearing. There are investigations still happening at the federal level, Schoettler said. Editors note: Beginning in June, Lee Montana's daily report on Montana's COVID-19 statistics will be published once weekly. The first report will be published in the Wednesday, June 2 edition. Montana added 69 new cases of COVID-19 on Saturday, and one more of its residents has died due to the virus. Confirmed active cases in Montana dropped to 778, down from 853 reported the previous day by the state Department of Public Health and Human Services. DPHHS Public Information Officer Jon Ebelt told the Gazette earlier in the week the department has started tracking less than 800 active cases in the state for the first time since July 2020. The death reported Saturday, a Powell County resident, brought the pandemics death toll in Montana rose to 1,613 people. Montana Has a Supreme Problem. Our Supreme Court justices must think they are the executive branch and the legislative branch all rolled into one. They may even believe they are the new oligarchy in charge of Montana. Whatever their problem, it is manifesting itself in executive and legislative authority being usurped by Montanas Supreme Court. The examples are legion of our judiciary overstepping their authority. Consider this: can you imagine the Supreme Court of Montana threatening the Montana Attorney Generals state attorneys with disbarment if they continue to look into the Courts wrongful, maybe even illegal, activities? Montanas Attorney General Knudsen said, There is also some irony in accusing these fine attorneys of disrupting the administration of justice when their clients (the people) argument is that it is constitutionally, legally, and ethically improper for the court to attempt to administer justice in this matter. The real question is, what is our Supreme Court hiding? Because newspapers have been at the forefront of community building, we cannot talk about the precarious condition of the published word without considering this primary function of nurturing the sense of togetherness. As we look at the decline of the newspaper industry, we also see the fragmentation of relationships in communities. While the development of community becomes more and more difficult as the size of cities becomes larger, the weekly newspapers are in a more advantageous position to foster a sense of community because intimacy already exists. So what is this community that newspapers nurture? The word community has been used so recklessly that its true definition has become meaningless, and we have used it to skit along the surface like a pond-skimming bug that never looks down. Fabian Pfortmuller of the Together Institute has been troubled by the lack of an accurate definition and to purify use of the term he offers a few comments to clarify the definition. He alleges that the absolute core of a community is that the people care about each other. When people care about each other, they develop trust and trust unlocks collaboration, sharing, support, hope, safety and much more, Fabian claims. Clouston, who spent 25 years in the Army National Guard and Army Reserves, has been part of the honor guard since 2001 and serves as the chaplain. Being in the group is a "family thing," he said. His father was an honor guard member, and after Clouston joined, he talked his brother and brother-in-law into joining as well. Both Clouston and Ringland described what they do as an "honor" for their fellow veterans. "They deserve the honors because they helped defend our freedoms," Ringland said. Having the honor guard present also is meaningful to the families of the deceased veterans, they said. Sometimes families even record the salute, according to Clouston. "I can't even describe the tears that are flowing and the thanks that we get," he said. "It's very meaningful." Memorial Day program The Memorial Day ceremony will take place at noon Monday at the North Dakota Veterans Cemetery south of Mandan. David Adler is pushing his own Big Lie on North Dakotans when he categorically declares there is no evidence that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. This is patently false and misleading. There certainly is evidence of fraud, irregularities and other wrongdoing. The question is whether the evidence is sufficient to conclude that Trump would have won, but for the fraud, irregularities, and other wrongdoing. But I have this suggestion for how he might redeem himself. He could join pundits Adkisson and Andrist, who hold the same or similar views, and investigate this question. Our A Team should first read the Navarro Report, which concludes that fraud and election irregularities were widespread, and that the number of possible illegal votes in each of the six swing states exceeds Bidens margin of victory. Granted, Navarro is a Trump partisan, but he at least provides a framework for assessing the integrity of the election. The A Team should evaluate Navarros findings and give us their best judgment whether fraud and irregularities determined the outcome. Their final report could be printed in the Tribune in installments. In November 2019 at the Veterans Affairs Medical Center on Bailey Avenue, he screamed at her, according to the lawsuit, and then apologized after she started crying and told her to hit him, according to the suit. He also "emotionally isolated" her "by placing demands on her time and controlling her," according to the suit. "What the evidence is going to show is that he was a manipulative actor here and, because of her vulnerability at the time, he was able to manipulate her into being submissive to him," Coppola said. "And that's what predators do." The woman confronted Akl about "his inappropriate touching," according to the lawsuit, but he told her she was mistaken about his motivations and "portrayed himself as a savior figure to help her through her grief." According to the suit, the woman brought her concerns about Akl to UB officials three times: on Dec. 18, 2019, when she told the director of her residency program; in January 2020, when she completed a performance evaluation of him; and this past February when she sent a letter through her attorney. As the impact of the COVID-19 second wave recedes in the country, Reliance Retail is looking to accelerate its digital commerce by horizontally expanding across major categories on JioMart. The horizontal play envisages growing new commerce merchant partnerships across businesses and geographies. The company is also looking at expanding its own brand portfolio across categories to strengthen JioMart. In its last earnings call, the company announced that it is in the process of launching new private label brands and wants to scale up the existing ones. The new brands will play a major role in fashion and lifestyle, electronics as well as grocery segments. The recent acquisitions of Urban Ladder and Zivame are also expected to size up the respective categories of the company's retail business. Also Read: How big is Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail Reliance Retail, which is India's largest retailer with 12,711 stores across the country, has already integrated its grocery and Trends stores network with JioMart. Over 400 Trends stores have been integrated as of last quarter, while the grocery store network of over 800 stores was integrated right from the launch of the e-commerce platform last year. JioMart has recently piloted the electronics category in Navi Mumbai with a select portfolio of products like audio accessories and small appliances. "On JioMart, the assortment is three times more than it was when we launched," said Dinesh Thapar, group CFO of Reliance Retail, in the last analyst call. The emphasis is to offer widest possible selection to customers, he added. According to Thapar, JioMart has a high retention of customers with 80 per cent repeat orders. Simultaneously, JioMart has also extended its new commerce model with the kiranas. The JioMart Kirana programme, which changes the kirana format to open store rather than closed, has been extended to 10 more cities in the previous quarter, taking the total to 33 cities in March. The digital commerce also targets another category expansion shortly through the recently acquired online pharmacy Netmeds. It has opened 114 physical pharmacies within Reliance Retail stores in the March quarter and is also growing its product catalogue by onboarding third-party sellers to expand its online reach. Netmeds' hyperlocal delivery is under pilot in Bangalore. In order to strengthen its digital commerce play across categories, Reliance Retail is also looking at expanding its own brand portfolio within each category and is continuously introducing new private label FMCG brands. In fashion, Trends and AJIO have a rich portfolio of their own brands, while in electronics the company is looking at a collective play of its in-house brand (called Reconnect) and a host of licensed brands. Also Read: Reliance Retail moves NCLT for shareholder meet to approve Future deal "We are expanding our own brand portfolio," Thapar stated in the last analyst call. For this purpose, Reliance Retail has recently relaunched iconic brands like Kelvinator, BPL, and Walt Disney-cobranded products. In 2019, the retail arm of India's largest conglomerate had signed an exclusive brand licensing, manufacturing, marketing, and distribution deal for Kelvinator with Swedish appliance maker Electrolux, which owns the brand. The BPL agreement has helped the company establish its presence in electrical categories like fans, residential lights, personal care appliances, etc. With another licensing agreement with Walt Disney Company, Reliance Retail wants to grow its share in the children's segment as well. It has already launched Disney and Marvel co-branded personal products in electronics that include headphones, bluetooth speakers, electric toasters, and hair dryers. The company is also looking at extending its tie-up with Walt Disney to other categories including toys, packaged foods like biscuits and breakfast cereals, apparel, and back-to-school items like school bags, lunch boxes, and stationery. While the second wave of COVID-19 is seen as a dampener for the retail sector's recovery, analysts expect Reliance Retail's ramp-up in omnichannel/new commerce to consolidate its business. "We expect signi?cant market share wins for RIL, driven by investment-led scale-up in digital assets complemented by their lower cost structure driven by large of?ine presence and rising private label contribution," Goldman Sachs said in its report. It forecasts a 50 per cent market share for RIL in the online grocery market by FY25, with a 30 per cent market share in overall e-commerce. It translates into $35 billion gross merchandise value (GMV) and $15 billion in revenues by FY25. Another report by JP Morgan Research has stated that JioMart's activity is scaling up. The note added that it found brisk online activity across stores and formats it visited in Mumbai in the last week of March. "Unfortunately, we know, and we've seen, that the number of homicides and the number of shootings go up in these three months, in June, July and August," Erie County District Attorney John J. Flynn Jr. told reporters at a news conference inside the King Urban Life Center on Genesee Street. "What we're going to do over the course of the summer months is to re-engage and ... let our community know that we care about you. We love you. We don't want you to get shot. We don't want you killed. We don't want to have our clergy presiding over your funerals." Democratic sheriff candidate Kimberly L. Miller-Beaty picked up her most significant endorsement to date Friday when Assemblyman Patrick B. Burke announced his support. Burke, a Democrat from Orchard Park, broke with the leadership of his own party and its endorsement of Brian J. Gould, assistant chief of the Cheektowaga Police Department. "As a state assemblymember I'm technically a party leader," he said of the split with officials. "But I just felt compelled to do this because I think she is the best candidate." Miller-Beaty, former deputy commissioner of the Buffalo Police Department who now heads security for Canisius College, is challenging Gould for the party nomination in the June 22 primary. Activist Myles L. Carter is also competing. The winner of the Democratic primary will face in the November general election either Karen L. Healy-Case, a retired Buffalo lieutenant, or John C. Garcia, a retired Buffalo detective. Both are competing in the Republican sheriff primary. But because Miller-Beaty has been forced to campaign apart from party regulars as a challenger to the endorsed candidate, backing from a state lawmaker now carries weight. Burke hopes it will spur others to follow his lead. "Don't be fooled by Garcia," the flier proclaims. "He's a Never-Trump Democrat in disguise." How long each candidate has proclaimed their loyalty to the Republican Party now dominates an increasingly competitive and negative primary contest. Healy-Case insists that Garcia could attract no attention among Democrats as a sheriff hopeful so he joined the Republicans. Garcia has no history with the party, she says, and produced her own research showing he voted in the 2016 Democratic primary for president. That can only mean, she concluded, that Garcia voted for Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders the two Democratic contestants. Garcia, meanwhile, says he voted for Trump in the 2016 and 2020 general elections, and for "none of the above" in the Democratic primary even though New York has no such option on the ballot. Though he went to the polls that April 2016 day to vote in a primary featuring only Clinton and Sanders, he says he cast his ballot for neither. Healy-Case doesn't buy it. "There were only two candidates Hillary or Bernie so he voted for one of them," she countered. "Who else did he vote for? Mickey Mouse?" Many states have now embraced updated guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that say fully vaccinated Americans no longer need to wear masks indoors or out in most situations. But some cities and businesses still take a wait-and-see attitude amid questions of whether the new stand is safe or workable, given that there is no easy way to know who has been vaccinated and who hasn't. The guidelines essentially leave it up to people to do the right thing. Labor groups and others warned that employees at stores, restaurants and other businesses could be left exposed to the coronavirus from customers and could be forced into the unwanted role of vaccination police. Want to do the right thing? Here's a new guide, "Mask Or Not?" With the gusher of federal money flowing to New York State this year, it seems unconscionable for the state to shortchange services for people with disabilities, but thats the effect of recent cutbacks or modest increases in aid from the state. Since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the state will have received more than $400 million in enhanced Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP) aid generated by the not-for-profit providers of supports and services to individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities from the federal government, part of a stimulus bill. Providers have stated that they never received a penny of it, a claim disputed by the state budget office. I have no idea where that money went, Rhonda Frederick, president and CEO of People Inc., told The News this week. It didnt come to providers. As part of the American Rescue Plan passed this year, the federal government is increasing FMAP aid 10% for home and community services for the disability community. Frederick said this years aid needs to get out quickly. The provider associations are asking for a 5% increase in rates for voluntary agencies for pay increases to help with staff recruitment and retention, Frederick said. Through May 31 Regular wild turkey season continues for upstate New York. Bearded birds only. Two birds per season but only one per day. dec.ny.gov May 29-30 ASA Qualifier Archery Shoot at Allied Sportsmen, 12846 Clinton St., Alden. Cost to qualify is $25. Shooting times are 9 and 11 a.m. Saturday, 9 a.m. Sunday. Please arrive at least 45 minutes before shooting time. To pre-register, contact John Floriano at 725-5822. For more info, contact Kevin Ulrich at 430-1059. May 29 Statewide muskellunge season opens (except for Great Lakes). Minimum size is 40 inches and one fish per day. May 29-31 National Lake Trout Derby on Seneca Lake. $10,000 grand prize. Call 315-789-5520 for more info. May 30 60th Anniversary Sporting Clays Shoot at North Forest Rod and Gun Club, 6257 Old Niagara Road, Lockport. Shotgun start at 9 a.m. 100-bird event. scorechaser.com. Call Ashley at 698-5892 for more info. The concept is simple. Fish on Lake Ontario targeting salmon and trout for the day. Bring your best three salmon and trout to the scales at Clarks Park in Wilson before 3 p.m. Prizes will be awarded for the best three fish (total weight) as well as for the biggest fish overall. Sign up by 6 a.m. the morning of the contest at Bootleggers Cove Marina and the Gas Shack in Wilson, and The Boat Doctors in Olcott. Scoring will be based on 10 points per fish and a point per pound. For more information, call Mike Johannes at 523-1727. Southtowns Walleye Derby entry deadlines set The countdown has started to register for the 37th annual Southtowns Walleye Association of Western New Yorks Walleye Derby, set for June 12-20 on Lake Erie and the Upper Niagara River. More than $100,000 in cash and prizes will be up for grabs for this nine-day event. No registration will take place following the in-person sign-up from noon to 5:30 p.m. on June 11 at the SWA clubhouse, 5895 Southwestern Blvd., Hamburg. The club will also have a sign-up from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. June 3. You can also sign up at the monthly club meeting starting at 7:30 p.m. June 10. AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) today praised the Biden Administration and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida State Legislature for siding with the cause of allowing the importation from Canada safe, US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approvedand less expensiveprescription drugs in filings submitted in a federal lawsuit. Bipartisan support of such drug importation was reported by Politico last evening (5/28/21) in a story that reported the Biden administration " filed a motion in federal court seeking to dismiss a lawsuit that aims to prevent prescription drug imports from Canada a plan Florida is lobbying to utilize." The drug industry, through its lobbying trade association, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturing Association (PhRMA), sued the state of Florida which enacted a law that would allow safe and less expensive drugs to be imported from Canada. The Biden administration requested the court to dismiss the drug companies lawsuit. "Were delighted that theres bipartisan agreement between Democratic U.S. President Joseph Bidens administration and Republican Florida Governor Ron DeSantis on this welcome attempt to bring down the obscene prices of prescription drugs," said John Hassell, national director of advocacy for AHF. "Were very pleased the drug industrys scare tactics failed to gain any traction with either President Biden or Governor DeSantis especially since most prescription drugs are already manufactured outside the United States anyway." AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), the largest global AIDS organization, currently provides medical care and/or services to over 1.5 million clients in 45 countries worldwide in the US, Africa, Latin America/Caribbean, the Asia/Pacific Region and Europe. To learn more about AHF, please visit our website: www.aidshealth.org, find us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aidshealth and follow us on Twitter: @aidshealthcare and Instagram: @aidshealthcare Story continues View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210528005535/en/ Contacts MEDIA CONTACTS: Ged Kenslea, Senior Director, Communications, AHF, +1.323.791.5526 [cell], +1.323.308.1833 [work], gedk@aidshealth.org John Hassell, National Director of Advocacy, AHF, +1.202.774.4854 [cell], John.hassell@aidshealth.org Transat (TSX:TRZ) is a leading integrated international tourism company, specializing in holiday travel. The company operates and markets its services in the Americas and Europe. It develops and markets holiday travel services in packages, including air travel and hotel stays, and air-only formats. Transat operates under the Transat and Air Transat brands mainly in Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and in 10 European countries as part of a multi-channel strategy. Transat is also a retail distributor, both online and through travel agencies, some of which it owns. It offers destination services in Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica. Recently, Transat started setting up a division with a mission to operate hotels in the Caribbean and Mexico and to market them, particularly in the United States, Europe, and Canada. Sustained profitability As part of the companys 2018-2022 strategic plan, Transat set a two-pronged objective of building sustainable profitability by improving the companys current business model and pursuing hotel development. Recently, Transat strengthened the companys current model by maintaining focus on satisfying the expectations of leisure customers with user-friendly service for an affordable price. This was made possible by greater synergies between the companys various divisions in Canada, continued efforts to increase efficiency and reduce costs, continuous improvement in Transats digital footprint, and a special focus on the development of certain functions, such as revenue management or air network planning. Cost-reduction efforts In 2019, Transats shareholders approved an arrangement agreement with Air Canada, under which Air Canada agreed to acquire all issued and outstanding shares of Transat. On October 9, 2020, a new arrangement agreement with revised conditions was signed to replace the previous agreement. In April 2021, however, the transaction was called off due to regulatory hurdles and Air Canadas own pandemic-related business challenges. Transat received a lucrative break-up fee from Air Canada. Story continues Air Canadas interest in acquiring the company demonstrates the great value that exists in Transats shares. Meanwhile, Transat has slowed down investment in hotel development and continued cost-reduction and service-enhancement efforts to fully implement the companys strategic plan. Serving leisure markets By dramatically disrupting airline and travel businesses, the COVID-19 global pandemic has forced Transat to focus on adapting to the situation in the short term by targeting cost reduction and cash preservation. At the same time, Transat has moved forward with parts of the companys strategic plan where possible, and to best position itself for recovery when demand picks up. Transat constantly stays abreast of the latest trends that will allow it to serve the companys two leisure markets, namely sun destinations with departures from Canada and the transatlantic program with departures from Canada and Europe. Further, Transat Tours is a major Canadian tour operator, but it competes with other tour operators for sun destinations. The company continues to devote major efforts to the expansion of Transats range of products, accounting for market trends, with the objective of offering a product line that differentiates it from the competition. These efforts are likely to payoff over the long term. As business travel picks up, Transat should benefit substantially. The post COVID-19 Recovery: 1 Value Stock Set to Outperform appeared first on The Motley Fool Canada. If you enjoyed this article, click the link below for top market insight delivered directly to your inbox! The 10 Best Stocks to Buy This Month Renowned Canadian investor Iain Butler just named 10 stocks for Canadians to buy TODAY. So if youre tired of reading about other people getting rich in the stock market, this might be a good day for you. Because Motley Fool Canada is offering a full 65% off the list price of their top stock-picking service, plus a complete membership fee back guarantee on what you pay for the service. Simply click here to discover how you can take advantage of this. Click Here to Learn More Today! More reading Fool contributor Nikhil Kumar has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. 2021 Ethiopian patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church Abune Mathias attends the Timkat celebrations, which marks the Baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River, at Jan Meda Sports Field, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on January 19, 2021 The patriarch of Ethiopia's Orthodox Church recently ignited controversy when he said that genocide was being committed in the northern Tigray region. His Holiness Abune Matthias - an ethnic Tigrayan himself - explained that since the outbreak of conflict in November between the Ethiopian military and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), his "mouth had been sealed, unable to speak from fear". Abune Matthias' emotional statement resonated with many Tigrayans, who are deeply traumatized by the violence in their region. More than two million people have been displaced in the conflict. Through protests in capitals around the world and via social media, members of the diaspora have united to campaign against what they insist is genocide. The Ethiopian government rejects reports of mass atrocities as exaggerated and politically motivated. Breaking with the traditional hierarchy of the Ethiopian church, the Orthodox Synod distanced itself from the patriarch's statement. In popular parlance, genocide is the crime of crimes - the very worst on the books. It evokes a special outrage - campaigners against genocide call for exceptional international responses, including military intervention, to stop it. Thousands of people have been killed in the conflict in Tigray The term was invented by Rafael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, to describe the uniquely terrible crimes perpetrated by the Nazis against entire peoples. It won a special place in the international statute books when the United Nations formalized the Genocide Convention in 1948. Hate speech In the trials of high-ranking Nazi officials at Nuremberg, prosecutors had brought charges of crimes against humanity - defined as widespread and systematic violations perpetrated by a state or a state-like entity. Genocide is a different kind of crime, defined by the perpetrator's intent: "to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such." Map Until now, human rights organizations have said that crimes against humanity may have been committed in Tigray. That may change. Story continues Some Ethiopian media have expressed ethnic animosity towards Tigrayans, with derogatory language used indiscriminately to tar all Tigrayans with the alleged misdeeds of the TPLF, which was in power at a federal level for more than 25 years and had a bitter fall-out with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed after he took office in 2018, resulting in the conflict in its stronghold of Tigray. Dehumanizing words such as "daylight hyenas" and "unfamiliar others" are used to foment hatred. Protests have been held around the world to demand an end to the war in Tigray There are reports of ethnically selective purges of Tigrayans from government employment and the army, and restrictions on their travel, businesses and residence. These violations aren't in themselves as heinous as murder, rape, or starvation but they would be important to building a case for genocide. There have also been numerous reports of mass killings in Tigray, by all sides. The definitive determination of whether it is genocide would be a guilty verdict in the trial of a high-level perpetrator - preferably in the International Criminal Court (ICC). But for the ICC to take on a case would require a decision by the UN Security Council, which is highly unlikely given African suspicions of the court and the objections of China and Russia. Ex-Ethiopian leader convicted of genocide Another possibility is the prosecution of an Ethiopian who is dual national of another country - perhaps for statements in the media that could be taken as incitement. Or there could be an arrest warrant issued by a magistrate by a state that has universal jurisdiction, such as France or Belgium. Ethiopia has itself previously prosecuted genocide. Its 1957 penal code prohibits genocide with an important variation - it includes "political groups" among those protected. This is a legal curiosity that arose because Ethiopia used one of Lemkin's early drafts for the UN Convention, before the Soviet Union insisted that targeting political groups shouldn't be included. Tigray has been devastated by the conflict Lemkin himself was particularly concerned with food deprivation as a tool of genocide. In his book Axis Rule he devoted more space and attention to Nazi policies of limiting food rations to starvation levels than to gas chambers and killing squads. The term "starvation crimes", coined by Bridget Conley, is becoming common usage for the varieties of ways in which hunger is used as a weapon of war, oppression and punishment. The UN, US and UK have all warned this week of an impending large-scale famine in Tigray. The dire situation is the result of "starvation crimes" including pillage, forced displacement, destruction of food, water and health facilities, widespread rape that prevents survivors from caring for themselves and their children, and obstruction of humanitarian aid. Thirty years ago, when Ethiopia set up a Special Prosecutor's Office to try officials of the ousted military regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, it was decided to use genocide charges for political killings. The main focus was the "Red Terror" of 1977-78 when the regime murdered tens of thousands of young people for their real or suspected political alignments. More than two million people have been left homeless Mengistu was convicted in absentia for genocide on this basis in 2007 - 40 years after his most egregious crimes. Campaigners don't want to wait until judges hand down a verdict. When proof of genocide is finally forthcoming it is by definition too late to prevent it. To get around the problem, activists and diplomats have coined new words to describe patterns of ethnically targeted atrocities. As Yugoslavia broke apart in the early 1990s, the term "ethnic cleansing" was coined. This isn't codified in law - and acts such as targeted killings and rapes and forced displacement that make up ethnic cleansing aren't distinct from the actions that could constitute genocide. An internal US state department report referred to "ethnic cleansing" in western Tigray earlier this year. Children face the risk of spending the rest of their lives as refugees Ten years after the Yugoslav war, the former US special envoy for war crimes, David Scheffer, introduced the term "atrocity crimes" to try to short-circuit what he saw as fruitless legal debates on what counted as genocide. He argued that "governments and international organizations should not be constrained from acting by the necessity of a prior legal finding that the crime of genocide in fact has occurred or is occurring". More on the Tigray crisis: There's also a grey area of localized, ethnically targeted violence. This kind of conflict is rife across Ethiopia, involving many different communities. There are contested boundaries between ethnically defined regions and disputes over the status of minorities within regions dominated by another group. Violence of this kind has recently increased, with ethnic Oromos, Amharas, Somalis and Gumuz, among those swapping accusations of atrocities. Ethiopians in the diaspora have been trying to draw global attention to attacks on their ethnic groups back home Spokespeople for these groups commonly portray themselves as victims of genocide. Crying "genocide" sounds the alarm but doesn't spell out a clear course of action. Chart showing the ethnic make-up of Ethiopia The peril of a singular focus on "genocide" is illustrated by the international campaign against atrocities in Darfur in 2004. Activists focused on calling the atrocities genocide: they assumed that once their governments designated it as such, they would be required to send troops. One protester's sign at a Washington DC rally read: "Out of Iraq, Into Darfur!" In fact there's no such obligation. An inquiry sponsored by the US state department did indeed find that the Sudanese army and associated Janjaweed militia had committed acts of genocide. Then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell accepted the report, but said that this finding did not change US policy, which prioritized humanitarian aid, a peacekeeping mission, and a peace agreement. Bruising genocide debates In Darfur, the debate over whether the atrocities were or weren't genocide became a distraction from dealing with what actually could be done to stop the atrocities. The US designation of "genocide" was purely symbolic, and when the UN's International Commission of Inquiry on Darfur stopped short of calling it a genocide, the Sudanese foreign ministry trumpeted a victory, overlooking the inquiry's careful wording that "crimes no less serious and heinous than genocide" had been committed. Many people in Darfur are still waiting for justice The prosecutor of the ICC later issued an arrest warrant against President Omar al-Bashir, which included charges of genocide. Bashir was imprisoned by the Sudanese authorities two years ago after he was overthrown, but he hasn't been handed to the ICC. The trial of a militia leader, Ali Abdel Rahman "Kushayb" opened on 24 May at the ICC on 31 counts of crimes against humanity and war crimes - but not genocide, which lawyers suspect will be very hard to prove. If Bashir does face trial at the ICC, prosecutors will also have to weigh whether to proceed with genocide charges. Today's senior officials in Washington DC include veterans of those bruising debates from Yugoslavia to Darfur. At Thursday's hearing of the US Senate foreign relations committee, Tigray was compared to Darfur. At the hearing, a state department official said they were considering financial sanctions against Ethiopian officials allegedly responsible for failing to stop atrocities in Tigray. The state department also said that a legal team was investigating whether the atrocities amounted to crimes against humanity. But there's little appetite for considering whether it is genocide, fearing it will inflame emotions that would impede, not facilitate, solutions. Short presentational grey line Alex de Waal is the executive director of the World Peace Foundation at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in the US. Calling COVID-19 pandemic and vaccines as one of the most important aspects of his discussions with top officials of the Biden administration, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said the endeavour is to expand production of vaccines in India with assistance from the United States. Jaishankar, 66, is the first Indian Cabinet minister to visit the US under the Biden administration. The primary focus of the visit obviously was on the relationship with the new administration. It is a very important relationship. Also, to engage with the senior cabinet members here, he told a group of Indian reporters here on Friday as he concluded most of his engagements. There was also of course the COVID-19 context because of the vaccine partnership between India and the US, and also Quad-based discussions on vaccines. That was also one of the important subjects. In fact, in many ways, I would say the most important subject of my discussion, the minister said. Jaishankar met Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, US Trade Representatives Katherine Tai and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines over the past two days. He also held meetings with top officials from about a dozen departments of the administration. He also spoke with co-chairs of India Caucus, and Chairman and Ranking Member of the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee. Jaishankar said he also met with business leaders in a meeting organised by the US India Business Council and US India Strategic and Partnership Forum, during which one of the key topics of discussion was related to COVID-19. Apart from that, there was a lot of business interest on what is happening with COVID-19. How is it moving? What could be its economic impact? All this matters to a lot of people who have invested in India, who have employees in India, he said. The external affairs minister had also attended a series of meetings at the United Nations. If I were to sort of describe the objectives, one, of course, was to come here and express our appreciation for the very strong solidarity that the United States has shown during the second wave of COVID-19 in India, and to work with the US on the vaccine production issue, because the US in terms of the supply chain, for vaccines, is absolutely indispensable, he said. You would have seen even in my tweets, in many meetings, that an issue in some form or the other came up, and our endeavour is to expand our production of vaccines in India we will work with the US to make that possible, he told the group of Indian reporters. On India getting vaccines from the US, Jaishankar said there are ongoing conversations on various aspects of vaccines, ranging from regulatory aspects to legal and commercial ones. A large number of companies have reached out to ensure that their supply chain is smooth, he said. This was something I had discussed in detail with Secretary Blinken, when we were in London. We have seen in the last two to three weeks the supply chain is working more smoothly. I think some of that is also due to the interventions by the (India's) ambassador (to the US), he said. In terms of the details of which is the American stock from which President Biden has said that they would be willing to do some supplies, the issue came up at the conceptual level. But my understanding is that, in the coming days or weeks, the US will obviously make its decisions, the minister noted. He asserted that India and the US are having sustained engagement over the issue. The minister added that India has indicated a willingness to accept and import vaccines which have been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration. Also read: Jaishankar, US Defense Secretary discuss shared priorities, regional security challenges Also read: US Secretary of State reaffirms Biden administration's commitment to deepen partnership with India Also read: Quad fills crucial void that has emerged in contemporary times: S Jaishankar (Getty Images) And so, at last, theyve done it. These games are where the fun is, or so Henrik Dalsgaard had claimed this week, a little insensitive to a fanbase that had endured nine play-off failures without success. But finally, at the tenth time of asking, they have been rewarded with perhaps the greatest day in their clubs history. For the first time ever, Brentford are Premier League. Fun might be a stretch, but this was a victory earned - in contrast to the trauma that has preceded it - with the minimum of fuss, by a side who not once looked burdened by the experience of a heart-breaking defeat to Fulham on this very turf only ten months ago. Football songs are not known for their accuracy - Arsenals Marouane Chamakh chant describing Morocco as not far from Iraq remains a nadir for the genre - but Brentford fans new ode to Ivan Toney, to the tune of 70s hit Yes Sir, I Can Boogie hit the nail on the head. When he scores you cant go wrong, it claims, and from the moment the Football Leagues most lethal forward sauntered up to stroke home his 33rd goal of the season after just ten minute, Brentford never looked anything other than on their way to the Premier League. After 20, when the outstanding Emiliano Marcondes thundered in a second, any curses or hoodoos lay in tatters. This was happening. Now living in a state-of-the-art new stadium, creators of an envied production line of Premier League-bound talent and having come to be viewed as perennial contenders - in some quarters perennial bottlers - after coming so close a year ago, perhaps some of the romance of the Brentford underdog story might have gotten a little lost. So let us revisit it. (Getty Images) Supporters of every club supposedly dream of the Premier League and its Promised Land (whether it lives up to the billing is another matter), but for Brentford it was not a possibility that was even on the radar prior to the Matthew Benham era, pie-in-the-sky stuff even by the high standards of delusional, optimistic fandom. Story continues Up until their current stint in the second tier, the Bees had only spent one season above the third in 60 years. They havent been a top-flight outfit since the first proper post-war campaign, in 1946/47. In all, 59 clubs have played a match at the highest level of English football since Brentfords last one, including Grimsby Town, Leyton Orient and Carlisle United. Seven men have been Pope, 14 occupied the White House and 12 walked on the moon. Never mind a generation of fans who have never known their side in the top flight. Some will have grandparents who havent. (Getty Images) This is a club that has only ever provided two England internationals, the same number as Dulwich Hamlet. One whose ground was, as recently as last season, so outdated and underdeveloped that they were still relying on special dispensation just to host Championship matches there. Even now, as they prepare to take on the might of Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea, Franks squad will embark on pre-season at a training facility still largely made up of construction-site Portakabins. Of course, Brentford know all about those, the drama of the last two seasons having played out against the backdrop of the demolition of one home and the building of another. As far as renovation on the pitch was concerned, the task Frank faced following last seasons near-miss was hardly seismic, with Ollie Watkins and Said Benrahma the only high-profile departures, but with Rico Henry and Josh Dasilva injured, and Christian Norgaard only fit enough for the bench, you could make a fair case that Brentford were without their five best players from last season here. Bryan Mbuemo might have something to say about that claim, mind you, and at the end of a second season that has not always reached the highs of the first, the 21-year-old Frenchman produced one of his best performances in a Brentford shirt. A constant threat, it was his clever run that earned the penalty for the opener after Sergi Canos wonderful pass and his pace on the break that had Swansea in disarray as the lead was doubled soon after. (Getty Images) He fed young Mads Roerslev, who will have spent the week knowing that his place in the XI was likely to depend upon Norgaard failing in his race against the clock, and the Dane showed wonderful composure to pick out countryman Marcondes. Toneys stunning, looping volley would have settled the game there and then had it bounced down off the crossbar and an inch. Still, the Bees might have been 90 minutes from the Premier League before but theyd never been 45. There were moments after half-time, particularly when Pontus Janssons generous defending gifted Andre Ayew a glorious chance to halve the deficit, when you wondered whether the weight of history which seemed to have dissipated in the first-half would return. Instead, Jay Fultons horrific, if slightly unlucky, tackle on Mathias Jensen left Chris Kavanagh no choice but to send him on his way, and with the Swans midfielder went any sense of jeopardy. A long time coming, perhaps, but this was Brentfords day right from the very start. Read More Frank: Brentford are an example to follow for clubs around the world Brentford star Toney cant wait to score goals in the Premier League Brentford promoted to Premier League after Play-Off win vs Swansea Police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for Ahmed Adam following a 15-month long investigation into human trafficking in Saskatoon. (Submitted by SPS - image credit) Police have issued a Canada-wide warrant for a 33-year-old Ahmed Adam after an investigation into human trafficking in Saskatoon that spanned more than a year. Adam is charged with a number of offences including trafficking persons, material benefit from sexual services and material benefit from sexual services provided by a person under 18, according to a police news release. Saskatoon police say they are aware of one victim who was reported to have been trafficked by Adam, with the two parties being known to one another, and investigators say they believe there are other victims. The investigation started in July of 2019 and charges were laid after more 15 months of investigation by the city police service's human-trafficking and VICE units. Adam may be in Saskatoon, but police say he also has ties to other communities in Western Canada including Calgary and Edmonton. Police say he stands roughly six-foot-three and weighs roughly 195 pounds. Anyone with information about Adam's whereabouts is asked to contact their local police department or Crime Stoppers to report the information anonymously. They stress that if you, or anyone you know, is involved in forced prostitution or labour, they should contact the Canadian Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-833-900-1010 where they can find support and help if desired. Friends were sticking their heads out of the window of a train when one was killed after being struck by an overhanging tree branch, an inquest heard. Bethan Roper, 28, suffered fatal head injuries while a passenger on the Great Western Railway (GWR) travelling at around 75mph. Miss Roper was returning home to South Wales from a day out with friends Christmas shopping in Bath. An inquest heard Bethan Roper, 28, died from head injuries when she was struck by a tree branch (British Transport Police/PA) Avon Coroners Court heard Miss Roper and her three friends, Elizabeth Winstone Evans, Chanelle Hagland and Madeleine Owens, had boarded the train at Bath Spa station on the evening of December 1 2018. The GWR London Paddington to Exeter service was using carriages fitted with droplight windows to enable passengers to use the handle on the outside when they needed to leave the train at the platform. Investigators told the inquest that the warning label above the window, a yellow sticker with the words: Caution do not lean out of window when train is moving, was not a sufficient deterrent. Miss Roper was fatally injured just a few minutes after the train left Bath when her head was struck by an ash tree branch growing on land adjacent to the line. Pc Kate Aldred, of British Transport Police, spoke with Miss Hagland when the train arrived at Bristol Temple Meads station shortly after the incident and made written notes of the conversation. The train had been travelling five or six minutes when Miss Evans opened the pulldown window of the door, Pc Aldred said. Miss Evans leant her head out of the window very slightly for about 30 seconds and then said something like, Girls try this. Miss Evans put her head back inside the carriage and then Miss Roper has immediately stepped forward and put her head right out of the window. Miss Hagland was sat on the floor close to Miss Ropers legs. Miss Ropers head must only have been out for five seconds when Miss Hagland heard the sound of an impact. Miss Roper fell backwards towards Miss Hagland and caught Miss Roper. Story continues Miss Roper then fell forwards and slumped onto the floor. Later, Miss Hagland told police in a statement that by the time they caught the train they were not drunk or disorderly. Weve all had a quite a few drinks but we are used to drinking like that. We had all sobered up by then and drunk ourselves sober, she told officers. Describing the minutes before the incident, Miss Hagland said they were all in the vestibule area of the train as it was busy and her friend Miss Evans pulled down the window of the door as she was hot. Lizzy leant her head out of the window just slightly and her hair was blowing, Miss Hagland said. I think Lizzy was hot and I didnt even know those windows go down. I heard Lizzy say, look at this girls and when she pulled in Beth charged over and did exactly the same thing and she put her head out just a little bit more than Lizzy did. From what I can remember the shoulders were still in the carriage. I was just about to stand up when the branch hit her head. It was pretty much straight away five seconds. She kind of took two steps back and stumbled and fell right into me and fell forward. A post-mortem examination found Miss Roper had died from head injuries. Toxicology tests found she had a blood alcohol level of 142mg in 100ml of blood, meaning she was nearly twice the drink drive limit. Miss Roper, from Penarth, South Wales worked for the Welsh Refugee Council charity and was chairwoman of Young Socialists Cardiff. The hearing continues. The class of 2021 is making the best of their commencement and putting on a show for the entire community. The Chippewa Falls Senior High School 2021 graduating class held a graduation parade through Chippewa Falls Friday afternoon. The parade began with a short ceremony at the Northern Wisconsin State Fairgrounds, traveled through Main St. downtown and concluded with another short program at Chi-Hi to cap off the night. This is the second straight year the parade has taken the place of a traditional in-person commencement address due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. George Walker, a Chippewa Falls native said it is wonderful that the young adults graduating from Chi-Hi were able to come together to celebrate despite coronavirus still posing a threat to the Chippewa Valley. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} It wouldve been a shame if they couldnt have done anything to celebrate together, Walker said. It sucks they couldnt have a normal ceremony since the mask mandate was lifted, but I understand their being cautious. It is still pretty bad. Glad we could be here today to cheer them on. Remembrances of Leo Antonio C. Abaya (December 13, 1960 - May 26, 2021) are filled with memories of keen learning especially of him as a professor at the UP College of Fine Arts where he taught students who would go on to become some of the best Filipino contemporary artists working today and appreciations of his understanding of the world, which flowed through his numerous works, both in film and in art. As an artist, his practice involved painting, sculptures and objects, installations, and video. His works ruminated on the forces that govern our daily lives, such as the continued colonization of our bodies in Sense, Sate (2011) and the ramifications of a world run by data in Demograpi Atbp. (2018). His works are in institutions such as the Singapore Art Museum, the UP Art Collection, and the Iloilo Museum of Contemporary Art. Mebuyan Scapulars by Leo Abaya. Photo courtesy of TIN-AW ART MANAGEMENT As a production designer, Abayas work was instrumental in fleshing out the remarkable worlds of some of the best Filipino films today, such as Jose Rizal, Muro Ami, and Kubrador and won awards. He would later become a director himself with the Cinemalaya entry Instant Mommy starring Eugene Domingo. Here, colleagues and students remember the life and work of Leo Abaya, artist, production designer, and mentor. Tributes gathered by Carlos Quijon Jr. Gabi Nazareno, artist I didn't have the honor of being Sir Leo's student, because he was on sabbatical during my thesis year. But I learned so much during the times Ive worked with him on a few exhibits. I am grateful to have witnessed the quiet and selfless work Sir Leo has done in support of his fellow Boholano artists. He went out of his way in one exhibit's ingress, to mount a fellow artist's work. We went searching for a particular hanging provision late at night just so he could present the artist's work in the best way possible. Roan Alvarez, artist and educator Sir Leo was not just a great professor, artist, and mentor, he was a blessing to many. I first knew him as my visual studies professor before he became my thesis adviser. After college, I was fortunate enough to assist him in several of his projects. Id like to think that he believed in me more than I believed in myself. This thought kept me going. Ill always be grateful for the push and encouragement he gave me, even if it is in the form of a critique or words of validation. He taught me that a little encouragement goes a long way something that I have also put into heart as an educator. Noelle Varela, artist I was at his house days before his passing, he was the usual sir Abs wearing an apron, talking about his explorations with resin, waiting for packages and materials to arrive, talking about his deadlines, us figuring out how to go about one of his commitments and showing off his level 1600+ in Candy Crush. Until his last days, his exuberance towards his discoveries oozed within his being; creating was his life. Sir always had the enthusiasm and trust in us, young artists. Beyond the variety of art practices I discovered under Sir Abaya, the sense of respect and understanding of art and art practices between us, him and his friends, will continue to flourish. Marya Salang, Tin-Aw Art Management I first met Leo in 2009 for the first UP Fine Arts thesis exhibition at Tin-aw Art Gallery. Through the years, I have worked with him on a lot of exhibitions and personal projects. We would always argue with each other about deadlines especially when schedules are tight and a lot are happening. His final retort would always be, Marya, mangyayari yan. (Marya, it will happen.) When I learned that he would be making his film, Instant Mommy, I bugged him to be included in it. He just laughed at me. And then one day he called and told me that I will be an extra in the film. I kept asking him to send me the script so I can internalize. To shut me up, he finally said, Punyeta! Extra ka lang. Hindi ka lead. And we laughed so hard after that. Thats how Leo is. He makes things happen. Small dreams or grand projects, Leo made everything achievable. Arkipelago by Leo Abaya. Photo courtesy of TIN-AW ART MANAGEMENT Dawn Atienza, Tin-Aw Art Management Leo Abaya was a creative genie artist, teacher, curator and writer. He had two solo exhibitions with us in Tin-aw Art Gallery. In Sense Sate in 2011, he explored the idea of the body inundated by external stimuli and expanded our small gallery space with an illusion of a never-ending hallway. For Demograpi Atbp in 2018, he challenged viewers to look at societal and political truths through the language of metadata. Leo collaborated with Tin-aw for 50 exhibitions inside the gallery and in local and international art fairs. Although he did raise an eyebrow when we told him our crazy ideas, he never said a concept was impossible. We were able to dream big because we were confident that Leo would help us pull it off. The shows that Leo loved most though, were the thesis exhibits of his beloved students from the UP College of Fine Arts. Eya Beldia, writer and curator We were driving through the congested Manila maze, as we used to, talking and laughing about silly and serious things when I asked him about histories and futures in art, he said, When we start, we cant say that we know everything, thats ridiculous. Of course, you wish you knew more before you started. This is how it is, with Leo Abaya, a critical comment and in the same breath comforting confidence but who am I to say who he was or what hes done. I only know to gather his kwentos and wish I observed more and listened more but most of all I wish I asked more. For how do I traverse the world without a constant compass? And so I mindfully wait, like many, of yesterdays today and todays tomorrow until your sun to my moon eclipse once more. Where you are free Steph Palallos, artist Leo Abaya wore different hats and he wore each one well. I admired him for that, but I loved him more for being a beautiful soul. Take all of those professions away and you have the kindest, most generous, wittiest, and warmest human to walk this earth. He was my professor at the CFA. I was not a brilliant student; in fact, I never finished my MFA. But he never made me feel inadequate or a failure. He respected my journey and knew that I had to figure things out my way and left nuggets of advice along the way for encouragement. He was a friend first and not a hat-wearer. He saw me as me and that was enough. Patrick Flores, UP Vargas Museum Leo Abaya struck me as an artist of broad sympathies, which made him a great mentor to young artists who, like him, were exploring forms and ideas. He worked with them, it seemed to me, rather than lectured, thus remaining close to them after their studies. It became a lifelong relationship of kindred spirits. As an artist, Leo had a keen eye for the scene and the details of the materials, owing perhaps to his work in the cinema. He spoke to urgencies, but always with sensitivity and openness for discourse. His unfolding work for Kalibutan, the exhibition for ViVa 2020, condenses Leos aspirations: a diorama that became a cosmos, photography that morphed into poetry, locality that was the universe. Poignant and layered, miniature but so generous. Demograpi (installation view) by Leo Abaya. Photo courtesy of TIN-AW ART MANAGEMENT Pope Bacay, artist Choose what comes naturally to you. These were sir Leos words when I was trying to decide on a specific production problem during my thesis year with him as one of my advisers. Before I enrolled in his class, I always pictured sir Leo as a very strict (terror, as students would say) professor during my college days. When I finally got him for my thesis, he was strict but was also the most understanding. Sir Leos advice in art and even in life up to this day, still hold. As someone I respected and looked up to, his opinions and comments always mattered. And when it comes to art practice, they actually matter the most. Any conversation with Sir Leo is no wasted time be it lengthy ones at the gallery office or quick small talks in exhibit openings. Jun Villalon, The Drawing Room, Manila Leo Abaya and I shared a lot in common being the same age. We shared a connection through our talks, mostly about music, advertisements and commercials from the 70s and 80s. We both knew every nostalgic jingle, catchy song and promotional scene. He had worked in advertising and similarly, I had worked incorporate. We also shared the experience of being probinsyanos, eagerly discussing provincial life, mannerisms and how things felt as we found ourselves currently settled here in the big city. We really bonded during our trip to Venice, visiting the Biennale. Leo was a delight to be with. He knew so much, with wonderful insights on the citys rich art history and bustling contemporary art scene. He also loved eating, another thing we shared with gusto, as well as travelling. All these things, he shared with great generosity. Our next planned trip was the city of Paris, a trip that sadly Ill now have to make in his stead. Lee Paje, artist It was one of our walks in UP when he looked at me intently and out of the blue he asked, Bakit ako? Why I look up to you? Why I love you? Looking back and to answer that question again, how can I not? It is impossible to not admire and love someone whose good qualities expand beyond being an artist and a teacher. And now this question, how to honor the memory of a great person who has been a mentor, a dear friend, and a mother to me? I have been trying to write something profound about who he is and how his life has been a blessing. It is difficult. All the words are pale and bland. Missing Slider (detail) by Leo Abaya. Photo courtesy of TIN-AW ART MANAGEMENT Goldie Poblador, artist My life would not be what it is today without Sir Leo Abaya, or Sir A, as we called him at the College of Fine Arts. He was my thesis adviser, teacher, and beloved mentor who I turned to for advice and greatly influenced the trajectory of my career. Those of us who were lucky enough to call ourselves his students, were inspired by his work ethic, his knowledge and his generous heart. He encouraged each of us to pursue that which made us unique, no matter how seemingly absurd or ambitious our ideas were. He taught me to take risks, believed in me before anyone else did and helped form who I am today. He will be missed. Jezzel Wee, artist and educator There are no words to describe how grateful I am to have been his student, mentee and colleague. He has greatly influenced my perspective in art and in life. Sir Leo taught us to have sincerity and integrity in all of the things we do. He taught us to dig deeper, to look for reason and significance. Everything is interconnected. A brilliant, beautiful mind and human being. You will be missed by many. Mahal na mahal kita Sir Leo. Bea Alcala, artist Sir A once told us, I am not your pillow; I am the pea under your mattress. Referencing the Princess and the Pea, and putting it in the context of our art practice, the discomfort the pea brings determines if we are in tune with the subtleties we need to be sensitive to as creatives. He was tough because he valued his students interests at heart. His famous question so what, who cares could then mean that he simply cared enough to be hellbent ruthless if it meant bringing out the best in his students. He used his intellect as his primary tool to communicate, but I find he also imparted a piece of himself to us in the process. The way he moved our lives went way beyond his job description; traces of his life force manifested in the lives of his students, molding them to be kids of substance. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 28) A PDP-Laban official denied cracks in the ruling party and downplayed the clashing orders from top leaders as a "very simple misunderstanding." In a May 25 memorandum, Senator Manny Pacquiao the party's national president "strongly advised" partymates to ignore a letter from party vice chairman and Energy Secretary Alfonso Cusi, who called for a national assembly. The memo was also signed by PDP-Laban executive director Ron Munsayac. "We will schedule a meeting very, very soon," to be attended by "all of the concerned officials," Munsayac told CNN Philippines on Friday. "I just like to clarify na wala namang rift, wala namang schism, wala naman pong pagbibiyak. In fact, siguro at most this is a very simple misunderstanding between partymates kasi normal naman po na nagkaka-misunderstanding," Munsayac said. [Translation: I just like to clarify there's no rift, no schism, no cracks. In fact, maybe at most this is a very simple misunderstanding between partymates and that's normal.] He added that the executive committee, a smaller body that handles the party's day-to-day affairs, is meeting Friday night "about what's happening in the party lately," in the wake of opposing pronouncements from Pacquiao and Cusi. Pacquiao will be there, Munsayac said. Cusi is not a member of the committe, but Munsayac said there will be a meeting with the vice chairman. 'Let's talk first' Munsayac maintained Cusi was not in a position to convene the party. Echoing Pacquiao's memorandum, Munsayac said Cusi's May 19 call for a meeting was not sanctioned by the "authorized national council officials," and violates Sections 4 and 5, Article 16 of the party's constitution. According to Munsayac and Pacquiao, these sections state that any call for a national council, assembly, or meeting, should be approved by both the party's chairman (President Rodrigo Duterte) and president (Pacquiao). CNN Philippines obtained a copy of a May 19 letter signed by Cusi addressed to Pacquiao citing the same provisions. "Dear Senator Pacquiao, in accordance with the authority under Sections 4 & 5, Article XVI of the PDP-Laban Constitution, a meeting of the National Council is called on May 31, 2021 in Cebu City," the letter read. Munsayac said he and other leaders received a similar invitation. He believes what Cusi did violates the party's rules, but said imposing sanctions would be a "worst-case" scenario. "Just to be very clear, hindi si Secretary Cusi ito ha (this does not refer to Secretary Cusi alone), this applies to all party members na pag proven po na (that if it's proven that) you are disloyal to the party, if you are creating division inside the party, if what you are doing is affecting the PDP-Laban, we have what we call a discipline committee, which will investigate the party member's actions," Munsayac said. "And if it is believed to be very, very heavy, the worst case is expulsion. Pwede naman pong suspension rin, pwede ring reprimand. But again 'yun po ay talagang pag worst case na lang po talaga. Mag-meeting muna tayo, magusap muna tayo," he added. [Translation: It can also be suspension or reprimand. But again that's really a worst case. Let's have a meeting first; let's talk first.] CNN Philippines has requested comment from Cusi but he has yet to respond. In the document signed by Cusi, he said the agenda of the meeting he was calling for includes Duterte's report on his programs as chief executive, consultation with local government officials on the management of coronavirus transmissions, and "administrative matters in preparation for the 2022 national elections." Munsayac said the party leadership believes talks about politics are ill-timed amid the COVID-19 pandemic and should probably kick off in September, a month before the filing of the certificates of candidacy. Who will run? Pacquiao and Cusi are both rumored to run for President in the May 2022 elections, but they have not confirmed their political plans. Reports from March also quoted them disagreeing about the party's possible candidates. Cusi cited a resolution urging Duterte to run for vice president, but Pacquiao said this was not sanctioned by him as party president. In May, PDP-Laban's Bulacan chapter reportedly denounced Pacquiao's remark that he found Duterte's recent statements on the South China Sea dispute lacking. During the 2019 midterm election season, then party president Senator Koko Pimentel and lawyer Rogelio Garcia submitted different sets of PDP-Laban officers to the Commission on Elections. The Supreme Court declared the Pimentel-led group as the legitimate chapter in the case filed by Garcia. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 28) An infectious diseases expert said the increasing COVID-19 cases in the regions is a delayed effect of the surge caused by variants that started off in Metro Manila, the epicenter of the local coronavirus outbreak. Speaking to CNN Philippines' The Final Word, Dr. Bejamin Co suggested that travel outside the National Capital Region should be limited to address the issue. However, he noted that government officials might not accept his suggestion as they are pushing for more movement across borders. When asked if allotting more vaccines to the areas of concern would be a solution, Co said this is just one of the ways to address the problem, considering there's still limited supply. What really needs to happen is the implementation of stricter lockdowns, he emphasized. Co also questioned why the Inter-Agency Task Force has to wait for a period of time before declaring stricter restrictions in areas with rising infections. This is also amid calls from local experts to enforce stricter rules, as healthcare facilities get overwhelmed. "Why do we want to wait until June 1 before you declare something like that? Before you go to stricter quarantine, why do we want to wait until that period when we can declare it now?" he said. On the next quarantine status for NCR Plus, Co said the general community quarantine should be retained, but "heightened restrictions can be eased out." The government is expected to announce the new quarantine classifications for June on or before May 31. Latest data showed the total number of COVID-19 cases in the country has reached 1,209,154 with 53,770 active cases. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) The Department of Health said there have been gradual and sustained increases in COVID-19 infections all over Visayas and Mindanao as the national daily case count continues to rise anew. "In Visayas, all regions showed gradual increase in cases," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said on Saturday. "In Mindanao, all regions showed sustained growth in cases, with Regions 10, 11, and Caraga showing faster increase this week compared to the previous week." The nationwide daily case tally breached 8,000 again on Friday - the highest in nearly four weeks. Saturday's record was also high at over 7,000 new infections. The OCTA research team has also warned that health facilities in Davao and Zamboanga are starting to get overwhelmed. Both health officials and researchers noted that the increases come despite a downward trend observed in Metro Manila and its neighboring areas. "For NCR and Plus Areas, the numbers continue to go down but the rate of decline is slower in recent weeks," Vergeire pointed out, referring to Metro Manila, Bulacan, Cavite, Laguna, and Rizal. OCTA researcher Ranjit Rye also said Metro Manila now comprises 50% of the country's total number of cases, down from the previous 70%. However, there is still room for improvement. As a precaution, Rye suggested keeping the current general community quarantine status in NCR Plus with heightened restrictions, while tightening domestic travel measures. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) While COVID-19 cases in NCR Plus are going down, infections and hospital admissions in six regions are rising, a Department of Health official said Saturday. Zamboanga Peninsula, Cordillera Administrative Region, Cagayan Valley, Caraga, Calabarzon, and Central Luzon fell under "high-risk" in terms of bed capacity in intensive care units for COVID-19 patients, according to Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire. This classification means the utilization rate is between 70% and 85%. "Bagamat bumababa ang kaso dito sa NCR Plus...nakikita natin naman po ang pagtaas ng mga kaso dito po sa ilang bahagi ng ating bansa, pati na rin po ang paggamit ng kanilang mga ICU beds," she told a briefing. [Translation: While cases in the NCR Plus are decreasing, we are seeing an increase in infections in some other parts of our country, as well as their ICU bed use.] ICU beds in the Zamboanga Peninsula were 79% utilized while those in Cordillera, Cagayan Valley, Caraga, Calabarzon, and Central Luzon were 71% occupied, Vergeire reported. "Kapag tiningnan ho natin, sila po lahat ay nasa high risk level po," Vergeire said. [Translation: If we take a look at them, they are all under the high-risk level.] Variants of the coronavirus could be among the factors driving the increase in some regions outside Metro Manila, infectious diseases expert Benjamin Co told CNN Philippines' The Final Word. He said movement from Metro Manila to other regions should be limited to address the increasing cases. Vergeire earlier said two more transmissible variants have been detected in all cities and municipality in Metro Manila. These are the B.1.1.7, first detected in the United Kingdom, and the B.1.351, first discovered in South Africa. Community transmission of variants in NCR? Meanwhile, Vergeire said the DOH has not received an official notice from the World Health Organization after Dr. Rabindra Abeyasinghe - WHO's representative to the Philippines - was quoted as saying in a report there is "some degree" of community transmission of the B.1.1.7 and B.1.351 variants in the NCR Plus. Community transmission means the source of infection can no longer be traced. "We rely [on] and we request this help from the WHO so they can be able to analyze properly, at mabigyan po tayo ng (and we can be given) guidance kung talagang may (if there is already a) community transmission na nga dito sa ating bansa (in our country)," Vergeire added. In line with the decision of Goods and Services Tax Council (GST Council), the Ministry of Finance on Saturday constituted a Group of Ministers (GoM) to examine GST relief on COVID-19 vaccines and other equipment like medical oxygen, oxygen concentrators, PPE kits, hand sanitisers, among others. The GoM will be headed by Meghalaya Chief Minister Conrad Sangma and will submit its recommendations to the Council by June 8. The ministry notified the constitution of the GoM with finance ministers of Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Kerala, Odisha and Telangana as its members. Maharashtra Deputy CM Ajit Pawar and Goa's transport minister Mauvin Godinho have also been appointed as members of the GoM. Also read: GST Council Meet: Centre to borrow Rs 1.58 lakh cr to compensate states, says FM "The GoM shall examine the need for GST concession/exemption and make recommendation on Covid vaccines, medicines and drugs for Covid treatment, and testing kits for Covid detection, medical grade oxygen, pulse oximeters, hand sanitisers, oxygen therapy equipment such as concentrators, ventilators, generators, PPE Kits, N-95 masks, surgical masks, temperature equipment, and any other items required for Covid relief," said the finance ministry notification. The rate fitment committee under the GST council had recommended tax cut only on medical grade oxygen, oxygen concentrators, testing kits and pulse oximeters. The finance minister of states, however, demanded GST reduction in a wide array of products like Covid vaccines, PPE kits, hand sanitisers, among others. Due to lack of consensus on the matter, it was decided to refer the issue to GoM. Also read: Blow to Digital India! Cash to GDP ratio peaks at 14.7% (Reuters) Authorities in Vietnam have detected a new coronavirus variant that is a combination of the Indian and UK COVID-19 variants and spreads quickly by air, the health minister said on Saturday. After successfully containing the virus for most of last year, Vietnam is grappling with a spike in infections since late April that accounts for more than half of the total 6,713 registered cases. So far, there have been 47 deaths. "Vietnam has uncovered a new COVID-19 variant combining characteristics of the two existing variants first found in India and the UK," Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said in a statement. "The new variant is very dangerous," he added. The Southeast Asian country had previously detected seven virus variants: B.1.222, B.1.619, D614G, B.1.1.7 - known as the UK variant, B.1.351, A.23.1 and B.1.617.2 - the "Indian variant". Online newspaper VnExpress said Long had described the new variant as a hybrid of the Indian and UK variants. "The new one is an Indian variant with mutations that originally belong to the UK variant," Long was quoted as saying, adding that authorities would soon announce the name and detailed characteristics of the newly discovered variant. The World Health Organization (WHO) has identified four variants of SARS-CoV-2 of global concern. These include variants that emerged first in India, in Britain, in South Africa and in Brazil. read more Officials at the WHO did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the new variant identified in Vietnam. Laboratory cultures of the new variant, which is much more transmissible than the previously known types, revealed that the virus replicated itself very quickly, Long was quoted as saying. He said that could explain why so many new cases had appeared in different parts of the country within a short period of time. (CNN) Rest assured that Rege-Jean Page is well aware of all the buzz and speculation he's been stirring. "I spend a lot of time at the moment talking about what other people are saying about me, as opposed to anything I'm actually doing," the "Bridgerton" star told Variety in a recent interview. From his rise to global fame via one of Netflix's hottest shows to hosting "Saturday Night Live" and causing a clamor for him to take over the James Bond role from Daniel Craig, Page is definitely having a moment. The usually very private 31-year-old British-Zimbabwean actor told the publication he had no fears regarding walking away from playing Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, after the success of Season 1 of "Bridgerton." "Simon was this bomb of a one-season antagonist, to be reformed and to find his true self through Daphne," he said. "I think one of the bravest things about the romance genre is allowing people a happy ending." The role won him an NAACP Award and Page takes seriously his representation as a Black actor -- especially in a Regency era romance drama "Me and my friends used to joke about the fact that you don't see a Black man on a horse," he said. There's been lots of speculation that Page could become the first James Bond played by a Black actor. He jokingly refers to it as the "B-word." "I can't talk about the B-word, because I've got nothing to say on the B-word," he said. "I can't talk about which jobs I'm not doing, because I'm not doing them, [but] I'm very happy with the work I am doing." Page is keeping busy with forthcoming roles in the films "Dungeons & Dragons" and "The Gray Man." And he's found a mentor of sorts in "This Is Us" star Sterling K. Brown, who Page met during the 2016 Emmy season. Brown was impressed. "He wasn't somebody who's like, 'Give me a couple of years and I'll be making $10 million a flick,'" Brown said of Page. "He really loves the art of illuminating the human condition." This story was first published on CNN.com Rege-Jean Page on life after 'Bridgerton' and that James Bond speculation Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) The Department of Health is set to release guidelines for the COVID-19 vaccination of health workers' family members, an official said Saturday, stressing that immediate kin may be the priority for now. "Kailangan pa ho nating makapag-release ng guidelines, para magkaroon po tayo ng pamantayan [We need to release guidelines so we can have basis]," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire said during government's Laging Handa briefing. "Kasi kailangan lang po siguro nuclear family muna ang uunahin natin, dahil nga alam naman natin [We might need to prioritize the nuclear families, because we know] that this will all depend on the number of doses that we have right now," she added. The Inter-Agency Task Force earlier expanded the A1 cluster or the top vaccination priority group to include family members of healthcare workers, overseas Filipino workers to be deployed in the next four months, and employees in hotels operating as quarantine or isolation facilities. The A1 group was initially reserved for healthcare workers when vaccine supply was scarce. Meanwhile, Vergeire noted that the DOH would still need to get data from the Labor Department on the exact number of outbound OFWs before inoculation on the group can start. Vaccine pass for vaccinated senior citizens? When asked about a proposal to establish a vaccine pass system for fully-inoculated senior citizens, Vergeire stressed the move still needs to be studied as well. "Kailangan din balangkisin nang maigi dahil... kakaunti pa lang ang nababakunahan, hindi pa sapat para masasabing magiging ligtas tayo," Vergeire said. "Kailangang pag-aralang maigi ang mga bagay na ito." [Translation: We need to weigh in on this since the number of vaccinated people remains low, not enough to ensure that we will be safe. We need to carefully study these proposals.] Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) Incentives may be given to ramp up the COVID-19 vaccination program, a Health official said Friday, taking the cue from some local governments. "We don't see anything wrong with that. Nag-iisip na rin ang DOH ng additional incentives para makahikayat tayo ng mas maraming tao para magpabakuna," Health Undersecretary Maria Rosario Vergeire told a briefing. [Translation: We don't see anything wrong with that. The DOH is also thinking of incentives to encourage more people to get inoculated.] Vergeire said Health officials are considering non-material rewards even as some local governments announced raffles with costly prizes. "Pag nagsabi tayo ng incentive, hindi lang po ito iyong materyal na insentibo katulad ng nagbibigay po tayo ng pagkain o di kaya nagbibigay tayo ng mga papremyo," she said. [Translation: When we talk of incentives, these are not material incentives such as giving food or prizes.] Meanwhile, at least two senators also on Friday backed the vaccine-for-reward scheme. Maganda naman po iyon. Kanya kanya naman po tayo ng paraan ng pageenganyo sa kababayan natin, Senator Bong Go said told reporters. [Translation: That is a good move. We have our own ways for encouraging our fellow Filipinos [to get vaccinated].] We should use all legal - and creative - means possible to have every Filipino vaccinated, Senator Ping Lacson said in a statement. As of May 25, almost 4.5 million people received at least one dose, according to government data, including over one million fully vaccinated. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) Over 400 workers stranded on Friday can now leave for Saudi Arabia as the government lifted the suspension of deployment over coronavirus protocol issues. The clearance was issued after the Labor department received communication from the Saudi Arabia government which stated that employers and agencies agreed to shoulder the cost of "institutional quarantine and other COVID-19 protocols" upon arrival in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Labor Secretary Silvestre Bello III said in a statement. "I have advised the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration to immediately implement this directive and provide the necessary clearance to all our departing Filipino workers to facilitate their travel to the KSA," he said. Bello told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Weekend that a number of stranded OFWs bound for Saudi Arabia left at 4 p.m. on Saturday. "Imagine if you go there and they are required to pay for the quarantine expense, kawawa naman ang ating mga OFWs. Hindi pa nakaka-hanapbuhay, meron na silang babayaran," Bello emphasized on why employers and agencies must shoulder the full quarantine expenses of Saudi-bound Filipino migrant workers. [Translation: Imagine if you go there and they are required to pay for the quarantine expense, our OFWs' situation will be distressing. They have yet to make a living, but they are required to pay their quarantine expenses.] On Friday, the government halted the sending of workers over the supposed refusal of foreign employers and agencies to pay for worker expenses for health and safety protocols, as well as insurance. The Philippine Overseas Employment Administration provided home and food assistance to the stranded workers. Meanwhile, Philippine Airlines announced on Saturday it will accept workers on flights to Dammam and Riyadh cities in Saudi Arabia. It added that OFWs may also rebook flights for free. Philippine Airlines excluded 403 OFWs from joining flights from Manila to Riyadh and Dammam on Friday, although the flag carrier said it did not receive prior information about the decision. Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 29) The country filed another diplomatic protest against the continuing presence of Chinese vessels in the West Philippine Sea. The protest lodged by the Foreign Affairs department on Friday cited the incessant deployment, prolonged presence, and illegal activities of Beijings maritime assets and fishing vessels in the vicinity of Pag-asa islands. The DFA demanded again for the East Asian giant to withdraw the ships in the area, reiterating that Pag-asa is an integral part of the Philippines over which it has sovereignty and jurisdiction. A May 12 report from the National Task Force for the West Philippine Sea stated that nearly 300 Chinese vessels suspected to be maritime militia remain scattered over parts of Kalayaan town in Palawan. The task force earlier assured the government will continue to beef up its presence in the area, with support from the Philippine National Police maritime patrols. Last week, the DFA also fired off a protest against China for its "unilateral" fishing ban in the South China Sea. (CNN) Carl Chan was walking in Oakland's Chinatown on his way to meet an Asian elder who had been attacked when a stranger called him a racial slur and hit him on the head. "I am so fortunate to be able to live another day to tell my story," Chan told CNN. As president of the neighborhood's chamber of commerce, Chan has closely seen how the Covid-19 pandemic and the wave of attacks on older Asians are keeping customers away. While police arrested a suspect, Chan says the April 29 incident motivated him even more to join a community foot patrol group. From coast to coast, volunteer groups have emerged in the past year to patrol Asian neighborhoods in an effort to deter the racism and violent attacks that people of Asian descent have been subjected to in the past year. In Oakland, about a dozen people wearing bright orange vests and caps daily comb the streets of Chinatown every day. They carry whistles and some even wear body cameras while they greet business owners and customers alike. "We try to just show our presence to try to make sure that the individuals that might be out there don't try to commit any crimes," David Won, one of the volunteers, told CNN. When the Covid-19 pandemic began, the number of people shopping at Oakland's Chinatown decreased significantly. Many businesses closed and those that were able to reopen have shortened their operating hours out of fear, Chan said. The East Bay Toishan Association, a group of mostly seniors known for organizing social events and Tai Chi classes for people from Taishan in China's southern Guangdong province, created the foot patrol in February as the Bay Area saw a surge of anti-Asian attacks. Won, a 59-year-old financial services professional who lives in Oakland, saw them while grocery shopping in the neighborhood and became curious about the group. He reached out to them and soon he began walking with them twice a week. Won says he joined the group because "being out there is the right thing to do." "I can't even imagine punching somebody so hard that you're going to break someone's nose or pulling someone's hair out," Won said about the anti-Asian violent attacks. "I can't even see how someone could actually even do that to another human being." Volunteers are stepping up in other cities Similar community watch groups have been created in several cities across the United States, including Seattle and New York. At least four other groups in Oakland have patrolled the streets in the past year, trying to keep elders safe. Meanwhile, an emergency response team in San Jose, California, known for providing aid during natural disasters created a patrol unit in the city's Japantown. Wan Chen, 37, couldn't "just sit around doing nothing" earlier this year when attacks surged in New York. At first, Chen tried contacting some of the victims, asking if they needed help because of language and cultural barriers. "A lot of them were afraid just to even talk about what happened to them," Chen said. Chen and a few others founded a group called Public Safety Patrol in Flushing, New York. About two dozen people, including city workers, waiters, students and drivers, have signed up to patrol with the group since March. Each shift, a person is responsible of video recording, another would take notes and a third person is responsible of communicating with police officers or community members. "We are people trying to make a living for our families but at the same time we care about this community," Chen said. Stop AAPI Hate, a center tracking reports of racism and discrimination against Asian Americans, has received more than 6,000 firsthand complaints since last year. Last week, President Joe Biden signed into law a legislation aimed at countering the rise in anti-Asian hate crimes during the coronavirus pandemic. The Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act, introduced by New York Democratic Rep. Grace Meng and Hawaii Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono, will create a new position at the Justice Department to expedite review of potential Covid-19-related hate crimes and incidents reported at the federal, state or local level. "We heard out too many Asian Americans have been waking up each morning this past year, genuinely -- genuinely -- fearing for their safety," Biden said. "Grandparents afraid to leave their homes even to get vaccinated, for fear of being attacked. Small business owners targeted and gunned down. Students worried about two things: Covid-19 and being bullied," he added. A chance to 'turn that pain into action,' vice president says Asian Americans have turned their pain and outrage into action in ways big and small, including the foot patrols. In a recent speech, Vice President Kamala Harris urged them to also consider using their political power. "When we saw the targeting, when we've seen the hate, when we've seen the viciousness of it all, and we've all seen that," Harris said during the inaugural AAPI Virtual Unity Summit hosted by the AAPI Victory Alliance last week. "As a member of this community, I share in that outrage and grief, and I believe we have an opportunity now to turn that pain into action," she added. While Asian Americans make up about 7% of the total US population, they were the fastest-growing segment of eligible voters among all major racial or ethnic groups between 2000 and 2020, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of US Census data. Some AAPI cultures encourage people keep their heads down and remain unnoticed, experts say, but Trump's immigration policies and his rhetoric about the coronavirus' origins proved a galvanizing force for Asian American voters last year. Nationally, Asian American turnout soared to record levels -- jumping from 49% in 2016 to 60% in 2020, according to an analysis by AAPI Data, which collects data and conducts policy research. Pacific Islander participation jumped from roughly 41% to nearly 56%. "But there was kind of a collective realization during the pandemic that folks could not be silent and that we needed to be vocal," Varun Nikore, president of the AAPI Victory Fund has told CNN. "This has turned many more people in the AAPI community into activists instead of passive watchers of politics on TV." This story was first published on CNN.com Asian Americans are patrolling streets across the US to keep their elders safe (CNN) The 61 human skeletons unearthed in the Nile Valley in the 1960s in what is now Sudan have long been regarded as the earliest evidence of organized warfare between humans. The remains uncovered at Jebel Sahaba, which are more than 13,000 years old, show injuries sustained as a result of brutal and intense violence -- mainly puncture wounds from weapons such as spears and arrows. However, a new study published in the journal Scientific Reports that reexamined the remains using the latest scientific methods suggests that the group were not killed in a one-off massacre as previously thought. More likely they were killed during sporadic and recurrent violence that took place over several years and was probably triggered by major climatic and environmental changes during the period. The researchers from France and the United Kingdom found healed injuries on the skeletons that hadn't been documented in previous studies on the remains -- suggesting there were multiple raids, ambushes and skirmishes within these people's lifetimes. Everybody in what would have been a community of hunters, fishers and gatherers was a target for violence, with men, women and children affected in an indiscriminate manner, said Isabelle Crevecoeur, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and the University of Bordeaux. "The only difference is related to what might be close combat. Women have more parry fractures of the forearm and men more fractures of the hand. In a close combat event, women might more instinctively try to protect themselves (with arms) while men might fight more with their hands." The children in the cemetery were more likely to have sustained blunt force trauma to the head. And the projectile nature of the wounds suggested that the violence wasn't domestic or between members of the same community, she added. The researchers revealed more than 100 new wounds -- both healed and unhealed on the skeletons and some of them had flakes from stone weapons still embedded in the bones. Almost all the individuals had evidence of trauma, whether from bone fractures or puncture wounds from projectile weapons. Some 40% of the individuals had both healed and unhealed injuries, suggesting that violence was part of the fabric of life at that time. They were also able to accurately date the skeletons to at least 13,400 years old through radiocarbon dating, making it the earliest known cemetery and example of interpersonal violence in the world. She said there was no way to be sure about what people were fighting about as there are no written documents. That said, the researchers believe that the conflict arose as rival groups that lived in the area competed for food and resources limited by dramatic changes in climate. Those changes took place between 11,000 and 20,000 years ago toward the end of a period known as the last glacial maximum, when ice sheets covered much of the Northern Hemisphere, disrupting the Earth's climate. Crevecoeur said the Nile Valley might have been a refuge for different groups of humans that once lived across a wide area as a very arid climate drove them toward the river, where it would have been easier to find animals to hunt and fish. There was also evidence of very severe flooding of the Nile at this time, she added. "These changes were not gradual at all. They had to survive these changes that were brutal," Crevecoeur said. This story was first published on CNN.com Earliest known war driven by climate change, researchers say While the COVID-19 pandemic has occupied most of our attention over the past year, there are many other issues important to the health and well-being of Platte County residents. As community partners are concluding the Community Health Needs Assessment (a process in which members and stakeholders identify the health needs of the community), some clear themes have emerged. Mental health and physical activity are two areas of opportunity for action that we identified through surveys, focus groups and secondary data analysis. It will be critical for us to mobilize the community to address these issues in the years to come in order to promote health and well-being, prevent chronic disease and address health disparities. In the coming months, the Platte County community will come together to review the information gathered in the Community Health Needs Assessment and prioritize our key focus areas for the 20212022 Community Health Improvement Plan. One of the greatest appeals of this evidence-based strategic planning process is that it allows input from the entire community to prioritize issues that matter to them. These issues range from increasing physical activity to decreasing poverty. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, a political consultant, and the author of Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.michaelereagan.com. Facebook decided this week its no longer misinformation to wonder whether COVID-19 was manmade by Chinese scientists in a biolab in the Wuhan Institute of Virology. But its not just Facebook. The national media and President Biden have just done a similar 180. On Wednesday, the same guy who had ordered the shutting down of the Trump administrations investigation into the origins of COVID-19 told the U.S. intelligence community to redouble its efforts to find out how the coronavirus got started. So, faster than you can say dishonest mainstream media, the idea that a deadly manmade virus came from a biolab in Communist China flipped from being a racist Trump conspiracy theory to a credible and probable possibility. All last year the liberal media and our top scientists told us over and over that we had to believe the Communist Chinese fairy tale that COVID-19 jumped from animals to humans. The Arvind Kejriwal-led Delhi government has issued a global Expression of Interest (EOI) for procuring 1 crore COVID-19 vaccine doses on an urgent basis. In the EOI, the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS) has explained that the vaccines offered to the state government must be approved by a competent authority of the Centre. The Delhi government has stated that it will accept an offer or EOI for COVID-19 vaccines through e-mail. The state government has set the deadline for the same at 5 pm on June 7, 2021. The Delhi government has floated the global tender to scale up the COVID-19 vaccination drive in the national capital. Earlier on May 22, the Delhi government had put the vaccination of beneficiaries aged between 18-44 years on hold for five days due to a shortage of COVID-19 vaccines. It had stated that that state's stock of Bharat Biotech's Covaxin COVID-19 vaccine had been completely exhausted. Even Covaxin is not available for people above the age of 45 in the national capital. "The Health and Family Welfare Department of NCT of Delhi intends to procure SARS-Cov2 vaccine on an urgent basis to control and manage the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global Expression of Interest is hereby invited from international manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccine or their authorised agents or from direct importers with appropriate license to import the vaccine in India. The offered COVID-19 vaccine must be duly approved by the competent authority of the government of India," the EOI document said, according to PTI. Recently, pharma giants Pfizer and Moderna had refused to sell their COVID-19 vaccines directly to Delhi and Punjab governments. The firms stated that they will only deal with the central government. "We have spoken to Pfizer and Moderna for vaccines, and both the companies have refused to sell vaccines directly to us. They have said that they will deal with the Government of India alone," Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said. The national capital has so far vaccinated 52,64,232 people and is left with 2,65,010 doses of Covishield for healthcare workers, frontline workers, and those above 45 years of age. Also Read: COVID-19 vaccine: Indian Immunologicals Ltd to begin drug substance production for Covaxin from June Also read: Vaccine takes time for harvesting, quality testing can't be done overnight, says govt Volunteers were hesitant to do rubbings because it could damage the stone, Essig said. Instead, they used a finger and some water to clean the surface or took photographs with a cellphone. One of the biggest challenges was making sure we were documenting the graves correctly in the blocks, Reese said. The name of the plot owner on the map did not always match the person buried in the ground, he said. The paperwork behind the project was often a nightmare, Essig said. There were times when he was tempted to bail out of the effort. But Essig followed through because he wanted to finish what he started. Much of the research involved verifying the military service of a person who may have been a veteran. For part of the work, online resources were used, but even the internet has its limits. Caseys grandmother, Pattie Essig, mentioned that the website Find a Grave often had photos of the tombstone, but no plot or section number to cross-check with the cemetery map. Landmarks pictured around the tombstone had limited value and a grave marker that is flat and flush with the ground could be anywhere within the cemetery. Below is a list of Memorial Day events scheduled in the county. Because this list mostly includes those organizations that responded to a request from the county veterans department, it may not be a complete list of all events. Sunday, May 30 Boiling Springs: Boiling Springs VFW Post 8851 will host its annual parade, ceremony and picnic, with the parade starting at 1 p.m. The ceremony will be held at the flag pole adjacent to the clock tower, with Edyie Robb as this years guest speaker. There will be a free picnic in the parking lot of Boiling Springs Tavern following the ceremony. Mount Holly Springs: A ceremony will start at 1 p.m. at the Mount Holly Springs Cemetery. The guest speaker will be Army Lt. Col. Paul A. Tomcik. This event is being organized by VFW Post 7343. Monday, May 31 Camp Hill: American Legion Post 43 will hold a Memorial Day service at 9:30 a.m. at the Camp Hill Cemetery behind the fire hall, 2145 Walnut St., Camp Hill. In the event of inclement weather, the service will be held at the Camp Hill Borough Building, 2145 Walnut St. There will not be a parade this year. The guest speaker will be Lt. Col. Matthew P. Smith of the Pennsylvania Army National Guard. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} "Each time/rank has awesome memories and all of them revolve around working with the greatest people in the world," Francis said. "Soldiers have huge hearts and thrive on being part of the solution and not the problem." Francis said he likes to teach this to the JROTC students he instructs. "If they can take that lesson, to focus their life in helping others, then this world will be a better place to live in," Francis said. "Life is also about contacts. We don't do anything in life without the help of someone else." Francis said it is nice to have people you know wanting to be part of something that makes the community better. "I've worked with soldiers and civilians of all ranks and walks of life and one thing is clear, we all have talents that no one else has," Francis said. "We were made specifically for a greater plan in life. I always tried to find out what each person's talent was so when the time came they could shine. Use your talent." Francis has an unbelievable ability to see the good in everyone and in all situations. He even found a sense of peace during deployment. Nancy Toscano, president and CEO of United Methodist Family Services, told The Mercury that the number of families interested in fostering has gone down by 30% over the last six months compared with the same time period a year ago. That means fewer people will complete the approval process and ultimately be able to accept children into their homes. The numbers of kids in our care has gone down as a result, Toscano said. Not dramatically, but it catches up. And we end up rejecting referrals that come from the Department of Social Services. Toscano described this as a domino effect on an already overburdened system. When we talk to foster parents, it usually takes them about a year of thinking about it before they pick up that phone and say, Yes, Im interested, Toscano told The Mercury. Thats where we think that delay is folks havent gone through that consideration period during the pandemic because of all the stressors. Robinson said outreach to potential foster parents has become challenging as a result of the pandemic, and DePaul has had to get creative. Simonds said McAuliffe is best positioned to take on the GOP, starting with its well-funded gubernatorial nominee. I endorsed Terry before I knew about Youngkin, but honestly, now I know were going to need that firepower at the top of the ticket, Simonds said. Ive seen how money can influence messaging and perception. Youngkin will spend a lot of money framing himself as a moderate. For me, the stakes are really high. McAuliffe launched his campaign with a focus on increasing teacher pay and school funding to combat racial and socioeconomic disparities in learning outcomes. He has since emphasized expanding access to health insurance, and touted his ability to attract business to Virginia as the states economy reshapes in the aftermath of COVID-19. *** For Democrats enticed by the possibility of electing the nations first Black female governor, the question has been who to side with: McClellan or Carroll Foy. Cole, the Fredericksburg delegate first elected in 2019, said he was first approached by Carroll Foy in the early days of 2020 for his support. He had sat behind her on the House floor, and said he has seen her hold her own against GOP heavy hitters in the legislature. When lawsuits come up, the localities are asked for a lot of correspondence from VERIS and they have to download lots of data. Some is in PDF format. Some in Excel format, said one report. However, the [registrars] feel it should all be in Excel so they can work with it to produce exactly what is needed. They cannot work with PDFs. For voter names that include special characters or accent marks, another note said, registrars have to replace them with their Latin-alphabet equivalent, because looking up voters with VERIS search is impossible with special characters. Other VERIS users reported connectivity and data-matching issues with voter registration info processed through the DMV and criminal-justice records used in the restoration of voting rights for people with felonies. Redistricting and assigning people to the correct polling place has also been a challenge, partly due to the lack of a built-in geographic information system. In 2017, almost 150 Fredericksburg-area voters cast ballots in the wrong House of Delegates district, prompting Democrats to push unsuccessfully for a do-over election in a swing district they lost by just 73 votes. PORTLAND, Maine (AP) A small fish that has been the subject of conservation efforts for years appears to be growing in number in the rivers of the East Coast. River herring are critically important to coastal ecosystems because they serve as food for birds and larger fish. Regulators have described the fishes' population as nearing historic lows because of dams, pollution, warming waters and other factors. But years of effort to save them appear to be paying off. Preliminary counts of the fish from Maine to South Carolina in 2019 showed 2.7 million more fish than in 2015, according to documents provided by the regulatory Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. The 2019 counts found more than 6.5 million fish. The river herrings include two species of schooling fish, alewives and blueback herring, that have been fished in East Coast rivers for millennia. Harvesters of the fish said conservative management of the fishery in recent years, coupled with conservation efforts such as dam removal, have helped the fish spawn and grow in number. You've got to get the parents in the bedroom so the kids can go to school, said Jeff Pierce, a longtime alewife fisherman and the president of Alewife Harvesters of Maine. I have opposed a statewide mask mandate all along because I dont think top-down mandates change behavior the way personal choice does, Little said in a statement about his repeal of McGeachin's order. Little added: But, as your Governor, when it came to masks, I also didnt undermine separately elected officials who, under Idaho law, are given authorities to take measures they believe will protect the health and safety of the people they serve. Little was attending the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee, and returned late Thursday. While he was out of state, the lieutenant governor is the acting governor and has the power to issue executive orders under Idaho's Constitution. It's not clear when or if an Idaho lieutenant governor has ever before used the authority while a governor was out of state. McGeachin in her order issued Thursday and that took effect shortly after at 11 a.m. didn't notify Little of her intentions, but the governor's office did notify McGeachin before Little's order to rescind hers went out. McGeachin also didn't notify ahead of time schools or elected officials effected by her order, or discuss the order with them. Palestinians in Gaza are dying by the hundreds under relentless Israeli missile attacks. Several Israeli citizens have also been killed by Hamas rockets. The predictable US response is Israel has a right to defend itself. While true, those concerned about lost lives on both sides must look beyond the misleading media characterization of the violence as a tit-for-tat exchange. This isnt a clash between equals, but between one of the most powerful armies on earth against fighters interspersed among nearly 2 million civilians. While Hamas rocket attacks on civilian populations are war crimes, so is the completely disproportionate Israeli response. To understand why Hamas would provide a rationale for the Israeli slaughter, one must examine the sequence of events leading to the exchange, something American politicians and media never do. As reported in several Israeli newspapers, several provocations preceded the Hamas response. These included forced evictions in Jerusalem, violent suppressions of resulting protests, ignoring or supporting settler violence against Palestinians in Jerusalem, and raiding the sacred al-Aqsa mosque during observances preceding a Muslim high holiday. The Times quotes Israeli politicians who argue that Netanyahu deliberately set the stage for civil war and the massacre in Gaza to save himself from prosecution on charges of corruption. Business featured As Denton businesses face hiring shortages, job seekers rethink post-pandemic work life Jeff Woo/DRC Wash It Kwiks marquee advertises Help Wanted and its $500 sign-on bonus for new hires, but the laundromats owner says no ones yet stayed on for the 90 days required to receive the bonus. Jeff Woo/DRC Kylie MacEntee works in her home office last week in Denton. She was furloughed more than a year ago from her job as head bartender at a downtown restaurant. A mile-long drive down most major highways in Denton reveals at least a half-dozen Now Hiring signs posted at the entrances of restaurant and retail establishments. While employers say extended unemployment benefits are to blame for a shortage of willing workers, some residents are rethinking what they want their work life to look like post-pandemic. Finding alternatives Kylie MacEntee was working as head bartender at Queenies Steakhouse when she was furloughed in March 2020. Since then, she has mastered two languages, learned to play chess and enrolled in a coding boot camp to prepare for a career change which may be in jeopardy now that the extra $300 in weekly pandemic unemployment benefits is ending June 26. Jeff Woo/DRC Kylie MacEntee works in her home office last week in Denton. She was furloughed more than a year ago from her job as head bartender at a downtown restaurant. Ive been enrolled in a coding academy, trying to like teach myself that so that I dont have to go back to bartending, and now its like well, I wont be able to afford my rent and go to school and not work, MacEntee said. I think this is going to force a lot of people into really bad situations and accepting really bad pay again. Queenies reopened May 1, 2020, but as someone who is immunocompromised, MacEntee said she was already uncomfortable with the restaurants handling of COVID-19, and they did not call her to return to work. Though she is vaccinated now, MacEntee says the $2.15 per hour she made is not enough to justify returning to an industry in which navigating the politics of pandemic safety practices has often fallen to public-facing employees. Ever since things have been soft opening, at least for bartenders and people in the service industry, its just been nothing but horror stories about the dregs of humanity are the ones that are going out and eating, and theyre not taking care of their servers, theyre being disrespectful and cruel, and you dont make hardly any money as it is, MacEntee said. A lot of people that I know that were working in the service industry prior, theyre trying to find alternatives now because, just with everything that weve seen, why would we want to go back to that, and how can we go back to that? Jeff Woo/DRC Wash It Kwiks marquee advertises Help Wanted and its $500 sign-on bonus for new hires, but the laundromats owner says no ones yet stayed on for the 90 days required to receive the bonus. The worst Ive ever seen Some local employers have begun offering incentives such as sign-on bonuses and higher wages in attempts to attract workers. Bruce Walker, owner of Wash It Kwik, said his full-service laundromat is experiencing its busiest year to date. But despite raising starting wages to about $13 hourly and offering a $500 incentive for new employees, it has been difficult to expand his team. I spend $100 a day with Indeed trying to advertise for our positions and thats typically what we find, is we get about 10 applicants a day, so well go through and well call them all, and very few of them will ever call us back, Walker said. For the few interviews that we do get set up, I would say 70% of the time the interviews ghosted, and then were just left with whoever makes it through all of that. Some reports suggest vacancies like those at Wash It Kwik could remain as many workers may not reenter the workforce right away or at all post-pandemic. Women are more likely to work in service occupations and be primary caregivers, and with not all child care facilities at 100% capacity, men accounted for most of the national job gains in April. Roughly two-thirds of unemployed Americans have seriously considered a job change, and because unemployment hit low-wage workers the hardest in 2020, according to the Pew Research Center, that could leave many service positions unfilled. Though Walker says Wash It Kwik offers incentives that workers might not find at other unskilled jobs, such as two weeks paid vacation, a retirement plan with up to a 6% match and access to a free financial literacy course, no new hires have yet remained on for the 90 days required to earn the sign-on bonus. At staffing agency ASAP Personnel Denton, it also has been a struggle to find workers, branch manager James Watts said. The firm, which connects employers and job seekers in property management, maintenance and customer service, has increased its pay scale for new hires but still experienced a lull in those seeking work through ASAP. People are just relying on unemployment versus going to work, Watts said. That has been the hardest hit for us as a staffing agency because our product is people, of course, and were here to help people find jobs, but its really hard for us to because of that [unemployment]. Ive been in the staffing business 28 years, and this is the worst Ive ever seen. Seeking flexibility While some service industry workers are rethinking their return to their former jobs, others who worked from home for the past year may also be feeling anxiety about returning to the office full time. A lot of that attitude about returning to work depends on peoples life context, but I do feel theres a general sense of hesitation and anxiety from a lot of people, said Carmen Cruz, a licensed psychologist and associate director/director of training at Texas Womans Universitys Counseling and Psychological Services Center. Social anxiety might play a role since people have spent more time alone during the past year, as might concerns about who is vaccinated and who is not, Cruz said. While some hesitation about returning to in-person work could wear off as employees readjust, it could also be a side effect of people rethinking what they want from their work life. Most people in a work environment pre-COVID were burning the candle at both ends, and I think for a lot of people, there was a sort of existential examination of, What is my life, whats my career? Cruz said. People that used to commute 30 to 60 minutes each way to work have five to 10 hours extra in their life now, and thats a long time. People got to engage in healthier behaviors like have a little bit more sleep, a little bit more exercise it sort of made time that we didnt have before in the hustle and bustle. Many have been enjoying the extra flexibility the past year has brought and want to maintain it going forward. And that could benefit employers, too, as productivity increased during the pandemic. But for more than half the workforce, remote work is not an option unless they change industries meaning a return to pre-pandemic routines could be a necessity. Regardless of industry, Cruz says workers can help make the reentry process less jarring by examining the habits theyve built over the past year. Theres an emotional and practical prep that needs to happen youre going to be more successful if you start really planning the practical things that can help with reentry, Cruz said. I think people are just grappling with, What habits can I keep, and what do I have to do the same [as before] that I have no choice? Things like changing wake-up time and deciding, if you have an exercise routine, can you keep it at the same time or not controlling the controllables can help. For those employers that have the power to do so, easing employees back into the re-entry process by, say, allowing them to gradually increase their office hours could help make the transition easier, Cruz said. While it likely will take time to determine how COVID-19 will impact the local and national workforce in the long term, people should be patient with themselves as they adapt. If they find that after a few months they are not able to adjust to their new or old work life, it may be time for a change. This is a time of adjustment, which is complex for everybody, and adjustment by definition means this is going to take time, Cruz said. Psychologically, if people havent adjusted in three to six months, thats when its a problem. External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Saturday met US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon during which they discussed shared priorities and exchanged views on a range of regional security challenges, the Department of Defense said. Jaishankar, who is on an official trip to the US, is the first Indian Cabinet minister to visit the country since Joe Biden became US president on January 20. "I had a terrific meeting with @DrSJaishankar today. He graciously hosted me in India in March, and I was delighted to return his hospitality. The @deptofdefense is deeply committed to strengthening our partnership w/ India as we work together to uphold a #FreeAndOpenIndoPacific," Mr Austin tweeted after the meeting. Pentagon Press Secretary John Kirby said Austin and Jaishankar discussed "shared priorities in the US-India strategic partnership and exchanged views on a range of regional security challenges". "Austin and Jaishankar reaffirmed their commitment to sustaining a free and open Indo-Pacific region and strengthening the US-India Major Defense Partnership," he said in a readout of the meeting. Kirby said the leaders also discussed opportunities to deepen coordination amid the resurgence of COVID-19 cases. "Secretary Austin conveyed that he looks forward to hosting Minister Jaishankar and Indian Defense Minister Rajnath Singh at the 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue later this year," the Pentagon press secretary added. Also read: US Secretary of State reaffirms Biden administration's commitment to deepen partnership with India Most Colorado employers implemented policies to encourage employees to get vaccinated, 76% in fact, according to a recent survey by the Colorado Chamber of Commerce. The survey included 40 businesses of all sizes from 17 different industries across Colorado, according to the chamber. With the availability of the COVID-19 vaccine and loosening restrictions across the state, a recovery is in sight for many Colorado businesses, Colorado Chamber President Chuck Berry said in a statement. Of businesses implementing the pro-vaccination policies, 56% provided educational materials and resources on getting shots, 54% provided paid time off to employees getting vaccinated, and 29% offered on-site vaccinations. None of the employers surveyed mandated their employees be vaccinated. The survey was conducted between May 12-14. It shows 88% of the businesses surveyed are concerned about future unemployment insurance premium increases due to the pandemic. According to a recent study by the Common Sense Institute, the states unemployment insurance trust fund was depleted in July in the face of soaring new state claims. The study shows the fund is$1 billion in debt and will could huge tax increases on businesses to recover. Eighty five percent of the business survey respondents would like to see state leaders dedicate state or federal stimulus funding to help backfill the unemployment system. The legislature still must confront major policy issues to get our economy back on track, Berry said in a statement. Jobs should be our top priority, and the first step in getting Coloradans back to work is to help the businesses that employ them. One of most pressing concerns facing Colorado employers is the states unemployment system and the significant premium increases needed to replenish the fund, he said. The uncertainty this poses for businesses could impede our economic recovery and should be a focus of state leaders moving forward. Heres some other interesting tidbits from the study: 71% of companies, or their employees, experienced unemployment insurance fraud during the pandemic 37% reported difficulty hiring employees due to unemployment benefits exceeding wages 74% of the surveyed businesses said they are, or were, negatively impacted by the pandemic, but 23 percent expect full recovery in a year 22% reported no employees working remotely, and 40% of the respondents said most of our employees have already returned to the office full-time On improving the states transportation infrastructure, 63% supported increased fees on electric vehicles if state and federal funding for transportation infrastructure is limited Another 37-39% of the companies surveyed supported additional fees on road usage, diesel fuel and ride-sharing/deliveries The economy cannot grow like we need it to without investments in our transportation infrastructure, one company official wrote. I think this is important for future growth and economic success in Colorado. Said another: With projected growth in Colorado, I feel like we need to continue to spend on infrastructure to avoid larger issues in the future. The Colorado Department of Transportation announced Friday its Revitalizing Main Streets program awarded over $200,000 to five cities and towns across the state. Each of the recipients must use the grant to improve their roadways, build infrastructure that supports a strong economic activity or public safety, according to the release. Last week, the agency announced that the City of Golden and Town of San Luis were also awarded funds through the program. "We're looking forward to seeing the projects come to life during this summer construction season," said agency executive director Shoshana Lew. "The long-term benefits this program brings to community main streets are numerous." To date, the program has awarded one $22 million dollars to cities and towns across the state since launching last summer, according to the release. This weeks recipients are: Mead was awarded $149,999 for their "Know Your Roads' project that will design, fabricate and install destination signs, an electronic kiosk, pedestrian and bicycle signs and trail navigation/maps throughout the town. Silver Cliff was awarded $149,999 to replace sidewalks in from of it's museum and improve American with Disabilities Act access and drainage along their main street. The funds will also help construct a pavilion that will have numerous amenities. Fountain was awarded $99,999 to improve the intersection of North Main Street and Ohio Avenue. The funds will also help improve sidewalks, and add bike racks and pedestrian ramps along Main Street. Glenwood Springs was awarded $149,999 for their Devereux Pedestrian Passage Project that will construct a pedestrian bridge along Devereux Road, connecting to a bus stop. The Town of La Junta was awarded $65,662.50 for the town's bike sharing program that will install 30 racks and deploy 26 bikes. "Improving pedestrian safety is so important, especially in areas like this where there is high usage, but no existing facilities connection to major destinations," Glenwood Springs Mayor Jonathan Godes said in a statement. Domestic air travel is set to become costlier as the Civil Aviation Ministry on Friday raised the lower limit on fares by 13 to 16 per cent, according to an official order. The increase in airfares will come into effect from June 1, it said. The upper limits on fares remain unchanged. The move is aimed at helping the airlines amid a devastating second wave of Covid-19 which has reduced air travel significantly. India had imposed lower and upper limits on airfares based on flight duration when services were resumed on May 25 last year after a two-month lockdown. On Friday, the official order said the lower limit for flights under 40 minutes of duration will be increased from Rs 2,300 to Rs 2,600 an increase of 13 per cent. Similarly, flights with duration between 40 minutes and 60 minutes will have a lower limit of Rs 3,300 instead of Rs 2,900 now, the order said. The move comes just over three months since the last hike in domestic air fares. In February 2021, the government had raised airfare by 10-30 per cent; the lower and upper limit price for the under-40 minute time band was hiked from Rs 2,000-Rs 6,000 to Rs 2,200-Rs 7,8000' while for flights. For flights with duration of 40-60 minutes, the lower and upper limits of airfare were increased to Rs 2,800-Rs 9,800 from Rs 2,500 - Rs 7,500. Also read: Bat found on Air India flight! Plane returns midway to Delhi's IGI airport Am I the only one who has fix-it projects fail but only if I button everything up prior to testing? As an example, when I was a computer technician I would frequently open up computers to replace parts for newer parts or sometimes to replace a broken part. The name of a young Navy ensign killed by a domestic terrorist on Dec. 6, 2019 in Pensacola, Fla., has been added to the Wall of Freedom at the Enterprise Recreational Park. Joshua Kaleb Watson, 23, the son of Benjamin and Sheila Watson, was a graduate of Enterprise High School where he had been a JROTC cadet and captain of the EHS Rifle Team before being accepted into the U.S. Naval Academy. Watson became the captain of the Academy Rifle team and earned a degree in mechanical engineering before receiving his commission as an ensign n May 2019. He had later been stationed at Pensacola Naval Air Station. Watson has posthumously been awarded the Purple Heart because of his heroic actions in the final moments of his life. Despite being shot multiple times, Watson was able to direct law enforcement officers to an active shooter who had already killed three other people and wounded eight others. Authorities were able to apprehend the shooter quickly because of the information Watson provided before he died. Naval and civilian officials said Watsons actions likely saved many more lives. A deeply split New Jersey Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the conviction of a Florida woman found guilty of killing her young son in New Jersey three decades ago, with the justices divided on whether the state presented enough evidence to justify the jury's verdict. Michelle Lodzinski's attorneys called the decision "a travesty of justice" and said they would consider appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court. The death of 5-year-old Timothy Wiltsey was one of New Jersey's most infamous cold cases after his disappearance in May 1991 and the discovery of his body several months later. Lodzinski, his mother, was convicted in 2016 and is serving a 30-year prison sentence. Wednesday's 3-3 ruling, in which Chief Justice Stuart Rabner did not participate, upheld the conviction. Lodzinski had been a suspect from the outset after she told investigators the boy disappeared while they were at a carnival in Sayreville but gave varying accounts describing strangers who could have kidnapped him. AUGUSTA, Ga. (AP) Harrell Lawson grew up in Hancock County in the 1960s, listening to tales about the old plantation across the road. I used to hear stories about how a Black woman used to own it, but I didnt know my relation to her at the time, he said. More people know now. On May 21, a Georgia historical marker was unveiled in downtown Augusta to mark the home at 448 Telfair St. where Amanda America Dickson Toomer perhaps the richest Black woman of the 19th century spent the last seven years of her life. Lawson, who maintains homes in Stone Mountain and Sparta, joined about a dozen other Toomer descendants at the marker ceremony in front of a renovated exterior that took months for John Hock, the houses owner, to complete with a team of subcontractors. While the outside has been repainted, refitted and repaired to match its original appearance, the inside has more modern features and will continue to be used as an attorneys office. This whole project was to commemorate the life of Amanda, and I think we did it, Hock said. SELMA The Alabama Law Enforcement Agency graduated the 13 members of Trooper Class 2021-A on Thursday, May 27, at ALEAs Training Center in Selma. Before swearing in the agencys newest sworn members, ALEA Secretary Hal Taylor congratulated the class and said, In my opinion, you have been trained by the best. He also promised he and ALEAs leadership will work to ensure everyone had what they needed to successfully perform their jobs and serve the citizens of Alabama. ALEAs new Department of Public Safety Director and Colonel Jimmy Helms was the guest speaker at the ceremony. As the former commander of ALEAs Training Center, he recalled welcoming the class when they first reported to training in mid-March. Colonel Helms addressed the class and commended them on their hard work and perseverance to become ALEA Troopers. In addition, he said, You are bringing with you a tremendous amount of experience, which will be an asset to this agency. Colonel Helms encouraged all members of 2021-A to continue to build upon the lessons learned during training which include meeting expectations, being professional and remaining dedicated and fully committed to serving the citizens and visitors of the state of Alabama. Here's what you need to know about the first FDA-approved drug for Alzheimers disease in nearly 20 years. What will it cost? What will insura MIAMI (AP) A search for 10 Cubans missing from a boat capsize continued Friday, a day after the U.S. Coast Guard rescued eight other passengers and pulled two bodies from the water. The group was first spotted on routine patrol 18 miles (29 kilometers) southwest of Key West, Florida, on Thursday. Crews searched overnight for 10 men, continuing and expanding the area Friday, officials said. The vessel sank after it capsized, so it was not clear what type of craft the group used to travel across the Florida Straits. The survivors were transferred to a Coast Guard vessel to receive food, water and medical attention. They were medically screened and remain aboard a Coast Guard cutter, officials said. Cubans and other foreign nationals found at sea are generally repatriated, but Coast Guard spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jason Neiman said the next step has not been determined. Capt. Adam Chamie, Coast Guard Commander of Sector Key West, said the group of survivors included two women and six men. They were spotted by a vessel patrolling the area off the Florida Keys. They were staying on top of the water, using their arms and legs for power, he said. They were in need of help. May 27 was the first anniversary of the murder of George "Big" Floyd at the knee of a Minneapolis, Minnesota, police officer in 2020. His murder, as with the killings of Ammaud Aubury and Breonna Taylor set of a summer of protest and racial reckoning, all while during a global pandemic. While Floyd's murderer was found "guilty," as with the trials of the three other former officers on the scene as accessories to the murder pending, the killings of Rayshard Brooks, Daunte Wright, Andrew Brown, Jr., as with the newly released footage chronicling the death of Ronald Greene, are proof that the battle for racial equality and equity in America is a never-ending one. To the "All Lives Matter" crowd who still insist in dismissing the Black Lives Matter movement as a fad, kindly do not use such a "bait-and-switch" term or any other form of phony outrage when Republican state legislatures in Alabama and across this country have refused to expand Medicare/Medicaid, implemented anti-abortion measures, voter suppression statutes, cut unemployment insurance and refuse to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Suffice it to say, Republican state legislatures have gone to a new low to ban Critical Race Theory from being taught in schools. It is also a huge affront for Republican-controlled state legislatures to allow protestors to be run down by motorists as if they were animals. The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development took the decision to stop imports to try and prevent the disease from being transmitted to domestic herds. Enterprises with signed contracts for pigs to be transported to Vietnam before June 30 can still implement them. The ministry has asked the Department of Animal Health to place imported pigs under strict quarantine. The department had detected the disease among 980 pigs during the quarantine process on May 19. The pigs were imported by livestock firm Senat Limited Liability Company and worth VND6.2 billion ($269,500). The infected pigs were destroyed May 21. Vietnam allowed import of live pigs for the first time starting mid-June 2020 to contain rising pork prices as a result of the African swine fever. The country imported over 503,000 live pigs from Thailand last year, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. A healthcare worker holds a vial of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine at a pop-up vaccination site in Manhattan in New York City, U.S., January 29, 2021. Photo by Reuters/Mike Segar. The Ministry of Health held a meeting Friday with a Moderna distributor to discuss supply of the U.S. companys Covid-19 vaccine to Vietnam in the shortest possible time. Zuellig Pharma executives assured Minister Nguyen Thanh Long they would soon discuss Vietnams demand with Moderna. The Moderna vaccine is developed from messenger RNA, or mRNA, which contains instructions for human cells to construct a harmless piece of the coronavirus called the spike protein that triggers an immune response in the human bodies. It has so far been authorized in 45 countries including the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Singapore. Moderna said earlier this week that trials of its vaccine in the U.S. showed it is safe and effective for teenagers. Vietnam, which currently uses the vaccine produced by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca for its immunization program, has received nearly 2.9 million doses, 464,000 through commercial contracts and the rest through Covax, and vaccinated over a million of its 96-million population. The ministry has struck commercial deals for 30 million doses and will get 38.9 million doses through Covax. It has registered to buy another 10 million doses through Covax under a cost-sharing scheme to benefit from lower prices. Besides, it has inked a deal to buy 31 million doses of Pfizers vaccine this year. Four vaccines are under development in the country by Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, Vaccine and Biological Production Company No. 1, and Polyvac. The nation is in the grip of a new wave of Covid transmissions, which in the last month has caused 3,595 infections in 33 cities and provinces. Update: 29-05-2021 | 08:14:54 Minister of Heath Nguyen Thanh Long on May 28 received 185 billion VND (8.01 million USD) in donations from businesses for Vietnams COVID-19 vaccine fund. At the event The Vietnam Oil and Gas Group (PetroVietnam) contributed 50 billion VND; the Vietnam Electrical Equipment Joint Stock Corporation, the BIM Group, and Vietnam Electricity 30 billion VND each; and the Vietnam Maritime Commercial Joint Stock Bank 20 billion VND. The Kosy Group and the DHG Pharmaceutical Joint Stock Company donated 3 and 2 billion VND, respectively. At the handover ceremony, Long highlighted the complex developments of the ongoing fourth wave of COVID-19 in Vietnam that began in late April. A concerted effort by the entire country was key to success in fighting the previous three waves, he stressed, expressing a belief that with solidarity and efforts, success will come again. Vaccinations are considered an effective solution and top priority in pandemic prevention and control, he affirmed. The health sector aims to increase vaccine coverage and reach herd immunity, he said. Since May, the Ministry of Health and related agencies have actively negotiated and accessed different sources of COVID-19 vaccines. Vietnam was one of the first countries in Southeast Asia to sign a contract to buy the AstraZeneca vaccine and was also one of 92 countries supported by the COVAX Facility, receiving 38.9 million doses. The ministry recently signed an agreement with Pfizer to buy 30 million doses of its vaccine./. VNA Reserve Bank of India has imposed a Rs 10 crore fine on HDFC Bank. The monetary penalty has been imposed on the private sector lender for contravention of provisions of section 6(2) and section 8 of the Banking Regulation Act, 1949, the central bank said in a statement on Friday. This action is based on deficiencies in regulatory compliance and is not intended to pronounce upon the validity of any transaction or agreement entered into by the bank with its customers, RBI clarified. ALSO READ: Amid muted credit growth, COVID, big banks find their niche in corporate banking The action has been taken after RBI looked into a whistleblower complaint about irregularities in HDFC Bank's vehicle loan division on July 23, 2020. The complaint reportedly claimed that the lender forced its customers to purchase a vehicle tracking device for four years till December 2019, which stands in contravention of the abovementioned sections of the Banking Regulations Act that prohibit banks from indulging in non-financial businesses. "An examination of documents in the matter of marketing and sale of third-party non-financial products to the bank's customers, arising from a whistleblower complaint to RBI regarding irregularities in the auto loan portfolio of the bank, revealed, inter alia, contravention of the aforesaid provisions of the Act and the regulatory directions," RBI said. "In furtherance to the same, a notice was issued to the bank advising it to show cause as to why penalty should not be imposed for contravention of the provisions of the Act/directions." ALSO READ: HDFC Bank introduces Mobile ATM in Bengaluru to assist customers amid COVID-19 curbs Aditya Puri, the then managing director and chief executive officer of HDFC Bank, told shareholders during an annual general meeting that the bank, following the whistleblower complaint, has investigated the matter and took disciplinary action against employees involved. "After considering the bank's reply to the show-cause notice, oral submissions made during the personal hearing and examination of further clarifications/documents furnished by the bank, RBI came to the conclusion that the aforesaid charge of contravention of provisions of the Act was substantiated and warranted imposition of monetary penalty," the central bank said. ALSO READ: HDFC Bank's NBFC arm holds IPO plans; to raise over Rs 8,600 crore via debt A doctor analyzes data of samples taken for the new coronavirus in Bac Giang Province, May 27, 2021. The yellow ones are those confirmed positive. Photo by VnExpress/Ngoc Thanh. The Health Ministry announced 87 more local Covid-19 patients in five localities Saturday morning as Vietnam's ongoing outbreak keeps expanding. Of them, 57 are in epicenter Bac Giang and 27 are in its neighbor Bac Ninh. The three other cases are in Hanoi, Bac Lieu and Gia Lai each. The new patients in Bac Giang are all related to its hotspots at its industrial parks. In Bac Ninh, the cases are those linked to a cluster in Thuan Thanh District and have been isolated prior to the tests. The case in Hanoi is detected at the K hospital cluster. This patient had contact with a Covid-19 patient. The case in Gia Lai is a person that had contact with a Covid-19 patient at the T&T Group, yet another cluster in Hanoi. In Bac Lieu, the patient is associated with a Christian mission cluster in HCMC. The cluster that emerged on Wednesday has reported as many as 58 infections, including members of the Revival Ekklesia Mission and those that had met with infected members. Genetic sequencing on five of the patients in the cluster found they were infected with the highly transmissible variant B.1.617.2 that was first found in India. With the new confirmations, southern Bac Lieu Province and Central Highlands Gia Lai Province have for the first time recorded cases in this wave, which started over a month ago. Until now, the wave has seen 3,595 infections spread to 33 cities and provinces, or more than half of Vietnam's 63 localities. Eight have gone over two weeks without recording any new cases. Bac Giang has kept accounting for the highest infections, with 1,881, followed by Bac Ninh with 736. A medic prepares an AstraZeneca vaccine shot at a healthcare facility in Dong Ha Town of the central Quang Tri Province. Photo by VnExpress/Hoang Tao. The government has approved the establishment of a Covid-19 vaccine fund to raise contributions from various sources and ease the burden on its resources. It said on Wednesday the fund would accept contributions in the form of cash and vaccines from benefactors in Vietnam and abroad. To be managed by the Ministry of Finance, it will buy Covid vaccines and also fund studies into and the production of vaccines. It will be audited by the State Audit Office of Vietnam and the Vietnam Fatherland Front, an umbrella organization of all political and social groups in the country. It is not yet clear how big it would be, but the Ministry of Health said a week ago that Vietnam aims to secure 150 million doses of vaccines to immunize 75 percent of its population this year, and the cost is estimated at VND25.2 trillion ($1 billion). Though the fund has only been formalized now, the health ministry has already received contributions of tens of thousands of dollars from companies and others. Vietnam, which currently uses the vaccine produced by British-Swedish firm AstraZeneca for its immunization program, has received nearly 2.9 million doses, 464,000 through commercial contracts and the rest through Covax, and vaccinated over a million people so far. The ministry has deals to buy 30 million doses and obtain 38.9 million doses through Covax. It has also registered to buy 10 million additional doses through Covax under a cost-sharing scheme to benefit from lower prices. Besides, it has inked a deal to buy 31 million doses of Pfizers vaccine this year. Four vaccines are under development in the country by Nanogen Pharmaceutical Biotechnology JSC, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biologicals, Vaccine and Biological Production Company No. 1, and Polyvac. Vietnam should standardize manufacturing facilities and get expertise if it wants to make Covid-19 vaccines, experts have said. Professor Thomas Preiss of the John Curtin School of Medical Research, Australian National University, said the production of mRNA vaccines is a new technology and involves several distinct steps. Preiss said mRNA is the basis for certain Covid vaccines like those made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, while AstraZeneca uses the viral vector technology. He said the more conventional AstraZeneca vaccine could probably be manufactured by an established vaccine producer in Vietnam of suitable size. Setting up the new technology for mRNA production would be more complex but still achievable. The country does not need to build a huge plant to make mRNA vaccines, and only needs several ordinary-sized clean rooms in which most of the processes could be carried out, he said. A health worker in HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases holds a dose of AstraZeneca vaccine in March, 2021. Photo by VnExpress/ Huu Khoa. Regardless of vaccine type, "Vietnam will have to build facilities that complies with the high medical manufacturing standards to make an efficient and safe Covid-19 vaccine." For Vietnam to have an end-to-end solution for mRNA production it would need a facility to make the gmp-grade DNA plasmid, and a specialized bioreactor for the making of the actual mRNA using that DNA as a template and purify it. Another specialized device will take the purified mRNA and package it up into lipid nanoparticles. Finally, the formulated mRNA vaccine will need to be dispensed into ampules and packaged for shipment. This last fill-and finish step is similar for any type of vaccine. In the production of any vaccine, there are multiple issues a country has to address like having the facilities, raw materials and supply lines, Preiss said. Besides, the patent regime for mRNA vaccines involves multiple sub steps that are patented separately, he said. Licenses would have to be sought from multiple entities. If Vietnam wants to make the mRNA vaccine, it also has to source a number of specific kinds of building blocks and other reaction components. The supply lines are different from those making the AstraZeneca vaccine with respect to production and packaging. Citing the case of Australia, which is already making the AstraZeneca vaccine, he said a major pharma company has been tweaking its existing factory for its production. With mRNA vaccine being based on new technology, there is currently no established manufacturing line in Australia but the government has just begun an Approach To Market process to encourage commercial parties to establish a sovereign mRNA production facility for the country. Preiss said it is not beyond the capacity of Vietnam to produce vaccines, and if it is ambitious about the development of its biotech industry, establishing mRNA production could be a good move. It is not too complex for a developing country to make vaccines, even mRNA vaccines, if it has the resources, he assured, pointing out that India, a developing nation, is the largest vaccine manufacturer in the world. On May 14 the World Health Organization (WHO) had said it was considering a proposal by an unidentified Vietnamese vaccine manufacturer to make an mRNA-based Covid-19 vaccine. Last week Vietnam asked the U.K. to consider transferring vaccine technologies to Vietnam. Nitin Kapoor, chairman and general director, AstraZeneca Vietnam, said the company would consider transferring technology to Vietnam in future if there is a capable partner in the country to produce medicines, including vaccines. AstraZeneca had begun a survey to check bioreactors in Vietnam for Covid-19 vaccine production, but stopped it because the need for the vaccine was urgent around the world as the pandemic raged. Speaking about infrastructure, Dr Sarah Schiffling, senior lecturer in supply chain management, Liverpool John Moores University, the U.K., said Vietnam would need suitable facilities for production on a desired scale, appropriate technology and sufficient workers with the knowledge to produce vaccines. The supply chain is possibly the most overlooked element in vaccine production, she said. It requires many different items from the ingredients of the vaccine to things like filters that are used in the production process and the vials in which the vaccines are filled. In a time of such extremely high demand, it could be difficult to have sufficient capacity in all stages of the supply chain from raw materials all the way to the finished vaccines, she said. "With such a sensitive product, it is essential that excellent quality can be guaranteed throughout the production process." She recognized that Vietnam has a fairly developed pharmaceutical industry but said it would need to identify specific companies to make Covid vaccines. But it has to consider the wider environment, including vaccine storage, transportation and distribution, she said. Tinglong Dai, professor of operations management and business analytics, Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School, the U.S., said making vaccines based on mRNA is a niche technology, and so the training could take years, and the country should instead get experts from companies like Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna. Vietnam would need to get the technical knowhow to make things work and ensure vaccine quality, and that is why it needs technology transfer, he said. Optimistic about Vietnam's capacity Dai said it is "absolutely technically possible" for Vietnam to produce Covid-19 vaccines since it has a great workforce with a lot of educated workers. The U.S. has expressed interest in expanding Covid vaccine production in Asia, he said. Vietnam "does not need to produce everything" but instead could collaborate with partners, for example South Korea, to produce vaccines, he said. Moderna and Novavax have signed a deal with the South Korean government to manufacture their Covid-19 vaccines. Dai pointed out that a country that wants to produce Covid vaccines needs to consider both supply and demand, and there are uncertainties about the demand in the near future since people might prefer newer vaccines. "Without enough demand, I don't think the proposed manufacturing center will be feasible." But if the government shows strong political will and commitment, companies could be confident enough to develop and produce vaccines. LAS VEGAS (AP) Economic signs are pointing up for Nevada gambling and tourism heading into the Memorial Day holiday weekend, with reports on Thursday showing that casinos won $1 billion in April for the second month in a row, and monthly visitor volume increased for a fourth straight month. Most casinos can again host 100% capacity, even ahead of Gov. Steve Sisolaks target date of June 1. Masks are still advised for people who haven't received coronavirus vaccinations and in some places with large indoor gatherings. Crowd restrictions and personal space restrictions will be virtually eliminated statewide next week. Tourists have jammed sidewalks and returned to shows in Las Vegas in recent weeks arriving mostly by vehicle, according to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Nevada Highway Patrol. The authority tallied nearly 2.6 million visitors last month in Las Vegas a 15.4% jump in volume since March and more than twice the 1.25 million visitors the area hosted in December. But the number was still down about 27% from the pre-pandemic level in April 2019. The bill passed on a party-line 26-16 vote in the Assembly and on a narrow 11-10 vote in the Senate, with Sen. Dina Neal (D-Las Vegas) joining Republicans in opposition. AB435: Expands tax exemptions to trade shows/meetings Under current law, every business entity in the state whose gross revenue during a fiscal year exceeds $4 million pays an annual Commerce Tax. But, there are exemptions for businesses that take part in an exhibition held in the state for conducting business and are not required to obtain a state business license for the exhibition because the exhibition facilitator pays the licensing on behalf of that business. The bill expands the exemptions from the Commerce Tax to apply to anyone who takes part in an exhibition, trade show, industry or corporate meeting held in the state, regardless of whether the person is required to obtain a state business license. It also clarifies that an organizer, manager or sponsor of such an event or an exhibitor may claim the exemption. The bill passed out of the Assembly on a 41-1 vote and the Senate on a 20-1 vote. SB46: Protecting personal information Last year, detectives began working with Parabon NanoLabs Snapshot of Virginia to narrow the list of potential family members of the victim using genetic matches from a database called GEDmatch. Its the same database the Washoe County sheriffs office used two years ago to finally identify a woman whose body was found in 1982 on a trail at Lake Tahoe, and eventually the man they believe killed her. They closed that cold case, determining Mary Silvani was killed by James Richard Curry. He served prison time for robbery in California before he confessed to a 1982 murder in Santa Clara and two killings in the San Jose area in 1983. Curry killed himself in jail before he went to trial. Lyon County detectives said Wednesday the new information in the Trapp case prompted them to travel to two states to interview persons of interest. They were able to establish a rudimentary timeline of Trapp's general whereabouts leading up to his death. Pattison noted he couldnt disclose any names or locations, but said they started talking to relatives and collected DNA from a brother. Thats how we were able to confirm he was the victim, he said. Its really fascinating. On Thursday California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced the introduction of an enormous cash lottery aimed at convincing more of the states residents to get the covid-19 vaccine. The USs most populous state is offering the largest cash incentive in the country, with ten lucky Californians set to receive a $1.5 million jackpot. So far more than 20 million Californians are at least partially vaccinated, but there are still roughly 12 million residents who are eligible for the life-saving shots who are yet to sign up. The hope is that the California Vaccine Lottery, with a combined prize pot of $116.5 million, will convince anyone yet to be vaccinated to get the shot. Upon announcing the lottery, Newsom said: Were putting aside more resources than any other state in America, and were making available the largest prizes of any state in America for those that seek to get vaccinated. How to sign up for the California Vaccine Lottery Fortunately there is no complicated registration process to contend with to be entered into the draw, simply ensure that you get your first vaccine dose and you will be automatically signed up. The lottery draw will be taken from the states vaccine registry. The only vaccinated Californians who will not be entered into the draw are incarcerated residents, and some state employees (California State Lottery, California Department of Public Health, the Government Operations Agency, California Health and Human Services Agency, the governors office) and their families. How much can I win in the California Vaccine Lottery? As well as the ten-person top prize of $1.5 million in cash, there is a second tier of prizes also on offer. Another 30 lucky vaccine recipients will be given a $50,000 cash prize, the drawing of which will be split across two weeks. On Friday 4 June the first 15 winners of the $50,000 second prize will be announced, with the other 15 confirmed on Friday 11 June. But if your name is not pulled out of the hat for either of those draw you will still be in the running for the top prize of $1.5 million, which will be drawn on Tuesday 15 June. The money for these lucrative prizes comes from the states disaster response fund, which will then be reimbursed with federal relief money. Some have questioned whether or not the enormous outlay is worth it, but Newsom told reporters that the cost of not getting vaccinated is exponentially, incalculably higher. On Thursday Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin, the leader of the Cherokee Nation, signed legislation that will provide an additional round of stimulus checks to citizens of the Oklahoma-based tribe. The Cherokee Nations 392,832 citizens will each receive a $2,000 stimulus check, split into two $1,000 direct payments over two years, after the tribes governing council voted resoundingly in favour (16-1) of authorising the stimulus checks. How will the Cherokee Nation stimulus checks be funded? In his American Rescue Plan, President Biden provided $1.8 billion of federal support for the tribe, which they are free to spend as they see fit. The $2,000 direct payments will see around 43% of that support sent out to citizens of the tribe, the second-largest in the country after the Arizona-based Navajo Nation. In a statement announcing the decision, Hosking confirmed: In this resolution, we will appropriate funds out of the $1.8 billion (provided the tribe) to cover the individual assistance payments to citizens and adopt a broad spending framework with categories as a place to start which can be modified as we move forward. To apply for the support citizens will have to use the Gadugi Portal, which is yet to go online but is taking registrations already. Citizens are encouraged to sign up now to ease the registration process when it becomes fully functional in June. What other relief spending does the Cherokee Nation have planned? Bidens stimulus bill provided a historic investment in Native Indian communities with a total of $20 billion set aside for tribal governments. The funding comes from the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Fund (FRF), which is expressly targeted at easing the economic consequences of the pandemic. The Cherokee Nations Respond Recover and Rebuild programme aims to provide covid-19 relief for the tribes citizens, using support provided by the FRF. Alongside the $2,000 stimulus checks, the Cherokee Nation will also allocate additional funding for mental health and wellness initiatives. The tribes infrastructure, education, housing and job training programmes will also be bolstered by the federal money. Hoskin said that the funding would be focused on: "ensuring the Cherokee Nation is able to heal together and rebuild to be a stronger tribe with stronger and healthier Cherokee families and communities. This funding is an important step in our ongoing efforts to recover and rebuild. Belarus is ready to resume free trade with Ukraine if the latter reviews its measures on Belarusian goods, Belarusian First Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Guryanov said. "We're ready to fully scrap all our decisions. We're ready to resume free trade in full. But not before Ukraine has reviewed the measures taken in regard to Belarusian products, whose de facto aim was simply to limit competition from Belarusian manufacturers," Guryanov said, commenting on a Belarusian government decision to license the import of certain types of goods in order to restrict trade with Ukraine. His commentary was published on the ministry's website on Friday. Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Deputy Economic Minister and Trade Representative Taras Kachka said that Belarus was about to introduce an individual licensing regime on the import of a number of Ukrainian goods. "There is information that Belarus has introduced individual licensing of the import of some Ukrainian goods: confectionary products, chocolate, juices, beer, chip and fiber boards, wallpaper, toilet paper and packaging, bricks, ceramic tiles, glass ampoules, agricultural equipment for sowing, washing machines, and furniture. The decision was approved by Decree 292 issued by of the Council of Ministers of Belarus on May 26," Kachka said on Facebook. The decision will take effect ten months after publication and will remain in effect for six months, he said. "Such actions are unfounded and discriminatory. Individual licensing means manual management of the import of Ukrainian products into Belarus. The government is holding consultations with manufacturers on dealing with the negative consequences of the discriminatory actions taken by the Belarusian government," Kachka said. For his part, Guryanov explained that the Council of Ministers decision of May 26, 2021, to license the import of certain types of goods was due to Ukraine having "recently systematically violated the free trade regime spelt out in the CIS free trade zone law. "We have all agreed a long time ago that a free trade zone involves free movement of goods. The agreement does not involve imposing any tariff restrictions on members' products in any form or stipulation. Last December Ukraine stunned Belarus by deciding to impose a de facto duty on certain types of Belarusian metal products under a pretext of supposedly unfriendly and discriminatory steps by the Republic of Belarus," he recalled. In May Ukraine's inter-agency commission for international trade imposed further duties on Belarusian wheel products, and that despite "the Republic of Belarus having supplied, quite efficiently, passenger equipment to various towns across Ukraine by offering flexible financing tools, good prices, good technology. On the one hand, we were puzzled; on the other, this was yet another step which we think is wrong from the standpoint of free trade," he said. Belarus has long been analyzing all of Ukraine measures imposed on Belarus, he said. "I can state that, aside from those two examples I mentioned, Ukraine currently has eight anti-dumping and special protective measures in regard to Belarus. They involve anti-dumping duties on matches, starch, construction material, cement, incandescent bulbs, i.e. a whole list of products which falls under restrictions as Belarusian export to Ukraine," he said. Belarus repeatedly offered Ukraine (including at the level of the prime minister as a co-chairman of the intergovernmental commission and at the level of the foreign trade regulator, which in Belarus is the Foreign Ministry) holding consultations, using mechanisms to remove barriers, clarifying the sides' positions, Guryanov said. "Never once did Ukraine show a desire to respond to our requests and only in isolated cases, already after the decisions were made regarding restrictive measures against Belarus, we were simply told that at some point the Republic of Belarus' long-time decisions started to be seen as unfriendly and discriminatory and for that reason it became necessary to restrict our supplies to Ukraine," he said. Belarus took measures, which effectively limit imports from Ukraine through additional controls, and then only temporarily, as per the international trade rules that are in active use in many countries, he said. "We are ready for talks any moment. We once worked with Ukraine quite actively to remove barriers to mutual trade. For some reason, now these barriers began to re-appear, not at our initiative," he said. During the bilateral consultations "Ukraine hinted that what it saw as unfriendly and discriminatory measures on Belarus' part were, for some reason, certain decisions made by the Eurasian Economic Union, which is now the responsibility of five countries, not just Belarus," the diplomat said. "Yet the counter- or some unfriendly restrictive measures needed to be taken exclusively against Belarus. For the simple reason that we are still not a member of the World Trade Organization. Which apparently means that it is okay to punish us in breach of free trade principles, in breach of international agreements which create conditions for normal competition, for normal export-import operations. So, once again: this is nothing to do with the current souring of our relations, aviation issues, and so on. This is down to the trade negotiations, pure and simple, which were supposed to lead us to remove the barriers, as I exhorted our Ukrainian colleagues to do," the first deputy minister said. Naftogaz Ukrainy National Joint Stock Company (NJSC) only partially supports the open appeal of the Center for Liberal Modernity to the Federal Government and democratic parties of Germany, as it considers unacceptable the call for a compromise on lifting U.S. sanctions. "Given the high likelihood of new threats, Naftogaz appeals to state authorities, public activists, and the expert community to take immediate public initiative and call upon strategic partners and all stakeholders to prevent the lifting of U.S. sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 project," the NJSC's press release says. According to Naftogaz CEO Yuriy Vitrenko, the risks of waiving sanctions on the part of the new U.S. administration were obvious, so he expressed surprise that the previous management of the company did not timely issue a statement about the inadmissibility of the provision on lifting the sanctions in circulation. "The risks of abandoning sanctions from the new U.S. administration were clear. We expected the new administration would seek certain compromises with Germany, in as much as it is an important NATO partner for them. In turn, Germany, at least until the autumn elections, will try to complete the construction of Nord Stream 2 as soon as possible and put pressure on the United States. As this risk was obvious, I expected my predecessors to plan steps ahead," he said. According to an appeal released by the Center for liberal modernity, they are calling for an immediate moratorium on the construction of the pipeline, as it undermines European cohesion and transatlantic relations; conflicts with the new European and German climate goals; threatens the already precarious security of Ukraine and runs counter to the aim of a common EU external energy policy. At the same time, the think tank suggested that after the announcement of the moratorium, the U.S. sanctions against the project should also be suspended. Earlier, U.S. President Joe Biden said that the construction of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would continue despite the already existing U.S. sanctions, because it is already almost fully completed. The current U.S. administration has repeatedly stated that it opposes the Nord Stream 2 project and will try to prevent the completion of construction. Republicans criticize Biden for too soft, from their point of view, sanctions policy regarding the gas pipeline. In particular, earlier in May, many Republican congressmen expressed dissatisfaction with Biden's decision not yet to impose sanctions against the pipeline operator, Nord Stream 2 AG. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that the country would fight the construction of Nord Stream 2 until the end. In May, Naftogaz carried out a personnel reshuffle in its team, announcing the strengthening of the management team to achieve qualitative changes in interaction with stakeholders, carry out real and complex reforms, as well as to search for new tools to counter the Nord Stream 2 project. Amid rising demand for COVID vaccines, Bharat Biotech on Friday said production and supply of Covaxin is a time-consuming process as various procedures and approvals need to be in place before it is made available for vaccination. The Hyderabad-based vaccine major noted the timeline for manufacturing, testing and release for a batch of Covaxin is around 120 days, depending on the technology framework and regulatory guidelines to be met. The company's statement comes amid the shortage of COVID jabs in the country and demand from various states to enhance the production of vaccines. Also Read: Missing Covaxin doses! Bharat Biotech clears air "Thus, production batches of Covaxin that were initiated during March this year will be ready for supply only during the month of June," it said in a statement, adding that manufacturing, testing, release, and distribution of vaccines is a complex and multi-factorial process with hundreds of steps, requiring a diverse pool of human resources. For vaccines to result in actual vaccination of people, the company said highly coordinated efforts are required from international supply chains, manufacturers, regulators, and state and central government agencies. "Production scale-up of vaccines is a step-by-step process, involving several regulatory SOPs of GMP (Standard Operating Procedures of Good Manufacturing Practices). There is a four-month lag time for Covaxin to translate into actual vaccination," it noted. The company said that based on Central Drugs Standard Control Organisation (CDSCO) guidelines, all vaccines supplied in India are mandated by law to be submitted for testing and release to the Central Drugs Laboratory. All batches of vaccines supplied to state and central governments are based on the allocation framework received from the central government, the company said, adding that the timeline for vaccine supplies to reach the depots of the state and central governments from the company's facilities is around two days. Also Read: Hester Biosciences to produce Bharat Biotech's Covaxin The vaccines received at these depots have to be further distributed by the state governments to various districts within their respective states and thus require an additional number of days, it noted. "Pandemic vaccines are distributed by respective governments equitably across all sections of the population. Vaccines once available at the vaccination centres are then administered to recipients over a period of time, based on demand," it added. With the increase in demand, Bharat Biotech has already taken steps to produce additional 200 million (20 crore) doses of Covaxin at its subsidiary's Gujarat-based facility. This will take the overall production volume to about 1 billion (100 crore) doses per annum. From May 1, the government started the COVID-19 vaccination drive for population above 18 years of age. The procurement of vaccines for those between 18 and 44 years has been left to states and private hospitals. This has led to state after state rushing to Bharat Biotech and Serum Institute of India (SII) for the supply of vaccines. Twenty state-owned enterprises of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry are to be liquidated and fifteen others are to be reorganized based on the results of 2020-2021, Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Ihor Khalimon said. "Over the course of 2020-2021, 20 state enterprises should be liquidated, 15 reorganized, and three prepared for privatization (the 209th Operations Officer's Directorate, the 417th Operations Officer's Directorate, and the Druzhbivsky Quarry of Nonmetallic Minerals Kvarts)," Khalimon said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine. In line with a list of state-owned assets endorsed by the Defense Ministry order of September 11, 2020, which envisions the optimization of the state enterprise management system, 42 of the 111 Defense Ministry enterprises (40 related to the ministry's Main Directorate and the other two to its Main Intelligence Directorate) will remain operating, Khalimon said. "We're talking about optimizing the system of management of state enterprises by determining a list of economic assets to be engaged in meeting the needs of the Ukrainian Armed Forces," he said. The Defense Ministry currently manages 109 economic entities, which generated losses of over UAH 53,000 in 2019, Khalimon said. "Based on the results of economic activities in 2020, the enterprises transferred UAH 269.235 million to the Ukrainian state budget, which is 12% more than in the previous period, the enterprises' aggregate revenue grew by 23% to UAH 1.069 billion, and the net sales revenue grew by 19.6% to UAH 984.7 million," Khalimon said. According to him, after the reorganization of the state-run enterprise Ivano-Frankivsk Military Timber Industrial Complex and the state-run enterprise Lviv Military Forestry Complex, 11 newly established forestry enterprises, based on the results of financial statements, worked profitably, with no wage arrears. Ukraine has recorded 3,096 new cases of COVID-19, as well as 10,199 recoveries and 156 related deaths, as of Saturday morning, the press service of the Ukrainian Health Ministry said. "Ukraine has recorded 3,096 new daily cases of the coronavirus infection as of May 29, 2021, including 144 children and 55 medical workers. Additionally, 1,309 people have been admitted to hospitals, 156 have died and 10,199 have recovered over the past day," it said. Ukraine reported 3,306 new COVID-19 cases on May 28. Ukraine has recorded a total of 2,199,769 cases of COVID-19, including 50,388 deaths and 2,030,415 recoveries, since the pandemic began. The largest numbers of confirmed daily cases were recorded in Kyiv (377), Dnipropetrovsk region (261), Lviv region (231), Kyiv region (197), and Zaporizhia region (170). Biden administration requests more than $58bln for State Dept's needs, incl. $255 mln to help Ukraine The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has requested $58.5 billion for fiscal 2022 to support the activities of the Department of State and its goals, according to a document published by the U.S. Department of State on Friday. "The President's Budget for FY 2022 requests $58.5 billion for the Department of State and USAID," the message reads. It is noted that this is 10% higher than the final budget of the State Department in fiscal 2021. "These resources will position us to advance the Administration's foreign policy agenda on behalf of the American people. It also reflects the importance the Administration places on U.S. global leadership and the fact that diplomacy and development are vital tools for advancing U.S. interests," the U.S. Department of State said. According to the document, it is proposed to allocate a total of $665.8 million for spending in the European region and Eurasia, which, in particular, will help strengthening the resilience of countries to foreign malevolent influence and promoting Euro-Atlantic integration, confronting the growing challenges from Russia and China. Thus, $88 million of this amount is planned to be allocated to support the democratization of Georgia, its economic development and the creation of resilience to resisting the malicious influence of the Kremlin. In addition, $255 million will be spent on aid to Ukraine to strengthen its ability to withstand Russian aggression. To counter Russian influence and disinformation in the Western Balkans, according to the document, $106 million is required. Secretary General of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Helga Schmid visited Donbas on Friday, May 28, in particular, got acquainted with the operation of the Novotroyitske checkpoint. "At the Novotroyitske entry-exit crossing point I saw efforts made on the government controlled side to help people cross the line of contact. Urgently need to ensure freedom of movement, including opening up new and existing crossing points," Schmid wrote on Twitter. In turn, head of Donetsk Regional State Administration Pavlo Kyrylenko said that he had discussed with the OSCE Secretary General and First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Emine Dzhaparova the security and humanitarian situation in Donetsk region, as well as the work of the checkpoint. "Ms Schmid highly appreciated the fact that from the Ukrainian side all checkpoints located in the part of Donbas controlled by the Ukrainian government are open," Kyrylenko wrote on his Facebook page. He noted that Schmid expressed satisfaction with how well the Novotroyitske checkpoint is equipped, especially in terms of providing medical assistance, including the opportunity for people crossing the checkpoint to be tested for COVID-19. Kyrylenko informed the OSCE that representatives of the occupation authorities, for unknown reasons, leave their checkpoints closed, harming people who live in the temporarily occupied territory and are unable to travel to the free part of Ukraine. Ukraine will be the first among NATO partner countries to receive an updated package of the Ukraine-NATO Partnership Goals, the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense said. On May 28, 2021, a meeting of the Partnerships and Cooperative Security Committee (PCSC) took place in the format of the Planning and Assessment of Ukraine's Forces Process. The meeting was held in a combined format - in the conference room of NATO headquarters and online. The event was attended by delegations of Ukraine and the Alliance, according to the press and information department of the Ministry of Defense. The Ukrainian delegation, headed by Deputy Minister of Defense of Ukraine for European Integration Anatoliy Petrenko, consisted of representatives of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine and the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Veterans Affairs of Ukraine, as well as the Government Office for Coordination of European and Euro-Atlantic Integration. The NATO delegation, which included representatives from member states, the Operations Department of the NATO International Staff, and the NATO International Military Staff (IMS), was led by the Alliance Assistant Secretary General for Operations John Manza. Manza noted Ukraine's progress in reforming the security and defense sector, and meeting the Partnership Goals of the previous period. He said that Ukraine is and remains the most important partner of the Alliance, adding that NATO supports the independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine. The NATO Assistant Secretary General said that the U.S. would continue assisting Ukraine in implementing the necessary reforms and developing the capabilities of the security and defense forces. Petrenko, in turn, stressed: "The process of planning and assessing forces is one of the most effective tools for bringing Ukraine closer to NATO standards, strengthening the institutional capabilities of the defense department, developing the capabilities of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and acquiring interoperability," Petrenko noted. The updated package of Partnership Goals for Ukraine contains tasks and activities for the period up to 2025. It also lists the forces and resources that Ukraine is preparing to participate in the Partnership for Peace program, operations and missions of the Alliance. The goals of the partnership support other tasks of reforming the defense and security sector, primarily defense reform projects and activities. During the discussion in their comments, the representatives of Bulgaria, Great Britain, Denmark, Canada, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the United States of America and France unanimously noted the progress of the defense reform in Ukraine, as well as the efforts that the military-political leadership of the state is making to approximate the standards and NATO principles. All speakers expressed undeniable support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine and its Euro-Atlantic aspirations. The meeting participants discussed the draft Partnership Goals and separately emphasized the importance of building a system of effective democratic civilian control, the need to subordinate the military components of the defense sector to the civilian ministry, further transforming the command and control system of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and achieving compatibility with NATO at the strategic and operational levels, which are key conditions for Ukraine's entry into the Alliance. The delegations of Ukraine and the Alliance supported the proposed document and agreed to move on to the next stage of its coordination - sending it to the North Atlantic Council for consideration. A mob of supporters of then-U.S. President Donald Trump climb through a window they broke as they storm the U.S. Capitol (Photo : REUTERS/Leah Millis) Republicans in the U.S. Senate on Friday derailed a bipartisan inquiry into the deadly assault on the Capitol by former President Donald Trump's supporters, despite a torrent of criticism the lawmakers were playing down the violence. Democrats and some moderate Republicans had called for a commission to probe the events up to and including Jan. 6, when hundreds of supporters of Trump, a Republican, stormed the Capitol, fighting with police, urging violence against lawmakers and delaying the formal certification of President Joe Biden's election victory. The violence left five people dead including a Capitol Police officer. Advertisement The measure mustered a 54-35 vote which fell short of the 60 votes needed to advance the legislation in the 100-member Senate. The 35 no votes were all Republicans. Six Republicans voted in favor of the commission. "We all know what's going on here. Senate Republicans chose to defend the Big Lie because they feared that anything that might upset Donald Trump could hurt them politically," Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said after the vote. The proposed commission would have had the power to force witnesses, possibly including Trump, to testify under oath about what happened that day. Trump had urged Republican lawmakers to vote against it and warned of "consequences" for those who supported it. It was the first time this year that Republicans used the 60-vote hurdle, known as a filibuster, to defeat legislation. The vote underscores the steep challenges for Democrats in the evenly divided chamber, as they will have to win the support of at least one in five Republicans to pass policing reforms, voting-rights legislation and other priorities. The White House said Biden remained committed to a full, independent investigation of the attack. 'LIMITS OF BIPARTISANSHIP' Senate Democrats have been under pressure from activists on the left to scrap the chamber's longstanding supermajority rule, but have so far declined to do so. In a letter to Democrats after the vote, Schumer said Congress had "seen the limits of bipartisanship." Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has argued that a commission would have duplicated work done by other congressional committees, as well as a sweeping federal criminal investigation that has so far resulted in the arrests of more than 440 people. But Republicans are also concerned that a commission, modeled on one that probed the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, would focus attention on the violence and on Trump's persistent false claims about the 2020 election well into next year's midterm congressional election campaigns. Republicans did not defend these positions on the Senate floor before or after the vote. The proposal previously passed the House of Representatives with the support of all Democrats and 1 in 6 Republicans after bipartisan negotiations. "Something bad happened. And it's important to lay that out," Senator Lisa Murkowski, one of the Republicans who supported the measure, told reporters late on Thursday. Republicans Bill Cassidy, Susan Collins, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney and Ben Sasse also voted for the commission. Two Democrats and nine Republicans skipped the vote. After the Senate vote, House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats would "proceed to find the truth" about what happened on Jan. 6, but said nothing about whether she would set up a special committee to investigate, as some Democrats have suggested. Russian President Vladimir Putin meets with his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko in Sochi, Russia (Photo : Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via REUTERS) Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday offered his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko support in his standoff with the West over his handling of the grounding of a passenger jet and the arrest of a dissident blogger. The West has accused Belarus of piracy after Belarusian air traffic control on Sunday informed the Ryanair pilot of a hoax bomb threat and Minsk scrambled a MiG-29 fighter plane to escort the jetliner down, and then arrested Roman Protasevich, a blogger and critic of Lukashenko, along with his girlfriend. Advertisement Both are now languishing in jail. Accused of orchestrating mass riots, Protasevich could be jailed for up to 15 years. But Putin, a close ally of Lukashenko, gave his support to Lukashenko, warmly welcoming him for talks in the southern Russian city of Sochi and agreeing with Lukashenko that the West's reaction to the incident was "an outburst of emotion". "At one time they forced the Bolivian president's plane to land and took him out of the plane and nothing, silence," said Putin, referring to a 2013 incident in which Evo Morales' plane was forced to land in Austria at a time when the United States was trying to intercept whistleblower Edward Snowden. The talks in the Black Sea city of Sochi were organised before the plane incident, but come after many European nations have imposed flight bans on Belarusian aviation and the EU is weighing further sanctions. Lukashenko told Putin he would show him some confidential documents about the Ryanair incident that would help the Russian leader understand what really happened. "There is always someone who causes problems for us. You know about them, I'll inform you," Lukashenko told Putin. "I brought some documents so that you understand what is happening." Looking relaxed and smiling, Putin had earlier suggested the two men take a sea dip, something Lukashenko agreed to. Russia, a close ally which sees the ex-Soviet republic of 9.5 million as a strategically important buffer to its west, had offered verbal support to Minsk before the Putin meeting, while dismissing speculation it was itself complicit in the incident. Moscow says Belarus has shown a readiness for transparency in the row and has described the West's reaction to the plane incident as "shocking," with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accusing it of "demonising" the authorities in Minsk. Russia and Belarus, which are formally part of a "union state", have been in talks for years to further integrate their nations, a process that has long spurred fears among Belarus's beleaguered opposition that Lukashenko might trade off chunks of sovereignty in return for political backing from the Kremlin. Putin told Lukashenko the two men were continuing to build the union state, but were doing so steadily, without haste, and in a low key way. In power since 1994, Lukashenko with Russia's help faced down the biggest protests of his rule last summer over election rigging, allegations that he denied. The protests lost momentum amid a violent crackdown, but his critics plan to stage new ones. The Egyptian Holding Company for Airports and Air Navigation, EGYPTAIR Holding company and their affiliates signed on Monday a cooperation protocol with the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority (EAEA) for the safe disposal of radioactive waste. The deal will be implemented in coordination with the Civil Aviation Ministry's Central Administration of Quality and Environment. Applauding his ministry's fruitful cooperation with the EAEA, Civil Aviation Minister Mohamed Manar said that the ministry adopts effective plans and strategies for airport and building security and the safe disposal of radioactive waste in compliance with the best health and safety practices and ICAO instructions, according to a statement by the ministry on Monday. Short link: The Safe use of Wastewater workshop in Egypt, organised by the International Water management Institute (IWMI) ReWater MENA project, will be wrapped up on Sunday with a closing ceremony to be held later in the day. The workshop, organised in collaboration with Arab Countries Water Utilities Association (ACWUA), is pushing for building and strengthening the capacities of different stakeholders and participants from Egypt in the field of safe use of wastewater. This is all built on four training modules. The modules include: Stakeholders acceptance and gender integration in reuse interventions, assessing the Economic Feasibility for Integrated Wastewater Reuse (WWR) Projects: From formulation to reporting, governance and reuse safety Plans, as well as water reuse technologies. The workshop ends today and delivers certificates of completion to all participants who attended the workshop and completed the four modules. ReWater MENA project - running in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon - is a regional project funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA), and led by the International Water Management Institute (IWMI). During the workshop, Rifaat Abdel-Wahaab, Head of the Research and Development Sector at the Holding Company for Water and Wastewater (HCWW), said that the biggest challenge for indirect reuse in the Delta has been the mixed sources of waste streams that are discharged untreated into agricultural drains. He also mentioned that Egypt's government plan is to treat and reuse drainage water on a large scale. Wastewater presents a great potential for bridging the supply-demand gap as it is the only water source which increases as the population grows, as mentioned by Amgad El-Mahdi, Head of IWMI MENA Office. He refers to wastewater as an untapped resource. Thus, the use of treated wastewater (TWW) in agriculture is considered one of the most sustainable alternatives to cope with water scarcity, especially considering that agriculture accounts for 80 percent of the regions freshwater withdrawals. He said that there are many challenges facing the use of treated wastewater in the Arab region, including social, institutional, economic and cultural challenges. He assured the need to deal with these challenges by developing plans and a road map for the three countries participating in the ReWater MENA project, namely Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. Hussein El-Atfy, Secretary-General of Arab Water Council (AWC), indicated that wastewater is the only sustainable water resource and it would be one of the main pillars to overcome water scarcity challenges. Khaldon Khashman, the Secretary-General of ACWUA, emphasised in a video message the importance of the fields covered by the training course and that this is the first time in the Arab region that such a scheme is launched. He also mentioned that the Arab region lacks wastewater reuse safety plans that deal with all aspects starting from the water coming out of homes through the water collection and purification system, throughout its safe use and up until the impact on water users. Short link: Egypt offered its deepest condolences to the government and people of Nigeria after the death and injury of scores of people when an overloaded boat ferrying passengers to a market sank in the Niger River. In a statement by the Foreign Ministry Friday, it expressed its sympathies to the families and friends of the innocent victims, wishing a speedy recovery to the injured. It asserted its support to Nigeria after this shocking tragedy. Short link: An 18-wheeler lays on its side after it rolled over Thursday, May 27, 2021 on the Interstate 10 access road spilling scraps of metal. Egypt, the current president of the United Nations (UN) Peacebuilding Commission (PBC) for 2021, is working on enhancing coherence between peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts, the foreign ministry said Saturday. Egypt was elected in February to lead the PBC, an intergovernmental advisory body of 31 member states that supports peace efforts in conflict affected countries. "Egypt is among the leading countries supporting UN peacekeeping operations since its contribution to the UN mission in Congo in 1960 and is the seventh largest contributor with over 3,000 peacekeepers - men and women," Spokesman for the foreign ministry Ahmed Hafez said on Twitter. Hafezs remarks coincide with the International Day of the UN Peacekeepers 29 May that was established by the General Assembly in 2002 to pay tribute to all men and women serving in peacekeeping, and to honour the memory of those who have lost their lives in the cause of peace. Egypt is currently engaged in the UN peace operations in Abyei, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan and the Western Sahara. In commemoration of the day, the UN held a ceremony on Thursday to honour the fallen peacekeepers, among them five Egyptians. Their service and sacrifices will never be forgotten. I express my deep gratitude to the 85,000 civilian, police and military personnel currently deployed in some of the worlds most challenging hotspots to protect the vulnerable and help to build peace, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said said in a statement to commemorate the day. Short link: Egypt's Senate, the consultative upper house of parliament, will meet on Sunday and Monday to discuss a report prepared by its Financial and Economic Committee on the state's 2021/22 socio-economic development plan. Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said is expected at the debate to answer questions and give comments. At a meeting with the Senates Financial and Economic Affairs Committee that took place two weeks ago, El-Said said the new development plan targets EGP 1.3 trillion in overall investments, of which EGP 358 billion is to be spent on 12,000 projects throughout Egypt. The Senate's Financial and Economic Committee's report clarified that most of the investment projects in the government's 2021/22 development plan will focus on both the education and healthcare sectors. The new socio-economic development plan's investments in the health sector alone will reach EGP 47.5 billion in 2021-22 in order to help the state and medical institutions contain the COVID-19 crisis, the report read. The report also indicated that the volume of investment earmarked for the education sector in the new development plan is estimated at EGP 56 billion. These investments will focus on building more schools, raising the quality of education and improving teaching methods, the report said, adding that "the investments in the health and education sectors also aim to establish universities in most governorates as well as mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on socio-economic conditions of poor citizens." Minister El-Said also said that the new development plan aims to raise the economic growth rate to 5.4 percent in 2021/22, up from the 2.6 percent in the current fiscal year. "The COVID-19 crisis had led economic growth in Egypt to drop from 3.6 percent in 2019-20 to 2.8 percent in 2020-21, but we hope that we will be able to bounce back to the pre-COVID-19 level of 2018/19, achieving an economic growth rate of 5.4 per cent in fiscal year 2021/22, El-Said added. She also said that the above figures were in line with estimates made by international lending institutions. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts an economic growth rate of 5.5 percent in Egypt in 2021-22, up from 2.8 percent in the current fiscal year, the World Bank expects a rate of 5.8 percent. Fitch Ratings, an international ratings agency, and UK magazine the Economist put economic growth in Egypt next year at six percent and 4.1 percent, respectively. All of these estimates are close to each other and they all say that Egypt will be able to ride out the damaging effects of the COVID-19 crisis to a large extent and achieve reasonable positive economic growth, El-Said said. The spike in economic growth, according to the minister, is expected to be boosted by a number of factors. We expect remittances from Egyptian workers abroad to grow by seven percent or from $28 billion in the current fiscal year to $30 billion in the new 2021-22 year, not to mention the fact that the tourism sector will begin recuperating to generate $6 billion in 2021-22, up from an expected $3 billion this year, El-Said said. She also added that Suez Canal transit fees are also expected to reach US$6 billion, foreign investment rates are forecast to increase to $7.4 billion in 2021-22, and non-petroleum commodity exports are targeted to increase by 10 percent to hit a record of $19.5 billion. The Senate is also scheduled this week to discuss a new bill on setting up a fund to be spent on medical emergency units. A report by the Senate's Health and Population Committee said that the fund is designed to be a tool that will be spent on certain kinds of medical services, ones that are not usually covered by the state budget. "The Fund will be devoted to spending on patients receiving treatment at emergency and intensive care units; buying drugs and medicine, and providing health care services to citizens who are on waiting lists," said the report. The 'Fund on Containing Medical Emergency Cases' will be headquartered in Cairo and affiliated with the Prime Minister. Short link: President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi urged state officials on Saturday to localise the components of the water desalination technology in a bid to achieve further progress in this field. El-Sisi stressed maximising the amount of water coming from desalination and treatment water stations, a statement by the presidential spokesman, Bassam Rady, read. He urged the integration of the water desalination strategy with the states general policy for the wise management of water. The president ordered officials to continue conducting further studies and experiments in this field to reach the best outcome. The presidents directives come within the general framework of building the national capacity of the state in all fields, the statement noted. The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouli, Minister of Planning Hala El-Saeed, Minister of Housing Assem El-Gazzar, Presidential Adviser for Urban Planning Amir Sayed Ahmed and Chairman of the Armed Forces Engineering Authority Ihab El-Far. The meeting reviewed the states strategic plan in terms of seawater desalination plants, Rady said. During the meeting, the president reviewed the operational desalination plants and those under construction or set to be built. El-Sisi also reviewed the plan to distribute the suggested plants nationwide together with the cost and capacity of these projects,including projects to desalinate Red Sea water using new and renewable energy. El-Gazzar last month revealed that 14 seawater desalination plants are being built in Egypt, with a total capacity of 476,000 m3 of water per day, at a cost of EGP 9.71 billion. The 14 plants, expected to be completed by June 2022, are being constructed in the governorates of Marsa Matrouh, the Red Sea, North Sinai, South Sinai, Port Said, Daqahliya, Suez and Alexandria, El-Gazzar's statement read. When built, the plants will bring Egypts tally to 90 desalination stations with a total capacity of 1,307,69 million m3 per day due to the operation of 76 existing seawater desalination plants, with a total capacity of 831,690 m3 per day, the minister said. The plan works to provide alternative sources of drinking water through desalination in coastal governorates and reuse treated water, he added. Egypts annual share of water is 560 m3 per person, placing the populousous country well below the international threshold for water scarcity. Prime Minister Madbouly affirmed last month that the state has carried out development projects as part of its efforts to ensure every drop of water is preserved, including the construction of more seawater desalination plants. The states move towards building more desalination plants comes amid a water shortage threat Egypt faces due to Ethiopias plan to unilaterally continue its massive dam filling in July. The Ethiopian step comes despite the absence of a binding deal that secures the interests and water rights of Egypt and Sudan, a matter that has been frequently rejected by the two downstream countries. Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will receive in Cairo on Sunday his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. The two ministers will hold talks at Al-Tahrir Palace in the Egyptian capital, the statement added. Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, which came into effect on 21 May, ending 11 days of Israeli aggression against the enclave. The Israeli violence left more than 250 Palestinians dead, hundreds injured and homeless, while tens of residential and commercial buildings were shelled by Israeli air strikes. Egypt has taken several political and diplomatic steps since then to consolidate the ceasefire, including sending security delegations to the warring sides. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi received US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday in Cairo. The president affirmed to Blinken that the recent developments in the Palestinian territories reflect the urgent need to revive direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. A Palestinian man was shot and killed by Israeli troops on Friday during a protest against settlement expansion in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, health officials said. The protest erupted over a settlement outpost near the town of Beita - one of dozens dotting hilltops in the West Bank in what Palestinians see as an ongoing Israeli land grab. Several hundred Palestinians gathered on the hilltop. Dozens burned tires and threw stones at soldiers who fired live rounds, rubber bullets and tear gas. The Palestinian Health Ministry said a 26-year-old Palestinian man was killed by army fire and that five protesters were injured, including two by live fire. The Israeli military did not immediately issue a statement on the shooting. The clash came at a time of heightened tensions following an 11-day war between Israel and the Islamic group Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip. More than 250 people, the vast majority Palestinians, were killed in the war which ended a week ago. During the fighting, Gaza Palestinian factions fired more than 4,000 rockets at Israel, while Israel bombed hundreds of targets allegedly linked to militants in Gaza. *This story was edited by Ahram Online Short link: In an open letter published by more than 100 Associated Press employees, AP staffers from across the world demanded 'more clarity' from the company about why Emily Wilder, 22, was fired as a news associate in Phoenix only three weeks into her job. The Associated Press has been facing criticism for firing the young journalist over her pro-Palestinian activism in college. "We need to know that the AP would stand behind and provide resources to journalists who are the subject of smear campaigns and online harassment," the staffers said in the letter. The staffers said AP's lack of communication after Wilder's firing "gives us no confidence that any one of us couldnt be next, sacrificed without explanation." The employees noted that interest groups involved in targeting Wilder were "celebrating their victory and turning their sights on more AP journalists." "Once we decide to play this game on the terms of those acting in bad faith, we cant win," the letter said. In a viral Twitter thread last week, the Stanford College Republicans branded Wilder, who is Jewish, as an "anti-Israel agitator" by highlighting her old social media posts critical of Israel and her participation in pro-Palestinian groups and rallies during her time at Stanford. Wilder had started at the AP on 3 May as a news associate for the Western U.S., based in Phoenix. On Wednesday, just over two weeks later, the AP informed her that she was being terminated for violations of its social media policy that took place after she became an employee. In the days before her firing, Wilder had been targeted in conservative media for her pro-Palestinian rights activism while a student at Stanford University, where she graduated in 2020. AP spokeswoman Lauren Easton would not say what Wilder had written that violated the policy. Wilder said she was not given specifics. On Sunday, she tweeted: objectivity feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly take a claim. Using Israel but never Palestine, or war but not siege and occupation are political choices - yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased." AP prohibits employees from openly expressing their opinions on political matters and other public issues for fear that could damage the news organization's reputation for objectivity and jeopardize its many reporters around the world. In an interview Wilder said because I have an opinion about an issue that is deeply political and personal doesn't mean that I am incapable of fact-based, contextual and fair journalism, she said. Short link: Germany will start offering coronavirus jabs to children over the age of 12 from June 7, Chancellor Angela Merkel said Thursday. But she stressed that vaccination would not be compulsory and would have no bearing on whether children can attend school or go on holiday. The European Medicines Agency is expected to approve the Pfizer/BioNTech Covid jab for 12- to 15-year-olds on Friday. It is already authorised in the EU for those over 16. "Children and young people aged 12 and over will have the chance to book a vaccine appointment from June 7," Merkel said after talks with Germany's regional leaders. Those willing will be offered at least their first of two shots by the end of August, she added, roughly in time for the new school year. "The main message to parents is: there will be no compulsory vaccinations," Merkel told reporters. Schools would not require pupils to be vaccinated, she said. "And it would be totally wrong to think you can only go on holiday with a vaccinated child." Inoculating children is seen as a key step towards achieving herd immunity in the fight against the pandemic. Canada and the United States have already started vaccinating over-12s. But experts have also expressed reservations, pointing out that children rarely suffer from severe Covid and that vaccine supply is still tight. Merkel urged patience, saying not everyone would get an appointment for their child right away. 'Not over' Germany's STIKO vaccine regulator is due to give its recommendations for over -12s shortly after the Pfizer jab is approved. The agency has already signalled it intends to recommend the jab only for children in risk categories, such as those with underlying medical conditions. All over -12s will still be allowed to get jabbed regardless, similar to the AstraZeneca vaccine which is officially recommended only for people over 60 in Germany but is open to anyone who has consulted with their doctor. After a much-criticised slow start, the coronavirus inoculation campaign in Europe's top economy has kicked into high gear in recent weeks. More than 40 percent of adults have now had their first jab, and 15 percent are fully vaccinated. The accelerated pace, along with rapid testing and widespread shutdowns, has helped break a third coronavirus wave and allowed Germany to relax restrictions. "This is a great success," Merkel said. But she called on Germans not to ditch precautions such as social distancing, mask wearing, and airing out rooms. "The pandemic is not over." Short link: Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Friday the United States and India are united in trying to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic together and Washington is determined to help India with its coronavirus crisis. Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, who has spent the past week in the United States seeking help amid a devastating second wave of infections at home, told reporters while standing with Blinken at a State Department meetingthat India is grateful to Washington for strong support and solidarity. "In the earlier days of COVID, India was there for the United States - something we will never forget," Blinken said. "And now we want to make sure that we're there for India as well." Blinken said the partnership between the two countries is "vital," "strong" and "increasingly productive." "We're united in confronting COVID-19 together," Blinken said. He said the two countries were also united in addressing climate change, and were partnered together directly through the Quad -a four country groupthat also includes Japan and Australia -and through U.N.institutions "in dealing with many of the challenges we face in the region and around the world." India, the worlds second most-populous country, this month has recorded its highest COVID-19 death toll since the pandemic began last year. Only about 3% of Indias 1.3 billion people have been fully vaccinated, the lowest rate among the 10 countries with the most cases. Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has faced mounting criticism for its failure to secure COVID-19 vaccines for its people, even though India is one of the world's biggest producers of vaccines. Indian officials have said Jaishankar has been seeking supplies while in the United States. Jaishankar said India was appreciative to Washington for its "strong support and solidarity at a moment of great difficulty for us." U.S. Acting Assistant Secretary for South Asia Dean Thompson later told a briefing hosted by the State Department's Foreign Press Center that vaccine manufacturing, procurement and delivery were discussed with Jaishankar, but declined to give details. He said final decisions were still pending as to where up to 80 million vaccine doses President Joe Biden has promised to send abroad would go. Thomson said the U.S. Government, state governments, U.S. companies, and private citizens had provided over $500 million in COVID-19 relief supplies to India. He said the assistance had included redirecting a U.S. order of critical vaccine manufacturing supplies that would allow India to make over 20 million additional doses of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. India pledged last month to fast-track vaccine imports. Its insistence on local trials and a dispute over indemnity stalled discussions with U.S. firm Pfizer. India scrapped local trials for well-established foreign vaccines on Thursday and a government official said Pfizer shots could arrive by July. Jaishankar met with U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres in New York on Tuesday. Guterres' spokesman said they had a "very good discussion" on "COVID19, the issue of vaccines and also a number of other peace and security issues in general." U.S.-India ties have grown closer in recent years amid shared concerns about China's rise and they have increased cooperation through the Quad. U.S. President Joe Bidens Indo-Pacific policy coordinator, Kurt Campbell, said on Wednesday that the United States is looking to convene an in-person summit of leaders of the Quad in the fall, with a focus on infrastructure. The Quad held a first virtual summit in March and pledged to work closely on COVID-19 vaccines, climate and security. Short link: Russian President Vladimir Putin took Belarus strongman Alexander Lukashenko for a boat trip on Saturday as the close allies met for a second day and held "informal talks" amid the outcry after Minsk diverted a European plane. "Yesterday was the day of official talks and today it's informal," Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov told reporters of the meetings in Sotchi on the Black Sea. Putin and Lukashenko, had "taken advantage of the fine weather" and "gone on a boat trip", he added. The Telegram channel "Pool Pervogo", which runs an unofficial account of the Belarusian presidency, released a photo of the pair in casual wear on what appeared to be the boat. Saturday's talks had centred on economic cooperation and the Covid-19 pandemic, Peskov said. But they had also spoken of last Sunday's events when Belarus scrambled a military jet to divert a Ryanair plane and arrest journalist Roman Protasevich and his Russian girlfriend on board. "Lukashenko provided his counterpart detailed information about what happened on board the Ryanair aircraft," said Peskov. Moscow was "not indifferent to the fate" of the detained journalist's girlfriend, Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen, the spokesman went on. Following the forced diversion, the United States on Friday announced punitive measures targeting the regime while the European Union urged EU-based carriers to avoid Belarusian airspace and has promised fresh sanctions. According to the Kremlin, Lukashenko has not sought additional economic assistance from Moscow. The neighbours would work on "organising the air link" between the neighbours following EU restrictions. Russia and Belarus have formed a "union state" that links their economies and militaries but the Kremlin has been pushing for closer integration. Peskov reiterated Moscow's call for a "full inquiry" into the diversion of the flight after accusing the West of drawing "hasty conclusions". The head of Belarusian airline Belavia, Igor Tcherguinets, hit out Saturday at the EU restrictions which he termed a "complete violation of the foundations of democracy". "Innocent, Belavia is punished even before the opening of a proper inquiry. Cowardice." he posted on Facebook. The Media Freedom Coalition of 27 countries including the United States, Britain and several EU states called Saturday for Belarus to release 26-year-old anti-regime journalist and activist Protasevich. "The unprecedented and shocking action constitutes a full frontal attack on media freedom," the statement said. Short link: The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), a member of the World Bank Group (WBG), affirmed its commitment to support vital development sectors in Egypt, including energy and transportation, and to build on successful partnerships, especially Aswans Benban Solar Park project. This came during a virtual meeting held on Sunday between MIGA officials and Egypts Minister of International Cooperation Rania Al-Mashat to discuss strengthening partnerships with the private sector and developing the transportation and electricity sectors. The meeting was attended by a number of high-level officials, including Merza Hassan, executive director of the WBG; Ragui El-Etreby, alternate executive director at the WBG for Egypt and Arab Countries; Vijay Iyer, vice president and COO at the MIGA; and Sarvesh Suri, the director for operations at the MIGA. The MIGAs officials also said that they are looking forward to the possibility of expanding their partnerships in the field of wastewater management area in Egypt. For her part, Al-Mashat noted that providing investment guarantees to private sector companies across sectors such as communications, electricity, renewable energy, and transportation will aid in expanding the scope of participation of private sector companies in national development efforts. She added that Egypts government is committed to transform towards a green economy, explaining that Egypts integrated sustainable energy strategy 2035 is a live example of how the government is adamant to source new energy sources. The strategy has increased the electricity surplus and explored the use of hydrogen to generate electricity. Pushing towards a green reform, Egypts government issued $750 million in green bonds, the regions first sovereign offering of climate-friendly securities. These strides towards a sustainable business ecosystem represent important measures taken by Egypt in promoting green investments and in strengthening cooperation with MIGA, the minister expounded. Al-Mashat also presented the efforts made by the Ministry of International Cooperation in hosting multi-stakeholder platform meetings through which they bring together multilateral and bilateral development partners and relevant government entities to catalyze on private sector engagement in the sustainable development framework. Al-Mashat also pointed to a possible cooperation between the MIGA and the Federation of Egyptian Chambers of Commerce to stabilise the economic environment and draw more capital investments in Egypts development vision. Moreover, she discussed the possibility of strengthening cooperation through partnership with the private sector at the Ministry of Finance; this is in light of many successful projects, particularly the 6th of October City Dry Port project. The MIGA is a key partner in Egypts development efforts aiming to achieve economic recovery and sustainable growth, providing coverage worth $500 million of investments in the local market in the past few years. The MIGA was established in 1988 as a member of the WBG to encourage the flow of foreign direct investments into emerging economies to support economic growth, reduce poverty, and improve living conditions. In 2020, the Ministry of International Cooperation secured $9.8 billion in development financing, $6.7 billion of which was secured for financing sovereign projects and $3.19 billion was directed to support the private sector. Short link: Dalondo Moultrie is the assistant managing editor of the Seguin Gazette. You can e-mail him at dalondo.moultrie@seguingazette.com . Egypt said it will ban starting July the entry of any cargo arriving from abroad at its ports that is not registered in its new cargo information system, in a move aimed at facilitating customs procedures. In a statement on Saturday, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait urged importers and customs clearance officers to register in the Advance Cargo Information (ACI) to help in increasing the rate of clearance of procedures before the arrival of the cargos at ports. The registration will also assist in faster customs clearance of cargo after arrival at ports, he said. The new system will improve Egypts rating in global international indicators, stimulate investment climate, and maximize the competitiveness of Egyptian exports, he added. Around 400 leading importers have registered in the system since its pilot launch in April, Maait said, adding that no import orders for any cargo registered through the system have been rejected to date. Egypt began a trial rollout of the new system at ports in April under efforts to facilitate customs procedures and upgrade border security. Short link: Bibliotheca Alexandrina (Alexandria Library) launched a permanent exhibition dedicated to the late renowned Egyptian puppeteer Nagy Shaker (1932-2018), last Wednesday. The display was organised by the Bibliotheca Alexandrina's arts department in cooperation with Vera Lagator, Shaker's widow. The display showcases over 30 pieces of work focusing on Shaker's art of puppetry, costume and set designs, all covering two walls of a hall alongside a vitrine protecting three of his famous puppets, the characters from 'Shehab Al-Dins Donkey' (1962). The exhibition showcases Shaker's work on designs for 'Shafika and Metwali', a 1979 film directed by Ali Badrakhan based on a story by Salah Jahin, starring Souad Hosni and Ahmed Zaki. Posters are also put on display; the visitors can view the original film posters designed by Shaker, including one for Youssef Chahine's 'Alexandria...Why?' Among the display's highlights is the famous puppet Rihana whom Shaker loved as if she were his own daughter. Occupying a glass vitrine together with her father and a donkey, the puppets come from Shehab Al-Dins Donkey (1962), a puppet operetta co-directed by Shaker, and his second cooperation with the iconic duo; poet Salah Jaheen and musician Sayed Mekkawy. Although Rihana was closest to Shaker's heart, and is considered to be an Egyptian puppetry masterpiece, it was another puppet show that engraved its place in the Egyptian collective memory: the multi-award-winning play 'Al-Leila Al-Kebira' on which Shaker also cooperated with Jahin and Mekawy. The epitome of poverty and kindness, Rihana was created during Shaker's stay in Germany and may well have represented the artists longing for home. Shaker often expressed his pain for Rihana for being neglected at the Cairo puppet theatres storage rooms. While giving the three characters a permanent home at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, Cairo theatre was offered the exact copy of the puppets. Vera Lagator said months before the launch of the exhibition, "while the donkey and the father seem to be exactly the same, Rihana's real spirit is seen only in the original puppet." It is worth noting that while the primarily interest of the audiences is usually directed towards Shaker's work in puppetry for children, his creative wealth was much bigger. The profound creative reservoir of the jack-of-all-arts (and master of them all) also included painting, scenography designs, experimental films and an artistic approach to light. Many can still remember Shaker's last exhibition dedicated to light, titled 'Light Talk', held at the Faculty of Fine Arts in 2015. In 'Light Talk', the artist integrated his passion for light with knowledge of interior design; architecture; painting and colours. Lagator has been very active in keeping Shaker's memory alive since his passing on 18th August 2018. In this journey, she has been supported by Shakers lifelong friend Omneya Yehia, once his student at the Faculty of Fine Arts, Cairo, and now a professor at the same institution. "Omneya Yehia is the person who is makin an enormous effort to keep Nagy's legacy [alive]. In the name of Shaker and myself, I express our gratitude," Lagator wrote on her Facebook page following the launch. Prior to Alexandria acquiring Shaker's work, Lagator pointed to a few steps taken by some institutions to continue Shaker's legacy and present his work to the younger generations. "The Faculty of Fine Arts at Helwan University (located in Cairo's Zamalek), has named one of its largest ateliers after Nagy. At the same time, the American University in Cairo expressed their interest in creating an archive of his papers and some work too," she explained in last year's interview for Ahram Online. In fact it was in one of Shaker's exhibitions, at the AUC, that attracted attention of Bibliotheca Alexandrina's management which then led them to contacting Lagator regarding the work. The organisation of the permanent display is accompanied by the Bibliotheca's efforts to publish Shaker's book. The large volume was created by Shaker and Yehia. It focuses on the artist's memories and artwork. "It is a very big project, filled with dozens of coloured photos. I am not sure when it will be published but we are finally heading towards this direction," Lagator added. For more arts and culture news and updates, follow Ahram Online Arts and Culture on Twitter at @AhramOnlineArts and on Facebook at Ahram Online: Arts & Culture Short link: Egyptian Minister of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities Assem Al-Gazzar led a delegation to inspect work being done on Tanzanias Julius Nyerere Dam and its hydroelectric power station on Saturday, which is being built by a consortium of Egyptian companies including Arab Contractors and Al-Seweidy Electric. Al-Gazzar said the visit reflected Egypts interest in implementing this national project in Tanzania within the framework of the friendly relations between the two countries. It also reflects Egypts interest in developing the Tanzanian economy, given the role the dam will play in providing energy and controlling the flooding of the Rufiji River as well as preserving the environment. Al-Gazzar was accompanied by the Egyptian ambassador to Tanzania and officials from Egypt and Tanzania, as well as by officials from Arab Contractors and Al-Seweidy Electric. The dam is being constructed on the Rufiji River and is some 1,025 metres long at the summit and 131 metres high. It has a storage capacity of about 34 billion cubic metres of water and a hydroelectric power station with a capacity of 2,115 Megawatts. The power station will be the largest in Tanzania, and the energy generated will be transmitted through transmission lines at a voltage of 400 Kilovolts to a substation where it will be integrated into the national electricity grid. Al-Gazzar said that the most difficult part of the project had been completed, which was diverting the course of the river in preparation for the construction work. The project also includes the construction of four supplementary dams to form the reservoir, as well as two temporary dams in front and behind the main dam to help in draining and diverting water during the construction. There is a water spillway in the middle of the main dam, an emergency spillway, and two temporary bridges on the Rufiji River. Tanzanian Minister of Energy Midard Kalimani told the media that the project was very important for the Tanzanian economy and would increase growth rates even before it is completed next year. Kalimani said cooperation between Tanzania and Egypt was progressing well and hoped it would continue in the future. He added that the work was being done on schedule and that no problems had been encountered. Ahmed Al-Seweidy, CEO and managing director of Al-Seweidy Electric, said on Saturday in a television interview with Al-Arabiya that the contract for the Julius Nyerere Hydropower Station was the largest contract for Egyptian companies in Africa and had a total value of $2.9 billion fully financed by Tanzanias government. He added that the main aim of the dam was to generate electricity, in addition to other development goals, and that it should solve Tanzanias electricity shortages. The projects 2,115-Megawatt capacity would secure a clean power supply to more than 60 million Tanzanians, he said. It would support the countrys economy by creating jobs and developing industry that would benefit from the energy produced by the dam. Al-Gazzar said during his visit to Tanzania that President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi was following the course of the project, as well as others taking place outside Egypt being implemented by Egyptian companies. He added that the latter had the experience and expertise necessary to work outside Egypt. Ahmed Al-Assar, deputy chair of the board of Arab Contractors, said the dam project in Tanzania was a major challenge. It was being implemented in a rocky area, necessitating the removal of 2.5 million cubic metres of rock. The project dates back to August 2017 when Tanzania announced bids for the construction of the dam. In December 2018, the contract was assigned to Arab Contractors and Al-Seweidy Electric at a budgeted cost of $2.9 billion. In February 2019, the government of Tanzania handed over the construction site to the Egyptian companies selected to build the dam. Construction began in the third quarter of 2019, and the project is scheduled to be completed by 2022. The success achieved by the Arab Contractors and Al-Seweidy will encourage other companies to invest and work in African countries by implementing development projects, said Hassan Abdel-Aziz, head of the African Federation for Construction and Building Contractors. He added that Egyptian contracting companies were capable of carrying out projects outside the country, and especially in the African states. Egyptian companies working abroad will have a positive effect on the Egyptian economy and can be important sources of hard currency, Abdel-Aziz said. However, they still needed to overcome certain obstacles to work abroad more freely. These included financial burdens related to taxes and insurance. These should be looked at carefully, as should the setting up of Egyptian commercial representation offices abroad. President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has said on several occasions that Egypt is willing to help in efforts to develop the African countries, provided that these are environmentally sustainable. Dams built by Egypt abroad are not mega-dams under the international definition, and they do not exceed a storage capacity of 14 billion cubic metres of water. Dams exceeding this amount require an agreement that may be subject to international law. *A version of this article appears in print in the 27 May, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Short link: In the heavily populated Cairo district of Matareya stands an ancient sycamore, the Virgin Mary Tree, waiting for its official reopening. For decades, the site has attracted thousands of pilgrims because it is said to have offered shelter for the Holy Family during their stay in Egypt at the beginning of the Christian era. According to the fifth-century Coptic Pope Theophilus, Joseph possessed a wooden walking stick that the infant Jesus broke into pieces. Joseph then buried the pieces in Matareya, and when he placed his hand on the ground a spring burst out beside a sycamore tree that provided shade and respite for the Holy Family. The pieces of the buried stick then flourished and emanated a pleasing scent. Jesus drank from the spring and numerous balsam trees grew on the spot. The Arab historian Al-Maqrizi later described the Holy Familys journey in the mid-15th century and mentions that they had settled in Matareya by a stream. He recounts how when the Virgin Mary washed Jesuss clothes in the stream, the water flooded the nearby land where balsam trees began to grow. Al-Maqrizi adds that the balsam oil from the trees was prized for use in baptism. It is said that as the Virgin Mary, Joseph, and the child Jesus tried to escape from two brigands who were pursuing them, the trunk of the sycamore tree also miraculously opened its bark, allowing them to hide inside, escaping detection. The tree is said to have medicinal properties, which is why its branches have been depleted by pilgrims. Nearby, the spring where the Virgin Mary is said to have bathed Jesus is also part of the miracles of the place because of its healing water. Today, the site of the Virgin Mary Tree boasts archaeological and modern attractions including the well, the tree, and several stone water basins. A visitors centre relates the story of the Holy Familys journey in Egypt, and a small museum displays icons and other artefacts alongside photographs of other places visited by the Holy Family. This week, Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Khaled El-Enany visited the Virgin Mary Tree to follow up on the development work carried out at the tree and its surroundings. During the visit, he visited the trees open courtyard, the small museum, the visitor centre, and the roof. He asked for modifications to the design of the lighting to make it more consistent with the overall design of the site. He also asked for the installation of descriptive labels explaining the icons on display in the outer open courtyard, in addition to adding interactive screens to the visitors centre to engage visitors and introduce them to the route of the Holy Familys journey in Egypt and the restoration and development projects on related monuments. More artefacts should be on display at the small museum, he said, and there should be a booth to sell replicas. According to the development project for the site, a wooden fence now protects the tree, and the well has been cleaned and reopened, said Osama Talaat, head of the Islamic, Coptic, and Jewish Antiquities Sector at the Ministry of Antiquities. The roads around the archaeological area have been paved and upgraded, descriptive street signs erected, and all tourist services upgraded. *A version of this article appears in print in the 27 May, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Short link: Tickets for the 'Kings of the Sun' exhibition in Prague have sold out until June 6, shortly after it was reopened following the lifting of COVID-19 lockdown in the Czech capital. Ibrahim Mostafa, the Inspector escorting the exhibition, said the exhibition was visited by almost 10,000 people since its reopening in early May. The visitors are divided into six groups per day, each consisting between 65 to 66 people. The exhibition was officially inaugurated in August 2020, which coincided with the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the start of Czech archaeological work in Egypt. It was inaugurated by the minister of tourism and antiquities along with the Czech prime minister. On display, there are 90 artefacts unearthed during excavations conducted by the Czech mission in Abusir. Among the most valuable items on display is a basalt statue of King Raneferef, carved around the year 2460 BC, alongside other objects and statues from the Old Kingdom. Short link: For millennia and in most years the Nile has provided enough water to support the people who call its banks their home. But even the worlds longest river has its limits, and they are quickly approaching. Egypts fast-growing population, expected to hit 160 million by 2050, a 50 per cent increase over today, means that the country will soon need to look beyond the Nile for potable water. The question is: where will that water come from? One possible answer being explored by the government of Egypt in partnership with our teams at the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is desalination. By extracting the salt from the virtually limitless supply of seawater off its coasts, Egypt could lessen the pressure on the Nile and help ward off what some experts call a looming water crisis. Egypt already has a modest desalination programme. But to fill 160 million glasses with water the country will need to massively scale up the industry, a feat that those of us in the development finance industry firmly believe could be eased with the active participation of the private sector. Thanks to their innovation, management expertise, and financial muscle, private desalination companies have the potential to transform the industry, turning Egypt into a desalination powerhouse. This is a model that we already see working today. In 2019, Egypt unveiled its flagship Benban Solar Park, the worlds largest solar installation. Today, the park is lowering the price of energy, strengthening Egypts energy mix, and adding more local resources. It will help to avoid millions of tons of greenhouse-gas emissions. This is a win for Egypts burgeoning renewable energy industry. For this reason, we were heartened to see Egypts government launch a programme to build 47 desalination plants last year, including four initial facilities that will be constructed through public-private partnerships (PPPs). There are two main ways to pry salt from water. In thermal desalination, seawater is boiled, and the vapour is condensed, leaving behind water that is free of most salts. The other method, known as reverse osmosis, passes the seawater through a membrane, weeding out the salt. Both techniques are costly and energy-intensive, which is why large-scale desalination has largely been restricted to wealthy, energy-rich countries, including those in the Gulf. Desalination can be cheaper than transporting water over huge distances. But in many communities, the water from desalination plants will likely be more expensive than that from the Nile. That is why public-private partnerships are key. PPPs will foster competition and breed efficiencies, over time helping to lower the price of desalinated water for ordinary Egyptians. They will also relieve the fiscal pressure on the government, allowing it to devote funding to other essential sectors, like healthcare and education. Over the past six years, Egypt has increased its desalination capacity 10-fold to 800,000 cubic metres of water per day. The four new plants alone, which are to be built in Al-Hamam, Koseir, Marsa Alam and Safaga, will pump out up to 390,000 additional cubic metres of potable water daily. At the IFC and EBRD, we are proud to say that we will be advising the government of Egypt to structure and tender the public-private partnerships for the first four desalination plants, which can serve as pilots before rolling out a broader programme. Our experience in other countries has shown that well-prepared projects awarded through competition result in the lowest prices and best services. However, for Egypts desalination programme to be a success it needs more than just the participation of private companies. The country will need to upgrade many of its municipal water systems; right now, too much water is lost through leaky pipes. Moreover, because desalination plants are energy-intensive, the country would be well-served to link them with renewable energy facilities. Given Egypts abundance of sunshine and strong winds, that would be a cheaper and more eco-friendly approach than relying on electricity generated from fossil fuels. Finally, the country should consider reforming its water tariffs, bringing them closer in line with costs. The IFC and EBRD are committed to supporting the government to address these reforms and help transform the industry. Egypt is not the only country facing a water crisis. Half the world experiences water scarcity at some point in an average year, and one in four major cities is water stressed. But Egypt remains especially vulnerable: 95 per cent of the countrys water comes from the Nile, and virtually all of that originates from outside Egypts borders. There is also the wildcard that is climate change. We dont yet know how planetary warming will affect the rains that supply the Nile. But the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) warns that any reduction in water will have drastic impacts. Desalination alone is not a panacea for Egypts looming water crisis. The country will still need to reuse more wastewater, better manage the industrial demand for water, and make irrigation, which in many places still involves flooding fields, far more efficient. But if done through well-structured PPPs, desalination can be a hedge against climate change, spur private investment in the country, and help lay the foundations for a more sustainable future. *Beatrice Maser is director for the Middle East and North Africa at the International Finance Corporation (IFC). *Heike Harmgart is managing director for the Southern and Eastern Mediterranean at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD). *A version of this article appears in print in the 27 May, 2021 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly Short link: Their beaming smiles say a lot about the passion of the three university girls who chose to put effort into challenging deep-rooted norms in order to see change on the horizon. Zeina El-Salamony, Farida Rashwan and Neamat El-Touby are three students in their final year at Egypts MSA University, who just launched the Raise them well campaign as part of their graduation project. The campaign has already taken off on various social media platforms, and will be distributed via print outlets soon, El-Salamony told Ahram Online. The students are using their campaign to battle the problem of gender-based differences in parenting. They say their aim is to help parents learn about the mistakes they make, their long-term effects, and how to prevent them. The team explained to Ahramonline that they were prompted to initiate the campaign after observing how since the beginning of time, the differences in raising boys and girls has been prominent and obvious to many girls and women of this day and age. Providing a historical overview, the students explain that mothers, grandmother, and great-grandmothers discuss the differences in the level of liberty and freedom that they had in contrast to the permission and independence that their brothers had. Although the topic has raised many eyebrows over the years, it has been all talk and no action," El Salamony says. In turn, the students launched the campaign to raise awareness about the prejudice girls face as they grow, and the psychological turmoil that is created. "As this happens, boys are affected too. Their personality is embedded with a sense of false superiority, which causes them to belittle females. When we view many of our traditions and culture, the differences in the upbringing in terms of sexes is remarkable. Arab culture raises girls to be inferior in society, while her male opposite is raised to be superior," El Salamony adds. The students say that a clear example is the way parents discipline the child. In many cases, boys are pressured to be violent in order to "be a man", while girls are pushed to be quiet, polite, and obedient. Describing the impact of these differences in parenting, they explain that on many occasions, girls are accustomed to being undermined, which leads to diminished self-esteem and sense of self-worth. With this campaign, the main goal is to overturn this mentality as much as possible and convince parents to raise their children as equals, El Salamony concludes. Short link: Egypt amends Civil Service Law: More for state employees Gamal Essam El-Din, Saturday 29 May 2021 Parliament has passed a bill to increase allowances for state employees The House of Representatives, the lower house of Egypts parliament, approved amendments to Civil Service Law 81/2016 on Sunday, with the objective of increasing allowances and incentives granted to state employees. A report prepared by parliaments Labour Committee and Budget Committee clarified that the new eight-article bill reflects the states commitment to achieving economic and social stability for the families of state employees. This bill also comes at a time of difficult economic conditions, as the Covid-19 pandemic has hard hit many sectors of society, particularly state employees, the report said. Article 1 of the bill states that the periodical bonus granted to state employees, addressed by Civil Service Law 81/2016, will be increased to LE75 per month. For state employees not covered by the law, Article 2 indicates that they will be granted a special bonus at a rate of 13 per cent of basic salary and at a minimum of LE75 per month as of the beginning of July 2021. Article 3 of the new bill states that an additional incentive for state employees and workers, whether or not covered by the law, will be increased by between LE225 and LE400, depending on the employees rank. Workers in the third category will get an additional incentive of LE225, those in the second category will get LE275, those in the first category will get LE325, and those in the excellent category will get LE400, said the report. Article 5 states that workers in the public sector as well as public-enterprise companies will be given the same amounts. Minister of Finance Mohamed Maait said the new increases in bonuses and incentives would come into effect as of 1 July. He explained that the law will add a bonus of LE75 plus an incentive of LE175 to make a minimum increase of LE250 for each state employee, indicating that the increases would cost the state budget LE25 billion. State employees who move to the New Administrative Capital will also be given a bonus at a cost of LE1.5 billion, Maait said. Parliamentary Speaker Hanafi Gibali said state employees would benefit from the new bonus and incentive increases even when they reach retirement age. Parliaments approval of the bill came after the cabinet approved in its weekly meeting on 19 May the new basic salary hikes increasing minimum wages for the lowest category from LE2,000 to LE2,400. The last minimum wage increase for the public sector was introduced in 2019, when President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi raised it to LE2,000 from LE1,200. The bill implements a set of presidential decisions in March to boost the incomes of millions of Egyptians through increases in the minimum wage for public-sector employees, pensions, and civil servant salaries. *A version of this article appears in print in the 27 May, 2021 edition ofAl-Ahram Weekly https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/412916.aspx Egypt's Senate to discuss state's 2021/22 socio-economic development plan Sunday, Monday Gamal Essam El-Din, , Saturday 29 May 2021 The Senate is also scheduled to open a debate on new bill aimed at establishing a fund to spend on medical emergency units Egypt's Senate, the consultative upper house of parliament, will meet on Sunday and Monday to discuss a report prepared by its Financial and Economic Committee on the state's 2021/22 socio-economic development plan. Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Said is expected at the debate to answer questions and give comments. At a meeting with the Senates Financial and Economic Affairs Committee that took place two weeks ago, El-Said said the new development plan targets EGP 1.3 trillion in overall investments, of which EGP 358 billion is to be spent on 12,000 projects throughout Egypt. The Senate's Financial and Economic Committee's report clarified that most of the investment projects in the government's 2021/22 development plan will focus on both the education and healthcare sectors. The new socio-economic development plan's investments in the health sector alone will reach EGP 47.5 billion in 2021-22 in order to help the state and medical institutions contain the COVID-19 crisis, the report read. The report also indicated that the volume of investment earmarked for the education sector in the new development plan is estimated at EGP 56 billion. These investments will focus on building more schools, raising the quality of education and improving teaching methods, the report said, adding that "the investments in the health and education sectors also aim to establish universities in most governorates as well as mitigate the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on socio-economic conditions of poor citizens." Minister El-Said also said that the new development plan aims to raise the economic growth rate to 5.4 percent in 2021/22, up from the 2.6 percent in the current fiscal year. "The COVID-19 crisis had led economic growth in Egypt to drop from 3.6 percent in 2019-20 to 2.8 percent in 2020-21, but we hope that we will be able to bounce back to the pre-COVID-19 level of 2018/19, achieving an economic growth rate of 5.4 per cent in fiscal year 2021/22, El-Said added. She also said that the above figures were in line with estimates made by international lending institutions. While the International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecasts an economic growth rate of 5.5 percent in Egypt in 2021-22, up from 2.8 percent in the current fiscal year, the World Bank expects a rate of 5.8 percent. Fitch Ratings, an international ratings agency, and UK magazine the Economist put economic growth in Egypt next year at six percent and 4.1 percent, respectively. All of these estimates are close to each other and they all say that Egypt will be able to ride out the damaging effects of the COVID-19 crisis to a large extent and achieve reasonable positive economic growth, El-Said said. The spike in economic growth, according to the minister, is expected to be boosted by a number of factors. We expect remittances from Egyptian workers abroad to grow by seven percent or from $28 billion in the current fiscal year to $30 billion in the new 2021-22 year, not to mention the fact that the tourism sector will begin recuperating to generate $6 billion in 2021-22, up from an expected $3 billion this year, El-Said said. She also added that Suez Canal transit fees are also expected to reach US$6 billion, foreign investment rates are forecast to increase to $7.4 billion in 2021-22, and non-petroleum commodity exports are targeted to increase by 10 percent to hit a record of $19.5 billion. The Senate is also scheduled this week to discuss a new bill on setting up a fund to be spent on medical emergency units. A report by the Senate's Health and Population Committee said that the fund is designed to be a tool that will be spent on certain kinds of medical services, ones that are not usually covered by the state budget. "The Fund will be devoted to spending on patients receiving treatment at emergency and intensive care units; buying drugs and medicine, and providing health care services to citizens who are on waiting lists," said the report. The 'Fund on Containing Medical Emergency Cases' will be headquartered in Cairo and affiliated with the Prime Minister. https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/413135.aspx Egypts FM to receive Israeli counterpart in Cairo Sunday Ahram Online, , Saturday 29 May 2021 The two ministers will hold talks at Al-Tahrir Palace in the Egyptian capital Egypts Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry will receive in Cairo on Sunday his Israeli counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi, the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement. The two ministers will hold talks at Al-Tahrir Palace in the Egyptian capital, the statement added. Egypt brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip, which came into effect on 21 May, ending 11 days of Israeli aggression against the enclave. The Israeli violence left more than 250 Palestinians dead, hundreds injured and homeless, while tens of residential and commercial buildings were shelled by Israeli air strikes. Egypt has taken several political and diplomatic steps since then to consolidate the ceasefire, including sending security delegations to the warring sides. President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi received US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday in Cairo. The president affirmed to Blinken that the recent developments in the Palestinian territories reflect the urgent need to revive direct Palestinian-Israeli peace talks. https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/413148.aspx Islamist raid in Niger leaves three police dead: Officials AFP, , Saturday 29 May 2021 Two gendarmes and a policeman died in a jihadist raid against the major town in southeast Niger, near the Nigeria border, local authorities said Two gendarmes and a policeman died in a jihadist raid against the major town in southeast Niger, near the Nigeria border, local authorities said Saturday. Machinegun-toting rebels of the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP), a breakaway group from Boko Haram, stormed Diffa aboard 15 vehicles, a statement from the authorities said. "The provisional toll is two gendarmes killed, one policeman killed and two gendarmes wounded," the statement said. Three rebel bodies were found after soldiers pushed back the attack, destroying seven vehicles, it said. The army recovered rocket launchers, a mortar and a large amount of ammunition as well as mobile phones, drugs and syringes, according to the statement. A senior local official had told AFP on Friday that Boko Haram elements attacked Diffa. He said the fighting had sparked "movements of panic" among the population of 200,000 but that calm had returned. Diffa has been attacked several times since 2015. In May 2020 intense fighting broke out between the army and jihadists near the Doutchi bridge that links Niger with Nigeria, south of the city. The region is also home to 300,000 refugees and displaced people who have fled jihadist fighters. Fighting with Boko Haram and ISWAP jihadists has killed more than 36,000 people since 2009 and driven almost two million people from their homes in northeastern Nigeria. In western regions of Niger near the borders with Mali and Burkina Faso, authorities face jihadists from the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara (ISGS). https://english.ahram.org.eg/News/413152.aspx Bengaluru: Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Sunday hit out at Rahul Gandhi for accusing the BJP of spreading hatred and violence in the country, saying it was his party which is dousing the fire lit by the Congress. Addressing a party rally here, Singh posed several questions to Rahul Gandhi who made the charge against the BJP in his first speech after formally taking over as Congress President yesterday. "Congress has got a new president. I congratulate him. He says that BJP is responsible for the unrest in the country. I want to ask him who is behind the communal tensions, terrorism, Naxalism and unrest in Kashmir? "Who is behind the dynastic politics in the country? Let Rahul Gandhi know that it is BJP which is trying to douse the fire lit by Congress," Singh said. He also said the whole world knew that the BJP alone knows how to run the nation. "The Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh election results (tomorrow) will prove it again. Already exit polls have predicted that we are going to form the government in these two states," the senior BJP leader said. The BJP rally was organised as part of "Parivarthan Yatra" with the party leaders crisscrossing the state to "expose the misdeeds" of the Siddaramaiah government ahead of the Assembly polls, which are due early next year. Gandhi yesterday hit out at the BJP, accusing it of spreading hatred and violence in the country, and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taking India back to the medieval times. In his first speech to party workers after formally assuming charge as the Congress president, he had said, "The Congress's respect for all Indians extends to even the BJP. We do not fight hate with hate. They crush voice, we allow the most vulnerable to sing. They defame, we respect and defend." "Today, the BJP people are trying to spread fire and violence in the entire country and only the force of lovable Congress workers and leaders can stop them. They break, we unite. They ignite fire, we douse it," he had said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Three Indian officials of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad were timely recalled after they revealed that Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has set up a honeytrap to extract critical and sensitive information from them. According to media reports, an investigation has been started and no classified document has been passed on to ISI as their bid was foiled well in time. The reports further claimed, a honeytrap was laid for the officials where several attempts were made to allure them by women. Due to security measures, the identity of the Indian officials could not revealed. Sources familier with the matter told The Times of India that the attempt was to seduce and later film the officials in compromising position. However, the officials realised early and approached senior Indian authorities seeking help to get them out of the situation. They were asked to return to Delhi for further investigation. According to the initial examination, none of the three Indian officials was found guilty and was co-operating in investigation. These Indian officials worked with the language sections and were responsible for the translation of official documents. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Indian Air Force bid farewell to one its longest-serving attack helicopters, the MI-8, at a phasing out ceremony held on Sunday evening at the Air Force Station, Yelahanka in Bengaluru. The MI-8s served the Indian Air Force for 45 years after their induction way back in 1972. Air Chief Marshall (Retd) Fali Homi Major flew the last MI-8 mission along with CO 112HU for 10 minutes at the height of 1.5 kms and speed of 120 kms. Former Air Chief Fali Homi Major described Mi 8 as one the finest helicopter which served as the backbone of IAFs attacks prowess. The first Mi-8 helicopter arrived in India in the year 1971 at Bombay. In 1972 MI-8 helicopters were formally inducted into the Indian Air Force. From 1972 to 1998, the IAF inducted 107 Mi-8 helicopters, rechristened as the PRATAP. Mi 8 helicopter's showcased their Ariel warfare capabilities by playing a major role in Operation Meghdoot in the Siachen Glacier and Operation Pawan in Sri Lanka added Air Marshal SRK Nair, Air Officer Commanding-in-Chief, Training Command, IAF. Mi-8 helicopters had also taken part in various Humanitarian and Disaster Relief operations across the country. This helicopter was also used for flying VIPs/VVIP's for over decades. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Chandigarh: Ruling Congress on Sunday swept the three municipal corporations of Amritsar, Jalandhar and Patiala while the opposition SAD-BJP alleged misuse of official machinery. The Congress virtually swept the wards in the three important corporations as results were out by late evening, prompting celebrations in the ruling camp. The results come as a boost for the Amarinder Singh led government in the state. The opposition alliance, however, alleged gross poll code violations and demanded countermanding of the Patiala corporation elections. Polling was also held in 29 municipal councils and nagar panchayats today, amid tight security arrangements. Among the three municipal corporations, Patiala registered the highest poll percentage of over 62.22 per cent followed by Jalandhar at 57.2 and Amritsar at 51 per cent while the voting percentage in the municipal councils and nagar panchayats ranged between 60-86 per cent. In Patiala, the Congress won 58 wards while the opposition failed to open account. In Jalandhar, 66 wards fell into the Congress's kitty followed by 8 which went to BJP and four to their ally SAD. In Amritsar, Congress won 69 while 12 went to the SAD-BJP alliance. The voting started at 8 AM and continued till 4 PM, a spokesman of the state election commission said here. Tight security arrangements were made to ensure fair and free polling, which by and large remained peaceful barring a stray incident, officials said. The main political outfits in the state: ruling Congress, SAD-BJP and AAP, were contesting the polls on their party symbols. A total of 8,000 election staff and 15,500 police personnel were deployed at the polling stations. The Election Commission had ordered videography of 103 hyper-sensitive wards. Polling was held for 222 wards out of the 225 wards of the three municipal corporations and 327 wards of the 29 municipal councils and nagar panchayats. In 90 wards, the candidates had earlier won unopposed, Of these, three were in the Patiala Municipal Corporation and 87 in municipal councils and the nagar panchayats. Nearly 900 candidates were in fray for the elections to the three municipal corporations - Amritsar, Patiala and Jalandhar. The civic polls in the state were held nine months after the state assembly elections after which the Congress stormed to power in the state. Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh hailed the poll results as a "clear vindication of the Congress policies and a resounding defeat of the opposition's deceitful propaganda." For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Lok Sabha on Monday witnessed noisy scenes amid sloganeering from both sides of the House, leading to adjournment of the proceedings. As BJP members raised slogans hailing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the polling trends, the opposition raked up the remarks made by him against former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. As soon as Speaker Sumitra Mahajan completed obituary references, BJP members raised slogans like "Narendra Modi zindabad" and "BJP zindabad" (hail Modi, hail BJP). BJP's Kirit Somaiya was heard taking a dig at the Congress over poll result trends coming in from Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh. The opposition raised the issue of remarks made by Modi against Singh in Gujarat. Some other opposition members raised the issue of floods in Odisha. Here are the highlights: #12:25 PM Lok Sabha adjourned for the day following Opposition's uproar #12:20 PM Lok Sabha adjourned for the day #11:40 AM Rajya Sabha adjourned for the day after Opposition continues to raise slogans in the House #11:39 AM Lok Sabha adjourned till 12 noon #11:18 AM Rajya Sabha adjourned as well #11:15 AM Lok Sabha adjourned within minutes #11:12 AM Prime Minister Narendra Modi flashes victory sign as he arrives in Parliament #WATCH: Prime Minister Narendra Modi flashes victory sign as he arrives at the Parliament. #ElectionResults pic.twitter.com/Q4PRNjMpoK ANI (@ANI) December 18, 2017 As the din continued, Mahajan adjourned the House till noon, about ten minutes after the House had met for the day. As soon as the House met, the Speaker referred to the death of people in a boat accident in Andhra Pradesh, Okchi cyclone, earthquakes in Mexico and Iran-Iraq border and terror attacks in various parts of the world, including the US, the UK, Afghanistan and Egypt. The sloganeering started soon after the House stood in silence in the memory of the departed souls. (With inputs from PTI) For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Karachi/Islamabad: Heavily-armed terrorists attacked a church during a midday service on Sunday in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, killing at least eight people and wounding 44 others including children and women. The attack on the Bethel Memorial Church on Zarghoon road in Balochistan capital came just over a week before Christmas. Balochistan Home Minister Mir Sarfaraz Bugti said that at least two suicide bombers were involved in the attack on the church. "One attacker was killed at the gate by police after an intense gunfight while the other wearing suicide vest entered the church and detonated his explosives," he said. Bugti said that the terrorists had weapons and it seems they wanted to take hostages inside the church. "The security forces foiled their plan," he added. Balochistan's Inspector General Moazzam Ansari said there were 400 worshippers inside the church when it was attacked. Ansari said that police assigned to the church's security reacted in a timely manner and averted a much larger tragedy. "Security forces have cleared the church," he added. Dr Wasim Baig of Civil Hospital said that eight people were killed while 44 others injured, including children and women. He said that nine injured are in critical condition. According to the church's Facebook page, it had organized different programmes all throughout December to mark Christmas, and was holding a Sunday School Christmas Programme at the time of the attack. No group took responsibility for the attack but the Taliban militants targeted minorities including Christians in the past. The Bethel Memorial Church has been the target of a terrorist attack in the past. Meanwhile, there were conflicting reports about the number of attackers. Ansari said that three militants were involved. He said one was killed by police and the second was able to detonate explosives. He said there are reports that a third militant fled from the scene and police was searching for him. Earlier, DIG police Abadul Razzaq Cheema said two more attackers were involved but they ran away after one of the attackers was gunned down by police. Following the attack, an emergency was declared in all hospitals across Quetta. Pakistan Interior Minister Ahsan Iqbal condemned the attack, which came a day after Pakistan observed the third anniversary of the Peshawar school attack of 2014 which killed at least 150 people, mostly students. Foreign Office Spokesperson Muhammad Faisal condemned the terror attack, saying Pakistans resolve against terrorism cannot be deterred by these cowardly acts of terrorists. Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf Chairman Imran Khan also strongly condemned the terror attack. "The govt must ensure special protection for churches as Christmas approaches. My prayers go to the victims' families and for the speedy recovery of the injured," Khan tweeted. On March 15, 2015, the Taliban suicide bombers attacked two churches in Lahore?s Youhanabad neighborhood, killing 15 people and wounding 70 others. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: As all eyes are on the Gujarat and Himachal election results, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Shahnawaz Hussain on Monday said that he was confident that the party will secure a massive win in both the states. "There is no doubt that the people in both Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh have blessed PM Narendra Modi and the BJP. The entire nation was eagerly waiting for these elections," said Shahnawaz Hussain. He said that the BJP was heading towards victory. "Today we are heading towards a massive victory thanks to the work our government has done in Gujarat for 22 years, the trust people have on PM Modi and the hard work of Amit Shah and party workers," he added. ALSO READ | Gujarat, Himachal election results: BJP, Congress supporters perform 'havan' GUJARAT ASSEMBLY ELECTION RESULTS 2017 | FULL COVERAGE HIMCHAL PRADESH ASSEMBLY ELECTION RESULTS 2017 | FULL COVERAGE New Delhi: Soon after taking charge as the Congress president, Rahul Gandhi on Saturday launched a frontal attack on the BJP, accusing it of spreading hatred and alleged that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was taking India back to medieval times. Gandhi said the BJP is fighting for itself, while the Congress is fighting for everyone in the country. The Congress chief said he wanted the party to be an instrument of dialogue with people from all corners of the country, all religions, all ethnicities, all ages and gender and for our dialogue to be led by love and affection. I want the Congress party to become an instrument for dialogue between Indian people, from all corners of our great country, all religions, all ethnicities, all ages and gender and for our dialogue to be led by love and affection. pic.twitter.com/VhjFDz2qht Office of RG (@OfficeOfRG) December 16, 2017 He lamented that politics was being used today to crush the people and not lift them up. The BJP is spreading hatred and communalism... they break, while we unite. They ignite fire, we douse it, Gandhi said. The Congress took India into 21st century, while the prime minister today is taking us backwards to medieval past when people are butchered because of who they are, beaten for what they believe and killed for what they eat, he alleged. Suggested Read | At son Rahuls elevation ceremony, Sonia Gandhis last speech as Congress President This ugly violence shames us in the world, he said in his first address to party men after taking over as the Congress president. 47-year-old Rahul Gandhi took charge of the Congress in the presence of his mother and outgoing president Sonia Gandhi, sister Priyanka Gandhi-Vadra, her husband Robert Vadra, former prime minister Manmohan Singh and other senior party leaders. Reaching out to the youth, he said as it is stated that the Congress is a grand old party we will make it a grand old and young party... we will fight all hatred with love. Rahul Gandhi said the Congress party is like a family to him and vowed to take it forward. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Buoyed by Rahul Gandhi's spirited campaign in Gujarat, the Congress said on Sunday that the exit poll results will be reversed and it would emerge victorious in the state. Upbeat on the eve of the election results, Congress leaders today hailed Gandhi's Gujarat campaign as a "winner", saying his issue-based strategy would bring positive results for the party tomorrow when counting will take place. "We are confident of victory in Gujarat. The manner in which Rahul Gandhi spearheaded the campaign and used issue-based politics, he put the BJP on the mat forcing them to resort to non-issues for public sympathy," Congress general secretary in charge of Gujarat Ashok Gehlot told PTI. Gehlot, the former Rajasthan Chief Minister who was sent to Gujarat to lift party's morale ahead of the high stakes election, appeared confident of a Congress win in the state. Asked whether the Gujarat election result would be the first test of Gandhi, who assumed charge as Congress President this Saturday, Gehlot said, "It is not the issue of whether he is on the test or not. The issue is the way he came in and assumed leadership of the Gujarat campaign forcing state government's accountability and cornering the PM (Narendra Modi) and BJP chief on development issues." "They had no answers to Rahul Gandhi's questions and were forced to rake Gujarati pride. In this lay Rahul Gandhi's victory. He has already proved himself," he said. The BJP has been in power in Gujarat for 22 years. Gandhi single-handedly steered the Congress campaign in the state this time around. Another Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia, former Congress legislature party leader in Gujarat, said the state was sure to "fall in Rahul Gandhi's lap" after the aggressive and successful development-based canvassing he launched. "The BJP was so cornered by Rahul Gandhi's insistence on answers about Gujarat's development or lack of it that the PM and BJP President Amit Shah had no option but to peddle non-issues. Gujarat is sure to land in Congress kitty after Rahul Gandhi's spirited show there," he said. Modhwadia noted that all exit poll results predicting a BJP win will stand reversed when actual results come tomorrow. Gandhi worked on new political strategies in Gujarat to take on the BJP in prime minister Modi's home state, including visiting a series of temples in an apparent attempt to project the Congress in a soft Hindutva mould. Another strategy was the understanding it reached with dominant and emerging caste leaders in Gujarat, including Hardik Patel of the Patidars, Jignesh Mewani of the Dalits and Alpesh Thakor of the OBCs. Results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh elections are being widely considered as the first test of Gandhi, the new Congress president. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The CPI(M) on Sunday accused that the Congress was helping the BJP-RSS by carrying out campaigns against the Left party in Kerala. Stating that the saffron combine was running a "hate- filled" campaign against her party, CPI(M) politburo member Brinda Karat asked Congress president Rahul Gandhi to spell out his party's stand on Kerala. Gandhi had earlier asked the CPI(M), which is heading the ruling Left Democratic Front (LDF) coalition in Kerala, to come clean on its fight against the BJP and the "fascist forces" in the country. It was very important that the Left party, which was in power in Kerala, made its position clear on fighting the BJP at the national level, the Congress president had said in Thiruvananthapuram last week. Seeking to counter him, Karat said the BJP-RSS was running a "toxic and hate-filled, non-stop campaign against the CPI-M and killing the cadre of the Left party" in the southern state. "Why? Because they (the BJP) see us as the main barrier against them (for their expansion in Kerala). Where does the Congress stand. They have been helping the BJP-RSS by their anti-CPI(M) campaigns, which are their main focus," she told PTI. "Let Mr Gandhi concentrate on stopping his party leaders from defecting to the BJP as they are doing in almost every state," Karat said. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Berlin : Germany should appoint an anti-Semitism commissioner to counter growing hate speech against Jews and Israel from both its home-grown far right and the immigrant community, the interior minister said today. Thomas de Maiziere spoke days after protesters in Berlin burnt Israeli flags to protest the US decision to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. Every criminal act motivated by anti-Semitism is one too many and a shame for our country, de Maiziere, the caretaker minister since inconclusive September elections, told the Bild am Sonntag newspaper. Anti-Semitism must never again take hold in Germany, he said, pointing to a rise of derogatory remarks, inappropriate jokes and discriminatory behaviour against our Jewish citizens. He condemned the recent flag-burnings as the symbolic destruction of a countrys right to exist, while Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen also said such expressions of hate were unbearable. De Maiziere said when Germany has a new government which Chancellor Angela Merkels conservatives and the centre-left Social Democrats are now discussingit should appoint an anti-Semitism commissioner. Merkels spokesman Steffen Seibert said last week that, although Berlin opposed the move by US President Donald Trump, it strongly condemned protests where hatred of Israel and Jews was expressed. On Friday, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier also declared himself shocked and shamed by the incidents and warned that anti-Semitism was still showing its evil face in a variety of ways. Steinmeier stressed Germanys responsibility to learn the lessons of two world wars, the lessons of the Holocaust, the responsibility for the security of Israel, the rejection of all forms of racism and anti-Semitism. This was non-negotiable for everyone who lives in Germany, no matter where and when they were born, he added. Justice Minister Heiko Maas demanded that lessons on the Holocaust be included in integration courses that teach German language and civics to asylum seekers and immigrants. He wrote on Spiegel Online that many come from countries where powerful elites intentionally fuel hatred of Jews and Israel, and where anti-Semitism is practiced almost as a matter of course. Maas said that all immigrants needed to understand that we fight against the anti-Semitism of the neo-Nazis and we will equally never tolerate an anti-Semitism imported by immigrants. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Beijing: Indias exports to China registered a sharp increase of over 53 per cent year-on-year to reach USD 1.24 billion in October, but the trade deficit continued to mount, according to data released by the customs. The trade deficit for October stood at USD 3.86 billion. Despite the strains in the bilateral ties, India-China trade increased by 13.56 per cent year-on-year to reach USD 6.33 billion in October. Significantly, Indias exports to China increased by 53.04 percent year-on-year to reach USD 1.24 billion though the trade deficit continued to grow. The Indian exports to China around the same time last year was USD 0.81 billion, data showed. Chinas exports to India also continued to grow to register a year-on-year growth of 6.87 per cent to reach USD 5.09 billion. The Indian exports were boosted by natural pearls, precious stones and precious metals, organic chemicals, copper and articles, cotton, including yarn and woven fabric, ores, slag, and ash. Since this year, India's exports which were on the decline for a number of years started showing an increase. In the first seven months, the exports registered 40.69 per cent year-on-year to reach USD 10.60 billion. However, the trade deficit expanded to USD 44.51 billion in the first seven months despite a surge in Indian exports as imports from China continued to increase. Last year, the trade deficit climbed to USD 52 billion in little over USD 70 billion trade. India has been pressing China to open up its pharmaceutical and IT software sectors to expand the base of Indian exports. For all the Latest Business News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: A major day in country's political landscape shall unfold on Monday as counting of votes for the results of Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh assembly polls takes place to decide who forms the government in these two states. While the BJP is aiming to hold on to its saffron bastion, Gujarat, for the sixth straight term, the Congress is aiming to stage a major upset after being in the opposition for over two decades. As per the exit polls, the BJP is heading towards a landslide victory in Himachal Pradesh thanks to the anti-incumbency against the ruling Congress. As per political pundits, the Gujarat Assembly election is being considered as a prestige battle between Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his home state and newly elected Congress president Rahul Gandhi. GUJARAT ASSEMBLY POLLS Voting ended in 93 Assembly seats in North and Central Gujarat in the second and final phase of polling on 14 December amid reports of malfunctioning EVMs, clashes among party members and accusations of Model Code of Conduct (MCC) violations. In Gujarat, counting of votes will be held at 37 centres across 37 districts of the state. An average of 68.41 percent polling was recorded in the two-phase of assembly elections, held on December 9 and December 14. Political analysts believe the economic reforms that were undertaken by the BJP govt under PM Modi mainly demonetization and GST haven't gone down too well with a section of the voters who voted for the BJP in the name of development. Chief Electoral Officer, Pushpender Rajput said three- tier security arrangements have been made at all counting centres. He said wire mesh barricading has been done at counting centers and there was a separate entry passage for counting staff and counting agents. Videography and CCTV coverage will be done in all counting centres. In 2002, the BJP won 127 seats and got 44.81 per cent vote share, the highest ever while the Congress won 53 seats and got 35.28 per cent votes. In 2007, the BJP won 117 seats and 49 per cent vote share while the Congress won 59 seats with 39.63 per cent votes. In 2012, the BJP got 115 seats with 48.30 per cent while the Congress won 61 seats with 40.59 per cent. But, the party is confident of winning the most crucial election in political terms. HIMACHAL PRADESH ASSEMBLY POLLS Counting will also take place in Himachal Pradesh to decide the fate 337 candidates contesting for 68 assembly seats at 42 counting centers. The hill stat witnessed a record 75.28 per cent turnout and political pundits have predicted a BJP victory. If one goes by history, Himachal has always witnessed a change in government after every election and going by the trend, this time it is the turn of the BJP which is upbeat after exit poll results. A turnout of 75.28 percent was recorded in the north Indian state when the state went to poll on November 9. New Delhi: Close to 14 crore out of about 30 crore Permanent Account Numbers (PANs) have so far been linked to the national digital ID Aadhaar, according to a top Government official. The situation on linking of bank accounts to the biometric identifier is better, with 70 per cent of estimated over 100 crore accounts already been seeded, UIDAI CEO Ajay Bhushan Pandey told. The Supreme Court last week extended the deadline for linking Aadhaar to all services including new bank accounts and mobile phone connections, to March 31, 2018. Earlier this month, the deadline for linking PAN with Aadhaar too had been extended by three months to March 31, 2018. Asked about how many PANs have been linked to Aadhaar, Pandey said that nearly 14 crore of about 30 crore PANs have been linked so far. Regarding bank accounts that have been seeded with Aadhaar, he said the number stood at about 70 crore as against an estimated 100 crore bank accounts. "We will continue to work on simplifying the Aadhaar linking process. We have asked all the banks to provide Aadhaar fingerprint and iris scanner in branches (stipulated 10 per cent branches), so that people don't face any difficulty," Pandey said. The government is pushing for linking a host of services such as credit cards, cell phones and bank accounts to Aadhaar to weed out ghost holders and check tax evasion. With 119 crore residents already enrolled for the Aadhaar -- a unique 12-digit number backed by fingerprints, iris scans and certain demographic details -- the programme today is the world's largest biometric database. He said Aadhaar is saving the government crores of rupees by better targeting beneficiaries of subsidized food and cash transfers. After the deadline extension, the PAN, which helps track tax filings, bank accounts, credit cards, insurance policies, mutual funds, pension plans and social welfare benefits will have to be linked to Aadhaar by March 31, 2018. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: The Central Government has recently taken a major decision to provide assistance to Indian women working abroad (May 26, 2021). Under this, the government is going to set up one stop centres for working women in 9 countries in the coming days with the objective of tackling anti-women violence. Under this, one stop centres each will be set up in Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, UAE, Australia, Canada and Singapore. On the other hand, 2 such one stop centres will be opened in Saudi Arabia. In addition, 300 One Stop Centres will be set up across India. The One Stop Centre being opened abroad will be supported by the Ministry of Women and Child Development and the Ministry of External Affairs. One Stop Centre means a system where all assistance is given under one roof to any woman affected by violence. Here women are given a home-like environment so that they can share their problems well and solve their problems. The Government of India had implemented the One Stop Centre Scheme, 1st April, 2015 to provide assistance to women suffering from violence, mainly known as 'Sakhi'. The scheme has benefited women in many states of the country. Under this, helpline numbers have been issued to help women in each state and district to protect them from any kind of violence. CM Yogi speaks to newly elected gram pradhans: 'Work with spirit of my village corona-free' Mamata Banerjee has insulted PM Modi: CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan Bhopal: CBI arrested four including FCI divisional manager in bribery case Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli on Friday urged all political parties to form an all-party government and hold fresh elections, as he tried to justify the controversial dissolution of the House of Representatives twice by the President, saying a "functionless" Parliament turned out to be the main source of instability in the country. "Going for an election can never be a regressive act," Oli said in a televised address to the nation, a week after the House was dissolved by President Bidya Devi Bhandari. The president dissolved the 275- member House of Representatives on Saturday for the second time in five months and announced snap elections on November 12 and November 19 on the advice of Prime Minister Oli, who is heading a minority government. Oli, 69, called upon the political parties to form an all-party government and hold elections, My Republica.com portal quoted him as saying. Addressing the nation as the chief executive of the country, Oli took most of his time to criticise the moves taken by the Opposition parties and his fellow party leaders. He blamed the Opposition parties and dissident faction of the ruling CPN-UML for the dissolution of Parliament. He blamed his party's rival group for blocking his attempts to consolidate democracy and to take the nation to the path of socio-economic transformation. Oxford University launches new research center to fight new pandemics German President Steinmeier considers second term in office ICG ships Vaibhav & Vajra continue to battle fire onboard container ship MV X-Press Pearl Following the outbreak of the second wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Ministry of Finance, on the recommendation of the Ministry of Health, has been allocating a huge budget for setting up oxygen plants, ICUs, and HDUs in the district hospitals. Altogether, the central, provincial, district hospitals and local hospitals have already received a budget of Rs 5.75 billion recently. Interestingly, the size of the allocations has decided based on political lobbying. Home districts of top and powerful leaders have grabbed bigger shares than the districts where there is a huge crisis. Leaders of both ruling and opposition sides, lawmakers and heads of constitutional bodies have taken the budget to their district hospitals. Meanwhile, at the local level, there has been a cyber war between the cadres on giving credit to their leaders for bringing the budget. Competition for credit on social media On the one hand, supporters and cadres are busy in the race of thanking their respective leaders including former prime ministers, former speakers, ministers, ex-ministers and MPs of the dissolved House of Representatives for bringing the budget to the hospitals. A letter written by former prime minister Jhala Nath Khanal asking for budget for a hospital in his home district. For instance, on Monday, the Ministry of Finance, through the Ministry of Health, agreed to spend Rs. 7.5 million to set up an oxygen plant at the Ilam District Hospital. Stating that the budget was managed by former prime minister Jhala Nath Khanal, some cadres posted a letter written by Khanal to the Ministry of Health on social media. Some claimed that it was because of the initiative of the former speaker of the House of Representatives, Subas Chandra Nembang. However, both Khanal and Nembang are silent on this matter. On the other hand, some leaders are busy crediting themselves for bringing in the budget. For example, UML leader Sher Bahadur Tamang indirectly credits himself for allocating Rs 7.5 million for the Sindhupalchok District Hospital. He says he had written a letter to the Ministry of Finance on May 8 to lobby for the allocation. Letters written by Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota and UML leader Sher Bahadur Tamang asking for budget for a hospital in their home district. Meanwhile, Shreedhar Neupane, the press advisor to Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota, wrote on social media on Monday, According to a letter from the Ministry of Health and Population, the budget has been approved by the Ministry of Finance for setting up an oxygen plant at Sindhupalchok District Hospital, Chautara, on the special initiative from Honourable Speaker Agni Prasad Sapkota. Now, the establishment work will move forward immediately. Sapkota had written a letter to the Ministry of Finance on May 20 for the budget. Not only Neupane, many CPN- Maoist Centre cadres have resorted to social media to thank the speaker. Similarly, many leaders including UML leader Krishna Kumar Shrestha from Tanahun, former MP Mahesh Basnet, Minister for Foreign Affairs Pradeep Gyawali, Minister for Agriculture and Livestock Development Padma Aryal and many others are vying for the credit on social media after receiving budget allocations for the hospitals of their respective home districts. Next to them are their cadres and supporters competing, thanking and praising their respective leaders. A letter written by former minister Mani Thapa lobbying for budget for his home districts hospital, Pyuthan. More the power, more the amount of budget Looking at the list of hospitals that the Ministry of Finance has allocated budget for the purchase and installation of medical equipment, it is found that the more the power and reach of the leader is, the more the budget is allocated for his/her home districts hospital. Here is the instance. The hospital in Dadeldhura, the home district of former prime minister and Nepali Congress President Sher Bahadur Deuba, has received Rs 68 million. Similarly, the district hospitals of the ministers and the powerful members of the ruling parties have also received a lot of budgets. For example, Syangja (the home district of Padma Aryal), Doti (the home district of Environment Minister Prem Ale), Arghakhanchi (the home district of former energy minister Top Bahadur Rayamajhi), Nawalparasi (the home district of Health Minister Hridayesh Tripathi and Tehruthum (the birthplace of the prime minister) have received Rs 15 million each. A letter written by Minister Padma Aryal lobbying for budget for her home districts hospital, Syangja. Likewise, district hospitals in UML leaders Bhim Rawals home district Achham, Yogesh Bhattarais Taplejung, Bishnu Rijals Dailekh and CPN-Maoist Centre leader Janardan Sharmas Rukum West are on the list of Rs 7.5 million recipients. Solukhumbu, Bajura, Bajhang and Mahottari district hospitals have also received a budget of Rs 7.5 million. Not only is there a huge margin in the amount of budget allocated to the districts hospitals of leaders and ministers as per their power and reach, but also the hospitals in these districts have been receiving additional budgets. Charikot Hospital in Dolakha, home district of Minister of Communication, Parbat Gurung, which has received a budget of Rs 7.5 million, has received an additional Rs 8 million for five HDU beds at Charikot Hospital. Likewise, Jiri Hospital in Dolakha has also received Rs 8 million for HDU beds. Doti, the home district of Minster Ale, and Sankhuwasabha, the home district of Prem Kumar Rai, the chief commissioner of the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority, are also on the list of hospitals that have received a budget of Rs 8 million for HDU beds. Similarly, the Gulmi Hospital in the home district of Minister Gyawali has twice received Rs 10 million for an oxygen plant and Rs 20 million for five ICU beds. No budget for small partys stronghold Recently, the Bagmati provincial government allocated Rs 90 million to install and operate oxygen plants in Suryabinayak, Changunarayan and Madhyapur Thimi municipalities of the Bhaktapur district. There are four municipalities in the smallest district of Nepal in terms of area. Whereas the provincial government has allocated funds for three local governments covering the suburban areas of the district, the Bhaktapur municipality, the local government covering the core town of Bhaktapur, has not received any money from the federal and provincial governments of late. The reason is simplewhile mayors of the three municipalities belong to the ruling CPN-UML, Bhaktapur municipality is led by the Nepal Workers and Peasants Party. The partys provincial lawmaker Surendra Gosain has recently protested the discriminatory allocation in front of Chief Minister Dor Mani Paudel. Meanwhile, the federal government allocated Rs 1.41 billion to 41 hospitals of the country after the Nepali edition of Onlinekhabar criticised the discrimination earlier this week. Multiple decision-makers Meanwhile, the Ministry of Health claims allocations have been made to the hospitals only after a purely technical assessment considering the pandemic. But, as the recommendations of some ministries can be amended even by the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Health is not only the responsible body for all the decisions. A letter written by Minister Pradeep Gyawali lobbying for budget for the hospital in his home district, Gulmi. The Health Ministry Assistant Spokesperson Dr Sameer Adhikari explains the budget has been given to the hospitals considering the locations, patient pressure, bed occupancy and other crucial factors. We also need to see if the infrastructure we provide is used, he adds. When asked about the pressure from the powerful leaders for allocating a budget in their home districts, he replies, We are in Nepal. We dont have to say what happens here, but the ministry makes budget recommendations only after evaluating the technical aspects based on sufficient evidence. Budget Biden's first budget ups cyber and tech spending; gives feds a 2.7% pay raise Optional caption goes here. Optional caption goes here. Optional caption goes here. Optional caption goes here. The Biden administration released its $6 trillion fiscal year 2022 budget proposal on Friday, including $1.5 trillion in discretionary spending across federal agencies. The discretionary request seeks $769 billion on non-defense spending and $753 billion in defense programs. Of that, $715 billion is tabbed for the Department of Defense essentially flat from 2021. The proposal includes $58.4 billion in IT spending across civilian agencies. The aggregate figure for DOD IT spending was not broken out in the documents, but should eventually be posted to the federal IT dashboard. The FY2021 figure was $37.7 billion. On the workforce side, the Biden administration is proposing a 2.7% pay raise for civilian feds. That matches the pay raise being funded in the DOD budget request. IT spending The $58.4 million in civilian spending represents a 2.4% increase over 2021 estimates. Some big gainers include the Treasury Department with an $860 million increase over 2021, Department of Veteran's Affairs, with a $734 million proposed increase over 2021 and the Department of Homeland Security with a $852 million proposed increase. The few decliners include NASA and the Department of Commerce. The budget also includes a $500 million plus-up for the Technology Modernization Fund, which would make the total capitalization of TMF about $1.7 billion. The administration has been touting the revolving fund of no-year money as a vehicle for agencies to modernize legacy IT and shore up cybersecurity. The proposal includes a request for $100 million for Department of Labor to develop state unemployment insurance IT solutions "that can be deployed in states to ensure timely and equitable access to benefits." The proposal says this effort will "[set] the stage for broad changes to modernize the program." The Biden administration features plans to accelerate cloud adoption, noting how the use of such technologies "positioned federal agencies to convert to maximum telework during the COVID-19 pandemic" while "rapidly and proficiently enabling the continuity of their missions." The tech budget represents "a real commitment from the Biden administration that IT is fundamental to delivering on the Build Back Better agenda," Matthew Cornelius, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation, told FCW. "The increases at almost all agencies is an attempt to rectify the constant cuts that agencies saw in the previous administration." Workforce The administration is proposing a 2.7% average pay increase across the civilian federal workforce, although the proposal doesn't parse how locality pay would be factored into that. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the proposed pay raise as "great progress towards the goal of competitive compensation for our federal workforce." He also called on his colleagues to pursue his longtime goal of passing his bill that would give feds a 3.2% raise. The request also gives insight into Biden's federal workforce plans more broadly. "After decades of under-investment in a modern-day workforce, a failure to partner with labor unions, and ongoing, unwarranted attacks on its independence, the civil service is in need of repair and rebuilding," it reads. Biden's request calls on agencies covered by the Chief Human Capital Officers Act to participate in a new centralized, government-wide hiring assessment support team set to improve hiring outcomes, especially for technical and otherwise difficult-to-fill positions. It also calls on these agencies to "create and fund talent teams at the component levels." OPM is going to provide agencies with comprehensive guidance on hiring flexibilities and competitive hiring practices to "facilitate a talent surge into Government." This will also include regulations that facilitate bringing back former feds by allowing agencies to rehire them "at a grade commensurate with the experience achieved while working outside of Government, rather than limiting such employees to the grade level where they were when they left." The budget would require agencies to revive their internship programs and include internships in workforce planning. The number of paid internships in government dropped from over 60,000 in 2010 to 4,000 in 2020, the budget says. Biden is requesting a total of $197 million for the Office of Personnel Management, an increase of $37 million over last year's funding. The budget also calls for $46 million for the Merit Systems Protection Board, a quasi-judicial agency that hears appeals from feds on agency personnel actions. That's an increase of over $1.5 million. The Federal Labor Relations Authority, the agency that governs labor-management relations in the federal government, is slated for a little over $29.2 million, as compared to $26.6 million last year. Cybersecurity The White House is seeking $9.8 billion for cybersecurity funding to secure federal civilian agencies. The budget also includes an additional $500 million for the Technology Modernization Fund and $750 million to respond from the hacking campaign against SolarWinds. The Biden budget cites the SolarWinds hack multiple times as justification for its cybersecurity-related requests, although it does not appear to mention the president's recent executive order. Civilian departments and agencies collectively are seeking $1.2 billion more for cybersecurity-related investments than they did in FY2021. Year over year, DHS is aiming for the largest agency increase, requesting roughly $300 million more than last year. By Hams Rabah and Dominic Evans AMMAN, May 25 (Reuters) - When Syrian refugee Lara Shahin fled Damascus at the start of Syria's conflict she thought her family would be back within months to help rebuild the country. Nine years later, an election dismissed as a sham by refugees across the region is set to grant President Bashar al-Assad another seven years in power - further shredding her hopes of ever going home. Like millions of refugees in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey she has watched as Assad clung to power in the face of an uprising and devastating civil war which has left Syria economically ruined and too dangerous for them to return. "At the beginning when I used to talk about the future of Syria I used to say us young people are the future, we will go back and rebuild," she told Reuters in the Jordanian capital Amman which has been her home since 2012. "But bit by bit I started losing hope... When we first came we got the keys of our home here and we were thinking in two or three months we will go back to Syria. I am not lying if I say that this feeling is now shattered." The 39-year-old entrepreneur runs a handicraft and cosmetics business supporting more than 40 women workers in Jordan, which has become "like my first country, not my second". Her despair at returning is echoed by others in Middle East states which host 5.6 million U.N.-registered Syrian refugees. Fear of retribution as long as Assad stays in power, as well as the dire economic conditions inside Syria, mean there is little prospect of seeing their country soon. Many refugees dismiss Wednesday's election as rubber stamping another term in office for Assad, who succeeded his father in 2000 and has extended the family's 51-year hold on power, despite the 2011 uprising and civil war. "This is a farce, fooling nations and people," said Abu Alaa, a 43-year-old farmer and father of 10 children from the Syrian city of Homs, living in a tent in northern Lebanon. Story continues "Someone who destroyed a whole country and fragmented it and made millions flee and destroyed Syria," he said, referring to Assad. "He has no longer a place in our hearts - why should we vote for him? He is a killer." LOST LEGITIMACY "WITH FIRST BULLET" On Islambol Street in the heart of old Istanbul, one of many districts where the refugees have gathered, most coffee shops, jewellers, restaurants and butchers are run by Syrians. Few believe they will leave a city which hosts half a million Syrian refugees - just a fraction of the 3.6 million living across Turkey - or that conditions in Syria will improve. "It's obvious that these are not impartial elections. He will win, with or without elections," said Hussam, a 36-year-old from the city of Homs, selling coffee, nuts and sweets. "In Syria everything's getting worse. There's no bread, no food, everything's expensive. If Bashar al-Assad remains, things will get worse." Forty-year-old Ahmed, who like most refugees asked only to be identified by his first name, left Damascus in 2012 after fighting erupted in outlying parts of the capital. But worse was to come. "My sister died in the chemical weapons massacre, and I had a brother who was martyred in Jobar in Damascus," he said in the fruit juice stall he runs. "They destroyed us for 10 years... they can't be elected." With his eldest child now studying at a Turkish school in Istanbul, he said authorities had welcomed Syrian refugees. But conditions were not easy and few would choose to stay if there were a chance to return home safely. "The regime lost its legitimacy when the first bullet was fired on the first person who died in Syria," said a 35-year-old university graduate who left his job in graphic design in Damascus and now sells sweets in Islambol Street. "If there were a democratic election, if someone was elected in a clean election by the people, not this theatre we are seeing - I would be the first one back," he said. (Reporting by Hams Rabah in Amman, Walid Saleh in Tripoli and Dominic Evans in Istanbul, Editing by Alexandra Hudson) CrediMax, a pioneering credit card issuer and acquirer in Bahrain, has announced the launch of its latest campaign with JCB, the leading international payment brand in Japan, offering CrediMax JCB cardholders the opportunity to get cashback amounts. Under this scheme, the cardholders will have the opportunity to get 10% cashback on an accumulated amount of BD50 spent monthly when paying by contactless option on CrediMax Point of Sale (POS) terminals. The campaign will run till August 19 and is applicable for all CrediMax JCB cardholders. CrediMax CEO Ahmed A. Seyadi said: "We are delighted to partner with JCB on this campaign to enhance our cardholders payment experience." "The campaign allows cardholders the opportunity to get rewarded on their daily purchases while enjoying safe and secure payment experience through the contactless payment option," he stated. Yoshiki Kaneko, the President & COO of JCB international, said: "We are extremely excited to launch this campaign for JCB cardholders in Bahrain. CrediMax was the first JCB issuer in the Middle East region and continues to be a valued partner." "The launching of Contactless payments for CrediMax JCB cardholders is another step toward ensuring they can continue to make payments in quick, easy and secure manner, especially in the times of this pandemic," he added.-TradeArabia News Service RADNOR, PA / ACCESSWIRE / May 29, 2021 / The law firm of Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP announces that the firm has filed a securities fraud class action against Emergent BioSolutions Inc. (NYSE:EBS) ("Emergent") on behalf investors who purchased or acquired Emergent common stock between April 24, 2020, and April 16, 2021, inclusive (the "Class Period"). This action, captioned Roth v. Emergent BioSolutions Inc., et al., Case No. 1:21-cv-01189-PX (the "Roth Action"), was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Maryland (Southern Division). To view a copy of the Roth Action complaint, please click here. Investor Deadline Reminder: For additional information or to learn how to participate in this litigation, please contact Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP: James Maro, Esq. (484) 270-1453 or Adrienne Bell, Esq. (484) 270-1435; toll free at (844) 887-9500; via e-mail atinfo@ktmc.com; or visit: https://www.ktmc.com/emergent-biosolutions-class-action-lawsuit?utm_source=PR&utm_medium=Link&utm_campaign=emergent. Emergent is a specialty biopharmaceutical company that develops vaccines and antibody therapeutics for infectious diseases. Emergent signed a series of deals with Johnson & Johnson ("J&J") and AstraZeneca worth a combined $876 million to provide contract development and manufacturing organization services to produce the companies' COVID-19 vaccine candidates. The Class Period begins on April 24, 2020, the day after Emergent announced that it had entered into an agreement with J&J to manufacture J&J's COVID-19 vaccine candidate at Emergent's Baltimore facility. Under the deal, Emergent would provide drug substance manufacturing services and reserve large-scale manufacturing capacity for J&J. On April 19, 2021, Emergent revealed that, "at the request of the FDA, Emergent agreed not to initiate the manufacturing of any new material at its Bayview facility and to quarantine existing material manufactured at the Bayview facility pending completion of the [FDA's] inspection and remediation of any resulting findings." Following this news, the price of Emergent's common stock declined $9.77 per share, or more than 12%, from a close of $77.64 per share on April 16, 2021, to close at $67.87 per share on April 19, 2021. Story continues The Roth Action alleges that, throughout the Class Period, the defendants failed to disclose that: (1) Emergent's Baltimore facility had a history of manufacturing issues increasing the likelihood for massive contaminations; (2) the Baltimore facility had received a series of FDA citations as a result of these contamination risks and quality control issues; (3) Emergent had been forced to discard millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccines after workers at the facility deviated from manufacturing standards; and (4) as a result of the foregoing, the defendants' public statements about Emergent's ability and capacity to mass manufacture multiple COVID-19 vaccines at its Baltimore facility were materially false and/or misleading and/or lacked a reasonable basis. Emergent investors may, no later than June 18, 2021 , seek to be appointed as a lead plaintiff representative of the class through Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP or other counsel, or may choose to do nothing and remain an absent class member. A lead plaintiff is a representative party who acts on behalf of all class members in directing the litigation. In order to be appointed as a lead plaintiff, the Court must determine that the class member's claim is typical of the claims of other class members, and that the class member will adequately represent the class. Your ability to share in any recovery is not affected by the decision of whether or not to serve as a lead plaintiff. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP prosecutes class actions in state and federal courts throughout the country involving securities fraud, breaches of fiduciary duties and other violations of state and federal law. Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP is a driving force behind corporate governance reform, and has recovered billions of dollars on behalf of institutional and individual investors from the United States and around the world. The firm represents investors, consumers and whistleblowers (private citizens who report fraudulent practices against the government and share in the recovery of government dollars). For more information about Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP, please visit www.ktmc.com. CONTACT: Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP James Maro, Jr., Esq. Adrienne Bell, Esq. 280 King of Prussia Road Radnor, PA 19087 (844) 887-9500 info@ktmc.com SOURCE: Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check, LLP View source version on accesswire.com: https://www.accesswire.com/649402/Deadline-Alert-Kessler-Topaz-Meltzer-Check-LLP-Reminds-Investors-of-Deadline-in-Securities-Fraud-Class-Action-Lawsuit-Filed-Against-Emergent-BioSolutions-Inc In the world of energy, size matters. Therefore, large producers and consumers can influence global markets while smaller players have to acquiesce to developments. One outlier has been the Netherlands, which historically is a 'natural gas country' due to its sizeable reserves. The medium-sized European country's virtual trading hub Titel Transfer Facility, or TTF, is quickly becoming the global benchmark for natural gas. It is an immense asset for a country with an economy the size of the state of Florida. TTF was established in 2003 by the countrys TSO Gasunie to promote gas trading in the region and improve liquidity. Back then the UKs NBP trading hub exceeded TTF by far in importance and size. Ever since trading has expanded massively making the Dutch hub a benchmark for global trade. According to Gordon Bennett, managing director for utility markets at ICE Futures Europe, traders for the TTF benchmark have increased by 164 percent since 2016. TTF is becoming a global gas marker, it is the Brent of the gas market. A lot more participants are coming from outside Europe. Several characteristics of the Dutch market have boosted TTFs rise. The Netherlands enormous natural gas reserves have made it the largest producer in the EU. Without a sizeable domestic market, liquidity is hard to find. The country's production capacity has been so large since the 1970s that major volumes have been exported to Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy. The foundations of TTFs success were laid decades ago when vast pipeline infrastructure was laid in northwest Europe. Therefore, the hub does not only serve the Netherlands but also neighboring countries. Domestic reserves are dwindling in Europe which further increases the necessity for imports. Historically the majority of the EUs foreign gas has come from Russia, Norway, and Algeria. However, the proliferation of LNG has been decisive in boosting trade. The shale revolution in the U.S. and increased LNG exports have helped bolster TTF as Europe is one of two primary buyers markets, together with East Asia. Story continues The LNG revolution and TTF's rise are closely linked. The majority of international trades used to be done through long-term oil-indexed pricing. The expanding LNG industry has provided the global natural gas market a level of flexibility and liquidity that wasn't possible through more fixed pipeline infrastructure. According to Patrick Barouki, director of gas trading and origination at German utility Uniper SE, "TTF is the global gas market. Downstream liquidity is essential, showing enough use of gas, a variety of players, enabling people who are just speculating to take positions with confidence. TTF checks all the boxes." With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic nearing through advances in vaccination across Europe, natural gas demand will increase further. In the past couple of months, futures trading concerning Dutch gas on ICE has increased 24 percent and doubled in the past 2 years. The Japan-Korea Marker, or JKM, the benchmark for LNG prices in East Asia has also seen an increase in liquidity over the last few years. However, there isnt nearly as much trade as TTF. Despite the recent jumps in prices in Asia, such as in January of this year, Asia-based traders have used the Dutch benchmark as an indicator for key sport rates. This includes China and India, besides Japan and South Korea. With ever-decreasing domestic reserves and rising geopolitical tensions, expect Europeans to take measures to strengthen their energy security. This means that LNG flows can be preferred over natural gas from traditional supplier Russia which overwhelmingly uses pipelines and fixed rates. The growing use of flexible pricing and liquidity will bolster TTF even further which will cement its function as a global benchmark. By Vanand Meliksetian for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Read this article on OilPrice.com NEW YORK, May 28, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market by Type, Application, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025 The polyisobutylene (PIB) market is poised to grow by 349.26 th MT during 2021-2025, progressing at a CAGR of 5% during the forecast period. View our exclusive report on market scenarios, estimates, the impact of lockdown, and customer behaviour. Download FREE Sample Report! The report on the polyisobutylene (PIB) market provides a holistic update, market size and forecast, trends, growth drivers, and challenges, as well as vendor analysis. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current global market scenario and the overall market environment. The market is driven by the increase in demand from the automotive industry and increasing demand from other diversified applications. The polyisobutylene (PIB) market analysis includes type, application and geography segments. This study identifies the growing demand for PIB-based fuel additives as one of the prime reasons driving the polyisobutylene (PIB) market growth during the next few years. This report presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources by an analysis of key parameters. The polyisobutylene (PIB) market covers the following areas: Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Sizing Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Forecast Polyisobutylene (PIB) Market Analysis Companies Mentioned BASF SE Braskem SA Chevron Corp. Daelim Co. Ltd. DuPont de Nemours Inc. Evonik Industries AG INEOS Group Holdings SA LyondellBasell Industries NV The Lubrizol Corp. TPC Group Related Reports on Materials include: Alcohol Ethoxylates Market by Application and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025: The alcohol ethoxylates market has the potential to grow by USD 1.16 billion during 2021-2025, according to Technavio. Download PDF Sample Advanced Polymer Composites Market by Fiber Type, End-user, and Geography - Forecast and Analysis 2021-2025: The advanced polymer composites market has the potential to grow by USD 5.25 billion during 2021-2025, according to Technavio. Download PDF Sample Story continues Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary Market Landscape Market ecosystem Market characteristics Value chain analysis Market Sizing Market definition Market segment analysis Market size 2020 Market outlook: Forecast for 2020 - 2025 Five Forces Analysis Five forces summary Bargaining power of buyers Bargaining power of suppliers Threat of new entrants Threat of substitutes Threat of rivalry Market condition Market Segmentation by Application Market segments Comparison by Application Additives - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Automotive - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Others - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Market opportunity by Application Market Segmentation by Type Market segments Comparison by Type HR-PIB - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Enhanced PIB - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Market opportunity by Type Customer landscape Geographic Landscape Geographic segmentation Geographic comparison Europe - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 North America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 APAC - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 South America - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 MEA - Market size and forecast 2020-2025 Key leading countries Market opportunity by geography Market drivers Market challenges Market trends Vendor Landscape Vendor landscape Landscape disruption Competitive scenario Vendor Analysis Vendors covered Market positioning of vendors BASF SE Braskem SA Chevron Corp. Daelim Co. Ltd. DuPont de Nemours Inc. Evonik Industries AG INEOS Group Holdings SA LyondellBasell Industries NV The Lubrizol Corp. TPC Group Appendix Scope of the report Currency conversion rates for US$ Research methodology List of abbreviations Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Technavio's in-depth research has direct and indirect COVID-19 impacted market research reports. Register for a free trial today and gain instant access to 17,000+ market research reports. Technavio's SUBSCRIPTION platform About Us Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focuses on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios. Contact Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media & Marketing Executive US: +1 844 364 1100 UK: +44 203 893 3200 Email: media@technavio.com Website: www.technavio.com/ Report: https://www.technavio.com/report/polyisobutylene-pib-market-industry-analysis Technavio (PRNewsfoto/Technavio) Cision View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/global-polyisobutylene-pib-market--basf-se-braskem-sa-chevron-corp-among-others-to-contribute-to-the-market-growth-301301513.html SOURCE Technavio Information technology and software development firm Globant bought bitcoin in the quarter ended March 31, according to a company filing made this week with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission With the purchase, the Luxembourg-based firm becomes the latest company to hold cryptocurrency on its balance sheet, following in the footsteps of firms like MicroStrategy and Tesla. At March 31, when the price of a single bitcoin was roughly around $58,000, Globants holdings of the leading cryptocurrency was worth $500,000. Bitcoin is currently trading at about $34,000. A spokesman declined to comment on what the company paid for each bitcoin. CORRECTION (May 29, 22:00 UTC): Corrects amount of bitcoin purchased. UPDATE (May 30, 00:06 UTC): Adds company spokesman declining comment. Related Stories 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. OTTAWA, ON, May 29, 2021 /CNW/ - As part of Paramedic Services Week, I would like to take this opportunity to thank Canada's paramedical practitioners for the important work they do each and everyday, connecting patients with a broad range of health and community services. In particular this year I would like to recognize their efforts as part of the largest mass vaccination campaign in Canada's history. In communities across the country, paramedic services are working in partnership with local public health to increase access to COVID-19 vaccines. In some cases this has meant administering vaccines right in the homes of people who are unable to attend vaccination clinics due to medical or mobility issues. These are the kind of efforts that can make all the difference in ensuring that everyone who is eligible has the opportunity to be vaccinated to protect themselves against COVID-19 and be a part of the collective effort to build up immunity across our communities. Canada's National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) continues to review new evidence on COVID-19 vaccines. Most recently, there has been encouraging real-world evidence that COVID-19 vaccines, primarily mRNA vaccines, have been well tolerated in populations not included in the original clinical trials. NACI has reviewed this new data, as well as COVID-19 risks for these populations and has updated their guidance so that recommendations for people who are immunosuppressed, have an autoimmune condition, or who are pregnant or breastfeeding are now the same as the recommendations for the general adult population. NACI has also reviewed up-to-date information on vaccine effectiveness from Canada and the United Kingdom, where extended intervals are being used. While NACI continues to recommend that jurisdictions maximize the number of individuals benefiting from the first dose of a COVID-19 vaccine by extending the interval between doses up to four months, in the context of increasing COVID-19 vaccine supply in Canada, the Committee recommends that second doses be offered as soon as possible. NACI recommends that priority for second doses should be given to those at highest risk of severe illness and death from COVID-19 disease after or at the same time as first doses are offered to all remaining eligible populations. NACI continues to closely monitor the effectiveness of extending dose intervals and will update recommendations as needed. Story continues 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. Since the start of the pandemic, there have been 1,374,275 cases of COVID-19 and 25,440 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 a large majority of Canadians remain susceptible to COVID-19. Multiple safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines, with unique advantages, are authorised for use in Canada. As vaccine delivery continues to ramp up at an accelerated pace, there is increasing optimism that widespread and lasting immunity can be achieved through COVID-19 vaccination. As of yesterday, provinces and territories have administered over 22.8 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines. Benefits are being seen among groups targeted for priority vaccination and as vaccine coverage increases across Canada, we can expect further benefits to protect more Canadians over the coming weeks and months. We are seeing strong and steady declines in disease trends, with 39,903 active cases in Canada, showing that measures put in place are working to suppress the third wave. The latest epidemiology and modelling update show that nationally, we expect the third wave to continue declining, as long as current measures are maintained and there is no increase of in-person contact rates across the community. However, as COVID-19 activity remains elevated in many jurisdictions, strong public health measures must be sustained where COVID-19 is circulating and individual precautions are important everywhere to drive infection rates down to low and manageable levels, while getting our vaccination rates as high as possible. While the latest national-level data show continued downward trend in disease activity with an average of 3,376 cases reported daily during the latest 7 day period (May 21-27), down 33% compared to the week prior, infection rates remain high in some areas of the country. For the week of May 16-22, there were an average of 94,311 tests completed daily across Canada, of which 4.7% were positive for COVID-19, compared to 5.6% the week prior. Until vaccine coverage is sufficiently high to impact disease transmission more broadly in the community, we must maintain a high degree of caution with public health and individual measures and not ease restrictions too soon or too quickly where infection rates are high. Elevated infection rates continue to impact lagging COVID-19 severity indicators, particularly in areas with sustained high levels of disease activity. Although we are seeing declines in these trends, persistently high numbers of severe and critical illnesses have put a prolonged and heavy strain on the health system and healthcare workforce. Provincial and territorial data indicate that an average of 2,910 people with COVID-19 were being treated in Canadian hospitals each day during the most recent 7-day period (May 21-27), which is 16% fewer than last week. This includes, on average 1,173 people who were being treated in intensive care units (ICU), 10% fewer than last week. Although the mortality trend has leveled off, with a 7-day average of 43 deaths reported daily (May 21-27), continued high rates of infection and high numbers of hospitalisations and critical care admissions could continue to impact this trend. We are continuing to monitor and assess genetic variants of the virus and their impacts in the Canadian context. Overall, variants of concern (VOCs) represent the majority of recently reported COVID-19 cases across the country. While all four VOCs (B.1.1.7, B.1.351, P.1 and B.1.617) have been detected in most provinces and territories, the B.1.1.7 variant continues to account for the majority of genetically sequenced VOCs in Canada. All of these VOCs are more contagious, and evidence demonstrates that the B.1.1.7 and B.1.617 variants are at least 50% more transmissible. The P.1, B.1.351, and B.1.671 variants all have mutations in common, which may have an impact on vaccine effectiveness, although the evidence is limited at this time. While the impact of all VOCs continues to be monitored in Canada, we know that vaccination, in combination with public health and individual measures, are working to reduce spread of COVID-19. As vaccine eligibility expands, Canadians are urged to get vaccinated and support others to get vaccinated as vaccines become available to them. However, regardless of our vaccination status, Canadians are urged to remain vigilant, continue following local public health advice, and consistently maintain individual practices that keep us and our families safer, even as we're beginning to see the positive impacts of COVID-19 vaccines: 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). For more information regarding the risks and benefits of vaccination, I encourage Canadians to reach out to your local public health authorities, healthcare provider, or other trusted and credible sources, such as Canada.ca and Immunize.ca. Working together, Health Canada, the Public Health Agency of Canada, the National Advisory Committee on Immunization, Canada's Chief Medical Officers of Health and other health professionals across the country are closely monitoring vaccine safety, effectiveness and optimal use to adapt approaches. As the science and situation evolves, we are committed to providing clear and evidence-informed guidance in order to keep everyone in Canada safe and healthy. 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/May2021/29/c3421.html NCAA TOURNAMENT / GAINESVILLE REGIONAL GEORGIA 4, FLORIDA 0 A three-run homer in the top of the seventh bygave pitcherall the insurance she and the unseeded/rival Bulldogs needed Friday night to take their NCAA Super Regional best-of-three opener against the host and fourth-seeded Gators at Pressly Stadium. Avant handcuffed UF, allowing just three hits and no runners past second base, while Bordeau's late-game smash paired with an earlier solo shot fromin the second. Fields' homer made it 1-0 and that's where it stood over the next four-plus frames, as the Gators' bats were quiet most of the night, except for a couple doubles from-- UF left the tying run at second both times -- and a two-out single in the fifth byfollowed with a flyout to left). In taking just her third loss of the season, Florida starting pitcher(17-3, 1.88 ERA) gave up six hits and the four runs, all of them earned, before being lifted with one out in the seventh forThe Bulldogs, up 1-0, had the bases loaded with no outs in the top of the fifth whenbounced a hard grounder to third. UF'ssnared the ball on a hop, threw to catcherfor the force out, with Cottrill firing back to third to try and double up Bordeau. The throw was a smidge late, but Bordeau slide past the bag and was tagged out by shortstopcovering. Lugo got the next batter to line to center and kept the margin at a manageable one-run deficit, and kept Florida in a game that could easily have been blown up early.Make that two wins over the Gators for Avant (19-10, 2.69 ERA) this season. She one-hit UF and fanned six in a 4-2 win on April 3 to open a three-game regular-season series in Athens, Ga. Two days later, though, Florida banged out seven hits, including a three-run homer by Echols in the top of the first, and beat Avant by an 8-1. She made up for that one.The Gators went 0-for-6 with runners on base and 0-for-3 with runners in scoring position. Compare that to the Bulldogs, whose No. 6 through 9 hitters combined to go 6-for-9, plus another three walks. Fields, batting seventh, went 3-for-3 and Bordeau, batting eighth, went 2-for-3, and accounted for all four Bulldogs runs.Florida (45-10) and Georgia (33-21) will meet Saturday in Game 2 at noon, with the Gators' season on the line. A win for the Bulldogs means a two-game sweep of the Super and thus a repeat of when the two teams met here in the 2016 Super round, a postseason UF entered as the two-time defending NCAA champion. Florida has won each of the last three Super regionals, while UGA will try to make its first trip to Oklahoma City since 2018. NEW YORK (AP)A long-awaited book about Philip Roth that was pulled last month amid allegations of sexual assault and harassment against biographer Blake Bailey has a new publisher. Skyhorse Publishing told The Associated Press that it will have Philip Roth: The Biography available in paperback June 15. Baileys 900-page biography was begun in 2012 and written with the participation of Roth, who died in 2018. Released in early April by W.W. Norton & Company, Philip Roth received mostly positive reviews, although critics for The New York Times and The New Republic found Bailey too indulgent of Roths behavior toward women. The book reached the Times bestseller list, among others. But two weeks after publication, reports from the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times-Picayune and the AP featured extensive, on-the-record quotes from former students of Bailey while he was a middle-grade teacher in New Orleans in the 1990s. The students alleged a pattern of inappropriate behavior while he was a teacher, and that he later pursued sexual relationships. Two former students and book publishing executive Valentina Rice have alleged he assaulted them. There have also been pushes to remove monuments in Orange and Essex counties in the past year. The Culpeper Town Council voted in February to change the name of Lake Pelham because it honors a Confederate officer. The Tappahannock Town Council has a vote scheduled on the Essex monument for June 8, but there has been no notable movement in Orange. In that regard, we were kind of a leader in the region, Fortune said of Caroline removing its monument. Im really proud of the community in that regard. STILL BUILDING BRIDGES Holland said its been encouraging to see several grassroots organizations such as #Enough! and #Undivided Fredericksburg sprout in the past year to encourage change and to gain better understanding of different cultures. He said that for every negative interaction he has with people in the county, he receives positive reinforcement. Holland and others have felt empowered by the relationship a coalition in the area has started with Rappahannock Regional Jail officials to monitor conditions inside the facility. Eunice Haigler, a Black historian and activist who lives in southern Stafford, said shes noticed an improvement in race relations since Floyds death and the subsequent protests. Lilly said there was evidence that in March or April, Fridley visited a church in Narrows. She returned to the Narrows church on May 2 and went to its childcare area, where she gave a false name for herself and said that Larry was sick and had asked her to pick up a child, Lilly said. But church members questioned Fridley and when she gave a name for the child she was looking for, they said it was not the name of anyone there and turned her away, Lilly said. Investigators determined that Fridley then went to another Narrows church, across the street from the first, and again said she was there to pick up a child, Lilly said. She was turned away there as well. Fridley went on to Ripplemead and Riverview Baptist Church, where she talked to nursery workers, and pointed to Noah, saying he was the boy she was supposed to take, Lilly said. Fridley was photographed leaving the church with Noah, Lilly said. She drove him to Clifton Forge, which is about 90 miles away, and told her boyfriend that this was his child, Lilly said. Fridley and Taylor shaved Noahs head and took him around to meet neighbors, Lilly said. Girl Scouts Spirit of Nebraska recently announced that it will receive $51,100 from the Nebraska Environmental Trust for its Spirit of Nebraska Camp Woodland Restoration project. The Spirit of Nebraska Camp Woodland Restoration Project will enhance 200 acres of oak and cottonwood forest and tall grass prairie as well as enrich habitats for tier 1 and tier 2 species through the strategic removal of invasive trees. Tier 1 species are those found in Nebraska that are globally or nationally most at-risk of extinction. Tier 2 species are rare or imperiled within Nebraska, although typically not at-risk from a global or national perspective. Improved year-round access will allow for additional safety for camp visitors and facilitation of programs for girls while keeping protection of flora and fauna in mind. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Girl Scouts will be completing this project on two camp properties: Camp Crossed Arrows located near Nickerson, in Washington and Dodge counties, and Camp Maha in Papillion, a Biologically Unique Landscape designated by the Nebraska Natural Legacy Project. Al Dahra BayWa, a leading sustainable agribusiness company in the UAE, has announced the opening of its facility in Dubai as part of its plan to expand its operations and to be closer to its customers and suppliers. The move will ensure optimum distribution to Dubai and the northern emirates of its locally grown, premium quality tomatoes under its Mahalli brand. This expansion represents a forward step in achieving Al Dahra BayWas vision of solidifying its market presence and promoting its diverse line of tomato produce across the UAE. The new facility will help enhance the firms logistics and distribution power and ensure a faster delivery to local markets all throughout the UAE. It will also include a fully equipped station for loading and unloading containers dispatched through trucks, manned by qualified staff to ensure efficient operations. Managing Director Georg Czerny said: "The new warehouse within Dubais fresh market is the ideal location for us to manage the daily transport of our fresh harvest to the local market in Dubai and the northern emirates within a few hours." Al Dahra BayWa is a pioneer of innovative farming in the UAE that aims to support the countrys food security strategy through sustainable agricultural practices. Its headquarters is located just a few kilometers from Al Ains town center, spanning over 12 hectares of facilities, of which 11 hectares are dedicated to a semi-closed greenhouse and nursery. The firm manages a hi-tech infrastructure, manned by a team of experts, to grow premium tomatoes all year round. As an environmentally responsible company, Al Dahra BayWa yields quality tomato produce using innovative sustainable farming methods with a 100 per cent irrigation recirculation process and the most water-efficient system with 80 per cent less irrigation water compared to traditional open-field farming. "We look forward to supplying major retailers with fresh, high-quality tomatoes at an efficient delivery time. This move demonstrates our readiness to serve markets across UAE, as part of our expansion plan," he stated. "We reaffirm our commitment to expand our business for the long term and play a key contributor role to the development of the high-tech agribusiness sector in the UAE. We are ready to meet the increasing market demand and offer UAE consumers more options to enjoy fresh, best quality, locally grown produce,"observed Czerny. "We are proud to contribute to the countrys efforts to increase local agricultural production in the country through the sustainable year-round supply of fresh and high-quality tomatoes," he added. Chris Madsen, chairman of the Veterans Park and co-chairman of the Avenue of Flags, also stressed the importance of community attendance. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Madsen said Memorial Day is a time to honor all the men and women who made the ultimate sacrifice so Americans can live free. The worst thing we can do to dishonor the memory of them is to forget them, Madsen said. Weve got to take this day if not every day to make sure we honor them and we honor the sacrifices they have made. Tarrin Reed will sing the National Anthem. Fremont Mayor Joey Spellerberg will read the proclamation naming May 31 as Memorial Day in Fremont. As Fremonts newest mayor, this will be Spellerbergs first time to read the proclamation. Uniformed, active duty service members will lay wreaths representing the different branches of the military. Representatives of the firefighters, sheriffs and police departments and veteran organizations and auxiliaries will lay wreaths as well. Representatives of American Legion Post 20, Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 854 and Disabled American Veterans Post Chapter 18 will serve on the Honor Guard presenting the 21-gun salute and play Taps. I often think about the days spent in hospitals with my child, thankful for friends, communities, and family that surrounded us and helped us through the hardest moments in our lives. Then I look at our Legislature and the actions they have consistently taken to show they are not representing Nebraskans. That they do not care about families with disabilities. The corporation tax cuts passed instead of LB376 showed how out of touch many elected officials are with their constituents and the program. As my son has never walked, felt grass under his feet, or used the restroom independently, the lack of knowledge and strength of programs that Nebraska has qualifies him as not disabled enough. Thats right. Not disabled enough. Not sick enough. We work full time and carry insurance, but easily meet our deductible in two months with medical bills still coming in the mail. We and other families pay the monthly costs which includes $3,000 worth of medical supplies and $1,000 in medications. It would be beneficial for us to stop working, divorce, and use other assistance programs to meet our needs. Most savvy buyers of real estate know the popular mantra Location, location, location. However, fewer know that on the other side of the tab Colorado Springs, CO (80903) Today Sunny to partly cloudy. High around 85F. Winds SSE at 15 to 25 mph.. Tonight Mostly clear. Low 57F. Winds SE at 10 to 20 mph, becoming NNE and decreasing to 5 to 10 mph. More Information If you are struggling with substance abuse, contact the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administrations free national helpline at 1-800-662-4357. The helpline is a confidential treatment referral and information service, provided in English and Spanish, for individuals and families facing substance abuse or mental health disorders. Help India! The predominance of informal employment in the unorganized sector has been one of the central features of the labour market scenario in India. According to the Ministry of Labour, Government of India there are four categories of the unorganized labour force, out of which domestic helpers fall under the service category which is the most affected lot and consists of midwives, barbers, fishermen & women, vegetable and fruit sellers, newspaper vendors, cobblers, handicraft artisans, rickshaw pullers, etc. The COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdowns have been economically the most disastrous for this category. In this TCN Ground Report, we spoke to domestic helpers and some social workers, academicians and activists to bring to our readers the problems this community is facing. Yumna Mobin | TwoCircles.net Support TwoCircles WEST BENGAL Shahina is a domestic helper who lives with her old mother-in-law, a paralyzed husband and two children, an 18-year-old daughter, Sameena and a 15-year-old son, Nadim. Before the coronavirus pandemic, she worked at three places and managed to put together a livelihood for herself. Out of the three places I have temporarily been fired from two because in one place the apartment people dont allow me in, as they think I can infect them & in the other one, my employers have got Corona themselves and are very ill, she told TwoCircles.net. Its not that they are unkind, maybe I will get infected if I go there, she said. Shahina said that her children also are not able to contribute much. Her daughter Sameena is a part-time Mehendi artist. By doing this work, she was able to manage about 800 to 1000 rupees a week. However, the pandemic has impacted her work also. Due to the coronavirus, there are hardly any weddings or festivities and the income from her end has depleted, Shahina said. Sameena has finished her 12th standard board exams. I cant let her continue her studies because of the financial crisis. My husband is paralyzed and my mother-in-law is too old to contribute anything be it household chores or financially, she said. Shahina has a lot of expenses to cater to. She has to fund the education of her two children. Her mother-in-law is hypertensive and also suffers from a heart condition. Her paralyzed husband needs constant medication and things like adult diapers, which are expensive and burdensome for Shahina and her family. She said that the coronavirus pandemic has badly impacted their livelihood and she cant find ways and means to sustain her family. Future looks bleak, she said. Another domestic helped Renu, lives with her husband and three sons, aged 19, 15 and 7 respectively. My husband is an alcoholic and a drug addict and contributes almost nothing to the home. Its like he is there at home, but not even a family member for us anymore, she said ruefully. Renu worked as a domestic helper for two families and both dismissed amid the coronavirus scare. My eldest son used to run errands and work part-time at a butchers shop. We somehow had enough to eat and I admitted my younger son to a local English medium school. I wanted him to study but now we are in a lot of crises. Because of my eldest sons little income, we just manage one to two meals a day. There is not even money enough to recharge our touch screen-wala (Smart) phone for my youngest son to do his online class, she said. The lockdown has been painful for their lives. Like my employers, the rich and the office people are working from home and getting their salary. What do we do? How can we work from home? she laments. The common problems in the service category of unskilled unorganized labour are low real wages, poor living conditions and poor working conditions. There are issues of seasonal unemployment, contractual employment, atypical work relations, absence of social security and welfare, and a very high amount of negation of social standards and rights of these workers. For the workers of the unorganized sector, some of them do fall under BPL programmes or the Jan Dhan Yojana or were beneficiaries of some cash transfers, the previous year when there was a national lockdown. Of course, that was not sufficient for survival but at least for the sake of tokenism, it was done, Sayoni Choudhuri Patra, Assistant Professor, Loreto College, Kolkata told TwoCircles.net. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had requested the employers to pay their domestic helpers for some time, and most of the people did comply with it. However, Prof. Patra said, this time the lockdown has been more erratic and these people have not been beneficiaries of any kind like the previous time. Whether or not they are being given their salary, fully or partly, by their employers is very uncertain. Spouses of domestic helpers are also unskilled or contractual labourers, so employment is erratic or absent for them as well. The second wave especially has been very brutal, and the uncertainty and vulnerability of these people have become much higher. Even more because like the privileged classes they cannot even fight for medical facilities, Prof. Patra said. Pushpendu Sardar, a social worker & activist, from a West Bengal NGO called Sondhi, told TwoCircles.net that one major consequence of the lockdown was the stoppage of trains, which was the main cause of unemployment of domestic helpers and workers of the unorganized sector. Most of the workers, and especially women workers working as nannies, ayas, care-takers & nurses travel up and down the city every day or every few days for work. The kind of unskilled service they provide is only availed in cities. Many of these women who can work in smaller allied industries like vegetables, small fisheries, poultry or dairy farms, are not able to do so because of the same reasons- the rise in cases, resulting in erratic lockdowns and the losses suffered by these industries due to this, Sardar said. Sardar further said the lockdown has severely affected the women of the rural areas especially because of social evils & their husbands indulgence in drinking and gambling. This is also one reason for domestic violence of these women domestic helpers, trapped in their houses because of the pandemic, he added. Prof. Choudhuri Patra further said that lockdown is not just affecting domestic workers alone but their children as well and the problem is much of a womens issue. Their childrens education is at stake. The future that they were trying to build for their children has become very bleak. This is because online classes at the government schools level are very marginal. Not only is it an unemployment issue, but involves a big human capital risk, Prof Patra said. Prof Patra further said that this part of the population that would have come under the organized sector from these particular strata in the next 10 years has fallen into the poverty trap even more than it already is. If the unskilled unorganized worker is a single mother the problem is even more as if she gets infected or happens to die the childs future is finished. With the type of circumstances, chances are highest that such children would enter the labour market as child labourers or worse, get trafficked, she said. For Sardar, he feels that the government never really does anything for poor people ever. It just continues to function in its own way with its schemes and yojanas that never really reach them. If anything is done at all, it is a little bit just before elections, otherwise nothing. This is the reason why individuals like us have started working for them, Sardar added. Sardars NGO Sondhi runs 14 community kitchens, each of which provides food to around 400 people each, prioritizing children, pregnant women & elderly senior citizens in the rural areas of the Sundarbans. In Denver, homicides have increased 23.1% and shootings have increased 62.8% this year, compared to the citys three-year average. In an effort to contain the spike, the city's law enforcement are launching a new policing strategy centered on community collaboration and crime prevention in the citys most violent areas. FILE - In this Jan. 27, 2019, file photo, Patrisse Cullors poses for a portrait to promote a film during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Cullors, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter, announced Thursday, May 27, 2021, that she is stepping down as executive director of the foundation. The Colorado House passed a bill Thursday morning that could allow residents of homeowners' associations the "freedom to express themselves," as the title of legislation puts it. Copyright 1995 - . All rights reserved. The content (including but not limited to text, photo, multimedia information, etc) published in this site belongs to China Daily Information Co (CDIC). Without written authorization from CDIC, such content shall not be republished or used in any form. Note: Browsers with 1024*768 or higher resolution are suggested for this site. 0108263 License for publishing multimedia online Registration Number: 130349 Registration Number: 130349 The National Pork Producers Council, a group representing pig farmers, this week asked the USDA to appeal the ruling, seek a stay while the appeal is considered and request the agency pursue a fast-tracked rule that would allow higher line speeds. In a statement posted Wednesday on its website, the USDA said pork processing plants should prepare to revert to previous maximum line speeds as of June 30. The agency is committed to worker safety and ensuring a safe, reliable food supply. We will work with the establishments to comply with the courts ruling and minimize disruptions to the supply chain, the USDA said. Pork processing plants in Hatfield, Pennsylvania; Coldwater, Michigan; Fremont, Nebraska; and Austin, Minnesota, have been working with the faster line speeds under a pilot project for years, and a plant in Guymon, Oklahoma, began faster speeds in 2019. Several others were expected to adopt faster speeds but plans were delayed by the pandemic. The pork producers group had said the judges ruling would force plants already operating at faster speeds to return to the previous maximum line speed of 1,106 hogs per hour, significantly less than the 1,450 hogs per hour some plants were processing. IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) An Iowa man who left a threatening voicemail telling Gov. Kim Reynolds she should be hung or shot for treason for imposing COVID-19 restrictions has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor harassment charge. Harvey Hunter Jr., 48, pleaded guilty Thursday to second-degree harassment, accepting a plea agreement offered by Polk County prosecutors. In a written guilty plea, he said that he did threaten to commit bodily injury to a government official" in his Jan. 5 voicemail. Prosecutors will recommend that Hunter serve a one-year term of probation, pay a fine, have no contact with the governor and undergo a mental health evaluation. A judge will not be bound by the recommendation when Hunter is sentenced next week, and could impose stricter penalties. Hunter left the voicemail on a governor's office phone line set up to gather input on the partial statewide mask mandate. He called the governor a dictator and said every single one of you need to be hung for treason for pushing this COVID scam. He also called Reynolds two derogatory names for women and said you need to be put in front of a firing squad. Wherever large numbers of foraging white-throated are encountered, you may also have the good fortune of spotting one or two Harris sparrows. With its distinctive black bib, black crown, and streaked sides, it would be hard to mistake the Harris for any other species. With a length of seven inches, it is the largest and arguably most spectacular, of our native sparrows. Although some Harris sparrows occur in Iowa during winter, most spend the cold weather months in the southern U.S. and northern Mexico. Long distance migrants, most Harris nest at or above the treeline in subarctic tundra. Harris sparrows are the only North American songbird that breeds exclusively in Canada. During the summer nesting season, they are found nowhere else on earth. The acquisition of the historic structure provides a place where the missions and goals of Alpha Phi Omega can be fulfilled, said golden member Cynthia Polk, president of the chapters corporation. Alpha Phi Omega members have long impacted the community in such areas as education, politics and health care. Influential members include Ruby B. Archie, the first woman mayor of Danville; renowned attorney Ruth Harvey Charity, first African American woman elected to Danville City Council; and Traci DeShazor, current Deputy Secretary of Virginia. Pearl chapter member Rosa Chamber, who joined the sorority in 1953 on the campus of St. Pauls College, said what made her want to become part of Alpha Kappa Alpha was the dignity, character and class of the AKAs; and they were so smart. Oh, and I fell in love with that pink and green! The chapters current 76 members represent a diversity of professions and bring strength to carry out its goals. Gayle Hunt Breakley, a 25-year member of the sorority, is currently in her second term as chapter president. The work of Alpha Kappa Alpha calls us service, Breakley said. Whether we serve as an officer, a committee chairman, or a diligent volunteer, our commitment to AKA is a beacon to impact our community for good. Were still doing social distancing and requiring people to wear masks, Campell said. Faith Memorial Baptist Church celebrated one year of having in-person services this week. In the early days of the pandemic, the church had its services solely online, but later added outdoor services in the parking lot and then resumed indoor services, said Seth Lackey, young families and childrens pastor at the church. We still have masks available, Lackey said. We have hand sanitizer all around the church. The church now also offers two Sunday online and in-person services one at 8:30 a.m. and the other at 11 a.m. Faith Memorial also has a 6:30 p.m. service on Wednesdays. Until Easter, the church had every other pew off-limits to maintain social distancing, Lackey said. At First Baptist Church, its 10:30 a.m. Sunday services are livestreamed on Facebook and available on the churchs website later that day, Zimmerman said. Joey Bray, executive pastor at The Tabernacle, said the church has returned to normal operations for its services in the sanctuary and in Sunday school. People need to exercise their own good judgment and caution based on their own health circumstances, Bray said Friday. Lackey agreed. We believe that people should use their own discretion and wisdom, Lackey said. The Tabernacle is continuing the livestream its services. The pandemic has prompted those in church circles to focus more on online worship, he added. It has caused in church circles to fine-tune if we already had livestreaming and to embrace and introduce livestreaming if we did not, Bray said. That gives those who are homebound more opportunity for worship, he said. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. The riders, traveling on two motorcycles, were shot Monday afternoon around 4:45 p.m. as they headed northbound along the U.S. 29 bypass between Barnes Street and N.C. 14, officials said. RCSO investigators said the deadly gunfire came from a red Dodge dually pickup. A dually is a dual rear-wheel truck. Page said on Tuesday that the truck was recovered at the time of Coxs arrest in Kentucky. This type of crime is horrific. Its not something we see here in Rockingham County. In fact, in my more than 30-year career in law enforcement in this county, I dont think Ive seen anything like it, Page said in a Tuesday email. Our team at the Sheriffs Office is working hard to identify the shooter(s) and bring them to justice. At this point in the investigation, we do not believe this was a random act. My top priority is and always will be protecting our citizens and keeping them safe. Motorists alerted authorities that two victims were lying along the the highway with calls to 911 at around 4:45 p.m. on Monday. Deputies and other first responders found a third victim shortly after arriving on the scene, RCSO officials said. The Danvilles treasurers office, along with the Virginia Department of the Treasury, is bringing another unclaimed property virtual call event this week to help residents who might be owed funds they dont know about. Customers can call 1-833-302-0704 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Thursday and Friday to have staff check their name for missing money. During the last event held in December, Treasury workers looked up more than 1,000 names over a two-day period. They found $80,690. The State Treasurys Unclaimed Property Division operates essentially as a centralized lost and found. It handles unclaimed money and property turned over by companies when they have lost track of the rightful owner. Unclaimed property can include utility deposits, customer refunds, unpaid wages, money from insurance policies, securities and investments, bank accounts and tangible property. Under Virginia law, any funds in dormant financial accounts must be turned over to the state government, which holds them in trust. Examples of dormant accounts include a company that sent a check but was never cashed or perhaps a loved one who died with money he or she never collected. The Y also had a system with different color cones were put in certain places to indicate where the most cleaning was needed, Barbour said. The Y lifted its mask mandate Friday for those fully vaccinated, but those who have not had their shots are asked to still wear them, he said. Now the cone system is no more and capacity restrictions for exercise classes will be lifted at the Y. All of the group exercise classes before, they were in the gymnasium to be spread apart ... now theyre moving back up into the classrooms, Barbour said. Appointments for using the pool that were in place are also being removed, he added. So its all first-come, first-serve again, Barbour said. As for Mes Burgers & Brews, Tomlinson said she plans to add capacity again, but that will still be limited not due to the pandemic, but because she is short-staffed. We dont know how much well be able to add next week, Tomlinson said. As to whether the easing of restrictions will lead to a boom in spending at restaurants and other establishments in Danville, that depends on consumers, Ehrhardt said. Consumer confidence is also critical, she said. If everything is open, but people dont feel comfortable being out, recovery will be slower. Fortunately, many of our businesses have been doing an incredible job to keep their employees and customers safe, and I anticipate that our community will be excited to be out supporting our businesses across the region. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. That's frustrated progressive senators and outside liberal groups. They've pressured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to eliminate filibusters, even as their use has increased by whichever party is in the minority. According to Senate records dating back to World War I, the number of votes to end filibusters in any two-year Congress never reached 100 until the 2007-2008 sessions. It hit a high of 298 in the 2019-2020 Congress, mostly on then-President Donald Trump's appointees that majority Republicans were pushing to confirmation. In this year's first five months as of this week, there were already 41 votes to end filibusters, mostly on Biden's nominees. WHAT CAN DEMOCRATS DO? It would take a simple majority, 51 votes, for the Senate to eliminate or weaken filibusters. GOP support for retaining them is solid, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying Democrats want to end them in a quest for raw power. But with Democrats eager to enact their priorities before they lose their fragile majority, their support for discarding filibusters has grown. Biden, who's influential despite having no vote on the matter, has said the tactic is being abused in a gigantic way." Update: 29-05-2021 | 17:30:05 Sergey Levchenko, First Secretary of the Irkutsk regional division of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (KPRF) and former Governor of Irkutsk, has expressed his admiration for Vietnams achievements in the COVID-19 fight. Sergey Levchenko, First Secretary of the Irkutsk regional division of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and former Governor of Irkutsk, grants an interview to the Vietnam News Agency In a recent interview with the Vietnam News Agency, he said he is impressed with the Southeast Asian countrys attainments in COVID-19 prevention and control, and that Vietnam has been combating this pandemic in an effective manner. Since the pandemic began in Vietnam in April last year, the country has been making drastic, sound, and smart response, showing that if a country is governed well and if all are determined to win over this pandemic, it will definitely gain success, he noted. Voicing his admiration, Levchenko, who served as Governor of the Irkutsk region from 2015 to 2019, said Vietnam has outperformed even many developed economies in the COVID-19 combat. He also wished the country more success in this regard. The former governor attributed the accomplishments to the leadership of the Communist Party of Vietnam and the superiority of socialism and noted Vietnam has been moving in the right direction and chosen the sound socialist path of development./. VNA A minister who spoke out against violence was shot and killed days after he was ordained, friends say. Robert Booth, 25, had also recently proposed to his girlfriend before his life was cut short, video he posted to Facebook shows. The thing that hurts me the most is we went from talking about wedding plans on Sunday to now his family is planning his funeral, friend Brandon Smith told McClatchy News in a phone interview. On Tuesday night, Smith said he was told his friend approached people wearing ski masks in his neighborhood. Trying to preach the word to the people and then they just shoot him anyway, I believe its sad, neighbor Melissa Jones told WGHP-Channel 8. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} High Point police said officers responded to gunfire on Ardale Drive just before 8:30 p.m. Tuesday and found Booth had been shot. First responders tried life-saving measures before Booth was rushed to a hospital, where he died. He leaves behind a 2-year-old son, Smith said. Police are investigating the shooting as a homicide and are looking for two suspects and a car seen leaving the scene, according to a news release. The vehicle was described as possibly a burgundy Hyundai Santa Fe or Nissan Rogue. Hubert was also an active member of the local Home Builders Association, holding several offices, as well as a member of the National Board of Directors. In addition to the Home Builders, he was very active in the Greensboro Jaycees, holding several offices including projector editor, vice president and president. He was also a member of the Kiwanis Club and mentor for Junior Achievement. He made lifelong friends in those organizations. We expect this is due in large part to the fact that Tom was a sincerely affable man, liked by all who knew him, the family wrote in his obituary. He was quick with a smile, a joke and a drink. While with the Jaycees he was active with the Greater Greensboro Open (now the Wyndham Championship). Though not very good at golf, he was an avid watcher. He was remarkable, said son Paul Chip Hubert of Omaha. He says dont just take his word. When Hubert lived on Tremont Drive years later, his next-door neighbors had a cat that had kittens. A pit bull killed all the cats except one kitten, which was traumatized and wouldnt let anyone get near it, even the owners, Paul Hubert said. Dad made it his mission to befriend the cat and eventually had it eating out of his hand and letting Dad pet it, he said. The cat never trusted anyone else and would run like hell whenever anyone else got close to it. I think it shows what kind of person Dad was. Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 336-373-7049 and follow @nmclaughlinNR on Twitter. Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Theres another pattern that emerges if you start examining those who most often make this shopworn argument: Theyre white, privileged and speaking from a position of great power. Thus, it benefits them to envision as limited an idea of political participation as possible. That is a phrase that is uttered by people who, looking back on the sweep of American history, see themselves as safely at the center of the narrative, and typically they see their present privileges under threat, documentary filmmaker Astra Taylor told Slate in 2020. And so, they want to shore up the privileges that they possess, and theyre looking for a sort of historic hook. Taylor points out that the United States has never really been a fully inclusive democracy going back to the founders who denied women and Black people the right to vote and who didnt even count the enslaved as fully human. Still, the political pendulum of the last few years has been swinging away from that conceit to a view of American democracy, while not fully majoritarian, as nonetheless evermore diverse and inclusive. He portrayed illegal immigrants crossing the Southern border as rapists and drug dealers. He called Black athletes protesting police brutality sons of bitches and said they should be fired. He claimed that a U.S. federal judge, an American citizen born in Indiana, would be unfair to him because Hes a Mexican. He repeatedly retweeted messages from white supremacist Twitter accounts. He called Haiti and African countries s---hole countries. He reduced U.S. refugee intake to historic lows and drastically reduced legal immigration. Hate crimes against minorities surged under his administration, often committed by people who chanted his name. Despite his occasional, tepid denouncements, leaders of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis saw in him a kindred spirit and gave him their full support. And now the people who want nothing more than to return him to power also want to dictate what schools can and cant teach our children about racism. Across the country, theres been an organized, concerted effort among Republicans to pass state and federal bills that limit or prevent the inclusion of the Pulitzer Prize winning The 1619 Project and critical race theory, a decades-old field of academic study, in school curricula. Theyre often accompanied by bills that ban diversity training for federal employees and the military. The late Bill Craft was a successful businessman who always made time for arranging group walks, building new trails and planting trees. I was fortunate to be in his hiking group for many years. We miss him still. Thank you, Bill. Virginia Achey Greensboro Its nothing new In a May 23 letter, Money talks, the writer revisits his letter of five years ago that criticized the Trump fundraiser at the home of Louis DeJoy and Aldona Wos. He argued that the money would do much more good for charitable purposes. Democrats have fundraisers, too, but I have not seen a letter saying their money should go to charity. The writer laments that he was criticized by self-appointed moralists for trying to tell other people what to do with their money. At this point, I am trying to sort out who the self-appointed moralists are. It appears that the writer certainly falls into that category. He condemns the Trump fundraiser and the moralists who supported it simply because they did not spend their money the way he thought they should. Silvia Gonzalez Scherer is the Executive Artistic Director and co-founder of the Hanford Multicultural Theater Company. She is also a playwright and an actress. Montanas Bad Actor law does apply to an Idaho-based mining company and its executives for the pollution problems they left at a closed gold mine near Malta, a state judge has ruled. Former Gov. Judy Martz signed the bad actor law in 2001 after Pegasus Gold declared bankruptcy on its Zortman-Landusky, Beal Mountain and Basin Creek mines along the southern border of the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation. Those cyanide heap-leach operations have cost the state more than $50 million in cleanup efforts to water, vegetation and sacred sites of the Gros Ventre and Assiniboine tribes. Phillips Baker was an executive of Pegasus Gold and now serves as chief executive of Hecla Mining Co., which is seeking permits for two copper-silver mines on the edge of the Cabinet Wilderness near Noxon. The Montana Department of Environmental Quality filed a bad actor lawsuit against Hecla and Baker in 2018 over the Pegasus damages. The Fort Belknap Indian Community and a traditional community of the Ktunaxa Nation of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, along with the Clark Fork Coalition, Earthworks, Montana Environmental Information Center, Rock Creek Alliance and Montana Conservation Voters all intervened on the side of DEQ against Hecla and Baker. House Bill 276 was more straightforward, requiring that voters be registered by noon on the Monday before Election Day. Montana was previously among 19 other states that allow voters to register at the polls on Election Day, including neighboring Wyoming and Idaho, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. A previous attempt by Republicans to end same-day registration was voted down in a 2014 referendum. Voters rejected the legislative referendum, proposing to set the registration deadline on the Friday before the election, 57.1% to 42.9%. A lot has happened since 2014, said Cuffe, who carried the bill in the Senate. I dont take citizen initiatives lightly, [but] theres been several elections since then. For election administrators who must implement those changes, education is key to preventing voters from having to find out on Election Day that they wont be able to vote. In the 2020 general election, held by mail in most of the state because of public health concerns, 3,352 voters registered to vote on Election Day, according to information provided to a committee by the Secretary of States office in January. In the 2018 midterms, 8,053 voters submitted their registration on Election Day. For the 2016 presidential election, that number was 12,055. Thumbs up It seems there may be nothing Helena High School senior Claire Downing cant do. She is an accomplished athlete and a student representative on the Helena Public Schools board of education. She was named a distinguished student by the Helena Education Foundation. She was the National Honor Society vice president for the school, president of the Montana 4-H Ambassador Officer team, a volunteer for the Bureau of Land Management and the National Forest Service, and a multi-award-winning competitor at the Montana Science Fair. And now she is a presidential scholar, which is one of the nations highest honors for high school students. For the last few years, it seems we couldnt keep her name out of the newspaper because of her many accomplishments. And we suspect she will continue making headlines as she starts the next chapter of her life at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee. Downing will be greatly missed in Helena, but its time for her to share her gifts with the world. Thumbs up Hawthorne Elementary School in Helena has a long history of excellence, and the seven recently retired educators honored Wednesday are largely responsible for that. DECATUR Jim Root was driving with his wife to meet friends for dinner when he got the call from his attorney that the ruling on the outcome of the 2018 election was in. A few minutes later, after dropping his wife off at the restaurant and returning home to read the document, he got the news he had waited more than two years to receive. He is the winner of the 2018 race for Macon County sheriff. Im happy the justice system did its part and saw the true outcome of the election, Root said Friday night. Im a little disappointed it took this long, but I dont have any control over that. The legal fight over the results of the 2018 sheriffs race began shortly after Election Day. Tony Brown was declared the winner by just one vote 19,655 to Roots tally of 19,654. The 36-page order from Champaign County Circuit Court Judge Anna M. Benjamin determined Root won the election by 16 votes. The electronic court file does not reflect a ruling being made in the case. This is all about the will of the people, he said. I would like to thank my family and friends and everybody that has been with me over the course of the 2018 election cycle. Root said text messages congratulating him on his victory began arriving while he was still reviewing the order. After calling his attorney Root said he called his wife to share the good news. Then I called her and said, Hey, I won by 16 votes. She said I just got a text from somebody saying that you did, he said. As of 9:30 Friday night, Root had not heard from Brown regarding the ruling. Im going to leave it up to him. Its obviously in his court, Root said, regarding what will happen next. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. We filed this case two and half years ago and we presented our case and the judge has ruled on it. We know that Tony Brown has an appeal process, Root said. Since it has been ruled on and the judge has clearly ruled on a very narrow window of items were hoping he will allow for a smooth transition in the next couple weeks. Attempts by the Herald & Review to reach Brown and his attorney, Christopher Sherer, were unsuccessful Friday night. After losing by a single vote, Root initiated a discovery recount of ballots in December 2018 to gather evidence to persuade a judge to order a full recount. Benjamin, brought in as an impartial jurist to handle the legal battle, then ordered a full hand recount in July 2020. Brown re-emerged the winner with a margin of 18 votes, but the recount also revealed dozens and dozens of disputed ballots. There were two uncounted ballots for Root that had previously been discovered in a ballot tabulating machine and then forgotten until after the 2018 count was ratified. Benjamin presided over five court hearings that finished up in February as lawyers on both sides fought over issues ranging from what ballots should count to questions of whether there had been election fraud. Both sides then submitted written closing arguments. I go back to work Monday night, said Root, who joined the sheriffs department in 1996 and continues to serve as a lieutenant. It will be fine. It will be just like any other day of going to work. I go to work, I do my job and I go home. Root said he will begin the process of getting up to speed on things as he prepares to be sworn in as sheriff. I will go back and start looking at the budgets and things that I have not been part of and see what those things look like so I can have that knowledge when I get in the office, he said. Root, a Republican, wouldnt say Friday if he intends to run for sheriff in 2022. Lets savor the 2018 election win before we start the 2022 process, he said. If he does decide to run, Root already has a potential primary opponent in Howard Buffett, who has indicated in campaign finance documents that he will run as a Republican in the upcoming election. Buffett, the 66-year-old philanthropist, businessman and son of multibillionaire investor Warren Buffett, previously served as sheriff for 14 months before the 2018 election. He was chosen by former Sheriff Thomas Schneider, a Democrat, to serve the remainder of Schneider's term. Brown told the Herald & Review earlier this month that he had not decided whether to run in the 2022 election, saying he wanted to get past the legal battle with Root before making a decision. Warren Buffett is the CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. That company sold its newspaper division last year to Lee Enterprises Inc., the parent company of the Herald & Review. Love 1 Funny 0 Wow 2 Sad 1 Angry 4 Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. DECATUR The city has reversed its denial of a Freedom of Information Act submission seeking the location of license plate-reading cameras. The city declined the request by the Herald & Review to provide the locations because "disclosure would result in demonstrable harm to the agency or public body ..." The license plate recognition cameras are part of a crime-fighting initiative to drive down violence in the Johns Hill neighborhood and other areas. The technology can read license plates on vehicles going up to 100 mph from 75 feet away. The city and philanthropist Howard G. Buffett are paying $165,000 for the devices for the first year. The city will pay $150,000 annually after that. Springfield may get same license plate cameras that Decatur has A Herald & Review Freedom of Information Act request for the location of the Decatur cameras has been denied. Various civil liberties groups have raised concerns about similar technology being too invasive. Decatur police have said the cameras will be used carefully and won't invade privacy of residents. Last week, the Herald & Review reported on Springfield city officials considering purchasing license plate-reading cameras from the same vendor used by Decatur, Atlanta-based Flock Safety. The story also mentioned that the Decatur FOIA had been denied. On Friday, City Clerk Kim Althoff emailed that "after further review of your FOIA request, the locations of the LPR cameras are not exempt from disclosure." It's unclear what prompted the change. The Herald & Review has filed a separate FOIA request seeking internal city emails about what preceded the reversal. A copy of the list released by police is reprinted below. It includes 54 cameras. One location is listed as "North Woodford Street" but without an intersection. The following list was released by the police: #01 - E Wood St & S Martin Luther King Jr Dr #02 - S Maffit St & E Wood St #03 - E Wood St & S Jasper St #04 - S Jasper St & E Wood St #05 - S Calhoun St & E Wood St #06 - E Clay St & S Maffit St #07 - S Maffit St & E Johns Ave #08 - E Whitmer St & S Jasper St #09 - S Jasper St & E Cantrell St #10 - E Cantrell St & S Jasper St #11 - E Cantrell St & S MLK Jr Dr #12 - S MLK Jr Dr & E Cantrell St #13 - E Decatur St & S MLK Jr Dr #14 - S Webster St & E Lawrence St #15 - E Lawrence St & S MLK Jr Dr #16 - E Whitmer St & S Maffit St #17 - S Maffit St & E Cantrell St #18 - S Illinois St & E Whitmer St #19 - E Moore St & S Jasper St #20 - N Lowber St & E Garfield Ave #21 - N Woodford St Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. #22 - N Woodford St & E Garfield Ave #23 - E Garfield Ave & N Illinois St #24 - E Garfield Ave & N Illinois St #25 - N Illinois St & E Garfield Ave #26 - N Jasper St & E Garfield Ave #27 - N Lowber St & E Garfield Ave #28 - N Woodford St & E Garfield Ave #29 - E Garfield Ave & N 21st St #30 - E Garfield Ave & N Woodford St #31 - E Locust St & Brandt Ct #32 - E Grand Ave & N Dinneen St #33 - N Dinneen St & E Locust St #34 - E Locust St & N Dinneen St #35 - N Woodford St & E Grand Ave #36 - N Charles St & E Grand Ave #37 - N Lowber St & E Grand Ave #38 - N Jasper St & E Grand Ave #39 - N Illinois St & E Grand Ave #40 - N Calhoun St & E Grand Ave #41 - E Grand Ave & N Calhoun St #42 - E Grand Ave & N Clinton St #43 - N MLK Jr Dr & E Grand Ave #44 - N MLK Jr Dr & E Main St #45 - S Stone St & E Wood St #46- 16th St & E Clay St #47 - S Stone St & E Cantrell St #48 - S 16th St & E Cantrell St #49 - E Cantrell St & S 21st St #50 - E Cantrell St & S Jasper St #51 - E Wood St & S 22nd St #52 - S Jasper St & E Johns Ave #53 - E Olive St & N 21st St #54 - S Jasper St & E Wood St Love 2 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 1 Angry 1 CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. General Motors is teaming up with Lockheed Martin to produce the ultimate off-road, self-driving, electric vehicles for the moon. The project announced Wednesday is still in the early stages and has yet to score any NASA money. But the goal is to design light yet rugged vehicles that will travel farther and faster than the lunar rovers that carried NASA's Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s, the companies said. "Mobility is really going to open up the moon for us," said Kirk Shireman, a former NASA manager who is now Lockheed Martin's vice president for lunar exploration. The rovers used by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 moonwalkers ventured no more than 4 1/2 miles from their landers. GM also helped design those vehicles. NASA last year put out a call for industry ideas on lunar rovers. The space agency aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, a deadline set by the previous White House. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. The initial rovers will be designed to carry two astronauts at a time, according to company officials. A brief company video showed a large, open rover speeding over lunar slopes, with more headlights in the distance. By operating autonomously when needed, Shireman noted, the rovers can keep astronauts safely away from dangerous spots like the permanently shadowed craters at the moon's South Pole. Frozen water gathered from these dark corners could be used for drinking, growing plants and creating rocket fuel. Autonomy could also improve efficiency, with astronauts focused on collecting rocks as a rover follows behind like a puppy, he said. In a separate venture begun two years ago, Toyota partnered with the Japanese Space Agency to build a pressurized electric-powered lunar rover for astronauts. They're calling it the Lunar Cruiser. GM and Lockheed Martin's vehicle will be unpressurized, meaning that riders will need to wear spacesuits at all times. There's room for both models, according to Shireman. ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute's Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 A former Catholic schoolteacher in the Joliet Diocese was indicted on five counts Thursday after he was arrested earlier this month for allegedly traveling to meet a child and child grooming, according to Will County court records. Jeremy Hylka faces five criminal charges in connection with his April 27 visit to a Joliet-area McDonalds to allegedly meet and solicit someone whom he believed to be an underage boy he met through the internet, according to court documents. The criminal charges include traveling to meet a child, two charges of indecent solicitation, grooming and soliciting to meet a child all felonies. Police issued a warrant for Hylkas arrest on April 29 one day after a video of the alleged encounter was brought to their attention. Hylka was released on a $10,000 cash bond following a two-week hospitalization at Silver Oaks Behavioral Hospital in New Lenox, according to courthouse records. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. The video was made by a 19-year-old citizen, who, acting independently, posed as a 15-year-old and also uploaded alleged messages between the two on social media, police said. Hylka previously worked as a teacher at St. Joseph Catholic School in Lockport and as a youth pastor at two Joliet Catholic churches. He was fired from his positions in April, one day before police issued the warrant for his arrest, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet and police. The 44-year-old teacher had previously been put on two-week paid leave in January, while a TikTok video in which an adult man alleged he was propositioned and groomed by an unnamed teacher in high school was investigated, the diocese said. The St. Joseph Catholic School principal was also placed on leave while the diocese looked into the circumstances of Hylkas employment, officials said. Hylkas next court date is scheduled for June 24, Joliet police said. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 SPRINGFIELD Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed legislation Friday allowing for plaintiffs to collect pretrial interest on money awarded in some civil suits, after vetoing a previous version of the provision in March. An amendment to Senate Bill 72, introduced by Rep. Jay Hoffman, D-Swansea, grants 6% pretrial interest on money awarded to plaintiffs in personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits in civil court. Hospitals and health care providers are typical defendants in these cases. Before the passage of the legislation, plaintiffs received only 9% interest post-judgment in Illinois. That would be interest accrued on the plaintiffs monetary award from when the judgment is made to the time the monetary judgment is received. Now, additional interest on monetary awards is retroactively applied from the time the lawsuit is filed to the time a judgment is made in favor of the plaintiff. Both apply only to cases settled in court, encouraging defendants to settle with plaintiffs out of court. There are 47 states, including Illinois, that now have some form of pretrial interest for court winnings. In his March veto message, Pritzker said he did not support the previous version of the bill because its rate of 9% interest was significantly higher than other states with similar laws. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. The Illinois Manufacturers Association, which lobbied against the bill, issued a statement after its signing. This measure will dramatically increase litigation costs on manufacturers, hospitals, and doctors that have been on the front lines throughout the pandemic, IMA President Mark Denzler said in the release. Policy makers should be focused on supporting manufacturers to spur economic recovery from the pandemic, not making it harder for businesses to hire workers and invest in our communities. The provision, which does not apply retroactively, goes into effect June 21. The Illinois State Medical Society, which also opposed the bill, claims the new law will harm the states liability climate. The consequences of this new law will be felt when physicians decide Illinois is too expensive of a state to practice medicine. Prejudgment interest will drive up medical liability payouts, force doctors away from our borders and increase the cost of health care. Weve said it before and well say it again: The bottom line is that patients will suffer, ISMS President Regan Thomas said in a written statement. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 "Let's not pretend that the folks on the other side of the aisle if the roles were reversed would be doing anything differently right now," said state Rep. Kelly Cassidy, D-Chicago. "They're not volunteering to unilaterally disarm, they're trying to run the clock and gamble on a random drawing." Many Democrats also defended the map through a policy lens, saying that several key initiatives, like criminal justice reform, would not be possible with more Republicans in the General Assembly. "If a fair map only means more Republicans, then we would not have passed the criminal justice pillar to make sure people aren't denied bond just because they are black with low income," said state Rep. Kam Buckner, D-Chicago. Still, Republicans said the outcome is just another sign that even with Madigan gone, ways of the past remain, or as some might say, "meet the new boss, same as the old boss." "It's a new day in Illinois, right?" state Rep. C.D. Davidsmeyer, R-Jacksonville sarcastically asked. "The new day seems to hire the same people to do the same hit job," he said. "We're getting the same outcome that we had before, but it's a new day." House Speaker Chris Welch, D-Hillside, speaking towards the end, framed the argument around protecting voting rights and representation. He said the Republican track record across the country was not promising. "We are not going to do that in Illinois. Period," Welch said. "We are not going to violate the Voting Rights Act. We are not going to abandon our constitutional responsibility. Period. We are not going to let Republicans gridlock the process solely for political gain. It's not going to happen. Not here." All that's left to redistrict now are U.S. Congressional maps. Legislators have more time for those as federal maps are not bound by the June 30 cutoff date. Many believe the lawmakers will wait until 2020 census data is released. Behind the map The more we make Memorial Day about remembering our fallen warriors, the better off we are as Americans. And the day after Memorial Day, there are many steps we as thankful Americans can take to honor the service and sacrifice of those who have so selflessly served us. Its important to realize that, in every war in our nations history from Bunker Hill to Baghdad the majority of those who took up arms were volunteers. Sure, there were conscripted soldiers and draftees in the Civil War, both world wars, Korea and Vietnam. But even in those conflicts, most of fighting, bleeding and dying was done by those who choose to put on a uniform. How amazing is that? That there have always been so many willing to fight and die to ensure the rest of us can live in freedom, peace and prosperity. The nobility of their sacrifice, regardless of the war or terms of service, deserves our prayerful thanks. It not only affirms who they were; it is a validation of who we are: a nation worth fighting for. Identity politics and vicious partisanship threatens to divide us as a nation. Our shared culture is becoming a shared cancel culture. No issue seems too trivial for the exchange of woke and anti-woke barbs and accusations. In that toxic environment, it can be tempting to try to turn Memorial Day into a trope for whatever cause you wish to attack or promote. Dont. It would be wrong. There can be no other respectful purpose for this day than remembrance of those who fell standing up for us, no matter who we are and what our politics, predilections, hair color or social media preferences. Please log in to keep reading. {{featured_button_text}} Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} We can all get back to slinging mud at each other the day after, if thats what you want. After all, thats part of what soldiers fight and die for: the right of Americans to use their freedoms to squabble endlessly over how to express their freedoms. Of course, theres a more constructive way to extend the observance of Memorial Day: serving those who served and those they left behind. Too often we forget that latter group. On average, every military death profoundly affects at least a dozen others a spouse, children, extended family, friends, co-workers. We can continue to honor the fallen by doing what they can no longer do: look after the ones they love. In every community in America there are opportunities to serve the families of Americas armed forces, especially the families of the fallen. Here are three worthy organizations that can always use a helping hand. Since 1994, TAPS the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors has provided a national peer support network that connect mourning families to grief resources. At no cost to surviving families and loved ones, TAPS gives these folks comfort and hope, helping them heal, recover and remember. TAPS and their volunteers have earned the love and praise of untold families by helping make the unbearable bearable. Then there is the Gary Sinise Foundation. Yes Lieutenant Dan from Forrest Gump. There are no bounds to Garys love and respect of military members and their families. His foundation is an incredible font of love and respect for our military. Less well known is the Special Operation Warrior Foundation. Its mission: to help every child of every fallen warrior who wants to go to a good college. It may sound like mission impossible, yet somehow the foundation always seems to find a way and the resources to make that happen. There are other worthy groups as well, and many individuals who take extraordinary steps to give back. Every American has an opportunity to be one of them. If youre interested in building up America rather than tearing it and each other down, here is one worthy way to make a difference. James Jay Carafano is a Heritage Foundation vice president. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 I enjoy greeting folks; talking to people I dont know; finding out where theyre from. Sammie likes to watch people. I like to talk to them. She says my assignment in heaven will be to greet people at the gate. Ive always heard that was St. Petes job, but maybe I can be his backup. Sophie, our 4-year-old boxer, is a great conversation starter. Oh, what a beautiful dog! Do you mind if I pet her? Whether walking her in the neighborhood, a local Lowes store, or hundreds of miles from home, she opens the door for me to ask, Where yall from? and offer a parting word, Have a nice day! As I write this, we are vacationing in Williamsburg. Walking Sophie on the grounds of the resort where we are staying, Ive met folks from all over the country; but its especially fun to meet someone from back home. Ive seen license plates from all three West Coast states, from Maine to Florida, and everything in between. But I really enjoyed meeting someone from Kingsport and leaving a note on the windshield of a Bristol car with Go Vols on the side and a Tennessee High School Vikings magnet on the back. Because parole board decisions are essentially secret, we dont know why the board (which includes Roanoke Mayor Sherman Lea) decided Simpkins merited parole. Perhaps he was a model prisoner who, by his late 50s, showed contrition for crimes committed when he was in his 20s. If Simpkins had come home and stayed out of trouble, you could argue that the parole board made the right call even a conservative call, because releasing him spares taxpayers the expense of his upkeep. But the parole boards decision was clearly and demonstrably wrong because Simpkins went right back to his old ways. The Pulaski County robbery foiled by what authorities called a brave Samaritan isnt Simpkins only new charge. Hes also racked up 28 other charges in four other localities plus a probation violation in Wythe County. In all, thats 30 charges after Simpkins got out on parole. If that customer had not risked his own life to thwart the Pulaski robbery who knows what might have happened? Peterson maintains his innocence and a judge is considering whether to grant a new trial because a juror failed to disclose that she had sought a restraining order in 2000 against her boyfriends ex-girlfriend. She said in seeking the order that she feared for her unborn child. The judge must decide if that amounted to juror misconduct, and if so, whether it was so prejudicial that a new trial is warranted. If no new trial is granted, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment. One of Petersons attorneys said the announcement is not a precursor to a plea deal and that his client will seek a new trial if a judge decides his first one was tainted by juror misconduct. Superior Court Judge Anne-Christine Massullo said she hopes to make a decision this year whether Peterson merits a new trial. Its not clear if prosecutors could again seek the death penalty if there is a new trial and he was again convicted, said defense attorney Pat Harris, who is handling the death sentence portion of the case. A different attorney, Andras Farkas, is representing Peterson on the issue of whether he gets a new trial. Farkas did not respond to an email requesting comment. Mayor Sam Liccardo, a former prosecutor, said that while he has not seen the Homeland Security memo, its not a crime to hate your job. The question is, how specific was that information? he said. Particularly, were there statements made suggesting a desire to commit violence against individuals? The president of the union that represents transit workers at the rail yard sought Friday to refute a report that Cassidy was scheduled to attend a workplace disciplinary hearing with a union representative Wednesday over racist comments. John Courtney, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 265, said in a statement that he was at the facility simply to check on working conditions and the continual safety of the dedicated men and women who work there. The attack comes amid an uptick in mass shootings following coronavirus shutdowns in much of the country last year. Since 2006, there have been at least 14 workplace massacres in the United States that killed at least four people and stemmed from employment grievances, according to a database on mass killings maintained by the AP, USA Today and Northeastern University. Representative Image Kabul [Afghanistan], May 29 (ANI/Xinhua): Ten Taliban terrorists were killed and six others wounded following airstrikes in two Afghan northern provinces on Friday, the military confirmed on Saturday. In Faryab province, a Taliban divisional commander and two of his subordinates were killed and two other Taliban terrorists were wounded after Afghan Air Force (AAF) targeted a Taliban hideout in Badghisi village, Khwaja Sabz Posh district, spokesman of the army's 209th Shaheen Corps Hanif Rezai told Xinhua. Meanwhile, seven Taliban terrorists were killed and four others were wounded in AAF strikes conducted on a Taliban's base in Hazhda Bala village in Sayaad district, Sari Pul province, he said. The Taliban has not made a comment yet. (ANI/Xinhua) Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (PA) The maiden voyage of the HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier will seek to show allies that post-Brexit Britain is ready to defend Western interests and eager to see China respect international rules, the vessel's commander has said. Commodore Steve Moorhouse, the ship's commanding officer and captain, said the carrier's forthcoming voyage was "a hugely powerful statement". On Friday the ship took part in Nato exercises in the Mediterranean ahead of the journey that will cross through the South China Sea in a signal to Beijing that sea lanes must remain open. A Royal Navy Merlin helicopter lands on to HMS Queen Elizabeth ahead of the ship's maiden deployment to lead the UK Carrier Strike Group on a 28-week operational deployment travelling over 26,000 nautical miles from the Mediterranean to the Philippine Sea (Steve Parsons/PA Images via Getty Images) "It shows that we are a global navy and wanting to be back out there," Moorhouse said. Referring to the Indo-Pacific that includes India and Australia he added: "The aim for us is that this deployment will be part of a more persistent presence for the United Kingdom in that region." Asked about UK efforts to step up influence in the Indo-Pacific region to counter China's rising power a strategy also followed by the EU and supported by Nato Moorhouse said: "We want to uphold international norms... our presence out there is absolutely key." The Queen met with Commanding Officer Captain Angus Essenhigh and Commodore Stephen Moorhouse, Commander of the UK Carrier Strike Group, ahead of HMS Queen Elizabeth's maiden voyage. (AFP) In the Mediterranean, the British carrier group is part of one of Nato's biggest drills of the year, Steadfast Defender, that includes a maritime live exercise with around 5,000 forces and 18 ships. "It sends a message of Nato's resolve," Nato secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said onboard the aircraft carrier. "We face global threats and challenges, including the shifting balance of power with the rise of China," he said, adding that although China had the world's biggest navy, it was not considered an adversary by NATO. Watch: HMS Queen Elizabeth departs HMNB Portsmouth ahead of its maiden operation Prior to its departure, the Queen visited the HMS Queen Elizabeth on Saturday. Arriving by helicopter, the 95-year-old monarch was greeted by the ships commanding officer, Captain Angus Essenhigh, and Commodore Moorhouse. Story continues While aboard, she was given a briefing on the upcoming deployment and had a chance to chat with some of the 1,700 personnel, including Royal Navy sailors, Royal Air Force airmen and women, Royal Marines and 250 United States personnel. The queen wore a scarab brooch that had been a gift from her late husband, Prince Philip, a former high-ranking naval officer who died last month at age 99. A pair of F-35B Lightning II jets on the flight deck during the Queen's visit to HMS Queen Elizabeth last week (Getty Images) Boris Johnson also visited the ship and met with the crew ahead of its voyage around the world. One of the things well be doing clearly is showing to our friends in China that we believe in the international law of the sea and, in a confident but not a confrontational way, we will be vindicating that point, Johnson said last Friday. Read more: What you can and can't do under current lockdown rules Boris Johnson met with members of the crew during a visit to HMS Queen Elizabeth on 21 May, prior to its departure for Asia in its first operational deployment. (AFP) The PM sat in the cockpit of an Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II during his visit. (PA Images via Getty Images) China claims 90% of the potentially energy-rich South China Sea, but Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also lay claim to parts of it. The US has long opposed China's expansive territorial claims there, sending warships regularly through the waterway to demonstrate freedom of navigation. About $3tn worth of trade passes through it each year. The UK, like China, now has two aircraft carriers, both countries dwarfed by the US's 11. The new 65,000-tonne vessel carries eight British F-35Bs and 10 US F-35s as well as 250 US marines as part of its 1,700-strong crew. It will lead two destroyers, two frigates, a submarine and two support ships on its journey of 26,000 nautical miles, joined by a US destroyer and a frigate from the Dutch navy. The UK was the main battlefield ally of the US Iraq and Afghanistan and, alongside France, the principal military power in the EU. The 3bn ship has eight RAF F35B stealth fighter jets on board. (PA Images via Getty Images) But the decision of the UK to leave the EU after the Brexit vote raised questions about its global role. Partly in response to those concerns, London announced its biggest military spending increase since the Cold War late last year and has been touting the clout of the carrier, built at a cost of more than 3bn. HMS Queen Elizabeth will exercise with naval vessels from the US, Singapore, Japan, and South Korea along the route, Moorhouse said. Watch: How to save money on a low income Bengal Chief Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay has been recalled by the Centre with immediate effect and has been asked to report to the Department of Personnel and Training in the North Block, New Delhi by 10.00 AM on 31 May. The Mamata Banerjee led state government as a result has been asked to relieve Bandyopadhyay with immediate effect. This decision comes after Mamata Banerjee and Bandyopadhyay kept Prime Minister Narendra Modi waiting for almost 30 minutes during a Cyclone Yaas review meeting at the Kalaikunda airbase. After making the Prime Minister wait, Mamata entered the room with Bandyopadhyay, submitted a report and then left along with the Chief Secretary stating that they have another meeting in Digha. "You wanted to meet me that is why I have come today. Me and my Chief Secretary want to submit this report to you. Now we have a meeting at Digha so we seek your permission to leave", Mamata has been quoted as saying. ANI reported that the West Bengal CM upon entering the review meet has handed over papers related to the cyclone impact and left the meeting hall. These empty chairs were reserved for Mamata Banerjee , her home secretary and chief secretary but she did not let anyone attend the meeting. The presentation was loaded on the screen but no one presented it before the PM, Senior editor of Times Now Megha Prasad said in a tweet. Bandyopadhyay a 1987-batch IAS officer was set to retire at the end of this month with Mamata writing to PM Modi to grant him a six month extension. She then purportedly proceeded to unilaterally announce a three month extension for him. Islamabad, May 29 (PTI) Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Saturday expressed full confidence in the country's nuclear capability to defend itself. Khan visited a nuclear facility of the Strategic Forces Command, which is responsible for protection of nuclear assets. Pakistan is committed to continue working towards the promotion of an environment of peace and stability at the regional and global levels, Khan was quoted as saying by an official statement issued by the prime minister's office. During the visit, the prime minister was apprised of various facets of Pakistans Strategic Programme, it said. Khan appreciated and acknowledged the efforts of the scientists and personnel associated with Pakistans Strategic Programme and 'expressed full confidence' in the country's 'nuclear capability and protection to strengthen the national defence', the statement said. The visit came a day after Pakistan celebrated 'Youm-e-Takbeer' (The day of greatness) to commemorate the nuclear tests it conducted on May 28, 1998 in response to India's Pokhran tests and establishing a 'credible minimum nuclear deterrence'. Pakistan carried out the tests after India conducted a series of five nuclear bomb test explosions at Pokhran in May 1998. On his arrival to the nuclear facility, Khan was received by Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee General Nadeem Raza and Director General Strategic Plans Division Lieutenant General Nadeem Zaki Manj. PTI SH SCY AKJ SCY Remains of 215 children found at former indigenous school site in Canada The main administrative building at the Kamloops Indian Residential School is seen in Kamloops By Anna Mehler Paperny TORONTO (Reuters) -The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children, a discovery Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday. The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978, according to the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation, which said the remains were found with the help of a ground penetrating radar specialist. "We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify," Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Chief Rosanne Casimir said in a statement. "At this time, we have more questions than answers." Canada's residential school system, which forcibly separated indigenous children from their families, constituted "cultural genocide," a six-year investigation into the now-defunct system found in 2015. The report documented horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s. It found more than 4,100 children died while attending residential school. The deaths of the 215 children buried in the grounds of what was once Canada's largest residential school are believed to not have been included in that figure and appear to have been undocumented until the discovery. Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news "breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country's history." In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system. The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc Nation said it was engaging with the coroner and reaching out to the home communities whose children attended the school. They expect to have preliminary findings by mid-June. In a statement, British Columbia Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Terry Teegee called finding such grave sites "urgent work" that "refreshes the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia." (Reporting by Anna Mehler Paperny, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien) Russia approves Air France, Lufthansa routes avoiding Belarus FILE PHOTO: An Air France airplane lands at the Charles-de-Gaulle airport in Roissy PARIS/BERLIN (Reuters) - Air France and Lufthansa have received approval from Russia for flight routes to the country that avoid Belarusian airspace, the airlines said on Saturday. The European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has advised domestic and foreign airlines to avoid Belarusian air space following the May 23 forced landing in Minsk of a Ryanair jet en route to Lithuania from Greece, and the arrest of a dissident journalist on board. Air France said its new flight path to Moscow started on Saturday and had been authorised for this weekend. "We ... are awaiting a green light from Russian authorities for our flights after this weekend," a spokesman said. Air France, part of the Air France-KLM group, operates one or two flights a day between Paris and Moscow. A spokeswoman for Lufthansa, Germany's biggest airline, said it had been given approval for the new routes on its flights from Frankfurt to Moscow and St Petersburg for the foreseeable future. Lufthansa currently operates seven return flights from Frankfurt to Moscow and three return flights from Frankfurt to St Petersburg per week. (Lufthansa corrects number of weekly Moscow flights to seven from four in last paragraph.) (Reporting by Polina Ivanova in Moscow, Matthias Blamont in Paris and Kirsti Knolle in Berlin. Editing by David Holmes and Mark Potter) Representative Image Shopian (Jammu and Kashmir) [India], May 29 (ANI): One terrorist was killed on Friday in an encounter between security forces and terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir's Shopian district. He has been identified as Aitmad Ahmad Dar, a resident of Awend Shopian. He was associated with Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT). "One terrorist was killed and his body was retrieved from the site of encounter. He has been identified as Aitmad Ahmad Dar resident of Awend Shopian linked with LeT. As per police records, he was active since March 26 and was involved in several terror crime cases," J-K Police informed. Arms and ammunition and other incriminating materials have also been recovered from the site of the encounter. "Arms and ammunition. including 01 AK-56 rifle and other incriminating materials were recovered from the encounter site. The police have registered a case under relevant sections of law and an investigation has been initiated," the Police added. As per the J-K Police, the encounter has broken out in the Ganapora area of the district. (ANI) Representative image Taipei [Taiwan], May 29 (ANI): As China offered to provide Taiwan with Chinese-made COVID-19 vaccines, the majority of Taiwanese are skeptical of Beijing's motives and of the vaccines which have lower levels of efficacy than many competitors. The Chinese government has offered to help Taiwan to deal with the current outbreak by sending more COVID-19 vaccines. On May 24, China's Taiwan Affairs Office said it had repeatedly offered to help Taiwan and claimed that certain groups and people in Taiwan have been calling for the purchase of Chinese vaccines. "Our attitude is very clear: we are willing to make arrangements quickly so that the vast majority of Taiwan compatriots will have mainland vaccines to use as soon as possible," the office said. Taiwan is witnessing a new surge in the COVID-19 crisis. It has reported 7,315 cases and 78 deaths so far. However, an opinion poll conducted by the Global Views Monthly in Taiwan revealed very few people in Taiwan are willing to receive COVID-19 vaccines from mainland China, DW reported. The February poll showed that only 1.3 per cent of the respondents would choose COVID-19 vaccines from China. Health experts also have concerns about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines from the mainland, citing China's poor track record of complying with Good Manufacturing Practice (GMP) regulations. "Usually, the approval of a vaccine should ensure that the manufacturing process and the delivery process of the vaccine meet the existing requirements," said Ho Mei-Shang, professor at the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at Taiwan's Academic Sinica. "So far, we cannot monitor any of the processes mentioned above, so I do not think Taiwan's Food and Drug Administration will do something that they think is risky," Ho told DW. Recently, Taiwan directly accused China of blocking a deal with German firm BioNTech for COVID-19 vaccines. "Taiwan was close to sealing the deal with the German plant, but because of China's intervention, we still cannot sign the contract," the island's President Tsai Ing-wen said in a meeting of the ruling Democratic Progressive Party. Story continues According to the South China Morning Post (SCMP), this is the first time Taiwan has directly accused Beijing of blocking a deal with BioNTech. Beijing claims full sovereignty over Taiwan, a democracy of almost 24 million people located off the southeastern coast of mainland China, despite the fact that the two sides have been governed separately for more than seven decades. While Taiwan has effectively ruled out the possibility of importing Chinese vaccines to solve its problem, it is looking to the United States for vaccines. Meanwhile, the US government has asked American vaccine manufacturers to prioritise Taiwan as it scrambles to inoculate its people against COVID-19 amid the country's worst outbreak. (ANI) Barbee began his career with the city in 1987 as a meter reader before joining the electric underground crew. He was later promoted to his current position as the underground supervisor. Barbee is known for continually putting the needs of his co-workers above his own. He has volunteered to take on-call duties from co-workers so they can spend holidays with family; he provides training and mentoring to new co-workers; and he has taught both basic and advanced underground lineman schools across the state for Electricities of North Carolina. Barbee has also served as the neighborhood liaison to Sapphire Hills for nearly 10 years through the citys Partnership for Stronger Neighborhoods program. All the time spent online, away from their school, left many seniors feeling isolated and burned out. Pearsall said he didnt see the point of going back to school for a few weeks. Most of his friends decided not to return as well. For most of the year, Pearsall said he was on his computer for school work up to seven hours a day, leading to burnout and what he called a subpar year. Pearsall freely admitted that he didnt do his best work. At the beginning of the year, I was learning really well. But as it goes on, it becomes monotonous. It just gets boring and its hard to differentiate one day from another. You zone out 90 percent of the time, Pearsall said. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Besides the joy of playing music with his classmates in band and orchestra, Pearsall said he missed the classroom experience. As a junior, he felt like he was hitting his academic stride. I was at the peak of my learning potential, he said. And I feel like I missed out on that. Pearsall will be going to the University of South Carolina in the fall and plans to major in biomedical engineering. He worries that what he missed out on this year in academics could hurt his growth in college. Immigration has a significant impact on North Carolina, where immigrants have been the main drivers of population growth. But North Carolina is also a state where most residents are influenced by their faith, including more than one-third of the states voters who are evangelical Christians. As an evangelical, Im concerned with immigration policy because North Carolinas 900,000 immigrants are my neighbors, whom Christ commands us to love as ourselves. In fact, as a pastor, my job description originates in the New Testament, and one job requirement, as the Apostle Paul said, is to be hospitable. While we may think of Southern hospitality as having friends and relatives over for barbecue and sweet tea, the biblical definition of hospitality in the New Testament Greek, philoxenia is literally the love of strangers, not just our friends and family. As we welcome strangers, they become us. Immigrants form a growing and integral part of local churches like the one I lead. Christians advocacy for immigration reforms is often motivated by relationships: by people we know whose ability to flourish as God intended is limited by structural problems. Builders are also facing higher costs for other materials, including PVC pipe, shingles, appliances and garage doors. They are seeing price increases anywhere from 5% to 20%, according to Vogtman. Whats causing the materials shortage and subsequent price hikes? Experts say its the surge in consumer demand in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Supply and demand. Its really as simple as that, Brett Clarke, owner and president of Frontier Builders in Omaha, said in an email. When COVID-19 first became an issue, many of the lumber facilities began to lower production as they thought there would be a decrease in demand. Instead, Russell said, the demand for lumber rose as people began to undertake home improvement projects. Demand increased very rapidly. (Lumber mills) were caught with short inventories. They have been trying to rebuild inventory since then, but theyve never been able to do that, he said. As soon as they get something produced, its out the door. The lumber price increases have been dramatic enough that construction contracts have been adjusted and real estate agents are feeling the pinch between their clients and the homebuilders. City officials are seeking to declare as blighted two large swaths of northwest Lincoln in an effort to help homeowners and possibly spur more residential development. The Lincoln-Lancaster County Planning Commission last week recommended approval of both blighted and extremely blighted status for about 2,200 acres in the Belmont area and approximately 1,750 acres in the Air Park area. The proposals will go in front of the City Council sometime next month. The extremely blighted status, which can be applied to blighted areas where the unemployment rate is at least twice the state average and 20% or more of residents live in poverty, opens up additional tax incentives for both developers and homeowners. Homeowners in extremely blighted areas qualify for a $5,000 state property tax credit if they live in their homes. "That was the driving force" in the city seeking to blight the two areas, Urban Development Director Dan Marvin said. In most cases, blight designations are driven by developers who are looking to build a building or redevelop an existing property and want to be able to use tax-increment funding to cover some of the costs. In 1952 the Stuarts incorporated KFOR TV as Channel 12 in Lincoln, associated with the Dumont Network and built a two-story studio on the southwest corner of 48th and Vine streets. Channel 12 went on the air in 1953 but the following year assumed Channel 10, giving Channel 12 to the University of Nebraska as the beginning of the Nebraska Educational Television. Channel 10 moved to a new building at 42nd and Vine in 1957. Umberger Sheaff Mortuary then sold their 1110 Q St. property and in turn purchased the 48th and Vine building. A year later the 48th and Vine Street studio was converted to apartments on part of the first and most of the second floor with the old TV studio renovated as the mortuary. The mortuary also then established satellite chapels in Hallam and Waverly while purchasing Alba Browns downtown mortuary. Brown himself, then in his 90s, worked briefly at the Vine Street location. In 1856 the Nebraska Territorial Legislature briefly considered moving the capital from Omaha to Chester, which, though it was reported that a grist mill had been erected there in a supposedly thriving village, there was in fact no population and no buildings whatsoever. In 1957 the general area of Chester became the privately owned Lincoln Memorial Park Cemetery, which, in 1979, purchased the Umberger Sheaff Mortuary, renaming it the Lincoln Memorial Funeral Home, located on the cemeterys grounds. And closer to home for that weekend escape, you can try Mahoney State Park between Omaha and Lincoln or Scotts Bluff National Monument on the west end of the state. Again, we detail several stops along the way well worth your time. Earlier this week, Gov. Pete Ricketts and first lady Susanne Shore launched an initiative to Reconnect Nebraska with relationships, activities and service opportunities as the pandemic ends and life returns to normal. They were joined by Nebraska Tourism Commission Executive Director John Ricks, who encouraged Nebraskans to get out and enjoy the states beautiful places and the exciting events happening across Nebraska this summer. Ricks invited Nebraskans to take part in the 2021 Nebraska Passport Program, which runs through the end of September. This year, participants can get their passport stamped at 70 stops throughout the state. Stamped passports then can be submitted for prizes. To order a passport and learn more about this years program, go to nebraskapassport.com. Elections topical alert ELECTION INVESTIGATION Wisconsin Republicans aim to use investigation of 2020 election to fuel voting law changes JOHN HART, Lee Newspapers Dane County's recount of ballots in the 2020 presidential election resulted in a 45-vote gain for President Donald Trump, barely budging President-elect Joe Biden's winning margin. Vos Trump Biden Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, a Rochester Republican who is the de facto leader of elected conservatives in Wisconsin, agrees with the allegation that there were shady dealings in the November 2020 election, but also says that the taxpayer-funded investigation he is ordering does not intend to and will not overturn the results. Take advantage of this great offer! That investigation, he hopes, will lead to support for new election laws that Republicans say will ensure ballot counts are accurate; Democrats and voting-rights advocates say such laws will only discourage people from voting, particularly people of color and those who are poor. Evers Vos said that he hopes the investigation will lead to enough evidence to leave Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, unwilling to veto Republican bills. On Wednesday, Vos said that three former law enforcement officials have been lined up to lead the investigation. If we actually have independent investigators go out and find the data and clearly show why election laws need to be changed, I think Gov. Evers will be forced to listen. And if for some reason he doesnt, well then well have a fact basis to show the electorate not just Republicans, but those leaning independent that weve got to change the guy in office if hes not willing to listen to the facts, Vos said Thursday morning on The Dan ODonnell Show on WISN (1130 AM). Republicans have claimed that election law was enforced inconsistently across the state. Particularly, with some clerks taking the discretion to cure mail-in ballots by filling in missing information such as someones home address and others not doing that, requiring voters to fix their own absentee ballots. Now, would that have changed the results? Some people say yes, some people say no, but that doesnt really matter at this point, Vos said. What Im most concerned about is to make sure when we have another election in 2022 that we dont have a lot of the same problems occurring where theres almost no opportunity for us to actually find things to be improving. He added that: The election is behind us, its been certified, Joe Biden is the president. In a later phone interview with The Journal Times, Vos said: Its my belief that the 2020 election is settled Were going to learn from the last election. Democrats and election officials have criticized Republicans investigations of the 2020 election across the U.S., saying they have been furthering the Big Lie repeated by Donald Trump that he won the election when in reality Biden won. Neubauer If Republicans truly want to increase trust in our electoral process, they should stop repeating lies about election fraud and end the never-ending stream of politically-motivated investigations. The way to restore trust is to remove unnecessary and discriminatory barriers to the ballot box and educate voters about the safeguards that already exist in our election system, state Rep. Greta Neubauer, D-Racine, said in an email. This weeks newest so-called investigation is just another attempt by legislative Republicans to intimidate voters and election officials and to undermine the right to vote in Wisconsin. Group that still claims 2020 election was fraudulent takes aim at Mason for coordinating Zuckerbucks A group with the support of the Racine County GOP has continued alleging the 2020 presidential election that Joe Biden won was fraudulent is taking aim at the City of Racine and Mayor Cory Mason for aiding in bringing money donated by Facebook's founder into Wisconsin to support election efforts. Racine continuing to use money from Facebook founder-funded nonprofit to purchase election equipment The City of Racine is continuing to use grants paid for by the nonprofit that received significant funding from the founder of Facebook to invest in election equipment that can be used long after the pandemic is over. Grants Wisconsin and federal courts consistently ruled over the past year that it was not illegal for communities to apply for and accept funds for the operation of an election. However, Vos replied by saying you are 100% right when ODonnell said Thursday that clearly there were laws that were violated (in the 2020 election. And that) there were shady dealings at the levels of government responsible for administering the election. Regardless of what the courts concluded, Vos told The Journal Times: I believe it is unclear in the law whether a municipality can take funds from another private organization, even though that practice has been never been banned by the Wisconsin Election Commission. That to me is illegal and it is wrong. More than 200 Wisconsin communities, including Republican strongholds, accepted millions of dollars combined from the Chicago-based nonprofit Center for Tech and Civic Life to aid in the conduct of the pandemic-affected November presidential election. The lions share of that money ($6.3 million) was directed at five Wisconsin cities: Green Bay, Milwaukee, Madison, Kenosha and Racine. Those cities have argued that not only did they legally apply for grants to help them make up for immensely increased expenses tied to the election, but also that they needed more help than smaller communities, where COVID-19 concerns were not as high and where polling places would not be as busy. Coolidge A fundamental duty of the city is to facilitate the act of democracy by ensuring free and fair elections, Racine City Clerk Tara Coolidge said in a statement Thursday. The city takes that responsibility very seriously and, in the midst of a pandemic, we are incredibly proud of the extraordinary work we did in both April and November to ensure our residents were able to safely exercise their right to vote. To make that happen, the city pursued all available resources under the law, and in a completely transparent way. As an outcome, we mitigated the spread of COVID-19, expanded safe access to the ballot box for eligible voters and potentially saved lives in the process. Vos and others think it should have been illegal for communities to accept private money the alleged shady dealings that have been at the center of attention in Wisconsin right-wing circles for months. In a statement last month, Shannon Powell, Racine Mayor Cory Masons chief of staff, said: These issues have been fully litigated and any suggestion of wrongdoing is misguided. ODonnell, who has for months called for attention to the CTCL money, claimed that money was unduly influencing the way elections were run in the five biggest Democrat strongholds in the state. In Thursdays interview with The Journal Times, Vos said: Imagine that the Koch Brothers decided to spend $1 million and they only gave it to Waukesha and Cedarburg, and they got somebody from the NRA to run the elections. People would be outraged, and they should be. Now we have the exact opposite. Here, Vos referenced former Brown County Clerk Sandy Juno, who has alleged that the City of Green Bay mishandled the 2020 presidential election and gave authority to a CTCL employee. The City of Waukesha was among the Wisconsin recipients of CTCL funds, according to the Wisconsin Spotlight. Of the CTCL money, Vos alleged: This was clearly an effort to try to sway the election if they (CTCL) wanted to buy advertisements or hire people to go door to door, they are free to do that; this is America. Republicans are moving to make the acceptance of such private money illegal by changing Wisconsins laws, with several bills in the pipeline. Although such legislation could face a veto from Evers. Vos investigators, he said, will be combing through statements submitted to representatives offices and elsewhere regarding election allegations. Sworn testimony from some of those witnesses who appear to be credible is likely to follow. Only one of the investigators lined up to take on the job has been named: Mike Sandvick. Sandvick is an former Milwaukee police officer who led investigations into presidential elections throughout the 2000s. Vos said that Sandvicks prior work was nonpartisan and thorough, but the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School, which analyzed some of Sandvicks investigation of Wisconsins 2004 election, found that the investigation primarily revealed administrative mistakes and, occasionally, negligence. It showed that much of what had originally been identified as potential fraud was in fact due to clerical error, according to a Thursday report from Salon.com. Schaefer, a 2018 Franklin High School graduate, is a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison pursuing a degree in animal science and communication, with a digital studies certificate. As a Tucker 4-H member she tried new projects and activities, some of her favorites being beef and swine. She is involved in school clubs and organizations including Saddle and Sirloin, Association of Women in Agriculture and the Wisconsin Marching/Varsity Band. Schaefer remains involved in the community by being involved at her church and as an adult leader for the Tucker 4-H Club. The winner will follow Jessica Noble, 2019-2020 Fairest of the Fair. Becoming the Racine County Fairest of the Fair has always been a dream of mine, and in 2019 that dream came true, said Noble. From crowning Wednesday night of the fair, to pulling my tractor at the Friday night pulls, to Sunday night helping 4-H kids take down their signs in the barns as the fair came to a close. It was one of those times that you wouldnt trade for anything. I was able to attend many other events in support of the fair, from promoting the next fair to thanking those who make the Racine County Fair possible. My favorite part of being fairest was sharing my passion for the fair with others. Being Fairest was a treasure and I am proud to have represented the Racine County Fair for the past two years. Judge Robert Repischak went beyond that, saying a deputy wouldnt be needed and approving the furlough, so long as Bell wore a GPS tracker from the time he left the jail at 11 a.m. Friday and that he would be back at the jail by 4 p.m. that day. On Tuesday, Bell and his loved ones figured hed be able to see his family again come Friday. But then the DOC stepped in, asserting it would be a risk to let Bell out even for just a few hours, even though local elected authorities (i.e., the district attorney and Judge Repischak) didnt come to the same conclusion. The last week had been full of hopefulness, hoping hed be able to get out, that theyd be able to see and hear the severity of the situation, Ashley Stuckey, Bells girlfriend of eight years, said during an interview Thursday evening. To just find out the court system would agree to him getting out and the DA would agree to get him out, but for the people who were supposed to be working with him (the DOC and his probation officer) to not let him get out its devastating. Allegations 1. Yes. Its important to keep my child as safe as possible. We plan to take advantage. 2. Yes. With the school district dropping its mask mandate, its a necessary step. 3. No. Local COVID cases are dropping. There is no good reason to vaccinate my child. 4. No. There hasnt been enough data on vaccinated children. I think Ill hold off. 5. Unsure. I havent decided yet whether to take part in the vaccine clinics. Vote View Results At Carnival, the cruise operator gave stock grants to executives, in part to encourage its leaders to stick with the company as the pandemic forced it to halt sailings and furlough workers. For CEO Arnold Donald's 2020 compensation, those grants were valued at $5.2 million, though their full value will ultimately depend on how the company performs on carbon reductions and other measures in coming years. That helped Donald receive total compensation valued at $13.3 million for the year, up 19% from a year earlier, even as Carnival swung to a $10.2 billion loss for the fiscal year. Meanwhile, regular workers also saw gains, but not at the same rate as their bosses. And millions of others lost their jobs. Wages and benefits for all workers outside the government rose just 2.6% last year. That's according to U.S. government data that ignore the effect of workers shifting between different industries. It's an important distinction because more lower-wage earners lost their jobs as the economy shut down than professionals who could work from home. "This should have been a year for shared sacrifice," said Sarah Anderson, who directs the global economy project at the left-leaning Institute for Policy Studies. "Instead it became a year of shielding CEOs from risk while it was the frontline employees who paid the price." Carry-out drinks werent the most lucrative, Beck said, but it helped while things were shut down. An old-fashioned in the bar ran about $10. But the same drink, served in a Mason jar that holds four or five servings, runs about $25. I see no reason why we wouldnt, Beck said. It would be counterproductive for us not to do it. Carry-out drinks helped keep the Tiny House Bar in Omaha afloat during the pandemic, said owner Megan Malone. The bar, located on South 13th Street in Little Bohemia, turned one of its windows into a drive-thru lane. Having Omahas only cocktail drive-thru, people have really embraced that, Malone said. Its novel. Its convenient. Malone said the bar plans on keeping the drive-thru in place, even with indoor seating available to patrons. It lets customers grab six margaritas to take to a party or to grab a single cocktail, saving them from the hassle of buying all the ingredients and making the drinks at home. The new law helps to make the state, and Omaha, more competitive, Malone said. Something as small as being able to take a cocktail to-go pushes the city forward in a way younger people are responding to. Innovation and convenience, she said. Several exhibits at Omahas Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium open this weekend for the first time since COVID-19 safety protocols shut them down last spring. The Alaskan Adventure Splash grounds, Berniece Grewcock Butterfly and Insect Pavilion, Bay Family Childrens Adventure Trails, all rides and the zoos North Entrance opened Friday. The Hawkins Giraffe Encounter and Meadowlark Theater will be open daily beginning Saturday. The zoo also announced that fully vaccinated visitors can go maskless, a decision based on the most recent health and safety guidelines provided by Gov. Pete Ricketts office, according to a press release from the zoo. Unvaccinated guests are encouraged to wear masks indoors or in areas where social distancing isnt possible. COVID-19 closed the zoo to the public last year from March 16 through June 1, and it reopened with significant restrictions. Omaha zoo President and CEO Dennis Pate said the zoo is ready to welcome the summer season. I think we are all ready to get outside and enjoy again, Pate said. These are the days we have been looking forward to! Father Robert F. Pedretti age 82, a priest for 57 years passed away at Aspirus Hospital in Wausau, WI on Wednesday, May 26, 2021. Fr. Bob was born in Genoa, WI on October 18, 1938 to Albert & Helen (Venner) Pedretti. He grew up on a farm and attended several elementary schools as well as Holy Cross Seminary in La Crosse, WI and St. Johns, Collegeville, MN. Fr. Bob was ordained to the priesthood on May 30, 1964 at the Cathedral of St. Joseph the Workman, La Crosse, WI. Following his ordination, he was assigned to Sacred Heart Parish in Nekoosa as assistant pastor and also taught at Assumption High School, in Wisconsin Rapids. In 1967 Fr. Bob volunteered for mission work and was assigned to Holy Cross Parish in Santa Cruz. While in Bolivia he worked with a carpenters cooperative that helped carpenters and others with woodworking and hand craft skills. In 1975 Fr. Bob returned to the Diocese of La Crosse after eight years serving the poor in Bolivia. He was appointed associate pastor of Newman University Parish in Stevens Point and in 1976 became pastor of St. James Parish, Amherst. In 1988, he was also named pastor of St. Mary of Mt Carmel Parish, Fancher where he had been administering without an official appointment since 1986. Throughout his life Fr. Bob enjoyed deer hunting with his family near La Crosse as well as with friends from his parishes. In his spare time Fr. Bob spent time riding his motorcycle enjoying the countryside and many times stopping in to visit parishioners especially the homebound. Fr. Bob continued to serve both parishes, with his residence at St. James, until his retirement in 2009. He resided in the village of Amherst in his retirement years and continued to help out by offering Mass at area parishes as well as weekly Mass at Whispering Pines, an assisted living facility in Plover. The lake isnt the only draw to Okoboji. Parks, concerts, summer camps, shops and more attract people every week. Last year, many of the attractions had restrictions in place or canceled events, but are returning this year. Arnolds Park Amusement Park is open and is already filled with kids enjoying the classic roller coaster. The free summer concerts are returning this year after being canceled last year. Starting June 5, people can bring blankets, chairs and snacks to see free concerts at the Preservation Plaza with fireworks following every Saturday, Peters said. A new attraction is East Lake Park. The playground resembling the Queen II ship was a partnership between the City of Okoboji and Imagine Iowa Great Lakes. Minnie Queen is located along Highway 71, south of Sanborn Avenue. Theres just so many things to do for all ages, Meyers said. So many people have been eager to get out of the house, said Okoboji Tourism Director Rebecca Peters. Theyre vaccinated and feel they can go somewhere. Already this year she believes there will be more people in town than last year. The hotels she has spoken with are expecting record numbers based on reservations thus far. Collier was one of three Democrats picked to negotiate the final version, none of whom signed their name to it. She said she saw a draft of the bill around 11 p.m. Friday which was different than one she had received earlier that day and was asked for her signature the next morning. Texas is also set to newly empower partisan poll watchers, allowing them more access inside polling places and threatening criminal penalties against elections officials who restrict their movement. Republicans originally proposed giving poll watchers the right to take photos, but that language was removed from the final bill that lawmakers were set to vote on this weekend. Another new provision could also make it easier to overturn an election in Texas, allowing for a judge to void an outcome if the number of fraudulent votes cast could change the result, regardless of whether it was proved that fraud affected the outcome. Major corporations, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell, have warned that the measures could harm democracy and the economic climate. But Republicans shrugged off their objections, and in some cases, ripped business leaders for speaking out. A U.K. company is set to build what it says is the world's biggest and deepest pool, in a new project backed by a British astronaut. Front page Tribune headline May 18: Candidate whips up masking discussion. Third to last paragraph: A spokesperson for Derrick Van Orden said he is not leading the coalition but only offering his help. Sidebar: Was this in-home gathering of 60-70 people legal? The candidate claims to stand for constitutional freedoms; simultaneously, he demonstrates wanton aversion to CDC guidelines. He stirs the pot, but claims no responsibility. Sounds like the subversive tactic of another, now former politician. For our Democratic Republic to thrive, we rely on healthy public discourse and citizen representation. Our middle and high school students learn the dynamics of debate and argument. Individuals like this candidate intentionally obviate civil discourse. He incites clear and present dangers. Paragraph 11: last week, a G-E-T School Board meeting was abruptly adjourned after anti-mask protestors and parents had board members leaving the room for their safety, . WASHINGTON (AP) The White House says it believes U.S. government agencies largely fended off the latest cyberespionage onslaught blamed on Russian intelligence operatives, saying the spear-phishing campaign should not further damage relations with Moscow ahead of next months planned presidential summit. Officials downplayed the cyber assault as "basic phishing" in which hackers used malware-laden emails to target the computer systems of U.S. and foreign government agencies, think tanks and humanitarian groups. Microsoft, which disclosed the effort late Thursday, said it believed most of the emails were blocked by automated systems that marked them as spam. As of Friday afternoon, the company said it was "not seeing evidence of any significant number of compromised organizations at this time. Even so, the revelation of a new spy campaign so close to the June 16 summit between President Joe Biden and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin adds to the urgency of White House efforts to confront the Kremlin over aggressive cyber activity that criminal indictments and diplomatic sanctions have done little to deter. I dont think it'll create a new point of tension because the point of tension is already so big, said James Lewis, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This clearly has to be on the summit agenda. The president has to lay down some markers to make clear that the days when you people could do whatever you want are over. The summit comes amid simmering tensions driven in part by election interference by Moscow and by a massive breach of U.S. government agencies and private corporations by Russian elite cyber spies who infected the software supply chain with malicious code. The U.S. responded with sanctions last month, prompting the Kremlin to warn of retribution. Asked Friday whether the latest hacking effort would affect the Biden-Putin summit, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, "Were going to move forward with that. The U.S., which has previously called out Russia or criminal groups based there for hacking operations, did not blame anyone for the latest incident. Microsoft attributed it to the group behind the SolarWinds campaign, in which at least nine federal agencies and dozens of private sector companies were breached through a contaminated software update. In this case, hackers gained access to an email marketing account of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and masquerading as the government body, targeted about 3,000 email accounts at more than 150 different organizations. At least a quarter of them involved in international development, humanitarian and human rights work, Microsoft Vice President Tom Burt said in a blog post late Thursday. The company did not say what portion of the attempts may have led to successful intrusions but said in a separate technical blog post that most were blocked by automated systems that marked them as spam. The White House said even if an email eluded those systems, a user would still have to click on the link to activate the malicious payload. Burt said the campaign appeared to be a continuation of multiple efforts by the Russian hackers to target government agencies involved in foreign policy as part of intelligence gathering efforts. He said the targets spanned at least 24 countries. Separately, the prominent cybersecurity firm FireEye said it has been tracking multiple waves of related spear-phishing by hackers from Russia's SVR foreign intelligence agency since March preceding the USAID campaign that used a variety of lures including diplomatic notes and invitations from embassies. The hackers gained access to USAID's account at Constant Contact, an email marketing service, Microsoft said. The authentic-looking phishing emails dated May 25 purport to contain new information on 2020 election fraud claims and include a link to malware that allows the hackers to achieve persistent access to compromised machines. Microsoft said the campaign is ongoing and built on escalating spear-phishing campaigns it first detected in January. USAID spokeswoman Pooja Jhunjhunwala said Friday that it was investigating with the help of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Constant Contact spokeswoman Kristen Andrews called it an isolated incident. While the SolarWinds campaign,was supremely stealthy and began as far back as 2019 before being detected in December by FireEye, this campaign is what cybersecurity researchers call noisy, meaning easy to detect. And though "the spear phishing emails were quickly identified, we expect that any post-compromise actions by these actors would be highly skilled and stealthy, FireEye's VP of analysis, John Hultquist, said in a statement Friday. He said the incident is a reminder that cyber espionage is here to stay. Many cybersecurity experts did not consider the operation an escalation of online Russian aggression. I think it's par for the course," said Jake Williams, president of Rendition Infosec and a former U.S. government hacker. He said its naive to think that U.S. cyber operators arent engaged in similar operations targeting adversaries. Bobby Chesney, a University of Texas at Austin law professor specializing in national security, said it is nowhere near as serious as the SolarWinds hack. Nor does it come anywhere near the damage done by the ransomware attack earlier this month by Russian-speaking criminals tolerated by the Kremlin that temporarily knocked the Colonial Pipeline offline. Chesney said he thought it was wrong to regard the USAID targeting as a Russian response to sanctions or a sign the sanctions were somehow feckless. I don't think it proves anything, really, Chesney said. It's no surprise at all that the SVR is still engaged in espionage in the cyber domain. I don't think we tried to deter them out of doing this wholesale. Bajak reported from Boston. Associated Press writer Alan Suderman contributed from Richmond, Va. The Rev. Lale Labuko was just a child when he inexplicably lost two older sisters. Only when he was an adult did he learn that they were secretly killed because his Ethiopian Kara Tribe in the Lower Omo River Valley believed they were cursed. Perhaps it was because they were born with what the tribe calls abnormalities, such as twins, or children whose top teeth come in before the bottom teeth, or children whose parents didnt get the necessary three blessings from the king, bishops and elders. Labuko says the tribe believed if cursed children werent killed, disease, disaster and death would destroy the tribe. The ancient tradition is known as mingi, with children thrown into the river, abandoned in a bush, starved or suffocated by filling their mouths with dirt. And yes, even in this day and age, it still happens. But no longer in the Kara Tribe. Labuko has devoted his life to convincing his people that mingi is a blessing not a curse. The day he convinced the king of his village, Dus, which means dust, to stop the killing, a rainstorm drenched the arid valley. Soon after, he founded the nonprofit Christian organization, Omo Hope. Labuko recently visited Gordonville while fundraising across the country for his organization. It wasnt his first time in Lancaster County; in fall 2018, he spoke at several churches. Two years ago, Omo Hope built Omo Childrens Home in Jinka that now houses more than 50 children rescued from nearby tribes. Last year, a private primary school, now with 261 students, was built across from the home. Older students attend a local high school, and one graduate is now in medical school in Addis Ababa, with plans to return to the village to care for her people. I just give them what they need, Labuko said. I just help them. The home and school have indoor bathrooms with clean water, which Labuko drilled for, while the rest of the valley drinks dirty water. Most kids under 5 die, he said. Labuko visits the United States periodically to raise funds to support his mission. This time, he arrived in September and has traveled across the country. His goal is to raise $51,000, and he doesnt plan to go home until he does. To donate, go to omohope.org, where there is also a link to the 2015 documentary/drama, Omo Child: The River and the Bush. With the funds, he hopes to expand the primary school, which generates income. Labuko was in the area from May 21 to 25, when he was hosted by Edna Stolfzfus, of Harrisburg, who met him in 2018 while on a Christian mission trip through Africa, with a stop in Omo Valley. Because of COVID-19, there were no large public events this trip, although he did visit Branch Community, in Gordonville, and Hillside Christian Fellowship, in Millersburg, Dauphin County. The goal for his extended weekend in the area was to connect with more people. Omo Child needs people to support Lale in his mission, share the vision and bring financial aid, Stoltzfus said. We believe the best way to gain that support and give people an opportunity to be a part of Omo Child is to first build relationships with, and connect to, Lales heart for the ministry. Labuko plans to return to Pennsylvania in August, with speaking engagements now in the works. For Stoltzfus, who worked with Labuko for two weeks when she was in Ethiopia, an important part of supporting Omo Child is building support here and inviting people to join Labukos growing Pennsylvania family. In the past three years, Stoltzfus said, the childrens home went from a rented space, to buying land, building a home and a school. The private school accommodates other children from Jinka, paying a small tuition for quality education, which generates income for the home. The goal is for Omo Child to be completely self-sustaining, she said. That is a far-reaching goal, but significant progress has been made. Lales time in Lancaster has played a part in this through fundraiser events and speaking at churches. Labuko grew up in a mud hut with a thatched roof. He converted to Christianity as a teen when missionaries came to his village. He was educated in schools in Ethiopia and graduated from Hampshire College, in Amherst, Massachusetts, and Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission in Germany before returning to Ethiopia. He had a spiritual change in his life in 2018 that led him to teach and preach and plant two churches. But the children are his life. I can see the children are growing every year, he said. They speak English, which is unusual in Ethiopia and is really difficult. Labuko now lives in Jinka, about 140 miles from Dus. He and his wife, Gido, have five children. She works at the childrens home and recently sent him a photograph of a 1-year-old girl, Metsananat, the latest rescue to arrive at the Omo home. Were going to connect with her familys tribe its huge, 200,000 people and teach them about mingi, Labuko said. He explained why it is so hard to get adults to give up their belief in curses. Its a spiritual issue, he said, and gave an example. They beat on drums for ceremonies. If a drum breaks, they believe the curse came back. So from now on, mingi children have to stay away from drums. They will always carry that (mingi) label, Stoltzfus said. In the past four years, Labuko said, 30 to 40 children have died in the Hammer and Benna tribes, also in the Omo Valley. They didnt really accept them, Labuko said. The kids in my home are more protected. They have a future. They can come to America. Mingis grow up with less hope. I forgave my family. Omo is about hope and forgiveness. Everyone at the Elizabethtown American Legion Post 329 knows Jim Phillips. Sitting at a table recently with photos, a jagged shard of German shrapnel, souvenir Nazi armband, yellowed three-day pass to Paris and commemorative medals including the National Order of the Legion of Honor from French government spread out before him, the 99-year-old World War II veteran and former post commander fielded well wishes and greetings from everyone around him. Born in Middletown on Aug. 2, 1921, Phillips was 20 when he was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1942. After basic training he was assigned to the 313th Field Artillery Battalion, 80th Infantry Division (the Blue Ridge Division) under Maj. Gen. Joseph D. Patch. The soldiers reported to Camp Forrest, Tennessee. There, Phillips was quickly promoted to sergeant and was put in charge of a forward observation squad that included a jeep and 14 enlisted men with weapons and radio equipment. I had no high school diploma, so I dont know why they made me a sergeant, he said. I think they flipped a coin. On July 4, 1944, the division loaded aboard the SS Queen Mary for a sea voyage that would end three days later at Greenock, Firth of Clyde, Scotland. Id never seen the ocean, Phillips recalled. Not everyone made the trans-Atlantic trip. There were three older men in my outfit, men in their midto late 30s, Phillips said. These men were stopped before boarding and told that, because of their age, they did not have to go overseas if they chose not to. Two accepted the offer but one stayed with Phillips and they soon became friends. He never called me sergeant, Phillips recalled. I called him Pop and he called me Hey Boy. Meeting Patton After landing in Scotland, the division was transported by train to Northwich, England, for more training, including instruction in waterproofing equipment for the upcoming crossing of the choppy English Channel. The crossing was made aboard Liberty Ships and ponderous tank landing ships or LSTs, dubbed Large Slow Targets by their crews. Phillips and his comrades landed in France on Utah Beach on Aug. 2, 1944, Phillips 23rd birthday. The 80th Division was attached to Gen. George Pattons Third Army. Phillips recalled the greeting they received from Patton, who was known for his colorful language. Ill tell you what, that man could swear, Phillips recalled. Somebody asked, How do we know which Germans to shoot? Patton replied, Kill all them lousy blah, blah, blah, all swear words none of them are any good. But you either liked Patton or you hated him. I liked him. He got the job done. What other generals would take in two or three weeks, Patton took in a week. Hed call in air support and theyd come in and strafe whatever he asked for, Phillips said. Before Phillips went into combat, his commanding officer asked if hed like a three day pass to see Paris. I started telling him, Yes, sir, I dont have any money, Phillips said. He got mad and said, That wasnt what I asked you. I asked if you wanted to go to Paris. I said Id love to, so he put a blanket on the ground, reached into his pocket and pulled out money and put it on the blanket. Then he asked everyone else, Who wants to help Jimmy go to Paris? Phillips was also given American cigarettes, which were as good as cash in Paris. So with the money and a bag full of cigarettes he was off, staying in a Red Cross-managed hotel. Then it was off to the front. War stories His first combat experience was at a French village called Pont-a-Mousson. The men came under fire of a large German railroad gun that was concealed in a forest, safe from Allied air reconnaissance. When they wanted to fire it, theyd pull this thing out of the woods and open up, Phillips said. When the shells hit that town, the ground shook. Phillips kept a jagged chunk of steel about three inches long. As the eyes of a battery of four 105mm field pieces, Philips and members of his observation team were often on the move, staying out in front of the guns and occupying high ground whenever possible to find the best vantage points. Every time we moved we had to pick up the (communication) wire, the radios and field phones and carry everything along with us, he said. His combat experience included the Battle of the Bulge and liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp, with all of its horrors of the Holocaust. The fighting ended on May 8, 1945, but the danger remained. One day Phillips, a lieutenant and 12 men were assigned to escort a trainload of Russian soldiers whod been captured by the Germans back to their own lines. The Soviets wanted none of these former prisoners to flee, so every time the train stopped, Phillips and his soldiers got off and patrolled along the length of the train to make sure no Russians jumped off. They didnt want to go home, Phillips said of the ex-POWs. Reaching their destination, they delivered their charges, then stayed overnight before heading back to their own lines. That night, the lieutenant got drunk on vodka and Phillips men had to load him onto the train next morning for the return trip. The engineer, a German who was evidently eager to return, opened the train throttle. Roaring toward a checkpoint the Russians had established on the tracks, it became obvious that the engineer had no plans to stop. One of the Americans yelled, Hit the floor as two Russian machine guns raked the train. No one was injured in the fusillade. The lieutenant, he never woke up, Phillips said. He really had a load on. Approaching 100 After the war, Phillips moved to Elizabethtown and went to work at Savoy Shoe Co. He married Ruth Kauffman from Tower City in 1956. He joined the Legion post and served as commander in 1963. Phillips, a 32nd Degree Mason, moved with his wife into Masonic Village 18 years ago; she died in 2014. When he turned 99 last year, Philips was asked what he wanted for his birthday. I said Id never been up in a helicopter, he recalled. I had to say something. Thats how he ended up flying from Lancaster Airport to Harrisburg International Airport, a trip that included a low pass over Elizabethtown so his friends on the ground could wave. He doesnt yet know what he wants for his 100th birthday in August, but noted that he still has time to decide. The son of a World War II veteran wondered why a World War I Purple Heart medal would be among his late fathers belongings. Mike Gallion of Brickerville wouldnt let go of the mystery medal without getting answers. He was determined to reunite it with its rightful owners, hopeful that his sleuthing would pay off. It did and the medal is going to be a surprise for the World War I Army veterans 77-year-old son, who is also a veteran. Gallions only clue to start his search a few months ago was the name Frank L. Klinepeter engraved on the back of the Purple Heart. The World War I Victory Medal was also with it. The name wasnt familiar to us, said Gallion, a member of the Sons of the American Legion Post 56 in Lititz. He reached out to a friend who discovered via the Internet that Klinepeter had died in 1968 and was buried in Duncannon in Perry County. Gallion credited The Perry Historians, a volunteer group, for providing him the names of Klinepeters son and other relatives. The family has lived in Duncannon for generations. More digging led me to the Facebook pages of his son and both granddaughters. I messaged all three of them and just waited, Gallion said. A few ways later, a granddaughter responded. Rachel Klinepeter Schlachter saw Gallions message one night and thought it a bit odd. I called my mom (Damaris) right away, she said. She recalled that that conversation began with, Youll never believe Gallion said Schlachter had no idea that her grandfather had earned a Purple Heart and welcomed its return to the family. He delivered the medals to them. He was reluctant to mail them but also wanted to meet the family. They believe that Frank Klinepeter was awarded the Purple Heart for being gassed during the war. Mustard gas was a commonly used chemical weapon in the First World War. The story of his medals continues with a surprise coming later this month. Rachel plans to place the medals in a shadow box with a photo of her grandfather taken in Ger- many in 1919 along the Rhine River. He was a sergeant with the Pennsylvania 58th Infantry and was about 29 years old at the time. Schlachter will present the shadow box to her father, Sonny Klinepeter, who served in the Air Force in the 1960s. She explained that Frank and Mary Klinepeter adopted their nephew, Sonny, and the military medals are a piece of his life too. I think hes going to get a little emotional, she said. Schlachter has the medals hidden at home and will present them to her father when the family gathers. She predicted that he will dig deeper into his fathers military service once he sees the medals. The Klinepeters and Gallions are linked through relatives. Gallion said Frank Klinepeter was his stepmothers stepgrandfather. Mikes late father, the Rev. Donald Gallion, served as an Army medic in World War II and entered the ministry after the war. He passed away in 2019 at age 94 and is buried at Fort Indiantown Gap National Cemetery. Mike said that in February, his brother gave him a box containing some of their fathers belongings, including Klinepeters medals. Thats when his search mission began. Im thankful and grateful that Mike Gallion took the extra time, Schlachter said. Bonnie Adams is a correspondent for the Lititz Record Express. She welcomes comments and story ideas at bonniebadams@yahoo.com. Iraq's Expatriate Assyrians Ineligible to Vote in Upcoming Elections Iraq candidates are preparing for the next parliamentary elections in October. By one report, 3,500 candidates have placed their names in the running for 325 seats. Of those, at least 34 Christian candidates are on the electoral lists. A minimum of five quota seats are reserved for Christian minorities, allocated to Baghdad, Kirkuk, Erbil, Dohuk, and Nineveh. Recent changes by Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) means that Iraqi citizens abroad will no longer be able to participate in the elections. Many Iraqis voiced support of the decision, arguing that the diaspora should not make decisions for a country they do not reside in. Assyrians make up nearly 40% of the Iraq War refugees. Once numbering 1.5 million in 2003, Assyrians now total around 142,000 today, leaving many Assyrians in the diaspora. A Newsweek opinion article by Neil Joseph Nakkash outlines the disadvantages of disqualifying expatriate Assyrians from voting in the upcoming elections. Nakkash argues that Assyrians still residing in Iraq rely on those in the diaspora to advocate on their behalf internationally as well as voting for Assyrian candidates in the elections. He continues to say that the five seats allocated for Christians are insufficient in parliament because of loopholes that allow Assyrians to be exploited. Because non-Christian citizens can vote for Christian candidates, other major Iraqi political parties seize this as an opportunity to secure more seats while still abiding by the Christian requirement. The Kurdistan Democratic Party and the Badr Organization are two parties identified by Nakkash as one who utilizes this tactic. Both parties are predominately Muslim and have historically restricted Assyrians in varying ways. Though Christian leaders are still elected to the allocated seats, Assyrians rarely vote for these candidates. Without the voice of the Assyrian diaspora, Nakkash argues that Assyrians are more likely to be disenfranchised in the upcoming election. Regardless, with very few Christians remaining in Iraq, Christian voters are drastically reduced with the IHEC regulations. Meanwhile, the Kurdistan Region President promises to protect the rights of Christians in the formation of the region's constitution. A Lebanon County school van driver was killed after being struck by another there on Thursday, according to a report by the Lebanon Daily News. Larry Schauer, 72, of Lebanon, was traveling south along Route 501 near Michters Road in Heidelberg Township when an SUV driven by a 29-year-old Myerstown man crossed into oncoming traffic and struck him at around 4 p.m., the Lebanon Daily News said. Schauer was transported to Lancaster General Hospital where he was pronounced dead, according to the report. The Lancaster County Coroners Office told the Lebanon Daily News that Schauer died from injuries he sustained in the crash. The Myerstown driver was also transported to Lancaster General Hospital to be treated for minor injuries, according to the report. Schauer was driving with three children in the van, ages 7, 10 and 11, the Lebanon Daily News said. All three children sustained minor injuries, with the 7- and 10-year-olds being transported to Penn State Hershey Medical Center. Nearly three months after Manheim Township commissioners asked other local leaders to join them in calling for creation of a county health department, boards in only a handful of the countys 60 municipalities have done so. About 20 boards have discussed the issue so far, according to LNP/LancasterOnline reports from municipal meetings around the county. Including Manheim Township, four boards representing 105,000 county residents or 19% of the countys population have endorsed the move, while 11 boards representing 11% of the countys population have voted against it. Five other boards discussed it but took no action, and Ephrata Borough plans to vote on it next week. But about 40 municipalities, representing a majority of the countys population, have not publicly taken up the matter at all. Many are members of the Lancaster County Association of Township Supervisors, which advised its members against supporting the resolution, citing potential cost as one factor. In a statement this week, Manheim Township said it invited partners to join its efforts because, Our goal was to start the conversation on establishing a health department and it hopes they will continue to debate the issue of a Lancaster County Health Department to better protect the health and safety of Lancaster Countians in the future. But the next steps in that conversation are unclear. Resolution passed in March The Manheim Township commissioners passed their resolution in early March, calling on the county to create a health department and citing the COVID-19 pandemic response. Among municipalities, support and opposition has fallen largely, but not entirely, along rural and urban as well as political lines. Manheim Township and Lancaster city, the countys two most populous communities and both led by Democrats, voted in favor of the resolution. They were joined by Denver and Marietta boroughs, two much smaller municipalities, one conservative and one politically competitive. Otherwise, it has been mostly rural, conservative townships and boroughs that voted against the resolution or took no action on it. Meanwhile, a Franklin & Marshall College poll of 2,000 Lancaster County adults last fall found strong public support for a county health department, though some public officials have criticized the polls methodology and results. County leaders weigh in While County Commissioner Craig Lehman, the sole Democrat, has supported creation of a county health department, his two Republican colleagues, Commissioner Josh Parsons and Commissioner Ray DAgostino, have argued that the 1950s law establishing county health departments is antiquated and creates an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy. Some of the communities that voted against the resolution took similar positions. I think this is a knee-jerk reaction to the COVID pandemic, Mayor Leo Lutz, of politically competitive Columbia Borough, said in April. I cant support another layer of government. Others, like Mountville Borough Council member Richard Spiegel, were worried about the cost. Jerry Long, chairman of the Brecknock Township supervisors, worried that the cost would get pushed back onto the municipalities. He cited the countys drug task force, which has been a contentious financial issue between the county and the municipalities. Next steps unclear The Manheim Township Commissioners, meanwhile, plan to discuss the issue and consider next steps on the resolution by the end of June, said Chairman Tom OBrien. OBrien said his board is disappointed more municipalities havent joined in, but hes hopeful because of the results of the F&M poll and the public support it identified for a county health department. We truly believe that it needs to be done and were going to find a way to event make it happen in some way, even a small way, he said. Lehman, the county commissioner, said he still supports a health department and believes the current law is a workable one, but added that he is open to change. Parsons said that as a conservative he would need to see data that would justify the multi-million dollar endeavor. He also noted that the Lancaster County Association of Township Supervisors represents two-thirds of the countys municipalities, adding weight to the number of municipalities who are opposed. Yes, the 1950s law is antiquated, Parsons wrote in an email Friday. We have already created an emergency health response capacity in County government this past year and I am open to other discussion if it is premised on doing it in a limited and fiscally responsible way. Commissioner Ray DAgostino said he believes some level of health capacity is necessary, and pointed to the countys new health and medical coordinator position as filling that need. But as it stands now the structure of a health department under the current law is unwieldy, he said. If the laws are updated, I would be in favor of reviewing the changes to see how the laws would impact Lancaster County and if it would be prudent and beneficial to develop some further health capacity within the County, DAgostino said in an email Friday. I have been in contact over the past several months with the County Commissioners Association of PA (CCAP) and county commissioners across the Commonwealth regarding these laws. The overwhelming consensus in these discussions is that counties that do not have a health department believe that these laws need to change before they would take a step toward creating a health department. Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. I didnt write that. It was actually Billy Joel in Say Goodbye to Hollywood from the Turnstiles album. I love that album, which Ive always thought was very underrated. The point is hes right and there is, perhaps, no more bittersweet, triumphantly excruciating, joyfully heartbreaking goodbye than the one we say to our children. Im reminded of this now because its graduation season and our kids are heading out, on their own, for the first time. Whether the independence is actual or perceived, the result is the same. It is interesting that young people, especially those heading to college though not yet involved in coursework believe theyve suddenly become smarter, for no reason other than the rising of the sun. A teenager who couldnt microwave a burrito a month ago is now an expert on a wide range of topics, from international affairs to home renovation. Moreover, we, as parents, become stupider, for no reason other than the rising of the sun. This is a byproduct of what behaviorists, and me, call the Good riddance affect. This phenomenon is part of the natural order of things, provided by God as a gift to parents so we dont miss our little know-it-alls quite so much. In fact, there have been rare cases in which parents have called university admissions offices to see if they might consider taking their sweet treasure a few weeks early. But the dorms wont be open. Cant he just hang out on campus? Not that Ive ever made such a call or imagined how the conversation might go if I phoned, anonymously, and disguised my voice just to test the waters to see, you know, if there was any precedent for such thing. No, no. Well miss our children terribly. But life does go on, after all. Cant sit around moping all day long. What am I going to do, for example, with two fewer cars in the driveway? I can either look, mournfully, out the window, at the empty spaces or I can do something productive, such as, I dont know, buy a Corvette. I spotted a bright yellow one online. Its very bold, I told my wife. It makes a statement. Whats the statement? she asked. IM YELLOW!? She had a point. How about a Miata? Its so small, she said. It looks like someone trying to have a midlife crisis but cant afford it. Touche. I found another place online that sells cars no one really needs. Supercars. Not the real name but it might as well be. It boasts a healthy inventory of jacked-up cars under the tagline, We specialize in impractical vehicles for middle-aged men. Sign me up! But even Supercars didnt have a car dumb enough for me. So, I dream. The kids meanwhile, unaware of my plans for their parking spaces, or their rooms, continue to plan their exits. When theyre actually here, that is. When children are getting ready to leave the nest, home turns into a kind of bed and breakfast. For them, not for us. They have business to conduct parties, photos, dinner engagements with associates. Every once in a while, well catch a glimpse of someone purported to live here but that might just be the dog. And yet, we anticipate the moment when we say, Goodbye. For real. We give them our best, last-minute advice, we hug them and drive away. And in that moment, as we peek in the rearview mirror, all of the firsts and lasts rush past us the first day of kindergarten, middle school, braces, birthday parties, high school, sports, band concerts, driving, dating. We hope weve done it right. How will we know? How can we? The house will be quiet; quieter than were used to. The cars will be gone, the rooms empty, save for the reminders: stuffed animals, books, blankets, shoes. Theyll be back. But it wont be the same. It cant be. They know it and we know it. Yes, theyll come back, but theyll leave again. Theyll always leave. I didnt understand this when I left home. I do now. Billy Joel did: Life is a series of hellos and goodbyes. Im afraid its time for goodbye again. Rich Manieri, a Philadelphia-born journalist and author, is a professor of journalism at Asbury University in Kentucky. He was previously an LNP | LancasterOnline deputy Opinion editor. His column is distributed by the Cagle syndicate. Workplace protections, stable jobs and a pathway to the middle class: For more than a century, our nations labor unions have been the strongest boosters for American workers. But for the last several decades, anti-worker forces, often led by Republican politicians in Washington and Harrisburg, have tried to strip workers of their power. We see the results today everywhere we look in stagnant middle-class wages and rising income inequality, or in dangerous working conditions even in the middle of a global pandemic. Luckily, President Joe Biden and Democrats know this needs to change. Thats why theyve introduced the American Jobs Plan, which contains Protecting the Right to Organize, or PRO Act. This vital legislation would play a critical role in strengthening unions, which in turn would address the staggering inequities in Pennsylvanias workforce. As Pennsylvania Democrats push for a higher minimum wage remains uncertain, expanding the ranks of organized labor would give more people a living wage. The U.S. Labor Department reports unionized workers median earnings are about 19% higher than those of nonunion workers. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought to light what many workers advocates have argued for years: When our communities become unsafe, front-line workers often with very few workplace protections face the biggest risk. No one should go to work in fear for their lives. But for the last 14 months, far too many Pennsylvanians have had to do just that not just at hospitals and clinics, but on mail routes and at grocery stores. Now, more than ever, we are reminded of the significant risk essential workers face and the need for stronger worker protections. The best way to ensure a safer workplace is a strong union. Organized workplaces are safer workplaces. A union contract often includes language restricting excess shifts, requiring safety equipment, and better health insurance. Pennsylvania has a long legacy of placing workers rights at the forefront by elevating pro-labor legislation and policies. It is time we live up to that and address those fundamental weaknesses by passing the PRO Act. Unions have weakened and membership has declined across the country as the balance of power has shifted toward corporate managers who have exploited outdated labor laws to bust unions and intimidate workers. Thankfully, unions now have President Biden in their corner. Just last month, in a historic move, he came out in support of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama. This is new. Nothing like it before, labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein observed. Politicians always give great speeches at union conventions and avoid union organizing campaigns because of the possibility of failure. But Biden broke this norm. Biden also made it clear in his speech that he is aware that todays working class has large contingents of Black people, Latinos and women. He is calling on Congress to update the social contract that provides workers with a fair shot to get ahead, so they can overcome racial and other inequalities that have been barriers for too many Americans. Biden followed up his Bessemer remarks with the American Jobs Plan and, with it, the PRO Act. The Pennsylvania AFL-CIO has applauded the American Jobs Plan and called it nothing short of heroic. By protecting the right to organize, the AFL-CIO continues, we ensure that all workers can prosper. Our pro-worker U.S. Sen. Bob Casey came out in support of the bill earlier this month. I applaud him for signing on to be a co-sponsor. The PRO Act is the next step to level the playing field for workers. A level playing field is all we are asking for. Casey has shown real leadership on the PRO Act, and it is our hope that Sen. Pat Toomey will follow his lead and support this critical bill. The PRO Act is the most significant piece of law to strengthen workers rights in over 80 years. The lives and the health of working families of Pennsylvania depend on their ability to have a voice in how they do their jobs. They depend on the passage of the PRO Act. Lets join President Biden and get it done. Robert Bair is the business manager for the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers local union No. 143. EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY, MAY 29, 2021 Anti-Malthusian AllianceMorally and Scientifically May 28, 2021 (EIRNS)Fortunately, there are individuals and alignments coming forward, or about to, worldwide, in resistance to the Green Great Reset/geopolitical onslaught we now face, which, unless stopped, means obliteration from disease, famine and war. Two developments this week contribute to the process of transforming resistance into a powerful offensive to defeat the Malthusian enemy. First, there is the needed understanding of how mankind, through creative discoveries and applications, must progress scientifically and technologically. This means going forward, not backward, in successive, higher modes of power. At a conference (virtual) in Moscow May 26-27, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche identified this in her presentation, Energy Flux Density as the Criterion of Physical Economy. Speaking on a panel at the annual Moscow Academic Economic Forum, she stated at one point: With his science of physical economy Lyndon LaRouche developed the yardstick needed, by defining the exact correlation of the energy flux density used in the production process and the associated relative potential population density which can be maintained on each level. Since wind and solar have very low energy flux densities, and many countries, such as Germany, are exiting nuclear energy, the Great Reset threatens to lead to a population reduction of billions, which is the result desired by the neo-Malthusian advocates of green finance. The Green New Deal is the opposite of the New Deal of Franklin D. Roosevelt: it is the revival of the economics of Hjalmar Schacht, with the same results: mass death and war. Understanding the LaRouche breakthrough concept of energy flux density and potential relative population density makes it clear: morally and scientifically, the Green New Deal and Great Reset are killers. A second contribution to the anti-Malthusian alliance comes from Italy. A webinar was held on May 26, by a grouping of Italian scientists, who have exposed the fraudulent climate models used by the UN IPCC to justify the climate change emergency demanding economic destruction and depopulation. The event was the first in a series of eight, through October, called the Climate Dialogues, with the next one scheduled for June 9. The organizers are the Padua Association of Engineers, and Galileo magazine. At the May 26th kick-off, Prof. Nicola Scafetta, a world expert on climate models, based on solar dynamics, demolished the CO2 emissions and overheating analysis, which is refuted by real data, past and present, as well as conceptually bunk. Scarfetta and others praised the more balanced Russian and Chinese climate models. These Climate Dialogue scientists are those who in 2019 released a manifesto titled, There Is No Climate Emergency, initially signed by 200 Italians, and soon by an international group of over 500 scientists. There are now more than 800 scientist signers. Again, understanding that the CO2 emissions model is a fraud, makes it clear: morally and scientifically, the Green New Deal and Great Reset are killers. The Schiller Institute, just a month from now, will have another international (online) conference to further the world Anti-Malthusian Alliance, in all respects, and based on the expanding dialogue already in progress. The Schiller Institute newsletter (No. 22, USA) out today, previewed the June 26-27 conference weekend, stating in part, The science of climate change is not settled, and much of what is presented is not based on science at all. Leading scientists with the integrity and courage to buck dangerous popular dogma will discuss so-called man-made climate change, and the most-advanced science, including the galactic science of astronomical-scale oscillations. The suicidal trend in some European countries to stick with anti-nuclear attitude will also be discussed. Space science and exploration, and recent breakthroughs in controlled thermonuclear fusion, are the science drivers for a growing and prosperous human race. Man is surely a galactic species, and the realization of that idea has profound implications for everything from education, health care, to the potential for new Beethovens and Mozarts. That issue of scientific and artistic creativity will be central to the conference.... Stoltenberg Extols Wonders of British-Led NATO Empire May 28, 2021 (EIRNS)Multiple NATO military exercisesland, sea and air, are underway from the Arctic Sea to the Atlantic Ocean to the Balkans region of southern Europe. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg went on a tour yesterday that took him to Portugal where he visited Her Majestys aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth to take in the global empire that NATO has now become. From these decks, the Queen Elizabeth projects power to keep us all safe, Stoltenberg declared. She carries U.S. Marines. She is protected by a Dutch frigate and she is on her way to the Pacific. So this is a perfect example of Europe and North America working together in NATO for our collective security. Steadfast Defender. The Queen Elizabeth is among 20 ships, 60 aircraft, 500 vehicles and over 9,000 personnel participating in Steadfast Defender, which Stoltenberg gushed reflects NATOs resolve to deter and defend across the Euro-Atlantic area. The exercise, yet another in a series of events under Defender-Europe 21, runs from May 12 to June 22. The Associated Press interviewed Stoltenberg, who did not name Russia, but held forth on how the focus of the Steadfast Defender mega-exercise is the movement of forces from across the Atlantic to the Balkans and the Black Sea. Who else could it be aimed at? NATO is there to defend all our allies, and this exercise sends a message about our ability to transport a large number of troops, equipment across the Atlantic, across Europe and also to project maritime power, he said. One aspect of the Atlantic phase of the exercise is the protection of undersea cables that carry masses of commercial and communications data between the U.S. and Europe which, NATO claims, Russia is mapping out and might have darker intentions towards. We all lulled ourselves into thinking that the Atlantic was a benign region in which there was not anything bad going on, and we could just use it as a free highway, U.S. Navy Vice-Adm. Andrew Lewis, the commander of NATOs Joint Force Command Atlantic, said. There are nations are out there mapping those cables. They may be doing something else bad. We have to be aware of that and answer that, he told reporters. Baltops. This exercise will begin June 6, centered in the Baltic. Arctic Challenge. This bi-annual air exercise is set to run from June 7-18, in parallel with NATOs BALTOPS. Arctic Challenge is this year somewhat scaled back because of the pandemic, involving some 70 fighter aircraft, as opposed to over 100 in prior iterations. Its part of the Nordic military cooperation NORDEFCO. In addition, planes from Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, United Kingdom and the U.S.A. will take part, according to the Finnish Air Force, which is this years sponsor. The objective of the exercise is to train participating forces to conduct dissimilar aircraft combat in large composite air operations safely and effectively, reports the Barents Observer. The success of action movies like Wonder Woman and television shows like Wandavision show that viewers like seeing women fighting, flying and jumping. Stunt performers often take the place of famous male and female actors in these action films so the big stars do not get hurt. At one point, movie producers would commonly use stuntmen wearing hairpieces, or wigs, to perform these actions for female actors. The practice began to change in 2017 when an American stuntwoman, Deven MacNair, started a discrimination complaint. She said a producer had used a stuntman to perform a stunt for a female actor on a set she was working on. Lucas Dollfus is the director of Campus Univers Cascade, or CUC, in northeastern France. He told the Reuters news agency, We dont need wigs anymore. The women are badass in any case. CUC calls itself the worlds biggest stunt school. About a third of the students at the school are women like Valeriane Michelini. Once trained as a dancer, Michelini is now training to fight, crash through glass windows and jump out of helicopters at CUC. She said fighting has a different kind of movement than dancing. "I'm used to thriving in a graceful and feminine world," the 29-year-old said. "And now, I'm in quite the opposite." April Wright makes films that tell stories about real life, called documentaries. Her film Stuntwomen: The Untold Hollywood Story came out in 2020. She spent many hours talking with women who do stunts in Hollywood, including those who started in the 1960s and 1970s. Generally, women are holding their own, and getting most of these opportunities, Wright said. Wright said stuntwomen do not usually go to a stunt school. They often find work by learning from or meeting people in the industry. Some make videos on YouTube or TikTok to show their skills. Sometimes stunts run in families, Wright said. Not every stunt woman had that, but a lot of them had fathers that helped them develop the skills. Malik Diouf is a trainer at the CUC stunt school in France. He said CUC cannot keep the students in school, as more women are needed for stunts with the growth of streaming services like Netflix and Amazon Prime. As soon as they have the slightest skills, they leave directly to work with the Americans, the English or the rest of the world, he said. Wright agrees that this is a good time for women to get jobs as stuntwomen. There is a lot more television and movies being made right now that have women doing action, and so theres a lot more opportunity now for women to get into this profession. There is also more work for stuntwomen because the actors in movies and television are more diverse. That means there are more opportunities for women from different racial backgrounds. Once they get started, Wright said it is a good idea for stuntwomen to keep learning new skills. Perhaps they might go to a driving school to learn how to control a car in a chase or a race. Stunt people have to keep their skills up to par, Wright said. While the opportunities may be growing, it is still not an easy business. Stunt people may know how to fight or fall out of cars, but they still get hurt. Wright said stunt people are very careful in the way they prepare for their work because they know it is dangerous. Sometimes it may be just a broken bone. But in 2017, stuntwoman Joi Harris, who had been a professional motorcycle racer, died in a chase during the filming of Deadpool 2. I knew some stunt women, but I did not know this much about it before I started the film. And it was really exciting to meet them, you know, because theyre very inspiring people. Im Dan Friedell. Dan Friedell wrote this story for Learning English with additional reporting from Reuters. Hai Do was the editor. Now that you have learn a little bit more about stunt women, what do you think about their work? Tell us in the Comments Section and visit our Facebook page. ____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story stunt - n. a difficult and often dangerous action complaint- n. in the legal world - a formal charge saying that someone has done something wrong badass- adj. tough and skillful thrive v. to flourish or succeed graceful adj. moving in a smooth and attractive way hold their own idiom, to stay in a good position or keep a job diverse adj. made up of people or things that are different from each other up to par idiom, meeting requirements or expectations inspire v. to cause someone to appreciate someone else Every day, hundreds of Central American immigrants cross the Rio Grande River on rafts from Mexico to Texas. However, on a recent day, many people stood out among migrants wearing T-shirts and jeans. These people were also generally taller. Some wore skirts and nice shoes. When U.S. border patrol officers arresting them near the river tried to speak to them in Spanish, they did not speak Spanish. Some of the border crossers explained in broken English that they were Romanians, a Reuters photographer said. Many Romanians who are part of the Roma ethnic minority have crossed the U.S.-Mexico border in south Texas in recent weeks to seek asylum. This shows how far away some immigrants are coming. They have added to the high number of recent border arrests, which have reached a 20-year high. Reuters workers witnessed large amounts of these immigrants crossing the Rio Grande on rafts many times in May. The immigrants explained to Reuters that they were fleeing racism in Romania and wanted to seek asylum in the United States. The Roma are Europes largest ethnic minority and have a long history of social exclusion and discrimination. Over three weeks, a Reuters photographer saw nearly 200 Romanians crossing at different points along the Texas border. Many groups were extended families of 10 to 15 people. According to Romanian media reports, many Romanian migrants fly from Paris to Mexico City as tourists. They do not need visas to enter Mexico. Then human traffickers take them by bus to the U.S. border where they cross the Rio Grande by boat or raft. So far in 2021, border patrol officers have arrested just over 2,200 Romanians. In 2020, 266 Roma were taken into custody. And in 2019 that number was 289. These numbers come from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency. Current arrivals are on pace to be the highest since 2007. That is the earliest year for which citizenship arrival numbers are available. Margareta Matache is director of the Roma Program at the FXB Center for Health and Human Rights at Harvard University. She said many Roma left Romania to escape oppression and very poor economic situations. Recently, their situation in Europe has worsened from the COVID-19 pandemic. "Currently, U.S. policies and policy proposals offer hope for more humane and just policies, including for immigrants," Matache said. "They (Roma) are looking for a better life in a place where they are not exposed to violence, discrimination, and disrespect." Romania's foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment. The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights did a survey in 2016 of nearly 8,000 Roma people in nine European countries. That survey found that about 80 percent of the Roma population was living below the national poverty line. There is no official population count for Roma people. They live in many countries and have long faced prejudice in Europe and worldwide. Most live in eastern Europe, particularly in Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary. Im Anna Matteo. Adrees Latif in Roma, Texas; Radu-Sorin Marinas in Bucharest, and Ted Hesson in Washington reported this story for Reuters News Agency. Mimi Dwyer wrote the story for Reuters. Anna Matteo adapted it for VOA Learning English. Susan Shand was the editor. ___________________________________________________________ Words in This Story raft n. a flat structure (as a group of logs fastened together) for support or transportation on water pace n. rate of performance or delivery : on pace to set a record exclusion n. the act of shutting or keeping out : the state of being shut or kept out extended family n. a family that includes not only parents and children but also other relatives (such as grandparents, aunts, or uncles) custody n. immediate charge and control (as over a ward or a suspect) exercised by a person or an authority survey n. to ask (many people) a question or a series of questions in order to gather information about what most people do or think about something Competing in his first basketball game of the season, sophomore Jaedyn Brown was summoned off the bench and provided Pullman with the shot in the arm the Greyhounds needed to sew up a 70-65 road victory against Clarkston in the second game of a Greater Spokane League doubleheader Friday at C by Vladimir Rozanskij Dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the church was built in the late 1800s. It was closed in 1936 and its parish priest, Father Ignat Zolnerovic, was sent to a gulag. During the Soviet era it was first used as the NKVDs archives, then as the Regions archives. Catholics have been asking for its return for the past 30 years and are willing to pay for its restoration costs. Moscow (AsiaNews) On Thursday, the fate of the Church of the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin Mary, the Catholic cathedral of the city of Smolensk, in western Russia close to Belarus, came before the Smolensk Oblast Duma (Smolensk Regional Assembly). The Duma recognised the church, large neo-Gothic building built in the late 1800s, as a federal architectural monument, noting that it is in a state of disrepair and in need of restoration. In Smolensk, local Catholics want to have permanent usufruct of the building, which was confiscated and never returned to the Catholic Church, and are willing to pay for its renovation. However, the Duma has refused. The permanent concession of the Church to the Catholic faithful is not on the agenda now or in the future, it said in a statement. This attitude of rejection has persisted for the past 30 years now, since the end of the Soviet period. The local Orthodox Church has backed the Duma in rejecting Catholic demands, refusing to acknowledge the right of Smolensks small Catholic community to use such a prestigious monument, located in a street once called Kostelnaya Ulitsa, "Catholic Street. During the Soviet era, the church was used as a repository which still houses the Smolensk Oblast Archive. In 2016, a project was put forward to restore the central nave of the church and turn it into an concert hall for organs. The church was built in the 1890s and consecrated in 1898, replacing the old Church of the Nativity of Mary, which had become too small for the local congregation. As one of the most important cities in the north-western Russia, Smolensk has always had close relations with neighbouring Catholic countries (Poland, Lithuania). At present, the Catholic presence is substantial with about 3,000 members; however, the local parish can accommodate only a few hundred worshippers in a nearby structure. After the revolution, the large church bells were removed in 1922. The building itself was shuttered in 1936, when the parish priest, a Belarusian, Father Ignat Zolnerovic (picture 3), was arrested and shipped to a gulag on Anzersky Island. After conducting the liturgy a few times in prison, Father Ignats sentence was increased by five years and he was sent to Kazakhstan where he died in 1939. In 1940 the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs, better known by its acronym NKVD (later KGB), set up its archives in the church. Starting in the 1960s, the building served as the Oblast Archives. After the fall of communism, Catholics asked for the church to be returned. In 1992, they were granted the use of a cemetery chapel owned by a Catholic family. Since, then, a parish priest, originally from Poland, Franciscan Father Ptolomeusz Kuczmik, has held holy Mass in the structure. Next to the church stands the priests house (Dom Ksiedza), where at present the faithful can gather for other celebrations and activities, including those by the busy parish Caritas. This follows a tradition that goes back to the 1800s when local Catholics set up an important Mercy association to help the poor. Because of its precarious conditions, the church was finally shut down in 2018. The Oblast Department of Monuments has repeatedly tried to start the restoration work, but has not obtained the necessary funds from Russias Federal Ministry of Culture. Also, no official reasons have been given for refusing to grant the church to Catholics despite their willingness to begin restoration. The Oblast Duma itself has complained that without proper work the church will end up like the citys ancient walls, which have largely collapsed in past years. Federal housing officials have ordered the Santa Maria City Council to repeal an H-2A housing ordinance that may be considered discriminatory or face a potential $400,000 fine, a city spokesman confirmed Wednesday. Local featured County deliberating best practices in use of federal funds Lymbery Stewart The U.S. Department of Treasury has allocated $16.8 million for Angelina County as part of the American Rescue Plan local government funding, according to the Treasury website. The money can be used in support of public health expenditures, to address negative economic impacts caused by the public health emergency, to replace lost public sector revenue, to provide premium pay for essential workers or to invest in water, sewer and broadband infrastructures. The county is aware of this money, but is waiting on guidance on how the money needs to be spent, county auditor Janice Cordray said. County Judge Don Lymbery has led the initiative on this funding, she said. We are doing lots of research. The (Treasury department) just recently came out with some guidance in the last couple of days, Lymbery said. The auditor and I are doing our due diligence in researching exactly what the allocated funds can be used for. It is still not completely clear if some things can be used the way we would like to use them. The first of two installments is expected to begin by the end of May, with the rest being allocated approximately 12 months after the initial payment, the treasury website states. However, states that have a net increase in the unemployment rate of more than (two) percentage points from February 2020 to the latest available data as of the date of certification will receive their full allocation of funds in a single payment. Lymbery has not applied for the funding, though. And he is unclear as to whether his lack of application would prevent Angelina County cities from receiving funding either; that is an issue hes looking into, as well. He plans to continue to work with the Treasury department, the Texas Association of Counties and other local judges as he moves forward. The issue will be brought before the commissioners court before any decisions are finalized, he said. There is no indication of when this will happen. Metropolitan cities across Texas have already received information from the state regarding this funding, but smaller cities considered non-entitlement units of local government are waiting for information. Among those, the city of Huntington is hesitantly moving forward in hopes of utilizing an excess of $400,000 city manager Bill Stewart learned the city may be receiving. The city began discussing how to best utilize the funding in the April 26 meeting. The council chose to advertise for a grant administrator by seeking requests for proposals and qualifications. Id like for our city to use the money for sewer improvements, he said. We have already begun some of a sewer system improvement project using Goodwin-Lasiter-Strong as our engineering firm. The American Rescue Plan would help enable us to replace numerous sewer lines in the older part of the city, lines that have been in the ground for an estimated six decades or so. Though the funding would not cover the whole project, it would allow the city to get most of the lines, manholes and lift stations replaced. Additionally, the city is seeking additional funding from the state to upgrade the citys water system and should know about the funding within the next 12 months. Receipt of these grant dollars will allow our citizens and businesses to have much more adequate and functional sewer service, especially with the second phase of the sewer plant renovation and expansion currently underway that should be completed by this time next year, if not sooner, he said. Due to these improvements, there will be far fewer problems with our system. Navy veteran Faron Smith Jr. reacts as he receives a COVID-19 vaccination at a Veterans Administration pop-up vaccination site on April 17, 2021, in Gardena, Calif. Patrick T. Fallon/AFP via Getty Images) As the nation takes a day to memorialize its military dead, living military veterans are facing a deadly risk that has nothing to do with war or conflict: the coronavirus. Different groups and communities have faced different degrees of danger from the pandemic, exemplified by the humanitarian disaster in India and the inequalities in U.S. health outcomes, vaccine distribution problems and outright rejection of vaccines. Veterans have been among the most hard-hit, with heightened health and economic threats from the pandemic. These veterans face homelessness, lack of health care, delays in receiving financial support and even death. Comments from financial donors on the site include, "Thank you dear Father, for standing courageously against the wolves who seek to devour us!" and "Thank you for staying 'salty.' So many of today's church leaders just go threw (sic) the motions, 'having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.'" On Monday, Altman was featured on the "Terry and Jesse Show" on Virgin Most Powerful Radio. While their Facebook page stated that Altman would be unable to call in as he is "under a time constraint to leave the parish," Altman ultimately appeared on the nearly hour-long Zoom, viewed by the Tribune. Stating the Bishop called him "divisive and ineffective," Altman, who iterated he likes Callahan, told the hosts, "Our job is to divide. How do we do that? We simply say the truth," adding that liberals are fearful that "the truth exposes their lies." "It's the liberal bishops that are trying to cancel," Altman noted. "...There seems to be a cadre of people in a certain level of power in the church that really despise me, I think because they are democrats and they hate the fact that you can't be a Democrat and a Catholic." With the countys COVID-19 restrictions ending next week, Dresen said most workers are ready to come back. I think a lot of our employees are very excited to return to campus, she said. Asked if some employees might resist, given that fewer than half have returned voluntarily, she said, Its hard to know. Its certainly possible. Our plan has been thoughtful. I think well work with staff to make their transition a good one. The company set July 19 as the initial timeline because administrators had said they would give employees four weeks notice and didnt see the need to make people return sooner, she said. In-person attendees at the Users Group Meeting will need to attest that theyre fully vaccinated, which is appropriate because theyre health care leaders and take their health status very seriously, Dresen said. The meeting, one of several yearly boosts to the Madison-area economy that have been gone since the pandemic began in early 2020, will signal a key new start, she said. Its really important for our customers to have an opportunity to get together and learn from each other, she said. Concerned about COVID-19? Sign up now to get the most recent coronavirus headlines and other important local and national news sent to your email inbox daily. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Manydeeds works at an Eau Claire firm and has the most experience of any current board member. Former Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle appointed him to a seven-year term, and Evers reappointed him in 2019. If elected, Manydeeds, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, would likely be one of the first people of color to hold the position in quite some time. The 1977 regent president was African American, but System records on ethnicity are incomplete, spokesperson Mark Pitsch said. Among Manydeeds priorities, he said, are addressing issues of diversity, equity and inclusion, as well as strengthening shared governance, especially for high-profile assignments such as president and chancellor searches. He said in an interview that he didnt know if he had the votes to become president Im not calling and campaigning; thats not really my style and that he would support Grebe and his agenda if he lost. Grebe, the chief legal counsel for Aurora Health Care, comes from a Republican family. His father, Michael W. Grebe, previously served as regent president in the mid-1990s, as campaign chairman for Walker and as president of the Bradley Foundation, one of the states leading conservative foundations. President Joe Bidens proposed budget for the upcoming year, released Friday, includes $80 million to help fund Madisons planned Bus Rapid Transit system. The city requested half of the cost of the $160 million project, slated for completion in 2024, come from the Federal Transit Administrations Capital Investment Grants Small Starts program. The rest of the money will come from federal grants already received and local funds. This is great news for Madison, Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said. It means we are on track to deliver a fast, efficient and comfortable rapid transit system to our residents one that will help people get to work, school, shopping and recreation easily and quickly. Govt-and-politics alert top story 'Nothing looks good' preparing for summer wildfire season ASHLEY SMITH, TIMES-NEWS FILE Members of the Idaho City Hotshots start a back burn to combat the 111,000 acre Elk Fire Complex, that has burned more than 50 structures in the past week, on Wednesday, August, 14, 2013, near Pine, Idaho. Kyle Kosma/High Desert Museum via AP In this May 14, 2021, photo provided by the High Desert Museum, U.S. Forest Service firefighters carry out a prescribed burn on the grounds of the High Desert Museum, near Bend, Oregon. The prescribed burn is part of a massive effort in wildlands across the West to prepare for a fire season that follows the worst one on record. Kyle Kosma In this May 14, 2021, photo provided by the High Desert Museum, U.S. Forest Service firefighters carry out a prescribed burn on the grounds of the High Desert Museum, near Bend, Oregon. The prescribed burn is part of a massive effort in wildlands across the West to prepare for a fire season that follows the worst one on record. (Kyle Kosma/High Desert Museum via AP) Heidi Hagemeier In this May 14, 2021, photo provided by the High Desert Museum, U.S. Forest Service firefighters carry out a prescribed burn on the grounds of the High Desert Museum, near Bend, Oregon. The prescribed burn is part of a massive effort in wildlands across the West to prepare for a fire season that follows the worst one on record. (Heidi Hagemeier/High Desert Museum via AP) Nic Coury FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2020 file photo firefighters with Vandenberg Air Force Base light a back burn to help control the Dolan Fire at Limekiln State Park in Big Sur, Calif. Crews across the west are lighting controlled burns and taking other steps to prepare for the 2021 fire season that follows the worst one on record. Prescribed burning gets rid of vegetation that can send flames into the forest canopy, where fire can spread easily, and makes the forest more fire resilient. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File) Nic Coury FILE - In this Sept. 11, 2020, file photo, firefighters light a controlled burn along Nacimiento-Fergusson Road to help contain the Dolan Fire near Big Sur, Calif. Crews across the west are lighting controlled burns and taking other steps to prepare for the 2021 fire season that follows the worst one on record. Prescribed burning gets rid of vegetation that can send flames into the forest canopy, where fire can spread easily, and makes the forest more fire resilient. (AP Photo/Nic Coury, File) SALEM, Ore. (AP) Wearing soot-smudged, fire-resistant clothing and helmets, several wildland firefighters armed with hoes moved through a stand of ponderosa pines as flames tore through the underbrush. The firefighters werent there to extinguish the fire. They had started it. The prescribed burn, ignited this month near the scenic mountain town of Bend, is part of a massive effort in wildlands across the U.S. West to prepare for a fire season thats expected to be even worse than last years record-shattering one. The U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management have thinned by hand, machines and prescribed burns about 1.8 million acres (728,000 hectares) of forest and brushland since last season, officials from the agencies told The Associated Press. They typically treat some 3 million (1.2 million hectares) acres every year. All that activity, though, has barely scratched the surface. The federal government owns roughly 640 million acres (260 million hectares) in the U.S. All but 4% of it lies in the West, including Alaska, with some of it unsuitable for prescribed burning. All these steps are in the right direction, but the challenge is big and complex, said John Bailey, professor of silviculture and fire management at Oregon State University. And more needs to be done to even turn the corner. The efforts face a convergence of bleak forces. Severe drought has turned forests and grasslands into dry fuels, ready to ignite from a careless camper or a lightning strike. More people are building in areas bordering wildlands, expanding the so-called wildland-urban interface, an area where wildfires impact people the most. Invasive, highly flammable vegetation is spreading uncontrolled across the West. Im seeing probably the worst combination of conditions in my lifetime, said Derrick DeGroot, a county commissioner in southern Oregons Klamath County. We have an enormous fuel load in the forests, and we are looking at a drought unlike weve seen probably in the last 115 years. Asked how worried he is about the 2021 fire season, DeGroot said: On a scale of 1 to 10, Im a 12. Nothing looks good. In other prevention measures in the West, utility companies are removing vegetation around power lines and are ready to impose blackouts when those lines threaten to spark a fire. Armies of firefighters are being beefed up. And communities are offering incentives for residents to make their own properties fire-resistant. Still, much work remains to change the regions trajectory with fire, particularly in two key areas, said Scott Stephens, professor of wildland fire science at the University of California, Berkeley. One is getting people better prepared for the inevitability of fire in areas like the wildland-urban interface. That includes new construction, he said. And the second is getting our ecosystems better prepared for climate change and fire impacts. On the local level, individuals and communities need to create defensible spaces and evacuation plans, he said. On the government level, more resources need to go toward managing forests. I think weve got one to two decades, Stephens said. If we dont do this in earnest, were frankly just going to be watching the forest change right in front of our eyes from fire, climate change, drought, insects, things of that nature. Part of the issue is that increasing wildfire resilience often requires trade-offs, said Erica Fleishman, professor at Oregon State Universitys College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Cities or states could require defensible spaces around homes. Building codes could call for fire-resistant materials. That would drive up construction costs but also mean homes would be less likely to burn and need rebuilding, she said. The insurance industry and the building industry and communities and lawmakers are all going to need to have the will to create these changes, she said. Fleishman also believes more prescribed fires could be conducted in the wildland-urban interface, but said society is risk averse. Right now, theres not, in many cases, a whole lot of will to do it, she said. Prescribed burns target vegetation that carries flames into forest canopies, where they can explode into massive wildfires. Planning and preparing for them can take two to five years. And carrying them out is a never-ending task, said Jessica Gardetto, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center, in Boise, Idaho. While targeting one forest, other forests continue to grow, creating this vast buildup across the landscape, she said. Besides overgrown forests, the West faces a newer threat: cheatgrass, which grows prolifically after a wildfire and becomes incredibly flammable. Gardetto said trying to get rid of the invasive grass is like the endless toil of Sisyphus, the Greek mythological figure who was forced to roll a boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down as it neared the top, over and over again. After a fire is put out, the first thing to come back is cheatgrass. It starts this horrible cycle that is really difficult to combat, she said. California Gov. Gavin Newsom and U.S. Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen signed an agreement last August committing the state and the federal agency to scale up treatment of forest and wildlands to 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) annually by 2025. They have a long way to reach that goal. Cal Fire, a state agency responsible for protecting over 31 million acres (12.5 million hectares) of Californias privately owned wildlands, treated some 20,000 acres (8,100 hectares) with prescribed fire and thinning from last summer through March. Meanwhile, California increased the number of seasonal firefighters by almost 50%, according to Lynne Tolmachoff, spokeswoman for Cal Fire. With the fire season getting longer each year, Colorado lawmakers last spring allocated about $3 million to increase staffing at the Colorado Division of Fire Prevention and Control, said Mike Morgan, its director. Historically, wildland firefighters were college students. Theyd get out of school on Memorial Day, theyd go fight fire, and theyd go back to school on Labor Day, Morgan said. Well, now were having fires every month of the year, and so we need firefighters year-round. The Bureau of Land Management is transforming its seasonal firefighting force to fulltime with a $13 million budget increase, Gardetto said. Despite all these efforts, warnings are going out telling people to be ready for the worst. The Oregon Office of Emergency Management advised residents on Monday to have a bag packed and have an evacuation plan. Abnormally dry conditions and pre-season fires on the landscape are causing concern for the 2021 wildfire season, the agency said. Now is the time for Oregonians to prepare themselves, their families and their homes for wildfire. BOISE Miles Patrick Barclay, 47, of Twin Falls, was sentenced in U.S. District Court to 30 years in federal prison for distribution and possession of child pornography, Acting U.S. Attorney Rafael M. Gonzalez Jr. announced Friday. U.S. District Judge B. Lynn Winmill also ordered Barclay to serve 25 years of supervised release following his prison sentence. Barclay pleaded guilty to the charges on Oct. 29. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} According to court records, Barclay, in June 2019, began communicating online with an undercover detective posing as a 14-year-old girl. Barclay engaged in sexually explicit conversation with the detective and asked her to take explicit images of herself and send them to him. Barclay also sent the detective images and videos of child abuse. A federal magistrate judge issued a search warrant for Barclays residence. Members of the Idaho Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force executed the search warrant and seized two cellphones and two laptop computers from the residence. A forensic examination of the devices revealed hundreds of files of child abuse. Barclay admitted to communicating online with an underage female and to trading photos of child abuse with other individuals through the internet. The task forces goals and rules didnt go unchallenged. Ten or so teenage protestors attended the meeting. The committees co-chair, state Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, asked them repeatedly to remove signs from the committee room. One protestor, asked to remove a sign that said EduKKKation Task Force, later returned with a different sign showing a picture of McGeachin with members of the Three Percent militia group. The protestor again left after Giddings asked security to escort him out. Both departures came to the cheers and applause of the audience, whom Giddings repeatedly quieted. With only two elected officials among its ranks and no representation from the State Department of Education or State Board of Education, its unclear how much material change the committee will be able to make. State Board of Education President Kurt Liebich has said hes seen little evidence of widespread indoctrination, and Gov. Brad Little has knocked the anecdotes and innuendo that have birthed legislation targeting social justice. One is getting people better prepared for the inevitability of fire in areas like the wildland-urban interface. That includes new construction, he said. And the second is getting our ecosystems better prepared for climate change and fire impacts. On the local level, individuals and communities need to create defensible spaces and evacuation plans, he said. On the government level, more resources need to go toward managing forests. I think weve got one to two decades, Stephens said. If we dont do this in earnest, were frankly just going to be watching the forest change right in front of our eyes from fire, climate change, drought, insects, things of that nature. Part of the issue is that increasing wildfire resilience often requires trade-offs, said Erica Fleishman, professor at Oregon State Universitys College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. Cities or states could require defensible spaces around homes. Building codes could call for fire-resistant materials. That would drive up construction costs but also mean homes would be less likely to burn and need rebuilding, she said. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} The insurance industry and the building industry and communities and lawmakers are all going to need to have the will to create these changes, she said. by Nirmala Carvalho The Jesuit priest, accused of Maoist terrorism for his commitment to the Jharkhand tribals, was hospitalised with COVID at the Holy Family hospital in Mumbai. I am carrying on, he said, thanks to prayers from all over the world. Mumbai (AsiaNews) Fr Stan Swamy, 84, was admitted to Holy Family Hospital yesterday and moved to the intensive care unit overnight. The Jesuit priest, who has been refused bail several times, was granted a 15-day temporary bail by the Bombay High Court on medical grounds. Preliminary tests suggest that he has COVID-19. The Court also allowed Fr Frazer Mascarenhas, a friend of Fr Stan, to visit and help care for him. The Jesuit priest was arrested on 8 October for alleged involvement with Maoist terrorism, and sent to Taloja Jail. Originally from Kerala, he has worked for nearly 50 years, in Jharkhands tribal areas, defending the rights of the Adivasi forest community, often clashing with the authorities over their poor record at protecting tribal rights. After his bail application was turned down about a week ago, the priest spoke via video conference with the court saying that he refused hospital treatment and that he wanted to die among his people in Jharkhand. Doctors who had visited him said that his health problems had taken a turn for the worst. His worsening health and support from Jesuit community convinced him to seek admittance at the Holy Family Hospital, which has a COVID-19 ward. Speaking to AsiaNews, Fr Frazer explained that when the priest refused hospital treatment, he was confused and only expressed a desire to be back with his people to die. While he was badly treated during visits to a government hospital, at Holy Family he is followed by four doctors, plus the medical director. Fr Stan is weak, but stable and seems in good spirits. Initial reports indicate COVID infection, Fr Frazer said this morning. When told that Jesuits and others are praying for him, he said: Not only do I know that, but it is because of this solidarity from all over the world, that I am carrying on. Pictured: Fr Stan with the medical director of Holy Family Hospital and Fr Frazer. TWIN FALLS All nine of St. Lukes emergency departments across Idaho will now have access to specialized care thanks to a high-tech upgrade. Neurologists, pediatricians, psychiatrists, social workers, registered nurses, critical care and emergency physicians will be available via live two-way cameras. These medical professionals are located at St. Lukes Virtual Care Center in Boise. Telehealth services can be crucial, especially in cases of a stroke, said Dr. Terry Ahern, medical director at St. Lukes Wood River Emergency Department in Hailey. When a patient arrives with stroke symptoms, doctors have a short window of time to decide whether they can give clot-busting medication. We can actually have a neurologist with us at the bedside on camera and communicating directly with the patient, making an assessment on their neurologic status and helping us decide in real time whether or not to give this potentially life-saving medicine, Ahern said. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} This program is also helpful during inclement weather, said Krista Stadler, senior director of telehealth. Smaller emergency departments also dont see as many high-risk events as more urban settings see. The law has been used with increased frequency in recent years, given the growing awareness of the prevalence of what is essentially modern-day slavery in a range of industries, with workers forced to work long hours for low pay, or none at all, and subjected to violence. CBP found that Dalian's operations, across the fleet, met all 11 criteria for forced labor laid out by the International Labor Organization, including the holding back of wages, inhumane conditions and physical intimidation, said John Leonard, the acting executive assistant commissioner of the agency's Office of Trade. This was a rather egregious example," Leonard said. Both the State Department and Labor Department have also documented abusive conditions in the Chinese fishing industry, where mostly foreign crews often work 18 to 22 hours per day under abysmal conditions. U.S. authorities have used the Tariff Act of 1930 to halt imports from specific companies, individual fishing vessels and all cotton and tomato products from the Xinjiang region of China, where the Chinese government is waging a brutal assimilation campaign against Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups. While Idaho Gov. Brad Little was away from the office, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin on Thursday gave Idahoans a taste of what life would be like if she were governor. McGeachin issued an executive order prohibiting any government entity from mandating face masks be worn. Neither the state nor a political subdivision may mandate that an individual in this state must wear a face mask, face shield or other face covering for the purpose of preventing or slowing the spread of a contagious or infectious disease, McGeachins order states. First of all, arent executive orders supposed to be bad? Didnt the far-right fringe of the Republican Party in Idaho spend much of their time this legislative session railing against executive orders by the governor? Second, even if you agree that executive orders are overreaching including those issued by Gov. Brad Little McGeachins executive order Thursday is equally an overreach, just in the opposite direction. If, for example, Boise school district board members decide that they prefer to listen to science and want to keep their students safe by mandating masks, McGeachins executive order takes that local control away from them. So we are left with our memorandum, which was approved unanimously by City Council and by a majority of the Board of Supervisors, even though not one of them liked it, wanted it or even could swallow it cleanly. That Debra Buchanan and Joe Bryant voted against the memorandum is notable, seen by some as pure politics for Mr. Bryant, who is up for re-election. We dont often find as in virtually never votes of politics that are wedded to votes of conscience. So for Mr. Bryant to play politics would suggest he believes what he said: Large numbers of residents are against this merger. But how could he know? Whom did he ask? Well, none of us, to be sure. No, we residents of the city and county have no memorandum of understanding because we dont know all the answers and perhaps even not all the questions. Like the most basic: Why is there unanimity on City Council for this reversion? Do those five people think the future for the city is bleak? Their revenue commissioner says otherwise. They dont think they can grow? Is that surrendering to an inability to govern? CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. General Motors is teaming up with Lockheed Martin to produce the ultimate off-road, self-driving, electric vehicles for the moon. The project announced Wednesday is still in the early stages and has yet to score any NASA money. But the goal is to design light yet rugged vehicles that will travel farther and faster than the lunar rovers that carried NASA's Apollo astronauts in the early 1970s, the companies said. "Mobility is really going to open up the moon for us," said Kirk Shireman, a former NASA manager who is now Lockheed Martin's vice president for lunar exploration. The rovers used by the Apollo 15, 16 and 17 moonwalkers ventured no more than 4 1/2 miles from their landers. GM also helped design those vehicles. NASA last year put out a call for industry ideas on lunar rovers. The space agency aims to return astronauts to the moon by 2024, a deadline set by the previous White House. The initial rovers will be designed to carry two astronauts at a time, according to company officials. A brief company video showed a large, open rover speeding over lunar slopes, with more headlights in the distance. Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain In a study of adults with normal kidney function, those who had frequent depressive symptoms were more likely to later experience a rapid decline in kidney function. The study will appear in an upcoming issue of CJASN. Depression is a common condition in middle-aged and older adults, and it can contribute to a variety of mental and physical problems. Previous research has found a link between depressive symptoms and rapid kidney function decline in patients with chronic kidney disease (CKD). To look for a potential link in adults with normal kidney function as well, a team led by Xianhui Qin, MD (Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, in China) examined information on 4,763 individuals with healthy kidneys when they enrolled in the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). At the start of the study, 39% of participants had high depressive symptoms, and during a median follow-up of 4 years, 260 (6%) participants experienced rapid kidney function decline. There was a significant association between depressive symptoms at the start of the study and rapid decline in kidney function during follow-up. Participants with frequent depressive symptoms were 1.4-times more likely to experience rapid kidney function decline than participants with infrequent depressive symptoms, after adjustments. "CKD is a leading risk factor for cardiovascular disease, kidney failure, and mortality worldwide. Therefore, the identification of more modifiable risk factors may possibly reduce the huge burden of CKD and its related complications by leading to early detection and prevention," said Dr. Qin. "While our study does not show causality, it demonstrated that high depressive symptoms were significantly associated with rapid decline in kidney function among Chinese adults with normal kidney function. If further confirmed, our data provide some evidence for depressive symptom screening and effective psychosocial interventions to improve the prevention of CKD." An accompanying Pantiet Voice article provides the perspective of a two-time kidney transplant recipient with an American-Born Chinese background. Explore further Reduced kidney function linked to increased risk of dementia More information: "Association of Depressive Symptoms with Rapid Kidney Function Decline in Adults with Normal Kidney Function," CJASN, DOI: 10.2215/CJN.18441120 "Association of Depressive Symptoms with Rapid Kidney Function Decline in Adults with Normal Kidney Function," Congress asked the Treasury Department to distribute the funds, but that department historically has little interaction with Indian Country," Kalt said. "My guess was that some poor middle-management level guy was saying 'I have to pass out $8 billion what do I do?' Housing and Urban Development had a population number, but it turned out to be wrong in so many ways. A preliminary analysis showed that in Montana, the Blackfeet may have received $7.6 million less than they should have, while the Little Shell Chippewa may have got $17 million more. Kalt said the problem wasnt that anyone on the receiving end did anything wrong, but that the federal government used faulty methods to estimate tribal size. Thats because the initial rollout of money last May used a population figure derived from federal Indian Housing Block Grant records, which in turn were based on U.S. Census figures. In all, $4.8 billion was dispersed nationwide to tribes under that formula. The result was that some tribes got minimum payments of $100,000 when their enrolled membership was far higher. Other tribes with active housing projects got much more per person than tribes with different housing situations. TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) Republican legislators have hatched a plan for returning the Kansas Statehouse's meditation room to its original spot after Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly moved it to create more space for her staff. Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, outlined the proposal this week during a meeting of top lawmakers. A decision is likely later this year. The GOP-controlled Legislature wanted space for prayer in 2012 when then-Republican Gov. Sam Brownback created a meditation room on the Statehouse's second floor. That's where the governor and governor's staff have offices. GOP legislators included provisions in annual state budgets to keep the room there. But they forgot last year, allowing Kelly to commandeer their prized space. Kelly expanded her constituent services team to help during the coronavirus pandemic and said they needed to social distance. We are so grateful that you care enough about your employees and your community, Cooper said during a news conference at PHB, where local officials joined. Because you know that makes for a safer workplace, safer family life (and) makes for a safer community. Sometimes people are on the fence about whether to get a vaccine and a little incentive can get people to step over the line, Cooper said. "We want you to know that we believe we are emerging from this pandemic even stronger than before, and the key to it all is vaccinations,'' said Cooper, noting nearly 80% of North Carolinians age 65 and older have been fully vaccinated. "I think people are feeling better about themselves and their communities, Cooper said. "What we do know, however, is that people who are not vaccinated are still at risk. We are still in a pandemic.'' On Thursday, more than 600 people across the state were hospitalized with COVID-19, while about 13,000 in N.C. had died from the novel coronavirus since the first state cases were reported in March 2020. He said in his response that the identity of the assistant district attorney handling the cases was clarified during those court appearances, that the DAs office agreed to extend plea offers by a certain date in three of the cases, and that a discovery issue was handled in another case. Another of the cases was set for a date on the trial calendar once the DAs office expressed its intent to drop the charges. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} The purpose of Administrative Sessions is at times to prod the State to take necessary steps to move cases to some resolution, Ervin wrote in his response. In this instance, the State needed to take certain actions before the defendants could make decisions about how to proceed. Failing to address such matters in a timely fashion created the likelihood that further continuances would be necessary on a future court date. Ex parte communications Another of Dubs claims was that Ervin had communications with one of her clients that negatively impacted his case without her present. That client was Justin Caldwell, who had retained Dubs to represent him in a felony drug trafficking case. His case had been set on the court calendar for the week in November that Dubs missed. Caldwell had been in custody awaiting trial for about 30 months at the time of that court appearance. Evangelist Alveda King: Please Do Not Deny That Systemic Racism Exists NEWS PROVIDED BY Alveda King Ministries May 28, 2021 ATLANTA, May 28, 2021 /Christian Newswire/ -- The following is submitted by Evangelist Alveda King and she is available for comment: What is systemic racism? Systemic racism occurs within a government that uses money from people of influence to elect government officials who will promote their agendas. For example, Margaret Sanger, a renowned racist and eugenicist, helped to promote an agenda of genocide which included birth control to what she considered to be the less needed communities of people on the planet. In her own words, Sanger said that colored people were like "human weeds" who needed to be exterminated. Here's another example. Then Senator Joe Biden helped to escalate marijuana from being a misdemeanor to a federal offense in order to incarcerate low hanging fruit that included the black communities. Systemic racism sometimes works through efforts of population control. There are many examples of systemic racism. For example, when America was seeking independence from Britain, the soldiers gave Native Americans blankets infested with smallpox to reduce the communities of the Native American Communities. That was population control. That was systemic racism. What is the answer to ending systemic racism or racism in general? The answer is simple but yet hard to achieve. The answer is love, specifically, agape love. Agape love is unconditional love. It is a pure, willful, sacrificial love. It is the kind of love that God has for His children; you and me; all of us. It is the kind of love we should all be striving to achieve. If we all had agape love in our hearts, then the word racism would disappear from our vocabularies because in order for racism to exist there would have to be different races that hated each other. Until it is definitively determined that aliens (not as in immigration) exist and are visiting our planet, there is only one human race on this planet. Acts 17:26 says, "Of one Blood, GOD made all humans to dwell together on the face of the earth." We are not different races, but one race; one human race. There is only one critical race; the human race. Yes, we have different skin colors, but that does not denote race; that denotes ethnicity; from the womb to the tomb. When wanting to let others know that someone is not a racist, some say that they are colorblind. They want people to know that they do not see anyone as a black, white, yellow, or whatever color person. In reality, the state of colorblindness is a medical condition. If you are colorblind then you need a doctor. Jesus adds sight to the blind. When we don't see the color of other human beings, we don't see their beauty and their God-given ethnicity that they represent; all the culture, all the history, all the values. God made us all in living color. When we deny the ethnicities and identity of others, we commit identity theft. We must not be colorblind. My friend Ginger Howard and I, we are not colorblind. In fact, we're so not colorblind that we collaborated on a book to share our stories. Please read the book. SOURCE Alveda King Ministries CONTACT: Leslie Palma, 917-697-7039 Share Tweet The money raised will go to Gaza communities as a sign of solidarity, said Patriarch Pizzaballa, to meet the needs that emerged during the brief war. Gazas Fr Romanelli is grateful that no member of the community was hurt, but the damage and the shock run deep. Spiritual and economic support is important. Jerusalem (AsiaNews) The Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem Pierbattista Pizzaballa recently appealed for help on behalf of Christians living in the Gaza Strip affected by the recent armed conflict between Israel and Hamas. The appeal goes to all parishes and churches in the Diocese of the Latin Patriarchate to devolve the collection of Sunday May 30, the Solemnity of the Most Holy Trinity in a sign of solidarity to our community in Gaza. Counting on donors generosity, the Patriarch said that the money raised will be used to meet the needs that emerged after the war of the last few days. In the aftermath of the tension and conflict we have recently experienced, let us turn our hearts and gaze to the needs of our brothers and sisters in Christ, especially in Gaza and in places severely affected by the recent exchange of rocket firing for eleven days. For Patriarch Pizzaballa, Their sufferings have worsened with the deadly clashes and bombings as they continue to struggle with COVID-19 that continues to spread in their area. I ask you to share some of your resources to alleviate the sufferings of our Christian faithful in Gaza. Gaza Christians have welcomed with joy the initiative of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, this according to Fr Gabriel Romanelli, the Argentinian-born priest of the Incarnate Word who heads the parish of the Holy Family in Gaza, We are quite well now, he said speaking to AsiaNews. We can say that we have benefited from the special protection of the Lord, because, despite very heavy bombing, no member of the community was hurt. The houses rocked like a crib, but it was no lullaby. . . only bombs. Fr Romanelli stressed that spiritual (and economic) support for the Christian community in the Holy Land is important through prayers and sacrifices, so that we can continue to bear witness with hope, serenity and joy. We aspire to a lasting peace but the latter is possible only on the basis of justice, he explained. In all this time, despite war and bombing, we have not stopped staying connected, living in communion. Now lots of people are returning to church to pray and worship, and, as a Church, we are trying to help them at a material level. We help everyone around us. Most of them are not Christians (they are Muslims), but we still want to be close to them because we are truly experiencing a real post-war period. The conflict may have lasted only 11 days, but it can change as well as destroy the lives of many people. Lets not forget the more than 60 children who died. Finally, Fr Romanelli noted the trauma and shock of many mothers and fathers, who have imprinted in their minds what they went through, the personal tragedy of bombs that fell close by, the broken windows, the fear. For now, the truce is holding, but people are afraid that violence could come back at any time. VALDESE A woman on probation is being held under no bond after a pound of methamphetamine was seized from her home Wednesday. Johnnie Denise Hickman, 42, of 3644 Tom Deal Ave. in Valdese, was charged with felony trafficking in methamphetamine, felony maintaining a vehicle/dwelling/place for controlled substances, felony possession with intent to manufacture/sell/deliver methamphetamine, felony possession of a firearm by a felon and misdemeanor possession of drug paraphernalia, according to a release from the Burke County Sheriffs Office. The charges against Hickman came after BCSO narcotics investigators along with probation and parole officers launched an investigation at her home Wednesday, the release said. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} After seeing controlled substances and drug paraphernalia at the home, narcotics investigators applied for and received a search warrant that led to the seizure of about 1 pound of methamphetamine and a large quantity of U.S. currency, the release said. Hickman, a felon, appeared to have been on probation for convictions of possession of a schedule II controlled substance from 2020, according to records from the North Carolina Department of Public Safety website. If it had been any other day, Helen Miller would have had her son in her car with her on her way home from work May 18. But since it was a Tuesday, and she got off early, she was driving down Interstate 40 alone when her 2017 Kia Sorento VX SXL AWD caught fire. She was none the wiser to the flames licking up from the passenger wheel well of her car, only finding out about them when a man motioned for her to pull over. She drove for about a mile without pulling over because she couldnt tell the car was on fire and couldnt figure out what the man wanted. When she finally pulled over, it was because she could see a state trooper on the side of the road up ahead of her. She finally got out of the car after the man told her the car was on fire, and by the time she walked to the hood of the car, the whole front end of the car was engulfed in flames. Miller said she scurried up the Exit 104 ramp to get away from the car, moving as far away from the flames as she could. The fire was extinguished by the Morganton Department of Public Safety. A report from MDPS said She found out that her injuries wont be covered by insurance since she got them once she got out of the car. Facebook said it's no longer removing from its platforms claims that coronavirus was man-made. That announcement comes shortly after President Joe Biden announced he had directed the US intelligence community to redouble its efforts into the origin of Covid-19. In a statement to CNN Business, a Facebook spokesperson said late Wednesday that, "In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of Covid-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that Covid-19 is man-made from our apps." "We're continuing to work with health experts to keep pace with the evolving nature of the pandemic and regularly update our policies as new facts and trends emerge," the spokesperson added. Hiebert said his favorite subjects include life and physical science. I just like finding out about our world, he said. Another favorite subject is English. Ive always been into writing, he said. Hieberts reading teacher, Kelly Rose, is impressed with all his work whether its written or verbally presented. Nathan is one of those unassuming students. He keeps to himself, yet gets along well with his peers. Hes quiet, but wow, when he presents his work it knocks your socks off! she said. Principal Keith Miller agrees. Nathan is one of the most all-around talented students that I have ever had the privilege to have in our school. From his music to his classroom performance, to his dedication to achieving at high levels, he is a rock star student, he said. Miller was also impressed by Hieberts talent as a pianist. I got the opportunity to watch one of his recorded performances and it blew me away, he said. The state is conducting an assessment of its public health and human services agencies to align and integrate programs, practices and policies. Though a merger between the agencies into a health and human services department is not confirmed at this stage, it is a goal of the head of both agencies that those departments work more closely together to conduct business more effectively and efficiently, according to state legislators. Ultimately better alignment will lead to improved outcomes for individuals, communities and the state, Sarah Ekstrand, Iowa Department of Public Health spokeswoman, said in an email. Over the next nine months, the Iowa Department of Public Health and the Iowa Department of Human Services is conducting a health and human services alignment assessment to improve delivery of services and most effectively leverage funding. Public Consulting Group, a Boston-based public sector consulting firm, has been brought on as a contractor to conduct the assessment. The state will pay the group $630,550 for its work, according to the state contract. Updates on the assessment will be posted on hhsalignment.iowa.gov. PORTAGE, Wisconsin The Portage, Wisconsin, Police Department have arrested a Portage High School teacher after learning of an alleged inappropriate relationship with a juvenile male student. Portage police released a statement saying Abby M. Dibbs, 35, of Cross Plains, was arrested for sexual assault of a child by a school staff person on May 26. The police learned of the relationship after the Portage Community School District Administration contacted the police. Portage School District released a statement saying they were working with law enforcement. "This teacher is no longer employed by the Portage Community School District and will not be returning to the classroom. Upon learning of this matter, the District responded immediately and contacted law enforcement. The District will not be commenting further to ensure that there is no disruption to the investigation by law enforcement and to protect the privacy of others involved," a statement from the Portage Community School District said. "We feel confident that the high school and all district buildings are safe and secure for all students and staff. We appreciate the efforts of our law enforcement in addressing this matter. District officials will continue to monitor our schools to ensure a safe environment," the district statement said. Thats when all he wanted to do was play StarCraft or sports, until Harry Potter came into his life. Back then his mom essentially forced him to read the first book of the series. She said, Im gonna read these first two chapters to you and you have to sit and listen to this and she did and then I just took it upstairs that night and I just kept reading and that was the first time in my life that I enjoyed reading and I started reading just for fun, he said. As his Twitter presence and occasional quotes in stories have shown, he also has a keen appreciation of Star Wars and is ready to go toe-to-toe with anybody on pop culture references. Whether its related to fantasy, or a rom-com or even a Channing Tatum dance movie from the mid-2000s. I hosted a birthday party by renting out the theater for a new Step Up movie one time, he told Arizona Capitol Times during a phone interview after a 12-hour day at his office in downtown Phoenix. The Duchess of Cambridge received her first coronavirus vaccine on Friday (05.28.21) The 39-year-old royal - who has Princes George, seven, and Louis, three, and daughter Princess Charlotte, six, with Prince William - revealed she attended London's Science Museum this week to have her first dose. Alongside a photograph of her having the jab, she wrote on the Kensington Palace Twitter page: "Yesterday I received my first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine at Londons Science Museum. "Im hugely grateful to everyone who is playing a part in the rollout - thank you for everything you are doing." Catherine had her first vaccine just days after her 38-year-old husband. The Duke of Cambridge paid tribute to all those involved with the roll out of the coronavirus immunization program in the UK as he shared a picture of himself getting the vaccine recently. He wrote on the Instagram account he shares with wife at the time: "On Tuesday I received my first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine. "To all those working on the vaccine rollout - thank you for everything youve done and continue to do." Dalian Ocean Fishing is accused of employing forced labour on board of its 33 longline tuna vessels. Indonesian workers are forced to work 18 hours a day for US$ 300 a month. The fishing industry in Japan, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand is high on the Global Slavery Index. The US has banned Xinjiang cotton. Beijing (AsiaNews) The US Customs Agency yesterday announced that it would block products by Dalian Ocean Fishing after the Chinese fishing company was accused of employing forced labour and abusing workers on board its 33 tuna vessels. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that companies using forced labour will not have access to the US market. According to US customs authorities, Dalian Ocean Shipping exploits its employees, who are forced to work under difficult conditions, and are at risk of having their salary withheld. Agence France-Presse reports that Indonesians employed by the Chinese company have complained of being forced to work 18 hours a day for 0 a month, which are often not even paid; workers are required to remain with the company for more than a year, with poor medical care and subjected to inhumane treatment. Last year, Advocates for Public Law, a South Korea-based NGO, and the Environmental Justice Foundation reported that the bodies of three workers who died on board of the Long Xing 629, a Dalian Ocean ship, were dumped into the sea. Chinese fishing companies are not the only ones accused of using forced labour. According to the Global Slavery Index, the fishing industry in six other countries Japan, Russia, Spain, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand are at a high risk of modern slavery. This is not the first time the US government has banned fish imports from China on humanitarian grounds; until recently though, it had never targeted a companys entire fleet. On the issue of forced labour, last year Washington also took steps to stop importing goods from Xinjiang after several media reported the existence of labour camps in China's autonomous region, with hundreds of thousands of Muslims forced to work, especially picking cotton. China produces 20 per cent of the world's cotton, most of it in Xinjiang. Jacob Mamabolo, MEC for Gauteng Public Transport and Roads Infrastructure, said a decision has been taken to scrap the Gauteng e-toll system. We are already in the post e-toll period. An announcement is imminent, Mamabolo told SAFMs Stephen Grootes. We are looking to a completely new e-toll dispensation we are just waiting for that to be formalised. Where we are, there is no turning back on e-tolls. E-tolls are a thing of the past. Mamabolo told Grootes e-tolls have been scrapped as the people of Gauteng should not be burdened with paying for national roads. He highlighted that national roads serve all South Africans and neighbouring states. It is unfair to limit funding of national roads to people of Gauteng. All of us must pay. All of us must carry the burden, he said. Soon after the interview, however, Mamabolo backtracked saying an announcement regarding e-tolls is imminent. We reaffirm that the announcement on scrapping of e-tolls is imminent and must be made soon. The tweet by @SaFmRadio distorts that conversation, he said on Twitter. Cautious optimism The Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) said it is cautiously optimistic after the announcement by Mamabolo that e-tolls were scrapped. Wayne Duvenage, OUTAs CEO, welcomed the initial statement by the MEC, but said the organisation awaits confirmation via the right channels before celebrating the news. If true, it would mean a massive win for OUTA and all Gauteng motorists who defied the system, he said. However, this is a matter that will need to be confirmed by either Cabinet or the Minister of Transport, Fikile Mbalula. If indeed this decision has been made, MEC Mamabolo may have let the cat out the bag and stolen Minister Mbalulas thunder. Hence the retraction on social media. Duvenage said a mere announcement that e-tolls have been scrapped, wont cut it. OUTA and motorists need to know that government will be reversing the law that declared the Gauteng freeway network as tolled roads, Duvenage said. He said many other decisions are linked to the scrapping of e-tolls, like the cancellation of contracts with ETC who collects e-tolls from motorists and amendments to the SANRAL act. Unpaid e-toll debt will also have to be written off without further threats to prosecute non-payers, he said. No decision on future of e-tolls Minister Shortly after Mamabolos comments, Transport Minister Fikile Mbalula released a statement saying no decision has been made on the future of the e-tolls. We are of the view that the MEC has made it quite clear that what he articulated during the interview, is a provincial position of Gauteng, which is not a new matter at all, Mbalula said. The full statement is embedded below. The encrypted messaging company Signal has long been popular with activists, investigative journalists, politicians and assorted law enforcement officials because of its emphasis on privacy and security. Its growth was steadybut slow. Then came Christmas break. Employees returned from the holidays to an unexpected surge in new users that overwhelmed Signals servers and sent engineers racing to increase capacity. Signal is experiencing technical difficulties. We are working hard to restore service as quickly as possible. Signal (@signalapp) January 15, 2021 The catalyst was a backlash against rival WhatsApp, which announced an updated privacy policy that included sharing some user account details with its parent company, Facebook Inc., turning off some of its 2 billion-plus users. Tesla Inc. Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk helped stoke the exodus, encouraging his army of Twitter followers to use Signal. Suddenly a niche app endorsed by National Security Agency whistle-blower Edward Snowden was swarmed by new usersmore than 50 million people downloaded it within 10 days, doubling Signals total user base and making it the top downloaded app in 70 countries, according to several current and former employees. The meteoric growth put huge pressure on Signals 30 or so employees, mostly engineers, product designers and developers who work remotely from their homes in the U.S. and Canada. The deluge also exposed tensions about the direction and management of Signal under its unconventional founder and chief executive officer, Moxie Marlinspike, a dreadlocked cryptographer whose varied interests have included punk rock, sailing and anarchism. A handful of employees have quit in the last year, leaving some engineering teams short-staffed. Others have complained about Marlinspikes oversight, Signals growing use by extremist groups and a new cryptocurrency feature they fear could be used for criminal behavior. Current and former staffers, who asked not to be identified either because of concerns of breaching confidentiality agreements or professional retaliation, describe Marlinspike as a technical genius but a stubborn boss who has resisted growing Signals small team. He long maintained a death grip on Signals underlying code and servers, a former employee said. That control at times caused internal frustration, several current and former employees said. But in recent months, he has gradually relinquished his tight control over the companys infrastructure, entrusting other executives and employees with the ability to modify code and access closely guarded servers and encryption keys, according to the two current employees. Lately, Marlinspikes company has also instigated a public relations feud with Facebook. Signal suggested in a May 4 blog post that Facebook refused to let Signal buy ads on Instagram that sought to highlight how the tech giant gathers and makes money off its users data. Facebook disputes Signals account, calling it a stunt. Running the ads was never their goal, a Facebook spokesperson said. It was about getting publicity. Still, Signals campaign against Facebook, if successful, could lure more users but add strain to the companys skeletal staff. Signals issues arent dissimilar to other technology companies that have struggled with rapid growth. Google and Facebook, among others, have faced internal dissent as the companies have grown from scrappy and idealistic startups to tech giants. But Signal is different in several significant ways: its a nonprofit that relies on contributions to fund its operations and is run by a founder who has shown little interest in the traditional rewards of corporate success. Can a nonprofit run by a one-time anarchist pose a serious challenge to Big Tech? Signal can benefit from people searching for more viable and virtuous alternatives, said Dan Blah, co-founder of Reset and the Open Technology Fund, organizations that financially support technology projects that advance human rights and democracy. In his role at the Open Technology Fund, Blah helped provide about $3 million funding to Marlinspike for the development of Signal. Blah said the question is whether Signal can rise to the challenge. They are going to have no lack of opportunity to grow, he said. But from a sustainability perspective, can they meet that growth? Within the current market and political realities, its a wild card. In interviews on the phone and via textover Signal of courseMarlinspike rejected criticisms of his leadership style and said it didnt reflect the views of everyone at the company. He also defended the size of his staff. I dont think its better, necessary, or inevitable for all technology organizations to be several hundred or several thousand person operations, he said. Many of the folks at Signal are drawn here for the opposite reason-small teams of committed people where work can be high agency and low bureaucracy. I would much rather work in a guild of committed craftspeople than a monster organization where feelings of alienation or disempowerment are more endemic. He also unleashed a broadside against Facebook, saying many people have grown increasingly dissatisfied with its privacy policiesand those of other technology giants. Consequently, he said he wasnt entirely surprised by the rapid spike in new Signal users. Weve really crossed the threshold where the era of utopian technology is over, he said. People no longer see Facebook as a company that is connecting the world. Most people conceive of Facebook as a company that is building apps for their data. And so we have been existing in this liminal space where everybody uses Facebook every day and hates it. Facebook declined to comment on Marlinspikes remarks. Marlinspike started Signal in 2014 as an app for encrypted calls and texts over Apple Inc. and Googles mobile operating system. It grew out of earlier projects, RedPhone and TextSecure, which he co-created in 2010 with his company Whisper Systems. Twitter acquired Whisper Systems in 2011 and brought Marlinspike on board as its head of product security. But he departed after less than two years to begin work on what would later become Signal. Marlinspike said his aim was to make encrypted communication accessible and easier to use than what was then available, which was cumbersome and difficult for ordinary people to adopt. Concerned about government surveillance of the internet and skeptical of law enforcement, Marlinspike said he wanted to empower people to protect their privacy from authorities. A big part of why we created Signal was because it feels like the way the internet works is crazy, he said. If in your living room there was just some weird guy sitting there that you didnt know, taking notes about everything you said and did, you would think thats nuts. In keeping with his zealous defense of personal privacy, Marlinspike doesnt like to discuss his background or personal life and has gone to some lengths to keep it out of the public sphere. He leads a very private life, said Blah, who characterized Marlinspike as someone profoundly frustrated and bored with the way things are. He wants to instigate change on a big societal level and also on a personal level. Some scant details of his background are available in public records and in previous profiles. Moxie was a family nickname, and the origins of his surname, Marlinspike, arent known. He declined to confirm details such as his age and name at birth for this story. He grew up in Georgia, where his mother was a secretary. In the late 1990s, when he was still in his teens, Marlinspike moved to San Francisco, where he got a programming job, according to people close to him. He has traveled extensively across the U.S., sometimes jumping on freight trains and hitchhiking. He learned to surf, obtained a master mariner license and piloted a hot-air balloon. He helped create an online library that people in the Bay Area could use to lend books to each other. But his coding skills brought him the most recognition. In 2009, he appeared at the Black Hat security conference, where he revealed a critical vulnerability that weakened the security of internet encryption used to secure the worlds data. The following year, he presented at Black Hat again, this time promoting his encrypted phone apps Redphone and TextSecure, while issuing a stark warning: Surveillance is probably at an all-time high, while privacy is probably at an all-time low. His words proved prescient. A few years later, in June 2013, whistle-blower Edward Snowden came forward and revealed details about the extraordinary scope of top-secret government surveillance programs in the U.S. and its allied countries. When Marlinspike launched Signal in 2014, Snowden endorsed it and still appears on the webpage, where he is quoted saying, I use Signal every day. Snowdens disclosures triggered growing public demand for more privacy and better data security. In response, WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook and Google separately announced plans to adopt Signals encryption protocol into their own messaging platforms, which would eventually bring Marlinspikes encryption to about a quarter of the worlds population. In February 2018, WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton joined Signal, after quitting the Facebook-owned company. Acton injected $50 million of new funding into Signal in the form of an interest-free loan and became executive director of the nonprofit Signal Foundation, where he said he would oversee Signals growth. The foundations stated aim is proving that a nonprofit can innovate and scale as well as any business driven by a profit motive. Acton later explained in a talk at Stanford University that he left WhatsApp in part due to his concern that the capitalistic profit motive, or answering to Wall Street, is whats driving the expansion of invasion of data privacy. A Twitter post was even more explicit: It is time, he wrote. #deletefacebook. Asked to comment on some of the criticism of Marlinspike, Acton said, I think my actions speak best when it comes to how much I admire and respect what Moxie and the rest of the Signal team have built. The bar is continually raised and met by the team and that consistency starts with strong leadership. He declined further comment. Actons hiring was a significant step. He has overseen growth of the companys staff from fewer than a dozen to more than 30, bringing on board engineers, developers and product designers, as well as a product management executive and an engineering director he knew from his time at WhatsApp. In recent months, he has pitched in with technical work due to staff shortages, helping to manage Signals expanding infrastructure and booming user base, the employees said. Marlinspike has gradually relinquished the tight control he maintained over Signal, handing over key responsibilities to newer recruits, according to two current employees. Still, Marlinspike has balked at dramatically increasing Signals staffing levels, according to current and former employees. Teams of employees and executives at the nonprofit interviewed dozens of candidates for positions in the last three years, some from leading Silicon Valley technology companies, only to have several approvals held up or vetoed by Marlinspike, the employees said. Marlinspike has told colleagues of his desire to keep Signal a close-knit group. He has also complained that he hasnt been able to find people with the right level of expertise, the employees said. In the early days, one of my most important tasks was hiring great people who could come together with a shared vision for what we wanted to build and how we wanted to build it, he said, in a message via Signal. These days, I am much more involved at the level of trying to help with a smooth hiring process rather than making hiring decisions about individual people. For those hired at Signal, the standards are high and mistakes sometimes severely punished, according to multiple employees. In April 2018, one of his companys new hires made a change to the desktop computer version of Signal, enabling non-English speaking users to send links to website URLs that contained non-Latin characters such as Cyrillic and Chinese. The change was approved and subject to an internal and external code review, which didnt flag any problems. But a month later, a team of Argentinian security researchers discovered a vulnerabilityintroduced as a result of the employees changesthat could allow a hacker to break into a persons computer and potentially spy on their Signal chats. Within a couple of hours of the researchers flagging the security issue, the employee fixed the problem. But about a week later, an upset Marlinspike called the employee and fired him. Some Signal employees at the time said they were shocked by the firing. Two former employees and one current one said they feared Signal staff would be hesitant to admit mistakes, lest they lose their job. The employee who was fired described Marlinspike as super brilliant when it comes to his vision and engineering skills. But the employee, who requested anonymity for fear of professional retribution, added that Marlinspike was relying on everybody not making mistakes. And that just doesnt scale. Asked about the fired employee, Marlinspike said, Like any other company, we have fired people who have under performed. No one at Signal has ever been fired for making a mistake. Joshua Lee Bauer, a Los Angeles-based former chief technology officer, joined Signal in January 2019 as a senior server engineer. But he left after only six months, citing frustration with Marlinspikes leadership style and unwillingness to respond to his suggestions. I felt like all the other engineers were pleased with what I was doing, but with Moxie there was just this weird barrier, said Lee Bauer. After a couple of weeks he just shut off from me. Hes sort of your typical hacker. He fits the mold in every way. And that comes with pros and cons. Hes pretty good at what he does, but at the same time theres an aloofness. Hes sort of your typical hacker. He fits the mold in every way. And that comes with pros and cons. Signals sudden growth has also prompted concerns among some employees that it hasnt created clear policies around misuse by extremists who are increasingly embracing the app. In the aftermath of rioting in Washington on January 6 by supporters of then lame duck President Donald Trump, federal authorities disclosed that members of the Oath Keepers militia group had been using Signal to orchestrate their participation in the rioting at the U.S. Capitol building. In February, Kelli Stewart, a leader in the conservative militia group Peoples Rights, told a gathering of supporters that the organization had adopted Signal because its regular method of sending out text messages had been blocked from communicating with phone providers. Gregg Bernstein, who started at Signal in March 2020 as a user researcher, identified the risk of militia groups adopting the platform. He resigned in January in part because of concerns that a new Signal feature could be misused by extremists. That feature allows users to post links online to group chats, which could be joined by up to 1,000 people. I thought we needed to think about how this could go wronghow the groups could be abused by bad actors, Bernstein said. But when I would raise issues about policies, guidelines for how we want people to use Signal, it was always a non-starter. Bernstein said he didnt want Signal to moderate the content of peoples private group chats or to take any action that would undermine the apps underlying encryption. Instead, he believes the company should consider limiting the size of groups, to make it harder for extremist groups to use them as forums for recruitment or for broadcasting propaganda. I dont think we want to support Signal for insurrections, he said. Marlinspike said Signal has taken some steps to reduce the risk of people spreading misinformation, including restricting users from forwarding messages to more than five people at a time. But he was dismissive of concerns about militias or other extremists using Signal groups to organize. People are asking YouTube to take responsibility for content moderation because YouTube is showing people videos that they had no intention of watching, he said. Encrypted messaging platforms cant do that and arent amplifying or making content discoverable. I think it is a different space entirely. In the future, Signal may become more than just a messaging app. In April, the company announced it was testing a new cryptocurrency feature that would enable privacy-focused payments, bringing with it a new set of issues for Marlinspike to address. Signals intention is to make it easier for people to send moneypossibly an effort to challenge a Facebook plan to create a similar tool for WhatsApp. In addition to concerns that it could be used for illicit activity, however, some employees worry the feature could provide ammunition to critics in law enforcement, some of whom have long argued that end-to-end encryption like Signals thwarts investigations by protecting criminals communications. Marlinspike said he isnt too worried about authorities coming after his company because large swaths of the government in the U.S. and many other countries are using Signal. He said he is hoping to continue growing Signal as a privacy-focused antidote to what he describes as the ills of Big Tech. Signal is in some ways the boring project of trying to bring normality to the internet, Marlinspike said. I would like to see that normality in as many places as possible. Local Public Safety Napa County adopts zone-based mapping to notify public of wildfires, evacuation orders Noah Berger, Associated Press Firefighters knocked down flames on a doghouse while battling the Glass Fire burning in St. Helena on the day of its eruption Sept. 27. Napa County authorities have a short and succinct motto for those who need to know whether to evacuate or keep watch during future emergencies: Know Your Zone. An evacuation mapping system rolled out by the Sheriffs Office divides the county into more than 250 numbered zones that can be targeted for alerts about wildfires and other threats to life or property. Operated by the San Francisco software company Zonehaven and previously adopted by Sonoma, Marin, and other California counties, the zone-based alert system is intended to more rapidly and precisely target public safety announcements during disasters, and reduce confusion about which areas are under the most immediate threat. Quality journalism doesn't happen without your help. Subscribe today! Napa County has added a Know Your Zone page to the Sheriffs Office website, where users can type in addresses and find the zone number for their home or business. Emergency alerts made on social media and other platforms will mention which zones are under orders or advisories, according to Undersheriff Jon Crawford of the Sheriffs Office. We will get the word out so that it takes 30 seconds, a minute tops, to go to the Sheriffs Office page, where there will be a Know Your Zone button taking people to the Zonehaven portal they enter their address and it takes them to where their zone is, he said during a Thursday interview. That way when (authorities) issue a message, there is no confusion. Zones will cover segments of Napa Countys five municipalities as well as unincorporated communities like Angwin, Lake Berryessa, Pope Valley, and Oakville. Boundaries are based on a Zonehaven algorithm that takes into account the fire history of various areas as well as population density, with cities split into more parcels than unincorporated areas of similar size, Crawford said. New software may speed up Napa County wildfire evacuations Napa Valley Community Foundation donates funds to purchase public warning system. Napa County will continue issuing alerts through the Nixle text notification system and various social media accounts, he added. In addition to wildfires, the mapping system will help to target announcements about power outages, floods, hazardous material spills, and post-fire debris flows. Grant funding will cover Napa Countys costs for five years of Zonehaven service, with the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation of Palo Alto contributing $84,370 and the Napa Valley Community Foundation offering $112,500. Momentum to take up Zonehaven mapping picked up last fall during the battle against the Glass Fire that erupted Sept. 27 and scorched swaths of the Upvalley, according to Crawford. Napa County personnel based at the fires Santa Rosa command center saw the cloud-based system in action, as Sonoma County officials used it to quickly convey information about the fires progress from first responders to agencies and then to the public into zones that were like ZIP codes but smaller, he said. Currently, local fire and law enforcement agencies issue alerts that define evacuation areas using compass points and referring to highways and roads that form their rough boundaries, a practice Crawford said leaves many residents uncertain about whether their homes and properties really are in immediate danger. Right now we list roads as borders of evacuation zones and you have to imagine, OK, do I fall within that big area? he said. Many times we have people saying they didn't understand the order, or they werent clear about how to respond to those warnings. We want to improve our communications so theyre more clear. City of Calistoga's high-tech wildfire mapping nears completion Come the next wildfire season, Calistoga will be better prepared with state-of-the-art, highly detailed digital wildfire maps and response plans. Zonehaven, which already had mapped Napa County territory, offered local authorities a trial run, which public safety agencies used internally to guide road and power crews as well as the repopulation of areas cleared out during the wildfire, according to Crawford. In addition to pushing out evacuation warnings to residents and first responders as they happen, the platform assists agencies in making decisions about when to evacuate areas. Zonehaven monitors road traffic in real-time, assists in creating traffic control points, and marks potential evacuation centers based on the flow of people leaving various zones, the Community Foundation said in an announcement earlier this month. The software also allows incident commanders at a wildfire to help guide the modeling of its potential spread. In Calistoga, the Zonehaven platform will be coordinated with a new set of digital wildfire maps the city commissioned from Colorado-based Anchor Point to improve local fire response. The Calistoga-area charts, which show potential fire paths based on a site's fuel level, will inform firefighters in real-time without the need to wait on reports from Cal Fire or other agencies. Napa County will promote the zone-based alert system at meetings of city councils and the Board of Supervisors, and a public-service video about the system is being prepared for social media, Crawford said. Another promotion being considered is the issuing of evacuation tags for homeowners to place on their mailboxes to inform public safety workers of their departure ahead of a disaster but with QR codes added to take users directly to the countys Know Your Zone page by scanning the code with a smartphone camera. Crawford was scheduled to speak about Zonehaven in a radio interview Friday, and said a Spanish-language outreach about the system is planned later in the year. Announcements also will continue to use references to roads and directions as the zone system is publicized, partly for the benefit of visitors unfamiliar with the system, but Crawford described the new setup as an important tool in a time when drought and higher temperatures have placed the Napa Valley under increasing threat. This is just another step forward in improving our response, our resilience as a community, in the event we have another fire or another disaster where we have evacuations, he said. Were hoping well be that much more prepared this year. Photos: These Napa County families lost everything in the Glass Fire Napa's Burning Problem: A Napa Valley Register series taking an in-depth look at Napa County's vulnerability to wildfires Please log in to keep reading. Enjoy unlimited articles at one of our lowest prices ever. The attendees got to see the show for free but were required to take three virus tests, two before and one after the concert. To further reduce risk, organizers only allowed people 18-45 years old without underlying health conditions to participate, according to the hospital authority. Frances cultural venues were shut for most of the past 14 months as authorities tried to contain persistent surges of virus infections that filled hospitals and were linked to more than 109,000 deaths. HANOI Vietnam has discovered a new coronavirus variant thats a hybrid of strains first found in India and the U.K., the Vietnamese health minister said. Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long said Saturday that scientists identified the variant while examining the genetic makeup of the virus that had infected some recent patients. He said lab tests suggested it might spread more easily than other versions of the virus. Long says the new variant has spread to 30 of Vietnams 63 municipalities and provinces, and could be responsible for a recent surge in confirmed cases. Viruses often develop small genetic changes as they reproduce, and new variants of the coronavirus have been seen almost since the one that causes COVID-19 was first detected in China in late 2019. EU President: I applaud Azerbaijans & Armenias parallel humanitarian gestures Georgia is ready to participate in settlement of humanitarian issues between Baku and Yerevan Aliyev: If Armenia wants peace, they should start negotiations with us on delimitation Kocharyan intends to turn government dachas into rehab center Baku says it handed over 15 POWs to Armenia in exchange for map of minefields Nikol Pashinyan shares photo of Armenian POWs returning home Eight more remains found in Artsakh search operations Saturday Armenia MOD refutes reports on deployment of Turkey army units in Sev Lake region Armenia MP candidate charged with bribery is remanded in custody Armenia acting PM on border situation: Our Russian partners have come, looked at areas where they can be deployed Armenia acting premier: This election battle has already turned into class struggle 20 Afghanistan security force members killed in clashes with Taliban Armenia acting PM supporters give kids instructions in Gegharkunik Province village Armenia 2nd President Kocharyan: We reject vendettas Armenia ex-President Serzh Sargsyan pays tribute to late PM Andranik Margaryan Armenia 2nd President Kocharyan: Maybe 2018 evens would not have happened if they had kept level of education Bright Armenia Party MP: Our prime ministerial candidate is Edmon Marukyan Armenia former President Kocharyan: I want to be proud of my homeland One person on Armenia ruling party electoral list also has Iran citizenship, his registration is declared invalid Armenias Pashinyan congratulates Boris Johnson on Queens Birthday Armenia ex-President Kocharyan in Spitak town, pays tribute to victims of 1988 earthquake Acting premier: Corrupt clergymen discredit Armenian Apostolic Church, traditional values Armenia, Georgia customs officials meet at Bagratashen border checkpoint One new case of coronavirus reported in Artsakh Armenia acting deputy PM signs new decision Sarkissian to Putin: Armenian-Russian cooperation is developing confidently in all directions 8 dead in China factory chemical leak Putin notes differences between "outsider" Trump, "career man" Biden 88 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia President: Karabakh has always underscored Russia's invaluable place, role in our region Security Council chief: We have had Russias support in Artsakh for centuries Pashinyan to Putin: I am convinced that Armenian-Russian interstate relations will continue to develop Armenias Pashinyan congratulates Mishustin on Russia Day Newspaper: Armenia criminal authorities take neutral position in current electoral process Newspaper: Real "war" behind scenes of Armenia authorities after every provincial visit of acting PM Armenia acting PM Pashinyan tells details from his talk with army General Staff former chief Gasparyan Man found dead in Armenia canal NATO Secretary-General affirms willingness for cooperation with Russia Armenia Special Investigation Service charges political party member for giving electoral bribe Armenia Central Electoral Commission grants motion to launch criminal prosecution against MP candidate "I Have the Honor" bloc member: Coronavirus and 'nikolavirus' (Nikol Pashinyan) are both lethal Greek PM: Greece willing to back positive EU agenda for Turkey Russia Deputy FM, France Ambassador discuss settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict CoE: We are engaged in a dialogue to develop a set of confidence-building measures between Armenia, Azerbaijan Armenia 3rd President states when country's security system began to collapse Armenia Armed Forces' General Staff ex-deputy chief on acting PM's statement on his "National Hero" title Armenia Arevik National Park director dismissed for being a friend of Meghri mayor Reuters: Erdogan's summit with Biden clouded by bitter disputes Armenia acting MOD receives Head of ICRC Delegation Gagik Tsarukyan: Armenia needs to develop the economy by using resources of country and people Gagik Tsarukyan: Russia is Armenia's main ally, and this can't be altered Armenia MOD: Azerbaijanis try to carry out engineering works in Kut border section, Armenian side counters Armenia 1st President's nephew and his son involved in brawl in Yerevan Snap elections online voting starts, Azerbaijan continues 'trial' of Armenian POWs, Jun 11 digest Armenian former high-tech industry minister, member of ruling party on June 9 brawl in Yerevan Robert Kocharyan: If Armenia wants a peaceful settlement of Karabakh conflict, it needs to give Azerbaijan hope Armenia acting PM: During campaign meetings hundreds of mothers thanked me for signing Nov. 9 document Citizens are demanded to applaud Armenia acting PM Armenia ruling party lawmaker, MP candidate: Civil Contracts election promises are continuation of 2018 promises Armenia villager to Nikol Pashinyan: Yard of Turk's house is in front of our military post Opposition Prosperous Armenia Party assures that it's not expecting ministerial positions Robert Kocharyan: "Armenia" bloc will restore and deepen country's ties with allies Czech Rep. parliament committee calls on Azerbaijan to release all Armenian captives immediately "Armenia" bloc member Armen Gevorgyan holds meetings with diplomatic corps and international organizations Dollar still dropping in Armenia Azerbaijan announces names of 26 Armenian servicemen it intends to "put on trial" Armenian publishing house to print 66,925,000 ballots for upcoming snap parliamentary elections "Armenia" bloc member: There are reports that over 10 police buses escorted acting PM yesterday Gallup: "Armenia" bloc records slightly higher indicator than ruling party Armenia acting PM has been obligated to publicly apologize to Khachatryan family "Armenia" bloc: Robert Kocharyan and ARF-D resolved crisis that Levon Ter-Petrosyan created in 1998 Intellectual Armenia Party to support "Armenia" bloc in snap parliamentary elections Armenia ruling party MP's powers terminated Brawl takes place during Armenia ruling Civil Contract Party's campaign meeting, case launched Armenia acting premier: We also have enclave under Azerbaijan rule Holy Etchmiadzin: We express regret for unwise, inappropriate statements of acting PM "I have the honor" bloc member: Armenia acting PM has instructed his voters to go to polls by afternoon Prosperous Armenia Party MP: Enemy does not divide Armenians into "blacks" and "whites" Bright Armenia Party leader: Acting premier will not be able to get 60% of votes Armenia acting PM: There are people in media who are more like "killers" than journalists Ex-President Kocharyan: 2009-2018 I did not agree with Armenia authorities on many issues Armenia has new millionaires Armenia President visits Russia embassy, meets with ambassador Artsakh search continues Friday for remains of Armenian soldiers killed in war Armenia ruling party election offices heads being paid by provincial halls? Armenia emergency ministry preparing for a new cooperation with USAID US, Turkey top defense officials discuss regional issues 95 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia G7 leaders pledge to share 1bn doses of coronavirus vaccine with world Armenia snap parliamentary elections online voting starts Trump tells Biden to give Putin his warmest regards Newspaper: Pashinyan is both Armenia acting PM and not Newspaper: Why is Armenia arms dealer released from custody? National Geographic officially announces 5th ocean Armenia MP candidate is detained Armenia Prosecutor General receives OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission's delegation France's Macron intends to discuss situation in Nagorno-Karabakh with Turkish counterpart Armenia 3rd President on Nikol Pashinyan: People look at him and say 'greetings, son of a b**ch' US Department of Commerce intends to impose sanctions against Armenia's Armenal aluminum foil producer/exporter Armenia 1st President recalls his "remedial secession" formula for Nagorno-Karabakh conflict settlement Iran, for the first time in 30 years, has exported oil to the US in the amount of 33,000 barrels per day, according to the Energy Information Administration of the US Department of Energy, TASS reported. The last time Iran supplied oil to the US was in November 1991. Then the volume of supplies increased to up to 64,000 barrels per day. In turn, Russia increased the supply of oil and oil products to the US by 1.8 times, compared to February, to 22.94 million barrels. Thus, Russia rose to second place in terms of fuel exports. The first place was taken by Canada (139.87 million barrels), and the thirdby Mexico (17.62 million barrels). In March, the US imported 179.4 million barrels of oil, which is up by 22.9 million barrels from February. Following the settlement in February, Standages status at the Naval Academy was unclear. He had completed all of his educational work and was attending graduate school at the University of Maryland through the Voluntary Graduate Education Program at the time. He was told he would not receive a service assignment when his classmates did in November. President Joe Biden on Friday condemned the rise in anti-Semitic attacks across the country in recent weeks, saying the incidents are "despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop," Erie News Now reported. The nation is seeing an uptick in attacks on the Jewish community as tensions flare following the violence in the Middle East between Israel and Palestinian militant group Hamas. Biden's statement on Friday was his second one this week on the issue. "We have seen a brick thrown through window of a Jewish-owned business in Manhattan, a swastika carved into the door of a synagogue in Salt Lake City, families threatened outside a restaurant in Los Angeles, and museums in Florida and Alaska, dedicated to celebrating Jewish life and culture and remembering the Holocaust, vandalized with anti-Jewish messages," Biden said in a statement. The President continued: "These attacks are despicable, unconscionable, un-American, and they must stop." "I will not allow our fellow Americans to be intimidated or attacked because of who they are or the faith they practice," Biden said. "We cannot allow the toxic combination of hatred, dangerous lies, and conspiracy theories to put our fellow Americans at risk." Biden pointed to the announcement this week by Attorney General Merrick Garland that the Department of Justice would be taking six immediate steps to improve its efforts to combat the spike in hate crimes. "In recent days, we have seen that no community is immune," Biden said. "We must all stand together to silence these terrible and terrifying echoes of the worst chapters in world history, and pledge to give hate no safe harbor." Leaders of the Armenian Caucus at the US Congress condemn Azerbaijan's latest aggression in Armenia's Gegharkunik Province, demand the US State Department hold Azerbaijan president Aliyev regime accountable, and threaten sanctions to end ongoing atrocities. The Armenian National Committee of America informed about this on Facebook. The full respective statement of these American lawmakers is as follows: "We are alarmed by the ongoing actions of Azerbaijani forces on Armenian soil in the Gegharkunik region and surrounding area that have resulted in the death of an Armenian soldier and the reported kidnapping of six more. It is imperative that the State Department hold Aliyev accountable for his deadly aggressions. We will continue to work with the Biden Administration and our colleagues to ensure the United States is using every diplomatic tool we have, including sanctions, to end these atrocities, and plan to put forward a series of tangible actions the U.S. must take to secure peace and accountability." The spiral escalation of tensions between two of Irans neighbors in the South Caucasus has taken the top Iran diplomat to the region amid a decisive round of nuclear talks between Iran and world powers in the Austrian capital of Vienna, according to Tehran Times. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif began a regional tour of the South Caucasus that included visits to Azerbaijan and Armenia. The visits began amid reports of border tensions between two rivals grappling with the consequences of a deadly 44-day war that resulted in Azerbaijan retaking large swathes of Armenian-controlled territories in the Nagorno-Karabakh [(Artsakh)] region. In mid-May, Armenia accused Azerbaijan of advancing into its southern territory. Armenian Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan has said Azerbaijans armed forces crossed the state border of the Republic of Armenia and advanced as far as 3.5 kilometers in Syunik Province. The episode required a position by Iran. So, Saeed Khatibzadeh, spokesman for Irans Foreign Ministry, called on the two South Caucasus rivals to settle their border disputes in peaceful ways and through dialogue. Khatibzadeh also said that Iran was closely and sensitively following the developments between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Underlining Irans readiness to facilitate the settlement of the dispute, Khatibzadeh said, The Islamic Republic of Iran underlines the necessity of maintaining stability and calm in the region, and calls on both sides to show restraint, avoid fueling the disagreements, and respect the two countries borders. Earlier, a senior Iranian lawmaker warned against change in Iran-Armenia borders. The lawmaker, Mojtaba Zolnouri, who serves as the head of the Iranian Parliaments National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, said Tehran has made it clear that it will not accept any change in international borders in the region. If part of the territory of Armenia is to be taken and our border conditions change, that is, to have a new neighbor, it is not acceptable for us. The existing borders must be completely protected and the shared border of the Islamic Republic of Iran with Armenia must be maintained, Zolnouri said. During his visit to Azerbaijan and Armenia, Zarif raised the issue of borders. In Baku, the top Iranian diplomat discussed with Azeri President Ilham Aliyev issues such as border tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan and communication corridors. Now you can play a historic role in bringing peace to the region, Zarif told Aliyev, according to a statement issued by the Azerbaijani presidency. In Yerevan, Zarif received the Armenian account of border tensions. Acting Minister of Foreign Affairs of Armenia Ara Aivazian thanked Zarif for paying a visit to Armenia during disturbing days in the region. Aivazian noted, It has been two weeks since the Azerbaijani armed forces invaded the border areas of the Republic of Armenia, trying to provoke a new escalation, which is fraught with new regional threats. He also said that Azerbaijan strives to create new geopolitical realities amid global silence towards Baku. Undoubtedly, this encroachment on Armenia's territorial integrity is a direct consequence of the war unleashed on September 27 last year by Azerbaijan against the people of Artsakh, their right to self-determination and life, as well as the inadequate international and regional response to Azerbaijan's actions towards endangering regional peace. Encouraged by the sense of impunity, Azerbaijan is trying to create new geopolitical realities which do not proceed from the interests of countries concerned in regional stability. In these conditions, the dialogue with our regional partners is more than important, Aivazian pointed out. In response, Zarif called the Caucasus a vital region that protection of its security is a national security issue for Iran. Expressing concerns over the recent tensions, Zarif said Iran made efforts over the past months to peacefully settle disputes between Armenia and Azerbaijan. He called on both sides to exercise restraint, respect each others borders, and resolve disagreements through dialogue. Zarif also underlined the need to respect international borders and protect the territorial integrity of countries as well as the need to refrain from changing borders as a red line outlined by Iran. The Iranian foreign minister also met with Acting Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. Our good-neighborly relations with Iran are of strategic importance. The common border with Iran has ensured the security of our country in a number of ways ever since the first years of Armenias independence. It is my pleasure to note that there is a similar perception in Iran about our relationship, Pashinyan told Zarif, according to a statement issued by the Armenian acting prime minister. The talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko have lasted more than five hours, RIA Novosti reported. During their meeting in Sochi, Russia, the two presidents had already discussed the situation with the Ryanair plane which had landed in Minsk on May 23 after receiving information about a bomb. According to Lukashenko, the reaction of Western countries to this incidents testifies to their attempt to destabilize the situation in Belarus, as it happened in August 2020, too. In turn, Putin recalled that in 2013, the plane of then Bolivian President Evo Morales had to land in Vienna due to reports that former CIA agent Edward Snowden was on board, who is accused in the US of leaking state secrets. The Russian President noted that this incident had not caused such a heated reaction among the Western partners. And Lukashenko, for his part, noted that he intends to show his Russian colleague "some documents" related to the situation of the aforesaid Ryanair plane. It is interesting that the state charged this one year after it is alleged to have happened, right after Mr. Davis won a new trial, and right after Ms. Mosby gave a Keith Davis supporter the finger and then people questioned whether she lied about it, said Davis attorney, Deborah Katz Levi, the director of special litigation for the public defenders office. Mr. Davis is innocent of these charges and he will be vindicated. As a result of the investigation, which lasted more than four months, Armenian News-NEWS.am found out remarkable information about the process of acquisition of equipment for the examination of DNA identification of the remains and bodies of war victims at the end of last year by the SNCO expertise center of the Armenian health ministry. In previous publications, News of Armenia - NEWS.am turned to the use of the purchased equipment and, with professional justification, presented the possible risks arising during the examination of DNA identification. Our research has shown that when organizing the process, which is most important for the state and relatives of the victims, those responsible not only did not take into account important professional nuances, but provided the expertise center of the Ministry of Health with a monopoly on the DNA identification process, and expertise center, in turn, as a result of an urgent purchase, provided superprofits for the supplier company. We present the details of the dubious transaction in order and facts. According to the information available in the public procurement system, the expertise center, the Ministry of Health of the Republic of Armenia, in December last year, announced a tender for the purchase of a set of analyzers and accessories for the examination of DNA identification, in which two companies took part - Medisar LLC, engaged in the import and supply of laboratory research and maintenance of medical equipment, and Prom-test LLC. The second companys application was rejected because the delivery time offered by it did not meet the procurement requirements. As a result, on December 18, expertise center concluded an agreement with Medisar LLC for 295.8 million drams (over $568,000). The company undertook to make the purchase under the contract by January 31st. According to Armenian News-NEWS.am, the aforementioned supplier purchased equipment for DNA identification from Thermo Fisher Scientific, the world's leading science company, in December 2020. The journalist of Armenian News NEWS.am, introducing himself as a supplier of laboratory equipment, sent a written request to this company two months ago with a request to provide prices for 39 items of goods listed in the contract. A few days ago, we received a response from the official representative of Thermo Fisher company, according to which the company offered $ 237.586 for the purchase of 39 items of equipment and laboratory materials, which is equivalent to AMD 122.766 million. Taking into account the significant difference between the amount allocated by the state for the purchase stipulated by the contract and the offered price for the equipment, we also tried to find out the customs value of the goods imported into Armenia. In particular, according to the information on customs transactions at the disposal of Armenian News-NEWS.am, on January 5, 2021 DNA identification equipment was imported from Georgia, the countries of origin of which were China and Singapore. The total customs value of these goods amounted to about AMD 184 million, including taxes. From the data obtained, it becomes clear that as a result of the procurement process, the supplier company received a profit (overhead) of at least AMD 111 million ($212,237 US). The procurement process took place during the work of the Minister of Health Arsen Torosyan. According to our information, for the purpose of the prompt acquisition, Torosyan personally negotiated with the supplier and was in direct contact with the company's management. As a reminder, as early as January 5, Armenian News NEWS.am addressed this dubious deal, noting that the center had acquired the same equipment back in 2018. In this automated system with typing up to 300 DNA per day, SNCO cannot use even 10% of the total capacity, since it does not have sufficient expert potential to carry out complex procedures for preparing samples for bone DNA sequencing. We found that even purchasing a second piece of equipment would not speed up the identification process and that this would take more than 6-7 months. And thus, three months after the purchase of new equipment, it became clear that those responsible for the sphere were forced to send abroad about 100 remains of the victims since they are extremely damaged and that it is impossible to identify them with the equipment available in Armenia. And 7 months after the end of hostilities, 70 samples taken from the bodies and remains of war victims are in the process of examination. In this case, a logical question arises: before the next ineffective expenses, the responsible persons of the sphere did not calculate the possible problems arising during the examination of DNA identification, or, fearing a justified protest from the relatives of the victims, hastened to dispel the discontent of relatives, stating that the state is acquiring second equipment to accelerate DNA research? And, in the end, is it really justifiable for a country facing a post-war crisis and serious socio-economic difficulties to trust the acquisition of such a production line to a company that can receive super-profits from supplies associated with the expertise of DNA identification of the bodies and remains of war victims? Or maybe government officials were also involved in this process and got their share? The issues of identifying possible crimes committed in the course of the transaction should first of all be dealt with by the General Prosecutor's Office, which is obliged to find out how effectively public funds were spent, whether we are dealing with an alleged case of embezzlement or not. The head of state must also express his position on this issue, who has an undeniable commitment to resolving this problem. By the way, when Nikol Pashinyan was an opposition deputy, he often criticized those suppliers who received excess profits. According to Pashinyan, the suppliers of the Ministry of Defense received the most super-profits in Armenia. It is curious whether Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan still has the same position on this issue, that in order to protect his own, he is once again ready to close his eyes to the dispersion of state funds? May 29PLATTSBURGH Adirondack Dance Company rises out of the fog of COVID with An Evening of the Arts featuring "Hansel and Gretel," 7 p.m., June 4, at the Strand Theatre, Brinkerhoff Street, in Plattsburgh. This is the premiere of the classical ballet in Plattsburgh and the Adirondack Dance Company is proud to present this production to the Adirondack Coast. Hansel & Gretel will be the first act of the performance, and the company's second act will be some contemporary & classical dance. "Because of COVID, I couldn't really bring in any principal dancers from Colorado like we've done in the past because I wasn't sure if they would have to quarantine or if they would have their vaccinations," Kathy Koester, artistic director, said. "So, I picked a ballet I could fully cast from our local area. As such, similar to the opera, a lot of times Hansel is played by a woman in the opera. We are having a dancer, a woman, play Hansel in the ballet." "Hansel & Gretel" is based on a Engelbert Humperdinck's opera of the same name. Music is from both the Opera and Edvard Grieg's "Incidental Music" from "Peer Gynt." "'In the Hall of the Mountain King' and 'Morning Mood' are two pieces very recognizable by Grieg," Koester said. "Although, he didn't like them. He thought they were insipid. "The other music is right from the opera, instrumental not the sung version." INTREPID CAST Dancing the role of Hansel is Malone senior, Margaret Marceau along with Franklin Academy sophomore, Lily Glazier in the role of Gretel. Returning to the stage is Carlee Carrier as the mother and other roles, with SUNY Plattsburgh junior, Mason Barber dancing the role of the Father. Other soloists are SUNY sophomore: Cassandra Ashline as the Dove, and Plattsburgh High senior, Ally Germain as the Wicked Witch. PHS sophomore, Gabriella Laundry is dancing the role of Sand Fairy and Emily Griffin, sophomore at Northern Adirondack, the role of Dew Fairy Queen. Story continues Arianna Martin, senior from Bouquet Valley School District, will be dancing the roles of Gum Drop, Dew Fairy and Angel. During the second act, contemporary & classical dances will be performed, along with a Spanish Character Dance and 2 Broadway musical numbers. "We have two dancers who went to Youth American Grand Prix, which is a big competition," Koester said. "They are going to be doing their variations that they performed at the Youth America Grand Prix in the second act." 15TH ANNIVERSARY This year, Adirondack Dance Company celebrates 15 years of presenting Classical Ballet Productions to the North Country, which has included Degas-The Ballet, 2nd act of Swan Lake, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Beauty and the Beast, Firebird, Les Patineurs, The Little Mermaid, A Midsummer's Night Dream, The Nightingale's Song, Aladdin, The Little Humpbacked Horse and more. "Once they opened up the theater so that we could have a public performance, we suddenly had to jump into hypermode to catch up," Koester said. "Up until this time, we thought it would just be a private filming. Then all of sudden, we got permission to make it public, of course, with people wearing masks and everything. All the stuff we would have done like six weeks out, we were jumping and moving three weeks out from the show." Despite the last-minute hurdles, the dancers are more than ready to dance before their fans. "I think the audience will enjoy the music," Koester said. "It's really very melodic and the dancers have worked really hard. It's the typical Hansel & Gretel story. The witch gets pushed into the oven at the end. It's the typical ballet story. It's been done before. The Ballet Pacific Northwest did it, and some other big companies have done Hansel & Gretel. But it's the first time it's going to be performed in Plattsburgh." DANCE POD This production is made possible with funds from the Decentralization Program, a regrant program of the NYS Council of the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo & the NYS Legislature, and administered by the Adirondack Lakes Center for the Arts. "It's been such a struggle this year with everything going on for the arts in general," Koester said. "All these dancers have been dancing in a dance pod since last July. We kept the studio completely COVID free. We put UVC air sanitizers, so we really took great precautions with making sure dancers were safe." Tickets are available at the door, $20 adult and $18 senior/child. Tickets may also be purchased at danceticketing.com/27613/ Email Robin Caudell: rcaudell@pressrepublican.com Twitter:@RobinCaudell Alibaba's cloud computing unit is making its Apsara operating system compatible with processors based on Arm, x86, RISC-V, among other architectures, the company announced at a conference on Friday. Alibaba Cloud is one of the fastest-growing businesses for the Chinese e-commerce giant and the world's fourth-largest public cloud service in the second half of 2020, according to market research firm IDC. The global chip market has mostly been dominated by Intel's x86 in personal computing and Arm for mobile devices. But RISC-V, an open-source chip architecture competitive with Arm's technologies, is gaining popularity around the world, especially with Chinese developers. Started by academics at the University of California, Berkeley, RISC-V is open to all to use without licensing or patent fees and is generally not subject to America's export controls. The Trump Administration's bans on Huawei and its rival ZTE over national security concerns have effectively severed ties between the Chinese telecom titans and American tech companies, including major semiconductor suppliers. Arm was forced to decide its relationships with Huawei and said it could continue licensing to the Chinese firm as it's of U.K. origin. But Huawei still struggles to find fabs that are both capable and allowed to actually manufacture the chips designed using the architecture. The U.S. sanctions led to a burst in activity around RISC-V in China's tech industry as developers prepare for future tech restrictions by the U.S., with Alibaba at the forefront of the movement. Alibaba Cloud, Huawei and ZTE are among the 13 premier members of RISC-V International, which means they get a seat on its board of directors and technical steering committee. In 2019, the e-commerce company's semiconductor division T-Head launched its first core processor Xuantie 910, which is based on RISC-V and used for cloud edge and IoT applications. Having its operating system work with multiple chip systems instead of one mainstream architecture could prepare Alibaba Cloud well for a future of chip independence in China. Story continues "The IT ecosystem was traditionally defined by chips, but cloud computing fundamentally changed that," Zhang Jianfeng, president of Alibaba Cloud's Intelligence group, said at the event. "A cloud operating system can standardize the computing power of server chips, special-purpose chips and other hardware, so whether the chip is based on x86, Arm, RISC-V or a hardware accelerator, the cloud computing offerings for customers are standardized and of high quality." Meanwhile, some argue that Chinese companies moving toward alternatives like RISC-V means more polarization of technology and standards, which is not ideal for global collaboration unless RISC-V becomes widely adopted in the rest of the world. I have some sympathy for the Associated Press as its being pummeled for firing a young reporter over social media posts. Not a lot of sympathy, mind you. The decision to fire Emily Wilder weeks into her new job for allegedly partisan tweets was ham-handed. A rookie reporter with great promise should be called into an office for a conversation and warning rather than a termination. The outrage over the APs decision grew after the public learned that Wilders pro-Palestine views as a Stanford student led to her being targeted by right-wing groups decrying her hiring by the AP. That in turn led to accusations that the worlds most prominent news organization had buckled to political pressure. More: Why Joe Biden won't solve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict or bring peace to the Middle East Frankly, the AP needs to issue a list of exactly what tweets violated its social media policy, which prohibits employees from openly expressing their opinions on political matters and other public issues for fear that could damage the news organization's reputation for objectivity and jeopardize its many reporters around the world. Otherwise the assumption is that Wilder is being punished for exercising her free speech rights in college. On Wednesday, the AP acknowledged mistakes of process, but not of outcome. But if the AP erred, so did Wilder. Tweeting is pro-active, an intentional decision to share your views with the world in hopes of persuading others. Depending on your role as a professional, that may have consequences. Why is Israel bombing Gaza? Violence in Gaza Strip escalates to what some say is worst in decades There are plenty of jobs where an errant tweet can get you fired. If youre a Democratic fundraiser, your employer has a right to expect you not to tweet criticism of President Biden. If youre a health professional, your boss can fire you for tweets saying COVID-19 was a hoax. And if youre a law enforcement officer, your supervisor will be angered by a tweet that attacks the Black Lives Matter movement. Story continues In each of these cases, a provocative statement by an employee can undercut the credibility of a department, create internal conflict and distract the organization from its mission. So, too, does a tweet by an AP reporter about news coverage of the Middle East: "objectivity' feels fickle when the basic terms we use to report news implicitly take a claim. using 'Israel' but never 'Palestine,' or 'war' but not 'siege and occupation' are political choices yet media make those exact choices all the time without being flagged as biased." Pro-Israel bias Wilder is accusing the news media and implicitly her employers of a pro-Israel bias because of the words they choose in reporting the conflict. It can feel good to lay out your unvarnished opinion for others to applaud, but Wilders first duty is to her colleagues reporting today in every possible hot spot in the world. These professionals strive daily to report factually and fairly. If theyre perceived as favoring one side over another, their personal safety is at risk. As a young reporter, I knew that I had an obligation not to inject myself into public matters. I didnt question it. That was just the cost of being a news professional. Later, when I was editor of USA TODAY and other newspapers, I had the same expectation of my reporters. No politics. No causes. And nothing that would impair your ability to reflect all sides. And if a reporter was unwilling to accept those limits, they werent going to be a good fit for our newsroom. Objective reality Ive heard younger journalists say that true objectivity is impossible and that they have a right to free speech. I respect the view, but I also know the value of being able to talk freely to a source who has no reason to question your sincerity or motives. Informing the public on behalf of a respected news organization is a privilege that comes with responsibility. The Associated Press has done noble and heroic work spanning decades, often at great risk to those doing the reporting. The AP is simply asking its journalists to focus on the news and stay off the soapbox. Thats the job. Ken Paulson is the director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, a former editor of USA TODAY and a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors. You can read diverse opinions from our Board of Contributors and other writers on the Opinion front page, on Twitter @usatodayopinion and in our daily Opinion newsletter. To respond to a column, submit a comment to letters@usatoday.com. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Emily Wilder and AP: Was charge of pro-Israel bias enough to fire her? Senator Kyrsten Sinema was noticeably absent from Fridays vote on the proposed Capitol riot investigative commission (Getty Images) Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema was absent for Fridays historic vote on a proposed Capitol riot investigation, and she still hasnt said why. After Republicans blocked a bill to establish a commission investigating the 6 January Capitol attack, Democrats directed most of their anger at the 35 GOP senators who voted against it. But there were also two Democrats who didnt even show up for the vote: Senator Patty Murray, and Ms Sinema. She will be entering into the Congressional record that she would've voted yes, the Arizona senators spokesperson, Hannah Hurley, told The Arizona Republic. Although a majority of the Senate 54 members, including six Republicans voted for the bill, it failed to garner the 60 votes needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. In her public statements, Ms Sinema had both supported the bill and opposed removing or reforming the filibuster. We implore our Senate Republican colleagues to work with us to find a path forward on a commission to examine the events of January 6th, Ms Sinema had said in a 25 May statement with another centrist Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin. Mr Manchin opposes changing the filibuster as well. When CNN asked him if hed be willing to use the nuclear option of filibuster reform, the senator replied, No, I cant take the fallout. Mr Manchin was present for the Capitol riot commission vote, and voted yes. In addition to the two absent Democrats, nine Republican senators missed the vote as well. According to The Arizona Republic, Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama was seen on a plane leaving Washington the day before the vote. Some on the left have wondered aloud how Ms Sinema explains her absence. Does anyone know why @kyrstensinema skipped the vote on the Jan 6th commission and bailed on her much-hyped push to bring in the magical 10 R votes to break a filibuster? progressive activist Kai Newkirk tweeted, referring to the ten Republican votes that would have been needed to pass the bill. Story continues Ms Sinemas office has not yet responded to The Independents request for comment. Read More Shame on the Republican party: GOP senators block Capitol riot commission Girlfriend of officer Brian Sicknick who was killed in Capitol riot blasts GOP for blocking commission Politics is Trump: Furious reaction as Republicans vote down Capitol riot commission These six Senate Republicans defied Trump to back Capitol riot commission McConnell reportedly asks GOP senators to vote against Capitol riot commission as personal favor By Andrius Sytas VILNIUS (Reuters) - Belarus opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Saturday hailed support from around the world after Minsk scrambled a warplane to intercept a flight and arrested a dissident journalist on board. Belarus has been subject to EU and U.S. sanctions since President Alexander Lukashenko cracked down on pro-democracy protests after a disputed election last year. But his decision to intercept an international airliner in Belarusian airspace and arrest the 26-year-old has brought threats of more serious action. Most European countries told their aircraft to avoid Belarus airspace and banned Belarus carriers from their skies. "I am very touched by the support I see in Lithuania and all around the world," Tsikhanouskaya told reporters, standing among a few hundred exiles in a square in Lithuania's capital Vilnius. The protesters were holding pictures of the detained blogger Roman Protasevich and his girlfriend Sofia Sapega, a Russian citizen who was also arrested. Lithuania has sheltered hundreds of Belarusians who it says risked detention in their country after the presidential election, including Tsikhanouskaya. "I hope we win this year. I want to come back. I want to be home," a woman at the protest told Reuters, bursting into tears. Holding a "Europe Act Now" placard, she declined to give her name as she said it would be dangerous to her family and friends back in Belarus. Lukashenko said on Wednesday the journalist had been plotting a rebellion, and he accused the West of waging a hybrid war against him. Protasevich has been shown on state TV confessing to organising demonstrations. But Belarus opposition figures have dismissed that, saying it is evidence he has been tortured. Russia has showed its longstanding ally support in this latest standoff with the West, with Lukashenko holding a second day of talks with President Vladimir Putin on Saturday. Russia confirmed it would move ahead with a second $500 million loan to Belarus next month. (Reporting by Andrius Sytas in Vilnius; Editing by Alison Williams) Associated Press British Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a strong hint Saturday that the next planned relaxation of coronavirus restrictions in England this month will be delayed as a result of the spread of the delta variant first identified in India. In a series of interviews on the sidelines of the Group of Seven leaders' summit in southwest England, Johnson conceded that he has grown more pessimistic about sanctioning the next easing scheduled for June 21 as the number of infections across the U.K. has increased to levels not seen since February. The British government has planned to take the next step in bringing England out of lockdown by removing all legal limits on social contact including allowing nightclubs to reopen for the first time since the pandemic struck in March 2020. BUDAPEST (Reuters) - With the tolling of a bell and a wreath lowered into the water, Hungary marked the second anniversary on Saturday of a Budapest boat accident which killed 27 people, mostly South Korean tourists, in the worst river accident on the Danube in decades. The 135-metre (443 ft) Swiss river cruiser Viking Sigyn hit a 27-metre (88 ft) tourist boat called Mermaid, causing it to capsize and sink under a bridge during heavy rain on the evening of May 29, 2019. "It is still very strange to be here," said Zsolt Sogor, a legal representative of the company that owned the Mermaid. "I am here because there are many for whom this day opens deep wounds." After a sailor lowered the wreath into the river from a boat, those on board threw flowers into the water to remember the victims at the commemoration event, led by the Hungarian Ecumenical Church. Of 33 passengers and two crew members, only seven Korean passengers survived. One South Korean tourist who was onboard remains missing. The survivors are due to give testimony at the next hearing of the trial, which began more than a year ago, on Sept. 21, Sogor said. In November 2019, Hungarian prosecutors charged the 64-year-old Ukrainian captain of the Viking Sigyn, identified as C. Yuriy from Odessa, with misconduct leading to mass casualties and 35 counts of failing to provide help. His lawyers have said he was devastated but did nothing wrong. The captain could face between two and 11 years in prison if he is found guilty. A verdict is expected early next year. (Reporting by Krisztina Fenyo; Writing by Marton Dunai; Editing by Alison Williams) Hours later, Western District officers responded around 7:52 p.m. to a ShotSpotter alert in the 1700 block of Braddish Ave. in the Coppin Heights/Ash-Co-East neighborhood. They found a 46-year-old man suffering from a gunshot wound to his head. He was taken to an area hospital and pronounced dead a short time later by medical staff. Image shows the Attorney Ben Crump When black Americans are killed by police and street protests start to simmer, it usually isn't long before Ben Crump gets a call. The Florida lawyer has represented the families of some of the most high-profile victims of police violence, including George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and Daunte Wright. How did he become the go-to man? Short presentational grey line Tiffany Crutcher was sitting in a restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama, in September 2016 and had just taken an unexpected call from her cousin. "My hands were shaking," she said. "I told the restaurant that I had to leave. I just didn't know if what I was hearing was true." Terence, her twin brother, had been shot dead by a police officer back home in Oklahoma. "He had just left Tulsa Community College," she told the BBC. "The day he was killed he was planning a slumber party for his youngest daughter. I just couldn't understand it." Terence was shot as he stood next to his broken-down SUV on a quiet road in the north of the city. Footage from the moments before he was killed shows the 40-year-old walking away from a group of police officers with his hands in the air. "That looks like a bad dude," one officer can be heard saying in a recording from a helicopter overhead. Lawyers would later argue that Terence ignored commands from the police before attempting to reach into his driver-side window. The officer who eventually pulled the trigger said she feared he was reaching for a gun. But there is no definitive footage of the moment he was killed and critics have said the window was closed. Either way, Terence, who was unarmed, was stunned by a taser and then fatally shot in the lung. The shooting triggered street protests that lasted for several turbulent days. "Terence's killing prompted one of the largest protests Tulsa had ever seen," Crutcher said. "I'm so grateful to the people who came out. It meant so much." Story continues But the attention soon became overwhelming. "Being bombarded by the media was so surreal," she told me. "I just wanted to go and hide. To have to tell your story over and over again was a lot of pressure." Crutcher checked into a downtown hotel in an effort to escape the cameras and the hype. The family had hired the civil rights lawyer Ben Crump, who was on the ground in Tulsa within three days of Terence's death, marching with protesters and holding bombastic press conferences in his melodic southern accent. "I told [Crump] that I didn't want to do any more media," Crutcher said. "But he told me: 'Your community is counting on you. Your family is counting on you. Terence's children are counting on you. And I will be with you every step of the way.'" "Knowing that he had my back made it easier to keep speaking out," she added. "He encouraged me to keep going." America has seen a succession of street protests following police killings This is a familiar story that has played out time and time again in the years since. Crump, who has become one of most prominent figures in the Black Lives Matter movement, has recently represented the families of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd and Daunte Wright; enthralling the media and supporting the bereaved in much the same way he did for the Crutchers. The 51-year-old works tirelessly - using what he calls the "mediasphere" - to ramp up the pressure on a city or police force until they agree a financial settlement. And Crump has won payouts in the vast majority of the cases he has taken on. George Floyd's family settled for $27m (19.1m). Breonna Taylor's did so for $12m. He is now established as the go-to man for the relatives of victims of police violence. "He is everywhere," explained Kenneth Nunn, a law professor from Florida who has followed his career closely. "But if anything were to happen to me or my family - he would be the number I'd call." Short presentational grey line Crump grew up in the small town of Lumberton, North Carolina, as the eldest child in a large family. He was raised primarily by his mother, who worked in a hotel by day and a shoe factory by night. He has recalled how Lumberton was racially divided, writing in the introduction to his book, Open Season: 'I wanted to understand why people on the white side of the tracks had it so good and black people on our side of the tracks had it so bad. This began my journey toward becoming a lawyer.' He remembers being bussed to the wealthier part of town in 1978, when school desegregation finally came to Lumberton. 'I soon learned that this was the work of a lawyer named Thurgood Marshall,' he wrote in his book. Crump has often spoken about how Marshall, the first black Supreme Court justice, is his legal lodestar. The other memory Crump tends to recall is of a white pupil at his new school pulling out a $100 bill as he was queuing with some friends for free school meals. 'We looked at the money in astonishment!' he wrote. 'I was stunned that a ten-year-old girl had an allowance that was the equivalent of my mother's weekly income.' Crump - pictured holding the megaphone - has a history of activism that dates back to his university days Crump moved to Florida aged 13 and, after attending high school there, won a scholarship to study law at Florida State University where friends say he quickly forged a reputation as an activist. "He always stood out as the person fighting for our black population on campus," explained Sean Pittman, who met Crump at FSU and has been friends with him ever since. "Ben organised and led two marches," Pittman said. "One was related to an effort to tear down the black student union house - which was our place of comfort and our place to convene. He led that fight and the house remained for much longer." "His whole make-up is related to fairness and equal justice," Pittman continued. "I don't know if he had a choice in making a career out of civil rights, because he would be doing it whether it was his job or not." After university, Crump and another friend set up a small personal injury firm in Florida that won millions of dollars in settlements. But it was in 2012 that he rose to national prominence while representing the family of Trayvon Martin, a 17-year-old who was shot dead as he was returning home from a shop with some sweets. George Zimmerman, the neighbourhood watch volunteer who shot Martin, claimed the unarmed teenager had looked suspicious. He was eventually acquitted of murder. While a criminal conviction eluded the Martin family, Crump helped them reach a seven-figure settlement with Zimmerman's homeowners association. That case had all the Crump hallmarks - dramatic press conferences, media scrums, marches, protests and powerful rhetoric. "Ben did a masterful job of keeping that in the public view," Mark O'Mara, who represented Zimmerman, told USA Today last year. "I was fighting for a client. Ben was fighting for a cause." Crump is known for generating media attention and holding showpiece press conferences Crump's combative, media-savvy style won further success when the parents of Michael Brown settled with the city of Ferguson, Missouri for $1.5m in 2017. He has rarely been out of the public eye since - juggling numerous headline cases at his eponymous law firm which opened in Tallahassee in 2017. Ben Crump Law now has offices around the US. Crump told the Washington Post last year that he was now able to pick and choose cases that would "shock the conscience" of the American people. He reportedly turns down at least a dozen requests for every case he takes on, claiming a third of any settlement he wins and nothing if he loses which - according to experts - is the norm in this field of law. More on US police killings: The question, then, is why always Crump? "A lot of it is momentum," Nunn said. "You have a successful case and then there's word-of-mouth after that. It's a knock-on effect." Indeed, several families that hired Crump told the BBC they were either recommended his services by other lawyers or had heard of him during previous cases. "We see success and we see progress, and we don't want our family's name to be brushed under the rug," Tiffany Crutcher said. "He is the go-to guy because he has shown up and answered the call every single time." Allisa Findley, whose brother Botham Jean was shot and killed by police in Dallas in 2018, also said her family had hired Crump because of his past victories. "With his experience from just being the attorney that most of these families call, he knows how to manoeuvre every situation because he has dealt with so many cases," she told the BBC. "He gets results and that's what any family wants. We want closure and he gets us that." Botham Jean was killed by police in 2018. His sister told the BBC that Crump "always shows up" Crump's omnipresence is also helped by a lack of willing competition. "There are not a lot of lawyers who want to take on these kind of cases," Nunn explained. "The amount you have to spend - Crump will get a coroner and ex-police officers to testify and hold big press conferences - there are not a lot of lawyers who would think that is a good investment. There's not a lot of people who shape their entire practice around this type of work." But - when asked why Crump is always called upon - the factor those who know him refer to most often is his ability to empathise and build trust. "He's more than a lawyer," Pittman said. "He's a therapist. He's a lobbyist. He's a coach. He's a pastor. And with the families he has helped through these difficult times, he becomes a family member." Allisa Findley became emotional when speaking about her relationship with the lawyer. "On Christmas morning we will get a call from Ben because he knows it's a difficult time for us. He just calls to check on you - not to talk legal or strategy - but just to check on you as a person." "He is so much more than an attorney," Tiffany Crutcher said. "He spoke at my mother's funeral in January. We lost her to Covid-19. And even though he was in the middle of his cases with Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, he made time to speak." Critics of Crump, however, have branded him an opportunist - someone who parachutes in to moments of tragedy and boosts his profile by doing the media rounds. Samaria Rice, the mother of 12-year-old Tamir Rice who was shot dead by police while holding a toy gun in 2014, released a statement earlier this year that decried Black Lives Matter activists and even named Crump explicitly. "[They] need to step down, stand back, and stop monopolising and capitalising [off] our fight for justice and human rights," it read. "In the case of Tamir Rice, it was even questionable as to whether Benjamin Crump knew the laws in the state of Ohio. I fired him 6-8 months into Tamir's case." Samria Rice (L) fired Ben Crump and questioned whether he knew Ohio state law in detail The deterioration in their relationship appeared to stem from a sense - on Rice's part - that she was being left out of key conversations. "My attorneys did not discuss many major strategic decisions with me about the civil and criminal matters involving my son," she said in a court filing in 2015. "This upset me greatly." Crump has also been criticised for focusing on winning settlements rather than securing criminal convictions. He's a civil lawyer, and so has no bearing on the criminal side to these cases which is usually handled by a different team of lawyers. Some activists have said police violence is unlikely to stop with cash payouts alone. This is a point Crump has even expressed himself. "I used to think that if we made a city pay $5m or $10m every time they shot black or brown people, they would stop doing it," Crump told New York Magazine. "But, as we've seen, the only way they're going to stop doing it is if they go to jail." There were celebratory scenes earlier this year after former police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd Others have taken aim at Crump's relentless media appearances and sharp tongue. Mark O'Mara, the lawyer who represented George Zimmerman, told CNN at the time of the trial that his client had been targeted by a campaign "to smear him, to call him a racist when he wasn't and to call him a murderer when he wasn't". It is hard not to view these comments as a direct attack on Crump. Some, however, say attracting attention - and winning cash settlements - is what he is hired to do. "Yes he's an opportunist, yes he's a publicity hound, but that's what his clients want," Nunn said. "It comes with the job." And in the main, the families he has worked with recognise and appreciate his media savviness. "He really doesn't do it to elevate his profile - he does it because he understands that the media is our biggest weapon," Crutcher said. "It puts pressure on the power structure and holds a mirror up to America." "It's so important to get ahead of the narrative," she said. "The playbook from the state is to vilify the victims and dredge up their past, but Ben Crump has done so well at controlling the narrative. The media has been his secret weapon." Whether intentionally or not, Crump's use of the media has raised his profile substantially. He has broadened out his practice and is at the forefront of some of America's most notable civil rights lawsuits - representing families affected by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan, as well as those who have filed claims against Johnson & Johnson that allege its baby powder causes cancer (something the company strenuously denies). It is a remarkable workload. "He wouldn't be human if these cases didn't tear away at the fabric of his humanity," Pittman said. "But when you're motivated by something much greater than your own personal feelings, then you press on with aggression and with passion. That's what I see from Ben - he is motivated by something far greater than himself." The Biden administration on Friday announced new crackdowns against Belarus as punishment for forcing down a Ryanair flight to arrest an opposition journalist. The big picture: The announcement comes hours after Aleksandr Lukashenko met with ally Vladimir Putin in Sochi. President Biden will be meeting with his Russian counterpart in Geneva on June 16. Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free Details: The United States on June 3 will reimpose full blocking sanctions against nine state-owned companies, which had previously been granted sanction relief "under a series of General Licenses by the Treasury Department." Belarus has been a target of U.S. sanctions in the past, particularly after Lukashenko claimed victory in a highly disputed election last summer and authorized violent crackdowns on protestors. The European Union announced earlier in the week that it would impose additional economic sanctions following the hijacking. The Treasury Department is also working on a new executive order, which would provide Biden further latitude to increase sanctions against the Lukashenko government and its allies. The White House reiterated its continued cooperation with its European allies, as well as the State Department's travel warning for U.S. citizens. The statement also includes the Federal Aviation Administration's advisory for U.S. passenger airlines to "exercise extreme caution" when flying over Belarus. What they're saying: "We call on Lukashenka to allow a credible international investigation into the events of May 23, immediately release all political prisoners, and enter into a comprehensive and genuine political dialogue with the leaders of the democratic opposition and civil society groups that leads to the conduct of free and fair Presidential elections under OSCE auspices and monitoring," White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement on behalf of the White House. Go deeper ... Biden: U.S. will coordinate with the EU on Belarus response More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free President Biden criticized a Texas bill that puts new restrictions on certain voting methods in the state, calling it "an assault on democracy" in a statement on Saturday. Why it matters: The legislation, which Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) is expected to sign into law, bans drive-through and 24-hour voting and adds new requirements on absentee and mail-in ballots. Stay on top of the latest market trends and economic insights with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free What they're saying: "Its part of an assault on democracy that weve seen far too often this year and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans," Biden said. "Its wrong and un-American. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote," Biden added. "I call again on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And I continue to call on all Americans, of every party and persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections." The big picture: When Abbott signs the bill, Texas will join Georgia and Florida in enacting voting restrictions in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Former Attorney General Bill Barr said last December that the Justice Department had not uncovered evidence of widespread voter fraud that would change the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. More from Axios: Sign up to get the latest market trends with Axios Markets. Subscribe for free The HBO host Bill Maher. HBO HBO host Bill Maher on Friday blasted celebrities who seek to run for political office. Maher said that Trump's four years in office should be a "cautionary tale" for celebrities. Maher said that celebrities are misguided in thinking that they can overcome partisanship. See more stories on Insider's business page. HBO host Bill Maher on Friday blasted celebrities who seek to run for political office, calling out actors and reality stars including Caitlyn Jenner, Matthew McConaughey, and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson for having "malignant narcissism." On "Real Time with Bill Maher," Maher was deeply critical of high-profile individuals assuming they have the qualifications to manage a state or the entire country. "Someone must explain why celebrities running for office is a recurring nightmare we cannot seem to shake," he said. "The Rock, Caitlyn Jenner, Matthew McConaughey, Randy Quaid. They all have suggested lately that when it comes to running the country, they have what it takes. And they do: malignant narcissism." Johnson has long flirted with a potential presidential bid, while Jenner has already announced that she would challenge Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California as a Republican. Last month, Quaid said he was also "seriously considering" a run for California governor, while McConaughey has talked up running for Texas governor. "Matthew McConaughey is I'm sure a lovely person, but when he says he says he's considering a run for governor in Texas, I must say that's not alright, alright, alright," Maher said, referring to the actor's memorable line from the 1993 film "Dazed and Confused." Maher contended that former President Donald Trump's single term in office should be a "cautionary tale" for celebrities who don't have the sufficient experience for positions like governor or president. Story continues "The last four years was a warning, not an inspiration," he said. "You were supposed to see that and think, 'I guess high-level government jobs should go to people who have trained for it and know what they're doing.'" This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Maher also gave a blunt assessment of Jenner's candidacy. "I'm sure Caitlyn Jenner is a nice person, but as California governor, she would be in charge of the nation's fifth-largest economy based on her qualifications of being a background character in a reality show not about her," he said, alluding to the long-running reality television series "Keeping Up With the Kardashians." He continued: "Governing is a difficult, nuanced job with people's lives and livelihoods at stake. Perhaps you've noticed that things in America have been a little different these last five months. That's because there are people back in charge who spent their formative years not on a sound stage, but studying the stuff you need to know to be effective on the world stage." Read more: We identified the 125 people and institutions most responsible for Donald Trump's rise to power and his norm-busting behavior that tested the boundaries of the US government and its institutions Delivering his final opinions on the issue, Maher said that celebrities are misguided in thinking that they can overcome the partisan divide prevalent in the US. "Let me put it bluntly to you and all of these would-be showbiz candidates," he said. "You're not good enough, you're not smart enough, and, doggone it, it completely doesn't matter that people like you. They like you now because you're an entertainer and thus largely uncontroversial. Governing is the opposite. If you think you can unite the country, you're delusional." Read the original article on Business Insider Is Boris Johnson really hard up? Getty Multiple reports suggest Boris Johnson is experiencing serious money problems. They claim that his recent divorce, multiple children, and reduced income have left him severely hard up. The reports come amid other claims that he has sought to use donors to pay for his living costs. Yet those who know Johnson well believe there is a much simpler explanation for him claiming hardship. See more stories on Insider's business page. Boris Johnson has told friends that he is experiencing serious money problems. Multiple reports suggest that the UK Prime Minister's financial situation has led to him attempting, and in some cases succeeding, to use donations from the Conservative party, and other donors, to pay for: Some commentators close to Johnson have suggested that these alleged money problems are due to the reduction in his income since entering Downing Street, combined with payments for his indeterminate number of children, and his divorce from his second wife Marina Wheeler. Without having access to Johnson's personal financial records it is impossible to know for sure quite how seriously to take these claims of his supposed hardship. However, analysis of his declared income, as well as accounts of his past behavior, does give some reason to doubt it. In the top 1% of earners Getty To begin with, it is worth pointing out that Johnson's 160,000 salary as prime minister, while not stratospheric compared to some of his higher-earning peers, still puts him in the top 1% of all earners in the UK. It's also worth pointing out that, unlike most people, his housing, transport, and large parts of his living costs are also covered by the taxpayer. And while he has had a significant reduction in his main sources of income since becoming prime minister, prior to his premiership he was one of the highest-earning politicians in the country, raking in over 275,000 a year from his Telegraph column on top of his salary as a politician. Story continues And although he has been forced to abandon that column, he does still continue to make many thousands of pounds worth of royalties from his back catalogue of books every year, according to his register of interests. In addition to this, he also declared 123,000 for a single speech in India in 2019, plus 88,000 from publishers Hodder and Staughton for an advance on as-yet unpublished book about Shakespeare. Yet despite all this past and present income, a report by last week's Sunday Times quoted a government source suggesting that the prime minister was so hard up that he had missed key emergency meetings at the start of the pandemic due to "working on a biography of Shakespeare, the money from which he needed to fund his divorce." A spokesperson for the publisher would not comment on whether Johnson had kept the advance for the as-yet-unpublished book, telling Insider only that "We have not scheduled the book to be released in the foreseeable future," and "we never comment on our authors' advances." He would 'never ever buy a drink' Associates of Johnson say he never buys a round. Getty So is Johnson really as hard-up as insiders and his media allies suggest, or is something else going on? The Prime Minister's biographer Sonia Purnell, who worked closely alongside Johnson in his early career as a journalist, is not convinced and believes there may be a much simpler explanation. Rather than being desperately hard-up, Purnell suggests Johnson may simply be acting as he has always done, which is to find any excuse he can to avoid opening his wallet. "All the way through his life he has been very successful at avoiding paying for anything," Purnell tells Insider. "It's a game he has always played... I mean what does he spend his money on? It's certainly not on buying people rounds of drinks in the pub. "He's never done that. All the time I was in Brussels... you would go to the bar and he would drink other people's drinks and never ever buy a drink. I mean never. Associates of Johnson say he also has a tendency not to pay his debts. "One of the first things I was told by someone else when I arrived there is that he will ask you to lend him money," Purnell says. "Never do it because he asks everybody and never ever pays it back." His reputation for failing to pay money back even extended to one wary EU official quoted in Purnell's biography of Johnson. "You were always wary," the official told Purnell. "I was told never to lend him money as he never paid it back - so when he asked for the equivalent of 50, I refused." Empty envelopes A spoof banknote depicting UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the Green Party Autumn Conference on October 4, 2019 in Newport, Wales. Getty With multiple houses, book deals and a large salary, Johnson is, by any reasonable standard, well off. Yet those who know Johnson describe him as almost comically tight with money. When first dating his second wife he claims to have taken her to a meeting of the Hare Krishnas in order to avoid paying for lunch, which he told the Evening Standard in 2008 that she had "never forgiven me" for. He continued the habit into later life, famously losing a 1,000 bet with his former employer Max Hastings, only to refuse to pay him. After much nagging, Johnson finally agreed to hand over the money, only to then send Hastings an empty envelope. "Whether or not Hastings actually needed the money is neither here nor there," Purnell tells Insider. "The fact he sat there, addressed an envelope, sealed it, and posted it and then there was nothing in it, is just bizarre behaviour." By all accounts, Johnson continued to be reluctant to pay his own way. Indeed one of my own first encounters with Johnson was in the canteen in the basement of London's City Hall when he was at the peak of his earning powers as Mayor of London and star Daily Telegraph columnist. As I was standing waiting to pay for lunch with a fellow journalist, Johnson shuffled over and asked my companion to lend him 3 for his sandwich which, somewhat taken aback, he did. Insiders say Johnson's notoriously scruffy appearance was also in part due to his reluctance to spend money on clothes. Indeed his outfits while mayor, which often constituted a strange combination of a faded grey jacket and municipal beanie hats, were in part, according to one former colleague, lifted by Johnson from Transport for London's lost property office. How bad was his divorce settlement? Boris Johnson (L) and wife Marina Wheeler (R) leave after casting their votes at a polling station on the EU Referendum in London, United Kingdom on June 23, 2016 Getty At the centre of claims of Johnson's supposed hardship is his divorce last year from his second wife. However, Johnson's biographer throws doubts on claims from Johnson insiders that their separation has left him penniless. "I think it's a rather sexist assumption to blame it on Marina," Purnell tells Insider. "After all she is a very high-earning person herself and always has been. She is a QC and has done very well. "I just don't buy that she took him to the cleaners." Are Johnson's finances a security risk? Stefan Rousseau-Pool/Getty Images Whether or not Johnson is genuinely hard-up, or is merely claiming to be in order to avoid dipping into his own pocket, some people believe the very existence of claims about his finances could be damaging. The revelation that Johnson had received an unpaid debt order from a court led to one former spy telling Insider that such claims could be used to damage his reputation, while others suggested they could also potentially leave him open to blackmail by hostile states. "All of these stories saying he is hard up is a bit like putting the begging bowl out," Purnell told Insider. "I imagine MI6 were quivering in their boots. It could be interpreted as an invitation to breach his own security and national security. You just don't do that as prime minister." And while claims about Johnson seeking donations to pay for luxury takeaways and wallpaper have only belatedly emerged, it remains unclear who exactly he has sought these donations from. "We have no idea who is giving him this money for wallpaper and holidays and all the rest of it," Purnell says. "And these are just the things we know about." "What else have people paid for? His personal trainer, his nanny, the takeaways, everything. It just mounts up and makes him one big security risk right there in Downing Street." A spokesperson for Johnson was contacted for comment. Read the original article on Business Insider Protesters in Brasilia carried a huge puppet of Jair Bolsonaro Protests have taken place across Brazil over the management of the Covid-19 crisis by the government of President Jair Bolsonaro. In the capital, Brasilia, thousands gathered in front of Congress calling for the president's impeachment, and demanding more vaccines. Demonstrations took place in other major cities, including Rio de Janeiro. Mr Bolsonaro's popularity has plummeted over his response to the pandemic. Brazil has registered nearly 460,000 deaths - the second-highest toll in the world after the US. It also has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases at more than 16 million. Saturday's protests piled further pressure on Mr Bolsonaro as Brazil's Senate holds an inquiry into his government's handling of the pandemic and the slow roll-out of the vaccine programme. Opposition parties, trade unions and social movements accuse Mr Bolsonaro of stalling the programme and disregarding the consequences. Opponents of Jair Bolsonaro blame him for the slow response to the Covid crisis There was a large anti-government rally in Rio de Janeiro The high number of cases has brought the country's health system to the verge of collapse. The far-right leader has consistently opposed lockdown measures, arguing that the damage to the economy would be worse than the effects of the coronavirus itself. He has also told Brazilians to "stop whining" about the situation. In Brasilia, protesters marched alongside a giant plastic doll of the president. Placards demanded his impeachment and called for more vaccines and emergency financial aid. There were also calls to better protect indigenous people and to stop deforestation of the Amazon. Protesters in Brasilia had a wide-range of grievances against the government In Recife, police fired rubber bullets and tear gas at protesters who tried to march down a closed road, local media reported. In some cities, demonstrators laid thousands of symbolic crosses in tribute to those who died in the pandemic. On Thursday, the head of Brazil's prestigious Butantan Institute told a Senate committee that President Bolsonaro's actions delayed the start of the vaccination programme, the Spanish news agency Efe reports. Story continues Dr Dimas Covas said that in August last year, Butantan offered to supply the government with 100 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine, which the institute manufactures under licence from China's Sinovac. He said the proposal included a pledge to deliver the first five million doses by the beginning of December. In Brasilia, protesters marched to Congress where the Senate is investigating the government's response to the pandemic But a day after Butantan's offer, Mr Bolsonaro vowed that his government would "never" buy a Chinese vaccine, Dr Covas said. "We could have been the first country in the world to vaccinate," he told the committee. Had the offer been accepted, Butantan would have been able to deliver 100 million doses by 30 March this year, Dr Covas added. Instead, Brazil has so far received a total of 46 million doses, due in part to shortages of raw materials amid the global scramble to obtain vaccines. Only 10% of the adult population has received the two required doses. Earlier in the inquiry, Pfizer's top executive for Latin America, Carlos Murillo, told the Senate committee that Mr Bolsonaro's government never responded to an offer that would have seen 1.5 million doses of the US pharmaceutical giant's vaccine reach Brazil last December. Tens of thousands of people in Brazil staged another day of protest against President Jair Bolsonaro, in particular for his chaotic handling of the pandemic, which has claimed more than 461,000 lives here. In downtown Rio de Janeiro, some 10,000 people wearing masks marched through the streets, with some chanting "Bolsonaro genocide" or "Go away Bolsovirus." Similar rallies were held in other major cities, the latest in a wave of anger against Bolsonaro that began months ago. After the United States, Brazil has the world's second highest coronavirus death toll. At the outset of the pandemic, the far right Bolsonaro dismissed Covid-19 as "a little flu" and as the death toll has risen steadily he has gone on to infuriate people in other ways, opposing stay-at-home measures and masks, touting ineffective medications, refusing offers of vaccines, and failing to anticipate oxygen shortages that left patients to suffocate. One of the themes of the rally Saturday was how many lives might have been saved if the Bolsonaro government had started Brazil's vaccination drive earlier. The drive is going slowly and has sputtered frequently for lack of supplies. "We must stop this government. We must say 'enough is enough,'" businessman Omar Silveira told AFP at the Rio rally. Of Bolsonaro, he said: "He is a murderer, a psychopath. He has no feelings. He does not feel, as we do. He cannot perceive the disaster that he is causing." Demonstrators also assailed Bolsonaro for allowing deforestation of the Amazon and land seizures from indigenous people, and said he encourages violence and racism. Rallies were held Saturday in other major cities such as the capital Brasilia, Salvador in the northeast and Belo Horizonte in the southeast. In the northeastern city of Recife, police firing tear gas and rubber bullets dispersed a street rally, said the news website G1. Brasilia saw its largest rally since the start of the pandemic as people marched on Congress, where a senate commission is investigating Bolsonaro's handling of the health crisis. Story continues The past two weekends supporters of Bolsonaro held demonstrations in support of him -- and at his request -- as his approval rating plummeted to a record low of 24 percent, according to a poll by Datafolha. Around 49 percent of those questioned favor Bolsonaro being removed from office while 46 percent are opposed, this pollster said. jm/yow/dw/je A letter writer notes that actors cast African Americans are often from other countries. Aaron Pierre and Thuso Mbedu in "The Underground Railroad." (Kyle Kaplan / Amazon Studios) Black Americans should play African Americans Regarding I Have to Do This by Greg Braxton [May 17]: Director Barry Jenkins tells The Times, Weve been shirking the responsibility of honoring these folks [slaves who escaped by the Underground Railroad]. But Jenkins is the latest in a long line of African American directors who have rejected African American actors in casting the central characters of their movies or television series. Instead, they have chosen actors from other countries in the English-speaking world, actors who did not grow up with the legacy of American slavery and Jim Crow and our uniquely American brand of police brutality. In the last five years Jenkins and fellow directors Regina King, Ava DuVernay, Shaka King and others have given us the following African American historical figures, played by actors of the following nationalities: Dr. Martin Luther King British; Harriet Tubman British; Malcolm X British; Muhammad Ali Canadian; Fred Hampton British; Aretha Franklin British; and Cora (the runaway slave in The Underground Railroad) South African. Is that a good way of honoring these folks? What message are these directors sending to African American actors? Are they telling general audiences, again and again, that our own American actors arent good enough to portray our African American heroes? This is more than a matter of injustice in casting. All the performances Ive seen, by British and other imported actors, are lacking in depth, authenticity, warmth and humor. We are not seeing our heroes on the screen. Were getting empty, technically polished imitations. Dave Clennon Santa Monica :: I havent seen any part of the series The Underground Railroad but I was mystified and saddened by the article about it. While Jenkins wants viewers to see beyond the violence, the first episode shows a captured runaway slave being whipped before being burned alive. A scene of whipping is horrifying enough, and would be true to the treatment many slaves experienced. But killing a runaway slave by burning? This is a scene from a modern horror story. If Jenkins wishes to be truthful about what slaves experienced, as he states later in the article, he could have shown the runaway being sold down the river after being separated from her children and her community. This exile would have been a deep and lifelong injury to her heart. Read one of Frederick Douglass autobiographies for his insight that killing a slaves soul was far worse being killed. Story continues Further, after the importation of slaves was banned by Congress in 1818, the sale of slave children and young adults became a booming business that added to slaveowners profits. Slaveowners rarely killed their slaves, no matter how many times they tried to escape or otherwise struggled, because they were valuable property. Beatings and sometimes torture of recalcitrant slaves was part of the truth of slavery, but treating slaves like property and denying their humanness was even more so. I understand that Barry Jenkins series is meant to be a multileveled horror story, with a focus on their struggles and triumphs, but in this article and many others printed in The Times, the depictions of extreme violence seem foregrounded. Its not until the second half of this article that we are told of Jenkins intention to show that slaves resistance sometimes succeeded. Emily Rader Long Beach How to solve homelessness Regarding Imagining Density, Done in the L.A. Way [May 17]: Times columnist Carolina A. Miranda did an excellent job presenting the challenge of the Low Rise: Housing Ideas for Los Angeles architectural competition led by Mayor Eric Garcetti and the citys chief design officer Christopher Hawthorne. This initiative, featuring the work of landscape architects, architects and urban designers, could become reality with the support of the governor and the extraordinary state surplus. Very few cities in California can afford to fund the kind of design/site review required to implement housing design sensitive to important local features. Developers would rather ignore neighborhood context and scrape the parcel of land, including any magnificent trees, rather than incorporate these place-making features in new housing. Thoughtful, place-based design and construction requires the approach featured in Mayor Garcettis initiative. The state must establish a trust fund to give all California cities design/site resources that would result in these well-conceived outcomes: The matter of design review should not be confined to a few wealthy cities, or the mayors initiative, but must be made available equitably to all of Californias neighborhoods. Emily J. Gabel-Luddy, FASLA Burbank I think most Angelenos can agree that housing affordability and homelessness in Los Angeles County have reached epic proportions. Contrary to Miranda's conclusion that "we've been doing density all along," we actually have not been for about five decades, hence thousands living on the streets. What no one seems to agree on is how to fix the problem. Here are five ideas that could have a meaningful impact: 1. Repeal the city of Los Angeles 1986 Proposition U to bring back baseline zoning limits on our mixed-use commercial boulevards. 2. Eliminate height restrictions on our commercial boulevards so that the first idea works effectively. 3. Remove land-use and zoning approvals from the political and litigious control where they currently sit and update planning and zoning. 4. Incentivize, and allow as standard, new models of shared and inclusionary housing. It is time to stop thinking small and implement big visions. Angela Brooks Venice Mental health conditions are not demons Regarding Christi Carras and Angie Orellana Hernandez's online article Lady Gaga Says She Lived in an Ultra-State of Paranoia After Rape Left Her Pregnant [May 21]: I found this piece on Lady Gaga's terrible trauma to be handled very sensitively and with care to the seriousness of the incident. However, I would challenge your use of the word "demons" to describe mental health issues. Describing mental health with this cliche contributes to stigma. You would not say a person with high blood pressure is "fighting demons" or that the black dog (Winston Churchill's nickname for depression) was upon a hyperglycemic diabetes patient. Those people have potentially life-threatening conditions that are treated with medicine. The same can be said of mental health issues, which can be treated with medicine and therapy. Mental health is not an invisible monster but a simple malfunction of brain chemistry sometimes caused by trauma and sometimes for no reason at all. Mental health is a health condition, nothing more and certainly nothing less. I write not to criticize or demean but [to encourage] one of the few remaining outposts in the dying craft of journalism to use its weighted words to push for a more accurate and less stigmatizing description of mental health. Daniel P. Finney Des Moines, Iowa A comic actor's most memorable performance Regarding Michael Ordona's A 'Cranky Comedic Genius' [May 19]: In all the remembrances of Charles Grodin I haven't seen any reference to his appearance as host on "Saturday Night Live." His was the most unique show of that series' long run. Befitting his quirky persona, the writers fashioned the entire episode as one discomforting skit. To quote then cast member Bill Murray, "You're not a host, you're a parasite." John Whiteman San Diego Film critic hits home Justin Chang's writing shows a depth Ive seldom seen in any writer in The Times, regardless of subject matter. He paints a picture with words that, to me, indicates someone with high intelligence, combined with an erudition that results in the use of language very few achieve. For example, when is the last time you saw bourgeois-flagellating [Director Doesn't Like us Either, May 21] used anywhere? John Snyder Newbury Park Review hits all the right notes Regarding Mikael Wood's review of Olivia Rodrigo's album 'Sour' Knows Exactly How It Feels [May 21]: Wood could not have been more correct than when he said, [S]he sings like an actor and writes like a screenwriter... When I read this I was immediately in full agreement. It was as if Wood were in my mind and pulled the words I couldnt think of right out of my brain. I also strongly admire the use of vernacular and how it complements the tone of the album so well, while still maintaining a sense of professionalism as a critic. They way he described Jealousy, Jealousy by saying, This preoccupation with perception and identity makes sense for a member of Gen Z who grew up amid social media where even non-celebrities have to learn to navigate an endless projection of selves. This perfectly phrases the way I feel as a Gen Z with the pressure of society with social media and its obsession with being perfect all the time. Everything in this review is phrased and written perfectly. I wouldnt change a thing. Aria Panisi San Jose The award for getting vaccinated goes to... Re: Want a Show? Get Vaccinated, by Charles McNulty, May 20. McNulty nailed it. Finally a real voice of reason. Ive been waiting for tough-talking politicians to do this. Im taking his column to my 99-year-old neighbor whos been on pins and needles for 14 months. She will feel so good reading this. Don Klosterman Long Beach :: Kudos for theater critic Charles McNultys commentary. Thanks for spelling it out so succinctly. Im sure hell get some blowback but I agree with, and support, everything he wrote. Lia Eng Aliso Viejo Time for TV times This is my second request to ask you to return the prime-time TV grid. I do not have a computer, nor a smartphone. It would be gratefully appreciated. Judith Orzechowski Huntington Beach This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) A Northern California man was charged Friday with using a weapon to assault officers guarding the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Body camera footage caught Sean Michael McHugh, 34, of Auburn pushing a large metal sign into a line of uniformed officers during the riot and spraying an unknown, yellow chemical on police, prosecutors said. Youre protecting communists! McHugh shouted at officers, prosecutors said. There is a second amendment behind us, what are you going to do then? The crowd that stormed the Capitol was trying to disrupt the certification of Joe Bidens presidential victory. Many had come from a rally by then-President Donald Trump, who refused to concede defeat and continued to assert without evidence that the election had been stolen. Hundreds of rowdy and violent Trump supporters broke through police barricades and overwhelmed officers. Some carried pepper spray, baseball bats and other weapons as they forced their way into the Capitol with chants of Hang Mike Pence and Stop the Steal. More than 400 people have been charged in the Capitol breach, including 125 charged with assaulting or impeding police. McHugh was arrested Thursday and held in custody after a hearing Friday in Sacramento federal court. He did not enter a plea and faces a bail hearing June 1. Assistant Federal Defender Lexi Negin declined to comment on McHugh's arrest. McHugh faces charges that include assault on law enforcement with a deadly or dangerous weapon, obstruction of justice and physical violence on Capitol grounds. To paraphrase Elton John, The beach is back. The traditional start of the summer season arrives this Memorial Day weekend, and while the expected weather is partly cloudy and a relatively cool mid-70s, the beaches are mostly open, as are many attractions across the nation. More from Deadline But there are still some concerns in Southern California that may limit the full reopening of everything until mid-June. This disease has not gone away, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday, reflecting the official stance. Its not taking Memorial Day weekend off. The full, official reopening of Southern California beaches wont happen until June 15. Even when they do reopen, there are new guidelines on behavior. Los Angeles, Orange and Santa Clara counties are in the yellow tier, which allows most businesses to operate indoors while observing social distancing and other restrictions. For private gatherings, the state has lifted most restrictions, although it cautions that outdoor gatherings are preferred. More than 37 million people are expected to venture 50 or more miles away from home between May 27 and May 31, the AAA automobile owners group said. Thats up 60 percent from the 23 million who traveled last year during some of the worst of the pandemic. Americans are demonstrating a strong desire to travel this Memorial Day, said Paula Twidale, AAAs senior vice president, in a statement. This pent-up demand will result in a significant increase in Memorial Day travel, which is a strong indicator for summer. The caution in all of that is that the average gas price is now $3.03 per gallon, its highest mark in seven years. Story continues Best of Deadline Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia once housed 500 children A mass grave containing the remains of 215 children has been found in Canada at a former residential school set up to assimilate indigenous people. The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia that closed in 1978. The discovery was announced on Thursday by the chief of the Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it was a "painful reminder" of a "shameful chapter of our country's history". The First Nation is working with museum specialists and the coroner's office to establish the causes and timings of the deaths, which are not currently known. Rosanne Casimir, the chief of the community in British Columbia's city of Kamloops, said the preliminary finding represented an unthinkable loss that was never documented by the school's administrators. Canada's residential schools were compulsory boarding schools run by the government and religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of forcibly assimilating indigenous youth. Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest in the residential system. Opened under Roman Catholic administration in 1890, the school had as many as 500 students when enrolment peaked in the 1950s. The central government took over administration of the school in 1969, operating it as a residence for local students until 1978, when it was closed. What do we know about the remains? The Tk'emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said the remains were found with the help of a ground-penetrating radar during a survey of the school. "To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths," Ms Casimir said. "Some were as young as three years old." "We sought out a way to confirm that knowing out of deepest respect and love for those lost children and their families, understanding that Tk'emlups te Secwepemc is the final resting place of these children." Story continues Analysis of the remains is still going on The tribe said it had reached out to the home communities whose children attended the school. They expected to have preliminary findings by mid-June. British Columbia's chief coroner Lisa Lapointe told Canadian broadcaster CBC "we are early in the process of gathering information". What reaction has there been? The reaction has been one of shock, grief and contrition. "The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart," Mr Trudeau wrote in a tweet. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Canada's minister of indigenous relations, Carolyn Bennett, said residential schools were part of a "shameful" colonial policy. The government was committed to "memorialising those lost innocent souls", she said. Terry Teegee, the regional chief of British Columbia's Assembly of First Nations, called finding such grave sites "urgent work" that "refreshes the grief and loss" of communities in the region. Those views were echoed by other indigenous groups, including the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). "That this situation exists is sadly not a surprise and illustrates the damaging and lasting impacts that the residential school system continues to have on First Nations people, their families and communities,'' its CEO Richard Jock wrote in a statement. What were residential schools? From about 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in these schools. The children were often not allowed to speak their language or to practise their culture, and many were mistreated and abused. A commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities. The landmark Truth and Reconciliation report, released in 2015, said the policy amounted to "cultural genocide". In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologised for the system. The Missing Children Project documents the deaths and the burial places of children who died while attending the schools. To date, more than 4,100 children who died while attending a residential school have been identified, it says. More on residential schools in Canada: May 29COLUMBUS, Kan. After nearly a five-day manhunt, two inmates who escaped from the Cherokee County Jail in Columbus on Monday have been arrested, the county sheriff's office announced Friday afternoon. Mark Gerald Hopkins II, 30 and Michael Martsolf, 34, were cited as missing about 11 p.m. Monday from the county jail. They were arrested Friday in Northeast Oklahoma following a manhunt, according to the Cherokee County Sheriff's Department. The suspects now face additional charges of aggravated escape from custody. Hopkins was arrested in June 2020 in connection with the slayings of 27-year-old Blaze Swank, of rural Scammon, Kansas, and Kylan Shields, 20, of Pittsburg, Kansas. Martsolf was being held on felony drug charges. On Thursday, Tasha Young, 26, of Weir, Kansas, was also arrested following a execution of a search warrant. Groves said Taylor is the girlfriend of Hopkins. She is being held without bond on probable-cause charges of conspiracy to commit aggravated escape, aiding and abetting, and obstructing justice. Chrissy Teigen is being unusually quiet. In recent years, the former model has become known for her presence on social media, taking on critics head-to-head and not being shy about her political and social opinions. After several years of sharp commentary and headline-making clap backs, Teigen has gone silent on social media since she was accused of cyberbullying. Most notably, the star, 35, allegedly encouraged singer Courtney Stodden to commit suicide and suggested that Lindsay Lohan physically harm herself out of jealousy. The ordeal has resulted in a great deal of backlash for the once-beloved star, which many consider ironic given her tendency to slam others for problematic behaviors. WILL BULLY CHRISSY TEIGEN RECOVER FROM CYBERBULLYING SCANDAL? Her most recent Twitter post came on May 12 when she publicly apologized to Stodden, 26, calling herself "lucky" to have been held accountable. She admitted to being "mortified" by her past behavior and promised that she will "forever work on being better." Stodden didnt find Teigen's comments to be terribly authentic, stating the apology felt like "a public attempt to save her partnerships" with various brands. Teigens Instagram has also gone dark, with her last post coming on May 11, just a day before apologizing to Stodden on Twitter. In the post, Teigen shared a page from her cookbook featuring a "cozy classic red lentil soup" recipe. She announced in the caption that shed be making the dish live that afternoon, which was presumably her final appearance on the app. THE RETAILERS THAT ARE AND AREN'T STICKING BY CANCEL CULTURE QUEEN CHRISSY TEIGEN However, the ordeal seems to have had a greater effect on Teigen than just silencing her social media, as she also appears to be taking a hit in the business world. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP Earlier this month, Macys said its "not actively selling Cravings by Chrissy Teigen on our site." Though, it's unclear if they will bring back her products in the future. CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTER She maintains deals with several retailers, but it remains to be seen whether that will change in the future. Cindy McCain (R), said she is proud of daughter Meghan McCain (L) for co-hosting "The View" but admits that on-air arguments upset her as a mother. (Photo: William Thomas Cain/Getty Images) Cindy McCain watches The View to support co-host and daughter Meghan McCain but admits that on-air bickering makes her "cringe." This week, the 67-year-old widow of Senator John McCain and the mother of Meghan, who has co-hosted the popular daytime series since 2019, appeared on the SiriusXM show Radio Andy, where she opened up about show's debates that often turn contentious. Comparing the spirit of The View to the Real Housewives franchise, host Andy Cohen asked Cindy, "Did you know that Meghan was such a tough cookie and a fighter? Because she gets into it with the other women. And what is your reaction when you're watching?" "Well, ever since she was very little, we've called her John McCain in a dress," answered Cindy. "Because she was always fighting, she was always questioning and talking and making sure, not only did she understand what was going on, but could we change it, kind of thing." "She's always been that way," added the proud mama. "So, that's her nickname within the family. And I think she's doing a great job she stands up for what she believes in and that's all you can ask for. And she's also really smart, so I appreciate what she does. I don't always agree with her but I do appreciate it." Cohen asked Cindy about a Monday episode during which Meghan got irritated when co-host Whoopi Goldberg cut to a commercial break while she spoke during a Hot Topics segment. The women had been discussing Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who has a history of promoting conspiracy theories, including about QAnon and 9/11, and has been removed from House Committee assignments for her views. Last week, Greene compared House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's mask rule on the chamber floor to Nazi control over Jewish people during the Holocaust. "I can't stand Marjorie Taylor Greene, I think she's a crazy person," said Meghan, pointing out that Greene had been stripped of legislative power. "I'm confused what has risen this to a 'Hot Topic' this week because last week, as I brought up on Friday, there's a huge rise in anti-semitic attacks against Jewish people globally and in our own country" while citing a long list of examples. Story continues "I would love if the energy that is being put on one crazy woman in Congress and by the way, if she is the face of the Republicans, then the Squad is the face of the Democrats," said Meghan referring to Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. But when Goldberg tried cutting to break, promising Meghan that she could continue in moments, Meghan said, "Why are you cutting me off?" Goldberg replied, "I'm cutting you off because we have to go, Meghan!" Cohen asked Cindy how she felt when watching that particular moment. "As a mom I just saw you kind of cringe a little bit when I brought it up. Did that upset you to watch?" "Well, yeah, from a mom [you] teach your children to be polite and be nice to other people and all that kind of stuff, and it does make me cringe a little bit," she answered. "But again, it's her job and it's what she does and it's Whoopi's job to keep the peace so I understand everything that's going on. But as a mom, yeah, it does bother me a little bit." Read more from Yahoo Entertainment: Soldiers are patrolling the streets of Cali after violent anti-government protests The Colombian army has begun to tighten its control over the city of Cali following weeks of deadly anti-government protests there. Streets are reported to be largely deserted after President Ivan Duque ordered the military intervention. At least five people died in Cali on Friday night, the latest casualties in a month of protests which have claimed dozens of lives. The protests began in April over a proposed tax increase. The tax plan was withdrawn but the protests grew to cover police violence, poverty and Colombia's health crisis. Two weeks of negotiations between the government and protesters have stalled. Cali, which has become the epicentre of the protest movement, is under curfew until Saturday morning. President Duque said he was deploying military troops to support the police in Cali and elsewhere The military intervention includes several other areas of the country. Demonstrators in the capital, Bogota, said they would return to the streets on Sunday to call for a halt to police violence. Speaking at a news conference in Cali, Mr Duque said he was sending in the "maximum deployment of military assistance" to the police. "This deployment will almost triple our capacity in less than 24 hours throughout the state, ensuring assistance as well at critical points, where we have seen acts of vandalism, violence and low-intensity urban terrorism," he said. One of those killed on Friday was an off-duty official in the attorney-general's office. The man opened fire on protesters before he was killed, Attorney General Francisco Barbosa said in a statement. On Saturday, a security official in Cali said at least five people had died on Friday in the unrest. He said a further five people had been killed in the city, but it was unclear if these deaths were directly related to the protests. Explosive cocktail Analysis by Daniel Pardo Vegalara, BBC Mundo Cali sits at a strategic point in the south-west of Colombia - connecting the urban centre to the Pacific Ocean and the biggest port in the country, Buenaventura. Story continues During the pandemic, the number of people in poverty in Cali increased three times more than in the rest of the country. Much of its economy is informal and it has a diverse population. It also has a high number of murders. That cocktail, in a very unequal and segregated city, was fuel for the protests. But then came the strong response of the authorities, who have treated many protesters as criminals because of the roadblocks they have set up and which are seriously affecting the region's economic activity. The rage of both sides is huge. And with dialogue attempts having failed, it doesn't seem as though it'll calm down at any point soon. How did the protests begin? The demonstrations started on 28 April and were initially in opposition to a proposed tax reform which would have lowered the threshold at which salaries are taxed. The government argued that the reform was key to mitigating economic difficulties but many middle-class Colombians feared they could slip into poverty as a result. The city of Cali has become the epicentre of the protests After four days of protests across the country, President Duque said he would withdraw the draft legislation. However, human rights groups accused police of using tear gas and, in some cases, live ammunition to disperse the protests. Dozens of people have since died. On Friday, Colombians marked one month since the protests began with marches across the country. Actor Danny Masterson, left, stands with his attorney, Thomas Mesereau, as he is arraigned on rape charges Sept. 18, 2020, at Los Angeles County Superior Court. (Lucy Nicholson / Associated Press) Danny Masterson will soon face trial on charges he raped three women, and that's a victory of sorts. In the past, prosecutors have often taken the easier road of not pursuing charges against alleged serial sexual assaulters like Masterson, a lifelong member of the Church of Scientology who rose to fame as a star of the hit TV sitcom That 70s Show. But fame and power no longer have the same inoculating effects for alleged perpetrators that they used to. The #MeToo movement and the horrific revelations about widespread sexual abuse in the Catholic Church have helped to level the legal landscape for people claiming to have been victimized by the famous and powerful at least when it comes to criminal prosecutions. Masterson's alleged rape victims are looking to the civil courts for relief, too. And they are not suing just Masterson; they are also suing the Church of Scientology, its Religious Technology Center and Scientology leader David Miscavige. The women, along with other plaintiffs, filed a civil lawsuit alleging that after they reported Mastersons assaults to the church and, eventually, to Los Angeles police they were tormented by agents of the church, which has strict policies forbidding members from involving police and courts in their conflicts. The church denies it engaged in retribution. Its spokeswoman, Karin Pouw, on Friday described the civil lawsuit as "a sham," saying it was filled with "false and scandalous allegations about the church dating back more than 15 years." In their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that those who go outside the church to resolve conflicts may face extreme levels of harassment which, in the secretive, insular world of Scientology, is called fair gaming. They say their trash was pilfered; their technology was hacked; they were followed and watched, verbally harassed, subjected to credit card fraud and, in one case, suffered the mysterious death of a family dog, whose trachea was later found to have been crushed. Story continues But the lawsuit faced a big obstacle. Three of the former church members had signed arbitration agreements when they became Scientologists, in which they agreed not to sue the church and instead let any disputes be resolved by a church-appointed panel. After the lawsuit was filed, the church responded with a motion asking the judge to compel religious arbitration. Late last year, a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge agreed with the church, ruling that the three plaintiffs who were church members would have to go through arbitration before they could seek a trial. By the churchs rules, according to court documents, the arbitrators would be three Scientologists in good standing, and Masterson would have the right to be present. An appeals court upheld the decision. But how, asked the plaintiffs' attorney Marci Hamilton, could people who have rejected the faith and been reviled as apostates be forced into what would essentially be a religious ritual with the very church they claim inflicted cruelty upon them? Forcing them to undergo arbitration under the churchs rules would be tantamount to forcing them to undergo a religious exercise, said Hamilton, a University of Pennsylvania expert on religion and the 1st Amendment. The courts in this case are being asked to enforce religious retribution against individuals who were raped and who have rejected the faith, she wrote in an appeal to the California Supreme Court. On Wednesday, the state Supreme Court unanimously directed the lower courts to reconsider the issue. But the church isn't likely to quit fighting in the civil case or in its support of Masterson in the criminal case. The Church of Scientology, founded in 1954 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard, is known for its special treatment of celebrities, who are considered important ambassadors for the religion. So last weeks ruling in the criminal case that there was enough evidence to bring Masterson, 44, to trial, must be considered a blow to the church, even though it is not a party in the state's case against Masterson, who has denied the charges. As my colleagues James Queally and Matthew Ormseth reported, explosive testimony at Mastersons pretrial hearing was rife with details about the secretive churchs policies and practices, and its absurdly misguided defense of its high-profile members. One woman testified, they wrote, that a church official instructed her to write a statement showing she would take responsibility for a 2001 assault, in which she alleges Masterson raped her while she was unconscious. Hamilton and her clients were especially worried that they would be forced into arbitration before the conclusion of Mastersons rape trial, which has yet to begin. The notion that you would have rape victims testifying in criminal court which is already stressful and then be told they have to go into arbitration with their perpetrator? said an incredulous Hamilton. That, like so much else about this sordid case, is unthinkable. Or, at least, it should be. @AbcarianLAT This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. Evangelina Vaccaro, 9, was born with no immune system but was cured with a treatment developed at UCLA and funded by the state's stem cell program. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) When last we reported on the fate of a stem cell-based cure for a rare childhood disease, we noted that the biotech firm managing the development of the cure with funding from the California stem cell program had shelved the project indefinitely. That's no longer the case. The firm, Orchard Therapeutics, announced Friday that it is abandoning the project permanently. Patient advocates and the inventor of the treatment say that's good news. That's because it opens the path to providing the treatment to patients on a compassionate basis promptly, rather than waiting for Orchard to go through more traditional steps for government approval. "We have to take this as a win," says Alysia Padilla-Vaccaro, whose 9-year-old daughter, Evangelina, received the treatment several years ago and has recovered from the disease. Orchard's chief executive, Bobby Gaspar, said that the firm had run into "technical issues specific to the commercial-grade manufacturing process ... that must be addressed before we, or any other entity, could progress the program toward a regulatory submission." We have to take this as a win. Alysia Padilla-Vaccaro, mother of a child with ADA-SCID The treatment, which Orchard designated OTL-101, addresses severe combined immunodeficiency due to adenosine deaminase deficiency, or ADA-SCID. That's a rare disease that deprives newborns of a functioning immune system. Victims typically don't live beyond the age of 2. The cure, however, has been shown in clinical trials to be spectacularly successful at restoring immune systems. Orchard's next task under its funding from the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine, or CIRM, and its license from UCLA and University College London, where the treatment was developed, was to run a small clinical trial to test the cure's manufacturing. Orchard put that trial on hold last May, citing "business reasons," but previously had left open the possibility that it would restart it at some point in the future. Story continues Instead, Gaspar said the firm had "to terminate our license agreement" from UCLA and UCL and "facilitate a smooth transfer of OTL-101 back to them." The announcement came in the form of a letter addressed to "Advocates and Partners in Advancing Treatments for ADA-SCID." Donald Kohn, the stem cell scientist who developed the cure in his UCLA lab, said he would move to obtain permission from the Food and Drug Administration to treat patients at UCLA under the agency's expanded access program "as soon as possible." The FDA program is designed to provide access to experimental drugs outside approved clinical trials to patients with a life-threatening condition. Maria T. Millan, CIRM's CEO, called Orchard's decision "wonderful news for families who have children with ADA-SCID." She said that securing expanded use permission from the FDA may take several months, however. Previous trials have established its clinical safety and effectiveness, but manufacturing the treatment is unlikely to be a big moneymaker. The inherited condition occurs in between 1 in 200,000 and 1 in 1 million births, meaning that four to 20 cases occur in the U.S. on average every year. Orchard had, however, secured FDA designations for the treatment as an orphan drug, a breakthrough therapy and a remedy for a rare pediatric disease, all of which allow for expedited review by the FDA. Its decision to place OTL-101 on indefinite hold posed a roadblock for existing patients' access to the treatment. The decision also raised questions about why UCLA and CIRM hadn't moved more aggressively to take back the exclusive license Orchard held for development and commercialization of the drug, as they had a legal right to do. Orchard received an $8.5-million grant from CIRM in 2018 for clinical trials. Of that grant, $5.8 million remains unspent. It's unclear what motivated Orchard to give up the license at this stage. Gaspar's letter acknowledged the disease community's "strong preference that we return the program to our academic partners at this time." He said that Orchard, a money-losing London-based biotech startup, would assist with the effort by UCLA and CIRM to secure the FDA's expanded-access approval. Kohn told me by email that UCLA and University College London "will look for a new commercial partner" to seek permanent approval for the treatment from the FDA. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons is about to win its 50th state ratification, the golden number needed for the treaty to enter into force. The list of 47 current signatories can be seen at ICANw.org, website of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize-winning coalition that helped navigate the treaty. Formal ratification of the new law -- TPNW for short -- is a nations binding promise never under any circumstances ... develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. The United Nations opened the TPNW for consideration by a vote of 122 to 2 in July 2017. A mere 90 days after the 50th nation state ratification, the TPNW will enter into force as international law, binding on countries that have seen it ratified. Now, in a fashion reminiscent of lawless dictatorships the world over, the Trump White House has written to countries that have adopted the treaty urging them to withdraw their ratifications. According to the Associated Press, which obtained the U.S. letter, the Trump Administration claims that the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France and all 30 NATO allies stand unified in our opposition to the potential repercussions of the treaty. The AP reported that Beatrice Fihn, executive director of ICAN, said several diplomatic sources had confirmed to her that they and other states that ratified the TPNW had been sent letters by the U.S. requesting their withdrawal. Fihn told the AP that the increasing nervousness, and maybe straightforward panic, with some of the nuclear-armed states and particularly the Trump administration, shows that they really seem to understand that this is a reality: Nuclear weapons are going to be banned under international law soon. So, while the US and the other nuclear-armed countries have opposed the ban treaty, they do recognize the stigma of violating a civilized prohibition that is coming into force. Like a drug cartel with the terroristic muscle and political connections to operate outside the law, the White House wants to pressure its lesser associates. The absurdity of the White House letter is flabbergasting. Its like imagining that President Lincoln had urged countries to reinstate slavery. Ray Acheson, director of the Womens International League for Peace and Freedom disarmament program, said in a tweet: Its incredible that a nuclear-armed state is demanding other countries withdraw from a treaty banning nuclear weapons. Back on March 27, 2017 when negotiations for the treaty ban began, Governor Nikki Haley, then US Ambassador to the UN, led a 40-state boycott of the proceedings. Speaking at the UN, Haley made two verbal slips that spoke the truth. Haley said, We would love to have a ban on nuclear treat. She caught herself and said weapons instead of treaties. Later, Haley flubbed her claim that: one day we will hope that we are standing here saying, We no longer need nuclear weapons.'" Evidently, the Trump administration doesnt hope for a ban on nuclear weapons but instead would love to have that ban on nuclear treaties. John LaForge, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Co-director of Nukewatch, a peace and environmental justice group in Wisconsin, and is co-editor with Arianne Peterson of Nuclear Heartland, Revised: A Guide to the 450 Land-Based Missiles of the United States. A heavily intoxicated Miami-Dade Schools Police sergeant repeatedly struck, resisted and cursed at two Doral Police officers, knocked their body cameras off them, wrestled with an officer on the ground while handcuffed and taunted him to call for backup, according to video and police records. But Sgt. Dubraska Guevara, 33, wasnt arrested that April 24 night. Nor does she face charges in the incident. Instead, Doral officers uncuffed the sergeant and let her go home. None of those details were included in the Doral Police report about the incident. Now the incident and Guevaras conduct are being reviewed by Miami-Dade Schools Police. But experts said it raises questions about whether the sergeant was shown preferential treatment by fellow law enforcement officers, and whether under similar circumstances a citizen would have been uncuffed and released without legal consequences. Miami-Dade Schools Police Sgt. Dubraska Guevara, pictured here in 2018, is under an internal review after she was seen on body camera video repeatedly striking and taunting two Doral police officers while heavily intoxicated April 24, 2021. Raises issue of preferential treatment by Doral cops If it was someone like you or I, we would be in much bigger trouble than what this officer was [in], said Florida International University professor Suman Kakar and expert in policing. Theres some partiality coming on. The report doesnt even mention all of the chaos she caused there. Doral Police spokesman Rey Valdes told the Miami Herald that the majority of drunks his agencys officers deal with are not arrested. He said officers have the discretion whether to make an arrest. In this case, it was not a felony, he said. If anyone was hurt here, it was the officer in question and her reputation. Valdes said he had not watched the whole video. He said the case was properly documented. He said officers C. Curbelo-Mesa and J. Valle, who handled the incident and decided to release the sergeant, are not under any kind of internal review. We do not do special treatment, Valdes said. Theres dozens of drunks we deal with on a daily basis over there that we dont even document it. We put them in a cab and we get them the hell out of there. Its not like we tried to sweep them under the rug. Story continues Disturbance begins at CityPlace Doral restaurant Doral Police involved when it sent the officers to investigate a report of a disturbance at Heaven Mykonos at CityPlace Doral. The general manager said two white females Guevara and Schools Police Officer Jennifer Grenier were being disorderly and disruptive and refusing to pay their check. He wanted them to leave. The Doral Police officers were a male (Valle) and a female (Curbelo-Mesa). The restaurant general manager listed on the report, Luis Toledo, declined to comment. Hour-long videos recorded by the two officers body cameras showed a belligerent Guevara repeatedly struck them and swiped at her Schools police colleague, Grenier. Guevara was handcuffed and placed in a Doral Police vehicle until she was picked up by another Schools Police officer and taken home. The officers also took Guevaras and Greniers department-issued handguns while inside the restaurant and emptied them, as seen in the video. Police led Guevara and Grenier through a stairwell, where the body camera videos showed Guevara used finger guns, as if simulating drawing a firearm and clearing a stairwell during a building search. Once outside, Officer Curbelo-Mesa put Guevaras hair into a ponytail. Guevara is seen and heard on video making several incoherent statements to officers, including, Motherfu--er I need my motherfu--in drugs. She became belligerent when she believed Grenier was recording her with her phone, though Grenier said she was arranging for a friend to pick them up. Guevara is seen on video trying to take off her shirt when she was handcuffed by Valle. Throughout the body camera videos, Grenier cooperated with police and repeatedly yelled at Guevara to calm down. Video captured on Doral cops body camera During the scuffle, the video shows Guevara handcuffed on the ground while shouting BLM motherfu--er, and Black lives matter! A Doral officer warned her to watch what she was saying because she was being recorded by their body cameras. When picking up Guevara, she is briefly swinging her arms up and striking Valle, a male officer, before they tussle on the ground. She yelled at officers to get my legs as backup officers arrived. The incident report written by the Doral officers does not mention that Guevara got into an altercation with them. Instead, it said there was a verbal altercation between Guevara and Grenier. Ms. Guevara began a verbal altercation with Ms. Grenier and subsequently began to remove an article of clothing off of her person, the report said. As a result, of her behavior, handcuffs were placed on Ms. Guevara to prevent further action. Police report later revised The report was later revised to identify the two women as police officers with Miami-Dade Schools Police, though the original incident report only listed Guevaras address as Schools Police headquarters. Doral Police declined to make officers Curbelo-Mesa and Valle available for interviews. Raul Correa, a retired Schools Police commander who is now a consultant at Miami Tactical, LLC, said without knowing all the facts or details to what led up to the incident, it appears as inappropriate behavior by the officer in question. Law enforcement is a profession with the highest standards possible. Policework is hard enough without these types of incidents, he wrote in an email. In todays climate of police scrutiny, these types of incidents sadly contribute to the publics negative perspective of police, which is unfair. Kakar, the FIU policing expert, said citizens would be afraid to lie about actions recorded on video, and that officers are held to a higher standard in relaying such incidents for possible prosecution. The report should have reflected what actually happened, not what is desirable by law enforcement or the department, Kakar said. It should reflect the facts because that is what the law is about. Thats why the public loses faith in police, loses faith in the law or faith in courts. Miami-Dade Schools Police is investigating Miami-Dade Schools Police Chief Edwin Lopez issued this statement Friday: Im aware that members of our agency were recently involved in an off-duty incident in the City of Doral, he said. The incident is currently being administratively investigated by our Internal Affairs Unit. Because its an open investigation, no further information is available at this time. Grenier, 33, is not under an internal investigation by Schools Police. A source with knowledge of the administrative investigation says Grenier never declined to pay any bill at the restaurant and was never asked by anyone to leave the restaurant. The source said Grenier was embarrassed by the incident and deeply distraught that other news outlets paint her as complicit in wrongdoing. Fraternal Order of Police 133 President Al Palacio declined to comment. Reached by phone, Guevara declined to comment. She is now being represented by private counsel. Guevara has worked for Schools Police since 2014. Grenier has been on the force less than two years. The Miami-Dade State Attorneys Office, notified of Schools Police internal review, has not acted on the incident. Joe Biden. NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP via Getty Images President Biden surprised some analysts when his $6 trillion 2022 budget proposal didn't touch a 20 percent tax deduction, implemented by Republicans in 2017, for owners of closely held businesses, The Wall Street Journal reports. Biden had campaigned on limiting the break, the Journal notes, but it wasn't mentioned in the proposal, which detailed the White House's first $2.4 trillion worth of net tax increases. The White House has yet to address the matter. William Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said he was a "frankly a little surprised that the Biden administration didn't propose curtailing" the deduction, which he said "just seems to be kind of without redeeming qualities." Kevin Kuhlman, the vice president of government relations at the National Federation of Independent Business, was also prepared for the break's removal, but his best guess as to why it wasn't mentioned is that "there is a sensitivity to direct tax increases on small businesses." Congressional Democrats have criticized the deduction as "an unnecessary boon to the rich," and it's possible they'll still try to "change this break as a potential alternative way to raise money," the Journal reports. Read more at The Wall Street Journal. Ayman Ahmed was one of the last holdouts at a homeless encampment that was cleared out of Echo Park. Weeks later, he and others were arrested after pitching tents in Griffith Park. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Six weeks ago, Los Angeles city park rangers descended on a small group of tents in Griffith Park, arresting a homeless man and at least two community activists who had gone there to show their support. Park rangers said they took that step because camping poses a major fire risk in Griffith Park, and because the group refused to take down their tents, which are prohibited by law in city parks. The group was taken into custody even though an aide to Councilwoman Nithya Raman showed up and asked the rangers not to make arrests. The Griffith Park incident drew scant attention at the time, particularly when compared with the uproar that greeted the city's decision to clear a massive encampment at Echo Park Lake in March. But it has emerged as yet another source of conflict over the city's handling of its recreation areas during a huge homelessness crisis. Since the confrontation, homeowners in Los Feliz have contacted Raman's office to express their fears about the fire danger posed by encampments in Griffith Park, which had a massive blaze in 2007 that triggered evacuations and burned hundreds of acres. Activists have taken aim at the park rangers, accusing them of failing to follow the proper protocols for dealing with homeless people. The head of the union that represents park rangers criticized Raman, saying her aide interfered with their work in Griffith Park that night a claim one Raman aide called "hyperbolic." Raman told The Times that she supported the city's law against camping in parks but also viewed incarceration as unproductive, saying it makes it more difficult to build trust with homeless people and, ultimately, to get them into homes. "Arrests should also be used only as a last resort to preserve community safety after a services-led approach has been exhausted," she said in an email. Ayman Ahmed, one of the people arrested that night, said he, another homeless man and some activists had gone to the park in the belief that Raman, who had previously spoken out about the closure of Echo Park, would let them stay. Story continues Ahmed was one of the last two holdouts at Echo Park and had been looking to create "something nice, something clean, something sustainable." Thank God I didnt bring anyone else from the park there who was actually homeless. It would have just been more trauma for them, said the 27-year-old, who is now living in a van. With park space becoming increasingly contested terrain, tensions are likely to increase. City crews recently reopened Echo Park Lake to the public after the cleanup of an encampment that had nearly 200 tents and produced 35 tons of trash. Homeless advocates have denounced Councilman Mitch O'Farrell for seeking the cleanup and city leaders for assigning police to patrol the area. On the Westside, Councilman Mike Bonin sparked an outcry after he identified several park and recreation areas in his district as potential sites for temporary homeless facilities. At the same time, some of his constituents have demanded that grassy areas along the Venice Boardwalk receive an encampment cleanup similar to the one in Echo Park. In downtown Los Angeles, the grassy section of Grand Park has been closed for eight months, ever since sheriff's deputies dismantled an encampment set up there to promote Black unity. The closure has disappointed park advocates, who say downtown already lacks open space. A fence went up around the grassy area of Grand Park in September, after the L.A. County Sheriff's Department raided a protest encampment there. (Gabriella Angotti-Jones / Los Angeles Times) Meanwhile, some in the San Fernando Valley are upset that Councilman Paul Krekorian converted a portion of Alexandria Park into a tiny-home village for about 200 homeless people. Walter Hall, who sits on the Greater Valley Glen Neighborhood Council, said residents were told the village would remain for at least three years. "We have less trees, less grass, less places for people to get out of their apartments and enjoy the outdoors," he said. Homelessness activists don't sound much happier, saying the installation of the tiny homes provided the city an excuse to clear homeless people out of public spaces in North Hollywood. When the tiny-home village opened, those activists disrupted the ribbon cutting. The debates over parkland do not surprise Carolyn Ramsay, executive director of the Los Angeles Parks Foundation, which raises money for new park facilities. During the pandemic, residents who felt stuck in their homes found relief in L.A.'s recreation areas, she said. Being in a park has been one of the best parts of COVID for them, so they feel protective of their park spaces, Ramsay said. In Raman's district, the showdown in Griffith Park last month has continued to reverberate. On April 12, park rangers approached half a dozen tents that had been set up near the old zoo by a small group of activists and homeless people, according to one report prepared on the incident, a copy of which was reviewed by The Times. The rangers informed the group that the tents were in a "very high fire severity zone" and gave instructions to dismantle them, the report said. Caleb Crowder, an activist arrested that night, said he and others told the rangers that the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had advised government agencies to leave encampments in place during the COVID-19 pandemic if housing options were not available. "We were telling them time and time again, you are not supposed to be displacing people," said Crowder, who said he was in the park to show solidarity with the homeless people there. Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn., the union that represents park rangers, accused an aide to Councilwoman Nithya Raman of interfering with the work of L.A.'s park rangers in Griffith Park. (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times) Crowder is a volunteer with Ground Game Los Angeles, a progressive advocacy group that has been a sharp critic of the city's handling of homelessness and a major supporter of Raman. In recent weeks, the head of that group has criticized the park rangers, saying they should have immediately contacted Raman's office and homeless outreach workers after finding the tents, so that shelter could be offered. Homeless people should not be arrested for simply setting up tents in parks, said Bill Przylucki, Ground Games executive director. And even if an outreach worker has offered a shelter bed or a hotel room, they should have the right to say no and stay where they are, he said. If the offer isnt housing not shelter, not a voucher, but housing then unequivocally yes, they should be allowed to stay in the park, said Przylucki, who said his group supported the action in Griffith Park but did not organize it. The Los Feliz Improvement Assn., a neighborhood group in the area, offered a different response, telling Raman in a letter last month that encampments pose a major fire threat to the park. Chris Laib, the group's former president, said cigarettes, matches and barbecue equipment could easily spark a blaze in the dry brush. I dont think the rangers had any choice, he said. God forbid if there had been a fire there. The council office would have been culpable." Ahmed, the 27-year-old now living in a van, said he had been told that staying in the park was "a sure thing." He also said there were two homeless people at the camping spot that night and that he was the only homeless person arrested.But had Raman's office allowed the tents to remain, everyone else was going to come," he said. We had the understanding that she would be more supportive of unhoused folks, and that we could grow our community there," Ahmed said. "But I guess the park rangers had a different plan. Ahmed, Crowder and a third person were arrested on suspicion of erecting tents in the park, which can result in a maximum $1,000 fine or six months in jail. A spokesman for City Atty. Mike Feuer said this month that prosecutors had not decided whether to file charges. The head of the city's park rangers declined an interview request. Jesse Zwick, a spokesman for Raman, said no one in the council office suggested that it would be OK for homeless people to sleep in Griffith Park. He did confirm that one of Raman's staffers, field manager Tabatha Yelos, asked rangers not to make arrests that night a request that was ignored. L.A. City Councilwoman Nithya Raman said she supported laws against camping in parks but arrests should be used only as a last resort to "preserve community safety." (Los Angeles Times) The head of the park rangers union had sharp words on that front, accusing Raman's aide of interfering with the rangers work. Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Assn., said he also believed Raman's staffers blurred the lines between their government duties and the activism of Ground Game, which supports the abolition of the Los Angeles Police Department. State business filings show that Yelos served last year as chief executive of Ground Game. Yelos also co-hosted an episode of the Ground Game video production Knock@Nite in December, discussing police brutality, the defund movement and the international use of the acronym ACAB "All Cops Are Bastards." "The police suck here and they suck in Latin America, said Yelos, who was not employed by the city at that time. McClain questioned whether such remarks would make it more difficult for park rangers to work with Raman's office. If youre employing people with that type of mentality, where does that leave us? he asked. Yelos stepped down from the Ground Game post in January, before becoming a council aide, according to Raman's spokesman. Asked about McClain's remarks, Raman said her office had had a productive relationship with the park rangers. Still, the councilwoman said that Yelos' actions in Griffith Park were "not representative" of the offices broader approach to homelessness. And she stated that she did not share the opinion expressed by Yelos on video last year. "Those are not my views, nor are they the views of this office," Raman said. Raman's office also provided a separate statement from Yelos on the video, which said: "My intention was simply to highlight the fact that the issue of police brutality is not isolated to the United States, but one that generates strong feelings worldwide." This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. WASHINGTON (AP) Minority Republicans used a Senate filibuster to block a Democratic bill that would have launched a bipartisan probe of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. It was the first time under President Joe Biden that the GOP used the tactic to derail major legislation. Yet the Republican victory Friday may prod Democrats closer to curbing or eliminating a legislative maneuver thats been the bane of Senate majorities since the Founding Fathers. Here's a look at the filibuster and the political storm over it. WHAT'S A FILIBUSTER? Unlike the House, the Senate places few constraints on lawmakers' right to speak. Senators can also use the chamber's rules to hinder or block votes. Collectively these procedural moves are called filibusters. Senate records say the term began appearing in the mid-19th century. The word comes from a Dutch term for freebooter and the Spanish filibusteros that were used to describe pirates. Filibusters were emblazoned in the public's mind in part by the 1939 film, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, in which Jimmy Stewart portrayed a senator who spoke on the chamber's floor until exhaustion. In a real-life version of that, Sen. Strom Thurmond, D-S.C., stood continuously by his desk for 24 hours and 18 minutes speaking against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, the longest Senate speech by a single senator for which there are records of speaking length. Those days are mostly gone. Senators usually tell Senate leaders or announce publicly that they will filibuster a bill, with no lengthy speeches required. The impact usually flows not from delaying Senate business but from the need to get a supermajority of votes to halt them. HOW DO FILIBUSTERS END? Records from the first Congress in 1789 show senators complaining about long speeches blocking legislation. Frustration grew and in 1917, the Senate voted to let senators end filibusters with a two-thirds majority vote. In 1975, the Senate lowered that margin to the current three-fifths majority, which in the 100-member chamber means 60 votes are needed to end filibusters against nearly all types of legislation. Only simple majorities are required to end the delays against nominations, thanks to recent years' rules changes. Story continues WHATS THE PROBLEM? Democrats emerged from the 2020 elections controlling the White House, Senate and House. They had pent-up pressure to enact an agenda that includes spending trillions to bolster the economy and battle the pandemic, expanding voting rights and helping millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally become citizens. But Democrats have a slender House majority and control the 50-50 Senate only because of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris. That means that to overcome a filibuster, Democrats need support from at least 10 Republicans, a heavy lift in a time of intense partisanship. That's frustrated progressive senators and outside liberal groups. They've pressured Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to eliminate filibusters, even as their use has increased by whichever party is in the minority. According to Senate records dating back to World War I, the number of votes to end filibusters in any two-year Congress never reached 100 until the 2007-2008 sessions. It hit a high of 298 in the 2019-2020 Congress, mostly on then-President Donald Trump's appointees that majority Republicans were pushing to confirmation. In this year's first five months as of this week, there were already 41 votes to end filibusters, mostly on Biden's nominees. WHAT CAN DEMOCRATS DO? It would take a simple majority, 51 votes, for the Senate to eliminate or weaken filibusters. GOP support for retaining them is solid, with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., saying Democrats want to end them in a quest for raw power. But with Democrats eager to enact their priorities before they lose their fragile majority, their support for discarding filibusters has grown. Biden, who's influential despite having no vote on the matter, has said the tactic is being abused in a gigantic way." Yet Democrats lack the votes to do that. Their two most conservative senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Arizona's Kyrsten Sinema, have opposed a change, arguing the country is better served when Congress can find bipartisan solutions to its problems. WHAT IMPACT MIGHT THE JAN. 6 COMMISSION VOTE HAVE ON FILIBUSTERS? Democrats consider creating a commission to examine the violent attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters one of many issues they're pushing that the public supports. Others include House-passed measures easing voting access, expanding citizenship opportunities for immigrants and curbing gun rights. So far, Schumer hasn't forced Senate votes on many such bills. But advocates of eliminating filibusters hope Friday's vote blocking creation of a Jan. 6 commission, a top Democratic priority, will build pressure on Schumer, Manchin and Sinema to eliminate the maneuver. Manchin called the GOPs derailment of the commission unconscionable in a statement that gave no indication that his support for retaining filibusters had changed. Schumer hasn't overtly tipped his hand on what he'll do but has kept the door open. The Senate spent much of this week debating a bipartisan bill aimed at strengthening the U.S.'s ability to compete economically with China, which some saw as demonstrating that Democrats work with Republicans when they can. We hope to move forward with Republicans, but were not going to let them saying no stand in our way," Schumer said this week. Democrats used special budget procedures to push Biden's COVID-19 relief package through the Senate with just a simple majority in March. They may try the same with Biden's huge infrastructure proposal, though Senate rules limit the ability to use that route. ___ This story has been corrected to reflect that South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond was a Democrat, not a Republican, when he spoke for more than 24 hours against the 1957 Civil Rights Act. NAIROBI (AP) The family of an American investor of Somali origin whose body was found with torture wounds days after he went missing in Nairobi wants Kenya's director of public prosecutions to run a separate investigation from one being done by police. In a letter sent through their lawyer, relatives of Bashir Mohamed Mohamud, 36, question the behavior of police after Mohamud disappeared in an apparent abduction and call for a separate investigation to run concurrently with that of the police. The family questioned the time it took police to ask them to positively identify Mohamud when he had been identified days before they were notified. In the letter delivered to the DPPs office earlier this week, they asked why the shell of Mohamud's burned Range Rover was taken away within minutes after the vehicle was linked to him. The family delivered the letter even as local media published stories quoting unnamed sources without evidence insinuating that Mohamud was funding extremism through money transfers made by his construction company Infinity Development Limited. Human rights defenders in Kenya have previously illustrated how police linked slaying victims to extremism or robberies to explain unsolved killings. Wilfred Ollal, the coordinator of a network of community-based social justice centers in Kenya, said people disappear every week before their bodies are found in the countryside, while others are never found. The killings and forced disappearances are rampant in low-income areas of the capital, but nobody is immune, he said. Our interventions save some, but the bodies of others are found in rivers," Ollal said Saturday. Police, without producing any evidence, attempt to explain such killings on social media pages associated with the force by saying the person killed was a criminal he would have bribed his way to freedom, if arrested and prosecuted. Both claims have been proven false by the media and human rights activists. Story continues According to rights group Missing Persons, Kenyan police killed 157 people in 2020 and 10 people disappeared without a trace after being arrested. According to Mohamud's family and police, he was abducted on May 13 by unknown assailants as he drove from a mall in Nairobi's wealthy Lavington neighborhood. The family reported him missing three days later, and police reported finding his body the same day in Kerugoya, a town 127 kilometers (78.91 miles) north of the city. The family questions why they were not informed until May 22 when police had identified the body as Mohamuds by at least May 18th. An autopsy carried out by Kenya's chief government pathologist revealed that Mohamud was strangled. The autopsy report said the body showed signs of torture that included blunt head trauma and burn marks, suspected to have been caused by a vehicle's cigarette lighter. An Iowa farmworker has been found guilty of first-degree murder in the 2018 abduction and stabbing death of a University of Iowa student, Mollie Tibbetts. Cristhian Bahena Rivera is expected to be sentenced in July. Tibbetts went out for a run almost three years ago and never returned. The case fueled anger against illegal immigration. Adriana Diaz reports. Video Transcript - In Iowa, the farm laborer who was convicted Friday in the abduction and murder of 20-year-old college student Mollie Tibbetts is expected to be sentenced in July. Tibbetts went out for a run almost three years ago and never returned. The case fueled anger against illegal immigration. Adriana Diaz reports. - Cristhian Bahena Rivera guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. ADRIANA DIAZ: The verdict came on the first full day of deliberations in a case that rocked the Heartland. BART KLAVER: He knew where the body was, and that was a big piece of the corroboration of his story. ADRIANA DIAZ: The disappearance of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts, who was last seen on a jog in July of 2018, consumed the town of Brooklyn, Iowa. Surveillance video of Tibbetts and this black Malibu led investigators to Rivera. The arrest of Rivera, an undocumented dairy worker, became a lightning rod over illegal immigration. Rivera told investigators in 2013 that he followed Tibbetts, who he found attractive. And when she threatened to call police, he became angry and blacked out, later finding her body in his trunk. He led police to her body in this cornfield. - Your talent is God's gift to you. ADRIANA DIAZ: Mollie Tibbetts captured the collective soul of America. - People see in Mollie their own daughters, their own girlfriend, their own sister. ADRIANA DIAZ: Prosecutor said Tibbetts's family is relieved. Now, first degree murder carries a life sentence in Iowa. Rivera, who on the stand said two masked men killed Tibbetts and put her body in his car, plans to appeal. For CBS This Morning Saturday, Adriana Diaz, Chicago. A former Catholic schoolteacher in the Joliet Diocese was indicted on five counts Thursday after he was arrested earlier this month for allegedly traveling to meet a child and child grooming, according to Will County court records. Jeremy Hylka faces five criminal charges in connection with his April 27 visit to a Joliet-area McDonalds to allegedly meet and solicit someone whom he believed to be an underage boy he met through the internet, according to court documents. The criminal charges include traveling to meet a child, two charges of indecent solicitation, grooming and soliciting to meet a child all felonies. Police issued a warrant for Hylkas arrest on April 29 one day after a video of the alleged encounter was brought to their attention. Hylka was released on a $10,000 cash bond following a two-week hospitalization at Silver Oaks Behavioral Hospital in New Lenox, according to courthouse records. The video was made by a 19-year-old citizen, who, acting independently, posed as a 15-year-old and also uploaded alleged messages between the two on social media, police said. Hylka previously worked as a teacher at St. Joseph Catholic School in Lockport and as a youth pastor at two Joliet Catholic churches. He was fired from his positions in April, one day before police issued the warrant for his arrest, according to the Roman Catholic Diocese of Joliet and police. The 44-year-old teacher had previously been put on two-week paid leave in January, while a TikTok video in which an adult man alleged he was propositioned and groomed by an unnamed teacher in high school was investigated, the diocese said. The St. Joseph Catholic School principal was also placed on leave while the diocese looked into the circumstances of Hylkas employment, officials said. Hylkas next court date is scheduled for June 24, Joliet police said. Former Rep. John Green is scheduled for sentencing next month in a federal court in Texas for conspiring to defraud the United States government. Green, an attorney in Rathdrum who also had a license to practice in Texas, was convicted on Jan. 15, 2020, for his role in helping a client, Thomas Selgas, hide funds to avoid paying more than $1 million in outstanding taxes. Selgas, who was convicted on conspiracy and tax evasion charges, deposited funds primarily from the sale of gold coins over the course of 10 years into a legal trust account Green managed. Green then paid Selgas personal expenses with that trust. Prosecutors argued Green also filed a false tax return on behalf of one of Selgas companies. Selgas wife, Michelle, was also charged with conspiracy and tax evasion but was acquitted. The verdict prompted the Idaho House to acknowledge their colleagues conviction and statutory inability to fulfill his duties essentially expelling him from office as Article VI, Section 3 of the state constitution prohibits a convicted felon from qualifying for public office until their rights have been restored. Pastor Tim Remington of the Altar Church was appointed by Gov. Brad Little to finish Greens term as a representative for Post Falls. Despite his conviction, Green then attempted unsuccessfully to run for Kootenai County sheriff. His filing was received but not accepted by the Kootenai County Clerks Office. Greens sentencing was originally set for April 17, 2020, but that hearing was delayed by judges and lawyers to May 22, 2020, then to Oct. 2, 2020, then to Feb. 2, then to April 14, and now to June 22. According to Erin Dooley, public affairs officer for the Department of Justice, the reasons for the repeated continuances range from scheduling conflicts by attorneys on both sides of the case to concerns over COVID-19. Green did not respond to requests for comment for this story. He faces up to five years in prison. Barring another delay, Green will face sentencing June 22 at the federal courthouse in Dallas. May 29COLUMBUS A Preston resident and former pediatric nurse practitioner has pleaded guilty to distribution of child pornography in a case involving thousands of images and videos of child pornography. William Clinton Storey, 41, of Preston, pleaded guilty to one count of distribution of child pornography before U.S. District Judge Clay Land. Storey faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years up to a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, a maximum fine of $250,000 and a term of supervised release of at least five years up to a lifetime of supervision. Storey also will be required to register as a sex offender upon his release from federal prison under the Sex Offender Registration Act. Storey's sentencing is scheduled for Aug. 17. There is no parole in the federal system. "William Storey will spend a significant period of time in prison for his role in distributing large amounts of the most depraved depictions of child sexual abuse online a criminal act made even more disturbing knowing he was a pediatric nurse practitioner at the time of his crimes," acting U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Georgia Peter D. Leary said in a news release. "GBI and FBI agents are to be commended for their urgent and precise investigation into Storey's activities as a child predator, removing him from his role working with children and helping us obtain justice." "The GBI will continue to work tirelessly to protect innocent victims of online exploitation," GBI Director Vic Reynolds said. "In this instance, the offender was a health care provider. We are grateful for the relationships we maintain with our federal partner agencies to bring these predators to justice." According to court documents, the multimedia messaging app Snapchat detected that user clint31824 had uploaded five files of suspected child pornography while using the platform on Nov. 21, 2019. The GBI investigated the cybertip and traced the IP used by user clint31824 to the defendant. At the time, Storey was employed as a certified family nurse practitioner. Agents executed search warrants at Storey's home and business on Feb. 18, 2020, seizing seven devices belonging to Storey. A forensic examination of the electronic media seized during the search warrant discovered approximately 6,000 videos and 24,000 images of suspected child pornography. The files contained depictions of babies, small toddlers, minors engaged in bondage, and male and female prepubescent children being sexually abused by adult males. The case was investigated by the GBI and FBI with assistance from the Webster County Sheriff's Office. Assistant U.S. Attorney Crawford Seals is prosecuting the case. LOS ANGELES Gavin MacLeod, a sitcom veteran who played seaman "Happy" Haines on "McHale's Navy," Murray on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and the very different, vaguely patrician Captain Stubing on "The Love Boat," has died. He was 90. MacLeod's nephew, Mark See, confirmed his death to Variety. GAVIN MACLEOD (ABC Photo Archives / Walt Disney Television via Getty) MacLeod played a relatively minor character on ABC hit "McHale's Navy," starring Ernest Borgnine, but as newswriter Murray Slaughter, he was certainly one of the stars of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," appearing in every one of the classic comedy's 168 episodes during its 1970-77 run on CBS. Murray was married to Marie (Joyce Bulifant) but was in love with Moore's Mary Richards. His desk was right next to Mary's in the WGN newsroom, so MacLeod was frequently in the shot during the sitcom, and Murray, like all the other characters, was richly developed a hallmark of MTM shows. MacLeod originally tried out for the part of Lou Grant, which went to Ed Asner, but claimed to be happy that he ended up playing Murray. He also auditioned for the role of Archie Bunker on "All in the Family," but of reading the script for the first time, he wrote in his memoir, "Immediately I thought, 'This is not the script for me. The character is too much of a bigot. I can't say these things.' " When Norman Lear called the actor to say that Carroll O'Connor had gotten the part, MacLeod was relieved. The "Moore" cast MacLeod, Edward Asner, Valerie Harper, Cloris Leachman, Betty White and Georgia Engel (Ted Knight had died in 1986) reminisced with Moore in 2002 on CBS' "The Mary Tyler Moore Reunion." MacLeod had the great fortune to roll right from one hit show to another in 1977, when "Moore" ended and ABC's "The Love Boat" began. The hourlong romantic comedy set on a cruise ship ran for 10 years. Even after the end of the voyage in 1987, the actor returned for telepic "The Love Boat: A Valentine Voyage" in 1990 and for the "Reunion" episode of rebooted series "Love Boat: The Next Wave" in 1998. Story continues MacLeod may, indeed, hold a record for consecutive long-running series: He went straight from "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" (168 episodes) to "The Love Boat" (249 episodes). The actor's Captain Stubing was known for his signature salute. The New York Times said in 2010: "Perhaps no actor has embraced a signature role the way Mr. MacLeod has with Captain Stubing. Since 'The Love Boat' went off the air, he has been a spokesman for Princess Cruises." In 1997, the actor joined the rest of "The Love Boat" cast on "Oprah" in what was the first full cast appearance since the show was canceled. Another cast reunion occurred in 2013 on "The Talk." MacLeod was born Allan George See in Mount Kisco, N.Y. His mother worked for Reader's Digest, while his father was an electrician who was part Chippewa. He grew up in Pleasantville, New York, and went to Ithaca College, where he studied acting and graduated in 1952. After serving in the U.S. Air Force, he moved to New York City and worked at Radio City Music Hall as an usher and elevator operator while seeking work as an actor. During this time he changed his name. He lost his hair early, which proved a barrier as a young man looking for acting work, but a hairpiece solved the problem. After a few uncredited film roles, MacLeod made his credited big screen debut in the 1958 Susan Hayward vehicle "I Want to Live," playing a police lieutenant, then played a G.I. in Gregory Peck starrer "Pork Chop Hill" the next year. His supporting role in Blake Edwards' World War II comedy "Operation Petticoat," starring Cary Grant and Tony Curtis and focusing on the chaotic goings on aboard a submarine, gave the young actor a flavor of what he would be doing a few years later on "McHale's Navy." In the meantime he appeared in the 1960 thriller "Twelve Hours to Kill," which starred future "I Dream of Jeannie" star Barbara Eden; Blake Edwards' musical comedy "High Time," starring Bing Crosby and Fabian; and the critically hailed but now forgotten Korean War film "War Hunt." He also did a boatload of guest appearances on TV before his stint on "McHale's Navy." "McHale's Navy," however successful, did not necessarily convince MacLeod to dive into a career full of sitcoms. He felt underused and even began abusing alcohol, causing his marriage to suffer. He sobered up in 1974 at the behest of the woman who would become his second wife, Patricia Ann "Patti" Kendig. In fact, he left "McHale's Navy" in order to be able to appear in a supporting role in the excellent period adventure film "The Sand Pebbles," starring Steve McQueen, and he appeared in a number of other films throughout the decade: "A Man Called Gannon" and Blake Edwards' Peter Sellers comedy "The Party" in 1968; "The Thousand Plane Raid," "The Comic" and "The Intruders" in 1969; and, in 1970, the World War II caper film "Kelly's Heroes," in which he played Moriarty, Oddball's machine-gunner and mechanic. In the meantime he was guesting on both dramas ("Perry Mason," "Ben Casey," "Ironside," "Hawaii Five-O," "The Big Valley") and comedies ("The Andy Griffith Show," "My Favorite Martian," "Hogan's Heroes"). In December 1961, he guested on "The Dick Van Dyke Show" in what was his first time working with Mary Tyler Moore. After his years on "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Love Boat," MacLeod did not work on a steady basis. He did not have to. He made an impression, however, in a 2000 episode of HBO prison drama "Oz" in which he played the Roman Catholic Cardinal Frances Abgott, with whom Rita Moreno's nun Sister Pete discusses leaving the order. The actor had assumed a certain gravitas as Captain Stubing, even amid the silliness of "The Love Boat," that made this role possible in a way that it couldn't have been before. In the 2000s MacLeod also guested on series, including "The King of Queens," "JAG," "Touched by an Angel" and "That '70s Show." MacLeod, who had appeared on Broadway in 1962 in "The Captains and the Kings," also returned to stage work after "The Love Boat." He toured with Michael Learned of "The Waltons" in A.R. Gurney's "Love Letters," and he appeared in musicals such as "Gigi" and "Copacabana" between 1997 and 2003. At a concert in 2008, he conducted the Colorado Symphony in Denver. During the mid-1980s, MacLeod and his second wife became Evangelical Christians, and the pair credited the religion for reuniting them. He wrote about it in his 1987 book "Back on Course, the Remarkable Story of a Divorce That Ended in Remarriage." He and wife Patti appeared in the Christian bigscreen time-travel epic "Time Changer," along with Hal Linden, in 2002, and he played the title role in the 2008 Christian film "The Secrets of Jonathan Sperry." His memoir "This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life," was published in 2013. MacLeod was first married, from 1955-1972, to Joan F. Rootvik, with whom he had two sons and two daughters. He married actress Patti Kendig in 1974. They divorced in 1982 but remarried in 1985. MacLeod is survived by Patti and the four children by Rootvik. This article originally appeared on NBCNews.com. U.S. Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., speaks during a Congressional field hearing on the Affordable Care Act in Apache Junction, Ariz. Gosar appears to be signaling support for a conspiracy theory that Jeffrey Epstein did not kill himself while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. Matt York/AP Ashli Babbit was shot and killed by police while storming the Capitol on January 6. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar praised Babbitt and claimed she was "executed." On Friday, he was slammed for praising her with quotes from a U2 song about Martin Luther King Jr. See more stories on Insider's business page. GOP Rep. Paul Gosar was slammed after praising Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by police while storming the Capitol on January 6. In a tweet, Gosar wrote: "They took her life. They could not take her pride. #onemoreinthenameoflove." The message paraphrased lyrics from the song "Pride (In the Name of Love)" by U2, which is about Martin Luther King Jr. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Babbit was one of five people who died after supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol. She was shot by a Capitol Police officer when she tried to climb through a door where the glass had been broken out in the Speaker's Lobby outside the chamber where members of the House of Representatives were meeting. The officer fired one round from his service pistol that hit her left shoulder, the agency said. The Justice Department did not pursue charges against the officer who shot and killed Babbit and said there was insufficient evidence to support criminal charges. Gosar, a Republican from Arizona, previously defended the rioters, calling them "peaceful patriots." He's also claimed Babbitt was "executed." So far, 500 people have been arrested for alleged crimes tied to their activity during the Capitol attack. GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger, who was one of a few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump over the Capitol insurrection, responded with "Paul you've lost your mind." "Side note to anyone watching, don't breach the house floor illegally, especially after warned," Kinzinger added. Read the original article on Business Insider Getty On June 23, 2020, I sent an email to Marianne B. Leese, the senior historian of the Historical Society of Rockland County. I had what I hoped was an easy question to answer. Who the hell was Jackie Jones? Two days earlier, on the longest day of the year, I had ridden a bicycle over the newly opened bike path on Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge from my home in southern Westchester County. After passing through Nyack and up to Haverstraw, Id climbed up to Harriman State Park and rode nearly all the way to the top of a local peak. On foot, Id climbed up to the top of a creaking old fire tower at the summit. The view from on top of Jackie Jones Mountain was spectacular. Courtesy Tony Ortega The year before, Id noticed that an Arkansas man named Doug Melton, whose hobby is ascending county summits, had done an analysis of LIDAR data (laser ranging) and determined that for years the wrong peak had been designated the highest point in Rockland County. With his analysis, Melton determined that Rockhouse Mountain was not 1,283 feet high, but only 1,271.95 feet, making it 5.55 feet lower than nearby Jackie Jones Mountain, at 1,277.5 feet. A website called Peakbagger.com, a major arbiter for the countrys high pointers, made the change to its database. As far as Peakbagger was concerned, Jackie Jones Mountain was now supreme. I'd recently begun my own pursuit of bagging county high points, but with a twist: riding there on a bicycle. I've ascended 20 of them, in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, including all five New York City boroughs in a single days ride. But none of them provided such a breathtaking vista as Jackie Jones Mountain. And as I left to ride down the mountain and go the long way home over Bear Mountain Bridge, I couldnt get one thought out of my mind. Who was the mountain named after? Initially, Ms. Leese said she couldnt find anything in a book of history about the park, and when she checked with a former park employee who knew the area well, He confirmed for me that no one knows who Jackie Jones was or how the mountain came to bear the name Jackie Jones. Story continues I turned to a New York state historian who was similarly stumped, but he was kind enough to check with his federal counterpart who pointed out that there was another peak a few miles away named Tom Jones Mountain. Perhaps there was a Jones family among local early settlers, he suggested. On a website about the history of the nearby town of Stony Point, I found that a Jones family had been particularly prominent in the area. But nothing about a Jackie. Several weeks later, Marianne Leese sent another message. She managed to find a 1992 document put out by the Palisades Interstate Park Commission that said the mountain had probably been named for a local resident, John R. Jones or his son John Jr., who had lived on the north side of the mountain in Sandyfield, a tiny hamlet that had been wiped out when a dam was built to create nearby Lake Welch in the 1940s. Is Olana 19th Century Americas Greatest Work of Visual Art? Now that I had a possible name, I was able to find more information about John R. Jones of Sandyfield. He had been born in 1817 in Haverstraw or Stony Point, and had married Highlyann Babcock. When John was about 24 and Highlyann was about 20 they began having children. Adelia, Margaret, and William all grew into adulthood. Their next child, Hiram, named after Highlyann's younger brother, was born in 1849 but died only a few years later, in 1853. Then they had Mary, John Jr., Harriet, Martha, and finally Sarah in 1862. Nine children over 21 years, and with 19th-century health care. They seemed fortunate to have lost only one of the nine while in childhood. According to the 1992 document, cultivating the soil in Sandyfield was a tough prospect, subsistence farming that would have required other work to make life sustainable. At some point the Jones men had given it up and had taken up stone masonry. They became known locally for harvesting fieldstones that were used in construction, and examples of their work can still be found throughout the area. Highlyann died in 1886, and John 10 years later, in 1896. The first instance I could find in local newspapers of the name Jackie Jones Mountain occurred 31 years later, in 1927. But there was nothing in the 1992 article that explained how John R. Jones of Sandyfield had come to have the mountain named after him, or whether there was any evidence that he was known by that name. And I soon found out I wasnt the only person who had been looking for him. In 2010, Alexandra Wren, then 19, went on a hike in Harriman State Park in search of her familys past. Following a description in a newly published park guide, she hiked on a path called Beech Trail until she found a trailside cemetery. Twenty years before, an eagle scout named Leroy Babcock Jr. had refurbished the forgotten little burial ground, repairing headstones and reinforcing them with metal frames. A small plaque bore witness to Leroys work. The graves were of John R. Jones, his wife Highlyann, and their 3-year-old son Hiram. Nearby were the headstones of two Civil War soldiers and members of the New York 6th Heavy Artillery, known as the Anthony Wayne Guard after a local Revolutionary War hero: John Strickland, a father of eight who had died of typhoid fever in 1863 at 45, and his brother-in-law Timothy Youmans, who died at 35 on April 7, 1865, just two days before the end of the war. Timothy, I would learn, was Highlyanns second cousin. When she spotted the stones, Alexandra used her mobile phone to call her father, Gordon, who was busy working as Rockland County's director of Fire and Emergency Services. "Gordon Wren, standing where he did as a 20-year-old taking admission money to the fundraiser at Burgess Meredith's estate in 1966." Courtesy Tony Ortega I hope this is important, he told her. It is, she said, and told him what she was looking at, the graves of John and Highlyann Jones. He told her she was looking at her great-great-great-great-grandparents. He told that story to the Genealogical Society of Rockland County in 2013, and it was reported in the Rockland County Times, which turned up on a search. Gordon retired in 2018, but I found an email address for Alexandra, who is now 30 and runs a photography business. I sent her an email explaining my interest in her family history. Gordon then called me, and confirmed that John R. Jones, the Sandyfield farmer, was his great-great-great-grandfather. He believed that Jones was the Jackie Jones the mountain had been named after, although he had no documentation of it. Gordon has lived in the area his entire life, and could still remember his older relatives, in the 1950s, speaking with a local mountain dialect. Back then, when the first bridge across the Tappan Zee was just being built, the differences between the two places, small Rockland County with its mountains and New York City to the south, were much more pronounced, and things that were unique about the area had not yet been lost. Gordon worked in firefighting his entire career and became Rockland Countys chief fire instructor in 1977. He was named director of the countys emergency services in 1995 and served in that role until his retirement. I could hardly have found someone more rooted to Rockland County or more familiar with its every nook and cranny. Gordon was involved in local historical societies, and he led hikes through the backwoods. He was anxious to share his own search for local history, and we bonded quickly over several phone calls discussing the mountain and his family. A couple of weeks after I first made contact with him, I emailed Gordon with some news I'm sure neither one of us expected. While continuing to search for some actual documentation providing a link between his great-great-great-grandfather and Jackie Jones Mountain, I had stumbled on a newspaper article in the Jan. 23, 1896, issue of the Rockland County Messenger. It was about John R. Jones and how he had died. Whoa, Gordon said when I told him about it. According to the Messenger, in 1896 John R. Joness daughter, who lived with him, was becoming increasingly concerned about the state of his mind. The article didnt name the daughter, but his youngest, Sarah, would have been about 31 in 1896. John himself was 79. And his wife Highlyann would have been dead for 10 years. It was January, and that means cold and dark days. John was acting strange, complaining that poverty was going to ruin them, when Sarah, if it was Sarah, knew that the family was actually doing fairly well. Her father owned two large farms and a woodland lot. Another daughter, living in Jersey City, was said to be worth $150,000. On Wednesday, Jan. 15, John said he was losing his mind, and tried to give his daughter $15, telling her to go spend the winter somewhere else or she might not live through it. She refused. The next morning, he asked her to go to Stony Point to take care of some business for him. While she was gone, John R. Jones strung a rope from the rafters of his barn and hanged himself. The housekeeper, a Miss Susie Topping, found him and fetched the neighbors. When the daughter came home she was overcome with the news that greeted her, the Messenger reported. An inquest found that it was suicide. I could find no further mention of John R. Jones in local newspapers, and there was no mention that he had ever been known as Jackie, or that a mountain had been named after him. He appeared instead simply to be a distraught and somewhat obscure 79-year-old local man who had sent his daughter away one January morning so he could end his life. I was back at square one. Where did Jackie Jones Mountain get its name? But then, another chance occurrencestumbling upon another article in an old newspapermade me realize that for some weeks now Id simply been looking in the wrong place. The answer to where the mountain had gotten its name was not on its north side, where Lake Welch was and the former village of Sandyfield. For the correct answer, I had to look south, to a small New York valley that had been saddled with an unseemly reputation. The article I found was in a 1934 issue of the Rockland County Times, and it praised the work being done by local volunteer firefighters. About halfway into the short article listing accomplishments by the local fire crews, there was this passage: The fire rangers under command of John Dempsey of Suffern met and conquered a forest fire Sunday that would have wiped out the Jackie Jones farm near Camp Hill, the property owned by the heirs of the late James A. Smith. Camp Hill was a reference to a protuberance that had obtained its name because Revolutionary War hero Anthony Wayne had camped his troops there after coming up from Haverstraw, the same Anthony Wayne that the 6th Heavy Artillery of Timothy Youmans and John Strickland had been named after. The 1934 newspaper article suggested that near to Camp Hill there was a Jackie Jones farm that was well known enough that it still went by that name even after it had been acquired by a James A. Smith, who had passed it down to his heirs. I sent the article to Marianne Leese, and she agreed that it was promising. She pulled out an 1876 map of Rockland County, and found that on an otherwise mostly empty parcel just north of Camp Hill, there was a lone house. It was labeled J.J. Jones. She then pulled up a current map and found that very close to that same location today there is a large, stately house that was listed as being built in 1865 (and was probably older, she said). Checking real estate listings, I found that the houses around it were all built in the 1970s and the 1980s, when the original farm had been subdivided. The 1865 house seemed like it could very well have been the J.J. Jones house on the 1876 map, as well as the Jackie Jones farm mentioned in the 1934 article. To confirm it, I began tracing ownership of the house from the current day back in time, grateful that Rockland Countys land records were relatively easy to access online. Marianne, meanwhile, emailed me that she had managed to figure out the full name of the J.J. Jones listed on the 1876 map. We seemed to be getting close. The worse place in the country, the Rev. David Cole called it, writing in 1884 about a crossroads that was about halfway along the 14 miles between Suffern, a town on the New Jersey state line with belching ironworks, and Haverstraw, the port town on the Hudson. In 1816, an enterprising nail cutter by the name of Michael Leyden, who also spelled his name Laden, realized that the midway point of that journey for the teamsters hauling goods back and forth between Suffern and Haverstraw would be a promising place to put a watering hole. His store and tavern also attracted mountain people who found that Laden was interested in their handmade products as payment for the food and drink he was selling. He took their handmade baskets and bowls so he could sell them in New York City. And although he left in 1836 to return to Manhattan, the crossroads had already taken on the name Ladentown and his tavern was already a local institution with an unsavory reputation. Sodom, Cole says it was called by some. Ladentown was a favorite stopping place for teamsters on their journeys to and from the river; and as liquor could there be had in abundance, the village soon came to possess an unenviable reputation, he wrote. But the good reverend assured his readers that by the time of his writing the hamlet has long ere this outgrown its bad reputation. One way the locals took on Ladentowns wide-open ways was to counter it by building a church. By 1865, Ladens original property had been acquired by a man named John J. Secor, who set aside a parcel for the erection of the Methodist Episcopal Church. Cole, in his 1884 History of Rockland County, not only lists the founders and original trustees of the church, crediting them with helping to clean up Ladentown, but also notes the institution's then current stewards, a D.D. Johnson, and a man who owned a large farm in the area about two miles to the northeast of the Ladentown crossroads. His name was Jacob J. Jones. It was Marianne who told me the name, and said the church steward in Coles history was the same J.J. Jones whose house was shown on the 1876 map. We were now quickly putting together an outline of the farms history up to the present day. Jones had acquired it at some point before 1865, and he had lived on it until he died the day after Christmas in 1908. Jacob J. Jones, perhaps one of the longest lived and best known residents of the Ladentown section, died at his home on Saturday last aged 83 years, 11 months and 14 days, the Rockland County Times noted on Jan. 2, 1909. As the 1934 newspaper article suggested, the Jacob Jones farm had eventually come into the possession of James A. Davis, the former manager of the West Shore Gas Company in Haverstraw, and a real estate investor whose holdings included the Jacob Jones estate, his obituary noted after he died suddenly on Aug. 2, 1933, at 74. His wife Eleanor then sold the former Jacob Jones farm in 1936 to a woman named Lillie Mayer, who, with her husband Arthur, owned the farm for the next 30 years. Arthur Mayer was a legendary film distributor who was so well known for his anecdotes about early Hollywood, he and Lillie spent much of the time in their later years touring colleges with their tales of movie lore. A short documentary was made about them, Arthur and Lillie, in 1975 and was nominated for an Oscar. "Lillie and Arthur Mayer, who owned the Jackie Jones farm from about 1933 to 1978." via UCLA Two years before that, in 1973, Jane Lemkin went to meet Arthur and Lillie Mayer for the first time. She had been told about them by a friend, who had house-sat the Mayer farm for several years. The Mayers were in New York City or lecturing at colleges most of the year, and they needed someone to live in the house year-round and keep it up. Her friend encouraged Jane to apply for the job, and she can still remember her first trip to the house, which at that time was surrounded by land, not other houses, and was quite secluded. There was a swimming pool at that time built close to the house, and she was taken there for the interview. Arthur was sitting out there by the pool, stitch-stark naked. And he invited us to go in. So I took off my clothes and jumped in! Jane told me with a laugh when I spoke to her on the telephone recently. She remembers him cracking a joke about how her calves identified her as good peasant stock. They got the job, and Jane says her children grew up in the house. After three years house-sitting for the Mayers, the house was sold to developer Vincent Giffuni, who asked them to stay in the house as he subdivided the farm, putting in new streets and houses. Finally, 15 years after that memorable interview by the pool, Janes family left the house in 1988. We loved it, she says. When we moved in, there was just this huge expanse of land. The house, the original part, had Dutch doors, and they told us the front door lock was from the old Rockland County jail. We would find things like bayonets on the property. It was paradise. We used to hike up to the top of Cheesecote Mountain, Jane says. And she remembers that Arthur was angry that a communication tower had been built on top of it, which Arthur said was land he owned. They didnt ask me, he would say. Among the visitors to the house that Lemkin remembered were the Mayers grandchildren, including a young Shelley Mayer, who today happens to be my state senator. As house-sitters, Janes family not only kept the house in shape but also the things in it, which included antique furniture, and also photo books, one of which included a snapshot of Eleanor Roosevelt in a white outfit at a lawn party at the house. She says all of that was taken away in 1978, when Giffuni took possession of the house but continued to allow Jane to live there. She remembers looking up the location of the house and seeing that it had previously been owned by a J.J. Jones, but she didn't know that the land had at one time been known as Jackie Jones Farm, and she didn't know if there was a connection to the mountain. She agreed with Marianne Leese that the house was older than the 1865 date in real estate listings. The Mayers thought it went back to 1810, she told me. In 1941, five years after Lillie Mayer acquired the Jacob Jones farm, her husband Arthur signed a deal to distribute an unusual and controversial quasi-documentary put together by two of his Rockland County neighbors. John Steinbeck lived for several years in the area, and the 1941 quasi-documentary The Forgotten Village was his attempt to portray a remote Mexican village that is dealing with a typhoid epidemic in a battle between traditional superstitions and modern medicine. The film used actual rural Mexicans as its cast, and the story is narrated in voiceover. Steinbeck had originally wanted Spencer Tracy to do the narration, but MGM wouldn't let him out of his contract. So Steinbeck asked another Ladentown local to do the job: Burgess Meredith, who lived only about a mile from Arthur and Lillie Mayer, on Camp Hill Road. Meredith had been lured to Rockland County by a playwright friend, Maxwell Anderson, who at one point in the 1930s was probably the most successful writer on Broadway. Anderson was inspired by Rocklands geography, in particular the High Tor, a high point on the Palisades towering over the Hudson River that overlooks Haverstraw. In 1936 Anderson wrote a comic fantasy with that name about a contrary gadfly named Van Van Doren who owns the peak, which is also haunted by 16th century Dutch sailors. The play's original production opened that year in Cleveland with Burgess Meredith playing Van Doren. Hell, you dont need money. Pap worked that out. All you needs a place to sleep and something to eat. Ive never seen the time I couldnt find a meal on the mountain here, rainbow trout, jugged hare, something in season right around the zodiac, Van Doren tells his sweetheart about how they can live on the mountain without money. (She remains understandably skeptical, so Van Doren, at least temporarily, throws her over for a Dutch ghost. Its a quirky play.) Three years later Meredith starred as George in the 1939 film version of Steinbecks Of Mice and Men. So they were already close friends when The Forgotten Village was made in 1941. The film ran into problems, however, when the states board of censors kept it from its scheduled opening in September for indecent and inhuman scenes that featured a mother breastfeeding and later while she is grimacing in childbirth. Arthur Mayer appealed the ban and managed to get it lifted for a Nov. 18 opening at the Belmont Theater on 48th Street, to mixed reviews. But Steinbeck was always fond of it, despite the criticism. During my marriage to Paulette Goddard... I saw John Steinbeck often, and under happy conditions, Meredith wrote in his 1994 memoir, So Far, So Good. Paulette and I were living in my country house in Rockland County, twenty minutes north of the George Washington Bridge. The Steinbecks came to visit us there and we went to his home in Manhattan. During the postwar period, I witnessed the disintegration of his marriage to Gwyn and the growing up of his children. Later, he rented a country house near me, a fine hand-built home belonging to the artist Henry Varnum Poor. Merediths own marriage to Goddard ended in 1949. He married for the third time in 1950 to dancer Kaja Sundsten and continued to live just down the road from the Mayers. By 1966, tensions over development in the area led local residents to incorporate as the village of Pomona. To help pay for the process, Burgess Meredith agreed to hold a fundraiser, a horse show, on his land. At the base of the property, a gate still stands where people lined up to go inside for the show, and a 20-year-old local fireman was stationed there to make sure and get $10 from each of them, a large amount in 1966. On a recent chilly March afternoon, Gordon Wren stepped over some dried branches and rocky ground in that same place in order to show me where he stood, taking money from people who had come to see the horse show on Burgess Meredith's property. "I think I had only been a firefighter for about a year," Gordon said, remembering the details of that day for Marianne Leese and me as the three of us, after trading emails and phone calls for a few weeks, got together for the first time to look at some of the places wed been researching. "I was only 20, but they had me count the money," he said with a laugh. Meredith invited him up to the house and showed him into an upstairs room so he could have some quiet while he counted the days proceeds. He asked me if I wanted a drink. Then he brought me a rye and ginger in a giant tumbler. I said thank you, Mr. Meredith, and he said, Don't call me mister! And he said when I was done, to come down to the pool for another drink. Gordon was still tickled about it, 55 years later. With Marianne and Gordon, I went by the Mayer house, the Meredith house, and other landmarks in the Ladentown-Camp Hill area, including a mural at the local post office that depicts the area during the Revolutionary War. I could tell that Gordon was disappointed that John R. Jones, his ancestor in Sandyfield, now seemed less likely to be the source of the mountains name. And Marianne, still mindful that the 1992 document suggested that John R. Jones was the source, asked me if I really had enough evidence to point instead to Jacob J. Jones of Camp Hill. I laid out the case for her and Gordon. The 1934 newspaper article called Jacob J.s land the Jackie Jones Farm, and he was identified in Rev. Cole's 1884 book as a steward of the Methodist church which Cole credited with helping to improve the area's reputation. His obituary, meanwhile, had said he was one of the best-known figures in the area. That all suggested to me the kind of person who might get a mountain named after him that was only three miles from the location of his farm. Yes, the place where John R. Jones lived on the north side of the mountain, Sandyfield, was even closer to the peak. But his suicide, and the fact that very little else was known about him, and that there was no evidence tying him to the name Jackie, made it seem less likely that the landmark had been named after him. But Marianne was right, there were still gaps in the story, despite what seemed like pretty good evidence that Jacob J. Jones, who had lived from 1825 to 1908 in the area that eventually became the village of Pomona, New York, with the help of Burgess Merediths 1966 fundraiser, was indeed the Jackie Jones whose name was on Rockland Countys highest peak. We hadnt been able to locate Jacobs gravesite, which his obituary said had been near his homestead. (Jane Lemkin didn't remember any headstones near the house, and she suggested it might have been bulldozed with the subdivision of the farm.) There was a Jacob Jones whose grave was a little farther south, and that Gordon and I tracked down. But that Jacob had died in 1851, and wasnt the person referred to in the 1934 newspaper article. The current owner of the Jacob J. Jones/Lillie & Arthur Mayer house was at first excited to talk to me about the place, which he had bought in 2018. He said its original history went all the way back to 1760, and he had been restoring some of its original features. But then he stopped returning my calls, and so I thought it best to preserve his privacy. Courtesy Tony Ortega I wanted to know more, of course. And perhaps someday more information will turn up that helps explain how Jacob J. Jones of Camp Hill got a mountain named after him that now, thanks to Doug Melton, has taken its true place as a countys highest point. And another summer is coming. The bridge beckons. I figure Ill ride back to Rockland County and up to Lake Welch and hike the Beech Trail, this time not with the goal of standing on a peak, but so I can visit John, Highlyann, Hiram, and their cousins Tim and John. And then swing down to Burgess Meredith Park in Pomona. I hope Gordon is up for a tumbler of something if I happen to swing by. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) Mac Horvath hit a grand slam in the first inning and drove in six runs on Friday night to help sixth-seeded North Carolina beat No. 3 seed N.C. State 9-6 in the final game of pool play in the ACC Tournament. The Tar Heels (27-25) and Wolfpack (29-16) each finished 1-1 in pool play, but N.C. State took the tiebreaker as the higher seed and advanced to the semifinals to face No. 2 seed Georgia Tech on Saturday. Horvaths grand slam came in the middle of a six-run first inning and was initially ruled a single but changed to a home run after a video review. It was the first grand slam by a North Carolina player since Ashton McGee hit one against Liberty on April 30, 2019. N.C. State went 4-for-5 to open the top of the eighth and closed the deficit to three. But the Tar Heels brought on Caden OBrien in relief and he struck out two to get out of the jam and two more in the ninth to close out his third save of the season. Austin Love (8-4) struck out nine in 5 2/3 innings for the Tar Heels. Wolfpack starter Andrew Tillery (1-1) picked up the loss. Watch: The Queen visits aircraft carrier ahead of deployment The Queen would never think of doing things "her way" like younger royals because she is "humble" and followed her father's example, according to a royal biographer. Matthew Dennison, author of The Queen, said that the monarch had it instilled in her from a young age that there was an example to follow. It comes as Harry has spoken about feeling "trapped" inside the institution of monarchy claiming his brother William and father Charles were in the same situation. Harry has said his move to the US was part of his work to break the "cycle of pain and suffering" which he said had been passed on from Prince Charles to him and from the Queen to Charles. However Prince William appears to have adapted to royal life by following the example of his grandmother. He stepped into defend his family as "very much not racist" after allegations by Harry and Meghan in their interview with Oprah Winfrey in March. Speaking about how the Queen was trained for her life of service, Dennison said: "The kind of queen the Queen would be was determined by older men in advance. "Throughout her childhood there was focus on her emulating the example of her father and grandfather, the press reports continually picked up on her physical resemblance or resemblance of character between the Queen and other family members. "When she becomes the Queen the Lord Chancellor sends a memorandum about how important it is to the survival of constitutional monarchy some idea of permanence is. "I think it was that idea, also part of gender politics at the time, that she would follow a model that had been foreordained. "We hear younger royals talking about wanting to be their own person and do it their way - it wouldn't cross the Queen's mind to do it her way. "She's very humble but also inculcated from her training from a young age was this idea that there was an example that you followed." Story continues The Queen during her visit to the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in Portsmouth, in May 2021. (Steve Parsons/AFP) The Queen, at 95, is entering a new phase of life as she continues her work without her "strength and stay" Prince Philip by her side. While Philip had retired in 2017 from his royal duties, he was still an important part of her life as her husband of more than 73 years before he died in April. They had spent more time together in the last year during the pandemic than they had been able to in some time, as he moved down from his retirement spot of Wood Farm in Sandringham to be with her at Windsor Castle. Dennison said his extensive research for the book showed him the Queen will keep going in her widowhood because of the commitment to the institution of monarchy itself. He told Yahoo UK: "What I saw throughout her life is this focus on the institution of monarchy and the sense that ultimately she is a servant of monarchy. "What will sustain her through whatever comes next is that strong conviction that her role is to do whatever is best by the monarchy and that can't change. it becomes a more diff task if you are not supported by close loved ones on who you previously relied but the job description is the same." He said the Queen's late parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, have been an "ongoing inspiration" for her. Watch: Prince Charles reveals Queen Elizabeth only owns one TV He added: "The Queen Mother was widowed for 50 years, which is not going to happen to our Queen, but both of them had a strong religious faith, an unwavering conviction in what loyalty was all about. "The Queen had watched her mother go on to the end, carrying out engagements when she was 101, and doing so, albeit in a slow way with a certain pizazz. "The Queen knows she lacks her mother's theatrical qualities, but what she recognises is that as long as her health continues she had the ability to keep going." Dennison noted the example too of Philip who didn't retire until he was 97, giving the Queen at least two more years. Dennison's biography, which is released on 3 June, is a comprehensive look at the monarch's life, from her birth and the unusual fascination with her in her childhood, to how she has dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic and Harry and Meghan's decision to step back as senior royals. Comparing the current royal crises to 1992, the year the Queen dubbed her 'Annus Horribilis', Dennison said: "There are clear differences in that in the Annus Horribilis with the collapse of the marriage of the Waleses, the criticism of the Queen's tax position there was direct criticism of the Queen herself. "I'm not aware that anybody's response to what's happening with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex includes any criticism of the Queen. On the contrary, there are high levels of sympathy that at this point in her life, and just after death of husband of 73 years she has this to deal with." The Queen, Prince Harry, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in July 2018. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images) But as for the similarities, Dennison said: "In part it's a crisis that emerges from her family but I don't think this constitutes an Annus Horribilis in the sense that the queen herself is being criticised or found wanting or any sense that what has happened has been brought about by her actions, even inadvertently." Without Philip by her side though, the Queen will rely more and more on her advisors. Dennison said: "Philip had this pater familias role of head of family and Philip found direct confrontation easier than the Queen for whom that is not a natural modus operandi. "But he had been in failing health for some time and I don't think realistically the Queen would have anticipated him having a guiding role in a crisis of this sort/ "It puts pressure on the Queens advisors to give best possible advice to her and children to rally around her." The Queen has been returning to in-person engagements in recent weeks as the restrictions around coronavirus ease. She attended the state opening of parliament with Prince Charles and Camilla but then took on a solo engagement when she visited Portsmouth before the departure of HMS Queen Elizabeth. She remains at Windsor Castle where she moved to escape London at the beginning of the pandemic. The Queen by Matthew Dennison is released on 3 June. nateswildn/TikTok; Lintao Zhang/Getty The Idaho deputy who mocked Lebron James in a viral Tik Tok was terminated from his job. Officials cited policy violations as the reason for Deputy Marshal Nate Silvester's firing. The firing comes after he was suspended from his position for the Tik Tok video that has garnered millions of views. Visit Insider's homepage for more stories. The Idaho deputy who went viral for mocking Lebron James in a TikTok video was fired from Bellevue Marshal's Office. Bellevue Mayor Ned Burns confirmed on social media that Deputy Marshal Nate Silvester was fired earlier this week. "During the week of May 20th, while on shift Deputy Marshal Silvester violated several clearly established City of Bellevue and State of Idaho Policing policies," Mayor Burns said in a statement posted on Facebook on May 27. "After his previous policy violations, Deputy Marshal Silvester was placed on probation and was on, what is called, a 'last chance agreement' with his superior officers." The statement cited violated policies as the cause for Silvester's firing. Burns said the "policy violations have nothing to do with the tone or the tenor of his speech that he posts online." "He was not terminated for the content of his speech; he was terminated for his failure to follow clearly laid out and well-established policy," Burns continued. "The decision was solely made by the command structure within the Bellevue Marshals office and was not influenced in any way by me or by the City Council. We were informed of the decision, and as in the previous incident, left the final decision making to the Marshal and Deputy Marshal." Silvester was previously suspended for making a TikTok video last month responding to LeBron James, who posted a tweet about Nicholas Reardon, the police officer who fatally shot 16-year-old Bryant multiple times in Columbus, Ohio. The shooting occurred just ahead of the verdict of Derek Chauvin, the former cop who killed George Floyd. Story continues In a now-deleted tweet, James wrote: "YOU'RE NEXT" and "ACCOUNTABILITY" with a photo of Reardon. In the TikTok video, Silvester is seen dressed in his uniform pretends to call James on the phone to seek advice about a situation about a Black man who is stabbing another with a knife. "So you don't care if a Black person kills another Black person, but you do care if a white cop kills a Black person even if he's doing it to save the life of another Black person?"Silvester said in the video, which has since garnered millions of views. The Bellevue Marshal's Office condemned Silvester's video in an April 24 statement. "The statements made do NOT represent the Bellevue Marshal's Office. The Bellevue Marshal's Office always demands that our Deputies engage with our citizens in a friendly and professional manner," the statement said. "This is NOT how we expect our Deputies to act on duty or use city time." As Insider previously reported, Silvester signed a book deal with Di Angelo Publications and a GoFundMe created on his behalf by a friend has raised more than $500,000. The fundraiser appears to have been organized by someone named Gannon Ward, who claims in the description that Silvester's firing stemmed from the viral video. "Unofficially, as I stated originally, Bellevue mayor Ned Burns has been gunning for Nate's termination since his Lebron James TikTok went viral," the description for the fundraiser said. "We have heard through the grapevine this is coming down the pipes, it was only a matter of time, and they were just looking for a reason to terminate him. " Read the original article on Insider BOISE, Idaho (AP) With the governor out of the state, Idahos lieutenant governor issued an executive order Thursday banning mask mandates in schools and public buildings, saying the face-covering directives threatened peoples freedom. Republican Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin is acting governor while Gov. Brad Little is at the Republican Governors Association conference in Nashville, Tennessee. He was expected to return Thursday evening. Last week, McGeachin announced her run for governor, challenging the first-term incumbent Little. McGeachin is on the far right of the political spectrum in the conservative state, and her order could bolster her support as a candidate for governor. Littles office said McGeachin did not make him aware that she planned to issue the executive order. The office didnt say what Little would do when he returned, but it did say residents value local control. Throughout the pandemic, Governor Little has been committed to protecting the health and safety of the people of Idaho and has emphasized the importance of Idahoans choosing to protect our neighbors and loved ones and keeping our economy and schools open, Littles spokeswoman, Marissa Morrison, said. Little has never issued a statewide mask mandate, but some counties, cities and schools have done so. Many have been lifting the mandates as more residents are vaccinated against COVID-19. The executive order was signed by Republican Secretary or State Lawerence Denney and went into effect at 11 a.m. Denney's office said it confirmed Little was out of state before determining the order was valid under the Idaho Constitution. The order applies to city and county governments, public universities, colleges and schools, and public libraries. The ban does not apply to federal buildings, hospitals or healthcare facilities. Courts are not specifically mentioned in the two-page order, and it's not clear how the executive order would effect that branch of government. Story continues Ive been listening to people all across the state with the concern about, especially, why are little kids being forced to wear masks in school, McGeachin said during an interview by The Associated Press. My oath to the Constitution is to protect those rights and freedoms of the individual, and Ive never supported any type of a mandate on the individual, especially when it comes to health care choices. She said she hoped Little would let the order stand when he returned. About 590,000 of Idahos 1.8 million residents have been vaccinated. State officials have reported that the virus has killed more than 2,000 people in the state and sickened some 190,000. McGeachin said she hasn't been vaccinated and didn't plan to do so. She believes she had COVID-19 last year and has a natural immunity now. She said the experience for her was similar to the flu. I have concerns about the long-term, prolonged wearing of the mask, what it may do to our lungs, she said, noting it was her personal belief. If it's something that the individual feels like they need to do to protect themselves than I support that. McGeachin noted that the Republican-dominated state House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a mask-mandate ban earlier this year, but the bill died in the Senate when a powerful committee chairman, Republican Sen. Fred Martin, declined to give it a hearing. ____ This story has been corrected to say the order bans mask mandates, not masks. Sometimes it takes a shared bond to help talk someone down from the ledge. So instead of sending in social workers, a pioneering Illinois police program designed to aid despondent and suicidal veterans deploys officers who have military backgrounds of their own to 911 calls about vets in crisis. When 911 dispatchers at the Joliet Police Department receive a call, theyre trained to ask several routine questions such as are there weapons in the house, is the subject COVID positive, and whether they served in the military. "If they say he's a veteran, and he's thinking of killing himself, then right away the lightbulb goes off and they know to that contact any Battle Buddy that's working at the current time to respond to the scene," Joliet Police Lt. Moises Avila explained to Fox News Friday. WWII VETERAN TRAVELS TO SOUTH CAROLINA TO GIVE FINAL SALUTE TO THE MAN WHO SAVED HIS LIFE In one instance, Avila responded to a report of a missing Air Force veteran who was believed to have been suicidal, he said. The Battle Buddy found him, brought him home, and got to know him. When a 911 call came in about the same man months later, Avila arrived to find him holding a knife to his own throat. "He recognized me from the previous contact, it was a real positive contact," he said. "As soon as saw me, heard my name, he immediately put the knife down." That man has called Avila personally several times since then. "Hes more comfortable speaking to me," he said. "And heres his reasoning, that being a veteran, I understand where hes coming from. And thats the gut of the program there." There are 26 officers, all veterans themselves, who volunteered to take part in the program and underwent critical incident training, according to Avila, who is one of them. Battle Buddies vary in rank from deputy chiefs all the way down to new patrolmen. "Were not gonna leave a buddy behind," Officer Chad Evans told Fox News Friday. "Well get you help." Story continues Hes the one who came up with the idea for Joliet in 2016, after the department said it noticed a spike in calls from veterans. CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP "You're not going to get a general call that says, Hey, my brother, he's a Marine veteran. He's suicidal. Can you send a social worker?" Avila said. "It doesn't work that way. They call 911 because they know that the situation can escalate and get real dangerous real quick." The Battle Buddy officers, equipped with crisis intervention training and a bond shared by the nations brothers in arms, have a perfect record in deescalating situations that theyve responded to, Avila said. The department doesnt have an exact record of how many Battle Buddy calls its responded to, but he put the number at around 30. The Battle Buddies also follow up with their subjects and try to pair them with programs that operate outside the Department of Veterans Affairs, which have a lighter workload and can often provide services with dramatically shorter wait times for appointments. Some of those are within the countys Veterans Assistance Commission. The Battle Buddy program gets its name from an Army term used to pair soldiers together to help each other out in training and battle, Avila said. "Being a veteran, you know, we see how some of these guys are hurting," Evans said. "They're proud peoplenever want to ask for help. But we let them know that it's OK to ask for help." He said he uses a personal story to solidify the connection. "I myself years ago went through a divorce," he said. "I had to go through some counseling to get my head on straight. There's no loss and pride there. I tell them it's OK to get help because it's impossible to do some of this stuff on your own. So I give him that example and they kind of open them up a little bit." May 29BEMIDJI Entry into the elite Air Force Academy is an accomplishment few others can claim. Bemidji High School senior Josh Nyberg is one of the few 2021 graduates from Minnesota the only one north of the metro area who can. Along with being accepted into a prestigious school, Nyberg has kept himself busy throughout high school with four different sports, serving as co-president of the National Honor Society, being an active member of St. Philip's Catholic Church and earning an Eagle Scout award. Nyberg will graduate on Saturday, May 29 along with the rest of the Bemidji High School class of 2021. Nyberg hails from a military background, with both of his parents serving in the U.S. Air Force. "My family's always been in the military, in the Air Force. So I knew about them and my sister-in-law also went to the Air Force Academy, so that was a big help, and that's how I got introduced to it," Nyberg said. Despite filling his high school career with activities, Nyberg has always made time for volunteering. One of the things that led to his acceptance to the U.S. Air Force Academy, Nyberg said, was his Eagle Scout project, which centered around supporting the Northwoods Pregnancy Care Center. "I talked at some local churches to raise money to help them pay for (their) new location. I raised about $5,000 through that, and then we got materials like diapers and other things. I did a drive at my own church," Nyberg said. "And then we moved them over, with the Knights of Columbus, to their new location. And also, before we moved them, we helped paint their new location." Over the years, Nyberg also volunteered with his church and through the Special Olympics. He's found himself feeling sentimental as his time at BHS comes to a close. "I'm going all the way to Colorado and all my friends are probably staying around here. It's not like I can come back most of the time. Most kids that go to college, they can come back for the weekend with their family. But in the military, you have to be there constantly," he said. "That aspect hits the most because all my friends are still gonna be here and then I'm going to be all the way over there." Story continues The application process for the Air Force Academy was a grueling one, full of interviews, physicals and other requirements. Nyberg's application carried the weight of recommendation from state legislators like former District 7 Rep. Collin Peterson, as well as Bemidji High School Principal Jason Stanoch and other area leaders. "He is a fantastic student and overall person that has worked very hard as a BHS student," Stanoch said of Nyberg. While at the Air Force Academy, Nyberg wants to study biology, with the hope of one day becoming an occupational or physical therapist. After earning his bachelor's degree, he plans to attend a two-year occupational or physical therapy program, and then serve his five years of commitment to the U.S. Air Force. Nyberg and the rest of Bemidji High School's class of 2021 will celebrate their accomplishments with a commencement ceremony and procession beginning at 9 a.m. on Saturday, May 29 at the Sanford Center and ending at the high school. May 28A Lucas County judge declined to further reduce an East Toledo man's bond Friday even though both defense and the prosecutor agree he didn't fire a weapon in a double homicide Brandon Lampros II, 22, of the 400 block of Arden Place, is charged in Lucas County Common Pleas Court with two counts each of murder and felonious assault with gun specifications. He has been held in the Lucas County jail in lieu of $750,000 bond which was reduced March 24 from the original $1 million bond previously set in Toledo Municipal Court after defense attorneys asked Judge Joe McNamara to not "rubber stamp" the amount. On Friday, Mr. Lampros' attorney, Jon Richardson, again asked for his client's bond to be reduced. After reviewing evidence, Mr. Richardson said his client wasn't the one to pull the trigger during a fight March 1 in the 1500 block of Nevada Street. His co-defendants, Matthew T. Garcia, 23, of the 1200 block of Noble Street, and Deandre Bowen, 17, address unknown, are accused of shooting Brad Keel, 44, and David Misch, 19, respectively. Prosecutors agree Mr. Lampros didn't fire a weapon, but he is considered complicit because he went to the Nevada Street location with the intention of fighting Brandon Keel, Brad Keel's son, said Frank Spryszak, deputy chief of the Lucas County Prosecutor's Office criminal division. However, the father intervened, the prosecutor said. Mr. Lampros' group brought two firearms in a vehicle, one of them belonging to the defendant, the prosecutor said. "When you go to a location with the intention to engage in a physical altercation and you bring firearms with you to that altercation, there's a possibility that those firearms could be used," Mr. Spryszak said Friday. But during the incident, Mr. Lampros grabbed a baseball bat from the vehicle not a firearm, Mr. Richardson noted. "The gun was in the car but that doesn't mean Mr. Lampros foresaw that someone might use it. He certainly didn't use it himself," Mr. Richardson argued on Friday. "That was Mr. Garcia's decision not Mr. Lampros' to pull that gun out of that car." Story continues After hearing both sides, Judge McNamara denied the bond modification request. A pretrial hearing for Mr. Lampros and Mr. Garcia is scheduled for July 16. The Brown youth's case is being heard in Lucas County Juvenile Court, but he is expected to be certified for trial as an adult. First Published May 28, 2021, 2:34pm La Puente City Councilwoman Violeta Lewis is alleging that the mayor failed to properly respond to her claims of sexual harassment by the city manager and instead joined a campaign to retaliate against her. (Julie Bujer) A La Puente councilwoman has filed a lawsuit alleging that the mayor of the San Gabriel Valley community failed to properly respond to her claims of sexual harassment by the city manager and instead joined a campaign to retaliate against her. The suit, filed this month by Violeta Lewis in Los Angeles County Superior Court, names the city of La Puente, Mayor Charlie Klinakis and City Manager Robert Lindsey as defendants. Lewis claims that the mayor "covered up" for Lindsey after she complained of harassment, and that Klinakis and then-City Atty. Jamie Casso did not conduct a thorough investigation and instead subjected her to a hostile work environment. Lindsey told The Times that he unequivocally denies the allegations, adding that an independent investigator had deemed them meritless. Casso declined to comment. In an email, Klinakis said he had been advised not to speak about the issue, although he wrote: "I am extremely confident that in time the real truth will come out. In the meantime I will continue, as I have been all during the pandemic, to stay focused on moving the city forward. Rick Olivarez, the managing partner at a firm that represents La Puente, said the city was reviewing the lawsuit. The suit states that the city hired Lindsey as a transitional city manager in October 2018 and assigned him to report to Lewis, who was elected to the City Council in 2012 and was then serving as mayor. Several months later, the suit says, Lindsey aggressively pursued a sexual relationship with Lewis. Lewis claims Lindsey made sexually offensive, unwelcomed comments and leered at her body, asking her to meet him at City Hall after hours for fake urgent meetings and then using that opportunity to make sexual advances. The lawsuit alleges that after a meeting Lewis scheduled with Lindsey at her home with her husband, in which she told him that she found his sexual advances offensive, Lindsey began a vicious campaign of retaliation" to sabotage Lewis job and turn other employees against her. Story continues Lewis alleges that during an April 2020 budget meeting between her, Lindsey and Klinakis, she was verbally accosted by Lindsey for about 20 minutes. She claims he screamed at her while Klinakis did not intervene. The lawsuit claims that after Lewis told Casso, the city attorney, that she wanted to file a complaint against Lindsey, the city immediately began a cover-up, starting with a sham investigation designed to sweep the matter under the rug. Casso and Klinakis pressured Lewis not to make a complaint, according to the suit, and the mayor asked if she would withdraw her complaint if Lindsey apologized. Lewis alleges that the city stripped her of her job responsibilities as retaliation for complaining, disbanding an ad hoc communications committee she led. In September 2020, Lewis was told the investigation into her complaint had been closed and the city attorneys only recommendation was to talk to Lindsey, the lawsuit states. It further alleges that while Lewis was campaigning for reelection last fall, the defendants spread misinformation against her. In an October 2020 letter to Casso that was attached to the lawsuit, Lewis asked the city to stop robocalls being made to residents. She said the calls simulated an election poll survey that asked the caller to select a candidate they would support in the upcoming election. Several residents, she said, reported that when they selected her name, a recording stated that she had a secret claim of $5-million against the city, adding: Knowing this information, would you still vote for her? Lewis claims that when the new City Council met this year, Klinakis organized a closed council session without informing her and spent more than an hour discussing her complaints against him and Lindsey. The lawsuit seeks damages for discrimination and harassment based on gender and race; retaliation; aiding and abetting; assault; and failure to investigate, prevent and correct violations of the California Fair Employment and Housing Act. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times. May 28The Lewiston Public Schools on Thursday signed a settlement agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice over discrimination in its English as a second language program and shortened school days for students with behavorial issues due to disabilities. The district agreed to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede students' equal participation in instructional programs and to take steps to change its instructional approach in dealing with students with disabilities. The district must send periodic reports on its progress in meeting the goals outlined in the 25-page agreement to the Justice Department for the next three years. Superintendent K. Jake Langlais said in a letter posted Thursday on the district's website that the agreement would bring "student instructional support to a new level." He also said that the district made strides in programming before the agreement. Langlais has been superintendent since the summer of 2019. Prior to that, he was principal at Lewiston High School. "We have nested special education programs for students with autism, functional life skills, and day treatment settings," Langlais said of the steps that have already been taken to remedy problems identified in the investigation that led to the settlement. "We have changed a number of practices, instructional approaches with abbreviated days, and language learners that have been cited by others as model programs. "We have adopted and built in professional learning that will benefit all our students, continue to grow in social emotional/restorative practices, and in our budget process we grew the number of staff and professional learning opportunities to improve reading, language skills, and comprehension that will better serve all our students," Langlais said in the letter. Lewiston voters on Tuesday approved a $92.2 million school budget by a vote of 340-232, according to the Sun Journal. The Lewiston City Council rejected a proposed $95.7 million budget. The approved budget includes funds to pay for the changes to programming outlined in the settlement agreement. The Justice Department's investigation was initiated by a complaint from Disability Rights Maine, an Augusta-based advocacy group. Congressman Matt Gaetz says he and his fiancee were targeted by malicious actors as they tried to purchase a boat (Reuters) Florida congressman Matt Gaetz, who has blamed extortionists for his slew of sex scandals, now says malicious actors stole more than $150,000 from him as he tried to buy a boat. A spokesperson for Mr Gaetz told WFLA that a large amount of money went missing after the congressman and his fiancee, Ginger Luckey, attempted to buy a $155,000 yacht named Ol Pappy. Rep Gaetz and Ms Luckey were the target of a financial crime, the spokesperson told the station, adding that the congressman has been targeted by malicious actors, first domestic and now foreign. The spokesperson did not say how much money was lost, but said federal law enforcement was investigating the case. The FBI declined WFLAs request for comment. Sources at the St Petersburg marina where Ol Pappy is docked say the boat was suddenly rechristened Thirsty in late April, around the time Mr Gaetzs purchase of the vessel was supposed to close. A little premature without ownership of the boat, said Jon Golly, a boat owner at the same marina who says he saw Mr Gaetz and Ms Luckey as they inspected the yacht. Mr Gaetz is already mired in controversy. The Justice Department is now several months into its investigation of whether the congressman hired women for sex across state lines, which could potentially have violated sex trafficking laws. It is also investigating whether Mr Gaetz had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paid for her to travel with him. Mr Gaetz has vehemently denied the allegations, and has not been charged with any crime. Over the past several weeks, my family and I have been victims of an organised criminal extortion involving a former DOJ official seeking $25 million while threatening to smear my name, the congressman said in a series of tweets when the probe first came to light. However, the investigation appears to be closing in on Mr Gaetzs innermost circle. The congressmans ex-girlfriend is reportedly now cooperating with the Justice Department, and his friend, former Florida tax collector Joel Greenberg, has taken a plea deal on his own charges of soliciting sex from a minor. Story continues None of this appears to have held back Mr Gaetz, who is currently traveling on a nationwide speaking tour and recently announced hell run for president in 2024 if Donald Trump doesnt do so. Read More Matt Gaetz says Trump is the leader of forward thinking Republicanism Marjorie Taylor Greene blasts Democrats for comparing Republicans to Nazis, then compares Democrats to Nazis Majority of Republicans blame non-existent left-wing protesters for 6 January Capitol attack: poll Scientists have been uncorking long, thin cylinders of soil from wetlands and riverbeds in an attempt to look back in time and understand the impact humans have had on nature. The results have made them radically rethink previous assumptions about when this started. Short presentational grey line "It's amazing - one of the most fascinating things," says Ondrejj Mottl. The object of his fascination? Mud. Dr Mottl and his colleagues have been extracting "mud cores" from the depths of lakes and wetlands. These long, tightly compacted cylinders of earth contain a record of exactly what grew in that soil when, going back millennia. "They're our window to the past," says Dr Mottl, an ecologist based in Bergen, Norway. Analysing these cores of mud, looking at the pollen that has settled in each layer, has brought an entirely new understanding of when human activity started changing vegetation. Scientists had expected to see the first "signal" of human intervention a few centuries ago, when landscapes really started to transform during the Industrial Revolution. Pollen records from the mud core research have led them to radically readjust that assumption, and track our species' first impact on the natural world back to about 4,000 years ago. It's a discovery that has major implications for the future of our forests and other natural landscapes. The evidence for all these grand theories exists in the tiny grains of pollen that fell and settled in layer upon layer of mud over the centuries. By carefully extracting that mud, like a cork from a wine bottle, and analysing the "fossil pollen" at different depths, researchers were able to carbon date each mud layer to work out what grew, when. Graphic: How a tube of mud revealed Africa's ancient past But what exactly did they spot that led them to rethink theories about when man had started to impact nature? The team found in the mud an uptick in the rate of change - layer by layer - of pollen composition. Basically, each layer began to look more different from the other in terms of the plant pollen it contained. Story continues The scientists chose to look back 18,000 years to capture the era time when the planet had started to emerge from the last ice age. Earth was defrosting, so almost every environment was changing. "The last 10,000 years was - climate-wise - relatively stable, so [that's when] we're able to pick up the influence of humans," says Suzette Flantua, a global ecologist also at the University of Bergen, That influence started as soon as we - humans - began to clear wild vegetation to make space for ourselves, our crops and our livestock. "We see that trend [in vegetation change] picking up at different points," says Dr Flantua. It's earlier in Asia and South America, and slightly later - about 2,000 years ago - in Europe. Mud core research. [ 1,100 mud cores were extracted from... ],[ 1,000 locations around the world, in every continent except Antarctica ] , Source: , Image: According to many biologists and climate scientists, we are now in a period of the Earth's history that can be dubbed the Anthropocene - an epoch of human influence on our planet. More than three quarters of the Earth's land surface has been altered by human activity. The mud core findings don't only change assumptions about the past. They also provide a valuable insight into where our planet's natural environment is heading. The uptick in change, detected in that long-buried pollen, is continuing ever faster. Hear more from the team digging into the evidence about humans' impact on our planet on Inside Science on BBC Sounds. "We're going to continue to get that large scale human influence and on top of that there's climate change," says Dr Jonathan Overpeck, a climate scientist based at the University of Michigan. It means, somewhat ironically, that if forests are to lock up as much carbon as possible and help us to minimise the impacts of climate change, we are going to have to intervene more in exactly how those forests grow. While many conservationists support the protection of forests - leaving them alone and intact to do their job of giving their wildlife a home and keeping lots of carbon locked away - we may have changed our planet so radically that forests will need some hands-on help simply to survive. "There's some climate change already baked in," Dr Overpeck explains. "And most of the old trees in our forests were seedlings when it was cooler, so we need to put in seedlings that will thrive when it's warmer." To protect forests from wildfires, which are also becoming more frequent and fiercer in warmer, drier climates, could require much more intensive forest management, too - removing smaller trees that provide that provide the "fine fuel" for wildfires. Dr Overpeck suggests that, if we do this correctly, we could "farm forests for carbon" creating jobs at the same time. What that will mean for biodiversity - the myriad plant and animal species that currently rely on the existing forest habitat - is much less clear and far more complicated to make a plan for. But the scientists combing through Earth's ancient pollen record say it could also guide how we protect and restore the natural habitats we have left. "This is the critical thing," says Dr Mottl. "To know what we are trying to restore, to know what exactly is pristine wilderness - this is the most important thing. "Lots of national parks are trying to be wild and pristine, without knowing if what they are doing is returning a place to its natural state." Rather than make assumptions based on what grows in a wild landscape now, the use of mud cores drills down to ask the Earth directly about its history. And until we have the information from nature itself, says Dr Mottl, we can't know if what we are doing for nature is for the best. Follow Victoria on Twitter Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. AP Photo/John Raoux Mike Lindell flew Gov. Kristi Noem to a RGA conference on his private jet, according to Politico. Lindell was booted from the event for plans to confront two governors about the election, per Politico. Noem is a potential 2024 GOP presidential candidate. See more stories on Insider's business page. Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota flew on MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell's private jet en route to a three-day Republican Governors Association (RGA) conference in Nashville, Tennessee, this week, according to a Politico report. Lindell, a high-profile ally of former President Donald Trump, reportedly was booted from the event after planning to grill Govs. Doug Ducey of Arizona and Brian Kemp of Georgia about the 2020 election results in their respective states, per Politico. President Joe Biden defeated Trump in both Arizona and Georgia, significant Sun Belt triumphs for the Democrats, but Lindell has continued to push the former president's false election-fraud claims. An official told Politico that Lindell was unable to attend official RGA events since he was not a full member of the organization. However, Lindell was allowed access to the RGA meeting as a "guest" of Noem and a "prospective member," according to Politico. Earlier this week, Lindell told Politico that after arriving in Nashville on Monday and intending to stay for much of the week, he changed course and departed in his jet on Tuesday. Lindell's itinerary shift forced Noem to find alternate accommodations for her return home, according to a source familiar with the matter who spoke with Politico. However, Noem spokesperson Ian Fury fully disputes this claim. "Lindell was not a guest of Governor Noem's at the conference," he told Politico. "Neither did her travel plans change following the conference. Governor Noem follows the law and reimburses for flights when appropriate." In a phone conversation with Politico, Lindell said that he "is not revealing anybody who goes on my plane." Story continues "I have people on my plane all the time and I don't know who told you that," he said. "I'm not disclosing anything." After hanging up, he sent a text message: "Anyone who ever is on my plane is highly confidential! I cannot comment on that or my plane's flights This is for security reasons[.] I have had many threats since I went public with the Dominion and machine evidence." Read more: A multitude of Trump-era mysteries are poised to come roaring back into the headlines. Everyone involved is bracing for what happens after that. In February, Lindell was sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 billion for defamation after repeatedly spreading debunked claims that the company's machines contributed to Trump's loss. His products have also been pulled from the shelves by numerous retailers, including Bed Bath & Beyond and Costco. Noem and Lindell have spoken at events together in the past, including a Trump rally in Michigan last September where she criticized Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's implementation of COVID-19 restrictions. That month, she also campaigned in Minnesota with Lindell for Trump. "It was an honor to travel to Minnesota with Mike Lindell to support President Trump in his re-election," she wrote in a Facebook post at the time. "We both understand that we need to leave it all on the table to ensure President Trump wins on November 3rd. Noem, who faces reelection as governor in 2022 and is widely seen as a likely 2024 GOP presidential contender, recently started a federal PAC called the "Noem Victory Fund." According to Politico, most states permit governors to fly on the private jets of friends or associates, but gifts have to be reported "under certain circumstances." Under South Dakota law, public officials or their immediate families cannot accept gifts from lobbyists that exceed $100 during a full calendar year. However, the state lacks any additional regulations on gifts from individuals who are not lobbyists. Read the original article on Business Insider Packages of cocaine keep washing up on a beach in Texas, and officials are warning visitors against picking them up. Over the past week, 50 kilograms of cocaine have washed up on Matagorda County beaches, the countys sheriffs office said Tuesday. The county is located about 90 miles southwest of Houston. The packages vary in weight, with about 110 pounds of the white powdery substance mysteriously appearing in total. The sheriffs office said you should not touch or pick up suspicious packages on the beach. Packages could contain cocaine, marijuana or fentanyl, and could be harmful if touched, according to the sheriffs office. Once the package becomes wet, the substance in the package could become liquid form and leak from the package, Lt. Phillip Hester said in a statement. Once the substance becomes liquid form it is easier to absorb into the skin and could cause a person to become ill or it could possibly be fatal. There could also be legal issues with picking up a package of this type. The sheriffs office said a person in possession of a package containing drugs could be criminally charged. Its unclear where the packages of cocaine came from. The wholesale price for a kilogram of cocaine is between $29,000 and $34,000, Special Agent Anne-Judith Lambert of the Drug Enforcement Agency told the Miami Herald this week. Beachgoers help find nearly 70 pounds of cocaine that washed ashore in Alabama, cops say Bag full of drugs label was no lie, Florida police say. Two people arrested Duffel bags packed with over 400 pounds of meth found near beach, Washington cops say Karaoke machine hid 16 pounds of cocaine worth $750,000, Texas cops say Comment Policy Calaveras Enterprise does not actively monitor comments. However, staff does read through to assess reader interest. When abusive or foul language is used or directed toward other commenters, those comments will be deleted. If a commenter continues to use such language, that person will be blocked from commenting. We wish to foster a community of communication and a sharing of ideas, and we truly value readers' input. The Telegraph He gained the nickname 'the Butcher of Kabul' by raining down rockets on the Afghan capital in the early 1990s. But Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a notorious warlord who has twice served as prime minister, is now warning that the 'irresponsible' American withdrawal is leaving behind a government unable to fight off the Taliban. In an interview with the Telegraph at his office near the Afghan parliament, he said: The Americans are withdrawing with an urgency, and I might add irresponsibly, and they are l Protestors in support of former President Donald Trump gather outside Veterans Memorial Coliseum where Ballots from the 2020 general election wait to be counted on May 1, 2021 in Phoenix, Arizona. Photo by Courtney Pedroza/Getty Images Republicans and Trump loyalists nationwide are still pushing for reviews of the 2020 election. Recounts or audits likely won't unearth new information, but calls for reexaminations are growing. From rural Michigan to sunny San Luis Obispo, recount fever persists six months after the election. See more stories on Insider's business page. More than six months after President Joe Biden beat former President Donald Trump by seven million votes and 74 electoral votes, the hunger for third-party, partisan reviews of the 2020 election among conspiracy theorists and Trump supporters throughout the country isn't dissipating. Trump himself is said to be "laser-focused" on the state GOP-led audit in Maricopa County, Arizona, and hopes more states will follow suit. The New York Times' Maggie Haberman said this week Trump thinks "they are going to overturn the election" and believes he will be reinstated by August, a baseless conspiracy theory. Outside Arizona audit, no other major, official post-election audits are currently in motion. But the desire among Trump loyalists to rewrite history by recounting ballots that have already been counted and certified is spreading far beyond south-central Arizona. For months leading up to the November election and in the months since, Trump pushed lies about election fraud, amplifying baseless claims of a "rigged" or "stolen" election that culminated in the January 6 Capitol insurrection when a mob of pro-Trump rioters attacked the Capitol as Congress moved to certify Biden's win. Elections experts told The Associated Press the Arizona audit - though widely condemned and mocked, even among some Republicans - has set a dangerous precedent. "This is bad enough to see it happen once," Eddie Perez, an expert on voting systems at the OSET Institute, told the AP about Arizona, but seeing it elsewhere in the country is "dangerous for democracy.'" Story continues Since Democrats won control of the federal government in the 2020 election, GOP lawmakers at the state level have introduced and in some cases, passed, a flurry of voting rights legislation aimed at appeasing Trump and his allies' baseless claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election by making voting access more difficult in many instances. And in recent weeks, GOP leaders across the US at the state, county, and local levels have undertaken efforts and attempts to stage "reviews" of the 2020 election in hopes of sowing doubt and stoking anger among vocal conservatives. Maricopa County, Arizona By how many votes did Biden win? Biden won Maricopa County by 45,109 votes. He won 50.3% of the county while Trump won 48.1%, according to Politico. Biden's statewide victory was narrower - 10,457 votes - but he won 49.4% of the vote to Trump's 49.1%. What is the GOP trying to do? After Biden's victory in the once-red Arizona, the Republican-controlled state senate subpoenaed the more than 2 million ballots cast in Maricopa County, where Trump and his allies relentlessly claimed there had been "irregularities" in the election process, though none have ever been officially noted. As the lie grew among Trump loyalists, senate president Karen Fann said an audit was necessary because so many of her constituents believed there had been "serious issues." The decision to proceed with a recount was notably made in spite of objections by the county's Republican-controlled board of supervisors, who said the election had already been audited more than once by credible firms. Republicans chose Cyber Ninjas, a private company with no prior election experience and spearheaded by a Trump supporter, to carry out another count of ballots in Maricopa County. Since it began on April 23, the audit has been plagued by ongoing questions of legality and partisanship stemming from a slew of errors and absurdities. Where are they in the process of the audit? By late May, auditors said they had counted about 500,000 of the more than 2 million ballots, according to The Hill. A spokesperson for the audit told the outlet they hope to be done by the end of June, when the vendor's rental term on the stadium where votes are being counted is up. Have state lawmakers passed voting legislation since the 2020 election? In May, Republicans in the state legislature passed a bill limiting distribution of mail ballots from an early voting list. The controversial bill removes voters from the state's Permanent Early Voting List, a method that voters used en masse in the 2020 election. The law could purge tens of thousands of people from a list of voters who automatically receive a ballot in the mail. Gov. Doug Ducey signed the bill into law hours after the legislature passed it. Then on May 26, Republicans on both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees voted to strip Democrat Katie Hobbs of her election powers as secretary of state, a seemingly partisan response to her continued criticism of the Maricopa County audit. The bill, which would still have to pass the full legislature to become law, would transfer many of her election powers to the state's Republican attorney general. Maricopa County ballots cast in the 2020 general election are examined and recounted by contractors working for Florida-based company, Cyber Ninjas, Thursday, May 6, 2021 at Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix. The audit, ordered by the Arizona Senate, has the U.S. Department of Justice saying it is concerned about ballot security and potential voter intimidation arising from the unprecedented private recount of the 2020 presidential election results. Matt York/AP Fulton County, Georgia By how many votes did Biden win? Biden secured another narrow victory in Georgia, beating Trump by 11,779 votes, carrying 49.5% of the state compared to Trump's 49.3%. In Fulton County, the most populous in the state, which includes the capital Atlanta, Biden beat Trump by 242,965 votes, winning 72.6% of the county compared to Trump's 26.2%, according to Politico. What are election skeptics trying to do? A longtime voting activist in Georgia and well-known conspiracy theorist, Garland Favorito, is spearheading a campaign in Fulton County to review the 2020 election results. He filed a lawsuit earlier this year against the county alleging improper counting and fraudulent ballots. According to The Atlanta Journal Constitution, the case includes testimony from Republican Party members who allege to have witnessed suspiciously "pristine" absentee ballots. The lawsuit also claims there were notable increases among votes for Biden late on election night. The attempted review comes even after election officials in the state counted ballots three times, audited voter signatures, and opened several investigations, before certifying Biden's win, according to the AJC. Favorito told the AP he voted for Don Blankenship, the US Constitution Party candidate in the 2020 election. "Our ultimate objective is the truth. What is the truth of this election?" Favorito told the outlet. "Don't tell us what the results are and then hide it from us and pretend we have to accept whatever you tell us." Where are they in the process of a possible audit? Favorito and company secured a massive win in May, when a judge ruled the plaintiffs in the lawsuit could inspect 147,000 mail ballots. Unlike the Maricopa audit, Fulton County's review would not focus on a ballot recount. Instead, the judge said he would order county officials to create high-resolution digital images to determine the legitimacy of the ballots. A judge had plans to consider procedures for the digital inspections, but postponed the meeting in light of motions by Fulton County to dismiss the case, the AJC reported. Have state lawmakers passed voting legislation since the 2020 election? Earlier this year, Georgia became a battleground among voting rights activists and GOP attempts to make voting more restrictive. In March, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a complicated and controversial omnibus bill into law that makes changes to almost every part of the state's voting and election system. It was the first major election-related bill signed into law in a swing state after the 2020 election. Civil rights groups and Democrats decried the law, arguing it suppresses votes - particularly those of Black people. Delta, Coca-Cola, United, and other Georgia-based companies blasted the law in a wave of fierce corporate backlash. As Insider's Grace Panetta reported, the bill's impact on voters, election officials, and candidates will be complex and wide-ranging. For example, most counties will see expansions in early voting dates and hours, but legislators also shortened the window to request an absentee ballot. Demonstrators bring signs inside the Capitol building in support of House Bill 531 on March 8, 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. Photo by Megan Varner/Getty Images Wisconsin By how many votes did Biden win? Wisconsin proved to be another close state, but Biden narrowly won by 20,682 votes. The president won 49.6% compared to Trump's 48.9%, according to Politico. What are Republican lawmakers trying to do? Top Republican and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos in late May said he would hire retired police officers and an attorney to investigate parts of the November election that Republicans have raised issues about in the months since, including possible voter fraud. Vos said investigators would spend three months looking into evidence of any election issues and pursuing credible tips, though he told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel he acknowledges Biden's narrow Wisconsin win and is not trying to overturn the presidential election results. "Is there a whole lot of smoke or is there actual fire? We just don't know yet," Vos told the Journal Sentinel. State GOP has already tried unsuccessfully to raise some election issues in court, including accusations that $6 million in private grants were used to run elections in some of the state's largest cities, the outlet reported. The move comes after Republicans in February launched a different audit led by the state's nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau, whose work will be separate from the investigators Vos hires. State Democrats have voiced concerns the three-month investigation could erode public faith in an election that was conducted legitimately. Where are they in the process of an audit? Vos made his investigation announcement in May and said officials will likely complete a report by the fall. According to The Journal Sentinel, he has not ruled out referring some matters from the investigation to prosecutors in an attempt to identify election laws that should be changed. Have state lawmakers passed voting legislation since the 2020 election? The GOP-controlled state legislature in May passed bills making absentee voting more difficult in the state in an attempt to address some of the "issues" Republicans have raised about the 2020 election in the state. But Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has vowed to veto any legislation targeting voting rights and access in the state. Windham, New Hampshire By how many votes did Biden win? Biden beat Trump in New Hampshire by 59,277 votes. Biden won 52.9% of the state while Trump won 45.5% of the state, according to Politico. In Rockingham County, where the small town of Windham is located, Biden beat Trump by 4,206 votes. The president won 50.3% of the county while Trump secured 48.2%. What are skeptics trying to do? Concerns over election results in Windham, New Hampshire, a town of about 14,000 have focused on both alleged vote-count discrepancies and voting machine irregularities. According to The Washington Post, a Democrat who came in fifth in a race for a state legislature position requested a hand recount after a narrow loss. After the review, the margin of her loss grew from 24 votes to more than 400. Ross McLeod, the chairman of the local board of selectmen, told the outlet there was broad agreement in the town that some kind of recount was needed after that. "If there's an error found in the machines, you could extrapolate that to all the machines in New Hampshire. Then, it could go nationwide," he told The Post. Disagreements between the town selectmen and residents over who should run the recount came to a head in May, when almost 500 people attended a town meeting in order to voice their support for an auditor who served as a consultant in Maricopa County's recount instead of the selectman's choice of an experienced auditor who publicly questioned the need for the Maricopa County audit. Election officials tally votes by hand during a forensic election audit at the New Hampshire Army National Guard Regional Training Institute in Pemboke, N.H., on May 18, 2021. Photo by Elizabeth Frantz for The Washington Post via Getty Images Where are they in their recount process? The town's recount began on May 11. According to The Post, live-stream cameras and audio discussion followed each ballot as it was counted and volunteers working the audit were named online each day. Auditors concluded May 27 there was no evidence of fraud or partisanship in the extra vote tallies, and instead, determined the mistake was likely due to human error and an overworked folding machine, according to the local NBC News affiliate, WBTS. But Republicans in town are still clamoring for a wider audit, arguing a statewide recount may be needed to reassure worried voters, CNN reported. Have state lawmakers passed voting legislation since the 2020 election? Republicans in control of New Hampshire's legislature are considering a preemptive move against the sweeping federal voter-rights legislation being debated in Washington DC, the AP reported. The House Election Law Committee heard testimony in May on an amendment that would essentially bar any changes to the state's election system should Congress pass the "For the People Act." The legislation passed the Democrat-controlled House in DC but hit a wall in the 50-50 Senate. Cheboygan County, Michigan By how many votes did Biden win? Biden beat Trump in Michigan, a state Trump won in 2016, by 154,188 votes. The president won 50.6% of the vote compared to Trump's 47.8%, according to Politico. But in rural Cheboygan County in Northern Michigan, where desire for an audit is brewing, Trump beat Biden by 4,749 votes, winning 64.2% of the county compared to Biden's 34.3%. What are conservatives trying to do? In April, Doug Logan, founder of Cyber Ninjas, and Ben Cotton, a cybersecurity expert who is also involved in Arizona's audit, filed separate witness reports alleging security problems in the state's Dominion voting machines in a lawsuit in Antrim County, Michigan, hoping to spark a statewide election audit, according to the AP. A judge dismissed that case in May, but the men's allegations have been used by Michigan attorney Stephanie Lambert, who represented plaintiffs who sought to overturn state election results in the fall, as fodder for a future "forensic audit" of the voting machines in Cheboygan County, a small, rural area in northern Michigan. The Dominion machines have been an ongoing point of contention in Michigan after an early election night error in red Antrim County suggested Biden had a 3,000-vote lead over Trump, according to The Washington Post. The mistake was quickly corrected and attributed to human error, but that didn't stop Trump loyalists and Trump himself from zeroing in on the case and using it to stoke recount fervor. Where are they in the process of a possible audit? Lambert has offered to pay for an audit in Cheboygan County herself. Even after the Antrim County dismissal, one of Cheboygan's Republican commissioners, Steve Warfield, told The Post he thought Lambert's argument was credible and is thinking about voting in favor of the outside audit. The office of the Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, who is a Democrat, sent letters to both Cheboygan and Antrim county clerks in May, warning them the county boards have "no authority" to order election audits, The Post reported, and telling election clerks not to give outside parties access to conduct them. Dominion sent its own letter to every county in the state, warning them that offering up voting machines to nonaccredited auditors could break licensing agreements and render the equipment unusable, the newspaper reported. The examination is still in early stages, several members of the county board of commissioners told The Post in late May, and no decision has been made yet on whether to approve Lambert's offer. Have state lawmakers passed voting legislation since the 2020 election? Michigan Republicans in the state Senate have joined in the national GOP efforts to introduce new voting restrictions. Earlier this year, they had introduced nearly 40 election-reform bills, according to the Detroit Free Press. Most of the bills, which Republicans claim will make voting easier and some Democrats have called "racist," face an uphill battle toward becoming law, with a Democratic governor and Democratic-controlled Senate. But lawmakers in the GOP-controlled House on Wednesday also targeted the "For the People" bill in Congress, adopting a resolution that calls the federal legislation a "massive overreach into state election administration." People hold a sign claiming Trumps victory in the presidential elections during a rally in Fowlerville, Michigan on May 15, 2021. Photo by JEFF KOWALSKY/AFP via Getty Images San Luis Obispo, California By how many votes did Biden win? In the stalwart blue state, Biden beat Trump by 5,103,821 votes. The president nabbed 63.5% of the state, while Trump won 34.3%, according to Politico. In San Luis Obispo County, Biden beat Trump by 20,874 votes. He won 55.3% of the state while Trump won 42.2%. What are conservatives trying to do? In purple San Luis Obispo County, local Republicans are now calling for their own election audit. In May, a board of supervisors meeting, originally meant to be a discussion forum on the future of voting in the county, was overrun by nearly 100 people voicing their concerns and questions about the 2020 election results, according to KCRW. The meeting reportedly descended into debunked conspiracy theories and racist attacks against the county's chief elections official. Much of the group's focus centered around the county's Dominion voting machines, The Washington Post reported. Members of the community have since suggested the inundation of Trump-loyalists calling into the county's election meeting may have included several people who were not San Luis Obispo residents, the San Luis Obispo Tribune editorial board noted. Where are they in the process of a possible audit? It likely will not happen. In an op-ed for The Tribune, Tommy Gong, the county's chief elections official noted the forensic audit requested by Republicans in San Luis Obispo is not authorized under California law and would "violate the chain of custody of the voting system." "A recount could have been requested up to five days after the election was certified, but that time has long since passed," he wrote. Has voting legislation passed? Democrats in California's state legislature control both chambers and the governorship - though Gov. Gavin Newsom faces a recall - and no legislation aimed at limiting voting access has been passed in the state this year. Read the original article on Business Insider Orlando City aims to remain undefeated through the first FIFA international break of the 2021 season with a positive result on the road against the New York Red Bulls on Saturday. The Lions will look to notch their third straight win of the season when they kick off at Red Bull Arena at 1 p.m. The match will be broadcast on WRBW-65 and Lion Nation TV. After picking up a draw and a win on the road against Sporting Kansas City and D.C. United, the Lions are aiming to continue their road success in their third away match of the season. At the end, the players are the ones who execute the job, and the credit goes to them, coach Oscar Pareja said. [Its] a group of players who have been strong every day. They are trying to get better, and in this case defensively demanding to each other what we need to do in order to get the results. The Lions success throughout the seasons start has been powered by the teams defensive effort. Orlando City currently leads the league in defense, allowing only two goals and recording four shutouts. This stringent performance came despite a series of injuries along the backline, which caused starters Robin Jansson, Ruan and Joao Moutinho to rotate in and out of the lineup. The team has played three different combination of defenders in the past three games. Ruan and Moutinho both remain questionable for Saturdays match. The Lions defense will need to continue its stalwart streak as they face the Red Bulls energetic midfield. Despite a two-game losing skid, the Red Bulls midfielders have consistently found the net this season, bolstered by the teams youngest star 18-year-old Caden Clark. The midfielder already bagged three goals so far this season, and all of his goals have been scored on his home pitch. Both the backline and the midfield will be tasked with slowing down the young star as the front line still works to find its rhythm without strikers Daryl Dike and Alexandre Pato. The forwards, myself included, have been kind of up and down at times, striker Tesho Akindele said. But our defense has always been that backbone giving us the time to find our feet. Story continues The Lions will play their second straight match without their captain as winger Nani serves the second match of a suspension earned during the teams victory against D.C. United. The captain was retroactively assigned a two-game suspension by the MLS disciplinary committee following a collision with a referee during a scuffle at the end of the Lions 1-0 win in D.C. The suspension removed the Lions leading goal scorer from the pitch after Nani tallied in three consecutive games. But the suspension also paved the way for new addition Silvester van der Water to make his first start last week against Toronto. The Dutch winger quickly made an impact, assisting Akindele for the game-winning goal in the victory. Against the Red Bulls, van der Water could be a valuable asset for the Lions to pick up their second road win of the year. After Saturdays match, the Lions will take two weeks to rest along with the rest of the league for the international window except for midfielder Sebas Mendez and Pedro Gallese, who will get on a plane Sunday morning to head out to international duty for the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers. For the Lions, entering this break without a loss on their record will be an important step as the team chases the top spot in the Eastern Conference rankings. But Akindele emphasized that the team isnt letting itself focus on its record. I mean obviously being unbeaten is great, but you dont want to focus on that, Akindele said. Were just focused on playing good soccer [and] sticking to our system. This article first appeared on OrlandoSentinel.com. Email Julia Poe at jpoe@orlandosentinel.com. MANILA (Reuters) - The Philippines on Saturday said the country's workers could again go to work in Saudi Arabia, reversing a brief deployment ban after the kingdom said they would not be charged for COVID-19 tests and quarantine upon arrival. "Our Saudi-bound workers will no longer be disadvantaged," said Labour Secretary Silvestre Bello. Flag carrier Philippine Airlines said it will accept Filipino workers on flights to Dammam and Riyadh, waiving rebooking fees for passengers who had been unable to board because of the deployment ban. Bello apologised for the "inconvenience and momentary anguish" caused by his Thursday ban, saying, "I understand that the suspension order drew confusion and irritation among our affected departing overseas Filipino workers. More than a million Filipinos work in Saudi Arabia, the most preferred destination of overseas Filipino workers in 2019, government data show. Many Filipinos are hired as construction workers, domestic helpers or nurses. In 2020, Filipinos in Saudi Arabia sent home $1.8 billion in remittances, a key support for the consumption-led economy. With more than 1.2 million cases and 20,722 deaths, the Philippines has the second-highest COVID-19 infections and casualties in Southeast Asia, behind Indonesia. (Reporting by Neil Jerome Morales; Editing by William Mallard) The Telegraph Concern is mounting over two ships from the Iranian Navy thought to be carrying a cargo of missiles and speeding across the Atlantic Ocean toward Venezuela. The ships were mid-ocean on Saturday, after reportedly departing from the port of Bandar Abbas in early May. It marks the first time that the Iranian military has sent vessels to round the Cape of Good Hope and enter the Atlantic. Satellite images show the larger of the two ships, the Makran, a forward supply vessel, carrying small, fast att DUBAI (Reuters) -Qatar's public prosecution has charged a Kenyan man who has written about migrant rights in the Gulf Arab state with receiving payment to spread disinformation, the government's communication office (GCO) said on Saturday. Malcolm Bidali, who had been writing under a pseudonym, was arrested on May 5 for violating Qatar's security laws, according to a Qatari official. Rights groups have voiced concern that his detention may be in reprisal for human rights work. "Mr Bidali has been formally charged with offences related to payments received by a foreign agent for the creation and distribution of disinformation within the State of Qatar," the GCO said in a statement, without elaborating. It said his case was transferred to the Public Prosecution after a thorough investigation and that Bidali was "receiving legal advice and representation ahead of the court date, which has not yet been set". Rights groups including Amnesty International said in a statement on Friday that Bidali, a security guard and blogger, told his mother in a May 20 phone call that he was being held in solitary confinement and had no access to a lawyer. Qatar's official National Human Rights Committee (NHRC) said authorities gave unrestricted access to Bidali and "he was being treated properly". NHRC added staff from the Kenyan Embassy visited him and he had contacts with his family and the International Labour Organisation (ILO). Bidali had a week before his arrest given a presentation to a large group of civil society organisations and trade unions about his experience working in Qatar, according to an earlier statement by Amnesty, Migrant-Rights.org, Human Rights Watch, FairSquare and the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre. Qatar's human rights record has been in the spotlight as it prepares to host the 2022 soccer World Cup, especially over migrants' living and working conditions. Doha has introduced labour reforms that aimed to address some concerns. (Writing by Ghaida Ghantous; editing by Mark Potter and Jason Neely) Shawn Dunwoody, an artist and community organizer, on Union Street, where the Inner Loop has been filled in and walkable new urban development is under way, in Rochester, N.Y., May 17, 2021. (Mustafa Hussain/The New York Times) ROCHESTER, N.Y. Built in the 1950s to speed suburban commuters to and from downtown, Rochesters Inner Loop destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses, replacing them with a broad, concrete trench that separated downtown from the rest of the city. Now, the city is looking to repair the damage. It started by filling in a nearly-mile-long section of the sunken road, slowly stitching a neighborhood back together. Today, visitors of the Inner Loops eastern segment would hardly know a highway once ran beneath their feet. As midcentury highways reach the end of their life spans, cities across the country are having to choose whether to rebuild or reconsider them. And a growing number, like Rochester, are choosing to take them down. Sign up for The Morning newsletter from the New York Times The massive roads radically reshaped cities, plowing through dense downtown neighborhoods, dividing many Black communities and increasing car dependence. In order to accommodate cars and commuters, many cities basically destroyed themselves, said Norman Garrick, a professor at the University of Connecticut who studies how transportation projects have reshaped American cities. Rochester has shown what can be done in terms of reconnecting the city and restoring a sense of place, he said. Thats really the underlying goal of highway removal. The projects successes and stumbling blocks provide lessons for other cities looking to retire some of their own aging highways. Nearly 30 cities nationwide are currently discussing some form of removal. Some, like Syracuse and Detroit, have committed to replacing stretches of interstate with more connected, walkable neighborhoods. Others, like New Orleans and Dallas, are facing pressure from local residents and activists to address the pollution, noise and safety hazards brought by the mega-roads. The growing movement has been energized by support from the Biden administration, which has made addressing racial justice and climate change, major themes in the debate over highway removal, central to its agenda. Story continues In a wide-reaching infrastructure plan released at the end of March, President Joe Biden proposed spending $20 billion to help reconnect neighborhoods divided by highways. Congressional Democrats have translated the proposal into legislation that would provide funding over the next five years. And the Department of Transportation opened up separate grants that could help some cities get started. Pete Buttigieg, who heads the department, has expressed support for removing barriers that divided Black and minority communities, saying that there is racism physically built into some of our highways. Midcentury highway projects often targeted Black neighborhoods, destroying cultural and economic centers and bringing decades of environmental harm. Congress is still haggling over Bidens infrastructure plan, but experts say the proposed funding for highway removal represents a shift in the way the government approaches transportation projects. As recently as a decade ago, said Peter D. Norton, a transportation historian at the University of Virginia, every transportation problem was a problem to be solved with new roads. Now, the impacts of those roads are beginning to enter the equation. Back to a Neighborhood Federal and state funds have historically gone to building highways, not removing them. But in 2013, the city of Rochester, in upstate New York, won a nearly $18 million grant from the Obama administration that allowed it to take out an eastern segment of its sunken Inner Loop freeway, known locally as the moat. The project turned a six-lane highway, with access roads running alongside, into a narrower boulevard, and the rest of the land was opened up for development. People have already moved into town house-style apartments where the highway once stood. Scooters and bicycles share space with cars along the new Union Street corridor, a once unlikely sight. Several cross-streets cut off by the highway have been reconnected, encouraging more walking in the area. And the big fear of removing a highway terrible traffic hasnt materialized. Lovely Warren, who has served as Rochesters mayor since 2014, said the project is proof the city can undo some of its mistakes. In the past, we created a way for people to get on a highway and go directly out of our community, she said, adding that highways also created barriers that were really detrimental to the communities left behind. Now, Rochester is trying a different approach: Instead of moving people in and out of downtown as quickly as possible, the city is trying to make downtown a more livable place. The highway removal and other deconstruction projects are part of a long-term plan for a city still struggling to come back from years of economic and population decline. The big bet: Rebuilding more walkable, bikeable and connected neighborhoods will attract new investment and new residents. And city officials hope it might even reduce car-dependence in the long run. But rebuilding a neighborhood from scratch isnt easy, or quick. Four years after the sunken freeway was filled, many buildings along the corridor are still under construction and new businesses have not yet moved into the space, including a planned pharmacy and grocery store. Local residents and business owners said they were glad to see the highway go, but many of them had mixed feelings about what followed. The success was: It got filled. You now have people living somewhere that was just road before, said Shawn Dunwoody, an artist and community organizer who lives in Marketview Heights, a neighborhood near the removal site. We dont have the moat that was there, he said, walking along the new corridor. But now, when you look down, theres just a whole series of walls, he added, pointing to the large, new apartment buildings that repeat down Union Street. Others echoed the concern that the redevelopment project brought in too many higher-end apartments (though a portion are reserved for lower-income tenants and other vulnerable groups) without opening up any space for the public: No parks, no plazas. Erik Frisch, a transportation specialist for the city who worked on the Inner Loop East removal, said the project has so far fulfilled its main goals: bringing in new investment and enlivening the citys East End. But the new neighborhood is still a work in progress. Rebuilding a neighborhood is not just an Add water, mix and stir type situation, said Emily Morry, who works at the Rochester Public Library and has written about the neighborhoods razed by the Inner Loops construction. You can set up all the infrastructure you like, but theres the human factor, which takes all these different buildings and turns them into actual, viable communities. Rochester is now looking to take down more of the Inner Loop highway, starting with a northern arm. Officials hope the experience from the first removal will help expedite the process. It took more than two decades of planning to break ground on the Inner Loop East removal, even though the project faced fewer obstacles than most. The eastern highway segment never carried the traffic it was built to serve, so its removal faced scant opposition from daily commuters and business groups. The aging road was due for major upgrades, which would have cost much more than the entire removal process. And there werent a lot of people already living along the corridor. Funding and expertise were the biggest barriers to removal. A few highways had been taken down in the past, but there was no real template. San Franciscos Embarcadero Freeway was irreparably damaged by an earthquake in 1989 and removed two years later. Other, more recent removals targeted waterfront highways and short spurs rather than segments of a working highway. We are a bit of a proof of concept, said Frisch, the citys transportation specialist. Removing the northern arm of the Inner Loop presents a new challenge. That section of highway carries much more traffic and its removal would reconnect two long-divided neighborhoods: Marketview Heights, a majority Black and Hispanic lower-income community north of the Inner Loop, and Grove Place, a whiter, wealthier enclave to the south. For current residents of Marketview Heights, the crucial question is: What will reconnection bring? More opportunity and less pollution? Or another round of displacement? Dozens of Projects In recent years, more cities have started to seriously rethink some of their highways. The Congress for the New Urbanism, a group that tracks highway removals, counted 33 proposed projects in 28 American cities. And the idea is being discussed in many others. If rebuilding cities is done right, highway removal projects could make life better for local residents as well as the planet, said Garrick of the University of Connecticut, because denser, less car-centric neighborhoods are crucially important to reducing greenhouse gases that are causing climate change. The proposed replacements, and their benefits, vary. Some follow Rochesters model, turning former highways into smaller, walkable boulevards. Others are covering highways with parks, or merely replacing them with highway-like streets. Nationwide, many cities also continue to expand highways. A growing number of removal projects are grappling with the questions of environmental justice central to Bidens proposal. Historically, vulnerable communities have had little say in infrastructure decisions. When the National Interstate Highway System was built in the 1950s and 60s, it connected the country like never before. But it plowed through cities with little concern for local effects. State highways and connector roads compounded the damage. Highways, freeways, expressways were always hostile to cities, said Norton of the University of Virginia. But they were particularly hostile to Black communities. In cities like Detroit, New Orleans, Richmond, Virginia, and many more, federal interstates and other highways were often built through thriving Black neighborhoods in the name of slum clearance. Most highway projects fit into a broader program of urban renewal that reshaped American cities in the mid-20th century, displacing more than a million people across the country, most of them Black. Cities replaced dense, mixed-use neighborhoods with megaprojects like convention centers, malls, and highways. When public housing was built, it usually replaced many fewer units than were destroyed. Clearing blighted neighborhoods, which was usually a reference to low-income and Black areas, was the intentional goal of many urban highway projects, said Lynn Richards, president of the Congress for the New Urbanism, which advocates for more sustainable cities. But, you know, where one person sees urban blight, another person sees a relatively stable neighborhood. Highways didnt just destroy communities, they also often reinforced racial divides within cities. White Americans increasingly fled cities altogether, following newly built roads to the growing suburbs. But Black residents were largely barred from doing the same. Government policies denied them access to federally backed mortgages and private discrimination narrowed the options further. In effect, that left many Black residents living along the highways paths. In March, Biden named New Orleans Claiborne Expressway as a vivid example of how highway construction divided communities and led to environmental injustice. The highway looms over Claiborne Avenue, once an oak-lined boulevard that served as the economic heart and soul of the Black community of New Orleans, said Amy Stelly, a local resident and urban planner, who has been pushing for the expressways removal for most of the last decade. A part of the Treme neighborhood, the Claiborne Avenue corridor was a meeting space for local residents and the site of Black Mardi Gras celebrations at a time when the festival was still segregated. In the mid-1960s, the oak trees were ripped out to make way for the highway, cleaving the neighborhood in two. Over the following decades, the once middle-class area fell into decline. Today, the expressway corridor is polluted: Local residents suffer higher than average rates of asthma and the soil is contaminated with lead, the result of years of leaded gasoline use in cars traveling into and out of downtown. The idea of removing the highway, however, is raising some of the same concerns heard in Rochester. Not Repeating Mistakes Older residents of Rochesters Marketview Heights neighborhood still remember the displacement caused by the construction of the Inner Loop. Many people now fear a second wave if it is removed. A common argument, said Dunwoody, the artist and community organizer, is that if the highway is removed folks are now going to be looking at our neighborhood, and bringing in yoga studios and coffee shops to move us out. People dont want to get gentrified, get pushed out, get priced out, he said. To make sure that city officials listen to these concerns, Dunwoody started a local advocacy group three years ago with Suzanne Mayer, who lives on the other side of the highway, in the Grove Place neighborhood. The group, called Hinge Neighbors, aims to bring local residents into the planning process. At a community meeting in Marketview Heights in early May, the biggest question on peoples minds wasnt whether the highway should come down, but what will replace it. Miquel Powell, a local resident and business owner working on a prison re-entry program, worried that more large-scale apartments, like those built in the East End, would come to the neighborhood. That would totally change the whole dynamic, he said. Marketview Heights is mostly free-standing single-family homes; some are subdivided and most are rented. Nancy Maciuska, who is in her 60s, said she wants to see more family-centric development in the area if the highway is removed, and some parks to replace those torn down by the construction of the freeway. So people can raise their families and enjoy Mother Nature, she said. Hinge Neighbors helped Maciuska, Powell and other residents put some of their concerns about the Inner Loop North project into a presentation for city consultants and the mayor. The project is still in early stages and Marketview Heights is only one corner of the area under study for removal. But Warren said her administration is exploring options that would help keep longtime residents in the neighborhood, including potential rent-to-own housing arrangements. City officials are scheduled to present a series of options for the project to the community this summer. The big challenge, according to Garrick, is that new investments in American cities today tend to lead to gentrification. We need to figure out how to change without displacing people, he said. Some of the positive effects of highway removals, like decreasing pollution and increasing property values, can lead to the displacement. A recent study looked at the effects of replacing the Cypress Freeway in Oakland, California, with a street-level boulevard and found that the project decreased pollution but increased resident turnover. Such environmental gentrification can also happen when parks and other greenery are introduced to historically disadvantaged neighborhoods. The proposed Democratic legislation hopes to avoid that paradox. The bill would fund community outreach and engagement by local groups. And it prioritizes capital construction grants for projects that include measures like land trusts that would ensure the availability of affordable housing for local residents. Its no longer good enough for us to remove a highway and make a replacement road beautiful, said Richards of the Congress for the New Urbanism. We have to reconnect the neighborhoods and invest in the legacy residents. This article originally appeared in The New York Times. 2021 The New York Times Company Xi stresses sci-tech self-strengthening at higher levels Xinhua) 09:08, May 29, 2021 Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Ju Peng) -- Sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening should always be considered a strategic support for national development, Xi said. -- Xi called for resolute efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. -- China's science and technology should make greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity, Xi said. BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- President Xi Jinping on Friday called for accelerated efforts in building China into a leader in science and technology and achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while addressing a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). Sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening should always be considered a strategic support for national development, he said. Xi said scientific and technological development must target the global sci-tech frontiers, serve the main economic battlefields, strive to fulfill the significant needs of the country and benefit people's lives and health. Scientists and engineers must closely follow current trends, take the initiative, confront problems head-on, and overcome difficulties, he added. Xi said the meeting is an important occasion to discuss the country's plans for promoting sci-tech innovation and development, as China is on a new journey to fully build a modern socialist country. On behalf of the CPC Central Committee, he extended congratulations to the meeting, and greetings to professionals serving at various sci-tech posts. A meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang) Noting the CPC has always attached great importance to science and technology, Xi said sci-tech innovation has been placed at the core of China's overall development since the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017. He praised the progress made in sci-tech innovation, basic research, original innovation, strategic sci-tech and high-end industries, as well as the significant role of science and technology in containing the COVID-19 epidemic. Major progress has been made in basic research and original innovation, including quantum information, stem cells, and brain science. The Chang'e-5 probe has brought back the country's first samples collected from the moon. China's first Mars rover started exploring the red planet. China's high-end industries, including large passenger aircraft and magnetic-levitation train industries, saw fast development. Industries related to artificial intelligence, digital economy, 5G, and electric vehicles are thriving. Science and technology have provided firm support for the country's response to COVID-19. China succeeded in isolating the world's first novel coronavirus strain and also developed various medicines and vaccines. Xi urged China's sci-tech professionals to assume the responsibilities of the times and strive for sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels. A meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang) KEY TASKS IDENTIFIED Xi called for resolute efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. Sci-tech breakthroughs should tackle the most pressing issues with a focus on meeting the country's needs, both urgent and long-term, he said. Xi also called for enhancing the overall efficacy of the national innovation system, calling on national laboratories, national scientific research institutions, high-caliber research-oriented universities and leading sci-tech enterprises to shoulder their responsibilities in the drive. Xi stressed the need to advance the reform of the sci-tech system to form a basic system of supporting innovation in all aspects. The new system concentrating nationwide effort and resources on key national sci-tech undertakings should be improved in the context of the socialist market economy, while more autonomy should be given to research institutions, he said, adding that scientists must be further empowered to decide their technical routes and how to use research funds. Xi called for more participation in global sci-tech governance with a focus on issues such as climate change and human health, as well as more joint research and development with scientific researchers from other countries. Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang) China's science and technology should make greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity, he said. In building a global center of talent, the country should strive to cultivate top sci-tech talent with global influence and more high-caliber technical and skilled professionals, he said. Highlighting the role of the two academies, Xi called on them to solve major original scientific problems and overcome challenges in core technologies in key fields that hinder China's development. Xi highlighted the duty of the CAST to rally sci-tech workers closely around the Party, urging the association to carry forward the spirit of scientists, and promote openness, trust, and cooperation with the international sci-tech community. "Members of the two academies are the treasure of the country, the source of pride of the people, and the glory of the nation," Xi noted, calling on them to respond to the Party's call, pursue excellence, and hold fast to academic morality and research ethics. Friday's event, attended by about 3,000 sci-tech professionals and officials, was presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng -- all being members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee -- also attended the meeting. Li Keqiang said Xi's speech made clear the major tasks in accelerating the building of China's sci-tech strength. The spirit of the speech must be thoroughly implemented. Chinese scientists were encouraged by Xi's speech. Liu Zhongmin, an academician of the CAE, said he expects a boom of innovation with more supporting policies rolled out. "Through self-reliance and self-strengthening, and by following the leadership of the Party, our country will make tremendous development achievements," said Wang Guodong, a professor at Northeastern University and also an academician of the CAE. "As a major country, China will contribute to humanity's wellbeing with its science and technology," Wang said. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Standage sued Superintendent Vice Adm. Sean Buck and the secretary of the Navy, at the time Kenneth Braithwaite, to block his expulsion from the Naval Academy after the academy moved to separate him over his tweets. The academy claimed the basis for expulsion was that Standage violated the academys social media policy and had unbecoming behavior for a midshipman. Reuters (Reuters) -The U.S. Food & Drug Administration on Friday said Johnson & Johnson must throw away millions of doses of its COVID-19 vaccine that were manufactured at a problem-plagued Baltimore factory but also cleared millions for use. Without disclosing or confirming the number of vaccine doses, the FDA said in a news release that it had authorized two batches of the vaccine for use, that several other batches were not suitable for use and that others were being evaluated. The agency said it was not yet ready to authorize Emergent BioSolutions Inc's plant for manufacturing the J&J vaccine. KABUL (Reuters) - A roadside bomb hit a bus carrying university staff in northern Afghanistan on Saturday, killing three teachers and wounding 15 others, police said on Saturday. The incident took place in Charikar, the provincial capital of Parwan. The bus was carrying teachers from Al-Biruni university, said a spokesman for the provincial police, Salim Noori. Some of the wounded teachers were in critical condition, said Hamed Obaidi, a spokesman for the ministry of higher education. No group claimed responsibility for the incident. Roadside bombs, small magnetic bombs attached under vehicles and other attacks have targeted members of security forces, judges, government officials, civil society activists and journalists in recent months in Afghanistan. The government usually blames the Taliban for such attacks but the insurgent group denies involvement. Violence has sharply increased since Washington announced plans last month to pull out all U.S. troops out of Afghanistan by Sept. 11. Three weeks ago, a bomb attack outside a school in the capital Kabul killed 68 people, most of them students, and wounded 165 others. Nearly 1,800 Afghan civilians were killed or wounded in the first three months of 2021 during fighting between government forces and Taliban insurgents despite efforts to find peace, the United Nations said last month. (Reporting by Kabul Bureau; Editing by Frances Kerry) Friends and family members of the nine victims have held vigils for their loved ones The man who killed nine people in California this week had 12 firearms, more than 20 cans of petrol, and approximately 22,000 rounds of ammunition at his house, police say. Samuel Cassidy, an employee at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) site in San Jose, opened fire at the site on Wednesday. He killed himself as police closed in, officers said. The mass shooting was the California Bay area's deadliest since 1993. So far this year, the US has recorded 233 mass shootings, the Gun Violence Archive reports. According to the local sheriff's office, this was "a planned event and the suspect was prepared to use his firearms to take as many lives as he possibly could". Police announced on Friday that the gunman had also set his home on fire before the attack. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. Guns were hidden in crawl spaces and doorways, a spokesman told reporters at a press conference. The home was "very cluttered", he said. Officers also said Cassidy had put bullets in a cooking pot on the stove, which detonated and set the house on fire. An FBI agent quoted by Reuters news agency said this blaze probably destroyed evidence which could have helped provide a motive for the shooting. Who were the victims? Paul Delacruz Megia, 42 Taptejdeep Singh, 36 Adrian Balleza, 29 Jose Dejesus Hernandez III, 35 Timothy Michael Romo, 49 Michael Joseph Rudometkin, 40 Abdolvahab Alaghmandan, 63 Lars Kepler Lane, 63 Alex Ward Fritch, 49 Emergency services were responding to reports of a fire at what was later found to be Cassidy's home at the same time as police were heading to the scene of the shooting. Shots were first fired at around 06:30 local time (14:45 GMT) on Wednesday at the VTA site in San Jose. Officers said Cassidy was armed with three semi-automatic hand guns when he opened fire after a morning union meeting. Sheriff Laurie Smith added on Friday that Cassidy's locker at the rail yard had "materials for bombs, detonator cords, the precursors to an explosive". Cassidy's ex-wife, Cecilia Nelms, told the Associated Press news agency that he told her he wanted to kill his colleagues, but she had never believed he would do it. Doug Suh, a neighbour of Cassidy, told the Mercury News that he was "lonely" and "strange". Thousands of people are killed by guns in the US every year. In April President Joe Biden announced new actions to tackle gun violence. DUBAI (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia is lifting a ban on travelers arriving from 11 countries that it imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus, the Saudi state news agency said on Saturday, but will still require quarantine procedures. Travelers from the United Arab Emirates, Germany, the United States, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Switzerland, France and Japan, will be allowed entry from Sunday, SPA reported, quoting an Interior Ministry source. (Reporting by Hadeel Al Sayegh; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Frances Kerry) The father of an elected member of the Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council in Montana who was assaulted and left for dead said Friday that whoever attacked his daughter did not break her will. A battered Silver Little Eagle, 24, was found earlier this month in a Billings hotel room. She remains strong. She is going to fight for justice, said her father, Goldstein Little Eagle. She is pulling through. She is in recovery and she is healing. The councilwoman was elected in November to represent the Lame Deer District, her father said. Silver Little Eagles relatives said in a May 20 statement that her injuries were severe. Silver Little Eagle was brutally attacked in Billings, Montana, and left for dead, the statement said. Had Councilwoman Little Eagle not been found by a family member, it is very likely she would have died from this violent attack. While not confirming Silver Little Eagle's identity, Billings police said this week in a statement that a female victim was found in a room at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the morning of May 16. Personal property was missing, and her vehicle had been stolen, police said. Police said they also received a report that a 31-year-old man was "assaulted at the same time and location as the female victim." Detectives have not found any evidence that Silver Little Eagle's attack was tied to human trafficking or was racially motivated, police said. No one has been arrested, but police said they wanted to speak to two women, ages 25 and 27, who were identified as persons of interest. One of the women apparently knew the man who was assaulted, investigators said. There is believed to be a partner family member association between the 31 year old male and the 27 year old female person of interest, police said in the statement. Further, it is believed there is some type of association between all parties involved and the crime is not believed to be a random act of violence. Story continues A department spokesman did not respond to multiple requests for comment Friday. Goldstein Little Eagle said he expected police to eventually arrest a suspect or multiple suspects. Investigators are working hard, and we are keeping up to date with them, he said. They are going to make sure that they have everything they need compiled before the very important next step. Goldstein Little Eagle said he could not imagine who would want to hurt his daughter, who he described as "a generous soul." Before her election to the tribal council, she provided healing remedies to tribal members sick with Covid-19. She also would often help feed older people, he said. She just cares deeply for her Cheyenne people, he said. He said his daughter now has a new mission: to empower Native American women who have endured violence. There are too many Native women out there that when this stuff happens, it gets thrown under the rug," Goldstein Little Eagle said. "What I see with her story is, its going to help someone. Its going to help others. Silver Little Eagles assault is another painful reminder of the high rate of violence toward Indigenous women in Montana, her family said in its statement. We recognize that behind these statistics are real women sisters, daughters, mothers, and tribal leaders!" it said. "Native women continue to face ongoing violence, and this must stop! The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, using 2018 data from the National Vital Statistics System, said homicide was the sixth-leading cause of death among American Indian and Alaska Native women between the ages of 1 and 44. The family statement said Silver Little Eagle has been the victim of threats, cyberbullying and defamation since the assault. Her father said she is no longer online. But she said in a Facebook post before the attack that in times of cruelty and hatred, prayer, compassion and kindness win. That just hit me, her father said, his voice cracking. She was beaten so badly. CORRECTION (May 29, 2021, 12:16 p.m. ET): A previous photo caption with this article misidentified a Cheyenne tribal councilwoman who was severely beaten and left for dead. Her name is Silver Little Eagle, not Little Silver Eagle. By Nelson Renteria SANTA ANA, El Salvador (Reuters) -In his wrinkled hands, Jose de la Cruz held a tangled gold-colored necklace adorned with hearts and a pendant spelling out the word "love." The necklace belonged to his granddaughter Jacquelinne Palomo Lima, one of more than a dozen people suspected to have been murdered by a former El Savaldoran police officer, Hugo Osorio, in his home. De la Cruz, 79, also lost his daughter Mirna Cruz Lima and grandson Alexis Palomo Lima inside that house, according to police, in an atrocity that has shocked all El Salvador. "My soul has left me," he said in an interview at his daughter's home, the walls of which were lined with diplomas and stacks of books on literature, physics and medicine. Alexis, a fourth-year medical student, was planning to travel to the United States to look for work and buy a house for his family back in El Salvador, de la Cruz recalled. The family raised $7,000 for the trip by mortgaging de la Cruz's house and contacted Osorio's brother, who allegedly worked as a human smuggler, de la Cruz said. But nothing went according to plan. After the family delivered the money, Osorio arrived at the store where Mirna and Jacquelinne worked, saying that Alexis had been kidnapped but that he knew where he was being held, according to an account told to de la Cruz. He would not say who told him. The two women then got into his car and traveled to his home in the municipality of Chalchuapa, some 80 km (50 miles) northwest of the capital San Salvador, according to this account. Police say that once Osorio got the two into the house he murdered Alexis and Mirna, while Jacquelinne escaped and ran down the street screaming. Osorio quickly recaptured her and, after dragging her back inside, killed her, the police said. A neighbor, alerted by the sound of her screams, called the police, authorities say. After discovering the bodies of Mirna, Jacquelinne, and Alexis, and arresting Osorio, authorities found a mass grave containing many more corpses. Story continues Reuters has been unable to obtain information from the Attorney General's office or the Security Ministry about the precise number of victims. The Attorney General's office has said that the majority of the victims may be women. El Salvador's national police chief, Mauricio Arriaza, said Osorio was removed from police ranks 15 years ago after he was convicted of raping a woman and a minor, crimes for which he was sentenced to five years in jail. Osorio is currently being held in a maximum security prison charged with the killing of two women and two men. Sexual violence is the leading theory for the killings, according to prosecutors. Authorities also point to the possibility of a wider conspiracy as 10 others have been charged with murdering nine women in presumably related homicides, along with four other murders of victims whose bodies have turned up in the grave. "I can't judge him. It's God who is going to judge that day, the living and the dead," de la Cruz said. (Reporting by Nelson RenteriaEditing by Sonya Hepinstall) Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. For example, biotech and mining exploration companies often lose money for years before finding success with a new treatment or mineral discovery. But the harsh reality is that very many loss making companies burn through all their cash and go bankrupt. So, the natural question for Beowulf Mining (LON:BEM) shareholders is whether they should be concerned by its rate of cash burn. In this report, we will consider the company's annual negative free cash flow, henceforth referring to it as the 'cash burn'. First, we'll determine its cash runway by comparing its cash burn with its cash reserves. Check out our latest analysis for Beowulf Mining Does Beowulf Mining Have A Long Cash Runway? You can calculate a company's cash runway by dividing the amount of cash it has by the rate at which it is spending that cash. As at March 2021, Beowulf Mining had cash of UK4.7m and no debt. Importantly, its cash burn was UK1.6m over the trailing twelve months. That means it had a cash runway of about 3.0 years as of March 2021. That's decent, giving the company a couple years to develop its business. The image below shows how its cash balance has been changing over the last few years. How Is Beowulf Mining's Cash Burn Changing Over Time? Beowulf Mining didn't record any revenue over the last year, indicating that it's an early stage company still developing its business. Nonetheless, we can still examine its cash burn trajectory as part of our assessment of its cash burn situation. Even though it doesn't get us excited, the 24% reduction in cash burn year on year does suggest the company can continue operating for quite some time. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Beowulf Mining due to its lack of significant operating revenues. We prefer most of the stocks on this list of stocks that analysts expect to grow. Story continues How Easily Can Beowulf Mining Raise Cash? While Beowulf Mining is showing a solid reduction in its cash burn, it's still worth considering how easily it could raise more cash, even just to fuel faster growth. Generally speaking, a listed business can raise new cash through issuing shares or taking on debt. Commonly, a business will sell new shares in itself to raise cash and drive growth. By looking at a company's cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year's cash burn. Since it has a market capitalisation of UK34m, Beowulf Mining's UK1.6m in cash burn equates to about 4.6% of its market value. That's a low proportion, so we figure the company would be able to raise more cash to fund growth, with a little dilution, or even to simply borrow some money. How Risky Is Beowulf Mining's Cash Burn Situation? It may already be apparent to you that we're relatively comfortable with the way Beowulf Mining is burning through its cash. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. Its cash burn reduction wasn't quite as good, but was still rather encouraging! After taking into account the various metrics mentioned in this report, we're pretty comfortable with how the company is spending its cash, as it seems on track to meet its needs over the medium term. Readers need to have a sound understanding of business risks before investing in a stock, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Beowulf Mining that potential shareholders should take into account before putting money into a stock. Of course, you might find a fantastic investment by looking elsewhere. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies, and this list of stocks growth stocks (according to analyst forecasts) This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned. Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com. OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) Jake Thompson drew a bases loaded walk in the top of the ninth and No. 4-seed Oklahoma State beat top-seeded Texas 5-4 on Saturday to secure a trip to the Big 12 Tournament championship game. The Cowboys (35-16-1) will face the winner between second-seeded TCU and No. 7-seed Kansas State in Sunday's finale. Oklahoma State has won all three of its games in the tournament and currently are on a five game winning streak. Thompson broke a 2-2 with a single to right field with runners at second and third base in the top of the fifth. Texas (42-15) tied it at 4 in its half of the fifth when Dylan Campbell scored on a throwing error and Mike Antico scored on a fielder's choice. Oklahoma State now has advanced to the tourney final five times under coach Josh Holliday including; 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. The Cowboys won Big 12 championship titles in 2004, 2017 and 2019. (Reuters) - U.S. companies can mandate that employees in a workplace must be vaccinated against COVID-19, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) said on Friday. The EEOC, in a statement posted on its website explaining its updated guidance, said employees can be required to be vaccinated as long as employers comply with the reasonable accommodation provisions of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws. In addition, employers may offer incentives to workers to be vaccinated, as long as they are not coercive, it said. The vast majority of employers have been reluctant to require workers to be vaccinated. A survey by management-side law firm Fisher Phillips earlier this year found that only 9% of the more than 700 employers surveyed said they were considering mandating vaccines. (Reporting by Sahil Shaw in Bengaluru; Editing by Leslie Adler) WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit filed against former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr and other officials over the forceful pushing back of peaceful protesters at a White House demonstration last year, the Washington Post reported. Trump and other U.S. officials should be considered immune from civil lawsuits over police actions taken to protect a president and to secure his movements, the Justice Department lawyers said, according to the Post. The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and other groups over the treatment of protesters at a demonstration against racism and police brutality on June 1, 2020, in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, in Minneapolis after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than nine minutes. President Joe Biden's administration sought its dismissal. Trump left office in January. Federal agents on horseback used tear gas to clear the protesters from Lafayette Square near the White House. The sweep allowed Trump to stage a photo opportunity at a nearby church in which he held up a copy of the Bible. A fire set during earlier protests had caused minor damage at the church. The lawsuit sought an order declaring that Trump, Barr and other officials violated the constitutional rights of the demonstrators. (Reporting by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Will Dunham) Ocean City EMS rendered emergency medical care before two victims were flown to Tidal Health by Maryland State Police Trooper 4, and the third was flown to Christiana Hospital by Delaware State Police Trooper 2. The fourth victim was not taken to the hospital, police said. WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Biden administration said on Friday it is drawing up a list of targeted sanctions against key members of the Belarusian government following the former Soviet republic's forced landing of a passenger jet and arrest of a journalist on board. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the United States was also suspending a 2019 agreement between Washington and Minsk that allowed carriers from each country to use the other's airspace, and taking other actions against the government of President Alexander Lukashenko. In a statement, she called on Lukashenko to allow a credible international investigation into the events of May 23, when the Ryanair passenger jet flying from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk. Belarusian authorities scrambled a fighter jet and flagged what turned out to be a false bomb alert to force the plane to land, then detained an opposition journalist who was on board, drawing condemnation from Europe and the United States. Psaki said the United States, with the EU and other allies, was developing a list of targeted sanctions against key members of Lukashenko's government "associated with ongoing abuses of human rights and corruption, the falsification of the 2020 election, and the events of May 23". The United States last year imposed sanctions on eight Belarus officials over an August 2020 election that the West said was rigged. President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that sanctions against Belarus were "in play", without giving details. The Treasury Department will develop an executive order for Biden to sign that will provide increased authorities to impose sanctions on elements of Lukashenko's government, and the United States will re-impose "full blocking sanctions" on nine Belarusian state-owned enterprises on June 3, prohibiting U.S. persons from dealing with those businesses. Last month the United States revoked an authorization for certain transactions with the nine sanctioned state-owned enterprises over alleged human rights violations and abuses. (Reporting by Jason Lange; Writing by Mohammad Zargham; Editing by Leslie Adler and Daniel Wallis) Belize Police via Facebook The daughter-in-law of a politically connected British billionaire was being questioned in Belize on Friday in connection with the death of the high-ranking police official the night before, local outlets reported. Jasmine Hartin, who is married to the son of Lord Michael Ashcroft, was reportedly socializing with Superintendent Henry Jemmott before he was found dead of a single gunshot wound to the head. Authorities have not said whether they believe he was murdered, killed accidentally, or died by suicide. We have to look at every possibility, Police Chief Chester Williams said at a news conference, according to Belizes Channel 5 news. Hartin has not been charged with any crimes. She initially did not cooperate with investigators and retained the former attorney general of Belize as her lawyer, Williams said. The attorney had not made any public comment about the investigation as of Friday night. Hartin is a U.S. national who lives in Belize with her husband, Andrew Ashcroft, the youngest son of Lord Ashcroft, a top donor to the U.K.s Conservative Party who once served as Belizes ambassador to the United Nations and has extensive business holdings in the country. Hartins LinkedIn profile says she is the director of lifestyle and experience at the Alaia Belize resort, which had its grand opening just two weeks ago. According to the police chief, Hartin and Jemmott were out drinking a pier in San Pedro at 12:30 a.m. on Friday morningpast COVID curfewwhen a single gunshot rang out. Upon investigating, police found the female on a pier and she had what appeared to be blood on her arms and on her clothing, Williams told reporters. And inside the waters, right near the pier, police recovered the lifeless body of Mister Jemmott, with one apparent gunshot wound behind the right ear. He said the weapon used was Jemmotts service gun, which was recovered at the scene. He was not on duty; officials said he had asked for time off to deal with some personal issues. Story continues Marie Jemmott Tzul, the victims sister, told Belizes Channel 7 news that she did not believe it could be suicide. I would say my brother would never kill himself. My brother had a passion for life, he look forward for his children, his five children and his fiancee and me and the other family members, she said. The chief said he was treating the investigation like any other case despite the immense wealth, political connections, and high profile of the Ashcrofts. Someone is responsible for his death. We owe it to him to ensure that we investigate properly and bring that person or those persons to justice, Williams said of the victim. I can emphatically state that I have not received any calls from anybody above me directing that we deal with the matter in one way or the other. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more. Isle Martin has now closed applications for a caretaker role. (Isle Martin Trust) A 400-acre uninhabited Scottish island has been forced to close applications for a summer caretaker job after it was swamped with applications. The Isle Martin Trust announced it would not be accepting any more applications three days earlier than planned on Saturday. It had invited single people and couples to register their interest in the job which would involve maintaining the island, off the west coast of Scotland, from June to the end of September. No one lives there permanently, so it could get lonely if youre by yourself, but that did not deter people from applying in large numbers. Read more: Map shows where COVID cases are increasing and decreasing around the world Isle Martin is located off the west coast of Scotland. (Google) The Isle Martin Trust charity wrote on Facebook: The post for caretaker is now closed for applications We're sorry but due to the publicity we have been swamped with applications and messages. Thank you all so much for your interest but we are unable to respond to any more communications for the foreseeable future. If you have emailed with an application up to 10.30am Saturday 29th May your application will be considered but if you don't hear from us by June 10th it is not being taken further. Please don't email any related addresses you may find. Isle Martin has two beaches, a small museum and offers excellent views from a hill for birdwatching but there's no running hot water The winning applicant will be the first full-time resident on the island for 30 years. The Isle Martin Trust hopes to generate new interest in the location and implement a plastic-free and sustainable future. Read more: Young people with one vaccine dose can still be hospitalised by COVID, says expert Trust director Becky Thomson told the BBC what the caretaker position involves, saying: "It is a bit of housekeeping. They need to keep the three houses on the island prepared for guests, clean the public toilets, welcome the visitors and make sure they are sticking to Covid safety measures." The caretaker will work three hours a day and be compensated by living in accommodation on the island and getting 150 expenses per week. The only requirement was that at least one of the applicants must have powerboat driving competency, as the closest mainland is almost a mile away. May 29Wilberforce University announced during their spring graduation Saturday that the school is wiping out $375,000 in debt and fines owed to the school by graduates from spring 2020 through those who graduated yesterday. School President Elfred Anthony Pinkard told the May 2021 graduates the news at the end of Saturday's commencement. The commencement ceremony hosted the classes of 2020 and 2021. "As these graduates begin their lives as responsible adults, we are honored to be able to give them a fresh start by relieving their student debt to the university," Pinkard said in a release issued by the college. The move is being paid for by scholarship funding from the United Negro College Fund, Inc., Jack and Jill, Inc., and other institutional funding, the school announced. Rodman Allen, a new Wilberforce graduate from Detroit, said the school's decision to cancel his debt is a blessing. "I couldn't believe it when he said it," he said. "I know now God will be with me. Now I can use that money and invest it into my future." Wilberforce University also awarded posthumous honorary doctorate degrees to civil rights activists Fannie Lou Hamer and Medgar Evers. They also awarded a posthumous bachelor's degree to senior William Easton who died in a car accident in his hometown in Florida, the university said. Easton's parents attended commencement and accepted his degree. 166 students graduated from Wilberforce University Saturday. The ceremony took place at 8 a.m. Saturday at the Gaston Lewis Gymnasium at the Alumni Multiplex. Nance said investigators confirmed there was evidence Hernandez was being pressured because he hadnt taken part in violence on MS-13s behalf. Around the time of Woods killing, Hernandez said he was trying to quietly slip away from the gang, since members had left the area. He insisted he wouldnt have picked up the two men if he knew there was a killing involved, especially a killing of someone not involved in the gang. While in jail, Hernandez said hes dedicated himself to God and distanced himself from the gang. He said he didnt feel in league with its members, being from Mexico while most MS-13 members hail from El Salvador, and having no family members affiliated with the gang. Im not a killer; Im not like them, he said through a translator. I have different feelings. Im sorry. He apologized directly to Woods mother, Marjorie Stagno, who was present to testify. She had asked Bedford County Circuit Judge James Updike to impose on Hernandez the maximum punishment allowed by law. Despite having cooperated with law enforcement and having served jail time since September 2018, Stagno said Hernandez still was part of the gang that orchestrated the gruesome murder of her son and was friends with its members. Two years ago, California became the first state to ban employers and schools from discriminating against people based on their natural hair. Thats fine with me. If it helps schools to focus on more education and less on follicle fashions, Im all for it. But what gave me pause in the Illinois story was Sen. Simmons explanation to a Chicago Tribune reporter for Jett Hawkins follicle flare-up: Its rooted in this respectability politics that says that for Black people to succeed, we have to conform to these really silly stereotypes, said Simmons. We need to wear our hair a certain length, walk a certain way and when we speak, dont speak too loudly. All of this is set up so as not to be perceived as a threat by others. If you were left a bit befuddled over whats so wrong about respectability, youre not alone. Like cancel culture and critical race theory, respectability politics increasingly has become weaponized by some and worshipped by others, depending on the situation. These days I think of it in the way we aging boomers often do, as a marker between the We Shall Overcome generation and todays Black Lives Matter crowd. Lets take a look at Simpkins record. He racked up all those convictions from a crime spree that began in Wythe County in December 1986 with two fraud charges and ended on February 1990 in Rockbridge County where he picked somebodys pocket. Over that time he racked up convictions in 10 different localities between Augusta County and Smyth County. Simpkins showed a fondness for armed robbery 14 such instances, which generally brought multiple charges, such as using a gun during the commission of a felony and wearing a mask. In November 1989 he was convicted of two robberies in Pulaski County sentenced to 30 years with 20 years suspended on one charge and 28 years to serve consecutively in another, meaning between the two he should have served 38 years on those two charges (10 years for the one robbery, 28 on the other). Based on that, he shouldnt be getting out until 2027. (No, we cant explain why he was sentenced for those charges on Nov. 20, 1989, yet was still out in February 1990. Thats just one of many mysteries about this case.) Other charges were more serious. Simpkins was found guilty of abduction with intent to defile in Botetourt County and sentenced to 10 years in prison. He was also found guilty of forcible sodomy in Botetourt County and sentenced to 60 years in prison. HYOGO (TR) A female police officer stationed in Nishinomiya City has resigned following revelations that she engaged in extra-marital affairs with two colleagues, reports Nikkan Sports. On Friday, Hyogo Prefectural Police handed the officer, stationed at the Koshien Police Station, a pay cut of 10 percent over a three-month period. However, she chose to resign the same day. Between August 2019 and February of last year, the officer, 29, regularly engaged in sex with a male head patrol officer, 26, inside a break room for a koban police box and an office of the station. After ending that affair, she engaged in regular sex with a 33-year-old male sergeant inside a station office between March and May of last year. The liaisons took place while the officers, all of whom are married, were on duty. Arrangements were made using the smartphone app Line. Right and wrong The matter emerged through an anonymous tip from within the station. During an inquiry, all three officers admitted to the allegations. I was unable to distinguish between right and wrong, the female officer said. The male officers were issued warnings. On Friday, the head patrol officer also resigned. The case was not the only one to unfold in the prefecture in 2020. Last March, a male sergeant stationed at the Higashi-Amagasaki Police was disciplined over sex with a colleague inside a koban. I offer my deepest apologies to the citizens of the prefecture for the loss of trust due to certain acts by police officers, said a representative of the Hyogo Prefectural Police. The Japanese government decided to extend the coronavirus state of emergency for Tokyo and eight other prefectures until June 20. That's the same day emergency measures for Okinawa Prefecture are due to expire. Okinawa governor Tamaki Denny said, "The number of infected people in their 40s and younger is increasing dramatically. And due to the rapid spread of mutant strains, cases are also on the rise among teenagers." Saturday's tally in Okinawa Prefecture is 335, marking a record high for the second straight day. Tamaki said the prefecture's health care system is stretched to the limit. He proposed enhanced PCR testing for visitors and the implementation of a system to easily present COVID-negative certificates upon arrival. In the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaido, 442 new cases have been reported. The shortage of beds is particularly serious in the capital, Sapporo where four people who tested positive for the virus were found dead in their homes. They were waiting to be hospitalized. Uemura Shuji of the Sapporo Medical University said, "Sometimes it takes more than a week for infected people to get checked by doctors or nurses. Some of them become sicker and die during that time." Government officials aim to inoculate Japan's 36 million seniors by the end of July. But so far, only 10 percent of people aged 65 or older have received at least one dose. The government is also looking at ways for people other than the elderly to get their shots as soon as possible. One plan the health ministry is considering, possibly as early as mid-June, is to have people vaccinated at their workplaces. It's also planning to extend the scope beyond employees to include their family members. Nationwide, 3,596 daily cases and 91 deaths have been reported so far on Saturday. The health ministry says more than 1,300 people are in a critical condition. A picture of the deceased victim of violence is not necessary for the point you are moving. Its disrespectful to the family of the young man pictured here, Amprey wrote on Twitter. I respectfully ask that you remove it. Even on the scene of a crime you respectfully cover victims. Books related to Karl Marx's "Capital" are selling well in Japan. Publishers say people could be more conscious of social issues, such as economic inequality and environmental destruction, amid the coronavirus pandemic. German philosopher and economist Karl Marx published "Das Kapital" in 1867. It studies the mechanism of capitalism and analyzes its problems. It had an enormous impact on the development of global economic systems. Books related to "Capital" have become popular in Japan in recent months. One of them was published by Associate Professor Saito Kohei of Osaka City University last September. It argues that it will be difficult for capitalism, which pursues economic growth by putting burdens on the environment, to resolve the issues of global warming or economic divide. The book has sold 300,000 copies. Other related books, including commentaries on "Capital" and analytic reports on labor systems in modern society, are also attracting readers. Staff at a major bookstore in Tokyo have voiced surprise at the growing interest in Marx among young people. They say more people seem to regard inequality and environmental deterioration as imminent problems and wonder whether current social systems can solve those problems. - NHK Local governments in Japan have been luring people to take ownership of the country's more than 8 million abandoned homes through a host of incentives, including millions of yen in renovation grants, new zoning laws and even giving away the structures for free. As Japan's population steadily declines, many communities across the nation are facing a growing problem of empty homes with little prospect of finding new residents. But a close look at housing data shows that some towns and cities have succeeded in turning the blight into a blessing, luring new residents through fresh incentives and reforms to reverse demographic decline. Roughly 8.49 million homes stood empty across Japan as of 2018, up 3.6% in five years, according to a report from the internal affairs ministry. Of particular concern are those that are not listed for rent or sale even after their residents have long gone. The number of these unlisted homes, which include old family homes that remain empty after the parents' death, for example, increased 9.5% and make up roughly 40% of all unoccupied homes. Areas facing steep population declines, like Shikoku and Kyushu in the southwest, have experienced the biggest problem with empty homes. Still, 37% of municipalities across Japan reported fewer empty homes in 2018 than in 2013, thanks to private-sector partnerships, incentives and deregulation designed to encourage more people to move into them. Mikasa, on the northern island Hokkaido, logged the sharpest decrease in unlisted homes at 11%, defying the stereotypes of decline often associated with old mining hubs. The city's generous subsidies for child care and home purchases have attracted new residents from neighboring communities, many of whom were able to keep their jobs in their old hometowns. Incentives for long-distance commuters have brought in new residents from as far as Sapporo, the island's biggest city. The town of Fujikawaguchiko, located in the foothills of Mount Fuji, came in second at 8.3%. Roughly 130 properties on the town's database of empty homes sold in the five years, while local residents have banded together to provide advice to those interested in moving in. The trend has only continued in recent years, with the resort town of Fujikawaguchiko experiencing a net inflow of residents in both fiscal 2019 and fiscal 2020. - Nikkei Singapore has removed its remaining import restrictions on food from Fukushima Prefecture imposed in the wake of the 2011 nuclear disaster, Japan's farm ministry said. Singapore was among 54 countries and regions that placed restrictions on farm and fishery imports from Japan following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi complex. The list has thinned to 14, including China and the United States. In January 2020, Singapore lifted its ban on food imports from some municipalities in the northeastern prefecture on condition that the shipments include certification of the place of origin and checks for radioactive cesium. - Japan Today The current COVID-19 fuss has caused adverse effects on the business industry. However, as businesses transform seamlessly to accommodate changes caused by the pandemic, the e-commerce industry has experienced a boom for a niche of products. Even in a marketplace platform such as Amazon, sellers have noticed at least 8 products that customers frequently add to their carts. Buying Trends in 2021 Industry influencers often determine buying trends, and the current customer behavior is fast shifting towards trending products. Thankfully, social media has a hand in promoting buying trends for most products in 2020 and 2021. 8 Amazon Items That Are Flying Off The Shelves With thousands of products today, some people rely on social media recommendations and reviews that back bestsellers in the online market. In this regard, let us explore 8 Amazon Items you can feel confident purchasing this spring. 1. Little Green Machine They know the other cats in the area, and luckily, they often have human caregivers looking out for their well-being. Although Council Bluffs does not allow for community cat colonies, there are towns and cities near and far that do have established programs for these types of cats. Midlands Humane Society offers a similar program called our Working Cat Program where community cats come into the shelter and are spayed/neutered, vaccinated, ear tipped and then essentially adopted by people who house them on their property, be it a warehouse, barn or garage. These cats are the responsibility of their new owners who provide regular food, water and medical care when necessary. Shelters like the Midlands Humane Society that work with Best Friends program teams are seeing their lifesaving rates improve much faster than shelters who arent working with them. They have helped us realize that cats who may have been considered unadoptable can now have a home and a promising future. On another note, our MHS Annual Gala is set for Sept. 17, at the Mid America Center. This will be an in-person event, so guests will be able to mingle with some amazing animals and see all the auction prizes. CAIRO (AP) An Egyptian court on Saturday adjourned the case of a hulking cargo vessel that blocked the Suez Canal for nearly a week earlier this year. The move is to allow more time for negotiations aiming at resolving a financial dispute between the Suez Canal Authority and the vessels owner. The dispute centers on the compensation amount the Suez Canal Authority is claiming for the salvage of the vessel Ever Given, which ran aground in March, blocking the crucial waterway for six days in March. At first, the Suez Canal Authority demanded $916 million in compensation, which was later lowered to $550 million, the head of the canal authority, Lt. Gen. Osama Rabie, said in comments on a television program on Sunday. The money would cover the salvage operation, costs of stalled canal traffic, and lost transit fees for the week the Ever Given blocked the canal. The vessels Japanese owner, Shoei Kisen Kaisha Ltd., and insurers said the demand is still too high. They previously had offered $150 million in compensation but that was rejected by the canal authority. The Ismailia Economic Court adjourned the hearing to June 20, as the vessels owner submitted a new offer to settle the dispute out of court, the Suez Canal Authority said in a statement. When I lived in France many years ago, I went to Mass regularly at Notre Dame Cathedral. My French was not so good, so the ability to attend Mass in Latin was a blessing, because I was able to understand much of what was going on. A: My favorite high school memory is going to Hershey Park with my fellow seniors. Although it was one of the last times that we will be together, it was very memorable. We were able to spend quality time together, laugh together and ride all the roller coasters. OMAHA, Neb. (AP) Police say the death of a man who fatally shot himself as he was being chased by officers in north Omaha will be investigated as an in-custody death. * Tourists taking the most direct route to Scotts Bluff National Monument will run right into Nebraskas No. 1 outdoor attraction. * Lake McConaughy filled after the 1935-41 construction of Kingsley Dam, linchpin of the Tri-County Project providing irrigation to farmers in Gosper, Phelps and Kearney counties in south-central Nebraska. * Lake Ogallala, below Kingsley, fills the borrow pit for what was the worlds second-largest earthen dam when finished. The Lake McConaughy Visitors & Water Interpretive Center, just south of the dam, tells the story of Kingsleys construction. * Also called Big Mac or Lake Mac, Nebraskas largest lake has drawn some 1.9 million visitors a year in recent times. * Most visitor facilities lie along the north shore. Tourists bound from there for Scottsbluff-Gering should continue west on Nebraska Highway 92. * Location (dam): Nebraska Highway 61, 6 miles northeast of Ogallala (runs over dam) * Namesakes: Charles W. McConaughy (1859-1941) of Holdrege and George P. Kingsley (1864-1929) of Minden, co-organizers of Central Nebraska Public Power & Irrigation District On Having a Good Memory The other day I was talking with a student I was a youth pastor for 20 years ago. She was wanting to reconnect and find a time where I could travel to where she lives and do a renewal of her marriage vows with her husband. This gal was in the foster care system through her entire middle school and high school career and allowed her foster parents to adopt her as she graduated high school. She often talks about how she remembers me with such positive regard. I then remembered a story of a time we shared together. She cannot remember the incident and has many of her specific memories blocked off due to the trauma she experienced. I think we both remembered well, just in different ways. Memory is about more than recall. Our memories guide our present and our future. So, it is important we not only recall facts in order to have a good memory, but that we frame our memories well. Miroslav Volf, in his wonderful book The End of Memory, goes into this in much greater detail. No lies detected. Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images Were entering an age of economic upheaval. Robots were already coming for workers jobs before the pandemic, and COVID hastened their arrival: To comply with public-health protocols while keeping pace with demand, firms have deployed automation in warehouses, grocery stores, call centers, and manufacturing plants. Meanwhile, a profusion of breakthrough technologies from AI to quantum computing to bioscience is poised to transform our economies in ways we cant fully anticipate. Add to this the twin imperatives of phasing out fossil fuels and keeping pace with a rising China in the high-value industries of tomorrow, and its clear the economic challenges of the 21st century are fundamentally different from those of the 20th. A new era requires new ideas, not nostalgic reassertions of postwar verities. Or so one often hears. Earlier this month, Tony Blair rehearsed a version of this argument in an essay for The New Statesman, in which he declared that the world is living through the most far-reaching upheaval since the 19th-century Industrial Revolution. In this new context of technological revolution, the former U.K. prime minister explained, the lefts old-fashioned economic message of Big State, tax and spend is not particularly attractive. Its certainly true that much policy thinking across the left, right, and center gives too much weight to past experience and too little to novel conditions (for example, the boomers formative experience with stagflation still haunts Americas macroeconomic debate nearly a half-century later). But in the United States, the anti-traditional, pathbreaking policies necessary for meeting the challenges of the 21st century are, in large part, the old-fashioned, tax and spend policies of Europes 20th century. Unfortunately, reforms that were banal in the Scandinavia of 1960 remain utopian in the U.S. of 2021. The American worker is not all right. A new McKinsey survey on economic opportunity in the U.S. drives these points home. In March and April, the consulting firm interviewed 25,000 Americans about their economic hopes and the obstacles they face in achieving them. Among the surveys key findings: Inadequate access to affordable health care was the most commonly cited barrier to well-being, with one-third of respondents naming it as a top-three obstacle. Half of those surveyed would not be able to cover their living expenses for more than two months if they or someone in their family lost a job (and 34 percent of respondents had lost a job or income over the past year). More than 60 percent of gig-economy workers would prefer a full-time job. Only 43 percent of women consider child care affordable, and more than one in four women are considering exiting the labor market or downshifting their career as a result of the pandemic. Unsurprisingly, women are less optimistic about their economic future than men are. Fifty-five percent of workers who are interested in pursuing training, education, or a credentialing program cited the cost of such endeavors in tuition and/or lost wages as a barrier. These results are unsurprising. And to a great extent, the discontents they illuminate are the downstream consequences of Americas underbuilt welfare state. Missed opportunities in Americas past are limiting economic opportunity in its present. World War II and the golden age of economic growth that followed it offered nations across the West an exceptional opportunity for establishing durable social-democratic institutions. The mass mobilization required for total war facilitated the growth of organized labor and cultivated a cultural sense of collective interdependence. The conflicts destruction of wealth and, in France and Germany, its discrediting of collaborationist elites significantly eroded capitals political and economic dominance. Meanwhile, the imperative to demonstrate capitalisms superiority to the (then-formidable-looking) Soviet model led many right-leaning elites to embrace redistributive reform. Finally, the high rates of growth fostered by wartime innovations and postwar rebuilding lowered the contradictions between capital and labor: High profits for business owners were compatible with expansive social benefits for workers. But the U.S. missed the boat. This was partly because of our relative insulation from the wars devastation (we had few Nazi collaborationists in our capitalist class and no firebombed cities to rebuild) and partly because of peculiar aspects of our political economy (an archaic constitution that makes legislation exceedingly difficult to pass, an exceptionally powerful capitalist class and weak federal state, a racially divided labor movement, a white-supremacist South, etc.). Instead of a proper welfare state, the U.S. built an employer-based system of social provision. Large, immensely profitable manufacturing firms bargained with trade unions over health care, leave, workers compensation, and other benefits, and their compromises became industry standards. Child care was not publicly funded but, rather, was left to women and kinship networks, who were, ideally, supported by the family wage of a male breadwinner. The employer-based core of this social model was eventually supplemented by vital public programs, from Medicaid to Head Start. But Big Government in the U.S. never approached the scale and ambition of the Western European welfare state. As a result, the American social model became obsolete long before robots started serving hamburgers. Americas labor settlement had unraveled by the 1970s as foreign competition thinned U.S. manufacturers profits. In Western Europe, labors postwar gains were typically enshrined in public laws and institutions; in the U.S., they were predominantly written into discrete collective-bargaining agreements. Thus, those benefits became the entitlements of a single generation of select workers, rather than of American citizens in perpetuity. The postwar approach to child-care provision held up little better. As working-class wages declined, women began entering the workforce in larger numbers. As workers increasingly sought employment in cities far from their ancestral hometowns, the costs of child-rearing were less easily socialized through kinship networks. The rights success in blocking progress toward universal child care under Nixon left American women with the dual burdens of breadwinning and care; according to McKinsey, in 2020, women were still performing twice as much unpaid care work as men in the U.S. Meanwhile, the failure to socialize medicine allowed a private health-care industry to entrench itself. Union contracts and public programs subsidized (some) Americans health-care spending. But Uncle Sam imposed few cost controls on the sector. American hospitals, doctors, and pharmaceutical companies were therefore able to secure payment rates far higher than their foreign peers were. With demand supported by the government but prices left largely to private discretion, the health-care sector managed to eventually commandeer nearly one-fifth of the U.S. GDP. The industrys extraordinary size makes it extraordinarily difficult to reform. Not only can the sectors rentier interests afford to inundate the airwaves with anti-reform propaganda, but they can also claim credibly that any attempt to bring prices down to international standards will force job losses and wage cuts on one of the nations largest industries. Source:: Source: Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Harvard Global Health Institute, London School of Economics. Credit: Rebecca Coleman/Harvard Where theres no political will, theres no way. The coming economic upheaval, as described by the likes of Tony Blair, is a mere exacerbation of existing economic realities. The challenge of the present is to ensure that working people have a comfortable standard of living despite routine labor-market disruptions, ecological decline, growing automation, and weak (and rapidly shifting) consumer demand. If we presume that the technology revolution will unfold as Blair prophesizes, the challenge of the future will be much the same. How do we guarantee Americans affordable health care in a context of routine job displacement and labor-market churn? Well, we can follow the lead of every other developed country and have the state guarantee universal coverage through large tax and spend programs and top-down price controls. How do we ensure that displaced workers can cover their living expenses for more than two months as they seek retraining or new jobs? We could make Americas (regular, non-pandemic-era) unemployment benefits as generous and long-lasting as those in the median OECD country: Graphic: The Washington Post How can we address the involuntary underemployment of gig-economy workers while redirecting ambitious low-skilled workers toward new, high-productivity occupations? We can make part-time employment more appealing by providing gig laborers with the full suite of social benefits enjoyed by their Nordic peers while offering state-subsidized job retraining and/or higher education for those interested in full-time, high-skill employment. How do we make child care affordable for families and enable women to fully participate in the economy? We can bring U.S. federal spending on child care and early education up to European levels. Or rather, we can do these things in theory: In practice, the U.S. appears politically incapable of doing any of them. Joe Bidens jobs and family plans would constitute real improvements to the status quo, but they would still leave the U.S. with an austere welfare state by international standards and do little to address Americas health-care crisis. One recent poll found that a supermajority of voters believed health-care costs should be Congresss top priority. But the electorate also punished Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for pursuing major health-care reforms, so Biden is steering clear of the issue. All signs suggest that whatever makes it through Congress will be far more modest than Bidens proposals. Durably financing a comprehensive welfare state would require raising taxes across the board; moderate Democrats dont even have the stomach to tax the unearned capital gains of millionaire heirs. I am losing track of congressional Dems uneasy w/ Biden tax plans. So far: -- Head of DCCC warning of 22 impact -- SALT crew -- Manchin, others oppose 28% rate -- Menendez, Warner disapproval of cap gains hike on +$1 million -- Axne, others, now Tester worried about heirs tax https://t.co/fosOSyrYRD Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) May 25, 2021 The U.S. is not without its strengths, of course. In many respects, our nation is better situated to thrive in the coming century than the European Union is. Our vast collection of research universities is peerless. Our tech industry is a world leader. Our central bank is less wedded to austerity than Germanys. Our relatively high tolerance for immigration makes our demographic crisis less acute. We are, in the aggregate, extremely rich. All this gives us the material capacity to construct a new era of shared prosperity. Yet the outlook for radical reform is as bleak today as it was auspicious in the postwar era. Labor is disorganized. The GOP coalition is wildly overrepresented in Congress. The Democrats are feckless. Our economic future is less imperiled by technological upheaval than political inertia. Destroy them first. We will discuss human rights matters later. These are the reported words of Bambang Soesatyo, chairman of the Peoples Consultative Assembly to the Indonesian military (TNI), last month. He was talking about the Indigenous people of the contested territory of West Papua just to Australia's north who are seeking independence from Indonesia. Those ten words have sparked concerns West Papua may again be on the brink of a violent crackdown or worse executed by Indonesias elite security forces, including the notorious Kopassus. These have occurred before, for example, the well-documented massacres in the Baliem Valley in 1977-78 and on Biak Island in 1998. The world said nothing about these events when they were happening they were conducted out of public sight. If violence is committed again, the world cannot in clear conscience turn away. There are fears renewed tensions could spill over into serious repression and violence. Source: Getty/Google Maps Months of building tensions The immediate catalyst for this latest military intervention was the fatal shooting of Brigadier General Gusti Putu Danny Karya Nugraha, head of Indonesian intelligence in Papua, on April 25. The act was claimed by members of the West Papua National Liberation Army, the TPN-PB. Danny had been in the highlands region investigating the killing of two school teachers and a youth, who were accused by the TPN-PB of being Indonesian spies. After the killing, President Joko Jokowi Widodo ordered state security forces to chase and arrest all armed militants and Bambang issued his threat to crush the rebels. We know, from recent accounts, what such revenge can look like. In February, an Indonesian soldier was shot and killed by separatist fighters in the central highlands of Papua, and security forces went on the hunt for his killer. During their interrogation of residents of a village, they shot a young man, Janius Bagau, in the arm, shattering his bone. This content is not available due to your privacy preferences. Update your settings here to see it. His brothers accompanied him to a health clinic to seek medical attention. While there, the three men were allegedly tortured and killed, according to Janiuss wife, who was interviewed by Reuters. Story continues The military claimed the men were members of TPN-PB the armed wing of the broader separatist group called the Free Papua Movement (OPM) and had tried to take the soldiers weapons and escape. However, a spokesman for the group said none of the men were members. The killing of Danny, the head of Indonesian intelligence in Papua, is certain to result in similar retribution. In the wake of the shooting, the government formally declared Papuan separatists terrorists, which human rights groups warned could lead to more abuses. The military also deployed 400 elite soldiers known as Satans forces to the region, who had previously taken part in operations in Timor-Leste and Aceh. And a leading independence figure, Victor Yeimo, was arrested for alleged treason, sparking widespread protests across the restive region. At least two cities have been without internet service for weeks. A motorist ride past a burning building after hundreds of demonstrators marched near Papua's biggest city Jayapura on August 29, 2019, where they set fire to a regional assembly building and hurled rocks at shops and hotels. Source: AFP Displacement in the guise of development In 1971, Papuans comprised over 96 per cent of the population in the two provinces of Papua and West Papua, on the western side of the island they share with Papua New Guinea. Now, Papuans in urban centres and coastal regions make up less than half the population due to the inward migration of non-Papuan settlers in recent years. Many Papuans believe they are facing a slow-motion genocide as they are progressively marginalised and their lands are forcibly expropriated for military-backed logging, oil palm and mining operations. One major reason for the escalation of the conflict in recent years has been the policies pursued by Jokowi. He believes economic development will trump Papuan nationalism and has pushed accelerated development as a cure for the conflict. Chief among these projects is the construction of a highway through the highlands region to the coast that will open up the interior of Papua. These are the very regions where Papuans remain in the majority and retain some degree of control over their lives. Two women are seen holding a Papuan flag and a placard in solidarity with West Papua during a demonstration at the Hague this month. Source: Getty Where Jokowi sees economic development flowing from the road, the Papuans see more soldiers, logging and mining companies, and more Indonesian settlers. Three years ago, TPN-PB forces killed at least 24 Indonesian road workers whom they claimed to be Indonesian army spies in a bid to stop the construction of the road. The area has been heavily occupied by the military ever since, resulting in the expulsion of some 45,000 people from their homes. The Papuan fighters see the conflict as a legitimate war of national liberation against foreign invaders. The TPN-PB has reportedly signalled it may start targeting non-Papuan settlers if Papuan civilians are killed or injured in the military crackdown, which seems highly likely. This opens up the horrifying possibility of inter-ethnic conflict between settlers and Papuans, which to date has been largely avoided. Indonesia successfully, albeit with great difficulty, resolved the other two armed conflicts that had troubled the nation for decades: Aceh (which remains as part of Indonesia) and Timor-Leste (which became independent). Through dialogue and foreign involvement, however, peace was finally achieved. There has been no substantial dialogue between leaders in Jakarta and independence advocates in West Papua to date. The UN has been ineffectual in resolving the conflict, and the world, with the exception of some of the Pacific nations, has turned a blind eye. While global attention has been riveted on Palestine, Myanmar and the plight of the Uyghurs in China in recent months, it is time to speak out against the atrocities unfolding on Australias doorstep. The authors of this article are Jim Elmslie, Honorary Fellow at the University of Wollongong and Camellia Webb-Gannon, Lecturer at University of Wollongong. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read West Papua is on the verge of another bloody crackdown at The Conversation. Thank you for Reading! We hope that you continue to enjoy our free content. ten years ago this wouldve been impossible. five years, even. things are shifting so quickly in terms of public opinion and i love it Reply Thread Link i promise you ten years ago it would not have been impossible for rage against the machine and patti smith to do this. this isn't exactly ariana grande and drake. Reply Parent Thread Link i mean like more so in terms of it being 600 signatories and reported by rolling stone - and generally well-received Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This exactly Reply Parent Thread Link Hmm depends on the musician because rage against the machine and Roger Waters have always been about this iirc. Reply Parent Thread Link honestly it's complete BS that it's taken so long. finally the general public are opening their goddamn eyes but i won't forgive them for taking so fucking long and how they treated certain celebs for speaking out about it. like the racism zayn had to endure in one direction was so gross. also most of it is probably just pressure to go with it, i bet most people still don't give a fuck. they still celebrate shitty politicians like obama who enjoy bombing countries to the ground. Edited at 2021-05-29 03:30 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Link 10 years ago people also did that. Its nothing new. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link 10 years ago people also did that. Its nothing new. Reply Parent Thread Link yeah i think ppl are misinterpreting your comment. there's always been committed activists like roger waters, but they were the exception rather than the norm & were always accused of anti-semitism bc of it. just 4 years ago both radiohead & nick cave proudly ignored activists' pleads to not play in israel (radiohead played their longest set in over a decade in tel aviv as "protest") largely without backlash, gaga, jt, madonna all played there recently too, others like lana del rey or lorde had to be convinced not to go. being pro-BDS was a controversial thing 4 years ago, let alone 10. there's definitely been a shift in public opinion lately. Edited at 2021-05-29 08:02 am (UTC) Reply Parent Thread Expand Link pretty much the typical group of folks on this list tbh, but it's nice to see all the same Reply Thread Link Yep - Roger and the Rage guys were expected lol Reply Parent Thread Link as i was reading the list i was like "check, check, check" lmao Reply Parent Thread Link Yeah rage and soad were expected Reply Parent Thread Link mte Reply Parent Thread Link Omg. Iconic. LEGENDS Reply Thread Link that's awesome Reply Thread Link Noname Reply Thread Link noname is one of my favorites right now Reply Parent Thread Link tbh I had no idea she was a rapper, I just followed her on twitter because her words are always spot on and powerful. but then she posted rainforest and I truly fell in love Reply Parent Thread Link Noname is great tbh Reply Parent Thread Link Pleasantly surprised about Julian Casablancas. Reply Thread Link i'm not really caught up in the world of music so much, why is he surprising? Reply Parent Thread Link it is and it isn't, lol. like, he's a leftist, bernie supporter, pretty involved in discussions abt american imperialism. at the same time, he sometimes has those white liberal views of 'there's no need for violence and impoliteness, let's just all get along & try to find some middle ground!!", so i feel like it could've gone either way here. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link This is great Reply Thread Link incredible <3 Reply Thread Link TRIGGER WARNING (not sure how to do a cut) I'm happy the movement is still gaining momentum. I haven't really shared this online anywhere before, but 3 years ago I visited Israel and went to Jerusalem to see the Aqsa Mosque (I didn't know you needed to wait in line to visit as you can usually walk into any mosque even if it's full people usually make room for you to pray etc.). There were IDF soldiers all over and I was parallel to the line and noticed this old man wanting to go pray (he was peaceful and wasn't loud or anything) and the soldiers wouldn't let him enter and out of nowhere started beating him with a stick and more soldiers came and just joined in beating him. Then other soldiers threw tear gas grenades at the line, and also where I was (which was far away from the line) everyone started screaming and running away. Shards of the tear gas grenades were flying everywhere, I saw a little boy just frozen couldn't move because he was so scared, I went back and grabbed him and ran and thank God the only thing that happened was a small burn on my arm from one of the flying shards. I told myself I would never visit there again after that. It was just a normal day and the soldiers just decided to be assholes and literally beat this old man and cause chaos when all people wanted to do was pray. The line of people had children, tourists etc they didn't care. I really hope one day all this chaos ends and the people of Palestine will be free to live normal peaceful lives. edit: typo Edited at 2021-05-29 07:35 am (UTC) Reply Thread Link So sorry that happened to you! Glad you were not hurt too bad and that you were there to get that little boy to safety. Reply Parent Thread Link we love to see it. Reply Thread Link Very few of the initial names surprise me. And that's a good thing. Reply Thread Link Good for all of these people. Is that pro-Israel group gonna make attack ads in newspapers for everyone now? Or do they just do it to young female celebs? Reply Thread Link You know men dont have the guts to go after other men. Also, I reported all of their IG posts about their attack ad against the hadids and dua lipa as bullying/harassment. Dunno if itll do anything but meh Reply Parent Thread Link Lawyers for at least three defendants charged in connection with the violent siege tell The Associated Press that they will blame election misinformation and conspiracy theories, much of it pushed by then-President Donald Trump, for misleading their clients. The attorneys say those who spread that misinformation bear as much responsibility for the violence as do those who participated in the actual breach of the Capitol. there have got to be more danny mastersons that the scientologists are protecting. it's sickening. Reply Thread Link I'm guessing he has lots of money and donates regularly otherwise they wouldn't protect him Reply Parent Thread Link I love how this post is right above a handmaids tale post. Also, fuck Danny masterson. Reply Thread Link Hes such a despicable human. No doubt Scientology is protecting other abusers and assaulters in their org. Im hoping for justice for his victims. Reply Thread Link Xenu come claim your son and blast his rapist ass into the nearest black hole. Reply Thread Link These women are so brave and strong! Hopefully, this is a big chunk out of the armor, and the Scientology downfall is closer. Reply Thread Link Nuke him! Arrest these disgusting scientologist assholes whos protecting him and the others the likes of him too. Shut them all down. Reply Thread Link I wonder if Ashton and Mila are still supporting his vile ass. Reply Thread Link i wouldn't be surprised Reply Parent Thread Link oh definitely Reply Parent Thread Link it's my first thought whenever their commercial comes on Reply Parent Thread Link If Kim K gets hate for racism while using black people to better her image i dont see why Ashton shouldnt when hes supporting a serial rapist while "fighting" against sex trafficking Reply Parent Thread Link I can't speak to them personally (obvi) but he got kicked off The Ranch in 2017 Reply Parent Thread Link They were partying with him at a Scientology wedding in 2019: https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/01/30/ashton-kutcher-criticized-for-partying-with-accused-rapist-danny-masterson-at-napa-valley-wedding/ Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Hed better get his comeuppance Reply Thread Link I'm glad you kept the title lmao. For real fuck Scientology. Needs to be recognised for the abusive scam cult that it is and it needs to be done sooner than later thanks. Reply Thread Link the coloring of his outfit with the mask hes giving off Jason vibes Reply Thread Link Jason sweetie, I'm so sorry... Reply Parent Thread Link A highly hierarchical close-knit organization covering sexual abuse to protect one of their own in the name of religion? I'm SHOCKED, I tell you. Fuck this shit Reply Thread Link Is Ashton Kutcher still friends with him? Reply Thread Link He was after he was accused multiple times. Probably is in private but realizes its bad PR publicly. Reply Parent Thread Link I'm sure he is. Reply Parent Thread Link Yes Reply Parent Thread Link Yes. He was photographed in a photo booth with him at a friends wedding (this was after he was pressured into finally firing Danny from The Ranch). THORN does amaaaaazing work but I swear to god, my fave gets hot when I hear about what a great victims advocate he is. Reply Parent Thread Link Well well well. Reply Thread Link I'm still in shock from that insane insta post... who....thought that was... a good idea? who was that post FOR? it's insane. he's insane. Reply Thread Link did danny post something? Reply Parent Thread Link Ugh yeah if you just click the tags and go to the previous posts... he basically made light of going to court for rape charges by posting a pic of him and his wife in the car: shes wearing a really short dress, doing a smoldering/sexy face, he calls her his Uber driver like its cute that his wife is dropping him off at the courthouse where hes being accused of rape... all sorts of WTF Reply Parent Thread Expand Link I can't find the other post, but yeah he (or Bijou?) posted a smiling pic on insta saying she was dropping him off for 'school' or something, when she was dropping him off to court? It was just the most foul thing one could do in such a situation... Reply Parent Thread Expand Link Yeah, I still can't believe they did it. Apparently Busy is very much like her serial killer character from Raising Hope. Reply Parent Thread Expand Link After over a year of pandemic-driven volatility and weak oil demand, Saudi Arabia is now experiencing an oil export boom. Saudi Arabias oil exports increased in March by 75 percent year-on-year, at a value of almost $14 billion, according to a General Authority for Statistics (GASTAT) report, with crude oil accounting for 70 percent of the countrys total exports. Low demand, which drove down oil prices, was extremely detrimental for the worlds largest oil exporter, which saw exports drop sharply throughout 2020. However, the countrys oil industry has been on the up since late last year when oil prices began to stabilize as pandemic restrictions eased. Non-oil exports also rose by 43 percent in March, up to $5.96 billion, representing the highest level since July 2018. Exports comprised mainly of medical instruments, clocks and watches, plastics and rubber, and vehicles, aircraft, vessels, and associated transport equipment. OPEC + is scheduled to meet next week, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, to discuss oil output increases, following a strict production quota earlier in the year, as well as the potential impact of an Iran nuclear deal on production levels. Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research explained, The overall mood in the market is moderately bullish,. In addition, People are looking at a stabilized market for the near-term, with the demand recovery continuing to shape up, but with Iranian supply coming back, that puts a cap on things. Following successes in vaccination rates across the U.S. and Europe, traders are positive about an oil demand increase throughout the summer months, even if Iranian output increases with the easing of U.S. sanctions. On June 1, OPEC + is expected to approve the 840,000-barrel-a-day increase planned for July, which will bring an end to the three sets of output increases this year, aiming to recover 2 million barrels by the summer, in line with the demand increase. Predictions are based on the positive trend in oil demand as well as prices, with Brent on target to close at a two-year high. Brent prices have steadily increased from $66.85 on Monday to $69.69 this Friday, slowly edging its way to $70 a barrel. Eugen Weinberg, a Commerzbank analyst, stated, "Boosted by good economic data and risk appetite among investors on the financial markets, Brent is making a renewed bid for the psychologically important $70 per barrel mark". Weinberg also believes the demand-drop prediction in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic has been overstated, "Concerns about demand because of the pandemic are giving way to optimism in view of the rapid return of consumers". According to predictions, oil demand could bounce back to 100 million bpd in the third quarter of 2021, as travel increases, and pandemic restrictions continue to be eased. Gasoline demand has already risen this year and is expected to increase further as the newly vaccinated seek to move away from national restrictions and take to the roads to resume normal activities as well as travel. President Bidens American Job Plan also appears to be helping the stabilization of oil demand, in the worlds second-biggest oil-importing country, as unemployment has fallen, providing people with more disposable income as well as the need to commute, after a year of stagnation. As Saudi Arabia reports record oil export levels, OPEC + is expected to continue easing its quotas to resume greater production activity across its member states and allies, as a sharp demand recovery is expected for the summer months. By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Oil production in the U.K. isnt dead just yet, as BP strikes a deal with Baker Hughes and Norway's Oldfjell Drilling to enhance production at the Clair Ridge heavy oil field following recent challenges to production. BP will use the latest technologies and expertise from this new partnership to boost drilling in 7 billion-barrel Clair Ridge, the U.K.s largest oil field. Initial aims include increasing output by 15 percent annually. The Clair Ridge oilfield, which consists of two bridge-linked platforms, was developed in 2018 at a cost of $10 billion, with a projected output of 120,000 bpd of oil. Clair had an expected shelf life of around 40 years but hit production challenges last year, meeting only a third of its anticipated output levels in 2020. BP operates the oilfield with a stake of 28.6%. Shell, ConocoPhillips and Chevron all also hold a stake in the field, with 28 percent, 24 percent and 19.4 percent respectively. BP stated that the new partnership "aims to improve production across Clair, initially targeting a 15 percent increase in average annual production on Clair Ridge, the second phase development of the field. This will be achieved through drilling the best quality wells safely and more efficiently and harnessing the skills and expertise of each company in a single collaborative team". Greater innovation and the use of new technology will allow BP to drill targeted wells to access the oil reserves more effectively. As crude oil in this region of the North Sea is much heavier than other lighter oil in other parts of the area it is harder to extract and will require the expertise of each company in the partnership for successful oil production. The partnership will mean the establishment of a steering group of representatives from BP, Baker Hughes and Oldfjell Drilling to make joint decision on effective well drilling. Using progressive remote operations models and digital solutions, this alliance is an important milestone on the shared journey towards safer, more profitable and lower carbon intensity operations., stated Marianne Davenport, vice president for oilfield services Europe at Baker Hughes. This partnership comes just weeks after an International Energy Agency (IEA) report recommended a shift away from fossil fuel production in favour of renewable alternatives. However, the U.K. has made its stance clear, it has no intention of giving up on production in its oil-rich North Sea projects. A government body told media sources that it intends to continue exploration in the North Sea, after the government reached a deal in March allowing offshore licenses in the region to continue. "We are working hard to drive down demand for fossil fuels, however, there will continue to be ongoing demand for oil and gas," the UK department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy told Reuters in response to emailed questions. Further, "We will not be cancelling licenses that were recently awarded. Any future licenses are only awarded on the basis that they are aligned with the government's broad climate change ambitions, including the UKs target of reaching net-zero by 2050." However, the U.K. government has faced controversy over this decision owing to its role as host to the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) in Glasgow, Scotland, in November as well as being commissioned by the IEA to develop a path towards net-zero emissions by 2050. Critics say the U.K.s role at the helm of climate change talks is at odds with its stance on North Sea oil. While several North Sea players, like Norway and Denmark, are heeding IEA warnings to curb exploration projects in favour of renewable alternatives, the U.K. is going full steam ahead in its production plans for the next few decades, with the Clair Ridge partnership presenting a significant area of opportunity for the oil majors involved. By Felicity Bradstock for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: In the world of energy, size matters. Therefore, large producers and consumers can influence global markets while smaller players have to acquiesce to developments. One outlier has been the Netherlands, which historically is a 'natural gas country' due to its sizeable reserves. The medium-sized European country's virtual trading hub Titel Transfer Facility, or TTF, is quickly becoming the global benchmark for natural gas. It is an immense asset for a country with an economy the size of the state of Florida. TTF was established in 2003 by the countrys TSO Gasunie to promote gas trading in the region and improve liquidity. Back then the UKs NBP trading hub exceeded TTF by far in importance and size. Ever since trading has expanded massively making the Dutch hub a benchmark for global trade. According to Gordon Bennett, managing director for utility markets at ICE Futures Europe, traders for the TTF benchmark have increased by 164 percent since 2016. TTF is becoming a global gas marker, it is the Brent of the gas market. A lot more participants are coming from outside Europe. Several characteristics of the Dutch market have boosted TTFs rise. The Netherlands enormous natural gas reserves have made it the largest producer in the EU. Without a sizeable domestic market, liquidity is hard to find. The country's production capacity has been so large since the 1970s that major volumes have been exported to Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy. The foundations of TTFs success were laid decades ago when vast pipeline infrastructure was laid in northwest Europe. Therefore, the hub does not only serve the Netherlands but also neighboring countries. Domestic reserves are dwindling in Europe which further increases the necessity for imports. Historically the majority of the EUs foreign gas has come from Russia, Norway, and Algeria. However, the proliferation of LNG has been decisive in boosting trade. The shale revolution in the U.S. and increased LNG exports have helped bolster TTF as Europe is one of two primary buyers markets, together with East Asia. The LNG revolution and TTF's rise are closely linked. The majority of international trades used to be done through long-term oil-indexed pricing. The expanding LNG industry has provided the global natural gas market a level of flexibility and liquidity that wasn't possible through more fixed pipeline infrastructure. According to Patrick Barouki, director of gas trading and origination at German utility Uniper SE, "TTF is the global gas market. Downstream liquidity is essential, showing enough use of gas, a variety of players, enabling people who are just speculating to take positions with confidence. TTF checks all the boxes." With the end of the Covid-19 pandemic nearing through advances in vaccination across Europe, natural gas demand will increase further. In the past couple of months, futures trading concerning Dutch gas on ICE has increased 24 percent and doubled in the past 2 years. The Japan-Korea Marker, or JKM, the benchmark for LNG prices in East Asia has also seen an increase in liquidity over the last few years. However, there isnt nearly as much trade as TTF. Despite the recent jumps in prices in Asia, such as in January of this year, Asia-based traders have used the Dutch benchmark as an indicator for key sport rates. This includes China and India, besides Japan and South Korea. With ever-decreasing domestic reserves and rising geopolitical tensions, expect Europeans to take measures to strengthen their energy security. This means that LNG flows can be preferred over natural gas from traditional supplier Russia which overwhelmingly uses pipelines and fixed rates. The growing use of flexible pricing and liquidity will bolster TTF even further which will cement its function as a global benchmark. By Vanand Meliksetian for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Crime-and-courts James Scurlock's family still grieving loss a year after he was killed in downtown Omaha The Scurlock family is still mourning the loss of their brother, son and cousin. James Scurlocks relatives remain frustrated at Omaha city and law enforcement officials for what they think was a mishandled investigation into his killing. And theyre still processing feelings of guilt, regret and trauma thinking back to the night of May 30, 2020, when Scurlock, 22, was fatally shot by Omaha bar owner Jake Gardner, 38. Scurlock I hate that my brother was down there by himself, Rajeanna Scurlock said. I hate that Ive always been there whenever hes needed me, except the time that he really, really needed me most. Im never gonna get over that. The Scurlocks shared their thoughts in a recent wide-ranging World-Herald interview reflecting on the upcoming anniversary of James Scurlocks death. While they acknowledge continued support and work of justice movements in the city, they stopped short of saying whether they planned to file a lawsuit. Last year, several rallies, marches and protests were held to remember Scurlock and demand justice. This weekend, a couple of public gatherings will allow people to do the same. A celebration of life at community space Culxr House, 3014 N. 24th St., will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, with various speakers, including Scurlocks father, James Scurlock II. Later, at midnight, a vigil is scheduled in front of the large mural of Scurlocks likeness at 24th Street and Camden Avenue, Rajeanna Scurlock said. Rajeanna Scurlocks reactions to that mural vary from day to day. Sometimes when she drives by, she said, she looks at it and is comforted by seeing her brothers face. Other times, she breaks down crying. When youre grieving, she said, you have your good days and you have your bad days. Rajeanna Scurlock The Scurlock family is still mourning the loss of their brother, son and cousin James Scurlock, who was fatally shot by an Omaha bar owner on May 30, 2020. James Scurlock II said its most difficult to look at Jewels, James Scurlocks daughter. Jewels now is 18 months old, and her grandfather recognizes how much she looks like her dad. Rajeanna Scurlock said when she gets older, the family will be careful telling her about what happened to her father. As a a family, we have to show her all the unconditional love that we can, she said. Tell her that he would shower her with love when he was still here and that he would have gave her the world, and he was a great father to her. Brother Nick Harden wiped away tears and mostly stayed silent during a recent interview with the family. He recalled how he had gotten into a car wreck that night, which soured his mood. Otherwise, he said, he might have been out with James. A few months after his brothers death, Harden and his girlfriend Susan Guffey found out wonderful news she was pregnant. Her due date? May 30, the same day Scurlock died. We really believe James sent this baby to us, Guffey said. As Harden prepared over this past year to become a father, he also grappled with his belief that the justice system didnt work for his family. One year after James Scurlock was killed, Omaha still coming to grips with aftermath The killing of James Scurlock in Omaha last year triggered a local rallying cry amid a national reckoning on race relations and policing after the murder of George Floyd. James Scurlock was shot after he jumped on Jake Gardners back outside Gardners downtown bar. A woman had tackled Gardner after Gardner showed some people near his bar that he had a handgun. Gardner briefly had hold of the gun before putting it back in his waistband. The woman ran away when Gardner fired two shots. Seconds later, Scurlock jumped on Gardner and held an arm around his upper chest. The two struggled as Gardner yelled for Scurlock to get off of him. Switching the gun to his left hand, Gardner fired one shot, striking Scurlock in the neck. The Scurlocks and many others were upset that Gardner wasnt immediately booked into jail or charged in connection with the fatal shooting. Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine initially said he thought the shooting was justified under a Nebraska law of self-defense. Two days later, Kleine filed a petition for a special prosecutor to present the case to a grand jury. Special prosecutor Fred Franklin did so in September. Grand jurors chose to indict Gardner on manslaughter and three other felony charges. Days later, Gardner died by suicide. In my opinion, they just sweep (expletive) under the rug, Harden said. I doubt half the time its gonna change. Scurlocks father said he thinks the city is still living in the 1960s. If he or his son had been the shooter, he said, they would have been immediately booked into jail without the benefit of the self-defense argument. Where is true justice? What is true justice in the state of Nebraska? James Scurlock II said. There is none. There cant be none. He said the family is working with Justice for James, an advocacy group started by organizer Ja Keen Fox, whose efforts they support. But Scurlock declined to say more about the groups plans. He also declined to say whether the family is considering civil action against the city. 'We still have work to do': Omaha leaders, activists react to Chauvin verdict Shortly after the guilty verdict was announced, Omaha community members, elected leaders and activists shared their thoughts on the trial that had gripped the country. That is in the air right now, he said. Who holds these people accountable that hold us accountable for everyday actions. Because aint nobody holding them accountable for (expletive). The family said they havent received closure and seek accountability from city leaders and law enforcement officials. What example does it set? Does it say that its OK for me to kill someone and get away with it? Rajeanna said. Does it say that, you know, they dont have to care about colored people? Because it looks like thats what theyre saying. James Scurlocks relatives still hold fond memories of him. He had the heart of a lion, Rajeanna said. In my eyes, he just wanted to try and save everyones life, including his own. ... He just seriously did not want something bad to happen. And he just paid the ultimate cost for that. As the Scurlock family continues to experience sadness, they also have found great joy. Guffey and Harden decided to name their son using James Scurlocks middle names: Reginald Dewitt. Wednesday night, Guffey gave birth to a healthy boy: Kenzo Reginald Dewitt Harden. The dusty blacktop road on the far east side in Tucson, Arizona, doesn't look like it leads to a British nobleman's house. But the 151-acre ranch near the foothills of the Rincon Mountains belongs to Sir Paul McCartney, whose wife Linda died there in 1998. McCartney's company still pays taxes on the property; someone obviously maintains the place. But that's the backstory. What we have here is a yarn about a larger-than-life love affair. This is an honest-to-goodness Camelot-style love story replete with a chivalric royal knight and his queen. This fairy tale spans the world and ends in this house near Redington Pass. Paul McCartney's connection with Tucson was through his wife, Linda Eastman. She attended the University of Arizona, where she began her prolific photography career. Linda was enamored with the desert beauty and tranquility of life. The two met in London in 1967 when Linda was on a photo assignment for a book about rock stars. After a two-year courtship, they were married in 1969 in a civil ceremony at a town hall in London. They soon pushed each other beyond the limits of their combined imagination. Over the 29-year marriage, Paul was the most creative in his musical career, and Linda blossomed as a musician. Over their 29-year marriage, the couple was apart only one night. After buying the Tucson ranch in 1979, the McCartney family began to grow. The house became a dominant family home, mainly in the spring and fall a place to be free and one with nature, away from global prying eyes. Locals understood and gave them a wide berth. Occasionally mom, dad and the children would venture out and thrill Tucsonans at restaurants and stores. The McCartneys visited the old Skaggs Drug Store at Speedway and Camino Seco, especially at Halloween and Thanksgiving. During these times, fans would hang out waiting for autographs and a glimpse of the rock star family entourage. Other locals camped out at the nearby AJ Bayless grocery store, where Paul would kindly sign albums while picking up milk and bread. In 1995, Linda was diagnosed with breast cancer. The privacy of the ranch allowed her to face treatment and healing in secluded personal privilege. Just days before Linda's passing, she and Paul rode her much-loved Appaloosa horses, Spot and Blanket, over the ranch and adjoining wilderness area, enjoying the private time together. Paul and Linda's doctors had decided not to tell her how much her cancer had aggressively spread. In the predawn hours of Friday, April 17, 1998, 56-year-old Linda Eastman McCartney died at the Tucson ranch house. Paul and the family, including their four children, were with her. A half-moon traversed Tucson's star-filled sky on the evening of her passing, casting a consoling soft glow over their tin roof. Linda's body was cremated in Tucson and became part of the desert she respected and embraced when the family spread her ashes at the ranch before returning to London. Tucsonans Greg Ash and Dave Slavin contributed to this story. Freelance writer Jerry Wilkerson, who lives in SaddleBrooke, is a former press secretary for two U.S. Congressmen and was a correspondent for Chicago CBS radio and newspaper correspondent. Wilkerson is a U.S. Navy veteran and served as a police commissioner. Email: franchise@att.net A celebration of life at community space Culxr House, 3014 N. 24th St., will be held from noon to 4 p.m. Saturday, with various speakers, including Scurlocks father, James Scurlock II. Later, at midnight, a vigil is scheduled in front of the large mural of Scurlocks likeness at 24th Street and Camden Avenue, Rajeanna Scurlock said. Rajeanna Scurlocks reactions to that mural vary from day to day. Sometimes when she drives by, she said, she looks at it and is comforted by seeing her brothers face. Other times, she breaks down crying. When youre grieving, she said, you have your good days and you have your bad days. James Scurlock II said its most difficult to look at Jewels, James Scurlocks daughter. Jewels now is 18 months old, and her grandfather recognizes how much she looks like her dad. Rajeanna Scurlock said when she gets older, the family will be careful telling her about what happened to her father. As a a family, we have to show her all the unconditional love that we can, she said. Tell her that he would shower her with love when he was still here and that he would have gave her the world, and he was a great father to her. Notices of Douglas Countys new property valuations are going out, and with the local housing market still running strong, homeowners might want to take note. The Douglas County Assessor/Register of Deeds mailed notices of changes to homeowners on Friday, and 2021 valuations will be posted online at dcassessor.org by Tuesday. The Assessors Office bases new property valuations on the housing market, and the local market has been increasingly vibrant in recent years, Assessor/Register of Deeds Diane Battiato said. According to figures from the Omaha Area Board of Realtors, the average sale price on an existing home in the Omaha area rose 8.6% from 2019 to 2020. This year, existing residential properties rose 5.9% overall, according to Douglas County assessment figures filed with the Nebraska Department of Revenue. We do not drive values the market drives values, Battiato told the County Board earlier this year. Battiato added: As long as its a vibrant market, our job is to value accordingly. Starting Tuesday, property owners can file a protest to challenge their valuation, and the protest period will run through June 30. The ceremony occurred two days before Memorial Day, a national holiday honoring all American service members who died in war. Rep. Don Bacon, an Air Force veteran and retired brigadier general, said Omahas recognition of Memorial Day stands apart. Right here, we do it better than anywhere Ive ever seen, Bacon said at the ceremony. Im so grateful that we had leaders in generations preceding us that determined Memorial Park was needed and bequeathed it to us. City Councilman Pete Festersen said that when the riverfront project was proposed and they realized that the monuments in Heartland of America Park would have to be moved, Memorial Park was the perfect location for them. This is where we celebrate our veterans to have all our things in one place, to have these ceremonies like we do couldnt be more meaningful, Festersen said. The Airborne Memorial, originally dedicated in 2007, honors airborne troops. The Marine Corps Medallion was relocated from Kansas in 2015 and honors those in the Marines. Thousands lined an Old Market street Friday, American flags in hand and cheers for those marching by. They watched as hundreds of veterans, some on motorcycles, others in Corvettes or on foot, passed by. They listened to a group of bagpipe players, their music echoing along Jackson Street, and pointed excitedly at the famous Budweiser Clydesdales. And they watched somberly as more than 200 Gold Star family members led the parade to its final destination in the Durham Museum parking lot. The families came from more than 10 different states to take part in the patriotic parade and concert, a kickoff to Memorial Day weekend. Among them was Noala Fritz of Nebraska. Fritzs son, Jacob Fritz, was killed in 2007 by members of a militia in Iraq. Today, Fritz dedicates her time to hosting the Remembering Our Fallen memorial towers, which were created by Bill and Evonne Williams, organizers of Fridays parade and concert. The towers greeted parade participants and observers as they made their way from 12th and Jackson Streets to the Durham Museum on 10th Street. The Democrats looked arrogant to many public school parents, who couldnt help but notice that prominent Democrats sent their own children to private schools that were open. The political class doesnt want to look foolish again, and the teachers unions want to kill their competition. The bill would take away the rights of private schools to decide their own protocols for opening during health emergencies. Rowan said last July was the busiest she has ever seen at Sharps, which has 120 campsites and 30 spots for recreational vehicles. August also was busy, with people from all over the country, some benefiting from remote work and remote schooling, coming to camp and float the Niobrara. There was nothing else to do, Rowan said with a chuckle. Yet another indicator of the great outdoors appeal came in the form of RV sales. Nationally, RV shipments in 2020 totaled 430,412 units, according to the RV Industry Association, a trade group. The annual total was up 6% over 2019 and good enough for the third best year on record. For some local dealers, 2020 was unrivaled. The 2020 year was the absolute best Ive ever had, said Pat Leach, owner of Leach Camper Sales in Lincoln, which has been in business for 59 years. In talking with customers, Leach said it was clear that COVID-19 concerns fueled much of the increased interest. This year and last year, theres been so many first-time buyers, Leach said. Strong summer ahead The youthful faces look back from the Remembering Our Fallen towers, a mix of uniformed portraits and smiling snapshots of more than 5,000 lives cut short by the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One tower in the traveling monument to America's post-9/11 military dead looks slightly different, the photos arrayed on a deep blue background instead of white. The blue-backed pictures are of 183 young men and women who returned from battlefield deployments to hugs and kisses from relieved parents and spouses and kids then weeks or months or years later, suffering from often invisible pain, they took their own lives. The monuments creators, Bill and Evonne Williams of Patriotic Productions, call it the PTS tower, for post-traumatic stress. They dont use the word suicide. Its heartbreaking to look at that tower, Bill Williams said. All of them are hard, but that one is the hardest. Tom and Donna Nicholson of Gretna saw the towers again at the Memorial Day event Friday in Omahas Old Market, and they know that feeling well. Their son, Marine Capt. Kevin Nicholson who died Sept. 2, 2014, after four deployments to Afghanistan in five years is on the blue tower. To see all the faces, the beautiful-looking people, Donna said. I think, What a loss. What a waste. Remembering Our Fallen is one of the few war memorials that honors warriors who succumbed to PTS alongside those who died on the battlefield. Candy Martin, former president of American Gold Star Mothers, is an Army veteran whose son was killed in combat in Iraq in 2007. She agrees that those who died of PTS deserve recognition, too. We recognize that they died in service, or as a result of service, said Martin, who marched in Omahas Memorial Day parade Friday, along with the Nicholsons. Its not how your child died. We focus on continuing the service that their sons and daughters didnt finish. During the 2010s, the Williamses had created 14 traveling memorials for individual states with portraits of those killed in post-9/11 combat. From time to time, Evonne Williams said, they would get queries from Gold Star parents about including their sons and daughters who died of PTS. When they created the national Remembering Our Fallen memorial towers in 2017, they created panels for PTS deaths as well as deaths in training accidents. The top of the first blue panel describes post-traumatic stress: Debilitating anxiety occurring after experiencing or witnessing a traumatic event; symptoms can include flashbacks, emotional detachment and jumpiness; bio-chemical changes in the brain and body. Ross Wimer, 32, of Omaha, served four years in the Marine Corps and deployed with the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment famous as the Darkhorse battalion during a brutal 2010-11 deployment to Afghanistans Sangin province. The unit lost 25 dead and 200 wounded, a higher rate than any other unit during the war. Many Darkhorse veterans, Wimer said, have been afflicted with survivors guilt. Over the years, suicides have mounted. Ive honestly lost count, he said. Members of his unit reach out to one another for buddy checks, an informal way to keep tabs on fellow veterans who may be in trouble. Wimer does see a distinction between those who died in battle and those who died later, at home, but only a slight one. Hes glad the Remembering Our Fallen towers recognize both types of casualties of war. Its great that Bill and Evonne are doing this, he said. Their heads are in the right place. The Williamses do not contact families of veterans who have taken their own lives because suicide remains a highly sensitive topic, but they will add the names and photos of those who died from the effects of PTS if families request them. Six of the deceased on the PTS panels are from Nebraska. To be included in the memorial, the veteran must have served after Sept. 11, 2001, and they must have served in a combat zone. They get lost. Their service feels like it does not count, Evonne Williams said. They deserve this. Last years Department of Veterans Affairs annual suicide prevention report counted 6,435 veterans who took their own lives in 2018, the latest year for which statistics were available. The numbers have risen about 6% since the Department of Veteran Affairs started counting suicides in 2005 an unhappy trend, but a far smaller increase than the 47% increase in all adult suicides in the U.S. during the same period. In the years since, there have been aggressive campaigns by both the military and the VA to prevent suicides, and to make it easier for veterans to receive treatment for post-traumatic stress. Still, in 2018 veterans were slightly more likely than other Americans to die by their own hand. Veterans represented 8% of the U.S. adult population but 13% of the suicides. Well over half of the veteran suicides last year were among vets over age 55. The 18-34 age group had the smallest number of suicides (874) but the highest rate. Tom and Donna Nicholson had no idea the pain Kevin was in when he visited them in July 2014 for what turned out to be the last time. We were glad to have him home. We tried to do special things, Donna said. He was only 31. They didnt see it coming. Over the years, he had grown more subdued compared with the cheerful youth Donna described as very independent, very smart. He was active in their church and liked to memorize Bible verses, and built models and rockets in 4-H. Kevin graduated from high school in 2001, attending Kansas State and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln before transferring to the University of Nebraska at Omaha and graduating in 2007. While at UNO, he became interested in the military and joined the Marines. He arrived as the Corps ramped up its operational tempo to support two simultaneous wars. He deployed for seven months to Afghanistan, then came home for 12 months before returning to the theater four cycles in five years. He was pretty proud of what he did, but he never talked about it, Tom Nicholson said. They felt awkward asking, so typically they didnt. As the deployments ground on, Donna noticed Kevin seemed distant. I noticed changes in his eyes. There was something about his stare, she recalled. Donna called him in mid-August 2014, just to visit. She asked him what kind of things he would like her to include in the next care package she sent him. The conversation still disturbs her. He just told me, I always send him junk, she said. It was hurtful ... I dont think he really meant it. I think he was not in a good place. Two weeks later, the doorbell rang at the Nicholsons' Gretna home about 6 oclock one evening. Donna answered. Three men in uniform stood on the porch. Donna knew instantly what that meant, but she was confused. Kevin was at home in North Carolina, not in Afghanistan. She shouted her husbands name. I knew something was wrong, Tom said. The rest hurts too much to talk about. Tom remembers numb shock, a sense of going through the motions while planning a burial. That was the worst week of my life, Donna said. Learning how Kevin died hurt. It left questions, but they drew support from family and friends, and their church. I called our siblings and others and told them what happened, Tom said. You cant just pretend he fell out of a tree. They came to accept that their son suffered invisible wounds, devastating ones. Bodies get injured arms, legs. The brain gets injured, too. You just cant see it, Tom said. You dont find out some things until its too late. The Nicholsons also found comfort in support groups like the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors (TAPS), which has special groups for those whose loved ones took their own lives. It helps being with other families who know what theyve gone through, and to tell his story. They were happy to join in Fridays Memorial Day event, which included a concert, parade, and giveaways. I just try to focus on things that bring happiness, Donna said. I dont think theres anything wrong with being happy. The way Kevins life ended, Tom said, Is just a small part of a big picture. Id like to think that its not the biggest part of the picture. I look at all the good he did. He served our country, Tom added. What more would he have done? Kevin Nicholsons picture is right there on the first of the blue panels, in the top row. One photo shows him in full battle rattle at a base in Afghanistan, eyes hidden behind dark shades and a gloved hand resting casually on the grip of his M-16 rifle. In the other hes standing in a driveway, dressed in polo and khakis. In neither picture does he smile. But above Kevins photos is a message: May these Warriors, at last, Rest in Peace. The number for the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. If you are a veteran in crisis, or a person concerned about a veteran in crisis, dial the number and press 1 to connect with the veteran crisis line, available 24 hours a day. Additional information can be found at www.veteranscrisisline.net. Be the first to know Get local news delivered to your inbox! Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. Ambassador Graham Fletcher was denied entry to the court on Thursday. Payne said Australian officials presence at the court entrance reinforced her governments support for Yang and our deep concerns with what continues to be a closed and opaque process. Chinese authorities have not released any details of the charges against Yang, a novelist who reportedly formerly worked for Chinas Ministry of State Security as an intelligence agent. Yang has denied the accusation against him, and while a conviction is virtually certain, it isnt clear when the verdict will be handed down. The espionage charge carries penalties ranging from three years in prison to the death penalty. China's Foreign Ministry said China was following international practice in barring observers from attending a case involving state secrets. The trial comes at a time of deteriorating relations between the two countries, brought on by Chinese retaliation against Australian legislation against covert foreign interference in its domestic politics, the exclusion of telecommunications giant Huawei from Australia's 5G phone network, and calls for an independent investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 outbreak that was first detected in China in late 2019. At the time only 10 of 432 nursing schools in the country were accepting Black nurses. By 1948 and World War II, Black nurses made strides in integrating the profession to the extent that members of the NACGN voted to be incorporated into the ANA in 1949. This was a huge mistake in my opinion, as the profession failed to keep its moral contract with Black nurses. Medical anthropologist Evelyn Barbee in her 1993 article Racism in Nursing outlines four attributes of nursing that promote a climate that openly allows and even encourages nurses to avoid dealing with racism in the profession. These include: 1. A preference for homogeneity the hallmark of any oppressive culture wishing to hold onto and maintain the power and dominance of the group. This is clearly present in the White group dynamics of professional nursing, which support and promote White nurses over people of color to the detriment of the entire profession. 2. A need to avoid group conflict the profession does all it can at every level to avoid the need to examine its own racist values. 3. An emphasis on empathy nurses view themselves as in a caring profession, therefore, how could they possibly be racist since caring is a paradigm of nursing? This attitude absolves the profession from any responsibility for examining bias. As a veteran who served in the Army, I have always been devoted to defending the freedoms that all Americans hold dear. This Military Appreciation Month, Im asking Congress to do the same, and ensure those freedoms for millions of LGBTQ Americans by supporting a federal law that prohibits LGBTQ discrimination nationwide. Ive been an ally to the LGBTQ community since my military days. I was stationed in Germany during the Cold War. The Berlin Wall had not yet fallen. The Soviet Union was a looming threat. It was a high-pressure time in a high-pressure environment. At least a dozen of the soldiers I served alongside were gay, and all of us understood that the discrimination they faced was completely unwarranted. These were well-respected military intelligence officers at the top of their game. A good soldier is a good soldier it doesnt matter who you are or who you love if you get the job done. No one in the unit had a problem with our colleagues sexual orientation, but military leadership did. For this reason, the soldiers I served alongside didnt come out publicly until retirement. At that point, many of them had been in the service for decades. Ken Ofori-Atta, the Minister of Finance, Friday said to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, Africa needs to close a financing gap of around US$425 billion in the next three years. He said the continent had to also ramp up vaccine rollouts, build organizational capital of the private sector, and invest in long-term and climate-conscious sustainable development. Mr Ofori-Atta made the remarks at the launch and presentation of the 2020 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Budget Report in Accra. He said urgent investments in sustainable and technology-enhanced agriculture, renewable energy and transport, digitalisation, biodiversity, and human capital development were an absolute necessity for the countrys recovery. "So we can no longer talk about the Decade of Action without talking about the impact of COVID-19; and the need to ensure that we recalibrate our economies to leapfrog towards the agreed deadline," he added. The Minister said as at the end of 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic, the SDGs financing gap in developing countries stood at $2.5 trillion; and about 10 months into the pandemic the financing gap had widened by 70 percent, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and stood at $ 4.2 trillion. He said since the launch of the baseline report, the country had published two more reports, with the 2020 SDGs Budget Report being the most recent. Mr Ofori-Atta said with less than nine years to 2030, the deadline for realizing the SDGs, the government had concurred with the United Nations on the need for accelerated action to enable the country to realise the ambitious yet critical objectives that "we have set for ourselves in the SDGs." He said the Pandemic had exacerbated the challenges of achieving the Global and Country level SDG Goals but "we can not despair." On the reasons for developing the SDGs budget report, the Minister said in 2018 when the SDGs Baseline Report was launched, the country recognised the challenges that countries were facing with accessing critical financing for the implementation of the SDGs. He said the country also recognised that aligning the domestic budget to the SDGs was the first step towards optimising the countrys current financial resources for Agenda 2030. The Minister said that process could place government in a better position to encourage the injection of more private capital in the implementation of the SDGs. 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 Mr Frank Kwakye Antwi, Chairman, Ghana Association of Medical and Laboratory Scientists (GAMLS), Korle- Bu Teaching Hospital Chapter, says they are not receiving new clients at the Laboratory Unit. He said due to the industrial action, "the Unit is reasonable and humane" to attend to old clients who had laboratory test results to be taken but not accepting new clients. Mr Antwi in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Friday said, We should be done attending to old clients whose monies we had taken before the strike and by close of day and we will shut down our systems. He said they had to turn away all new clients because they could not attend to them due to the strike. A client who wished to be anonymous said she was waiting to take her test results and was fortunate because she had reported at the Unit a day before the strike started. At the Central Laboratory of the Hospital, GNA observed that the hitherto busy Unit was quiet and almost empty except for few clients who had been waiting for their results. Today is the second day of the industrial strike action by the GAMLS in Accra, in support of the industrial action declared by their colleagues at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) to demand the removal of two medical doctors from the Laboratory Unit of the facility. 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 Fifty-three countries have issued a statement to the World Health Organization's (WHO) annual assembly expressing alarm about allegations of sexual abuse by WHO workers in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They said WHO leaders knew about the alleged cases but did nothing about them. Last year, a media investigation found that aid workers tackling an Ebola outbreak forced women to have sex, with at least two becoming pregnant. The head of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the results of an independent investigation into the allegations would report its findings in August. 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 Kenyas health ministry has advised hospitals to stop giving first doses of the AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccines. Health Minister Mutahi Kagwe says a shipment arriving on Friday from global-sharing scheme Covax is meant for those due for their second shots. More than 950,000 Kenyans who received their first jab of the Covid-19 vaccine in mid-March will receive the booster shots from Friday. Mr Kagwe says under the current circumstances it will be better to ensure that these people are fully vaccinated. A single dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine gives around 70% protection for at least 12 weeks and 81% after a full dose. The minister said those who are yet to be vaccinated will be given other vaccines such as Janssen which manufactured by Johnson & Johnson. But, it is still not clear when they will be delivered. 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 The EU's medicines agency (EMA) has approved the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for 12-15-year-olds - the first jab allowed for this age group in the bloc. Individual member states must now decide if they will offer the jab to children. German leaders gave the green light on Thursday. The US and Canada approved the Pfizer jab for adolescents earlier this month. Friday's announcement came as the World Health Organization (WHO) said Europe needed to speed up its vaccine rollout. WHO Europe director Hans Kluge warned that the pandemic would not be over until at least 70% of the population had been vaccinated. What is EMA's evidence on vaccinating children? Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of vaccine strategy, said the 12-15 age group would require two doses with an interval of at least three weeks. He said trials showed that the Pfizer vaccine was "highly preventative" for Covid-19 in children. "From a safety perspective, the vaccine was well tolerated and the side effects in this age group were very much similar to what we have seen in young adults and not raising major concerns at this point in time," he added. The EU has already approved the Pfizer vaccine for those aged 16 and older. German federal and state leaders agreed on Thursday that children over 12 could start receiving Covid jabs from 7 June. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the vaccine would not be compulsory for teenagers and one survey suggested that only 51% of parents wanted their children to have the jab. Florian Hoffmann, the head of Germany's Association for Intensive and Emergency Medicine, has said that adults should be prioritized "because they have a much higher risk of getting a serious course of the virus which could see them end up in intensive care". 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 Once the pandemic hit, a lot of students felt like, Whats the point of anything? because there was no reason to work hard anymore, when all you needed to do was pass, said Shipinski, 16, a junior, whose repeated request to have his pass grades from last spring changed to traditional letter grades were soundly denied by Elmwood Park Community Unit School District 401. The Ghana Ports and Harbours Authority (GPHA) has disclosed that as part of measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 through the countrys seaport, it suspended its passenger traffic in the early days of the pandemic. Mrs Nana Esi Soderberg, Deputy General Manager, Marketing and Corporate Affairs, GPHA said the management of the Ports had to issue directives not to allow passenger traffic through Ghanas port despite its economic prospects. Mrs Soderberg said this at the Ghana News Agencys Tema Regional Office stakeholder engagement aimed at allowing both state and non-state stakeholders to interact with staff and address national issues as well as throw more light on their institutions mandate. The event also serves as a motivational mechanism to recognize the editorial contribution of reporters to the professional growth and promotion of Tema GNA as the industrial hub, and national development, in general, is also to deepen the working relations between the Agency and its stakeholders. Speaking on: The state of Ghanas seaports under the COVID-19 pandemic Mrs Soderberg said the country used to receive on the average four vessels of passenger traffic annually, adding that the passengers mostly were tourists who upon arrival visit places of interest, change their currencies and buy from vendors adding to the economic fortunes of Ghana. She indicated that but because of COVID-19 we quickly issued a directive that we are not accepting passenger traffic, and its not only us it was worldwide, a lot of countries stopped. Speaking on other measures put in place by the GPHA to handle the pandemic, she disclosed that even before the pandemic hit Ghana, the port authorities initiated one of its contingency plans where top management met and discussed the implications of COVID-19. The outcome of those meetings made the Director-General institute a multi-stakeholder COVID-19 committee, which comprises not only the rest of the port community. It included: Ministry of Agriculture, Ghana Immigration Service, Ghana Navy, Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Port Health among others and as time went on others were added. The committee she said started by structuring guidelines that would help the port and port community to operate even if there was a pandemic or disease bloats in the country. This she said was communicated to the business public and the port community as well adding that they also incorporated into the port protocols governments imposition of ban on foreign travels, among others. She said during the three-week lockdown in Greater Accra and Greater Kumasi Metropolitan Areas, GPHA provided some structures to ensure that the issues of clients were satisfactorily handled in other to avoid shutting down the port enclave. Subsequent to that we made some operational adjustment including allowing the nonessential, non-shift areas including administration to work from home but all operational areas were working 24/7, they were reorganized in a way that there would be minimum contact but the work did not stop, she said. Mrs Soderberg added that the other areas in the supply chain also did their part where some worked off-site, indicating that there was an increase in technology so we were having more electronic meetings and conference calls and relying on governments initiated paperless system for the clearance process. The third GNA-Tema Stakeholder Engagement and Workers Appreciation Day seminar was attended by the National Commission for Civic Education, the Association of Oil Marketing Companies, and the Tema Regional Police Command. 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 An Accra High Court, has, Friday, at the request of the National Labour Commission, ordered the striking laboratory scientists in public health facilities to immediately call off their industrial action. The executives, members and agents of the Ghana Medical Association of Laboratory Scientists are also not to embark on any industrial action but to comply with the procedure provided under the Labour Act for resolving their dispute with their employer. The Commission secured an interlocutory injunction from the High Court of Justice, calling on members of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital Chapter of the Association to call off their industrial action. A statement signed by the Executive Secretary of the Commission, Mr Ofosu Asamoah, and copied to the Ghana News Agency, in Accra, said the injunction should be served by substituted service through publication in the electronic media for four days. The period is from Friday, May 28 to Monday, May 31. Members of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital Chapter of the Association started the strike on Wednesday to back home their demand for the withdrawal of two medical doctors posted to the Laboratory Unit as clinical hematologists. This was preceded by days of sit-down strike. On Thursday, they were joined by their counterparts across the nation amid calls from the Commission, the Parliamentary Select Committee on Health, and other stakeholders on them to return to the mediation table. Members of the Association say they are against what they call 'other professionals taking over their roles in the health facilities. Patients, especially at the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital, have been distressed by the action. 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 Chairman of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, will on Sunday May 30, 2021, conven an extraordinary Summit to enable Heads of State of ECOWAS countries to deliberate and take consequential decisions on the evolving political and security situation in Mali, the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Regional Integration, Shirley Ayorkor Botchway has said. Speaking at a press briefing in Accra on Saturday, May 29, 2021, the Minister noted that the summit is in line with efforts by the regional block to ensure the progressive development of member countries. She said the summit will be held to proffer conflict resolution strategies in accordance with relevant protocols to bring an end to the political crisis in the West African state. She said: "as you are all aware, the past few days have witnessed some worrying developments in Mali. The arrest and detention of the President and Prime Minister of the transition government by the military have necessitated a re-evaluation of the strategies adopted by ECOWAS to bring normalcy to the country. At the behest of the President of the Republic, an ECOWAS Mediation team, led by H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, ECOWAS Special Envoy and Mediator for Mali, embarked on a fact-finding mission to Mali from 25th to 26th May 2021 to assess the situation and explore opportunities for the resolution of the crisis. H.E. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan will, therefore, report to the Summit on the outcome of the mission, she added. The President will be joined by 10 Heads of State from ECOWAS and well-known dignitaries and representatives from Benin, Guinea, Cape Verde and Senegal. The summit will also see the participation of the President and Vice President of the ECOWAS Commission and the former President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and ECOWAS Special Mediator for Mali, Goodluck Jonathan. Providing details on traffic control measures, the Superintendent of Police speaking on behalf of the Director-General of the Motor Transport and Traffic Directorate (MTTD), William Kofi Jaliawu said traffic situation on Sunday is likely not to be heavy and hence, the MTTD does not intend to block any route. He said however that all dignitaries will be escorted per outriders from the Airport through Opeibea using the Liberation road. On his part, Minister for Information, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah said government expect that all stakeholders and parties involved would work together and assist so that the necessary diplomatic courtesies are extended to Heads of States and relevant authorities who will be coming into the country. Source: Peacefmonline.com/Ghana Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Central Region is expected to plant about 400,000 trees on June 11 as part of activities to mark the International Day of the Forest and also to complement the Green Plant Project launched by the Government this year. The Green Plant Project is to encourage Ghanaians to plant more trees to preserve, protect, save the Country's forest cover and the environment. Mr John Allotey, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Forestry Commission (EC), said the project formed part of a strategy and a programme to ensure aggressive afforestation to protect the environment and preserve the forest cover of the Country. The initiative, he indicated, was a joint responsibility for which more broad-based support was needed to address the adverse degradation of the nations forests and ecosystem. Mr Allotey made this known when he paid a day's working tour to the Central Region to solicit support from various opinion leaders and stakeholders in the Region and also discuss preparedness towards the Green Plant Project across the country. The CEO was accompanied by Madam Joyce Ofori Kwafo, Head of Corporate Affairs and Media Relations of the Commission, Mr. Hugh Brown, Director of Operations, Mr Mike Pentsil, Regional Director Forestry Services Division, among others. The team visited tree nurseries and met with staff of the Commission in the various Districts while viewing and inspecting some tree planting sites including land banks allocated for the Project. Some of the districts he visited included the Cape Coast Metropolis, Komenda- Edina-Eguafo-Abrem (KEEA), Effutu Municipality, and the Awutu Traditional Council. He stressed that it was a non-partisan venture, involving relevant stakeholders from all walks of life and called on all to collaborate with the Commission in making the Project a reality to save the forest and beautify the environment. The Project is all about the planting of trees regardless of your political party, we need to come together to retrieve our lost forest reserves he added. Mr Allotey said it was also aimed at inculcating the usefulness and importance of trees in the youth. He said after planting the trees, field officers would be designated to various districts to ensure the sustainability and growing of the trees to yield good results. The CEO and his team had earlier paid a courtesy call on Mrs Justina Marigold Assan, the Regional Minister, who expressed her full commitment to facilitate the implementation of the project, adding that it was time all came together to protect the forest reserves to boost the economy. She assured the CEO that the RCC would liaise with all Metropolitan, Municipal, and District Chief Executives (MMDCEs) to ensure that the expected number of trees were planted in the Region. Mr Allotey was also at the University of Cape Coast ( UCC), Professor Johnson Nyarko Boampong, Vice-Chancellor told the team that the university was ready to participate in the green plant project. He said the university would plant about 5,000 of the expected number of trees slated for the Region. 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 part of government's efforts to whip up national consciousness towards the planting of trees, the Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Mr Samuel Abu Jinapor Friday launched 'One-Student, One-Tree' initiative in Accra. The initiative is intended to encourage students to plant trees and nurture them to grow before graduating from the school. It is being spearheaded by the Ministry of Lands and Natural Resources, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education. The event also formed part of measures to encourage every citizen to participate in the upcoming 'Green Ghana Project' which is slated for June 11, 2021, to plant five million trees across the country. Mr Jinapor, who launched the 'One-Student, One-Tree' initiative at the Accra High School, said it was intended to recover the depleted forest cover, ravaged by the activities of illegal small-scale mining. The Minister said in view of the massive degradation of the country's forests, it required a dramatic and aggressive tree planting intervention to salvage the situation. Therefore, government had adopted two-pronged approach to recover the depleted forest cover namely, eradicating the illegal small-scale mining menace and embarking on an aggressive afforestation strategy to green the environment. Mr Jinapor mentioned some high profile personalities who would plant trees on the Green Ghana Day including; President Akufo-Addo, Vice President Bawumia, Speaker of Parliament Alban Sumana Bagbin and Chief Justice Kwasi Anim Yeboah. He noted that in other jurisdictions, a student was required to plant a tree and nurture it to maturity before graduating from the school, and suggested that it would serve the nation well should that policy be introduced into the country's education system. The Minister said the Ministry would make seedlings available at designated centres and district offices of the Forestry Commission for planting and encouraged religious leaders, traditional leaders and civil society organizations to support the initiative through funding and logistics. Dr Yaw Osei Adutwum, the Education Minister, in an address, said the campaign would help save Ghana and the world from the negative effects of climate change. He said the future belonged to the youth and, therefore, it was imperative for the young ones to take the tree planting campaign seriously and participate. "I pledged my support for the environmental rehabilitation project and urged every well-meaning Ghanaian to join the campaign," he added. Source: GNA Disclaimer : Opinions expressed here are those of the writers and do not reflect those of Peacefmonline.com. Peacefmonline.com accepts no responsibility legal or otherwise for their accuracy of content. Please report any inappropriate content to us, and we will evaluate it as a matter of priority. Featured Video The Ghana National Fire Service in the Eastern Region has come under intense public backlash for attending to a fire incident in a hired taxi instead of a fire tender. The Fanteakwa North District had been without a fire tender for nearly a month now due to a mechanical fault. It came as a huge surprise to locals in the district when fire personnel stationed at the district arrived at a fire scene in Begoro with extinguishers in a hired vehicle on Thursday (27 May). However, the commander of the Eastern Regional Division of the Ghana National Fire Service, Jennifer Naa Yarley Quaye, said her men deserve to be praised for being proactive despite the challenges bedeviling the unit. Our vehicles are faulty. It has a clutch problem for about two weeks now. We have mechanics who attend to them, but within the period, Akosombo had their problems and Nsawam also had their problems and these same mechanics attended to them so it was only yesterday [Thursday], that these chief mechanics said they had completed servicing the Akosombo vehicle, and that they will be moving to Begoro and unfortunately that incident occurred, Quaye told Accra-based Citi FM. They informed [fire fighters] in Bunsu which was the nearest fire station, but to be proactive, they had to go there with a fire extinguisher while they start fighting the fire, waiting for [fire fighters at] Bunsu to come. They could have decided to wait at the station because their vehicle was not working and waited for Bunsu to come from far away, but they took that bold initiative to move to the fire scene to assist, so I think we should applaud them, she added. Challenges The Eastern Regional Command of the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS) currently has 25 fire tenders, with one district having just one tender to respond to distress calls. As we speak, each district has a fire engine. There are 25 of them. Three of them are faulty as we speak, the fire boss said. View this post on Instagram A post shared by UTV Ghana (@utvghana) Source: UTV/asaaseradio.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 Hong Kong developers are offering a US$1.4 million apartment as a prize for residents who have been vaccinated for COVID-19. (PHOTO: Vernon Yuen/NurPhoto via Getty Images) By Shawna Kwan and Felix Tam (Bloomberg) Hong Kong developers are offering a US$1.4 million apartment as a prize for residents who have been vaccinated for COVID-19, as local authorities grapple with widespread reluctance to get inoculated. Sino Groups philanthropic arm Ng Teng Fong Charitable Foundation and Chinese Estates Holdings Ltd. are offering a brand-new apartment in their Grand Central project in the Kwun Tong area, the companies said in a statement Friday. Hong Kong residents who have received two vaccine doses are eligible for the draw to win the 449 square-foot (42 square-metre) unit. Sino Group is the parent of Hong Kong-listed developer Sino Land Co. The latest move comes after the government said it was studying options including donations for unused vaccine doses, some of which are set to expire as soon as August. Authorities have said that the surplus could hurt future procurement of shots. Hong Kongs government has been working to encourage residents to get their shots by providing policy incentives like reopening bars and shortening quarantines. Still, Chief Executive Carrie Lam this week rejected the call for any cash or in-kind incentives to boost the local inoculation rate amid high demand for vaccinations around the world. Despite being one of the few places in the world to make vaccines available to all adults, only 12.6% of the population of 7.5 million has been fully inoculated, according to Bloombergs Covid-19 Vaccine Tracker far behind neighbouring financial hub Singapore at 28.3%. A free apartment is bound to be attractive in Hong Kong, which has the worlds most expensive property prices. Private residential values climbed to a 21-month high in April, government figures show. Parts of the U.S. have set up lotteries to entice people to get shots. New York, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky and Oregon have offered lucky draws for vaccinated residents. 2021 Bloomberg L.P. In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, a Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Wenchang in southern China's Hainan Province, Saturday, May 29, 2021. A rocket carrying supplies for China's new space station blasted off Saturday from an island in the South China Sea. Credit: Guo Wenbin/Xinhua via AP A rocket carrying supplies for China's new space station blasted off Saturday from an island in the South China Sea. A Long March 7 rocket carrying the automated Tianzhou-2 spacecraft took off at 8:55 p.m. (1255 GMT) from the Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, the Chinese space agency announced. The agency said the craft entered orbit 10 minutes later and the launch was deemed a "perfect success." The Tianzhou-2 carried fuel and supplies, according to earlier state media reports. The station's core module was launched into orbit April 29. The Chinese space agency says 11 launches are planned through the end of next year to deliver two more modules for the 70-ton station, supplies and a three-member crew. China was criticized for allowing part of the rocket that launched the Tianhe to fall back to Earth uncontrolled. There was no indication about what Beijing planned to do with the rocket from Saturday's launch. The Tianhe, or Heavenly Harmony, is the third and largest orbital station launched by China's increasingly ambitious space program. Beijing doesn't participate in the International Space Station, largely due to U.S. objections. Washington is wary of the Chinese program's secrecy and its military connections. A Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Wenchang in southern China's Hainan Province, Saturday, May 29, 2021. A rocket carrying supplies for China's new space station blasted off Saturday from an island in the South China Sea. Credit: Chinatopix via AP A Long March 7 rocket carrying the Tianzhou-2 spacecraft lifts off from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Wenchang in southern China's Hainan Province, Saturday, May 29, 2021. A rocket carrying supplies for China's new space station blasted off Saturday from an island in the South China Sea. Credit: Chinatopix via AP In this image taken from undated video footage run by China's CCTV via AP Video, a rendering of a module of a Chinese space station is shown. China has launched the core module on Thursday, April 29, 2021 for its first permanent space station that will host astronauts long-term. Credit: CCTV via AP Video Explore further China delays supply mission to newly launched space station 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. In the shadow of Nyiragongo: A child in the northern outskirts of Goma runs on a bed of solidified lava. The eastern DR Congo city of Goma was eerily deserted after nearly 400,000 of its inhabitants fled following warnings that nearby Mount Nyiragongo volcano may erupt again. The authorities geared up for a major humanitarian effort, centred on Sake, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of the city, where tens of thousands of people are gathered. Located on the shore of Lake Kivu in the shadow of Africa's most active volcano, the city has lived in fear since Nyiragongo roared back into life last weekend. The strato-volcano spewed rivers of lava that claimed nearly three dozen lives and destroyed the homes of some 20,000 people before the eruption stopped. Scientists have since recorded hundreds of aftershocks. They warn of a potentially catastrophic scenarioa "limnic eruption" that could smother the area with suffocating carbon dioxide. A report on an emergency meeting early Friday said 80,000 householdsaround 400,000 inhabitantshad emptied on Thursday following a "preventative" evacuation order. Most people have headed for Sake or the Rwandan border in the northeast, while others have fled by boat across Lake Kivu. Late Friday, Rwandan President Paul Kagame said those fleeing needed "urgent, global support". Most people have headed for Sake, around 25 kilometres (15 miles) west of Goma, and for the Rwandan border, in the northeast. Aid efforts are being organised to provide drinking water, food and other supplies, and workers are helping to reunite children who became separated from their families. Nearly 10,000 people are taking refuge in Bukavu on the southern bank of Lake Kivu, according to governor Theo Ngwabidje, many of them in host families. Quieter night Several days of aftershocks, some of them equivalent to small earthquakes, yielded to a quieter night Thursday, and tremors eased both in numbers and intensity, an AFP journalist said. But late Friday afternoon black smoke could be seen rising from the crater on the horizon, causing worry. General Constant Ndima, the military governor of North Kivu province, ordered the evacuation of districts that potentially applies to nearly 400,000 out of Goma's 600,000 residents, according to an estimate by the UN humanitarian agency OCHA. The wider Goma area has a population of around two million. The authorities arranged transport towards Sake, but the roads became choked with cars, trucks, buses and people seeking safety on foot. Satellite photo of the zone around the Nyiragongo volcano, showing lava flows towards the city of Goma. Many spent the night in the open or slept in schools or churches. Evacuee Eugene Kubugoo said the water was giving children diarrhoea, adding: "We don't have anything to eat or any place to sleep." Tens of thousands had fled Goma last Saturday night but many returned when the eruption ended the following day. 'Limnic' risk Friday's report, issued after experts carried out a risk assessment at the volcano's summit, said "seismicity and ground deformation continues to indicate the presence of magma under the Goma area, with an extension under Lake Kivu." People should remain vigilant and listen to news bulletins, as the situation "may change quickly", it warned. Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is of an eruption under the lake. This could release hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) that are currently dissolved in the water's depths. Volcanologists say the worst-case scenario is of an eruption under the lake. The gas would rise to the surface of the lake, forming an invisible cloud that would linger at ground level and displace oxygen, asphyxiating life. In 1986, one of these so-called limnic eruptions killed more than 1,700 people and thousands of cattle at Lake Nyos in western Cameroon. Empty city On Friday, almost all of the shops and banks in central Goma were closed, and just a handful of people and some motorcycle taxis were on the usually bustling streets. In the poorer districts in the north of the city, a handful of stores were open and there were more people, including children who gambolled near a water truck. "I will stay in the city. I know that I'm in imminent danger but I don't have a choice," said Aline Uramahoro, who has a beer store. "I will leave when the volcano starts spitting." Nearly 3,500 metres (11,500 feet) high, Nyiragongo straddles the East African Rift tectonic divide. Hungry: Displaced people queue for food in Sake, 25 kms from Goma. Its last major eruption, in 2002, claimed around 100 lives and the deadliest eruption on record killed more than 600 people in 1977. Herman Paluku, who gave his age as 94, said he had seen them alland insisted he wouldn't budge this time. "There is a small hill near here which means that the lava does not reach us. And that's what protects us a bit," he said in Swahili, his hands sweeping the air. "I can never leave here, in this situation. I can't." 2021 AFP As the countrys major political parties move further apart, so does the legislation that flows from them and like voting rights and abortion, guns are no exception. This month, Texas became the 20th state to pass legislation that says a permit is not required to carry a concealed handgun, according to Anne S. Teigen, an expert at the National Conference of State Legislatures. Illinois and the city of San Jose, California, where nine people were killed in a mass shooting this past week, are considering bills that would tax things like ammunition and certain types of guns. When members of the William M. Collin Grand Army of the Republic post unveiled the Sandy Hill soldiers monument on June 30, 1887, the crowd raised three cheers for Dr. Erskine Clark, the local physician who commissioned and paid for the monument. The humble physician, who shunned the limelight, was not there to hear the cheers, even though he had been invited to make a speech. With his customary modesty, Dr. Clark refused to be present, The Morning Star reported on July 1, 1887. Clark paid $10,000 the equivalent of $284,100 in 2021 dollars to commission the National Granite Co. of Barre, Vermont, to craft the 51-foot-tall monument, with a sculpture of Libertas, the ancient Roman goddess of liberty and freedom, at the top. Clark contributed about 11.5% of his wealth, based on an $86,958 value of his estate, the value reported Dec. 11, 1895, in The Morning Star. All through the long war, the doctor was an enthusiastic worker for the cause of the union, The Granville Sentinel reported on June 17, 1887. He now cements his patriotic devotion to the union and the brave boys, by placing before young America this monument in honor of their fathers who died that they might enjoy the blessings of a free and united country. The Sandy Hill veterans and citizens of the village are determined that none of their guests shall go away hungry, The Morning Star reported. The temperature the day of the dedication was in the mid-90s and the sky was clear. The day, although excessively warm, was clear and bright and all that could be desired, The Washington County Advertiser of Fort Edward reported. Grand Army of the Republic posts and musical units marched from one end of the village to the other, and back again, before breaking for lunch, described as an ample spread. Amid the blare of trumpet and roll of drum, with songs and hymns and loving tribute of voice and brain, under the regenerated flag of liberty, the citizens of our sister village of Sandy Hill celebrated its festival to the memory of the dead, The Morning Star reported the next day. After lunch, veterans reassembled and marched to the monument for the 1 p.m. dedication of the war memorial dubbed The Goddess of Liberty because of the figure of Libertas, the ancient Roman goddess of freedom, depicted at the top of the 51-foot-tall monument, holding an American shield in her left hand and a cross-handed sword in her right. PHOENIX (AP) A lawsuit filed Friday alleges that Phoenix officers retaliated against 124 people at a protest of police violence nearly a year ago by arresting them on trumped-up criminal charges that were quickly dismissed. Lawyers who filed the lawsuit said the actions of the officers chilled the free-speech rights of protesters, contending officers were partially motivated by the desire to silence and disrupt plaintiffs actual or perceived protected anti-police-violence views. The lawsuit was filed against the city of Phoenix, Police Chief Jeri Williams and other police officials by 23 people who were arrested during the May 30 protest in downtown Phoenix. Demonstrators were protesting George Floyd's death in Minneapolis and Dion Johnson's death in metro Phoenix as officers were trying to arrest them. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages and class-action status to cover the other 101 people who were arrested. The demonstrators also were requesting court orders that would bar Phoenix police from using chemical irritants at demonstrations and declare that the protesters in question were officially cleared of the allegations. Korte on Friday said he spoke with Perkins after the claims were brought to his attention and that Perkins told him that the two had a consensual short-term relationship but that he never provided her alcohol (and) they never hung out when she was visibly intoxicated. There was no indication that any crime had taken place, Korte said. He said that at some point in the past few years he also spoke with the woman and that she confirmed the two hooked up but that he didnt document the conversations. Korte said that beyond those conversations and flagging the claims to the Bowling Green police chief, he didn't take further steps to investigate. An AP request for comment to the Bowling Green police chief was not immediately returned Friday. Asked about concerns that his handling of the case might erode young womens trust that his department would take seriously claims of sexual assault against law enforcement officers, Korte said he could see someone who didnt know him or the community questioning it. I guess my question is, were you ever in a situation where you said, Hey look at that cute cop? Korte asked. SAN DIEGO (AP) Families arriving at the U.S. border with Mexico will have their cases fast-tracked in immigration court, the Biden administration said Friday, less than two weeks after it said it was easing pandemic-related restrictions on seeking asylum. Under the plan, families stopped on the border starting Friday could be placed in expedited proceedings aimed at determining whether they can remain in the United States. Immigration judges would generally decide these cases within 300 days of an initial hearing in 10 cities including New York, Los Angeles and border communities such as El Paso, Texas, and San Diego, the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security said in a statement. It isn't the first time U.S. officials have sought to expedite the immigration cases of families arriving on the southwest border. The Trump and Obama administrations previously created dockets aimed at quickly deciding these cases in the immigration courts, which are notoriously backlogged and can take years to resolve cases. The latest iteration, which the administration is calling a dedicated docket, lets judges grant continuances for good cause, according to instructions they received. It calls the 300-day timeline an internal goal. Editor: Last December, I wrote an essay published in the Post-Star, promoting a plan that would shore up the financial solvency of the Social Security and Medicare programs and encouraged our elected representatives to promptly adopt this proposal. As previously discussed, both programs are facing huge funding shortfalls in the future and need major reform. Specifically, I recommended means-testing for upper income earners and expanding the number of investment options for program reserves, permitting higher rates of return. Recently and fortunately, Senator Mitt Romney of Utah followed up and has formed a bipartisan commission to address these very same issues. Dubbed the Time to Rescue United States Trusts Act, this initiative is designed to address the looming insolvency of these entitlement programs. The Congressional Budget Office projects that continued inaction regarding program finances could result in significant benefit cuts to current retirees and massive deficits for future generations. Workable solutions will prevent these and other financial calamities, so there is no economic reason not to support the initiative. Today is May 27, 2021. Let's get caught up. These headlines are in the news this morning: Details emerge about the victims and gunman in a California rail yard shooting that killed 8; Republican senators expected to block investigation of Jan. 6 insurrection at U.S. Capitol; the world remembers author of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar." Read on for these stories, other top headlines, celebrity birthdays and more. TOP STORIES Authorities ID 9 victims of California railyard shooting SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) An employee opened fire Wednesday at a California rail yard, killing nine people before taking his own life as law enforcement rushed in, authorities said, marking the latest attack in a year that has seen a sharp increase in mass killings as the nation emerges from coronavirus restrictions. The shooting took place around 6:30 a.m. in two buildings at a light rail facility for the Valley Transportation Authority, which provides bus, light rail and other transit services throughout Santa Clara County, the most populated county in the San Francisco Bay Area. International Many in US have shots, will travel LM OTERO, ASSOCIATED PRESS A traveler is processed at a security checkpoint at Love Field airport Friday in Dallas. Americans hit the road in near-record numbers at the start of the Memorial Day weekend, as their eagerness to break free from coronavirus confinement overcame higher prices for flights, gasoline and hotels. More than 1.8 million people went through U.S. airports Thursday, and the daily number was widely expected to cross 2 million at least once over the long holiday weekend, which would be the highest mark since early March 2020. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas warned people to expect long lines at airports and appealed for travelers to be patient. The rise in travel appears to be fueled by an increase in COVID-19 vaccinations as well as an improving economy. The U.S. Commerce Department said consumer spending increased in April, although not as much as in March, showing how consumers are driving a recovery from last years pandemic recession. At Miami International Airport, officials expected crowds equal to pre-pandemic levels. It was a similar story in Orlando, where airport traffic has reached 90% of 2019 levels as tourists flocked to theme parks that have recently loosened restrictions. Along the Florida coasts and around Orlando, many hotels were booked solid through the weekend. We are going into off-season, and it has not slowed down, said Cathy Balestriere, general manager of Cranes Beach House, a boutique hotel in Delray Beach, Florida. Vacation destinations like Las Vegas, Hawaii and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, were among the top destinations for holiday revelers, according to AAA. Paula Twidale, a spokeswoman for the auto club and insurer, said the pickup in travel began in April as more Americans got vaccinated and the weather improved. People are just excited to get out, she said. Memorial Day coincides with some states eliminating their remaining pandemic restrictions as the number of new COVID-19 infections, hospitalizations and deaths decline. Virginia, where President Joe Biden traveled to tout his administrations efforts to contain the virus, is easing all distancing and capacity restrictions Friday. A mask mandate in Massachusetts ends Saturday. AAA expects a 60% jump in travel over the 2020 Memorial Day weekend, with 37 million Americans traveling at least 50 miles from home, most of them in cars. Thats despite gasoline prices being at their highest levels in seven years: The national average is above $3 a gallon for regular. Prices for rental cars are up sharply, too if you can find one after companies culled their fleets to survive last years deep slump in travel. My mother-in-law called me on a vacation and said, Hey, can you get me a rental car? I said, No, said Jordan Staab, president of SmarterTravel Media. Demand is up 500% since January, and its tough to get a rental car right now, so plan ahead as much as you possibly can. Hotels and other lodging in beach and mountain areas are expecting bigger crowds than those in cities. Lou Carrier, the president of Distinctive Hospitality Group, said the companys two hotels in tourist towns in Connecticut have seen a jump in bookings since the state loosened its mask requirements two weeks ago, but occupancy is still only around 20% at its three hotels in Boston. Hotel room rates nationally jumped 9% in April after an 8% rise in March, and airfares soared 10% in April, according to the latest available figures from the Commerce Department. Meanwhile, Kids at summer camps can skip wearing masks outdoors, with some exceptions, federal health officials said Friday. Children who arent fully vaccinated should still wear masks outside when theyre in crowds or in sustained close contact with others and when they are inside, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. Fully vaccinated kids need not wear masks indoors or outside, the agency said. The guidelines open the door to a more conventional camp experience and came out in the nick of time, just before camps start opening in some parts of the country, said Tom Rosenberg, president of the American Camp Association. The guidance is the first in a wave of updates that will incorporate the CDCs recent decisions on masks and social distancing. Earlier this month, the agency said Americans dont have to be as cautious about masks and distancing outdoors, and that fully vaccinated people dont need masks in most situations. Previously, the CDC advised that just about all people at camps should wear masks with only a few exceptions, like while they are eating, drinking or swimming. In other developments: The number of new coronavirus infections in the U.K. hit a near two-month high Friday as British regulators authorized the use of the single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson. Government figures showed that another 4,182 new confirmed cases were reported across the U.K., the highest daily figure since April 1. The cases bring the total number of confirmed infections reported over the past seven days to 20,765, a 24% increase from the previous week. The rise prompted scientists to say the U.K. is now in the midst of a third wave of the pandemic. The United States and Britain are stepping up calls for the World Health Organization to take a deeper look into the possible origins of COVID-19, including a new visit to China where the first human infections were detected. We see good things for this season, our beach tag sales are up, our rentals are extremely strong, said Michele Gillian, executive director of the Ocean City Regional Chamber of Commerce. Especially this year, it will be really helpful for Boardwalk merchants because of the restrictions. Support Local Journalism Your subscription makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} Ocean City kicked off the weekend with the annual Business Persons Plunge and Unlocking of the Ocean at the Music Pier. Gillian said she wasnt seeing the weather as an issue for the weekend, as residents and visitors are eager to get out. Saturday will be the wettest, windiest and coldest day of the weekend. High temperatures will struggle to reach 60 degrees as off-and-on rain will be around. A strong northeast wind will bring coastal flooding with the late evening high tide. Sunday will be a bit less windy and wet, as lengthy dry periods are expected. Highs will rise a bit, into the mid-60s. Monday will be partly sunny, with highs in the 70s. I think were going to have a really good turnout because of the holiday and because people on Friday officially dont need masks inside, outside, Gillian said. Its going to be a celebration. Ocean City flag-raising moved to Memorial Day OCEAN CITY The dedication of a new flagpole outside the Music Pier has been postponed to M Some officials did attend the event. We at the Cumberland County Prosecutors Office stand in solidarity with the families. We agree that too many young people in our community are dying, said county Prosecutor Jennifer Webb-McRae, who joined the marchers in the park before they set off toward her office in the courthouse. She said her office would protect the anonymity of those who provide information. Bridgeton police Chief Michael Gaimari said his officers are working night and day, in cooperation with the State Police, to investigate the shootings. But he said the police need cooperation from the community. He said the violence is coming from 1% of the community. That 99% of the good people is the biggest gang that we have. So dont let that 1% dictate what you can and cannot do with your life, Gaimari said. We need your help. He indicated police have an idea who was responsible for the bloodshed. We have suspects. Im not going to lie to you. We have suspects. Do we have enough to arrest? If we did, theyd be in handcuffs, he said. We need the communitys support. We need the communitys help. If you know something, please let us know. MacLeod originally tried out for the part of Lou Grant, which went to Ed Asner, but claimed to be happy that he ended up playing Murray. He also auditioned for the role of Archie Bunker on All in the Family, but of reading the script for the first time, he wrote in his memoir, Immediately I thought, This is not the script for me. The character is too much of a bigot. I cant say these things. When Norman Lear called the actor to say that Carroll OConnor had gotten the part, MacLeod was relieved. In 2020, the White House Council on Environmental Quality revised the NEPA regulations for the first time in more than 40 years. Many of those reforms relied on objectives outlined in the original statute and regulations, which called for striking a balance between economic, technical and public good considerations. The 2020 reforms established a One Federal Decision framework to streamline the approval process, providing senior level oversight of the timeline and limiting the length of submissions. For substantially similar activity, the reforms allowed for the re-use or substitution of environmental documents and public input processes conducted under other environmental laws. To help reduce litigation over interpretations of the rules, vaguely written regulatory language was clarified with more specific guidance. Upon rollout of the revised NEPA regulations in 2020, businesses both large and small from nearly every part of the U.S. economy issued statements supporting the changes. Unfortunately, the reforms have been challenged in multiple U.S. courts by both environmental groups and several states, prompting the Department of Justice to ask for time to review the reforms so the Biden administration can submit its own version. President Biden asks GOP to not "get in the way" on infrastructure; rail yard victims honored; 'Friends' reunion review. Plus, your Memorial Day weekend weather forecast. With travel numbers high for Memorial Day weekend, COVID-19 numbers were low Friday. Scott County reported eight new cases, while Rock Island County reported 10 new cases of COVID-19 Friday. It's a hopeful sign of the dwindling pandemic as the daily number of airport travelers is expected to cross 2 million people at least once over the weekend, the highest mark since early March 2020, according to the Associated Press. AAA is expecting a 60% jump in travel over the 2020 Memorial Day weekend, with 37 millions Americans traveling at least 50 miles from their homes, a sign of hope the pandemic is nearing an end as more people get vaccinated. Still, the toll of the pandemic should not be forgotten. Scott County has seen 21,632 total cases of COVID-19 and 244 deaths from the coronavirus, while Rock Island County has had 14,930 total cases, with 324 total deaths. Illinois has seen 22,739 deaths from COVID-19, while Iowa has had 6,053. With 1,094 new cases between the two states, it's clear the pandemic isn't yet over, vaccinations still available to try and continue to end it for good. The first rhinoceros in the history of Niabi Zoo has arrived. A two-year-old, male southern white rhino named Keto arrived this week and was put on public display Friday. The rhino is the result of a fundraising effort that began in December of 2020 that Zoo Director Lee Jackson described as a "smashing success." "We are absolutely thrilled to be given the opportunity to share such an iconic mega vertebrate to the Quad-Cities community, and play a real role in their ongoing conservation efforts," Jackson said in a release. "This will be the first time that this or any rhinoceros' species will have been kept at Niabi, and we are beyond excited to be able to share these magnificent animals with our community. "Keto is only the beginning. We hope to have a female join him here by early summer of 2022 with the goal of eventually producing offspring in the future." After a lottery to determine winners among top-scoring applications for the 75 licenses, Ford's bill would set up lotteries for awarding the next 110 licenses, in two equal batches, that would make "social-equity" applicants more likely to qualify for lotteries. Social-equity applicants include entrepreneurs from low-income neighborhoods or who had been arrested on marijuana charges or had immediate family members who had been arrested. After the 75 licenses are awarded, applications for the next 110 licenses could qualify for a lottery if they scored 85% or better on state criteria rather than the perfect scores required previously, Ford said. The bill would allow social-equity applicants who win licenses to locate their dispensaries closer than 1,500 feet from an established dispensary unless local ordinances prohibited the option. Current state law prohibits dispensaries from opening closer than 1,500 feet apart. The bill also would allow existing dispensaries to move within a municipality with that municipality's approval. "Normally we're on fixed routes, but we've been given freedom to operate within a certain area of airspace by Air Services Australia, and that will allow us to keep maneuvering the airplane, just to keep that moon in the best position," Passerini told CNN. The pilot, who has spent much of the pandemic flying repatriation flights and transporting freight, commented on the "energy" of the travelers and said it was a treat to fly a bunch of excited passengers. Aviation enthusiast Rory Ding told CNN he was excited not only to see this rare lunar event from the air, but also get the chance to fly on a 787 Dreamliner aircraft for the first time since the pandemic hit Australia. The view from the plane window was "like nothing I had seen before," said Ding. Ding, who was seated in economy, said there was a great atmosphere on board, with passengers letting other passengers swap into window seats to ensure they got a glimpse of the eclipse. Passenger Aaron Seeto told CNN that even though he had an aisle seat, his seat neighbor shared the window view with him. "It was amazing," Seeto said. "Especially just seeing it so high up in the sky with your eyes." Ding was also impressed by the lunar view. We wish Republicans on the board had chosen to hold an election to fill this seat. We believe elections are better than appointments, no matter the party in power. The law certainly allowed the board to call for an election, but majority Republicans rejected that idea. In choosing to exercise their clout, Supervisors Tony Knobbe, Ken Beck and John Maxwell maintained a county tradition. They rejected the idea that voters should make this choice, deciding instead to substitute their own judgment; to flex their political muscle. Weve seen it before. Democrats have done the same thing in the past. In 2008, a Democrat-controlled vacancy panel appointed Democrat Jeff Liske to the county board to replace Moritz, who left the board after winning election as auditor. In both parties, facing similar circumstances, when faced with the choice whether to hold an election or exercise power, the lure of partisan advantage has superseded letting voters in on the decision. Yes, we heard the explanation from Republicans this time that this is what voters elect supervisors to do, to make the tough decisions. Its important that when they see someone like me, whos like a real person that talks to them every day and stuff like that, that Im actually getting my vaccine and they should too, Beth said while waiting during the 15-minute observation period following the jab. Even before Beths Saturday appointment, his reach as an influencer piqued some curiosity and pushback among his viewers. In total, Cook Countys vaccination webpages have racked up 400 additional clicks thanks to him linking to them in his videos, the countys public health department spokesman said. Some users have praised Beth for spreading the word, with one comment on an Instagram video a week ago saying, Using your platform RIGHT!!! followed by two clapping emojis. Like many of you guys, Im thinking about getting vaccinated, and I really want to experience the full privileges that come with getting vaccinated, Beth had said in the video. I want to party. I want to really get back to normal life. So I attached a few links where you could do your own research and find out which vaccine works for you. The proposed map extends the 4th District, which currently runs across central Illinois from Kankakee County to the Quad Cities, to absorb counties within the current 2nd District and 3rd District. For example, the new 4th District would gain Peoria County and the Quad Cities region, which are both currently in the 3rd District. It would also acquire Winnebago County and DuPage County, which are currently in the 2nd District. The 5th District, which currently spans more than 30 counties downstate, would gain Champaign County and Macon County, which were previously within the 4th District. The new map was drafted using American Community Survey data, as well as election data, according to Tarver. ACS data is less precise and detailed than the U.S. Census Bureau data, which is delayed because of the pandemic. Republicans also took issue with the Democrats claim that the new proposed judicial map will not impact the appellate court justices because the appellate courts share district boundaries with the Illinois Supreme Court. Rep. Patrick Windhorst, R-Metropolis, said he was concerned the new map could affect the number of appellate court justices within a certain district, and it could conflict with current law that sets the number of appellate justices in a district. As the Dreadhead Cowboy, Hollingsworth became a familiar sight at neighborhood events and protests last summer, and his unusual story drew national attention. But the feel-good story came to an abrupt end in September 2020, when he was charged with felony animal cruelty after being accused of mistreating one of his horses during a 7.5-mile gallop down the Dan Ryan Expressway, a journey that allegedly ended with the animal severely injured and near death. But it will hold people accountable, Hastings said at the rally without naming any companies. It'll hold those people that cast a dark cloud over our state that caused this whole problem. This bill would have been passed a long time ago if it wasn't for them, and we're gonna hold them to the highest ethical standards that we can. CUJA backers touted a refund mechanism which would protect consumers from paying inflated costs for nuclear plants receiving subsidies. The Climate Jobs Illinois coalition said state leaders still haven't found a way to sufficiently fund the nuclear plants that provide clean energy, which is why they suggest a 10-year bridge contract provision. If the market prices increase (providing higher payment for power generated), the bill includes a mechanism that would dynamically respond, lowering the credit value offered to the nuclear plants to protect consumers from paying more than necessary to operate them, according to a news release. Durkin said at the rally that the entire Republican Caucus is standing to ensure the nuclear fleet will continue to operate in Illinois. The legislation, sponsored by state Rep. LaShawn Ford, D-Chicago, would allow that initial lottery to move forward. In addition, another lottery would consist of 55 licenses and be open to all social equity applicants who scored 85% or higher on their application. A third lottery would award 55 licenses to groups that meet the above criteria and have 51% ownership by at least one person who's live in an area disproportionately impacted by the War on Drugs for five of the past 10 years or 51% ownership by at least one person or a close family member of that person arrested, convicted, or adjudicated delinquent for cannabis offenses. No applicant can receive more than two licenses under the proposal. The bill would also allow existing dispensaries to move to another location within their municipality with the municipality's approval. Pritzker, in a statement Friday evening, indicated he will sign the bill. Equity is at the core of cannabis legalization in Illinois, and this essential legislation will accelerate our collective vision to make sure that the communities harmed the most by the war on drugs can participate in this industry as it grows," Pritzker said. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 Finkenauer served two terms in the Iowa House, then one in the U.S. House before losing her re-election bid in 2020. Her candidacy would come as little surprise to those who follow Iowa politics closely. Finkenauer has been mulling her options since her defeat in November, and a Senate run would make sense for her. (Quick aside: There is a possibility that the U.S. Senate race could wind up a rematch of that 2020 1st District congressional campaign, if Finkenauer runs and wins the Democratic nomination, and if Grassley retires and Republican U.S. Rep. Ashley Hinson runs and wins the GOP nomination. But I digress.) One Iowa Democrat who has ruled out a run for U.S. Senate is state auditor Rob Sand, who made the revelation this week to the Carroll Times. Sand had been considering myriad options for 2022: run for re-election as auditor, or run for the U.S. Senate or governor. Sand has whittled the Senate off that list. It seemed likely the Democrats were headed for a competitive primary in Iowas Senate race. The questions now are how competitive, and whether the national Democrats aka "the establishment" will get involved. While the fire department does not support home growing inside residences, Behlings said if nothing else, they will provide guidance for home growers on the safe, proper techniques for doing so. Harrison was the last speaker for the committees first meetings. He has experience with narcotics and he has been to Colorado and spent time enforcing marijuana laws there. While he has never used marijuana, he said he has spoken with hundreds of people who have. Harrisons main concerns were with the home grow system that is allowed under IM 26. He said allowing home grow or for caregivers to supply marijuana to patients is a slippery slope that can easily lead to supplying the black market. Having caps on the amount of plants could help with this. He showed the committee photos he had taken in Colorado of commercial-growth marijuana plants, which can produce over a pound of product. Avoiding home grow entirely would be the best solution, he said. When you have home grow, thats where you have least amount of control, and the most room for cheating the system, Harrison said. The state should use South Dakota doctors and pharmacists to recommend [use] and we should regulate it like they do in Minnesota. According to court records, Hunt challenged the county's property tax valuations by appealing to the Meade County Board of Commissioners. The commissioners rejected Hunt's claims. Hunt Companies appealed the valuation to the circuit court, filing separate cases for each of the three years. Those appeals were consolidated into one case. The consolidated appeal did not address the constitutional question of whether or not Hunt Companies leaseholder interest should be tax exempt since Antelope Ridge is build on government property. The Fourth Judicial Circuit Court found that Meade County made an error in over-assessing Hunt's leaseholder interest by using the fee simple value of the property. The court found that the assessed value should be reduced to not include the value of the land and the depreciation of the property after the Air Force ceased maintenance and upkeep. In the circuit court's June 2016 ruling, it reduced the assessed leaseholder interest value by more than half $14.1 million in 2012, $15.5 million in 2013 and $15.1 million in 2014. The court also ruled that Hunt was not entitled to a refund for those tax years because they did not pay under protest. "I support the ongoing criminal investigations by the Department of Justice, which have already led to hundreds of arrests," he said. "I also look forward to the conclusion of the bipartisan investigation that is currently underway in two Senate committees." No South Dakota residents have been charged in relation to events at the Capitol on Jan. 6. Six Republicans voted with Democrats to move forward. Eleven senators missed the rare Friday vote. Though the Jan. 6 commission bill passed the House earlier this month with the support of almost three dozen Republicans, GOP senators said they believe the commission would eventually be used against them politically. And Trump, who still has a firm hold on the party, has called it a Democrat trap. The vote is emblematic of the profound mistrust between the two parties since the siege, especially among Republicans, as some in the party have downplayed the violence and defended the rioters who supported Trump and his false insistence that the election was stolen from him. A Los Angeles toddler has become the youngest American member of Mensa, where membership is strictly limited to those who score at the highest levels in IQ tests. Kashe Quest may be a two-year-old but her skills include naming all of the elements on the periodic table, identifying all 50 states by shape and location, learning Spanish and deciphering patterns, according to her parents. "She has always shown us, more than anything, the propensity to explore her surroundings and to ask the question 'Why,'" Kashe's father Devon Athwal told CNN. "If she doesn't know something, she wants to know what it is and how does it function, and once she learns it, she applies it." The Athwals said that as soon as Kashe said her first word, her skills developed rapidly. Soon she was speaking in sentences that contained five or more words. Through their daily observations, it struck the family that their daughter might be advanced for her age. Not your ordinary toddler "Once her pediatrician also acknowledged it, at her 18-month check-up I had let her know where (Kashe) was on her number shapes and colors, and wanted her perspective on all of it, and she said it was amazing ... it's something worth looking into." Kashe's mom Sukhjit Athwal told CNN. Xi Jinping on sci-tech innovation Xinhua) 09:13, May 29, 2021 Chinese President Xi Jinping, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, addresses a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, May 28, 2021. (Xinhua/Li Xiang) BEIJING, May 28 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping attaches great importance to scientific and technological innovation. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, Friday delivered a speech at a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology. The following are some highlights of his speech: -- Sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening should always be considered a strategic support for national development. -- We have joined the global network of sci-tech innovation and played an active role in coping with major challenges facing humanity. -- We should make resolute efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. -- China's science and technology should make greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity. -- We should strive to train top sci-tech talents with global influence. (Web editor: Liang Jun, Bianji) Like many of you guys, Im thinking about getting vaccinated, and I really want to experience the full privileges that come with getting vaccinated, Beth had said in the video. I want to party. I want to really get back to normal life. So I attached a few links where you could do your own research and find out which vaccine works for you. The Bitterroot National Forest will host a virtual public meeting on Wednesday, June 2nd from 5:30-7:30 p.m. to share information regarding the development of a forest Climbing Management Plan (CMP). This is the first of several public meetings to discuss the current needs and opportunities for a forest climbing plan. The virtual meeting will be held on the Microsoft TEAMS meeting platform. See below for instructions and a link to join the meeting. In addition to being an opportunity to learn about and participate in the process of developing a climbing plan, the meeting will: Introduce a framework for working together to understand critical issues, explore solutions, and provide recommended elements of a future CMP. Engage in a discussion around critical issues (e.g., considerations around impacts to raptors). Seek feedback on the process with the aim of providing meaningful engagement opportunities. The show will go out to the troops around the world on American Forces Network, its a tribute to them, Carlson Evans said. I was really overwhelmed when asked to work with the concerts producers on this. Its another dream come true, having the opportunity to talk about what the veterans have done for us. A native of Buffalo, Minnesota, during her second year of nursing school, Carlson Evans heard that nurses were needed for the war, and enlisted immediately and volunteered to go to Vietnam. She landed overseas on July 31, 1968. Carlson Evans and her fellow nurses worked six days a week, 12 or more hours a day, sometimes on duty 24-36 hours straight. After 351 days serving in Vietnam, Carlson Evans came home with pride in knowing she served her country by saving American lives and comforting those who didnt make it back. But she was told by some that her sacrifice and commitment was shameful. At the Vietnam Memorial Wall in 1982, a veteran next to Carlson Evans asked if she was a nurse in Vietnam. He said Ive waited 14 years to say... Thank You. Thank you for being there for us. Youre all we had. Carlson Evans realized that the women who served beside the men in Vietnam should also be represented, with memorials standing side by side in Washington, D.C. Please register or log in to keep reading Stay logged in to skip the surveys. Hes part of the story of how we turned Virginia blue, Simonds said in an interview. Hes a strong campaigner, and I think were going to need that to retain and even expand our power, she added, describing McAuliffe as a workaholic. Simonds said McAuliffe is best positioned to take on the GOP, starting with its well-funded gubernatorial nominee. I endorsed Terry before I knew about Youngkin, but honestly, now I know were going to need that firepower at the top of the ticket, Simonds said. Ive seen how money can influence messaging and perception. Youngkin will spend a lot of money framing himself as a moderate. For me, the stakes are really high. McAuliffe launched his campaign with a focus on increasing teacher pay and school funding to combat racial and socioeconomic disparities in learning outcomes. He has since emphasized expanding access to health insurance, and touted his ability to attract business to Virginia as the states economy reshapes in the aftermath of COVID-19. *** For Democrats enticed by the possibility of electing the nations first Black female governor, the question has been who to side with: McClellan or Carroll Foy. Eventually, she did remarry, but not knowing what became of Haaf lingered. As she watched news coverage of American prisoners of war returning from Vietnam in the 1970s she searched the images for a familiar face. Ill never forget, she said. Youre on pins and needles, thinking Doug might be among them. You look and you look, but nothing. A coal miners daughter, Marler grew up in Southwest Virginia in the community of Hurley in Buchanan County. After high school, she came to Richmond to find a job. She lived for a time with a sister, Madalene, and her husband, who was in dental school. She worked at Southern States (and later at Sears Roebuck on Broad Street), where she made friends who attended First Baptist Church, which is how she got involved with the church and got to know longtime pastor the Rev. Theodore F. Adams, who counseled her and Haaf before they were married. He would have performed the ceremony, Marler said, but he was away on a trip and bad weather grounded his return flight to Richmond. Associate pastor the Rev. Preston J. Taylor officiated in his place. (Marler still has the letter Adams wrote her, apologizing for missing the ceremony and wishing her and Doug a long and happy life together.) Chesterfield and Hanover counties are deemed as having a severe shortage by the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry along with 24 other localities while Richmond and Henrico Countys shortages are two of the 15 in Virginia classified as high. The rest, roughly 65% of the state, do not have any child psychiatrists at all. Dr. Sandy Chung, medical director of VMAP and a pediatrician, said in an interview that psychologists are often centralized around large hospital systems or academic centers, which leaves rural locations behind even as 80% of health care providers surveyed by VMAP this past year said theyre seeing more youth with anxiety, depression and other behavioral conditions. Generally, access to care is not necessarily equitable, so were addressing this through primary care, Chung said. Underlying that, we also have to make sure that primary care is accessible in an equitable manner for this to work. ... Today, at least with VMAP, were able to say that any primary care provider that is in place today can provide mental health care and that is an improvement. Gary Herber is a team member of Shepherds Men as well as a combat-wounded veteran who served in 2009 in Afghanistan and is a Purple Heart recipient. He says the SHARE Military Initiative saved his life. He gives back by handling most of the logistics for the event and gets runners what they need. I really lost my sense of purpose for a long time, and SHARE has helped breathe new life into, not just me, but over 800 other veterans that were literally at the end of their rope, he said. I was absolutely at my wits end for the last time. From 2009, when Herber was first injured in combat, until the time he got to SHARE in 2016, he attempted suicide multiple times. I just couldnt get the help I needed and within weeks of being at SHARE, I was able to kind of get my mind around the fact that I still had a purpose to live; there was still something that I could do to better myself and better my fellow man and not just serve my country but to serve my fellow veterans, because those bonds that are made and in times of war in times of crisis are so strong, Herber said. He said some of the runners push themselves to the absolute max and then go back home to their battalion. Data provided by the PHA shows that in roughly nine months time, the HRL is filling a void. The hotline has fielded nearly 4,700 calls, connecting more than 150 households to nearly $500,000 in financial assistance for issues including rent, utilities and more. But the aid extends far beyond money. Rental options was the No. 1 service needed (37%), with many people just seeking safe, affordable rooms in the area. Another 5% of calls were for legal support. One possible scenario is a tenant trying to understand the ramifications of a pay-or-quit notice the time when a landlord gives a five-day deadline to either fulfill rent or move, VALegalAid.org explains. If payment is not made in that time frame, the landlord can start an eviction in court. No matter what the need might be, HRL specialists can step in with expertise on the individuals place in a housing issue, the range of organizations that serve the community, the eligibility requirements for any resources, the status of available aid programs and more guidance. This is an issue of two peoples claim to the same land. At its inception, the Jewish claim was refuted by many Arab nations, who attacked the fledgling country. Had Israels right to exist not been rejected then, and many times since, and had negotiations that the U.S. had helped broker proceeded further, there would be a Palestinian State alongside a Jewish State today. The refrain echoed in Williams column is that this is an issue of white versus Black. The Jewish community locally, and especially in Israel, includes many Jews of color. In fact, it is estimated that only 30% of Israels citizens are white Ashkenazi Jews of European descent. To imply that Black and Jewish communities must be at odds shows a complete lack of understanding of the Jewish community and its diversity. It also ignores the decades of shared work done by our communities to combat racism, white supremacy and work toward shared prosperity. Unfortunately, the generalization that all Jews look alike goes hand in hand with bias that is at the root of prejudice and antisemitism. On the South Side, a 20-year-old man was shot while riding a dirt bike in the Englewood neighborhood about 8:30 p.m. The man was biking in the 6700 block of South Aberdeen Street when he was he was side swiped by a black Dodge sedan, police said. The motorist got out of his car and shot the man in the ankle. He was taken the University of Chicago Medical Center, where his condition was stabilized. Indeed, Americans who are Muslim constantly find themselves in this whirlwind of critics demanding we assimilate, and when we engage in the most American of things public service were questioned if were truly American enough. The solution in our commonwealth is to remember that Virginians long have aspired for that more perfect union, not by condemning people of different faiths, but by recognizing that diversity is the source of our strength. A landmark 1785 petition by the residents of Chesterfield County delivered to the Virginia General Assembly declared: ...[L]et Jews, Mehometans [Muslims], and Christians of every Denomination injoy [sic] religious liberty, as the decliration [sic] of rights has invited them [and] find their advantage in living under your [the States] laws. ... [T]hrust them not out now by establishing the Christian religion lest thereby we become our own enemys [sic] and weaken this infant state... Religion is of God to man. The civil law is of you to your people. This petition is the powerful Virginian history we must revive in 2021 to ensure we live up to our founding ideals. Despites the attacks levied against me for my faith, people of all faiths and no faith turned out to support me. Up until now, the justices have been fairly squeamish when it came to this volatile issue. While they were willing to deal with some of the tangential issues like how far away protestors had to stay from abortion clinics and what kind of certification abortionists needed to perform the procedure they tried to steer clear of actual bans. The last time the Supreme Court ruled on abortion was last year, when a majority that included Chief Justice Roberts struck down a Louisiana law that required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at local hospitals. Abortion advocates did the usual sky is falling theatrics at the possibility that some clinics would have to close, but the ultimate decision didnt address the legality of abortion itself. This time, its different. In the first place, the Mississippi law doesnt just limit who can perform an abortion. It limits who can have an abortion. If a woman is over 15 weeks pregnant and doesnt fall into the very narrow exceptions of fetal abnormalities or medical emergencies, she cant have an abortion. This is a direct hit on Roes holding that a woman has a fundamental right to an abortion, even in the last months. This could be the thing pro-life activists and those of us who honor the integrity of the Constitution have been waiting for. A former Navy Secretary under Richard M. Nixon, he won his Senate seat in 1978 and dutifully hewed to the GOP line most of the time. But in that era when it was still possible for a Republican to put country first, he did so without quaking in his boots. When it became clear that gun violence was a national epidemic, he infuriated the rabid right by voting for gun-safety measures and trying (without success) to extend the federal ban on assault weapons. He voted for some restrictions on abortion, but accepted that Roe v. Wade was the law of the land. Warner had supported George W. Bushs decision to invade Iraq, but in 2007 he called for Bush to start bringing the troops home, and he compelled Pentagon officials to testify about the torture of detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison. He opposed gay marriage, but when the chairman of the Joint Chiefs denounced gays in the military, Warner said: I respectfully, but strongly, disagree with the chairmans view that homosexuality is immoral. But arguably Warners most laudable moment came in 1994, when it appeared that Oliver North would become his Virginia colleague in the Senate. North, you may recall, was the key Iran-Contra scandal operative whod been criminally convicted for lying to Congress; naturally, Virginia right-wingers deified North as a hero and rewarded him with a Senate GOP nomination. Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device. Despite their Hallmark-esque TV commercials highlighting their customer-first priorities, banks arent exactly the wider publics favorite institution, and the aftermath of the pandemic is bringing into clearer focus. Even though banks are singing their own praises with regard to their handling of the pandemic, with plenty of odes to their efforts to help out those in need, the Federal government doesnt necessarily agree. Earlier this week, the six largest bank CEOs appeared before the Senate for a banking committee hearing on the oversight of Wall Street firms. The focal point was the fact that the COVID-19 crisis did not threaten bank profitability; yet, banks failed to do much of anything to help out ordinary people during the pandemic. Unlike the 2008 financial crisis, when 27 banks went under, the pandemic barely touched the six largest banks from a comparative perspective. The industry as a whole posted $147.9 billion in profits in 2020, which is a 36.5% decline from the prior year. And unlike other industries, the six biggest banks posted decent profits in 2020, led by JPMorgan with $29.1 billion, Bank of America with $17.9 and Wells Fargo with $3.1 billion. And when the economy started to recover at the end of last year, banks did, too--many of them beating estimates for Q1 2021. In addition to that, most bank CEOs saw their paychecks inflated in 2020. Still, the CEOs told the Senate Banking Committee that they helped small business owners and worked to narrow the racial wealth gap, among other things. Senator Elizabeth Warren wasnt buying it. She called such statements of charity by big banks "a bunch of baloney." "No matter how you try to spin it, this past year has shown that corporate profits are more important to your bank than offering just a little help to struggling families even when we're in the middle of a worldwide crisis," Warren said. Warren and other Democratic senators viewed the high bank profits as a sign that banks collected excessive amounts of fees and interest from consumers and businesses during the pandemic. The banks typically charge overdraft fees when the customer overdraws on their checking account. Rather than allowing a debit card to be declined or a check to bounce, the bank will cover the difference and charge an overdraft fee, usually about $30 to $35. The Senate particularly focused on JPMorgan Chases policy of overdraft fees, saying the bank collected $1.46 billion in overdraft fees during the crisis. But JPMorgan is not alone in it as Americas big banks make more than $11 billion worth of overdraft and related fees every year. While a few banks decided to waive those fees (overdraft banking fees, specifically), it still cost consumers $12.4 billion in 2020. Without stimulus payments, estimates are that losses would have been triple last year as overdrafts would have been far more frequent. None of the 10 largest banks offered any sustained relief from overdraft fees during the crisis. On the contrary, last year, TD Bank agreed to pay $122 million to settle claims related to overdraft abuse. Then, in March, Bank of America agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of extracting overdraft fees it didn't earn from customers. Several studies on the subject reach a consensus: Most overdraft fees are paid by Americans with low credit scores, people of color and by Americans living in relatively low-income neighborhoods. By Michael Kern for Safehaven.com A man was killed in a shooting following an altercation with a group of people Sunday near the intersection of Curryer and Boone streets, according to police. " " If you're a woman experiencing sexual difficulties, you should consult a doctor instead of popping the little blue pill. Paul Bradbury/Getty Images This question sounds like the opening for yet another joke about one of the most well-known and joked-about drugs in the history of pharmaceuticals. Viagra, which is the trade name for the drug sildenafil, is prescribed for men who can't get or maintain an erection when sexually stimulated. Before looking at what would happen if a woman took Viagra which is not a joke, by the way let's explore for a moment how Viagra works on men. So how exactly is Viagra triggered when a man is sexually stimulated? Here's how it goes: When a man is aroused, his body releases nitric oxide into the erectile tissue of his penis, which stimulates an enzyme that produces cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP). This causes the smooth muscle cells to relax and the arteries in the penis to dilate, which increases the blood flow to the penis and causes the erectile tissue to also fill with blood. The combination results in an erection. Viagra works by maintaining the level of cGMP in the smooth muscle cells, which are only present in the first place when a man is turned on [source: BPAS]. Advertisement Thus endeth the science lesson. Now, on to the original question: What happens if a woman takes Viagra? (First up, always consult a physician before taking prescription medications. The doctor can assess your situation and prescribe the best course of treatment for you or your symptoms.) A 2003 study from the University of California, Los Angeles, Urology Department was conducted to examine at the effects of sildenafil citrate (Viagra) on postmenopausal women with female sexual arousal disorder (FSAD). Interestingly enough, researchers found that it helped women in a couple of ways. For instance, the women reported increased genital sensation and increased satisfaction during intercourse and stimulation. However, the women also reported some mild side effects, including headache, flushing, rhinitis and nausea [source: Berman]. Since this study, however, few other studies have been designed to examine the effects of women taking Viagra. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has not approved the drug for women. There are a few drugs out there approved by the FDA to treat low libido in women, that have been wrongly labeled "female viagra." (Viagra is taking care of erectile dysfunction, a physical problem, while these drugs are trying to increase desire for sex.) Botton line: If you're a woman experiencing sexual difficulties, see your doctor for help before trying to take Viagra. Advertisement Originally Published: Jun 12, 2015 HARTSVILLE, S.C. Before they said goodbye Friday evening, members of the Emmanuel Christian School class of 2021 wanted to say thank you. Lower School Principal Heather Atkinson told those attending the graduation ceremony held Friday evening in the worship center of Emmanuel Baptist Church that the 2021 class even the members who had not attended the lower school went to each teacher in the lower school and said thank you Friday morning. Atkinson called the class more special than the typical class as a result of their gesture Friday morning. The class continued to say thank you during the ceremony. The senior class officers presented Upper School Principal Dale Ankers and his wife, Angela, with gifts and, as is tradition, each of the 20 graduates presented their parents with gifts during the rose ceremony. Nicholas Jordan was the class valedictorian. His address focused on the importance of building and maintaining relationships. Throughout our lives, we have met and will meet family, friends, classmates, teachers, coworkers and others, Jordan said. And for all of them, well have the opportunity to develop meaningful relationships. Diggs said her father told her the military service was different for people of color back then. She recalls one incident her father related to her about when he went to Colorado for dental technician training. She said his sergeant took him to Fitzsimmons to enroll in the program and wanted to know where he could stay. He was told that African American and white soldiers stayed together there. She said he had a white roommate. After finishing the dental technician program, William Diggs went to San Francisco and then on to Japan. Diggs said her father told them that it took 30 days for his ship to get to Japan and 31 days to come home. After spending that much time on a ship, Diggs said her father had no desire to be on a ship again. He never wanted to take a cruise, she said. A dinner cruise for a couple of hours was OK, but no longer, she said. Diggs said her father was always moving his legs when he sat down because that is how they exercised on the ship to and from Japan. Diggs said her father exercised his entire life and ate healthy. All of the dental training paid off, she said. When he died, he still had his own teeth. You have a big agency, and youre going to have to retrain everybody to do this, and thats going to take a couple of years, said Bercovici, who reviewed CPDs foot pursuit policy at the Tribunes request. You cant put the policy out, and then put a bunch of people with e-learning and hope that everythings going to go all right. The guy from Long Island smoking a big cigar didnt think historic statues and memorials should be removed. To do so would be a way for the present generation to try to whitewash the history of the past to rid these tributes from the states collective conscience and keep people from remembering how things were. Good point, but what about the people in the state for whom the memorials serve as offensive reminders of an economy built on the backs of their enslaved forefathers? Could the guy see how maintaining memorials might be little more than an attempt by a past generation to remind future generations about white supremacy? Yep, he could understand that and hadnt really considered how effigies in stone could channel values of the past as cold reminders to reinforce those values far into the future. But he still didnt like the idea of taking down statues, even if they were put in a museum. Lets turn back the clock. A generation after the Civil War, a monument movement swept through the country. In the North, communities erected statues as tributes to soldiers who fought to protect the republic and maintain American democracy. With evidence mounting that the coronavirus might have escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, President Joe Biden has reversed course and ordered the U.S. intelligence community to produce a report on the viruss origins within 90 days while reporters who until recently could not be bothered to ask tough questions pressed the White House for answers. Better late than never. For the past year, the media has scorned the idea of an accidental lab release as a far-flung conspiracy theory, declaring it debunked, dangerous or doubtful. In fact, it would have been an extraordinary coincidence for this virus to emerge in Wuhan home to Chinas leading research laboratory studying bat coronaviruses and have had no connection to the lab. Thanks to my Post colleague Josh Rogins excellent reporting, since April 2020 we have known that in 2018 U.S. diplomats warned of inadequate safety at the Wuhan lab. Just apply the principle of Occams razor the simplest solution is almost always correct and you have the most likely source of the pandemic. Klaver said the verdict was an emotional moment for the family of Tibbetts, calling the outcome a weight off of everyone's shoulders." Several of her relatives, including her mother, had watched the proceedings daily in a conference room across from the courtroom, where the public was banned due to COVID-19 protocols. Bahena Riveras defense attorneys, Chad and Jennifer Frese, said they were disappointed in the verdict and would appeal. They said their client had consistently since 2018 told them the story he shared on the witness stand about two masked men that he claims were responsible, even though prosecutors had never previously heard that claim. Jennifer Frese said that if the testimony had been coached by defense lawyers, we would have come up with something better than that. We can tell you that getting to know Cristhian Bahena, we are very surprised that he would be the kind of person that would commit a crime like this, Chad Frese said. He is nothing but a soft-spoken, respectful, kind person. They said they would renew their arguments that Bahena Riveras statements to police were coerced and should be suppressed, along with the discovery of Tibbetts body that followed. SIOUX CITY The Lewis and Clark Expedition is often described as America's greatest road trip. At the direction of President Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark set off on a journey in 1804 to explore lands west of the Mississippi that were acquired in the Louisiana Purchase. Iowa's leg of the 4,900-mile trip is marked by Lewis & Clark Trail signs along Interstate 29, as it follows the Missouri River from Council Bluffs to Sioux City. Lewis and Clark compel locals and tourists, alike, to explore everything in the area from Native American culture to music to agriculture to natural resources, including the Missouri River. "I think a lot of people don't realize how immense this was to take off into this land. Nobody knew what was out there. For them to actually have accomplished it and to come back with the journals and the record of what they saw and learned about is pretty amazing," said Theresa Jackson, a tour guide at Sioux City's Lewis & Clark Interpretive Center. The center, 900 Larsen Park Road, opened in 2002 on the Missouri riverfront in celebration of the the Lewis & Clark Bicentennial. Statues of a buffalo, grizzly bear, coyote, white-tailed deer, prairie dog and moose decorate the sprawling complex's picturesque grounds. SEATTLE (AP) Five weeks after ex-Minneapolis policeman Derek Chauvin was convicted of murdering George Floyd, three Washington state police officers pleaded not guilty Friday in the death of Manuel Ellis, another Black man who pleaded for breath under an officers knee. BAGDAD, Ariz. (AP) A day after frantically fleeing a remote Arizona mining town where a wildfire destroyed at least a dozen homes, hundreds of residents were allowed to return Friday. Haak had a duty to comport himself in a much more responsible manner, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Cunningham said. This is not the kind of aberrant behavior that anyone should accept, the prosecutor added. Cunningham said the first officer unfortunately suffered some consequences as a result of the incident that Haak didnt have anything to do with, but he didnt elaborate. She had a right not to be subjected to this kind of behavior, regardless of what may have motivated it or prompted it, the prosecutor said. Haak was charged in April with intentionally committing a lewd, indecent or obscene act in a public place, a misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of 90 days in jail. He was charged in Maryland because it was one of the states that the aircraft passed over that day. Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend a sentence of probation without requiring Haak to register as a sex offender. The judge wasn't bound by that recommendation. Haak, a resident of Longwood, Florida, was a Southwest Airlines pilot for 27 years until his retirement. His last flight for the Dallas-based airline was on Aug. 31, 2020, three weeks after the incident that led to the criminal charge. TACOMA, Wash. (AP) A suspended Nigerian government official accused of stealing $350,000 from Washington state as part of a massive pandemic-related fraud also sought to bilk the Internal Revenue Service of nearly $1.6 million, federal prosecutors said Friday. Abidemi Rufai, 42, was arrested May 14 as he tried to travel from New York to Nigeria. He is accused of using stolen identities to take more than $350,000 from the Washington state Employment Security Department as it tried to rush unemployment benefits to people who lost work during the pandemic last year. The state paid likely paid out more than $647 million in such fraudulent claims, though $370 million was recovered, officials said last month. Federal prosecutors in western Washington have been seeking to make sure Rufai remains in custody pending trial, saying he poses a severe flight risk, is facile with fake identities, and that he's unlikely to ever be extradited if he makes it back to Nigeria. On Friday, they filed a letter with U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle to bolster that argument. It said that in the last few days, IRS criminal investigators have revealed that they have been investigating an email account associated with Rufai for years. WASHINGTON (AP) President Joe Biden's $6 trillion budget proposal offers major new initiatives like child and elder care subsidies, generous tax credits for families and the working poor, and free community college. It also promises politically freighted tax increases on the wealthy and corporations and would give domestic Cabinet departments significantly bigger budget increases than the Pentagon. But like all presidential budget plans, Biden's proposal needs the approval of lawmakers, who can change the allotments and dollar figures. Here are some other things to keep in mind about Biden's budget: LOTS OF SPENDING This year's $6 trillion spending total fueled by ongoing COVID-19 relief efforts is actually down from a projection of $7.2 trillion for the budget year ending in September. But it's sharply higher than the pre-pandemic $4.4 trillion tally of 2019 and fueled by promises of government help for crushing child care, college, health care and elder care costs. But the nation's huge defense budget would get minimal increases, angering Republicans whose votes Biden needs. TAXING BUSINESS AND THE RICH As Biden left for Ohio, he said he called Capito to thank her for the proposal, but told her, We have to finish this really soon. But on Friday, it was becoming more certain that Biden was objecting to the GOP approach, and casting about for alternatives as he looks ahead to the House action. While the president welcomed the increased spending level by the Republicans as encouraging, he is concerned that it does not do enough to meet the scope of his proposal, and omits key features such as investment in veterans hospitals and a green-energy economy, the adviser said. The president found the idea of tapping unused COVID-19 relief funds unworkable a line that can't be crossed because it raises hard questions over whether aid provisions to families or businesses weathering the pandemic would have to be cut off or scaled back. Some 90% of the aid in the American Rescue Plan is already accounted for or already spent. Biden instead has proposed raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28% to pay for the infrastructure investment, a proposal Republicans reject as their own red line. Columbus, born in what is now Italy before he landed in the present-day Caribbean in 1492 while attempting to find Asia, has become a romanticized figure among some Italian American circles who later began hailing the explorer as the embodiment of their own hardscrabble voyages to America in search of a better life. That led to Columbus Day becoming a federal holiday in 1971 that falls on the second Monday of October as well as pressure from Native Americans and their supporters to replace it with Indigenous Peoples Day, citing evidence that Columbus brought brutality, disease and slavery to those populations. JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) State lawmakers left tens of thousands of Missouri residents facing big debts by failing to pass a seemingly popular measure to stop the state from clawing back mistaken overpayments of unemployment benefits. The General Assembly's session ended this month about four hours early because of a fight over abortion, blocking the measure to waive unemployment debts. The Kansas City Star reports that roughly 46,000 people could be affected. Claycomo forklift operator Amy Minich was forced to stay home for months during the pandemic. Missouri's labor department told her in December that she owed nearly $8,000 in overpaid benefits. In April, the department began deducting $500 a week from her benefits, forcing her to live on $135 a week. The department suspended most collections in April as lawmakers discussed their debt-forgiveness measure. Department officials haven't said whether they'll resume. I feel like Im paying the price for their mistakes, Minich said. LOS ANGELES (AP) Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday ordered an independent investigation into the conviction of death row inmate Kevin Cooper, who says he was framed for the stabbing deaths of four people, including two children, at a suburban Los Angeles home in 1983. Cooper, 63, maintains he was framed and has been seeking gubernatorial clemency since 2016. In his executive order, Newsom said he takes no position" on Cooper's guilt or innocence or whether to grant him clemency. Newsom appointed a law firm to review court records and all facts and evidence in the case, including those that don't appear in trial and appellate records, along with the results of DNA tests previously ordered by the governor. The order said the tests had been completed, but Coopers lawyers and the San Bernardino County district attorneys office have starkly different views about whether they support Coopers claims. Cooper's attorney, Norman Hile, called the order gratifying. We are confident that a thorough review will demonstrate that Kevin Cooper is innocent and should be released from prison," he said. SAN FRANCISCO (AP) The gunman who killed nine of his co-workers at a California rail yard had stockpiled weapons and 25,000 rounds of ammunition at his house before setting it on fire to coincide with the bloodshed at the workplace he seethed about for years, authorities said Friday. When the smoke cleared in June 1921, the toll from the massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, was catastrophic scores of lives lost, homes and businesses burned to the ground, a thriving Black community gutted by a white mob. A New York Times report in 2017 revealed that the military has, in fact, been gathering data for years from pilots who have reported unexplainable encounters with aircraft seemingly far more advanced than anything the U.S. has. A recent report by CBS 60 Minutes picked up and expanded upon that thread, with additional video footage in which military pilots can be heard gasping and speculating as they track objects moving in ways the laws of physics cant account for. The Pentagon has formally acknowledged that the tapes are real. Most shocking is the revelation that the sightings, often in restricted airspace, are relatively common. The military is days away from having to lay the rest of its cards on the table, by order of Congress. The $2.3 trillion government funding package signed into law last December contains a mandate for U.S. intelligence agencies to report to Congress by June all they know about these unexplained phenomena. If theres a secret hangar in the Nevada desert with the frozen bodies of extraterrestrial pilots in storage, this is where it has to be acknowledged. No serious people are expecting that, but given the stunning nature of the footage released so far, explanations are needed and if the sightings are indeed unexplainable, that opens a whole new and very necessary conversation. Whether its aliens or Russians, America needs to know whats going on up there. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 8 Sad 0 Angry 0 After the 36-year-old prince spoke candidly about his family's private problems, when he likened being a royal to "living in a zoo", his brother was said to be in a state of shock over the remarks. Nick Bullen said: "[Prince William] is very shocked by the amount of things that his brother has said over the last few weeks." William is determined to repair the relationship with Harry, but Nick observed that their dynamic has changed markedly over recent years. He also suggested that their relationship has been affected by their wives not always seeing eye-to-eye. He said: "In every family, when [one] sister ges for slightly more [confrontation] with [the] other, then that doesnt help the husbands in the middle." Nick thinks that, for the time being, the royal family would welcome a period of silence. He explained: "Im sure the royal family and the various royal households just want a moment of calm and [are saying], Lets not have any more headlines. Lets just have a period when no ones speaking.'" Harry had also accused the royal family of "total neglect". Cruella has been pitched as a movie that rewinds the clock on the infamous One Hundred and One Dalmatians villain, giving audiences a more in-depth look at the origins of Cruella de Vil. But, more importantly, for fans of a certain pair of Disney henchmen, it also provides a little more background on Jasper and Horace. In shining a light on these two men, it reveals that they are not only underappreciated as characters but misunderstood as people. In fact, they are eminently eligible bachelors, as deserving of love as any other young Londoners. In other words, the movie marks a crucial rise in visibility for henchmen everywherethat is, until it throws them to the dogs. Advertisement Some background. In this version of the story, Cruella, Jasper, and Horace have been friends since childhood, getting by on their street smarts and the strength of their friendship. They seem to be a loving and supporting family unit, the kind whose generosity extends to inviting another orphan (in this case, the young Cruella) into their petty crime ring. Later, Jasper, in particular, proves his selflessness once again, by managing to forge an application that will get Cruella the straight-and-narrow job she desires, even though, he realizes, that could mean that their gang might lose a pivotal member. So far, so good, for this duos admirers. Advertisement Advertisement Sign up for the Slate Culture Newsletter The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. However, as Cruella becomes more and more focused in her attempts to bring down the Baroness, she begins to take her two old pals for granted. Her increasingly mean, downright exploitative behavior isnt exactly unexpected, given how it tracks with how tyrannical we know Cruella will become when shes older. But its a little harder to stomach than in the previous movies adapted from Dodie Smiths Dalmatians novels, for a few reasons. First, Cruella has taken the trouble of retconning Jasper and Horace into her bosom buddies rather than hired hands, so they havent exactly entered into this contract willingly. Second, weve spent most of the movie being nudged to care about these characters, with Jasper positioned almost as a romantic interest and Horace providing the comic relief. Theyre no longer thugs who harbor the same vicious streak as their boss. Rather, theyre a couple of sweeties just trying to keep up with their friend, making the way this plot thread is resolvedwith Cruella offering an apology and then essentially going right back to bossing them aroundfeel particularly unsatisfying. Advertisement Making it even more painful to watch the pair get short-changed is this fact: Jasper and Horace are hot now. Making it even more painful to watch the pair get short-changed is this fact: Jasper and Horace are hot now. Depending on who you ask, the argument can be made that theyve always been hot. Their cartoon versions are pleasantly angular, sporting thick eyebrows and winningly color-coordinated ensembles, and in the live-action movies, theyre played by Hugh Laurie and Mark Williams, best known for playing a sexy doctor and the sweetest wizard in the world, respectively. Now, theyre played by Joel Fry and Paul Walter Hauser, who both make good cases for themselves as highly crushable. Frys Jasper is the sensitive one, well-attuned to Cruellas feelings as well as Horaces, and willing to step up to tell Cruella that shes being inconsiderate instead of stewing on it and growing resentful. Walter Hauser, thus far most recognized for playing unpleasant cronies and hapless losers, takes on a more himbo-esque role here, and ups his appeal by adding his own sidekick, Wink, a chihuahua who wears an eyepatch and, at a key point in the film, dons a rat costume that is adorable beyond words. Advertisement Their glow-up is in accordance with the movies larger project of taking characters we know as puppy-stealing villains and endeavoring to make them more palatable, and, despite how nice it is to now ponder building a life with either henchman, it ultimately backfires. In the same way that the viewer is left wishing that the film would go all the way toward delivering on its promise of showing how Cruella became a villain (even if I have no appetite for watching violence against animals), its also unsatisfying to watch Jasper and Horace achieve only partial vindication. While the seeds have been planted for Cruella to turn bad, there isnt really a similar blueprint laid for her friends beyond a possible case of Stockholm syndrome, given how long theyve known Cruella. But theyin this version of the story, and also frankly in every otherdeserve better. Maybe that means they should simply refuse to lie down, maybe it means that they should unite in collective bargaining, but either way, if this movie gets a sequel, or yet another reboot, I want no more half measures. When Olivia Rodrigo made her much-anticipated appearance on Saturday Night Live two weekends ago, the focus was, overwhelmingly, on the first song she performed, Drivers License. Over the winter, that out-of-nowhere chart-topping debut had instantly made her a national (and global) pop sensationeven the subject of a mash note by SNL itself. To say the least, she stuck the landing: Rodrigos live License was essentially flawless, amplifying the songs vulnerability with fierce, wounded vocals that were somehow also controlled, belying her 18 years. The media agreed: A superstar was born. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement After that showstopper, Rodrigos second song of the night couldnt help but feel like an afterthoughtand given its tempo shift, kind of a head-scratcher. But that afterthought is now sitting atop Billboards Hot 100. And this song might ultimately prove more important to the narrative surrounding Rodrigo as she continues to take 2021 by storm. Advertisement Good 4 Uan uptempo kiss-off to a former lover who moved on too quickly, and Rodrigos second hit to debut atop Americas flagship chartnot only establishes that she is more than a one-trick pony. It also affirms that Rodrigos budding stardom is bigger than any one sound: that as long as she delivers the hooks and the heartbreak, her fans will follow her anywhere. Advertisement Advertisement The punk-tempo Good is a snarling rock number, notably out of step with the sound of chart-pop in the early 20s. Its not really rock-slash-anything. It isnt alt-rock crossed with SoundCloud rap like the recent chart-topper Mood by 24kGoldn and Iann Dior, isnt guitar-based trap-pop a la Post Malone, isnt indie-rock with bedroom-pop hooks a la Taylor Swifts recent creations. In fact, Good 4 U is the most up-the-middle rock song to top the Hot 100 in a decade or more, depending on how liberally you define rockmaybe since anthem-rockers Fun in 2012, or Kelly Clarkson in guitar-pop mode circa 2009, or acoustic strummers Plain White Ts in 2007, or even, Kurt Cobain help us, Nickelback in 2002. Advertisement Sign up for the Slate Culture Newsletter The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox. We encountered an issue signing you up. Please try again. Please enable javascript to use form. Email address: Send me updates about Slate special offers. By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms Sign Up Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time. Thats only part of what makes Olivias new single so delightfully confounding. Normally, the industry practice with an emerging artist, in this fragile moment when the public is still making up its mind about them, is to drop followup singles that replicate the breakout hit. This is a very tried-and-true formula, employed over the decades by everyone from the Righteous Brothers (who rewrote Youve Lost That Lovin Feelin as (Youre My) Soul and Inspiration) and the Jackson 5 (I Want You Back made over into ABC) to Rick Astley (future meme Never Gonna Give You Up shamelessly rewritten as Together Forever), LMFAO (Party Rock Anthem rebooted as Sexy and I Know It) and Post Malone (Rockstar begat Psycho). All were Hot 100 chart-toppers, because the formula works. Advertisement Advertisement By contrast, Rodrigo is now only three singles deep into her music career, all three tracks placed high on the charts, and none sounds like the others. Three months after her torch ballad Drivers License debuted at No. 1 (and spent eight straight weeks on top, the longest run of any single so far this year), it was followed by the ethereal, midtempo art-pop of Deja Vu, which debuted at No. 8making Rodrigo the first new artist in Hot 100 history to send her first two singles straight onto the Top 10. Just six weeks after that, the hypercaffeinated Good 4 U crash-lands at No. 1. Ill confess I didnt see this coming. While Deja Vu did very well for a coattails hit, it didnt duplicate the chart performance of its predecessor and fell out of the winners circle even before License did. Given how different Deja was from License, it was impressive it did even that well. Good 4 U is an even bigger sonic leap. The night Rodrigo played SNL, Good came off as loads of fun but felt like a bit of a reacha newcomer trying on a different outfit to show breadth. I wasnt alone; reviews for Good 4 U were positive but slightly less effusive. The punky presence and crunchy guitars were maybe a little less convincing than Drivers License, wrote a reporter for Australian music station Triple J. Advertisement It wasnt until after SNL, when I fully immersed myself in the studio version of Good 4 U, that I came to appreciate how savvy the song is. Advertisement The track is full of ear candy. It opens with an uncluttered five-note bassline, played by Rodrigos producer-cowriter Dan Nigro, thats a hook all by itself. Its quite possibly my favorite bass kickoff to a song since Selena Gomezs 2017 hit Bad Liarand unlike Gomez, Nigro and Rodrigo arent sampling their bassline from Talking Heads. Theres a little vocal stingera multivoiced female sigh, likely an overdubbed pile of Rodrigosthat connects the track sonically back to the dreaminess of Deja Vu without copying anything. The verse lyrics are syncopated to tumble out of Rodrigos mouth. This song may not be rap-rock, but Olivia has flow. The chorus has the kind of pop symmetry Max Martin would endorse: Well, good for you!/ You look HAP-py and/ HEAL-thy/ NOT me!/ If you ever cared to ask. And then, heading into the bridgeIm going to credit mix engineer Mitch McCarthy with thistheres this three-note guitar riff thats allowed to ring out by itself before the full guitar solo starts, a kind of classic-alt-rock dopamine rush I havent heard since maybe the Gin Blossoms? Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Good 4 U is the most up-the-middle rock song to top the Hot 100 in a decade or more. Please forgive my old-school referents. Like Rodrigos Drivers License, which had music critics, this No. 1 hits columnist included, drawing comparisons ranging from Taylor Swift to Lorde to Billie Eilish, Good 4 U has enough signifiers baked into it to make scribes reach for their rock encyclopedias. The songs punk-turned-pop feminine energy evokes 2021 Rock Hall inductees the Go-Gos or the 90s alt-grrrl stylings of peak Alanis Morissette. At NPR Music, critic Lindsay Zoladz makes a strong argument that Rodrigos new album Sour, most especially Good 4 U, is mining an emo and pop-punk vibe, channeling such Millennial-beloved all-male bands as Brand New or New Found Glory. Zoladz and several other critics, including Alexandra Fiorentino-Swinton in Slate, also hear Rodrigo reaching for first-wave Avril Lavigne, thanks in part to Olivias plaid-pants-and-pocket-chain stylings during her SNL performance of Good. (That outfit was the clearest sign of what era Team Rodrigo wanted to evoke; all that was missing was a dangling necktie.) But given that Rodrigo was only born in 2003, many online observers have pointed out that her likeliest inspiration isnt any of these pre-2005 hitmakers but rather Paramore-frontwomanturned-soloist Hayley Williams. Indeed, there are some rather damning mashups already making the rounds on YouTube asserting that Good 4 U is basically a rewrite of Paramores moshworthy 2007 hit Misery Business. Advertisement Advertisement Regardless of how much she borrowed from past generations of rockers and popsmiths, Rodrigo has already achieved something exceptional in just three singles: early status as Gen-Zs most versatile new artist. The opening-week stats for Good 4 U are pretty remarkable. At radio, it already ranks 33rd at mainstream pop stationseven as Deja Vu and Drivers License are both still in the pop-radio top 20. Only Ariana Grande is working this many singles at Top 40 radio right now. In digital sales, Good ranks fifth in its first week, with 12,000 downloads soldnot as explosive as the arrival of License in January but about 60 percent higher than the first week of Deja Vu. And Rodrigos streaming numbers are most impressivein a week where returning rapper J. Cole dropped his new album and dominated the streaming services with a panoply of tracks, Rodrigos new single beat all of them, with 43 million streams. A significant chunk of Rodrigos streams likely came from YouTube, thanks to the songs Bring It OnmeetsNatural Born Killers video, which is queasily watchable. Advertisement Advertisement Audiences have bought in fully to the Olivia Rodrigo brand. Which is what, exactly, if the songs all sound different? Rodrigo is surely aspiring to the stylistic breadth of her hero Taylor Swiftwho, come to think of it, made her own move toward punk-inspired pop way back in 2012 with the Martin-produced We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together. But Swift generally sticks to one stylistic palette per album (e.g., country, electropop, indie) and instead shows off her breadth in the range of the songs under that sonic umbrella. With the understanding that Rodrigo is still starting out and forging her identity, what is drawing audiences to her varied material so soon? Advertisement If were going to draw parallels between what Rodrigo is doing and all of her 21st-century forbears, perhaps we should compare her to one of the best-branded superstars of all: Adele. Until the British megastar deigns to bestow upon her worshippers a followup to her 2015 smash 25, Rodrigo is our reigning Queen of Heartbreak. In his very upbeat review of Rodrigos debut album, my Slate colleague Carl Wilson makes it plain: Sour is a breakup album through and through. It treats the subject in a variety of styles, from folkie strums to shouty rants to tracks with a bit of groove. There are also plenty of recurring references to suggest the songs are all about the same split-up. Advertisement With her first three singles, Rodrigo has already established herself as Gen-Zs most versatile new artist. Hmm a single album all inspired by one cad who broke the artists heart sound familiar? And the thing about the multiple chart-toppers on 21 was they also ranged fairly broadly within Adeles soul-pop idiom: the modern Aretha of Rolling in the Deep, followed by the stark piano-only ballad Someone Like You, followed by the midtempo torch song Set Fire to the Rain. OK, theres no punk song in there (though having watched enough foul-mouthed Adele, Im sure she could pull it off), but what connects the song is both Adeles voice and her voicei.e., her wounded persona as presented in the lyrics. This is exactly what Rodrigo is doing across her hits: Guess you didnt mean what you wrote in that song about me (from License) begets I made the jokes you tell to her when shes with you (from Deja Vu) begets Remember when you swore to God I was the only person who ever got you? Well, screw that, and screw you! The progression from wounded to wafty to wrathful is the most natural thing about this succession of singles, and its clearly as addictive to the public as the story installments Charles Dickens used to publish in the newspaper week by week. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Theres no question Drivers License, among the songs Olivia Rodrigo has issued to date, is the song for which she is best known. Depending on where she goes from here, it may well be her legacy. But the reason I said at the top that Good 4 U might wind up being even more important to her emerging narrative is that it confirms that Rodrigo is the real deal, to both her audiencetwo No. 1 debuts, out of three immediate Top 10s, is a stunning career-launcherand the music business. The music-industrial complex is already foreshadowing that the 2022 Grammy Awards may well be The Olivia Show, much the way the 2020 awards were The Billie Show and the 2012 awards were The Adele Show. When and if this seeming inevitability comes to pass next winter, remember that Rodrigo went from talented fluke to capital-A Artist the moment she proved she could both cry out and rock out. The Justice Department is calling on a federal judge to dismiss lawsuits filed against former President Donald Trump, former Attorney General William Barr, and other officials over the forceful removal of protesters from a park near the White House. The American Civil Liberties Union, Black Lives Matter, other civil liberties groups, and individual protesters all accuse Trump and other senior officials in his administration of being responsible for the now-infamous events of June 1. But Trump and other officials are immune from civil lawsuits having to do with police action taken to protect the president, the DOJ lawyers said. Plus, the lawsuits should be tossed because Trump is out of office and the new administration is unlikely to repeat what happened last year considering President Joe Biden has a very different view of the racial justice movement than his predecessor. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement There were more than 1,000 people at Lafayette Square on June 1 peacefully demonstrating the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis when suddenly law enforcement officers used aggressive force, including firing smoke bombs and pepper balls into the crowd, to clear the area. Shortly thereafter, Trump had a photo op holding a Bible in front of St. Johns Church. The lawsuits claim that Trump, Barr, and others unlawfully conspired to violate the rights of protesters. Advertisement Whatever the precedent may be for holding the president accountable for the actions of law enforcement, if the judge gives way to the DOJ request it would authorize brutality with impunity in the nations capital. Dropping the cases would make it impossible to hold officials accountable for similar offenses and the state-sponsored violence could escalate. Authorities could have used live ammunition to clear the park, and nobody would have a claim against that as an assault on their constitutional rights, said Scott Michelman, legal director for ACLU-D.C. Advertisement The governments lawyers, though, argue that police acted to protect the president, which is a paramount interest of the government. U.S. District Judge Dabney L. Friedrich seemed open to the governments arguments, asking at one point, How do I get over the clear national security concern over the presidents safety? But Randy M. Mastro, an attorney for the protesters, said that the national security defense appeared to be the latest in a long list of shifting explanations that doesnt help explain what happened, since no one argues the president was ever in danger. Looking at Trumps tweets and public statements it is clear that these protesters were targeted because of their viewpoint, their message, their speech, Mastro said. Friedrich promised rulings in the near future. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently sparked a new skirmish in the culture war. She decided to grant the only one-on-one interviews about her anniversary in office with nonwhite reporters. We are a city that has almost three-quarters people of color, Lightfoot said. I believe that the City Hall press corps needs to reflect the diversity of our city. Illinois politics, and especially Chicago politics, can be a rough business. Losers can get regularly dragged, even all the way to prison, and winners can make it all the way to the White House. The city has corruption problems, police problems, education problems, and in its last year a pandemic. Lightfoot has a lot to answer for as she marks her second anniversary in office, but whom Lightfoot decided she would answer to made national headlines. Is this radical fairness, a political stunt, or both? On Fridays episode of A Word, I spoke about the controversy with veteran political journalist Errin Haines from the 19th*. (The asterisks in the name is a visible reminder of those who have been omitted from our democracy.) Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Jason Johnson: Does Lori Lightfoot have a point when she talks about the lack of diversity within the Chicago press corps and how has that historically affected how news gets reported, especially in cities? Errin Haines: Listen, there was definitely a message there, but the delivery was somewhat tainted. She said the quiet part out loud. There is a lack of diversity in political journalism at the federal, state, and local level. And we know coverage of city hall is a coveted beat at a lot of major news outlets, and far too many of those spots go to people who are overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male. This is the pipeline for people who maybe want to eventually cover the statehouse, who maybe want to cover Congress, who may eventually want to be White House correspondents. That kind of experience matters, and those kinds of folks do hold an outsized prominence in newsrooms, and do wield a lot of power in terms of holding the powerful accountable in a community. Advertisement I do think that her point about the lack of diversity in the folks who are covering city hall in places like Chicago is certainly valid. It is why organizations like my beloved National Association of Black Journalists were createdto try to increase media diversity in spaces like politics and other beatsbut access should be expanded and not contracted. So the answer is not necessarily to exclude white journalists. It is to have more Black and brown journalists in those newsrooms. Of course, if these newsrooms had a Black or brown journalist to send over to interview Mayor Lightfoot, I dont know if we would still be having this conversation. I dont know if the outrage would still be there. Advertisement Advertisement Why do you think we end up with these ultra-white press corps for cities that have a ton of Black people? Theres a few things. I am from Atlanta, where I certainly was spoiled. I saw anchors who were Black doing the nightly news when I was eating my dinner and watching television when I was growing up. Representation does matter, and representation is absent in a lot of our major American cities. Part of it too is the beats that folks gravitate toward. Politics has not always been the most popular beat for Black and brown folks. There was definitely a message there, but the delivery was somewhat tainted. Errin Haines But also when you have a beat that is overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male, what you get is a phenomenon that happens in all kinds of institutions. You have those white men plucking the next generation from folks who look like them or who remind them of themselves at their age. I dont remind most white men of themselves. So that kind of mentoring, that kind of somebody putting their hand on your shoulder and saying why dont you think about covering politics, if that is not happening, from somebody especially who shares your lived experience, that might not be an area that folks gravitate to. Advertisement Advertisement And I think it is a quality of life issue for some folks, especially folks who are young broadcasters. The cost of living in some of these cities and what some of the salaries might be in some of those newsrooms may make people think twice about trying to struggle and make it. So I do think as an industry there just needs to be more intentionality about diversifying these spaces. A lot of right-wing politicians and commentators were screaming and yelling causing all this smoke and nonsense about Lightfoots decision, including Tucker Carlson. Is this response surprising to you? This is kind of the Catch-22 for these politicians where race and gender are involved when they try to talk about their frustration. Look, all politicians are subject to scrutiny and should be held accountable. But at the same time, when it does feel racial, when it does feel gendered, if they do try to speak out about that, that is something that can provide fodder for folks who would just as soon not acknowledge those racial and gender disparities in coverage. Advertisement Lori Lightfoot hasnt exactly been a hero to many Black and brown Chicagoans while shes been in office. The big story before all this was her botched handling of the police shooting of the death of Adam Toledo, an unarmed Latino teenager. What are some of the other tensions between Lightfoot and Black and brown communities in Chicago? Advertisement Shes a former federal prosecutor who was swept into office after the Laquan McDonald killing. And so there were certainly activists even then who were skeptical about the kind of leadership that she was going to provide, the perspective that she was coming from, and how the national narrative around her and her identities jibed with what folks on the ground were seeing. Her handling of the pandemic was something that frustrated folks, because we know the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on Black and brown folks from both a public health and an economic perspective. Chicago was certainly a place that was pretty hard hit. Also, the citys progress, and who has and has not had the opportunity to benefit from that, is something that folks on the ground have been critical of. Advertisement Do you think that Black journalists fear losing access or sometimes fear being critical of Black politicians because they see themselves as having to be a balance between the inherent unfairness of how a lot of white reporters and journalists cover those politicians? For Black journalists who are already being accused of not being able to be objective, we just have to do our jobs. It is not on us to make others comfortable with us doing that job or how we do that job. We just have to be professional. Yes, I think that there have been Black journalists who have been critical of Mayor Lightfoot, raising those questions about her leadership as you would raise questions about the leader of any major American city because thats your job. If you are covering the mayor, whoever that mayor is, that is your obligation to cover that. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Its interesting because youre trying to do your job. Youve got some white people who may be accusing you of being biased, and then maybe youve got some people in the Black community who are like, What are you doing? Youre hurting our person. So really youre damned if you do, youre damned if you dont, so you might as well just do your job to the best of your ability. Youre one of the founders of the 19th*. Its led by women. You report about women and race. Can you point out how that has maybe framed a story that you reported on differently than what you saw in other major news outlets, because they were primarily talking to men or exclusively talking to men? Advertisement So much of it is about voice. That was especially true last year during the election, because most of the voters that I was talking to were women, and that was on purpose. My mom is a woman in the suburbs, but that is not who people thought about when they thought about suburban women voters and who we need to hear from. Faith voters. Who was a faith voter, if not the folks that are in the Black church? Thats not how we were talking about faith voters. Rural voters. Im from Atlanta, but Ive spent some time in the country in Georgia with my relatives. I know that there are Black rural folks, Black Midwestern folks. Who are we talking about when we talk about whos in the heartland? Who are we talking about when were talking about whos educated? Black women are the most educated. Advertisement Advertisement So really reframing a lot of the archetypes around voters, around voting blocs. I felt like I was able to do that in the kinds of voices that I was putting in stories about the election. And then also just making sure that we had an accurate portrait of the women who were being disproportionately affected by and responding to the pandemic. And so talking about that, hammering that as much as possible, not just me, but as a newsroom. When we look back at our coverage, I know that we can say that this newsroom told the truth about who and where we were as a country in that moment. I want to take this back to Lightfoot. So, on the one hand, she was trying to make a point about press diversity, but theres also a cynical take that maybe she threw this out there because she was trying to change the subject off of what had been her many high-profile failures and controversies. Do you think theres any truth to that? Advertisement I do not personally know Mayor Lightfoot, so I do not know what is in her heart or mind in terms of her motivation for saying what she said. But listen, I do think that this conversation has been a distraction, whether she has meant for it to be or not. At the end of the day, lets start lining up those interviews, whoevers going to do them. Advertisement If you had an opportunity to bend the ear of a lot of important Black mayors in this country, what would you tell them they could do to increase the diversity or even have an influence on increasing diversity in the local press coverage in their city? Tell their white mayoral counterparts that they need to push for this too. Every politician should want a diverse press corps questioning them. Theres nothing stopping you at a press conference from saying, This really should be more diverse. What about your communications team? How diverse are they? What is their relationship with journalists of color in their communities and beyond? If that is an imperative, then things begin to improve for everyone. But it cannot just be them raising their voices as Black and brown folks in elected office. This should be something that all of us are calling for so that things can be different. If white politicians do not also see this as something that needs to be addressed, that is a problem. Listen to the entire episode below, or subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you get your podcasts. We want it to be the independent commission that you have promised in your editorial boards, promised to your voters. Its in alignment with what Barack Obama said on that pedestal. Its in alignment with what your own president right now says, said Bourne as she pointed across the chamber at Democrats. He says that elections are being rigged through gerrymandering. Its pretty rich to hear how you all are justifying this map. A journalist who has covered the right-to-repair movement for years responds to Josh Bales In the Land of Broken Things. The great trick of In the Land of Broken Things is not that it reveals some horrible what-if future; its that it reveals the painful absurdity of our immediate situation. In Josh Bales story, the character Donovan is ready to blow a hole in someone to get his wifes oxygen concentrator fixed. A vital part, the compressor, needs to be replaced, but its a specialized designextras arent easy to come by. Our hero, Mallory, goes on a desperate journey to find such a part. She navigates roads that are under the control of corporate drones, dodging a toll and getting detained in response. Advertisement Advertisement Advertisement Many readers, accustomed to privileged lives filled with annual iPhone upgrades and their own good health, might view these problems as little more than dystopian plot devices. In fact, they reflect encroaching crises of the modern day. Last spring, with the COVID-19 pandemic spiraling into apocalypse, hospitals faced dire shortages of ventilator valves. Civilian volunteers stepped up to create 3D-printed replica parts. The feel-good narrative of tech-savvy citizens doing their part may have called to mind Rosie the Riveter, but there was something ugly beneath the surface. In Italy, volunteers asked a medical supplier to provide blueprints for a valve but were rebuffed. They said they couldnt give us the file because its company property, one volunteer told the Verge. The design is patenteda trade secretso copying it would be illegal. The group pressed on without assistance from the manufacturer, reverse-engineering the valve as best it could. Advertisement This particular aspect of the ventilator crisis is a perfect distillation of an ongoing conflict over the so-called right-to-repair movement. On one side are tech manufacturers who wish to closely guard how their devices are constructed. On the other are individuals seeking an open flow of information and parts that would allow equipment to be independently repaired. Although the movement has made headlines for its connections to consumer techApple has lobbied against it for years, to keep its tight control over devices like the iPhonemedical equipment has also emerged as a flashpoint in the debate. This year, right-to-repair bills are being considered across the United States, with California, Texas, Arkansas, and Hawaii weighing legislation that refers specifically to the panoply of devices youd find in a hospital. Advertisement Advertisement Corporations are currently under no legal obligation to provide documentation or parts to independent experts. Instead, they profit from a tightly controlled repair industry layered atop their manufacturing business. Their argument is that restricting access to information and device components maintains qualityunderstandably a concern for lifesaving medical equipment. But the restrictions only delay service to busted gear, itself a life-and-death problem. By preventing fully capable, on-site biomeds from fixing medical equipment as soon as it breaks, manufacturers are doing a disservice to a wide variety of patients, Kevin OReilly, a right-to-repair advocate at the U.S. Public Interest Research Group, wrote earlier this year. A 2018 FDA report even found that availability of third party entities to service and repair medical devices is critical to the functioning of the U.S. healthcare system. Advertisement In lieu of right-to-repair legislation that deals specifically with medical equipment, we have our own version of Bales Cove, where Mallory negotiates for a rare compressor (and a Star Wars DVDhopefully not Attack of the Clones). As Lauren Goode reported for Wired last year, independent actors have gathered and shared medical repair manuals for years, a small act of resistance against withholding corporations. IFixit has now collected thousands of those documents in an online archive, and it even has a whole section for oxygen concentrators. Advertisement Of course, the right to repair wouldnt do Reverte, Mallory, and Donovan much good. By the time most of the electronics on our planet are ruined by a flood of solar vomit, things will have deteriorated far beyond the grasp of the legislaturealthough democratizing information ahead of time may have increased the odds that our characters knew what to do with the oxygen concentrator in the first place. But while Mallorys journey across a sun-blasted hellscape is dramatic, its more metaphor than outright fiction. Many people, and especially those in rural areas, struggle to get their medical devices fixed. In their desperation, they sometimes turn to hacks or circumvent digital rights management software. The struggle is real, you might say. Advertisement In the Land of Broken Things points to another consequence of our eras repair woes. As Mallory approaches Reverte Repairs at the storys onset, she passes rusted-out artifacts shoved to one side of the road decades ago, after the Ejection had fried their electronics. Over time they seemed to be gradually fusing with the cracked, washed-out blacktop. Fixing things may sometimes be a matter of life and death, but it is always about waste. The longer things last, the less frequently we need to create new thingsand the fewer technofossils suffuse our landscapes. Advertisement Many of us do not often see the electronic waste thats filling our planet at a rate of 59 million tons per year. But it is certainly there, creating a new geological layer. Corporate policies that discourage repair ultimately encourage the purchase of fresh equipment. Whether by solar flare or the simple march of time, the result will be precisely as Bales describes: tides of junk with nowhere to go. So the reader can imagine what its like to be in Mallorys shoes, riding down Interstate WM-Seven-Five. The road is controlled by corporate forces. They insist on compliance. Thats an optionmaintaining the status quo always is. But maybe something different is possible, too. Consider the broken things in the world around you. Imagine how they might be fixed. Dont quake on the corporate road. Try to hear the bikers roar. Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society. Preparations for Memorial Day ceremonies this year included marking the graves of three World War I veterans, Scotts Bluff County Veterans Service Officer John Brehm told the Star-Herald. The graves of Marshall Cushing, who died on Oct. 24, 1933; George, H. McAlister, who died on Feb. 4, 1935; and Paul Dewey, who died Dec. 5, 1935, now bear markers after several decades. Brehm said that in the 1930s there was a period of time when graves went unmarked for some reason, which is why he speculates that the mens gravesites didnt have any markers until today. The absence of markers had been discovered as the result of a University of Nebraska project to find gravesites of Civil War veterans and the gravesite of a veteran, Phineas Guernsey, who died Jan. 17, 2935, had been found to be without a marker. Last year, Brehm set to work on marking Guernseys gravesite. Brehm said that Fairview Cemetery caretaker Vince Kelley did further research and found the three other sites that were unmarked. This Memorial Day those sites now have new white stones, belying a war veteran. I found it hard to believe that graves went unmarked that long, he said. Better late than never. He attributed the delay to the normal processes that generally taken on by auditing and accounting firms during the year. In the beginning months of the year, he said, those firms are working through completing taxes and they are also scheduled to do other audits for entities and companies. In its letter, the state outlined that surplus utility funds, which included electric, water and wastewater and sanitation funds, were examined as part of the auditors office examination, as the fiscal year 2021 budget had been filed and a transfer of surplus utility. A history of transfers from the last four budget filings, ranging from over $1.8 million in 2021 to a high of $2.5 million in 2019, were recorded. However, though transfer of excess utility funds is allowed, the council had failed to adopt a resolution approving the transfer of the funds. In its response, the City of Gering advised its attorney had advised a resolution was unnecessary because the city does not have a board of public works. The auditors office clarified that it is required. Heath told the Star-Herald the council will be approving a resolution in an upcoming meeting for the last fiscal year and acknowledging previous fiscal years. MIAMI (AP) Jesus Lopez says he feels like a stranger in the place he was born. He's from Guadalajara, Mexico, but his life was in Chicago. After 15 years in the city, he was deported a year ago during the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to go back because I belong there, that's where I have my friends, my family, said the 25-year-old, once a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program that gives protections to immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Lopez, who said he didn't renew his spot in the program because he couldn't afford it, hopes to benefit from new efforts by advocates, groups and attorneys to bring back immigrants they believe were unfairly deported from the United States. With President Joe Biden in office, one of the new proposals from advocates urges creating a centralized Department of Homeland Security office to consider requests from deported immigrants trying to reunite with their families in the U.S. We have deported hundreds of thousands of individuals, and to do that and not even have an effective safety valve to review bad decisions violates due process, said Nayna Gupta, associate director of policy for the National Immigrant Justice Center, the Washington-based nonprofit that proposed the idea. Sen. Brett Lindstrom of Omaha said Friday his bill to phase out state income taxation of Social Security benefits that benefit nearly 320,000 Nebraskans is "the first step to overall reform of Nebraska's burdensome tax structure." Lindstrom, who has voiced plans to seek the 2022 Republican gubernatorial nomination, said he is "proud of the bipartisan efforts of the Nebraska Legislature to allow this legislation to pass unanimously." The bill (LB64) cleared the Legislature on a 41-0 vote. Lindstrom hailed the Legislature's action at a news conference at the Capitol a day after senators completed their 2021 legislative session. "For too long, the state of Nebraska has taxed income from Social Security benefits," he said. "Taxing Social Security income hurts our vulnerable seniors, especially those on fixed incomes," Lindstrom said. "Retirees with the most disposable income choose to retire and spend their money in other states, partly because of the high taxation on seniors," he said. The two newest and tallest tenants of the Lincoln Childrens Zoo arrived under the cover of darkness, on a trailer from San Diego. The timing wasnt planned, but it was convenient, zoo spokeswoman Sarah Wood said. It made it easier for animal keepers to unload Ruby and Zawadi undetected and spirit them away behind the closed doors and covered windows of the 8,600-square-foot giraffe enclosure. The zoo has kept them a secret for more than two weeks -- time the animals needed to quarantine -- but will introduce them to the public Thursday. The new additions from the San Diego Zoo Safari Park will bring the Lincoln Childrens Zoo herd to six -- five females and a male. And theyre important on two levels, Wood said. Theyll give guests even more chances to come eye to eye -- and hand to mouth -- with the giraffes on the enclosures elevated viewing deck. The opening of the exhibit in 2019 proved to be a popular part of the zoos expansion, she said. Since then, the zoo sold nearly 130,000 bundles of lettuce for guests to give to the animals. * The National Park Services Homestead National Historical Park continues to serve as southeast Nebraska's largest tourism attraction. * The park was established in 1936 to recognize the Homestead Act of 1862, which was signed into law by President Abraham Lincoln to encourage Western migration by providing settlers 160 acres of public land. In exchange, homesteaders paid a small filing fee and were required to complete five years of continuous residence before receiving ownership of the land. * The National Park Service site features a heritage museum, education center, hiking trails and 100 acres of restored tallgrass prairie. * The park serves as a reminder of the important piece of legislation and draws visitors who want to learn about homesteading. * Homestead attracted an estimated 61,000 visitors in 2019, and 70,000 visitors to Gage County, Nebraska, in 2018. The previous year eclipsed all others when an all-time attendance record of 123,400 visitors was set in 2017. You must be logged in to react. Click any reaction to login. Love 0 Funny 0 Wow 0 Sad 0 Angry 0 The highly anticipated reunion special of the American sitcom "Friends" has taken its massive Chinese fanbase by storm with a nostalgic and tear-jerking tribute to the all-time hit series. The unscripted, one-off reunion episode, "Friends: The Reunion," brings together the sitcom's six stars on screen for the first time since the series went off the air in 2004. It premiered on several Chinese streaming platforms on Thursday afternoon. The reunion special skyrocketed to one of the top 10 trending topics on China's Twitter-like Sina Weibo on Thursday night, with a bevy of netizens saying the reunion has allowed them to "relive their youth" or simply expressing their longtime affection for the series. As of 3 p.m. Friday, the "Friends" reunion has a score of 9.5 out of 10 on China's leading film rating platform Douban. The charm of "Friends" drew more than 40 diehard fans to a Central Perk-inspired coffee shop in downtown Shanghai on Thursday afternoon to watch the get-together as soon as it was released. "I wouldn't miss it for the world," said Zhou Yunsheng, who attended the screening party. "I even asked for leave from my company to watch the reunion." The 31-year-old said he has been a devout "Friends" fan since high school and claimed he could recite famous lines from the show by heart. Yang Yi, the manager of the coffee shop, said he had received many phone calls in the past week about arranging a screening event at the shop. "This is nothing short of a festival for "Friends" lovers," said Yang. Stroll down memory lane From Phoebe's hit song "Smelly Cat" and table reads of the sitcom's iconic scenes to the unresolved conundrum of whether or not Ross and Rachel were "on a break," the "Friends" reunion has taken a legion of Chinese fans on an emotional stroll down memory lane. Fang Xue, a 26-year-old English teacher based in Beijing, said she could hardly hold back tears when the theme song "I'll be there for you" started to play when the episode began. "Though the actors have apparently aged and they weren't playing their characters, they had good old chemistry just by sitting on the sofa and reminiscing about the past," said Fang. "It feels like they have always been there for me." Fang said she started watching "Friends" in her freshman year as an English major at a Beijing university, on the recommendation of a classmate. Like many Chinese students, she first watched the series to learn colloquial English but quickly found its charm beyond the academic realm. "It opened my eyes to a different lifestyle and a new culture and, before long, I saw the six characters as my own friends," Fang said. Ji Yi, a Shanghai-based IT engineer, said she watched the entire "Friends" series over ten times. "The series' 10th and final season already gave a proper ending to the characters when everyone was in the prime of their lives, and I don't want that to unravel," said the 27-year-old. "I'm just happy that the actors helped me relive some of my most cherished memories from the show." "Friends" craze in China Although producers and actors suggested a minimal chance of a reboot or a second reunion in Thursday's reunion special, the episode does not mean "the end of an era," to quote Rachel Green's famous line. The sitcom's massive influence as a global cultural phenomenon is bound to stay. In China, "Friends" was much more than a TV comedy from the outset. It first gained popularity in the late 1990s as a tool for learning the English language. Then the country's post-1980s and post-1990s generations, like Fang, discovered its unique appeal as a window to learn about the American culture. The rise of Chinese streaming platforms and their import of American sitcoms since the early 2010s have helped "Friends" amass an even greater following in China, some of whom are "Generation Zers" born after the series wrapped up. Fang, who teaches at a private education institution in Beijing, said she plays clips from "Friends" in her classes to teach her teenage students new words and expressions. "They love all the jokes and farces. Some have even become binge-watchers of the show," she said. Many Chinese "Friends" fans relate to characters in the show and draw solace and life inspiration from it. Sheng Yang is a lecturer at the School of International Journalism and Communication at Beijing Foreign Studies University. Sheng said the "Friends" story of twenty-somethings making a living and finding love in a metropolis easily resonates with the growing number of Chinese young people who have left their hometowns to study or work in big cities amid the country's urbanization drive. "Despite the differences in cultural backgrounds and social environments, Chinese young people do share some similar pressures and insecurities with the "Friends" characters," Sheng said. "Career choices, the loneliness of living by oneself, and the craving for meaningful friendships, to name a few." Ji said she relates most to Rachel, who evolved in the series from a spoiled princess to an independent career woman who makes her own decisions. "The path Rachel has taken motivated me to become a more independent person and take charge of my life," said Ji, who studied alone in Germany for two years before returning to China to work in the male-dominated IT industry. "For that, I'll always be indebted to the "Friends" series," she added. Lewisville ISD middle school students attended the LISD Career Exploration Camp at the Technology, Exploration and Career Center East and Technology, Exploration and Career Center West campuses this past week. May 26 Nicholas Dale Johnson, 27, of North Bost Street, Statesville, 15 counts of breaking and/or entering, 13 counts of larceny after breaking and entering, six counts of larceny, four counts each of larceny of a firearm, identity theft, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, three counts of probation violation, two counts each of break and enter a motor vehicle and fleeing to elude arrest with a motor vehicle and one count each of conspiracy to break/enter a building, resist, delay, obstruct public officer and possession of stolen goods, $610,000 bond, Iredell County Sheriffs Office. But in a rare joint statement as tensions rose ahead of Friday's vote, Manchin and Sinema expressed exasperation with Republicans, imploring their colleagues not to stand in the way of a bipartisan commission to investigate the assault by a mob loyal to Trump seeking to overturn Biden's election. Manchin told reporters at the Capitol that the opposition to the Jan. 6 commission was disheartening. Sinema did not vote. As the Senate was considering the commission, Trump continued to push his false assertions about the 2020 election and its aftermath, which have collectively been dubbed the big lie. His persistent attacks on the integrity of the 2020 vote are sounding alarms among Democrats and some Republicans that more must be done to shore up Americans' faith in the civic process. Despite Trump's repeated accusations of voter fraud, dozens of judges and elections officials across the nation, along with his own attorney general, have found no evidence of a rigged election. The bill headed for a vote, the For the People Act, is vast, tackling a range of interrelated issues that Democrats say will protect the vote and curb special interests. Republicans say it is too broad of a federal reach into state and local election systems. Employees also said they thought Dundas sometimes took medication for personal use and was sometime not sober while at work, but the state report found that these allegations, while concerning, are not such that they can be investigated as it is so long after the fact. The state auditors office conducted an audit of the Coroners Office in 2018 after a complaint was made alleging improper handling of drugs and medication from death investigation scenes. The agency at the time recommended new procedures to ensure proper evidence handling and disposal. Generalized concerns of a hostile work environment also were raised, but those concerns are not criminal, but administrative in nature, according to the police report. There is no evidence of criminal activity in the additional concerns presented in the case, the police report said. That is not to say it is or is not occurring, it is to say that there is no evidence to support criminal charges. Reimbursement In 2018, county staff suspected Davidson was submitting reimbursement requests to the Washington Association of Coroners and Medical Examiners for travel expenses paid by the county and not depositing the reimbursements with the county to repay the public funds. Kessa Blankenship and Anabel Cusic School: Woodland High School Age: 18 Hometown: Woodland Parents: Lori and James Jourdan Plans: Anabel will take baking and culinary courses at Clark College and Kessa will join the U.S. Army. If you could talk to anyone, living or dead, who would it be? Kessa would talk to George Washington, because he also was in the military for a really long time, but he made the choices he made and built what we have today. Anabel would talk to Gordon Ramsey, because hes a really good chef and she could get some tips from him. What would you order for your final meal? Anabel would have her dads jailhouse burrito, and Kessa would have a doughnut. What is your secret talent? Kessas secret talent is singing and Anabels is crocheting. The officers cast Ellis as the aggressor, saying he punched the window of their cruiser and attacked them as they got out, according to statements from other officers cited in the charging documents. But two witnesses came forward with identical stories, saying the police attacked. An officer in the passenger side of a patrol car slammed his door into Ellis, knocking him down, and started beating him, they said. The witnesses described seeing a casual interaction between the officers and Ellis before Burbank struck Ellis with his car door there was no sudden, random attack by Ellis as the officers described that night to others, the probable cause statement said. In court Friday, Rankine's attorney, Bryan Hershman, sought to distinguish the allegations against his client from those against Burbank and Collins. My client was responding to a priority backup call. What happened prior to his arrival he had no knowledge of, Hershman said. He just knew there was a fracas when he got there. Video shows protesters at Toronto vaccine site The city of Toronto and the University Health Network held a pop-up vaccination event on May 23 at City Hall, where 2,500 doses of vaccine were administered, along with free ice cream, to those 12 years of age and older, according to the University Health Network. Canada became the first country to approve the Pfizer vaccine for 12- to 15-year-olds on May 5, a decision that was criticized by anti-vaccine advocates. In videos online, protesters can be seen at Nathan Phillips Square outside City Hall speaking out against vaccinating children at the clinic. "This is our children and we will not back down," one woman could be heard yelling in the video at police. Posts online shared the video to falsely claim it showed children being vaccinated against their parents' wishes. "A pop up vaccine clinic in Canada that is offering kids free ice cream in exchange for a vaccine, no parental permission required. Police are guarding the front to stop parents from intervening," one tweet said. Another post claimed that the video showed parents being barred from a school campus where children were being vaccinated without parental consent. Gillian Howard, a spokesperson for the University Health Network, said clinic staff did not see children being vaccinated without a family member present. "Anyone receiving vaccination would have been taken through the consent process by clinical staff and if there was any indication that someone whatever their age didn't understand the consent process, they would not be vaccinated," she wrote in an email. Only a handful of demonstrators took part in the protest. Howard said that police were present due to threats to the clinic. Under Ontario's Health Care Consent Act, there is no minimum age to provide consent for vaccination, according to Toronto Public Health spokesperson Dr. Vinita Dubey. Rather, it is up to the healthcare providers to ensure that they obtain informed consent prior to immunization. "This means the healthcare provider administering the vaccine has to deem the youth capable of understanding their decision," Dubey said. "If the individual is incapable of consenting to receiving the vaccine, they would need consent from their substitute decision-maker, such as their parent or legal guardian." Anthony Michael Kreis, a constitutional law professor at Georgia State University, said school boards can likely require teachers and students to wear masks without the governor's permission. He does not have broad-reaching, unilateral powers in the Georgia constitution to usurp the power of local school boards, Kreis said. I think what hes done here is basically removed himself from the calculus, punted this as a political issue back to the local school boards and said, `I dont want you to do this and you cant use me as your justification.'" Jason Esteves, chairman of the Atlanta school board and the state Democratic Party treasurer, said his district will continue requiring masks when 11,000 students return for summer classes next week. He said the wording of Kemp's order clearly shows the limits of his power over local school systems. We actually amended the dress code to require masks," Esteves said. "And we did it without consideration of what the governor or the political winds told us to do at the time. Kemp spokesman Cody Hall said the governor's prior emergency orders during the pandemic explicitly granted school systems the authority to require masks if they chose to. Kemp's new order rescinds that power at the end of May. The Healthcare Industry Summit and the official opening of AstraZeneca's northern China headquarters was held in Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA) on Friday. The launch of its northern China headquarters marks the first step of the company's China regional headquarters strategy this year. The new headquarters, located in the Beijing Economic-Technological Development Area (BDA), will oversee the company's operation, management and marketing in northern China and northeastern China, including Beijing and Tianjin. The headquarters will focus on industries related to smart medicine and technology, as well as the use of innovative technologies in the biomedicine and healthcare industries. With the full operation of the company's northern China headquarters, the Community Intelligence Healthcare Innovation Center, the Beijing International Life Science Innovation Campus and the AstraZeneca Global R&D China Beijing Office will also be established in the BDA. The company also held a forum about hospital management to provide in-depth interpretation and discussion of policies and key issues related to promoting the high-quality development of public hospitals. Another forum about medical innovation, medical organizations and smart primary care partnership was also sponsored. Sony has launched a new device that is aimed at helping you control music as you move. The company has launched Motion Sonic, which the company describes as an "effects gear to control sound in sync with your motion for playing music." The entire device consists of a tiny capsule-like design that can be attached to two different kinds of bands, one of which can be placed on your wrist, like you would wear a fitness tracker. This band can be worn while playing an instrument like a guitar. The other band can be worn at the back of your hand. It is better suited for playing devices like keyboards and pianos. Sony Motion Sonic (Indiegogo) What this device does is that it links your hand motions to specific musical effects. For example, you could set it to delay sound in sync with moving your arm up and down. You could also set it to pull a note when you roll your hand. An interesting bit about Motion Sonic is that Sony has introduced it on crowdfunding platform Indiegogo instead of launching it on its own website. But this is not the first time that Sony has launched a device on a crowdfunding platform first. Last year, it launched its Reon Pocket wearable air-conditioner on its own First Flight platform. But it was limited to Japan with Indiegogo, Sony is making this device available in the US and in Japan. This means that for people living in other countries, this gadget remains inaccessible. As far as the pricing is concerned, Motion Sonic retails at $248 or 27,200 Yen. However, the first 400 units will be available for $218 or 23,900 Yen. The company will start shipping the device in March 2022. Be Local is the regions premier shop local promotion and education network. This program is dedicated to strengthening the regions economy and promoting locally-owned, independent businesses by educating residents and visitors about the importance of shopping locally. The 2020 Be Local Network will include businesses from Southwest and Central Pennsylvania, Southeast Ohio, and the Ohio Valley in West Virginia. The two biggest Golden Isles Chamber of Commerce fundraisers of the year, Chamber Experience and Business & Bites, have been combined into one event for the first time. And it wont be the last. And theres Jesse LeRoy Brown, who earned the Distinguished Flying Cross the first Black naval officer to complete the Navys basic flight training program and the first Black naval officer killed in the Korean War. He was killed trying to save Marines trapped at the Chosin Reservoir. His body was never recovered, and his family was left without a grave to honor and remember him. The Sicily-Rome American Cemetery and Memorial is the final resting place for 7,861 servicemen who died liberating Italy from the Nazis. Many more heroes from all our wars rest in hallowed grounds around the world. We cant lose sight of what Memorial Day means for our nation and families who continue to grieve the loss of a soldier, sailor, airman, Marine or Coast Guardsman. For these Americans, Memorial Day may not be a day of celebration. It may be a deeply personal and somber day. Remember them in your prayers and recognize that we are free because of their sacrifices. President Joe Biden told me that my job as Veterans Affairs secretary is to fight like hell for veterans. He also said that there is no more sacred duty than to care for our nations vets who have given us so much. There are other states that have been trying to build their state veterans cemeteries for six, seven and eight years. They havent matched their 10% requirement for VA funding, Shuda said. We dont want to wait that long. Our veterans in the area, our veterans in the state, need to have a place in central Nebraska where they can have easy access to the burial site. Grand Island is perfectly situated along Interstate 80 between Fort McPherson and Omaha. And its needed, Shuda said. Its needed here in central Nebraska, and Grand Island is a perfect site for that. The Fort McPherson National Cemetery is south of Maxwell in western Nebraska. The State Veterans Cemetery is going to be good for all of mid-Nebraska, Quandt said. Its going to help honor veterans from Red Cloud all the way to ONeill, from Lincoln all the way to Ainsworth. I believe in it and I believe that the people will come up with the funds to make this happen and honor veterans in the right way. Brandon Warner, a Navy veteran, told Quandt how much his rooftop challenge means to him when he set up Quandts computer on top of the courthouse. Warner works in the information technology department at the Hall County Administration Building. Northwest Public Schools is keenly aware of that fluidity, but has managed to adjust accordingly, Ramsey said. We have worked the past couple of years to update our middle school financial literacy courses and the required personal finance course to stay current with financial practices, she said. Financial literacy can have a ripple effect, Teichmeier said. This is going to be something thats beneficial to all of us, he said. I think kids love the idea of learning about money. Hopefully, kids go home and teach their parents about it. In 2020 financial illiteracy cost each American an estimated average of $1,600 an estimated total of $415 billion nationally, according to the National Financial Educators Council. As benign as an act about financial literacy may seem, some have qualms concerning issues such as government overreach. The Nebraska State Education Association and Nebraska Association of School Boards both opposed the bill, indicating that, in a way, LB452 is redundant. In a letter to the Unicamerals Education Committee submitted for public record, NASB made its position known. A hearty Saturday Salute goes this week to Dave and Kelly Davis, as well as the volunteers from VFW Post 1347 and its auxiliary, who erected a patriotic display at the Nebraska Veterans Cemetery this week. The Davises built a wooden cross that is painted with stars and stripes, as well as wooden cutouts of a soldier praying. They positioned them, along with 30 small white crosses, in the cemeterys northwest corner. The display will remain in place until Wednesday. Dave Davis long has been aware of the need for improvements and proper maintenance at the cemetery, which is located next to the former home of the Grand Island Veterans Home. He said they would have created the display even if there wasnt a fundraising drive underway, but they also wanted to draw attention to the need for donations to make the cemetery a Nebraska State Veterans Cemetery. The Hall County Hero Flight Association is collecting donations for the local match of federal funding for the project. A total of $750,000 in donations is needed by Aug. 1. The expansion and improvement of the cemetery are important, Davis said. Small donations add up, he said. So every penny counts right now. Paris, TX (75460) Today Sun and clouds mixed. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. High around 90F. Winds light and variable.. Tonight Some clouds. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible. Low near 75F. Winds light and variable. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) has given the green light to the trading of crude oil and palm oil options and approved the introduction of overseas investors in the trading, according to a CSRC announcement on Friday. Crude-oil trading will launch on the Shanghai International Energy Exchange starting from June 21. Palm-oil trading, in turn, will launch on the Dalian Commodity Exchange on June 18. Crude oil and palm oil are substantive bulk commodities. Since the listing of relevant futures contracts, the market has been generally stable, with extensive industrial customer participation, the CSRC said. It also noted that introducing overseas investors in related listed options helps meet the tailored and refined risk management demand of domestic and overseas real economy entities. It also promotes the stable and healthy development of relevant industries. The CSRC is paying close attention to the market operation of agricultural products, energy, minerals, and other futures options related to the economy and people's livelihood, CSRC spokesperson Gao Li told a press conference Friday. The commission will effectively guard against market risks and curb excessive speculation, and resolutely investigate and punish violations of laws and regulations in the futures market. It will also actively cooperate with the relevant departments in implementing macro regulations on bulk commodities, Gao added. Ken Taake farms in Pulaski County with his brothers, and they are the fourth generation to work the land there. He agreed with McClerren. If you have heirs that want to keep the farm going, it would really put them in a bind, Taake said. Theres not enough liquidity to pay an estate bill like that. McClerren and Taake said farmers look wealthy on paper, but much of that wealth is tied up in assets like land and equipment. Their take-home pay is often quite less. Support Local Journalism Your membership makes our reporting possible. {{featured_button_text}} A lot of times the people involved live close to the poverty level even, he said, lumping himself into that statement. Back in the 80's, there were days when I did not know how we would buy groceries for the kids that week, McClerren said. He recalled his wife asking when they could have newer things and drive nicer cars like some of their neighbors. Honey, we will someday, he would say. He said they are in a much better place today but these gains could be short lived if his heirs have to sell the farm when he dies simply to cover capital gains. CARBONDALE A 43-year-old man is in the Jackson County jail after being charged in connection with a homicide Friday, according to a news release from Carbondale Police Department. At 5:44 a.m. Friday, Carbondale police responded to a request to assist with an eviction in the 700 block of South Marion Street. During the investigation, officers located a man with life-threatening injuries, later identified as Melvin L. Edwards, 61, of Carbondale. Jackson County Ambulance Service arrived and provided life-saving measures at the scene. Edwards was transported SIH Memorial Hospital of Carbondale where he was later pronounced dead, police said. Officers and detectives began to investigate his death and developed a suspect, identified as Freddie Ray Glasser, 43, formerly of Dolores, Colorado. Officers located Glasser in the 700 block of South Lewis Lane at approximately 10:20 a.m. and arrested him after he was allegedly trying to enter vehicles. Detectives charged Glasser with homicide and took him to county jail. Carbondale Police Department was assisted by Illinois State Police, Southern Illinois University Department of Public Safety, Jackson County Coroner and Jackson County States Attorneys Office. It was very clear to me that there was coercion and deception that was levied upon a 16-year-old Brendan Dassey, Durkin said. It became also very clear to me that this 16-year-old did not have the mental capacity to understand his Miranda rights, nor the capacity to waive these rights. Slaughter pointed to the case of Terrill Swift, one of the Englewood Four, who was released in 2012 after serving 15 years in prison after it was determined his confession as a 17-year-old minor was coerced by Chicago police officers. That confession had led to his conviction despite no evidence tying him to the crime committed, and the city paid Swift nearly $7 million in a settlement following his release. There are two other critical issues that we're addressing with this bill, Slaughter said. First of all fiscal responsibility the Englewood Four case cost our state taxpayers over $30 million. This is one case, the civil settlements are costing our state millions and millions of dollars and also on top of that, taxpayers are paying unnecessary costs for incarcerating individuals that are innocent. To the Editor: Agriculture is the largest economic sector in Illinois. Seventy thousand farms cover roughly 75% of the states total land area. Farms all over Southern Illinois fuel our economy, but farming has become increasingly more difficult because of soil erosion and nutrient loss. These challenges are impacting all farm operations and a farmers bottom line. One way to combat the challenges? Cover crops. Cover crops are not harvested but are planted to reduce nutrient leaching, soil loss, and runoff, while also improving soil health. Healthier soil creates larger yields because it improves water absorption, suppresses soil diseases and pests, and can help prevent weed growth. Cover crops also help reduce nutrient loss, a significant threat to our farms and our food and water supply. In 2015, the state launched the Illinois Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy (NLRS) to identify ways to direct resources towards improving water quality and reducing run-off. Planting cover crops are one of the most effective tools that can help the state reach its ambitious goals. Magers deployed last in the winter of 2001 through the summer of 2002 and retired in March 2003. His last deployment was to Bahrain to serve on the 5th Fleet staff during operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Horn of Africa. Magers was promoted to chief warrant officer in 1990 and retired as a CWO4 in 2003. He retired in San Diego before relocating to Charleston. He never did go back to Arkansas except for a high school reunion. Magers said he feels he did what he set out to do. "I worked to train those who worked for me," he said. "I think I prepared them to take over and continue what we were trained to do when I retired. "I hope that I helped those that came behind me to understand their oaths that were taken to this country and our fellow citizens," he continued. "I also hope that we presented a good image to those we came into contact with overseas and in the U.S." Magers said he does regret the time away from his family while serving, especially missing the milestones of children -- the first walk, graduation -- and other unforeseen circumstances like illness or injury of grandparents. But Magers said that despite the struggles, he is proud of his service. Job Title: Driver Organization: International Rescue Committee (IRC) Duty Station: Uganda Reports to: Supply chain Assistant About US: The International Rescue Committee (IRC) responds to the worlds worst humanitarian crises and helps people whose lives and livelihoods are shattered by conflict and disaster to survive, recover, and gain control of their lives. Founded in 1933 at the request of Albert Einstein, the IRC works with people forced to flee from war, conflict and disaster and the host communities which support them, as well as those who remain within their homes and communities. At work today in over 40 countries and 25 U.S. cities, we improve outcomes in the areas of health, safety, economic wellbeing, education and power. The IRC has been working in Uganda since 1998 supporting Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), refugees and various institutions in the country, notably the government, community-based organizations (CBOs), civil society organizations (CBOs) and the private sector. The current program portfolio in Uganda includes health and nutrition, support to persons with specific needs (PSNs) including case management, legal assistance to refugees, prevention and response to gender-based violence, Education and economic recovery and development (ERD). The IRC has a country office in Kampala and field offices in Amudat, Imvepi, Kyegegwa, Lamwo, Moroto/ Kiryandongo and Yumbe, as well as an urban office in Nsambya within Kampala. Job Summary: Under the direct supervision of the Fleet Assistant, the Full time Driver will provide transportation support to the West Nile Program including field site offices, as well as visitors to IRC. Key Duties and Responsibilities: Inspect and record the condition of the vehicle on a daily basis; prepare weekly maintenance checklist. Ensure timely servicing and maintenance of IRC vehicles (complete service request forms and maintain service maintenance records); report to head driver any mechanical problems. Ensure vehicle is insured and all legal documents are in order at all times; inform fleet Assistant three weeks in advance of any renewals due (i.e. insurance, road license, etc.). Conduct daily assessments of road conditions and security situation. Drive IRC program staff in a safe and courteous manner to field sites across the district. Deliver mail/messages as directed. Operate HF and VHF mobile radio equipment. Maintain cleanliness of interior/exterior of vehicle. Give accurate reconciliation within the given period. Obey IRC vehicle policy and operating procedures at all times (use of logbook, no drinking and driving, signing out vehicle on vehicle registry and so on). Assist the fleet assistant in loading cargo for road/air transport. Assist with other duties as assigned by the supervisor(s). Qualifications, Skills and Experience: The ideal applicant must have at least O- Level Certificate; A- Level Certificate an added advantage; Valid drivers license with classes A, B, CM,CH,DL and DM.; Good driving record; Minimum four years driving experience; Knowledge of Codan radio equipment; Fluent in English; NGO experience; Kiswahili language skills and knowledge of mechanics preferred. How to Apply: All suitably qualified and interested candidates are encouraged to apply online at the link below. Click Here Deadline: 8th June 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 This subscription will allow existing subscribers of The World to access all of our online content, including the E-Editions area. NOTE: To claim your access to the site, you will need to enter the Last Name and First Name that is tied to your subscription in this format: SMITH, JOHN If you need help with exactly how your specific name needs be entered, please email us at admin@countrymedia.net or call us at 1-541 266 6047. This summer the college began slashing 10% of its budget at the direction of Gov. Mark Gordon, who asked all colleges and state agencies to make those cuts amid an ongoing budget shortfall precipitated by the declining fossil fuel industry. Those cuts cost the college $2.4 million, and administrators were told to brace for more. In February, anticipating further cuts, the college announced it would be eliminating 15 positions, and eight people would be laid off the history centers archivist position among them. When we were looking at what the budget was going to be or what we were projecting the budget to be for this year, I think its important to know that it was kind of a crapshoot throughout the whole thing, Kosine said. He went on: When we were looking at the decision-making process ... we looked at all positions and we looked at all programs and (what) our No. 1 guiding principle was. We were trying to keep the cuts as far away from the classroom as possible to make sure that we didnt disrupt the student experience or resources that our students needed. The history center was identified as more community-facing than student-centered, Kosine said. But that reasoning has rubbed many in the community the wrong way. The United States has violated rules of the World Trade Organization (WTO) by adopting a new requirement on origin marking for Hong Kong products, the government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) said Friday. The HKSAR government has filed its first written submission to a panel of the WTO dispute settlement body, saying that the U.S. requirement is inconsistent with multiple WTO covered agreements, including the Agreement on Rules of Origin, the Agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade 1994. Edward Yau, secretary for commerce and economic development of the HKSAR government, said the U.S. requirement is discriminatory, unjust, and politically-driven, stressing that it is "unrelated to a proper determination of the place of origin of the goods as required under the various WTO covered agreements." Hong Kong as a separate customs territory uses the name "Hong Kong, China" to participate in international organizations and international trade agreements, which is widely recognized and respected by the international community, he said, noting that the status is on par with that of other WTO members. The U.S. requirement to mark goods originating in Hong Kong as originating in another WTO member has increased the cost and complexity of exportation for Hong Kong enterprises by forcing them to segregate their products based on different markets of destination, putting them at a competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis other WTO members, he said. The HKSAR government first brought the case to the WTO dispute settlement body in January and the director general of the WTO appointed a panel to examine the dispute on April 29. The panel is considering written submissions by Hong Kong, the United States, and 13 other WTO members who have reserved their rights to join as third parties to the dispute. Stainbrook, 30, of Casper, died hours after the shooting. Alexander, 26, of Evansville, died Feb. 23 of his injuries at a Lincoln hospital. Condon said a grand jury convened Thursday to review their deaths and found no true bill. This will clear the officers of the Lincoln Police Department and the Nebraska State Patrol who were involved in that shooting of all wrongdoing, he said. The full transcript of the grand jury isnt yet available. Four days after the shooting, Lancaster County Sheriff Terry Wagner said investigators reviewed video evidence from the in-car cameras and body-worn cameras of the troopers and officer involved and the Lincoln businesses where the two suspects had gone leading up to the pursuit and the shooting. He said Alexander was shot first after pointing a gun at a state trooper, then at two troopers and a Lincoln officer after the stolen SUV he and Stainbrook were in came to a stop under the I-80 overpass. Investigators say Alexander also fired at officers from the SUV during the pursuit. FINANCE Minister Colm Imbert said yesterday that the proposal to increase the retirement age to 65 from the current age of 60 is under active consideration, but he said the Government has not made a firm decision on the matter as yet. Moved by the sight of senior citizens waiting in long lines outside vaccination centres across the country, businessman Shane Mahabirsingh yesterday took it upon himself to provide comfort for them. Mahabirsingh, owner of Bilda Boyz Construction in Gasparillo, visited three health centres in the South-West Regional Health Authority (SWRHA) distributing chairs, water and sanitising the elderly men and women standing in line. It is not often that well-resourced and politically powerful companies such as ExxonMobil and Shell suffer historic defeats. However, last month, in different ways, both oil majors saw activist shareholders and environmentalists cause them and the international energy sector to have to think hard about what the future holds for hydrocarbons. Ducey, in a separate Twitter post, said his vetoes should not be seen as commenting on the merits of any of the bills. Some are good policy, but with one month left until the end of the fiscal year, we need to focus on passing a budget, he wrote. That should be Priority One. The other stuff can wait. Cant un-veto a bill Nothing keeps lawmakers from sending the same proposals back to Ducey later this year assuming they do it after there is a budget and he dissolves his veto pledge. But there is no procedure in the Arizona Constitution to un-veto a bill. That would mean having to start over again from scratch, either with entirely new bills and public hearings or finding ways to insert provisions of the vetoed bills into the budget package. Duceys move, while unusual, is not without precedent. In 2013, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer announced she would not sign any measures until there was resolution of a new state budget. And in that case, she also wanted the Republican-controlled Legislature to include her plan to expand Medicaid. The French prisoners somehow cobbled together a radio, hidden under the floor boards of their barracks. This was confirmed in the POW class I just completed and also in photographs I saw when my husband Dave and I visited the Stalag 11B museum at the site of the prison camp in 2015, the 70th anniversary of the camps liberation. As Jimmy and Albert told me, the French prisoners would pick up snippets of news. Someone would write the news on a slip of paper (I dont know in which language, but I assume it was English as the broadcasts were likely from the BBC). One of the English chaps would slip the paper in his shoe, and while making rounds delivering scarce firewood or other provisions to the barracks, drop off the news bulletin. Now that may sound farfetched, but I remember many evenings watching Hogans Heroes with you and what did the French prisoners have in their barracks? Yes a radio! President Xi Jinping on Friday called for accelerated efforts in building China into a leader in science and technology and achieving sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels. Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, made the remarks while addressing a meeting conflating the general assemblies of the members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the national congress of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). Sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening should always be considered a strategic support for national development, he said. Xi said scientific and technological development must target the global sci-tech frontiers, serve the main economic battlefields, strive to fulfill the significant needs of the country and benefit people's lives and health. Scientists and engineers must closely follow current trends, take the initiative, confront problems head-on, and overcome difficulties, he added. Xi said the meeting is an important occasion to discuss the country's plans for promoting sci-tech innovation and development, as China is on a new journey to fully build a modern socialist country. On behalf of the CPC Central Committee, he extended congratulations to the meeting, and greetings to professionals serving at various sci-tech posts. Noting the CPC has always attached great importance to science and technology, Xi said sci-tech innovation has been placed at the core of China's overall development since the 19th CPC National Congress in 2017. He praised the progress made in sci-tech innovation, basic research, original innovation, strategic sci-tech and high-end industries, as well as the significant role of science and technology in containing the COVID-19 epidemic. Major progress has been made in basic research and original innovation, including quantum information, stem cells, and brain science. The Chang'e-5 probe has brought back the country's first samples collected from the moon. China's first Mars rover started exploring the red planet. China's high-end industries, including large passenger aircraft and magnetic-levitation train industries, saw fast development. Industries related to artificial intelligence, digital economy, 5G, and electric vehicles are thriving. Science and technology have provided firm support for the country's response to COVID-19. China succeeded in isolating the world's first novel coronavirus strain and also developed various medicines and vaccines. Xi urged China's sci-tech professionals to assume the responsibilities of the times and strive for sci-tech self-reliance and self-strengthening at higher levels. Key tasks identified Xi called for resolute efforts to achieve breakthroughs in core technologies in key fields. Sci-tech breakthroughs should tackle the most pressing issues with a focus on meeting the country's needs, both urgent and long-term, he said. Xi also called for enhancing the overall efficacy of the national innovation system, calling on national laboratories, national scientific research institutions, high-caliber research-oriented universities and leading sci-tech enterprises to shoulder their responsibilities in the drive. Xi stressed the need to advance the reform of the sci-tech system to form a basic system of supporting innovation in all aspects. The new system concentrating nationwide effort and resources on key national sci-tech undertakings should be improved in the context of the socialist market economy, while more autonomy should be given to research institutions, he said, adding that scientists must be further empowered to decide their technical routes and how to use research funds. Xi called for more participation in global sci-tech governance with a focus on issues such as climate change and human health, as well as more joint research and development with scientific researchers from other countries. China's science and technology should make greater contributions to building a community with a shared future for humanity, he said. In building a global center of talent, the country should strive to cultivate top sci-tech talent with global influence and more high-caliber technical and skilled professionals, he said. Highlighting the role of the two academies, Xi called on them to solve major original scientific problems and overcome challenges in core technologies in key fields that hinder China's development. Xi highlighted the duty of the CAST to rally sci-tech workers closely around the Party, urging the association to carry forward the spirit of scientists, and promote openness, trust, and cooperation with the international sci-tech community. "Members of the two academies are the treasure of the country, the source of pride of the people, and the glory of the nation," Xi noted, calling on them to respond to the Party's call, pursue excellence, and hold fast to academic morality and research ethics. Friday's event, attended by about 3,000 sci-tech professionals and officials, was presided over by Premier Li Keqiang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee. Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng -- all being members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee -- also attended the meeting. Li Keqiang said Xi's speech made clear the major tasks in accelerating the building of China's sci-tech strength. The spirit of the speech must be thoroughly implemented. Chinese scientists were encouraged by Xi's speech. Liu Zhongmin, an academician of the CAE, said he expects a boom of innovation with more supporting policies rolled out. "Through self-reliance and self-strengthening, and by following the leadership of the Party, our country will make tremendous development achievements," said Wang Guodong, a professor at Northeastern University and also an academician of the CAE. "As a major country, China will contribute to humanity's wellbeing with its science and technology," Wang said. But it said the Missouri River pipeline would cost $8.6 billion to build. The Mississippi River pipeline, which in the bureaus study would start at Memphis, would cost $14.6 billion. The pipelines would cost over $2,000 an acre-foot to operate more than 10 times the cost of delivering CAP to Arizona cities. Both projects would take 30 years five years to determine feasibility, 15 years to get permits, and 10 years to build, the bureau said. ASU's Porter said a desalination plant is more realistic, something whose costs and benefits are already being scoped out a project "that has legs." It could bring in another 200,000 acre feet of water through an exchange in which Arizona gets more of California or Mexico's Colorado River supplies while the other parties get the desalinated seawater, she said. But, "we shouldnt be bringing in a new water supply, where theres work to be done on getting a handle on groundwater," said Porter, whose center just published a scathing attack on the state's failure to manage groundwater pumping in the state's urban areas. 'Until we get our house in order, we shouldnt be making big investments." At the Arizona Capitol Times discussion, Engel called the pipeline unrealistic, unnecessary and outrageously expensive. Of course, even it it does cost more, that should make you wonder why the city has excused its customers in incorporated Oro Valley and Marana from the rate increase. Presumably the same infrastructure differential exists in those far-flung suburbs. Inequity in water usage The city has also explained that county residents use more water than city residents, but the city gets back less of the water because of the relatively large number of septic systems used in the county. (Water used by city customers tends to be treated and reused.) Thomure has cited this among several inequities that justify the new water rates: Water customers in the unincorporated county use, on average, 43% more water than city users 1,000 cubic feet on average versus 700 in the city. But that doesnt mean theres an inequity those people who use more pay more for their water. If you use 100 to 700 cubic feet of water per month, you pay for it at a rate of $2.07 per hundred cubic feet. From 800 to 1,500 cubic feet, you pay at a rate of $3.82 per hundred cubic feet, and so on, up to $12.93 per hundred cubic feet for those using more than 3,000. If you use more, wherever you live, you pay more per volume. Thats equitable. Ten years is, I think, enough time to create or start some policy changes either locally or nationally in the U.S. that impact indigenous people and language and education, Zepeda said. Her work has become increasingly important as the Tohono Oodham language has become endangered. Zepeda says UNESCO adding the language on its endangered list in 2018 has helped create awareness for the Tohono Oodham work, which will help preserve the language by teaching it to their children. She believes the Tohono Oodham are in a good situation because several people in their 40s and older still speak Oodham fluently. Coupled with the increased awareness in recent years, these speakers can help boost efforts in keeping the language alive as the Oodham work to close the gap between fluent speakers and those who do not speak the language. Zepeda said she feels privileged to be able to study her first language, and she is always discovering something new about the Oodham language. When you study the language, youre allowed that kind of privilege to stand back and look at your own language, and you discover how it works, that its very sophisticated sometimes and then other times its very basic, she said. So its kind of like finding something new about your language every time. Contact reporter Stephanie Casanova at scasanova@tucson.com. On Twitter: @CasanovaReports Get local news delivered to your inbox! Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter. Sign up! * I understand and agree that registration on or use of this site constitutes agreement to its user agreement and privacy policy. NEW YORK (AP) The man accused of shooting and injuring three people in Times Square earlier this the month has been charged after arriving in New York from Florida where he was arrested. Farrakhan Muhammad, 31, is charged with attempted murder and multiple counts of assault, reckless endangerment and criminal use of a firearm, the New York Police Department said on Friday. Muhammad has denied that he is responsible for the shooting on May 8 that wounded two women and a 4-year-old girl. The victims did not know each other. New York Police Department Chief of Detectives James Essig has said that Muhammad was identified as the gunman by his brother, who told officers he was the intended target of the shooting. U.S. Marshals arrested Muhammad near Jacksonville, Florida, four days after the shooting, along with a woman who authorities said traveled with him from New York. The killings and forced disappearances are rampant in low-income areas of the capital, but nobody is immune, he said. Our interventions save some, but the bodies of others are found in rivers," Ollal said Saturday. Police, without producing any evidence, attempt to explain such killings on social media pages associated with the force by saying the person killed was a criminal he would have bribed his way to freedom, if arrested and prosecuted. Both claims have been proven false by the media and human rights activists. According to rights group Missing Voices, Kenyan police killed 157 people in 2020 and 10 people disappeared without a trace after being arrested. According to Mohamud's family and police, he was abducted on May 13 by unknown assailants as he drove from a mall in Nairobi's wealthy Lavington neighborhood. The family reported him missing three days later, and police reported finding his body the same day in Kerugoya, a town 127 kilometers (78.91 miles) north of the city. The family questions why they were not informed until May 22 when police had identified the body as Mohamuds by at least May 18th. An autopsy carried out by Kenya's chief government pathologist revealed that Mohamud was strangled. The autopsy report said the body showed signs of torture that included blunt head trauma and burn marks, suspected to have been caused by a vehicle's cigarette lighter. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. OPINION: Gov. Doug Ducey's move for the flat tax is on letter writers minds and the affects it can have on schools. What are your thoughts? Write a letter to the editor at tucson.com/letters. If you're someone who wants to try a little bit of everything, flights are a great solution. Here are seven food and drink flights to get in Tucson, from places such as Reforma, The Screamery and Bawker Bawker. For Tucson tweens and teens who are too old for summer camp, but not yet old enough or ready for a summer job, there are still a few, fun options for beating boredom this summer. TAHLEQUAH, Okla. (AP) Nearly 400,000 Cherokee Nation citizens will receive $2,000 lump-sum payments as part of the Oklahoma-based tribe's share of President Joe Biden's American Rescue Plan Act. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. signed legislation Thursday authorizing the direct payments to each of the tribe's 392,832 citizens. The tribe's governing council voted 16-1 to authorize the payments. In this resolution, we will appropriate funds out of the $1.8 billion (provided the tribe) to cover the individual assistance payments to citizens and adopt a broad spending framework with categories as a place to start which can be modified as we move forward," Hoskin said in a statement. The direct payments represent more than 43% of the $1.8 billion provided to the tribe through Bidens American Rescue Plan Act. In addition to the payments, Hoskin and Deputy Chief Bryan Warners spending plan includes mental health and wellness initiatives, assistance for Cherokee-owned small businesses, tribal health care services, infrastructure improvements, and support for education, housing and job training for Cherokee families. The Cherokee Nation is the second-largest tribal nation in the country, second only to the Arizona-based Navajo Nation. Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission. Of course, you could kick off the summer grilling season with burgers, barbecue and ribs, or you could dress up the first official weekend of summer with this green, zesty equivalent to the little black dress of cooking. Chimichurri, an Argentinian marinade and dressing laden with garlic, herbs and red pepper flakes, might be the most versatile recipe you make this summer. There are as many recipe variations (over 8 million results popped up on a Google search) as there are uses for the zesty sauce. Traditionally served alongside grilled meats, chimichurri can be used to smear or drizzle over many things stir into pasta, use as a dip for veggies or bread or marinate just about anything! Kick off summer grilling season with these zesty dishes, and keep the chimichurri recipe as a back-pocket go-to for the rest of summer. Chimichurri Sauce Makes about 2 cups